Recap: Power Rangers (Super) Samurai, Episode (@?%) ?!# – Trickster Treat (Halloween Special)

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Xandred is upset that the humans are celebrating Halloween since it’s supposed to belong to the Nighloks. OOH-AH-OOH! Octoroo says he has Nighlok Trickster trapping humans in weird dreams, including the Rangers.

Trickster is watching a movie of himself overseeing dreamboxes, let’s call them. First, he’s watching Moogers attacking some furries when the Rangers appear (complete with Kuroki and the Shiba set dressing) with furry animal accessories attached to them.

“Kevin won the prize for best costume and he’s feeling super!”

(Uh oh. That right there signals this isn’t going to end well.)

Kevin says he’ll “lead from behind” [/President Obama] and lets the others take care of the Moogers until he himself gets outnumbered.

After a typhoon of Halloween related-puns, the Rangers then try to figure out how they even got here. They don’t even remember getting dressed up for Halloween.

They hear a strange sound and a spinning windmill before Trickster decides to switch it up. He sends them into an idol concert.

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It’s showtime! [/Kamen Rider Wizard]

The Rangers are on stage and introduced as Mia and the Samurai Dance Machine. The lights come up and Mako Mia is dressed up and singing a dance song while the Rangers are dancing behind her.

(Wow.)

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When they again start clueing into what’s happening, Trickster blasts them into a quarry where he plays with them by using the rewind button. They again hear the strange hum and Trickster finally decides to show himself. The Rangers take part in their longest morph sequence ever and fight more Moogers before using the Multi-Disc Octo Canon to finish off Trickster’s first life.

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Trickster embiggens and the Rangers again take their sweet time summoning the zords. Trickster decides to embiggen some more until he’s 5 or 10 times as big as the Megazord.

He kicks the Megazord around until Jayden realizes the hum is emanating from the windmill. They destroy the windmill and get blasted back to, what seems like reality. They decide to go through their shiny new respective final strikes: Blazing Strike, Dragon Splash, Air Wave, Leaf Storm, Seismic Swing, Barracuda Bite.

Trickster embiggens again into his 4th (?) life and apparently, they’re all still in a dream since Trickster is still watching on a movie screen. Jayden goes SUPER! and they summon the Claw Armor Megazord.

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Trickster sends his DREAM BEAM! towards the Rangers.

“How are we going to stop the beams from in here?”
“We’ll have to dream big!”

Trickster thinks he’s gone all Inception over the Rangers, but the Rangers manage to send their final strike through the movie screen finally defeating the Nighlok.

“Time for you to fade to black. Samurai Rangers, Halloween is ours.”

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Xandred is not happy.

“I’ll OOH-AH-OOH you!”
“Wait! Master! Does that mean we aren’t making caramel apples?”

Episode Thoughts
Wow.

Wow. Really? I think Samurai has finally reached rock bottom. This episode was an absolute mess. Honestly, it might be one of the worst Power Rangers episodes of all time.

And all because they decided to cut and paste together a so-called Halloween special with as little effort as possible. Not only did they apparently insert scenes from past and future (!) episodes of Samurai, they used scenes from the Shinkenger original in the worst way possible.

How Much Better Was Sentai Than Power Rangers?
Corresponding Shinkenger Episode: Samurai Sentai Shinkenger Returns

Scenes for this episode were literally lifted from the Shinkenger direct-to-DVD special. Of course, Power Rangers always takes footage from the Sentai original, but taking that concert scene from the Shinkenger Special Act and merely blurring Rin Takanashi/Mako’s face was incredibly ballsy. That right there, I think, speaks to how messy and with completely lack of effort Samurai as a whole has been.

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The beginning scene with the Kurokis and the Shiba curtains and set dressing… lazy.

The Shinkenger special was crazy and random, but it was loads of fun. The Shinkengers we knew and loved were intact, despite getting shuffled off to different “worlds” or in their case, television genres.

Last year’s Nighlok clip show was a helluva lot better and more creative than this mess of an episode was. The Halloween-pun storm, the horrible voice work, the lazy cut and paste job… just an absolute clusterfrack. A horrible mess, even by Samurai standards.



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