Samurai (and when I talk about Samurai here, I am referring collectively to Samurai and Super Samurai)
receives a lot of flak from the fandom in general. While it is far from
being an instalment of the franchise to rival such seasons as In Space or RPM,
many of its negative aspects have been over time exaggerated and given
too much emphasis. So here are my general responses to criticisms of Samurai that have been made, plus a few extra points.
This for me is a non-issue to be honest. If you watch Super Sentai, then the show is not aimed at you and you might as well get used to it. I have accepted this a long time ago, and it makes things much easier for me. One thing the adult fandom of PR needs to understand is that the creative side of the show doesn’t cater to them, and while a majority of what is written by PR’s adult fandom acknowledges this, there are other fans of the show who think that PR should take what they want into account. It’s not going to happen.
With
that out of the way, copying plots from the Sentai is in itself not a
bad thing. The Psycho ranger arc has in general got a good reputation
among fans, and it is a direct rip from Megaranger. The common examples of Time Force and Lightspeed Rescue show that copying the Sentai isn’t a bad thing in itself. While watching Shinkenger,
I thought that I wouldn’t mind a direct adaptation of the story,
because I enjoyed it. However, this brings me to the next criticism of Samurai.
Samurai is a BAD copy of the Sentai
OK,
I can see where this argument is coming from. Stripping away a lot of
the ‘Japaneseness’ of the source footage and not really replacing it
with anything new causes problems, and Samurai manifests them. A good example is the fisherman who helps Kevin catch the swordfish zord. It makes no sense in Samurai because they stripped out all the meaning and backstory of the character.
For
the first season this can be somewhat forgiven due to the rushed nature
of pre-production. The short amount of time they had to mount the show
meant that they wouldn’t have had much opportunity to flesh out original
stories. Rumours that Saban wanted to wait until 2012 to make sure the
show was better tend to reinforce this.
The problems of the first season knocked onto the second, forcing them to directly adapt stories in Super Samurai.
That said, it it a much better adaptation, changing around motivations
and situations to make it a little more distinct and its own thing. It’s
hardly perfect, but the writers are learning, and bringing on better
writing staff helped them with the creative side.
Of
course, that doesn’t fully justify the end product. Behind the scenes
problems explain, but they don’t really justify problems with the show.
It is because of this that I would largely concede that there were many
mistakes made with the adaptation of Shinkenger,
especially in the first season. That said, despite some of the odd
happenings that occur as a result of the poor translation... I really
don’t mind all that much. While it is a bit of a copout to say “pff,
whatever” to some of the glaring plot holes, it isn’t as much of a
dealbreaker as people say it is.
Samurai has Bad Acting
I’ll say ‘Yes and No’ to this one. It really depends on the actor, so I’ll discuss them one by one.
Alex
Heartman (Jayden)- His acting is a little stiff, but I really don’t see
any problem with it. I interpret it as Alex trying to appear aloof but
not quite getting there. That said, he has managed to create an air of
dogged determination in his performances that I quite like, and as such I
really don’t have a problem with him as an actor, especially during
episodes where he is put through some sort of hardship.
Najee
De-Tiege (Kevin)- I’m tempted to say something about his acting being
so wooden he should have been the green ranger. A lot of the time he
looks uncomfortable delivering his lines, and it really doesn’t come
across very well. At some points during Super Samurai he has shown improvement, but he really hasn’t done very well IMO. He started out as the worst actor in Samurai,
and he finished as the worst actor. The finale has a great buildup, and
one scene is ruined by him misdelivering a line which just frustrated
me. He’s a great example of just plain unconvincing acting.
Erika
Fong (Mia)- She does well for a part that is relatively uninspiring.
Her character is pretty boring and is largely pushed to the background
so she had little to work with when it comes to acting. That said, what
she has been given she has worked with relatively well.
Hector
David Jr (Mike)- My favourite actor of the series, he has a reasonably
easy job to do- play the fun guy. I like a silly green ranger and while
some of the pranks he pulls are cliché, Hector manages to pull them off
with a bit of a cheeky grin and a bit of fun that says “it’s an oldie
but a goodie!”. Once again this is exploited better in Super Samurai purely because the writers had more time to think about how they would portray the characters.
Brittany
Pirtle (Emily)- I wish she would stop yelling. Other than that problem,
she isn’t that bad an actor. She manages to pull off the few pratfalls
given to her character quite well, and when she’s told to tone it down a
little she can actually get some emotion into her acting. Overall she
is the second worst actor in Samurai,
but she got a little better as time went on. Brittany is one actor
people are a little too harsh on; while she isn’t the best, she isn’t
the “arrg punch my eyes and ears” bad people say she is. With that said,
her explanation of ber backstory during “Origins” is painful to watch
because it’s a great script and she destroys all the emotion it should
have had.
Steven
Skyler (Antonio)- I kinda like him. Despite his overuse of the word
“Fantastico!”, he’s kinda grown on me. He’s energetic but not in a way
that’s identical to his Shinkenger counterpart.
As a result he’s a pretty good actor, because more so than the other
actors he’s been able to inject his own personality into what his
character is.
Rene
Naufahu (Mentor Mentor)- Eh, he’s all right. I really think people
overstate his acting deficiencies. His biggest problem is his
difficulties in being able to express more than one emotion. He looks
cool on a motorbike.
Ricardo
Medina Jr (Deker)- He's better than when he was Cole. The part he has to play
isn’t that hard though, so it’s difficult to gauge him. For what he was
given, he does the part of Deker justice and I kinda like what he did
with the character. My favourite villain? By far.
Overall
the acting is all right. The acting started out dreadful, but since the
origin story was shown out of order, it was easy to see how the actors
improved during Samurai, and even more so during Super Samurai.
I’ll never be so silly as to claim that they are really good actors
deserving of an emmy or anything, but they are better than people think,
especially as time goes on.
Bulk and Spike are Pointless
Yeah,
I’ll give that criticism some credit. Bulk and Spike’s presence seems
to be a product of executive meddling, since it’s understandable that
for a relaunch of the franchise it would be good to have one
recognisable character from MMPR. They have little impact on the story
telling and only meaningfully interact with the rangers once, during the
boot camp subplot. That was really awesome and show what sort of
potential stories these characters could have had if the writers could
have tried harder.
My main question is: why don’t people make the same criticism of Turbo?
Off the top of my head I can only really think of one time when they
had any sort of impact on the story of an episode, which is when they
had that delivery job in ‘Parts and Parcel’, and that was the
penultimate story. That said, in Samurai they
have even less relevance, degrading to the point where their scenes
just feels like an unrelated skit in the middle of the episode.
I guess it’s better to ignore those two.
Wouldn’t
it have been cool, though, if they were working at the Shiba house?
They could have been janitors, and they were inspired by seeing the
rangers go off to fight every day to want to become Samurai themselves.
The swordfish episode would have Bulk helping him catch the zord, and
scattered through the episodes would have Bulk and Spike helping the
rangers with a problem, sometimes directly, sometimes inadvertently
through their actions. As the season goes on they learn that though they
cannot become Samurai, they realise they truly have made a difference
by being part of a ranger team. Cliché? Hell yes. But it would have been
better than what we got with them.
They’re
to sell toys. Yeah, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the first
battliser that a female ranger has worn has no real purpose, but I’ve
gotten used to the idea that the show is a toy commercial. Are they lost
opportunities? Yes. But they are not that big of a problem.
The Show Looks Great, Though
Technically it’s the best season ever made. It doesn’t have the squished Sentai footage
the later Disney episodes had, it didn’t have noticeable image quality
issues such as in MMPR or LG, and it is finally in HD. It looks
gorgeous, the sets look great with attention to detail, and it just
looks like someone actually bothered to spend money on it. It’s
frustrating watching seasons of the show where they have taken the cheap
option for a show they only have to film at most 10 minutes of footage
for an episode.
Samurai has
a lot of flaws, which I have gone over above. That said, they are not
all that bad. The season isn’t full of Kalishplosions, an improvement
that cannot be overstated. There has been a lot of Disney nostalgia
washing over the fandom, which once again reinforces the interesting
cycle that the fans tend to like seasons more in retrospect then while
it’s airing (Jungle Fury
has been getting a better rap recently I’ve noticed). With that said,
the choreography sank low during the Disney era, with the wirework
becoming too in your face and the slow motion explosions becoming
repetitive and tiring. I tried to watch Mystic Force
recently and just couldn’t stand how awful the action sequences were.
JF at least had an explanation for the wirework at times. There are few
original fight scenes in Samurai, but hey, the ones they used in the show were good.
The
show isn’t stuck in a perpetual ‘third episode’, which is a nice
change. Bringing it up again, JF had this as a problem, and I was
willing to overlook it because... well, it was still enjoyable to watch.
This is helped by Shinkenger and by extension Samurai was a very episodic season, essentially having a set up episode, 48 episodes of filler and a finale.
The
plot holes aren’t so bad that they hinder my enjoyment of the episode.
Each season has its own tone, and this season has a general feeling of
being inane, lighthearted and silly. Yeah, stuff makes no sense, but
when Emily wakes up while being carried to ask for ice cream? Awww. When
watching Samurai I
just like to sit back and let everything unfold in front of me and not
take it seriously to the point where watching the show stops being fun.
And watching a fun show is the reason why I watch Power Rangers in the first place.
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