I talked about how I grew up with Power Rangers (Tokusatsu and me: Part 1 ). I wanted to watch this show because I had seen Zeo and was curious how the original Sentai differed in its portrayal. But this is a show I can’t talk about without going into some sad real world events, it explains certain things that happened in the show.

While Zeo starts out with the destruction of the command center, instead Ohranger starts with a full on invasion by the Machine Empire Baranoia in the year 1999 (this was broadcast in 1995 by the way). Already I was enjoying this. With the Machine Empire of Zeo, they were supposed to be this massive invading empire, yet ended up feeling identical to the old villains as a bunch of small forces rather than an army. Ohranger though right away paints a more imposing force using massive numbers of machines to attack the whole planet (not just one small town/city in America).

Also the Defense of the World is a more government run operation with many engineers producing the weapons rather than just a floating head in a tube, robot and a lovely man played by David Yost. No offense to them, but the set up in Ohranger just seems a bit more believable given the upkeep of those mechs.

Both shows state, however, that the source of the powers are from some ancient power. In Ohrangers case it comes from an ancient Pangaea civilization (don’t just don’t think about it, that explanation makes my knowledge of palaeontology, geography and biology yell) and it’s being backed up by the modern tech being developed from it. This makes the mentor figure Naoyuki Miura – played by Hiroshi Miyauchi  who has played in Sentai rolls before but here he is the commander of the team and not a combat member.

As the show goes on you start to notice the tone of Baranoia attacks tends to change. While early on they were this massive army to the point they had their butler Acha state the terms of surrender during an attack. Later on they do behave more like how you think a show aimed at a younger audience would behave with zanier plans that feel less invading army and more let’s do crazy stuff.  This is due to the Sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo Subway system that occurred in March of 1995. Because of that there is a considerable tonal shift after the first 8 episodes and many people cite the show becoming worse due to it.

This really hits the point when in the last act of the show they try to make the empire feel dangerous again. It’s just weird having started out as an imposing force, made silly and then remembering they need to be a threat again for the last few episodes or the stakes don’t seem that high.

I can’t say I disagree with the choice since the Sarin gas attack was a big tragedy which occurred and I’ve seen many examples of shows around the world that had to change plans due to such things, Power Rangers Time Force notably removed scenes of building destruction following the 11th of September attack of 2001.

Still it was quite interesting watching this in comparison to Zeo, which is what most of us over on this side of the planet would be doing it for. It is a better ending than Zeo got, with a proper conclusion for Baranoia that the machine empire never got, as well as those early episodes that made them feel like what they were promised to be.