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Old 11/23/14, 05:17 PM   #5
Zabitan
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Join Date: 01/06/11
Location: Eureka California
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Default Re: Thoughts on VR Troopers

Oh boy where do I start? (Takes a deep breath)

I'll start by saying it's my all time favorite Saban American Tokusatsu/Henshin Hero besides Power Rangers, and in terms of quality I would put it at the same level as MMPR-Turbo, Lost Galaxy, and Wild Force for Saban, and Ninja Storm, and Dino Thunder for Disney.

That being said I will also admit that it has a lot of double edged swords in terms of stuff that I liked story wise, stuff I didn't like story wise, stuff I liked production wise, stuff I didn't like production wise, all that jazz.

I guess a good way to put this is that I want to get that book Robert Hughes is talking about writing because I would buy it just if it had a chapter on VR Troopers even if it was just about how much everything cost, what the actual production situation they had to work with just so I would know for sure what it was actually like.

Mostly because I know some stuff had to happen but at the same time I think it could have been done better.

I think a good example would be how they had all these things to hide the fact that they used multiple Metal Hero shows from the 80's like the Battle Grid, the Skybase battles, using monsters from both shows at the same time, editing stuff together, etc even if it didn't all make sense.

But then you have episodes where Kaitlin, and JB don't transform at all, and they only using monster, and one Metal Hero show at at a time even when one of those concepts actually would have made sense for it.

I guess a good example is Battle Grid mode since I consider myself probably one of the few people who actually liked it like I actually liked the suits like the half red half blue look on Ryan to how they painted Kaitlin to make it look like she was wearing a red one piece swimsuit/leotard with a yellow belt on it, even JB who has the most "normal" looking one is pretty interesting I think.

And I like that they could go to other dimensions while wearing them, and the portal scenes, even how the Battle Grid itself kind of looked since it actually looked like how I imagine Virtual Reality, or at least another dimension would look like, and I believe it was actually the only time in some episodes where they would actually go to VR as opposed to Grimlord's minions coming here.

And the reason it even happened was because they couldn't get the Japanese suits for the full armor, and the few fights they had with the full suits were lousy, and at least the Battle Grid suits seemed like that stunt people could fight in them.

But at the same time I wish they would have at least explained why they wore those suits in the show instead of just what the place they went to was, also I could be wrong but I can't imagine as cheesy as it looks that the Battle Grid itself was really all that cheap to make.

Like what if they kept the Battle Grid suits themselves but called it Hyper Tech mode or something, and didn't go out of their way to make the set?

I also thought it was weird that in Season Two they either made better suits or at least got better about fighting in them, but they still used Battle Grid mode, and the first fight they used was just reusing footage from The Dojo Plot because they didn't feel like making Ryan a new suit for those parts but they still refilmed Kaitlin's transformation because she had different hair that Season.

And the second time they were in the suits in a place besides the Battle Grid but they never actually fought, that was the last time anyone transformed into Battle Grid mode.


I also understand that they couldn't make American suits for the monsters but I always wondered why they didn't adapt the human looking villains from the shows since you could still see them sometimes, and Power Rangers has human looking villains all the time, and I didn't have a problem with Rita, and Scorpina in Season one of Power Rangers.

Especially since they had no problem using human looking villains in Season two, I also would have liked if they could have made Desponda a general, and not just an MOTD since she was the main villain in Spielban, and they at least made Shaider's main villain the monster maker, and have her and Knighttime be introduced in Season one, and stay for the whole show.

I did like the monsters in Season one since I always thought they look like how I think mutants, and robots would probably look like in real life, and how they were an actual army, but at the same time the only ones I cared about were Ivar, Icebot, Decimator, Dark Heart, and maybe Toxoid, Blue Boar, Air Striker , and Fighterbot.

The rest looked cool but they even the ones who appeared more than once where still just MOTDs, and most of the time it seemed like they didn't care which monster they used for what episode like they used a Boxer monster for an episode where the evil plan was to drill to the center of the Earth, and used a Drill monster for an episode about putting a clean burning engine in a motorcycle.

Season Two had the opposite problem in that it was easier to tell the main minions from the MOTDs, they seemed to fit the episodes better but I wasn't fond of how they looked, and I didn't like how they were still using Bot, and Tron for monsters that looked as robotic as a ham sandwich.

I also liked that they started making their own monsters but I thought Transformatron was the only one that looked good, and they still used had Ryan fight Shaider monsters.

I also liked the main suits the Troopers wore, and the powers they had especially Ryan's Season Two one since it made them all look like one team even when they were from different shows.

I also wondered why they didn't have codenames when they were Troopers since even in Season one they could have been called Trooper one, Trooper two, etc, especially when in Season two Ryan started wearing an all blue suit, and the Troopers started wearing those civilian uniforms at Tao dojo that matched their Trooper colors.

I also liked the story at least in the multi parter episodes I just wished they did more with Ryan's dad in Season two even if it was just explaining how everything worked before they shipped him off to Norway, and resolved the plots they set up.

As for continuing the show I'm not sure about using B-Fighter only because I get that it would have solved the footage problems but I don't think Beetle Borgs was that bad, and I know a lot of people like it, and I like that they used different stories in the American shows then the Japanese ones, and VR Troopers with B-Fighter would probably be just B-Fighter: the American Version.

That, and as crazy as it sounds I always wanted to see Gavan, Sharivan, and Juspion get adapted because I felt like they fit the aesthetics of Spielban, and Shaider, and I think that one movie all three space sheriffs would have made a good finale for the show.
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