Megaforce is definitely a series with potential. An ambitious one at that, mixing up the footage of twoSentai series. (Both of which are near and dear to my heart!) For this review though, I'll only be looking at Season 1....The Mostly-Goseiger-adapted portion.
Unfortunately, they seem to be sacrificing storytelling for the sole sake of adding unnecessary morals. Many of the Season 1 plots don't really feel like plots....they feel more like 20-minute pro-environmental PSAs with teamwork bundled in. Writing 101, guys: Audiences (especially kids)aren't this stupid. They don't need to have "Earth is beautiful" hammered into their heads every other sentence. The Sentai Season 1 emulated had the environment as a motif, not a theme. Megaforce does the exact opposite.
It doesn't help that the characters don't seem to have any personality outside of their core social traits. (Noah, liking computers, is automatically slapped with television nerd traits while the flower-lover Emma is a Greenpeace pamphlet given Human form) Speaking of the characters, the acting in Season 1 is bad. Not necessarily due to the script quality; (most fans by this point expect PR scripts to generally be iffy) but due to the actors' lacking the ability to properly emote. (Andrew Gray, especially) I see more emotion from the emotion-less robot. Ironic, no? This is only made worse by the unnecessary extra dialogue sprinkled across every fight. Most fights consist of the enemy broadcasting their strategy, and then the Rangers repeating this verbatim. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the plots didn't consist of little more than "monster appears, go kill it, give us Earth/teamwork moral."
Season 1 isn't as horrible as, say, the-series-that-must-not-be-named. It isn't abhorrent, but it isn't anything special. Hence, having "Meh" in the title. but all of the extraneous padding, unnecessary moralizing, and cookie-cutter characters make this one season I didn't expect to save the day.
Let's hope Super Megaforce can salvage this series, and from what I've seen of it so far; there's definitely a chance to make a treasure chest out of this recycle bin. (........I apologize for that.)
Mega-Meh
Megaforce is definitely a series with potential. An ambitious one at that, mixing up the footage of two Sentai series. (Both of which are near and dear to my heart!) For this review though, I'll only be looking at Season 1....The Mostly-Goseiger-adapted portion.
Unfortunately, they seem to be sacrificing storytelling for the sole sake of adding unnecessary morals. Many of the Season 1 plots don't really feel like plots....they feel more like 20-minute pro-environmental PSAs with teamwork bundled in. Writing 101, guys: Audiences (especially kids)aren't this stupid. They don't need to have "Earth is beautiful" hammered into their heads every other sentence. The Sentai Season 1 emulated had the environment as a motif, not a theme. Megaforce does the exact opposite.
It doesn't help that the characters don't seem to have any personality outside of their core social traits. (Noah, liking computers, is automatically slapped with television nerd traits while the flower-lover Emma is a Greenpeace pamphlet given Human form) Speaking of the characters, the acting in Season 1 is bad. Not necessarily due to the script quality; (most fans by this point expect PR scripts to generally be iffy) but due to the actors' lacking the ability to properly emote. (Andrew Gray, especially) I see more emotion from the emotion-less robot. Ironic, no? This is only made worse by the unnecessary extra dialogue sprinkled across every fight. Most fights consist of the enemy broadcasting their strategy, and then the Rangers repeating this verbatim. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the plots didn't consist of little more than "monster appears, go kill it, give us Earth/teamwork moral."
Season 1 isn't as horrible as, say, the-series-that-must-not-be-named. It isn't abhorrent, but it isn't anything special. Hence, having "Meh" in the title. but all of the extraneous padding, unnecessary moralizing, and cookie-cutter characters make this one season I didn't expect to save the day.
Let's hope Super Megaforce can salvage this series, and from what I've seen of it so far; there's definitely a chance to make a treasure chest out of this recycle bin. (........I apologize for that.)