With the franchise back in Saban's hands and coming from a year gap, Linkara takes a look at Power Rangers Samurai, the season that aired when he was in the middle of the older seasons.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: During his rant against Mentor Ji, he calls him a "sack of Grumm".
- Actually Pretty Funny: Despite not liking Xandred, Linkara admits the joke about him talking without moving his mouth is this.
- Adapted Out: He notes that the original Shinkenger had the Rangers accompanied by massive support staff, including stage-hands carrying flags and banners to their battles. These people were not present in Samurai (minus a cameo in one of the Halloween specials), but fragments of this remain in the overall infrastructure.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Discusses how screwed-up he thinks the Samurai Rangers must be due to the heavy burden placed on them by their families, citing Kevin's perfectionism as an example, even looking at Mia's cooking as a way for her to break out of that routine and do something for herself.
- Arc Fatigue: Feels this way in general over Deker's story arc. While impressed with the backstory and a surprising finale, Linkara felt it was dragged out longer than it should have been.
- Artistic License – Medicine: When Antonio has his consciousness implanted into a dead fish about to be eaten by a stray cat, he becomes deathly afraid of fish, and the other Rangers try to help him with what they call "Aversion Therapy". Not only does Linkara point out that Aversion Therapy is something completely different, but what they are doing (Exposure Therapy) is supposed to be done slowly over a long period of time, and all shoving what someone is terrified of in their faces will do is likely cause the person to have a panic attack.
- Badass Decay: Averted in terms of Bulk. While Linkara notes that many fans considered this a severe step backwards in Bulk's character (especially from In Space), he points out that Bulk still has the same development and gumption he gained throughout the series, and his reactions to battle aren't cowardice per se, but just a realistic reaction to facing a dangerous monster when you have no special powers or weapons, like the Rangers have (again, noting that In Space was a situation of it being humanity's last stand, so of course Bulk would have an excuse for Taking a Level in Badass there).
- Borrowed Catchphrase: In Part 1, Linkara says, "To quote another web video show, 'You may not have noticed, but your brain did.'"
- Call-Back: Reminds us why Jayden and Lauren can't be the Red Ranger at the same time by pointing out what happened with the White Ranger Clone.
- Child Soldiers: Linkara notes that due to the heavy burdens of familial responsibility placed on the Samurai Rangers and the clear pressure they've been under due to their duty to fight the Nighloks, to the point where they're pretty much told to drop everything to answer the call, he considers them this. He also notes that while he joked about Zordon previously, it's worth noting that Zordon (and practically every other mentor) offered their Rangers a choice in the matter and that while Jayden technically offers that choice, their families still spent their lives forcing them down the path of the samurai, meaning that for them, there really was no choice at all.
- Christmas Rushed: Because of the last-minute Uncanceled, the show had about half the normal production period. This results in truncated filming and scripts that are almost direct translations from the original Shinkenger.
- Conflict Ball: He hates the artificial issues brought on by Jayden actually leaving the team after the reveal that he was not the proper heir to the Red Ranger legacy. Especially that Lauren is incredibly sympathetic throughout (she's equally skilled and does nothing poor as a leader to earn their ire) and that Jayden acts as though everyone is upset over the deception when they don't care from the start.
- Ending Fatigue: While he does give credit to the 'team-up episode' Clash of the Red Rangers despite its numerous shortcomings, he does note that the driving force for the plot was resolved halfway through the second episode, and thus all that was left was 15 minutes of a rather uninteresting fight scene that just seemed to stretch on forever.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Out of all the rangers, he enjoyed Antonio the most due to him actually choosing to become a ranger and fight evil while everyone else was forced into the life and suffers an absurd amount of emotional baggage because of it.
- Once again, he felt that Bulk was the highlight, despite his inclusion being last minute since he rarely interacts with the rangers.
- Lauren was actually Linkara's favorite ranger for this season due to being the first female red ranger as well as Kimberly Crossman's incredible performance.
- Establishing Character Moment: Linkara says that Jayden's first scene as the Samurai Red Ranger was handled very well since he came off as badass... and then laments the fact that Nickelodeon skipped the first two episodes of this season, starting viewers off on the third episode and thus wasting the whole purpose of the scene.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Points out that since Mentor Ji doesn't really have a first or last name, all the Rangers just call him "Mentor". He also points how that this really annoys him since it sounds really awkward whenever a Ranger calls him this, every single time.
- Fake Nationality: Linkara points out that the show tried really hard to push the fact that Antonio was Latino... even though the actor who played Antonio is actually Thai.
- Fake Shemp: Brings this up in regards to the "Clash of the Red Rangers" two-parter, how the RPM Red Ranger Scott remained morphed the entire time (and Antonio was not seen out of costume). The reasons for this were complicated, as Eka Darville, Scott's actor, had become a SAG member and Power Rangers has always been a non-union production, so he got around that by using an alternate stage name and providing the voice-over. But Linkara does say that while the set-up could be extremely disappointing, there was some value in that staying morphed supported the plot-relevant distrust, and there was still effort made to show the personality clash between the vehicle-oriented RPM ranger and the mystical Samurai rangers.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Jayden's secret that lasts the entirety of the series was not so bad that it obviously needed to be kept secret, and when it is discovered, Jayden himself is distraught that he had to hide it from his friends while they understood exactly why.
- Freud Was Right: Linkara mocks Deker's obsession with his phallic symbol — he-he means his sword, Urumasa.
- Fridge Horror: He talks about how the Rangers were drilled into being ready to fight as Samurai Rangers from a young age, and as a result, they had significant emotional scars and took failure extremely hard. Linkara's fury at how Mentor Ji treats Antonio as unworthy for not having that long tradition is among his biggest rants since Antonio is not merely self-taught but also the only Ranger who joins out of personal desire and not from longstanding family pressure.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: Despite not having seen Shinkenger, Xandred's "medicine" doesn't fool him for a second.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: Really doesn't find Xandred impressive. He doesn't even lead plans, he just sits around drinking "medicine", and does this for over 99% of the season. And even then, he doesn't have any redeeming qualities like an awesome voice or a humor factor that other villains could at least hold claim to. He even goes on record to say that with his other least enjoyable villains (Divatox, Lothor, Bansheera), at least they would do something with their time, making him perhaps the worst lead villain up to this point.
- HA HA HA—No: This rant toward Mantor Ji swiping Antonio's morpher (which Antonio made himself, thus it's his property and makes Ji a thief) starts off like this, chuckling before asking who Ji thought he was doing that.
- He Really Can Act: Not too surprising for the actress herself, but Linkara comments that Lauren is so well performed compared to the rest of the cast (being Power Rangers, most of the acting rarely gets above just "okay", and even then, some of the acting in this season was pretty damn bad at points) it makes her that much more sympathetic for their bad attitude towards her.
- Hero-Worshipper: Gets quite annoyed about the Samurai Rangers being this for Jayden, especially when Lauren enters the picture and is clearly trying her best, but the others barely give her a chance because 'she's not Jayden'.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Even he admits the almost sexual undertones between Jayden and Antonio, and shows the infamous clip of Antonio eyeing Jayden while saying "I'm ready for some action", ostensibly for sparring.
- Hurricane of Puns: Finds this incredibly annoying as the characters don't stop making puns in a fight.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: He points out how Samurai really suffers from largely being a straight translation of Shinkenger's story, with occasional plot holes when something was changed, plus massive Values Dissonance of a bunch of non-Asian people acting like they're Japanese.
- Insult to Rocks: During his Rage Against the Mentor towards Mentor Ji he refers to him as more of a glorified butler than a mentor before saying that's unfair since Spencer from Operation Overdrive actually was a butler and was one of his favorite characters that season.
- Karma Houdini: For all the reasons Linkara has to dislike Mentor Ji, one thing in particular that irks him is the fact that he never gets called out when he makes a mistake. There is even an instance where both Mentor Ji and Jayden are in the wrong, and only Jayden ends up called out and apologizing, Mentor Ji just standing in the background avoiding the blame.
- Lame Pun Reaction: This season's problem with the fight scenes? The Rangers keep invoking this trope for the audience.
- Last Minute Hook Up: There are some hints that Mike and Emily would end up together, but this comes mostly from a few instances of characters talking about it rather than actually showing them interacting and having chemistry throughout the season.
- Manchild: Says that since Spike's actor was clearly trying to channel Skull from the first season of Mighty Morphin' (keyword: trying), he comes across this way, even though Spike is obviously supposed to be around 17 or 18.
- Magic Versus Science: Linkara notes that the team-up has elements of this, even leading into a minor tangent stating that these were the two basic styles of Power Ranger shows (listing Mighty Morphin, Zeo, Overdrive, SPD and RPM as falling on the science side, while Mystic Force, Wild Force, and Samurai fall on the spiritual side). He also claims that the difference between the two methodologies, and even the way the command centers are decorated (and how Ranger Red reacts to them) increase his enjoyment of the episode.
- Merchandise-Driven: Got rather annoyed with this through the season, as new zords and power-up after power-up happened in every other episode. He didn't mind the armored form used to pilot the zords or the white jacket super mode (feeling that both were distinctive and "At least it isn't glitter!"), but the new battle discs and weapon variations wore thin.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Talks about his disappointment over not getting to see the Samurai Ranger team visiting the RPM Ranger team's command center (although he understands the previous set was likely destroyed and it wasn't cost-effective to rebuild nor bring back all the RPM actors). In particular, he would have loved to see how Dr. K would have reacted to the Samurai Rangers and the more spiritual origin of their powers.
- Out of Order:
- Decided to go with the official first episode "Origins" (which aired at the end of the series) instead of the third episode that was first aired. He notes that "Origins" isn't a great episode, but it does have a fantastic opening scene that would have endeared audiences to the show much faster.
- Also noted is that, despite premiering between seasons, "Clash of the Red Rangers" uses power-ups and Zords that wouldn't be properly introduced until Super Samurai.
- Plot Hole: Points out that sometimes the writers would forget important plot points between episodes! For instance, in one episode Xandred mutates one of his monsters for betraying him and sets him loose on the Rangers, but in the next episode, Xandred has no idea why the monster was mutated and what it was doing on Earth. Another one has Lauren joining the team because she finally mastered her sealing training...only to be still needing to train to master the technique in the next episode.
- Poor Communication Kills: Linkara points out two major instances of this.
- The first is that Jayden insists on keeping the fact that he's not actually the head of the Shiba family a secret from his team, even though there was no reason to keep that a secret and he just ended up orchestrating drama where it didn't need to be.
- The second is Dayu and Deker's sub-plot, in which Deker has forgotten all about his former life with Dayu and Dayu keeps wanting him to remember...but never bothers to just tell Deker who he was and actually try and help him remember.
- Power Glows: He liked the unique morphing style of the season, writing colored symbols into the air and them becoming the Ranger's helmet. The grand Sealing Symbol used against Xandred near the end also had additional fire effects, which made it feel like something special and unique.
- Race Lift: Zig-zagged, he actually has no fundamental issue with the team being multicultural instead of all Japanese, rationalizing that one of their ancestors may have been adopted or just not Japanese and married into the family, although he does admit that Jayden having the very Japanese last name of Shiba while being Caucasian was just odd. Given that Power Rangers hasn't had an Asian Red Ranger (white or black, with some argument towards Native American and Hispanic) yet, it would have been a nice touch and probably more appropriate. He also calls out the fact that Kevin acts bigoted towards Antonio at first due to him not having any "samurai heritage", even though Kevin is clearly not Japanese himself.
- Rage Against the Mentor / "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Oh my, Linkara does not like Mentor Ji. He goes on an angry rant about the fact that Ji is one of the most useless mentors in the series, seems to have no right to even call himself a mentor (since he's not a Ranger himself, nor is ever explained as having any samurai heritage), acts unnecessarily elitist towards Antonio when he wants to join the team (including "confiscating" Antonio's morpher, which he had no right to take given that Antonio made the damn thing, right in front of him), and typically gives pointless rhetoric as advice (and once even gave the exact opposite advice later in the same episode).
- Recycled Script: Relates Lauren's arrival to replace Jayden as the same "Originally-destined Red Ranger replaces established Red Ranger" plot as Alex replacing Wes in Time Force. However, he does call attention to the fact that Alex was an ass so the other Rangers wanting Wes back was understandable, but in Samurai Lauren is quite nice and sympathetic, so the other Rangers not giving her a chance and being obsessed with trying to get Jayden back comes off as jerkish.
- Revisiting the Roots: This was the first season Saban was making since Disney gave up the rights to the show, and it was obvious they were trying to invoke Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in Samurai. Linkara points out that this was actually a terrible idea since the series had evolved so much since the first season, and that forcing it to regress away from its development resulted in, according to him, an awful entry to the franchise.
- Rewatch Bonus: He admits that after being disappointed watching it when it first came out, seeing it a second time for the review let him appreciate certain things a lot better. In particular, he didn't catch Jayden's character arc in how he preferred relying on himself over trusting his teammates, only to build that trust and bring it through the finale.
- Rule 63: After the introduction of the dimension-crossing subway train, Linkara ponders if there's one for any alternate universe, including a gender-swapped one.
- Running Gag:
- Showing the Bulk and Spike clips with Bulk talking about his many adventures with the Rangers ("Spike, did I ever tell you about the time...?").
- Any time the Rangers get a new Zord, Linkara notes that it commonly gives the Megazord a big, clunky helmet.
- The Scrappy:
- He loathes Mentor Ji for his stubborn elitism, inconsistent teachings, and goes on a massive rant when he takes Antonio's morpher away. Keep in mind, Antonio made the morpher himself, so unlike the Samuraizers, which belong to the Shiba family, Ji has zero right to take it away.
- He finds Xandred to be one of the worst villains in Power Rangers, as all he does is whine on his boat and drink sake—err, "medicine". He comments that even Lothor actually got out of his ship and fought.
- Screwed by the Network: Linkara points out that for reasons that baffle him, Nickelodeon aired the third episode as the first, and notes that in comparison to the first episode that was aired on Nickelodeon, the actual first episode was a better start and that if the first episode had been the one that had actually aired, people would've probably had a lot more faith in the series. Also, due to showing the episodes out of order, he notes that the Sixth Ranger is spoiled by the openingnote .
- Serendipity Writes the Plot: Brings this up concerning Clash of the Red Rangers, noting that the inability of Eka Darville to be present on set, resulting in Scott being morphed for the whole special, aligned nicely with the plot revolving around the Samurai team's distrust of him.
- Shallow Parody: Again refers to the Power/Rangers film in that despite the franchise being built on characters who are teenagers or thereabouts, the franchise has never had their characters trained from birth and forced into being Child Soldiers, and they were always allowed to leave if they so desired. This is in discussion of how the characters in this season were trained from a young age to be warriors fighting evil, but are the exception rather than the rule.
- Shot-for-Shot Remake: Concedes that a lot of this season's issues stem from it being a rather poorly translated copy of the original Shinkenger.
- Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: Linkara discusses the fact that, unlike other seasons, the Rangers here were pretty much browbeaten by their families from a very early age to become Power Rangers, and thus really had no choice but to take the responsibility. He also claims that Jayden giving the other Rangers a choice to leave in the first episode doesn't count as actually giving them a choice since by then their parents had been pressuring them for years to accept their Samurai duty.
- So Okay, It's Average:
- His opinion of the season as a whole. Although he decries it for being obviously rushed, having mostly uninteresting villains, and having way too many power-ups, his ultimate verdict is that Samurai is still perfectly watchable and at least succeeded in targeting its intended demographic of little kids.
- A more specific example would be his opinion of the first two episodes. While he did enjoy Jayden's badass Establishing Character Moment, overall the episodes were just average.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Expressed disappointment that it was fairly obvious that Bulk and Spike were added late in production since they have very little interaction with the Rangers and almost no bearing on the plot.
- He also expresses disappointment in the amount of wasted potential with Emily, stating that her background of being chosen to replace her sick sister, who was originally supposed to take on the Samurai duties, could've been expanded on, especially with how she already seems to have depression or an inferiority complex because of said background. He specifically mentions that Emily replacing her sister as a Samurai ranger would have made a great foil to Jayden, and his not being the 'real' inheritor of the Red Ranger legacy.
- As with Turbo, he feels that Serrator is a better villain than Xandred and should have been the real Big Bad.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Says that the biggest problem with the Deker/Dayu subplot is that while the Deal with the Devil idea was interesting, the whole thing didn't really go anywhere and had almost no bearing on the main story. To make things worse, the subplot doesn't even have a satisfying conclusion (Deker and Dayu just die separately and never resolve anything between each other), making it feel even more pointless after the fact.
- While it was more based on Linkara's own personal interpretation of the characters, he feels there was a lot of lost opportunity in exploring how screwed up the Rangers must have been from being trained to be Samurai Rangers from such an early age. In particular, he says Emily's relation to her sick older sister or her possible depression could have been explored, and he would have really liked to see Jayden have more prominent daddy issues, or have a troubled father/son relationship with Mentor Ji.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Despite mentioning in a previous review he was actually enjoying Samurai, he prefaces this review stating his opinions had changed and that this season just was not very good.
- Troubled Production: Linkara notes that due to the season being Christmas Rushed after being uncanceled, the writers had a truncated pre-production period and had to bank heavily off Shinkenger's transcripts instead of creating their own work. This resulted in more than a few Plot Holes and Values Dissonance.
- Values Dissonance: One of his biggest problems with Power Rangers Samurai is the lack of care in adapting Samurai Sentai Shinkenger's heavy focus on uniquely Japanese cultural values such as Pillars of Moral Character and familial honor being put on children to drive them to inherit the family business, so to speak, for a more global perspective. It comes to a head during his discussion of Antonio's post-introductory episode, with him regarding Antonio as the most heroic of the Rangers, since he willingly chose to become a superhero of his own free will despite the risks and worked his ass off to do it, while the script is steeped in more-traditionally-Japanese notions of obligation and deference. It gets even worse when you learn in Dino Charge that Jonathan Tzachor originally wanted the rangers sequestered in the Shiba house, and one episode that had a video game console was met with shock and horror.
- Viewers Are Morons: He conjectures that the Rangers shout out their names during the Theme Song because the production team assumed little kids would be too stupid to remember them otherwise.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: Notes that this is the first series filmed in high definition and looks gorgeous for it.
- What Could Have Been:
- Although he claims to have gotten the information second-hand, he explains that Bulk and Spike were likely added to the cast to fill certain future roles in the show, specifically Bulk in a Brown Ranger sub-plot that ended up not being used, and/or Spike intended to be the Samurai Gold Ranger.
- He also shares that he heard that in pre-production, ideas were thrown around about the team being billed specifically as an International Team, as well as the show being set in Stone Canyon (the neighboring city to Angel Grove mentioned several times in Mighty Morphin').
- During his Dino Charge videos, he mentions that he saw an interview that revealed that the Child Soldiers undertone of the team would have been even more blatant if Jonathan Tzachor had gotten his way. Tzachor wanted the team to be permanently sequestered in the Shiba House with no contact with the outside world, to the point where apparently a proposed plot with the Rangers playing with a video game system resulted in a "horrified" reaction from Tzachor.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- He calls the other Rangers out on being jerks and borderline shunning Lauren just because 'she's not Jayden' when all she wants to do is fulfill her family duty and be their friend. He then calls out Jayden for leaving the team (in the middle of Lauren's welcome party, no less) when there was no reason to and turning the situation all about him while also causing his teammates to resent Lauren for "making" Jayden leave (she didn't, and wanted him to stay and still be part of the team).
- Calls out Mentor Ji for a lot of problems, such as him never getting called out on his flaws, conflicting advice, bad advice, and taking the Gold Ranger's Morpher because "he wasn't from a Samurai Clan" (the Morpher was undeniably Antonio's property, so it was literally stealing), despite the Gold Ranger being the only one who chose to be a hero of his own free will, without any familial prompting.
- Points out that the families of the Rangers put so much pressure on their kids to obey the family obligations that they come across as emotionally broken child soldiers who never had a choice in the matter.
- The Woobie: Lauren Shiba. Linkara states that if she had just been a jerk like Alex from Time Force things would have been different, but her actress (Kimberley Crossman) played her so sympathetic that it made the other Samurai Rangers look really bad when they kept ignoring her and trying to get Jayden to return to the team.
- WTH, Costuming Department?: While he admits that he enjoyed how the Moooogers' top-half looked Lovecraftian in design, he says that the mustard-yellow pants were pretty tacky and made them look strangely bulky.
- You Look Familiar: After Deker appears, Linkara goes on a brief tangent about how Power Rangers is fond of reusing actors during the New Zealand years (highlighting Kelsen Henderson, Michelle Langstrom, Rick Medina and Holly Shannahan).
