[Zabitan]

Hello there everyone I'm Zabitan, and I am here to take you on a strange trip into the world of American/Western Tokusastu productions starting with the first attempt at duplicating the success of Power Rangers, and one of my personal favorites VR Troopers.



I guess I'll start by saying what I plan on doing with this. I'm going to watch an episode of VR Troopers a day, and review it from Monday to Friday.

I will also watch episodes of Metal Hero but only the ones that the episode of VR Troopers used footage from so I can see for myself what footage they had to work with.

I'll save official reviews of those episodes when I decide to review the shows themselves.



Anyway I guess I'll start by talking about the Cybertron pilot. I like seeing Jason David Frank as the main character, Grimlord having a bully son who's the hero's main rival. Jamie Kennedy before he was famous as one of the comic relief characters.

My only real gripe is the transformation being just JDF starring at a crystal. I can understand him putting his hand on it, and then saying his transformation phrase to start it but just starting at it no.

Everything else I don't know I like Tao being a mentor, Tao's daughter Mia, and seeing how the show would have been like with only one Metal Hero show but at the same time I still like the VR Troopers we did get.

It mostly has to do with the fact that only the script for what the first episode would be about, and only about ten minutes of footage with 90% of it being Metalder

And it's pretty hard to judge a show that doesn't exist since there's no way short of a magic what if machine to tell if it would have been better or not.

I will say it's a pretty good what if though like if Saban was going to make an actual Karato series out of Janperson, or if they were going to take Rescue Hero or Blue Swat and make it something like Mega Patrol.



So on to the first episode of VR Troopers The Battle Begins written by Douglas Sloan, and directed by Shuki Levy.

So we start with how every episode starts with our main hero Ryan Steele sitting in front of a bell at park going on about his legendary missing daddy issues. Not much else to say since all the really good jokes have been made, and so no real reason to talk about them other than what the moral of the story is.



We then go to Tao dojo where Ryan, and his best friend JB Reese are in the middle of a karate tournament against the generic Crossworld City dojo with Tao dojo down 1 to Crosworld's 2 while their friend, and sensei Tao, and Ryan's pet bloodhound Jeb watch and cheer on.

I will say that I always enjoy how much 90's Saban shows treat karate tournaments like they're these big things that everyone in town is obsessed with. The middle aged white guy ref, random judges in business suits, and my personal favorite the audience that has a random guy with a 70's porn stache.

Ryan fights some random blonde guy in black gi, and they pretty much just kick at each other until they punch each other, Ryan takes him down with a scissor kick winning a point for Tao dojo.

Now for the tie breaker JB vs random Asian guy in black gi. They punch, and karate chop each other, then they kick each other, then random Asian guy jumps, and JB kicks him winning the tournament for Tao dojo, and Ryan, JB, and Tao celebrate.



We then go to the Underground Voice Daily where crazy editor Woody is on the phone giving the five Ws before comically slamming the phone on his own finger calling forth Kaitlin Star Ryan and JB's other best friend who works as reporter at UVD to tell her that local greedy evil rich corporate asshole type and the shows main villain Karl Ziktor is demolishing an old building to make a power plant.

Ryan, and JB then go on their motorcycles to meet Kaitlin at Occupy Crossworld City. While in his totally not creepy, and evil looking corporate headquarters Ziktor himself grabs his pet lizard Julia so they and his secretaries can watch the old building getting blown up.

Ziktor, and the foreman for the demolition team take turns counting down from five so that we can cut back and forth between Ziktor in his office, and Ryan and his friends at the demolition site, and then we see the old building get blown up.

Ziktor gets up, and tells his secretaries to return to virtual reality to await further instructions, and they turn into Skugs gold robots with weird faces in black tights with capes who are the show's henchmen, and slide into the floor while Ziktor starts gloating about taking over the city.

There's something about this part that bugs me but it won't make sense until I get to my final thoughts so let's move on.