Wow.
In sketch form. I am completely blown away.
On chatfilters.
Bear in mind this chatfilter was for a kid’s game.
Gatchaman – Gotta Fight!
A music video by Henrik Harbin in tribute to the classic Tatsunoko show.
Dekamaster.
Strange as it may sound, this may be one of the greatest character designs I’ve ever seen. Whoever designed it was having an inspired day.
I hope you mean the ranger suit. No offense, but I’ve never been a big fan of Dekaranger’s ‘alien’ designs. They designed them in such a way that they’d work in animation. In live action though…not so much. ‘Course, the LAST thing I want to do is get into a ‘Dekamaster vs. Shadow Ranger’ debate. Those things give me a headache.
Also, I have to say, I think the earlier monster designs of the 90’s were some of the best, in my opinion, anyway. There just seemed to be more…detail. Nowadays, there seems to be less, but it’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
I was referring to the stylish and elegant Dekamaster suit design. I keep hoping Bandai will produce a high-end action figure of it but that doesn’t seem likely.
I find the alien designs to be cheesy but there’s one Dekaranger alien I find appealing.
Heh, I figured. And yeah, agreed on Succubus. There’s a reason they carried that over for SPD, I think.
Honestly, at this point, you’d best just look for the Light Patrol Shadow Ranger figure. The detail is surprisingly good, and unlike other ranger figures in past years, SPD’s figures don’t suffer from unrealistic muscle-bound proportions. And hey, the sides light up too!
Too bad they never made Dekaswan or Dekabright, but hey, we got seven out of 10 (and really, a figure of Dekagold, in all her half-second appearance, would be pretty unlikely), and that ain’t bad.
Also, I wouldn’t normally think this, but with the US version of Gekiranger on the horizon, I was surprised, and pleased, to see Bandai USA make 3 completely original ranger designs for the Bat, Elephant and Shark mecha. Weird, and kinda misses the point of Gekiranger, but they look pretty cool.
I can see I’m going to have to pay more attention to what’s going on in the Sentai/Power Rangers market. Time to expand that bookmarks folder.
Rangerboard is good, if only for the ‘upcoming releases’ threads.
I hope you’re not too big a Boukenger fan: America got screwed rather mightily in THAT regard, despite the Battlizer figures being decent, and Japan-developed, the standard figures are practically steroid-level muscular. Not to mention Bouken Silver, Zuban, Ryuuon, and Yaiba all have intrusive raised sound-chip pieces on their chests, completely interfering with the design. And don’t even get me STARTED on the Megazords. Those were a nightmare.
Funny thing is, I don’t even COLLECT Power Rangers/Sentai/Tokosatsu toys. I guess old interests die hard.
I’ll check out Rangerboard. Thanks for the tip!
Also good, and slightly less reactionary and juvenile, is Henshin Justice, but then, that’s run by a long-time online friend of mine, so I may be biased. :)
But for merchandise, yeah, the yearly stickies in the merchandise thread are good, but it can get bogged down in Bandia of America hate posts. Best source, though.
Oh, and http://www.linearranger.com/ usually has a good US merchandise guide with comparisons to the Japanese products.
And http://www.seerinspections.com/timefire/ has some good guides of past lines as well.
Sprocket, you have gone above and beyond and I cannot thank you enough. I’m going to be busy looking over those sites over the next few days.
Okay, I apologize if this is getting a little annoying, but I felt you should see this, at least:
http://www.toysnjoys.com/dekarangers2.html
As I suspected, it looks like the SPD figures are just the Japanese ones with an extra light-up feature for the head-lights, and without the extra vehicle. I couldn’t find DekaYellow or Dekapink, so it’s possible those were made exclusively for Western markets.
They did the same thing for Abaranger and Hurricanger, I believe. In those cases, the Abaranger came with their Road Raptors, and the Hurricangers their ‘Winger’ hang-gliders. And of course, Magiranger got figures of all 5 members, and Magishine. The West didn’t get Magishine, bizarrely, but we did get Wolzard as a standard, non-combining figure, as well as figures of their ‘Legend’ forms.
In short, honestly, you don’t really lose anything by going for the Power Rangers figures. From what I can tell, they have the same detail, are almost ALWAYS cheaper, and sometimes include added features. As long as you don’t mind not getting the small vehicle the Japanese release comes with, it’s no big loss.
Unless you wanted a Magishine figure. Then you may be in trouble.
I appreciate you going to all this trouble, Sprocket.
I’m a little surprised at the differences between Sentai/Rangers merchandise particularly when it comes to omitted features and merchandise. If there’s a rhyme or reason behind it all, I’m not seing it.
There’s really not, for the most part, but I just can’t get behind the vitrol many fans feel toward Bandai of America. I guess some of it is omitting or changing features to what they think would sell better to Western Markets, and sometimes it’s a matter of keeping the item within production budget costs, I suppose, even if it means changing the toy so completely that hell, they probably blew the money on modifying the toy in first place, who knows.
It’s more a recent thing. It didn’t start to become obvious until about seven years ago with Gaoranger, when the G-Phone henshin toy was heavily, heavily modified for America.
From there, it’s usually the henshin devices that go through the most changes, with the exception of this year, when they decided to make the Megazords twice the size. And it appears as though Bandai of Japan may be completely giving up on the 5-inch fully-posable figures, leaving that to Bandai of America, who see those figures as their main selling point of the Power Ranger lines. The Gekiranger figures don’t look that bad, so hopefully there will still be decent figures for fans that want them.
Though I can’t say I’m very familiar with the Sentai market, it seems to me that Bandai Japan is catering to an even younger market in Japan. I’ve noticed recent Kamen Rider series (and figures) seem to be geared more towards a younger audience than previously as well.
One thing that puzzles me about the Sentai market is why Bandai hasn’t taken advantage of its older fanbase. We’ve seen a Soul of Chogokin interpretation of Battle Fever Robo but aside from that, zip. Where is the SIC equivalent for Sentai characters?
Hi, Gobi and all :)
I realize that the origin of this post is over 3 years old, but since I just found you, I thought I’d show you where the Gotta Fight vid went (along with all of my other AMVs). Youtube killed my account for copyright infranglement– I’m on my 4th one there– kirneh004. Meanwhile all my AMVs are now on Veoh. Please note that you may have to be 18 to find me properly there, as some of my vids are marked for violent content.
Lay chilly, dood :)
Henrik
(PS: If you are interested, I am on Facebook as “Henrik Harbin” and as I’ve said, my YT account is KirneH004.
Thanks for the update, Henrik. I’ll try to check out the videos.