With the 20th anniversary of Power Rangers soon approaching we decided to give you a breakdown of how these brightly coloured superheroes work…
Red Ranger: The leader of the team, tends to brash and impulsive. Expect a lot the stories to revolve around him. He’ll get a lot of the cool weaponry.
Blue ranger: The brains of the team. They tend to Peter Parker of the team. On occasion the do tend to be the strict second in command giving the red ranger a chance to be fun.
Black/green ranger: The oddball of the group. Throughout the franchise the ‘third ranger’ has a different colour scheme ranging between green and black. This character tends to be into <insert popular niche trend> of the time.
Yellow ranger: Usually female despite their Japanese counterpart being male. The tom boy of the group and best-friend of the pink ranger.
Pink ranger: The girly girl of the team. Tends to be very feminine. Like the yellow ranger she never ever gets any of the cool toys unlike the boys. Usually falls prey to the evil monster and has romantic feelings for the red or sixth ranger.
The sixth ranger: This one has a habit of being a completely exotic colour. They tend to have the unique weapons designed for solo combat.
Get ready to form Voltron as like its robotic counterpart Transformers Voltron is making a huge return hitting comics, TV and games with a blazing sword of vengeance. However was it ever popular in the UK?
Voltron in his full form, was he part of your childhood ?
Jeremy Corray of World Event Productions explains this wasn’t just your standard origin story to how a cartoon came on air.
‘We were looking for Japanese programming to localise the American market and basically the show was one big tape mix up. We rang up Toei a Japanese production company and asked for the one with the Lion and were mistakenly sent a copy of Beast King Go Lion. My bosses watched and loved and became entranced in the world of fantasy and machinery it had.’
Jeremy also explained the plot to us in a nutshell.
‘Five space explorers are sent to the Planet Arus to bring back a mythological defence and on the way are captured by the planet Doom led by the evil King Zarkon. So the explorers Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge and Sven unlock the power of 5 mystic robotic lions through magical keys which all together formed Voltron, a giant super robot.’
Though the team found the show easy to understand in another language their was a lot of content which was not suitable for a children cartoon series.
‘You had to see what they had to go up against’ said Jeremy ‘From violent beheadings and blood spurts and the death of a main character. In the Japanese version Shirogane (Sven) dies and in the that version you see a full on death scene whilst in Voltron he went to the hospital and was never heard of again’
Though Sven did return in Voltron as in Beast King Go-lion Shiroganes twin brother takes over piloting duties. In Voltron it was edited as if Sven had returned from hospital.
Though it was popular in theUSit’s considered obscure in theUK. Jerome Mazandarani Head of Marketing & Acquisitions at Manga Entertainment tells us the popularity was limited because of censorship.
‘The UK has always been quite close marketed until now since the BBC was commissioning a lot of content and the UK has been xenophobic when it comes to picking up TV shows from other territories as theirs a misconception their to violent and unsuitable, though it doesn’t stop something like Ben 10 from being hugely successful and that’s just about as violent as Voltron.’
Princess Allura: The princess of Arus, she took over piloting duties of the Blue lion after Sven was taken to the hospital after he was taken to the hospital after his fight with Witch Hagar. Out of the five she is the most inexperienced leading to danger, though her caring nature is channelled through her piloting.
Keith: The leader of the team. Keith is the heroic mullet clad alpha male who is calm and collected and always has a plan formulating. Keith pilots the black lions which forms the centre of Voltron and gives the order to form the machine and to create it’s signature weapon the blazing sword.
Pidge: The brains of the outfit. Though he’s short in height he makes up for this by being the most cunning of the group. Pidge is ruthless and cunning and has been seen to outwit his enemies on a regular basis using his surroundings as an advantage.
Lance: Despite his uniform colour being the calming universal sign of blue Lance is the complete opposite. Lance is fiery hot tempered and original rebel utilising the animalistic nature of Lion whenever he finds himself in combat.
Hunk: The muscles of the team. Hunk may not be the brightest of the group but like his best friend Pidge he is a wonder with machines and alongside his friend have managed to fix any technical error Voltron may encounter in his quest against evil.
Red Ranger: The leader of the team, tends to brash and impulsive. Expect a lot the stories to revolve around him. He’ll get a lot of the cool weaponry.
Black/green ranger: The oddball of the group. Throughout the franchise the ‘third ranger’ has a different colour scheme ranging between green and black. This character tends to be into <insert popular niche trend> of the time.
Pink ranger: The girly girl of the team. Tends to be very feminine. Like the yellow ranger she never ever gets any of the cool toys unlike the boys. Usually falls prey to the evil monster and has romantic feelings for the red or sixth ranger.
