Thoughts on VR Troopers

[Churlyryan]

Back then, I just took it as another fun show to watch, but I also just didn't know of all the incongruities within the show. It never occured to me that JB and Kaitlin never battled with Ryan, and that this was a whole total of 3 different footages rolled into a 22 minute show.

I've lately been going through the whole show on Netflix (because this is FAR BETTER than DVDs!), jumping between both Seasons for variety because each and every episode is essentially self contained. From a grown-up perspective (pssh, me, grown up? right ), there is so, so much to notice now that you know of the Sentai's.

For example, ALL of the Human-Characters from Metalder; Muki Muki Man, Fuu Fuu Chuu, and Beautiful Secretaries K & S, have snuck onto the American show. I even saw a scene of the Mutant-of-the-Day speaking to Grimlord and right there, clear as day, was one of the Secretaries, looking right in the camera. That scene even lasted like 5 seconds. And any time Grimlord calls his Spielban compadre's, Col. Icebot and General Ivar, Muki Muki Man and Fuu Fuu Chuu can be seen getting out of the way. It's funny how they lasted much, much more longer in VRT than they actually did in Metalder. I can probably go on and on about Grimlord's whole arsenal (if you know me on Rangercrew, you know I got a thing for Tokusatsu villains) but maybe I've said enough on that, so lets bring up my next good thing to say on this show.

Every episode began and ended with Ryan wishing for his father's return. Now, of course, if anyone's father has gone missing, you'd want him back more than anything, but as I child, I thought this was way over done. It pissed me off how we were taunted that time the Troopers may have saw Tyler in the jail. And, of course, the Troopers were unsuccessful with bringing him back from being Dark Heart. But you know what the good thing was? In the end, they did NOT fuck it up! Ryan's father was indeed rescued, well before the show even ended. Unfortunately, my syndication dropped VRT for the 2nd Season so I saw little of Season 2 back then, but it was GREAT to find out that Tyler was completely rescued from Grimlord's clutches. Yeah yeah, he still had to leave, but at least he's in safe hands, and it was great seeing him kick some Skug ass for one time.

Now, I want to go back to Grimlord. He was one of the best American Tokusatsu villains there was. He had an incredibly impressive army right before him, a huge reconnaissance team, many underground labs and airships. He was smart enough to attack Crossworld City on multiple fronts, sending multiple mutants for Metalder and Spielban, respectively, to fight, sending in Ivar with tanks, and so on and so on. The Troopers really had to keep up with this menace you know. Grimlord was pretty lucky in the beginning, being God Neros, and if you've seen Metalder, you know that God Neros was a very despicable villain. God Neros though, was like a father to his men, and all his compadre's were loyal to him. The Shielded Army, the Cyborg Warrior Army, the Monsters Army, and the Armament Army, they were so diverse and interesting. This was easily adaptable to Grimlord, and its easy enough to make Icebot, Ivar and the Spielban villains just as faithful to who was really God Neros, a full year after them.

The Troopers themselves are awesome too. Ryan was a great role model, and with my name happening to be Ryan as well, people would call me "Ryan Steele" in real life. Kaitlin was great, and everyone loves Sarah Brown, right? JB was great too, being the "Billy" of the team, but really not much of a nerdy dork. He was competent, and confident from the start, but is also tech savy. It was a great idea.

Well, maybe I've gone on for long enough. What did you think of the show?

[PRdude]

First I thought it was kind of "eh". Then again, I was just more committed to PR. I'd still watch occasionally, but I think I think I started watching a bit more regularly when the first season ended for the season and just started doing reruns. Things got interesting with the five-part "Quest for Power", where Ryan finally rescued his father. That was the only time I ever bothered to record episodes while I was in school. After that, I'd just watch whenever I could. Ever since the start of season 1 reruns, it started airing in the morning. So I'd just watch if I were sick, had a day off, or on snow days.

I decided to buy the tapes in 2004, but then I was able to see the rest of the episodes on YouTube in 2006. It's too bad that the material was so old that they couldn't film much of their own fight scenes with the monsters. I never even noticed it when I'd watch on TV, or even how Ryan usually fought somewhere else away from J.B. and Kaitlin.

Now that I've seen all the episodes, it's disappointing that it didn't get to have a proper ending. Especially with the Troopers not knowing Grimlord's true identity, and how they even came so lose to finding out. I still remember it being said that B-Fighter would be used for a third season if it ever happened, and that would have made things a lot better.

[Zeo-Gold92]

I haven't seen it in it's entirety yet, hell I actually haven't finished all of Shout!'s first volume. What I have seen though I found to be quite good, it just didn't grip me like Power Rangers or even Big Bad Beetle Borg's did. Maybe if I had been exposed to it back in the day I may have more of an attachment for it now. I do plan on seeing it all eventually, coz it's not bad, not bad at all.

[PrimoPiccolo]

I liked that it was similar enough to Power Rangers to enjoy it the same, yet different enough to where it wasn't as comparable. We had adults with jobs, we had personalities that weren't cookie-cutter enough to paste on toy packaging, we had a villain that was a corporate sleazeball/chauvinist sleazeball, and we had Jeb. ...Well, three out of four ain't bad.

The only time I ever truly loved the show was "Defending Dark Heart". Everything about that four-parter was badass. And they almost kicked Grimlord's ass! That moment was as palpable for me as the time the Megazord actually connected with the finisher on Goldar.

And my favorite part was the music. It's all in your mi-ee-ai-ee-ai-ee-ind!

[Zabitan]

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.

[PRangerX]

It would have been nice to get more of a background about Battlegrid. Most of the time the Troopers would randomly go their and fight and then act like it didnt happen afterward.

I agree about the codenames. They would have been a good marketing idea and good way to tell Troopers apart. Wouldnt have been hard to do.

I hear you on Beetleborgs but I just would have liked to see what they could have done with Beetle Fighter. The theme would have still fit. Plus you had a way to do a season 4 with the next Beetle Fighter series.

Dont know much about the other toku you mentioned. But that may have worked too. Would have been nice to have a Metal Hero Movie. But I doubt toei still had enough of the old suits that Troopers used.

[Zabitan]

I don't know about the Battle Grid itself but my head cannon is that the Battle Grid suits started out as prototype versions of the main suits.

Like originally Ryan's father invented the Battle Grid Ryan suit for a dimensional travel suit when he first discovered Virtual Reality, and he later invented the Battle Grid Kaitlin, and JB suits for Ryan's mother, and Professor Hart respectively.


And originally they were just for going to Virtual Reality, It wasn't until Ziktor became Grimlord and or created the Virtual Army that Tyler, and Professor Hart started working on what we know as the main VR Troopers suits.

[PRangerX]

Good theory , that makes a lot of sense.

[UchuKeiji Kid]

I didn't like it.

It was obvious they were using multiple shows at once, the Battle Grid suits were cheap as hell, and don't get me started on all the annoying comic relief characters.

[Virtual Vagabond]

I loved it.

It was my all time favorite show.

The Troopers were so bad ass, and Jeb was funny as all hell.

My only problem was I wish they could have made more original footage instead of having to adapt Metal Hero shows.