As most of you Geekscapists know, I am a die-hard Power Rangers fan. No matter what ridiculous decisions surround the upcoming 2016 movie, I will stand by it for no good reason other than just because. So I’m pretty excited for this.
At the San Diego Comic-Con this year, Shout! Factory, the renowned home video distributors of your childhood memories, announced they will be releasing — for the first-time ever on American soil — the complete Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger series on DVD! And today, they unveiled the official cover on their Tumblr page:
Not at all what I expected! The DVD cover is, in a word, risky. You would think to sell the DVD, they would put up the Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin’ costumes front and center, but nope! It’s a crystal clear image of the original actors, which I think is amazing. It’s about time their faces become more well-known after the phenomenon of Power Rangers all but erased them. Furthermore, there isn’t one single sight of the Power Rangers logo anywhere. There’s just the easy-to-miss “Before Power Rangers there was…” line at the top.
Also, isn’t it a little confusing? They have at the top “Before Power Rangers there was” and then “SUPER SENTAI” in big-ass letters, only to have “Zyuranger” spelled out in English at the bottom. The hell? Fans know exactly what this is, but to the less informed they don’t know what this thing is called.
Having seen Zyuranger, I’ll be buying this purely to support North American-released Super Sentai, which only could have happened in our dreams before the current geek landscape. Truthfully, Zyuranger is not a very good series. There are almost no interesting characters, awful pacing, ridiculous storylines (even given the genre!), and a gigantic lack of any meaningful arcs. Yes, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers has better storytelling. You can believe that or not. Aside from the obvious cool factor of seeing Power Rangers before they were, you know, Power Rangers, there is little reason to give Zyuranger any real attention. The action choreography is pretty great, though.
That said, I did have a wonderful time moderating the Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger panel at the Power MorphiCon convention this past summer. Jealous?
An official release date and price is still unknown.
Will you be buying the DVD set? Comment below!