Power Rangers Reviews: Power Rangers Zeo (1996)

 Hey everyone! Happy Halloween! How are you all doing today? I'm doing very well. I'm back for my review of Power Rangers Zeo (1996), a.k.a. season 4. So let's get right into it shall we?

Power Rangers Zeo is the last season of Power Rangers that I watched the entirety of as it aired until Power Rangers Ninja Storm came out in 2003. I was nine years old when this season started airing and was getting into my 10s/teen years and being that I went to schools that were intolerant as it was, I distanced myself from Power Rangers for fear of being bullied for still loving it as much as I did. Particularly because I didn't have any friends who were into it the way I was. Until 2001 when I started high school. But I'll get to that in my reviews of the early to mid-2000s seasons. 

I firmly believe that Zeo is an underrated season and is often dismissed as just a continuation of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993-1995). It had alot to accomplish and even though it did the best it could, the show was starting to drop in popularity, which was a downward spire that began after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie came out in the summer of 1995. Hence why Saban chose to finally change costumes after three seasons of the Rangers using the same suits and arsenal despite getting new powers and Zords every season. In fact, Zeo also changed villains entirely too, though Rita and Zedd do return in the back end of the season, around the time that Jason returned to be the Gold Ranger. Which, by the way, being that I haven't watched the entire season like this since it was airing back in 1996, I was actually surprised at just how late in the season it is when the Gold Ranger actually shows up.

In most seasons of Power Rangers the sixth Ranger or extra warrior, depending on the season, usually shows up around episode 17 or 18, especially in the longer seasons such as the first two seasons of Mighty Morphin. The post 2009 seasons, which were only 22 episodes long, bring the sixth Ranger in around the seventh or eighth episode. But here, the Gold Ranger doesn't show up until episode 27 and then Jason doesn't get the Gold Ranger powers from Trey of Triforia until episode 34, which is more than halfway through the season. Sure the season is only 50 episodes long, but for the sixth Ranger to not show up until more than halfway through such a long season is unusual.

I also felt surprise at just how late in the season it is when Billy leaves the show permanently. Well, not so permanently now since he's returning for the MMPR 30th Anniversary Special next year, but back in 1996, it felt pretty permanent. At the time we didn't know why. It wouldn't be until years later that we'd find out why David Yost left the show. And sadly, it's for disturbing reasons, which I won't go into here, but if you're a Power Rangers fan, you know why he left. Anyways, Billy left the show with only two episodes left after his departure episode. He left in the second part of a two part episode called "Rangers of Two Worlds", which is the very first fully blown team-up episode where the previous season's Ranger team and villains return to team up with the current season's Ranger team and villains. But because five out of the six Zeo Rangers were originally the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly), Walter Jones (Zack), Thuy Trang (Trini), and Karan Ashley (Aisha) either weren't available or just weren't invited (typical Saban move) the Aquitian Rangers from Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers came back instead. Actually, it's because Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, the Sentai series that Zeo took it's ground fight, Zord Battle, and villains footage from had a crossover movie with Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, the Sentai that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 3 and Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers got it's Zord Battle footage from and Ranger suit footage from, it made sense to bring in the Aquitian Rangers.

One thing I enjoyed about this season is that the Rangers's school lives was the focus of the early part of the season, with various school assignments, that led to King Mondo getting inspiration from for his schemes, being the main plot of these episodes. And every Ranger got an episode of their own too. I mean Tanya got two episodes in very close proximity to each other. 

One complaint I've heard from people is that Tommy had nothing to do once he became the Red Ranger. Um, yeah, because the writers finally realized that this is Power Rangers not the Tommy Oliver Show Featuring the Power Rangers. So much of the first two seasons of Mighty Morphin focused so heavily on Tommy simply because entitled kids refused to eat until they brought Tommy back. And you know what, those kids are probably the same entitled jerks who made fun of me for being a geek in high school, and are probably being jerks to people now that they're adults too, so the fact that they basically bullied the writers into bringing back a character, who had a cool costume and a cool Zord, but otherwise wasn't any better than the other five Rangers, or even that interesting a character for that matter, is a bit maddening. 

Don't get me wrong, Tommy did have a few solid episodes this season. It's just the writers didn't feel the need to cater to the "Tommy Oliver is the BEST Ranger!" crowd and focused on other Rangers. Though I do sort of feel like Kat got shafted hard this season, after being a huge focus in the last few episodes of Mighty Morphin, though she did have one or two decent episodes. Rocky and Adam were actually better this season. Adam did anyway, Rocky had some moments that were dumb at best, problematic at worst, but again, not here to talk about that kind of thing.

Bulk, Skull, and Lieutenant/Detective Stone were almost completely separated from the Rangers this season. Their subplots were completely apart from the Rangers this season and that made it a better season because, as I stated in my season 1 review, there were alot of episodes in the early days that felt longer when they took five minutes for Bulk & Skull's slapstick humour in what was meant to be a serious and intense scene. And I think that in this season more than any other, Bulk & Skull saw the most growth as people. 

My one negative with this season is that way too much was happening in the second half of the season and we barely got any "human moments" out of the Rangers. By that I mean they spent a good chunk of time morphed, at the Power Chamber, or morphed AND at the Power Chamber. As I have said in many comic book and comic book based TV show and movie reviews, I'm not watching these shows and movies for the big, prolonged, superhero vs supervillain battles. I watch them for the characters and their stories because at the end of the day these shows and movies should be about people rather than superpowers and fight scenes, but that's a rant for another day. 

 As mentioned before, Zeo was adapted from the 19th Super Sentai series, Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, which from everything I've heard about it was the most serious, most intense, Sentai series ever made. I've never seen it so I don't know if that's actually true or not, but trust me, there are some ridiculous scenes in Zeo that are from Ohranger, not shot for specifically for Power Rangers. This is also the first season of Power Rangers that uses footage from a single season of Sentai since Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1 since the second and third seasons used a combination of Zyuranger, Zyu2, Dairanger, and Kakuranger. It's also the first season to use mainly Sentai footage of the villains inside their base of operations since the villains this season aren't just Rita and Zedd again like they were for all of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. The only time original footage was shot of the villains was in the back end of the season because Prince Gasket, the eldest son of King Mondo and Queen Machina, is the older version of Prince Sprocket (Mondo and Machina's younger son) in Ohranger and since Sprocket didn't transform into Gasket and appeared in scenes together, they had to shoot all new footage of the two of them together.

As Zeo reached its halfway mark, Saban began production on another TV show for Fox Kids called Big Bad Beetleborgs, which premiered on September 7th, 1996, two days before Power Rangers Zeo episode 21, "Brother, Can You Spare an Arrowhead?" aired. Adapted from the Metal Hero Tokusatsu series, Juukou B-Fighter (1995-1996), Big Bad Beetleborgs is about three kids, Drew, Jo, and Roland, who become superheroes known as the Beetleborgs, after they enter a haunted mansion, meet a phasm named Flabber, who is basically the Genie from Aladdin, and he grants them their wish of becoming their favourite comic book superheroes, the Big Bad Beetleborgs to fight the Magnavores, villains from the comics. I loved Big Bad Beetleborgs when I was a kid, because it focused more on the comedy and the everyday stuff rather than the monster of the week aspect that the early seasons of Power Rangers focused on. This will be a post all of it's own, don't worry.

Of course, Zeo had it's own toyline. It was a much larger toyline since Bandai America could release all of the weapons, Zords, morphers, villains, and Ranger figures, which they hadn't really done since the first season of Mighty Morphin since Rangers and villains carried over from season to season. I only had two figures from this line, and I didn't get them until I was an adult. I got rid of them after my parents and I moved in 2016 though because I decided to focus on building my Mighty Morphin Power Rangers toy collection. 

While Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had books, comic books, toys, puzzles, playing cards, pogs, clothing, VHS tapes, and audiocassettes/CDs that were released from 1993 until 1995, Saban severely scaled back on the merchandise for Power Rangers Zeo. In fact the season had a single comic book issue and that's it. Published by Image Comics on September 1st, 1996 and was actually Rita and Zedd's first appearance in the continuity of Zeo since episode 2, "A Zeo Beginning Part II" as they wouldn't reappear on the show, outside of Adam's dream in episode 23, "It Came From Angel Grove", until Jason becomes the Gold Ranger. This issue has the Zeo Rangers teaming up with Rita and Zedd to prevent the Machine Empire from using the residual Mighty Morphin energies leftover from Rita and Zedd destroying the Ninja Power Coins in the third episode of Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. This issue was supposed to be the first in an ongoing series, with a changing title as Power Rangers Zeo was only the show's title for one season, but for some unknown reason Image Comics lost the Power Rangers license before the issue even came out and this ended up being the only one despite it ending on a cliffhanger. But with notorious comic book artist, Rob Liefeld, being credited as the editor on this book, I can see why Image lost the license. 

Only two VHS tapes were released for this season. Power Rangers Zeo: Zeo Quest is the first and it's mostly bits and pieces of the Rangers's Zeo Quests from Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers and then the two part premiere of Zeo, "A Zeo Beginning" and then Zeo's Halloween episode, "It Came From Angel Grove" had a VHS release, and that's it for the season. This fuels my theory that Power Rangers became less popular after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie came out until it became the niche superhero franchise that it is today. Because at the height of it's popularity in 1994 and 1995, during the end of the first season and during the second season, MMPR had so much merchandise coming out from clothing to comic books, AND a theatrical feature film, so to have things scaled back, particularly on the home video front is interesting.

Power Rangers Zeo was released on DVD in two volumes. The first volume, containing the first 25 episodes of the season, was released on November 12th 2013 and the second volume, which contained episodes 26 to 50, was released on February 11th, 2014. I got both volumes from my friend Kelly a few years ago when I was still staying at her place for the weekend twice a year. 

Zeo was also released as part of the Power Rangers: Seasons 4-7 DVD boxset, along with Turbo, In Space, and Lost Galaxy in the summer of 2013, along with tons of bonus features. From what I can see online, all six discs were in one case rather than split up into volumes. One of the bonus features was Power Rangers: The Lost Episode, which was the 1999 airing of the original pilot version of "Day of the Dumpster" hosted by Austin St. John and Walter Emmanuel Jones. 

Overall I enjoyed watching Zeo all the way through for the first time since 1996. It was interesting, fun, funny in places, and I never got bored of it like I started to be by the end of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 3. As I said at the beginning of this review, Zeo is a very underrated season of Power Rangers and it often seems to get dismissed as just a continuation of MMPR even though it's more than just that. Because, it is a continuation, no matter how you look at it. But it's a continuation that opened up the Power Rangers Universe in a way that MMPR was barely able to do by the end of it's run. And the franchise would continue to do so until 2011, but I'll get there when I get there.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997) as it's next in the sequence. My plan is to finish the first six seasons, with Turbo and In Space, by the end of November and then I'll take a break and get into some movie and comic book reviews before returning to Power Rangers in the New Year. So until tomorrow, have a great evening, Happy Halloween, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.