Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger
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by Cegarth
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Mild spoilers ahead.
Everything the show did well:
-The 6 Main Rangers are all very likeable characters.
-Battle choreography is consistently amazing.
-Very good cast of actors, the 7 rangers have ton of charisma.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
-The conflict between the Lupinrangers and Zamigo help their stakes feel real and make them more endearing.
-Some episodes can be pretty funny.
-The dynamic of having a kinda morally ambiguous team alongside a good-two shoes team is interesting.
-The show has lots of style that makes it stands out aestheticly from other Tokusatsu.
Everything the show did bad:
-While the overall cast is likeable, the show has favoritism towards the Lupinrangers. The Patrangers get shafted most of the show and barely get any upgrades. It ultimately ends up mostly wasting the dual team dynamic.
-The rivalry between the 2 teams feels very forced since it mostly stems from the Patrangers killing every monster they encounter rather than arresting them or even interrogate them which they only did twice in the show. This is especially grating if you've seen the other 2 cop Super Sentai where they actually arrest their monsters and only kill them if they've been properly judged. This overall makes the story feel very draggy.
-While the 7th ranger Lupin X has ton of charisma and it's pretty likeable initially, he fractures the already flawed team dynamic even further.
-Lupin X whole character arc and the truth behind Lupin comes off as kinda uninteresting since it feels very detached from the goal of the other rangers and the villains, plus it really never felt like something the other rangers would be opposed to him after the reveal. All of this ultimately makes him a pretty unlikeable character by the end.
-The villains are pretty boring for the most part because their actions feel very detached from their goal of world conquer as most monsters just do whacky low-scales crimes which makes the fact that the Patrangers don't arrest them feel even weirder. Again, this feels more unacceptable if you've seen other Sentai shows since a lot of them manage to make goofy monsters while also making them feel like a world-level threat. At least the writer got it right with her later show Zenkaiger.
-The villain generals barely get any backstory or even a chance to do something interesting after the first quarter.
-The main antagonist Dogranio despite having an entertaining personality, feels boring overall because he barely does anything on the show and we're only given his backstory at the very end and only via dialogue.
-While Kogure manages to do some interesting stuff with his disguises, him and the rest of the sidecast from both teams are mostly not relevant nor interesting.
-Despite LupinBlue being a likeable character overall, he isn't as likeable as the other five because the writer kind off sucks at writing a straight man character, but granted this is mostly a nitpick.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Producer Utsunomiya wanted to make an even more different team dynamic than the one from Kyuranger. Action Director Hirofumi Fukuzawa wanted to make the show even more stylish than the previous cop Sentai Dekaranger, so he went more all out than usual. Main writer Junko Komura is really good at choosing lead actors for her script. The pilot made by Sugihara had a very cinematic feel, so the following directors had to keep the momentum of the first 2 episodes to make the show feel consistent.
Reasons for the show's flaws:
Main producer Utsunomiya was afraid that 2 teams would be alienating, so requested that the villains were closer to standard Sentai. There's nothing particularly wrong with this approach but main writer Komura did a really generic execution of this idea, which ultimately resulted in the monster of the week format being worse than usual. Also she has the issue of focusing on only a few characters which doesn't make that good of a fit for Sentai since it's a team-based series. On top of all that she probably focused more on the Lupinrangers because in an interview she said she was scared that the Patrangers would feel too similar to the other 2 previews Cop Sentai shows. Other possible reason for the show focusing more on the Lupinrangers was that according to Utsunomiya the reason why he chose Junko Komura again so soon was because prior the animal theme for Zyuohger he considered doing thieves (That's how he phrased in the interview but I assume more that he means that there was going to be a thief plot point in Zyohger since other interviews indicate that Komura was chosen after the animal theme which is usually the standard for writers in Toei Tokusatsu), so he wanted her to use some of the ideas she couldn't do. So maybe she had a lot of plans for the Lupinrangers due to this but not as much for the Patrangers.
Ultimately this show would result in Utsunomiya being demoted due to releasing two consecutive financial failures, while the show's quality was definitely a factor, most of the fault is on the toy designers making pretty bad toys rather than the show's staff which makes this feel kinda unfair.
Overall:
For everything this show did right, it felt like it did something wrong. The overall storyline comes off as boring past the first arc, and the cast focus is kind of muffled. However, the actual direction of the show is great and the main 6 cast members are really likeable which keeps the episodes from being straight up bad in spite of being dragged down by the villains. Overall, the show felt average to me, but if you like the characters enough I could see it being a good time for other people, just don't go in expecting the Patrangers to get the same level of treatment as the Lupinrangers nor a particularly deep plot.
-The 6 Main Rangers are all very likeable characters.
-Battle choreography is consistently amazing.
-Very good cast of actors, the 7 rangers have ton of charisma.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
-The conflict between the Lupinrangers and Zamigo help their stakes feel real and make them more endearing.
-Some episodes can be pretty funny.
-The dynamic of having a kinda morally ambiguous team alongside a good-two shoes team is interesting.
-The show has lots of style that makes it stands out aestheticly from other Tokusatsu.
Everything the show did bad:
-While the overall cast is likeable, the show has favoritism towards the Lupinrangers. The Patrangers get shafted most of the show and barely get any upgrades. It ultimately ends up mostly wasting the dual team dynamic.
-The rivalry between the 2 teams feels very forced since it mostly stems from the Patrangers killing every monster they encounter rather than arresting them or even interrogate them which they only did twice in the show. This is especially grating if you've seen the other 2 cop Super Sentai where they actually arrest their monsters and only kill them if they've been properly judged. This overall makes the story feel very draggy.
-While the 7th ranger Lupin X has ton of charisma and it's pretty likeable initially, he fractures the already flawed team dynamic even further.
-Lupin X whole character arc and the truth behind Lupin comes off as kinda uninteresting since it feels very detached from the goal of the other rangers and the villains, plus it really never felt like something the other rangers would be opposed to him after the reveal. All of this ultimately makes him a pretty unlikeable character by the end.
-The villains are pretty boring for the most part because their actions feel very detached from their goal of world conquer as most monsters just do whacky low-scales crimes which makes the fact that the Patrangers don't arrest them feel even weirder. Again, this feels more unacceptable if you've seen other Sentai shows since a lot of them manage to make goofy monsters while also making them feel like a world-level threat. At least the writer got it right with her later show Zenkaiger.
-The villain generals barely get any backstory or even a chance to do something interesting after the first quarter.
-The main antagonist Dogranio despite having an entertaining personality, feels boring overall because he barely does anything on the show and we're only given his backstory at the very end and only via dialogue.
-While Kogure manages to do some interesting stuff with his disguises, him and the rest of the sidecast from both teams are mostly not relevant nor interesting.
-Despite LupinBlue being a likeable character overall, he isn't as likeable as the other five because the writer kind off sucks at writing a straight man character, but granted this is mostly a nitpick.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Producer Utsunomiya wanted to make an even more different team dynamic than the one from Kyuranger. Action Director Hirofumi Fukuzawa wanted to make the show even more stylish than the previous cop Sentai Dekaranger, so he went more all out than usual. Main writer Junko Komura is really good at choosing lead actors for her script. The pilot made by Sugihara had a very cinematic feel, so the following directors had to keep the momentum of the first 2 episodes to make the show feel consistent.
Reasons for the show's flaws:
Main producer Utsunomiya was afraid that 2 teams would be alienating, so requested that the villains were closer to standard Sentai. There's nothing particularly wrong with this approach but main writer Komura did a really generic execution of this idea, which ultimately resulted in the monster of the week format being worse than usual. Also she has the issue of focusing on only a few characters which doesn't make that good of a fit for Sentai since it's a team-based series. On top of all that she probably focused more on the Lupinrangers because in an interview she said she was scared that the Patrangers would feel too similar to the other 2 previews Cop Sentai shows. Other possible reason for the show focusing more on the Lupinrangers was that according to Utsunomiya the reason why he chose Junko Komura again so soon was because prior the animal theme for Zyuohger he considered doing thieves (That's how he phrased in the interview but I assume more that he means that there was going to be a thief plot point in Zyohger since other interviews indicate that Komura was chosen after the animal theme which is usually the standard for writers in Toei Tokusatsu), so he wanted her to use some of the ideas she couldn't do. So maybe she had a lot of plans for the Lupinrangers due to this but not as much for the Patrangers.
Ultimately this show would result in Utsunomiya being demoted due to releasing two consecutive financial failures, while the show's quality was definitely a factor, most of the fault is on the toy designers making pretty bad toys rather than the show's staff which makes this feel kinda unfair.
Overall:
For everything this show did right, it felt like it did something wrong. The overall storyline comes off as boring past the first arc, and the cast focus is kind of muffled. However, the actual direction of the show is great and the main 6 cast members are really likeable which keeps the episodes from being straight up bad in spite of being dragged down by the villains. Overall, the show felt average to me, but if you like the characters enough I could see it being a good time for other people, just don't go in expecting the Patrangers to get the same level of treatment as the Lupinrangers nor a particularly deep plot.
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