Recap: Power Rangers Megaforce, Episode 3 – “We’ve got our hands full with Loogies!”

Recap: Power Rangers Megaforce, Episode 3 – Going Viral

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Noah is chatting with Gia and Emma who are excited about the school’s social networking site about to get up and running. Jake comes in, a little too late to flirt with Gia, but just in time to ask Noah to help upgrade his Snake Axe so he can use it to impress her. And save the world, of course.

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Meanwhile, Vrak has a monster that can spread a virus to make humans into mindless minions with just one sneeze. Admiral Malkor gives the okay.

Noah’s done with the website so he turns his attention to the Snake Axe. But he realizes how heavy it is and begins to doubt if he has what it takes to keep up with Jake and others.

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Downtown, Vrak’s monster, Virox, sneezes his virus all over the place.

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Harwood County High School!
Jake returns to the computer lab to find Noah doing pushups. Noah tells him his doubts about being strong enough, but Jake says it’s not about muscles. It’s about believing in yourself, and when you do, you can do anything.

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The other three Rangers are strolling downtown. Emma asks if Gia’s noticed that Jake might have a crush on her. No, she replies. But before Emma can ask anything else, they see people turning into Loogies. Tensou says it’s like a flu virus.

Troy, Emma and Gia morph while at school, Noah goes on ahead as Jake has to run back to grab his Snake Axe.

Troy asks Gosei what they can do about the humans-turned-Loogies since they’re still people. Gosei says they’ll have to work together and figure it out on their own. (Well, thanks.)

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On the way, Noah sees Virox attacking more people, ready to sneeze at them. He decides to morph and hurries as Virox attempts to send a slimeball fireball towards a woman.

Noah uses his Gosei powers to whisk her away from the blast. Are you some kind of superhero, she asks. Noah replies, Well, I guess we’re about to find out.

Noah fires at Virox, but uses a shield to block the attacks. Jake arrives and takes Virox by surprise. He’s ready to go, but Noah says they should have an attack plan first.

Up in the ship, Creepox is pooh-poohing Vrak’s plan.

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Troy tells Emma and Gia to get up on a shipping container to get away from the humanLoogies. (Emma can’t do it on her own.)

Noah manages to fire at Virox, but he disappears when Noah and Jake appear to be too much trouble. The woman thanks Noah for saving her and Jake tells him, see, you are a hero.

Troy, Gia and Emma are just flabbergasted by all these Loogies. They call Jake and Noah.

“We’ve got our hands full with Loogies!”

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Jake wallops Noah’s foot with his Mega Axe and doesn’t notice, instead takes part in more flirting with Gia. While the four of them have no idea what to do next, Noah suggests they quarantine the infected people. Durr… the first thing to do with a virus is to quarantine people before they can spread it to others.

Jake tells Noah to stop fooling around and runs off to join the others. Oh man, Noah says, he’ll never be able to keep up.

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Troy, Emma and Gia decide to lure the humanLoogies into attacking them, but not fighting back so as just to tire them out, making it easier to round them up. Troy calls Jake and Noah to hurry up so they can herd these wild animals humans together.

Sorry, but they’re a little busy. Jake and Noah run into Virox. Jake summons his Snake Axe and proceed to fight the monster.

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They get knocked around. Noah goes down first, but so does Jake as his Snake Axe goes flying. They realize Virox’s weak spot is his chest. Noah gets up and uses his Shark Bowgun, but nothing doing.

He wants to use Jake’s Snake Axe, but it’s too heavy. Jake reminds Noah he can do anything if he believes in himself. And Noah believes in himself enough to throw his Bowgun in the air, pick up the Axe and whirl it around at Virox enough to give him a one-two punch.

Jake compliments Noah, but Virox gets up. The others arrive just in time to knock him back down while they explain how they used Goseiger Power Cards to round them up and do a roll call.

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“I’m going to force feed you some gooey virus!”
(Oh my, well, that’s a little extreme.)

The Rangers combine their weapons for the Megaforce Blaster and finish off Virox and his first life. Now they need to release the quarantined people. Noah says he’ll do it so he takes Jake’s axe and breaks the people free from the big block.

Vrak sends his Zombats to embiggen Virox and the Rangers call on their Mechazords, Megazords, whatever they want to call ’em.

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Virox grabs their Dragonsword and the others get whacked around in their seats. But Noah’s belief in himself unlocks a new Power Card for the Seaick Brother zords, the Mantazord, Sawsharkzord and Hammerheadzord.

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Noah activates the Sea Gosei Great Megazord. With a Victory Charge and a Sea Strike, they finish off Virox for good.

Mega Win!

Back at school, Jake tells Noah how Gia was very impressed with “the way you handled my axe.”

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Speaking of, Noah says he adjusted the Axe for him and recalibrated. Jake whirls it around the room and knocks a computer monitor off the table. It’s lighter thanks to Noah using titanium alloy, so he can be more agile with less effort. Jake says he can’t get used to it being like this.

Oh poppycock, you just have to believe in yourself, Noah says.

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Episode Thoughts
An okay episode. It’s interesting though how all the school stuff has come across as kinda slow. In fact, this whole episode was kinda slow moving. From the Harwoodbook social networking site to rounding up the cattle (and jumping onto shipping containers that have been left in the middle of the street), it was slow going.

Troy was pretty invisible this episode, except when he got overexcited and leapt up in the cockpit before sitting his butt back down. Tensou was nonexistent (must be too much effort to work the robot for a few seconds) and Gosei only popped up to tell the Rangers to handle things themselves (to learn of course).

And in a case of petty complaining, while I definitely welcome romance and all that, they are really pushing the Jake-Gia stuff down our throats as pretty much one of the major story threads it seems. It’s gotten more screentime than anything else so far.

There was also some amusingly forceful language too. “Rounding them up,” referring to humans and the force feeding… wow.

And how about Jake bringing a damn axe! to school? Yeah. I guess this is a good episode to get that national conversation on axe control going.

How different is Megaforce from Goseiger?
Corresponding Goseiger Episode: Epic 5 – “Magical Hyde”

The episode was slow and after watching the Goseiger episode, I see why. The Megaforce episode was an oversimplified version of the original.

The original episode had a whole elaborate scheme where the Warstars spread a “genius virus” amongst the children. Things got so crazy that parents were even forcing their kids to get the virus, just so they could get smarter. But soon, the kids began turning into Bibis. Agri and Hyde helped a scientist mother collect blood from the alien that created the virus to help find an antidote for the children.

It was a whole thing.

So even with the Noah doubting himself subplot and a few minutes of original NZ footage, they still had a pretty shallow overall plot that I guess made the episode just slog through Virox’s slimeballs, I guess. With the other three Rangers invisible (especially Troy), they could’ve used the free time to plug in more original character scenes. Maybe have a longer conversation between Emma and Gia or them with Troy.

Or a scene down in the command cave with Gosei and Tensou.

Anyway, with this being the first truly “adapted” episode of Megaforce, let’s compare how much better the original Goseiger episode was!

Goseiger was better of course. It was a lot more fun in the way it presented Agri and Hyde’s personalities than Megaforce did with Jake and Noah. Random grocery shopping is always a fun toku situation.

So, overall, an okay, though slow episode. Weakest of the three so far.




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