My thoughts on Super Megaforce Silver and Super Megaforce so far

Since Super Megaforce is going on summer break, I figured it was time to do this now that the silver ranger is part of the team as well. Getting right to the point, I'll start with him and then move on to the rest of the show.

Orion: His two-part premier was alright. Personality-wise, they wanted to give him a tragic back-story that oddly makes him feel like a bit like Tyzon from Overdrive at the moment. They did an alright job of keeping his identity secret in the first half of the two parter but sadly they gave it away at the end of the first part. That is something I really think they should have saved for part two. Having the rangers arrive with the enemy already defeated in the first part was a nice touch as it was a decent indicator of his strength despite not seeing him fight on screen during those instances.

As for the rest of the show, it has been meh so far with most of the episodes feeling like rehashed Gokaiger episodes only with bad editing and build up problems. The copy and paste episodes have been ok for the most part except in the case of the Blue Saber Saga episode but I'll get to that one in a minute. To simplify things, I'll only go into detail about the best and worst tribute episodes so far.

Worst tribute episode: That goes to the Blue Saber Saga for now. It earned that title for the simple reason that the script is not only a straight-up copy and paste of the Shinkenger tribute from Gokaiger plot-wise, but it feels like it was written solely with adapting Joe from Gokaiger in mind, not written for Noah's actual character. It was a major out-of-character moment for Noah as he is more of the thinker/nerd character type.

There was no reason for him to get depressed at all after losing the sword fight, nor did he play into his already established character so far. They should have had him try to out-think the monster. I would've cut them some slack if they had at least played up his sword training in more of a strategic manner with him using his nerd side to somewhat predict the attacks, finding a blind-spot in the attack, or have him training so he can calculate the angle of the attacks as a counter-measure. Instead he immediately thinks "Well I lost so I've got to train with a sword more." and all he really learns from the encounter is that he can use more than one sword at once. I know they were somewhat limited in their options thanks to stock footage but I think they would've been able to come up with something more in character for him.

Best tribute episode: Ironically, the best episode so far is a tribute to a PR season that I don't like, that being Jungle Fury. Granted I'm using the word "best" loosely there. It also features the return of Casey who in my opinion is the blandest red ranger in the franchise, next to Troy of course. Now going by all of that I should dislike the episode but it was executed decently. It kept relatively close to Jungle Fury's continuity aspects and the scenes with Emma and Jake training flowed really well. Though Casey was a little too on-the-nose when he guess their animal spirits. Granted they did use the word "spirit" a little too much for my taste but overall it was better done than most of the episodes outside of the season premier.

Main problems: Well one of my problems is the lack of a plot other than "protect the city" and the first half sort of had the same problem. Granted while most of the PR seasons' plots centered around protecting the city, we at least got some sub-plots to help spice things up. With this, it just feels far too episodic with the characters not being interesting enough to make up for it. The rangers also seriously need to tone down the talking during the fights as there is far too much banter going on, even by PR standards. Its a bit distracting constantly hearing bad jokes in the middle of a fight.

The concept of older rangers showing up in the context of adapting the source material does sound like a good idea but it doesn't really make that much sense to me for one simple reason: A lot of the veteran rangers STILL have their powers yet chose to sit back and watch instead of helping the current team. In Gokaiger, they at least had a valid reason for being unable to help during the show since they were basically powerless. To make it more illogical, the Megaforce city is the only city shown being attacked and no other city is hinted at being attacked. It just makes the veterans look bad. When Jayden said "we're watching you.", I wanted to punch him and ask where the veterans were during the attack. I get it, we're meant to assume that they're fighting the Armada in other parts of the world but that hasn't really been shown or even hinted at as of yet. It would've made much more sense from a story telling perspective had the Legend War been done at the end of the Megaforce half instead of saved for the end of Super Megaforce. Other-wise the veterans showing up just feels tacked on for the sake of nostalgia. The fact that they still have their powers while the ranger keys exist also violates a piece of continuity from the MMPR era. That condition being that there can never be two of the same power at one time other-wise it can be very dangerous for the morphing grid. The ranger keys in PR would technically count as duplicate powers. So they just shot themselves in the foot since a lot of the veterans still presumably have their powers.

Pre-Zyu suits showing up: I'll have a post where I go into more detail up later. For now, I'll just say that the suits really have no reason to be in there if they're not going to properly explain why they're there. They've basically blown a hole in their continuity without giving an in-show explanation for it. It just makes the editing department look lazy when they can easily cut out the five second clips they've shown of those suits. It also makes the writers look lazy when all they need to do is write a two-second line saying "These powers are from other planets.". Writing them off as new powers accessible by Super Mega mode can only stretch so far. Granted Zordon did say there were rangers from other planets back in MMPR but here is the problem, most of their target audience today wouldn't know that bit of continuity. People are trying to come up with fan theories to explain why those suits are showing up, and while that is a valiant effort, it is ridiculous for it to be left to the fans to do so. When a company alters a franchise's continuity, the burden of explanation rests squarely on the shoulders of the company, not the fans. I give the Dairanger suits a bit of a pass since they are post-Zyu and they did technically have a presence in the franchise thanks to Kibaranger being used as the MMPR white ranger. I'll be keeping a count of the non-PR suits showing up until we get some sort of explanation.

Overall, it has been a meh show with hints of laziness on the production side so far. However, I can tell they are making some effort here and there which is more than I can say for the first half of the show.