Recap: Power Rangers (Super) Megaforce, Episode (1) 21 – "No, not Ultra. SUPER MEGA!"

Recap: Power Rangers (Super) Megaforce, Episode (1) 21 – Super Megaforce

The Armada lays waste to the city. Prince Vekar is with his underlings, Argus and Levira, happy that the first wave of the invasion has gone well. Levira wishes she could find Vrak, but Vekar says they just have to assume he was killed in the line of duty. He authorizes Argus to initiate the second wave.

Emma walks through the ravaged mall where she finds Ernie hiding at the Brain Freeze. She assures him she’s taken care of all the X Borgs at the mall. Meanwhile, Noah is at the ravaged school where he finds two students hiding in the computer lab. He tells them to go find other hiding students because they all need to stick together now.

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Jake, Gia, Noah and Emma head back to Gosei’s lair. It’s still bad out there, Emma says. Noah tells them about the students, saying there are others who aren’t going to let the “creeps” beat them.

Gosei says the world has never seen an invasion like this. Suddenly, they hear footsteps. Obviously, it’s Troy. He says he’s been searching for Robo Knight. Gosei says all communication is down, so they couldn’t possibly find Robo Knight.

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But more important things. Gosei says it’s time for the Rangers to tap into the infinite power that lines the walls of the command center. He gives them their new morphers and new Ranger keys to unlock Super Megaforce Mode. But the keys that line the walls enable them to tap into the powers of all the Rangers that came before them. However, every time they morph into a legendary Ranger, their strength will be challenged.

Jake interrupts for a second. He asks why his key is green. Gosei says there’s a perfectly simple explanation for that. But The Armada suddenly starts attacking nearby. Gosei tells the Rangers to go.

Damaras gives Prince Vekar the latest report. Vekar says to do whatever it takes to wipe the Earth of humans.

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Commander Headridge and an army of Bruisers and X Borgs march into downtown. Headridge is about to shoot a Japanese teacher and her students, but the Rangers appear and stop him.

“We better go Ultra Mode,” Gia says.
But Troy replies, “No, not Ultra. SUPER MEGA!”

They morph into Super Mega Mode. Emma tells the citizens to get outta there and the Rangers fight the X Borgs head on with some pirate flair. They start trading weapons and fly all over the place while getting very chatty.

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Troy says it’s finally time to go to the next level.

“This is an historic moment for the Power Rangers.”

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They use their Legendary powers for the first time and morph into Samurai. “Go go Samurai!”

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Enjoying it, they decide to try different keys.
They morph into Mystic Force. “Magical Source, Mystic Force!”

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Headridge stops their fun and forces them to demorph back into Super Mega Mode. Gosei tells them to use their keys in their sabre locks and they send a Final Strike, finishing Headridge off.

“Now that’s a SUPER MEGA win!”

Prince Vekar is annoyed. So the humans actually can fight back. Apparently, yes, Damaras replies. Vekar demands another commander and in pops Tentacus, vowing to get the job done.

“Crush this resistance HARD!”

A fresh batch of Bruisers and X Borgs accompany Tentacus to the city as he blows a couple of buildings up before the Rangers arrive.

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The Rangers do more weapon switching and lots more chatting taking care of the X Borgs. Tentacus fires at them and the Rangers decide to morph into SPD. (No Emergency though.)

They then morph into Ninja Storm. (But no Ranger Form.)

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After a Shadow Battle Attack, they decide to do an all-Red morph.

Troy morphs into the Red Samurai Ranger, Noah morphs into the Red Wild Force Ranger, Gia morphs into the Red Mystic Force Range, Jake morphs into the Red Overdrive Ranger and Emma morphs into the Red Jungle Fury ranger.

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They finish off Tentacus. Argus says the Prince will lose his mind by all these defeats. But Levira says she’s been working on something big and wishes she didn’t have to waste it on this small planet. But oh well. She activates the Maximizer which can embiggen more than one monster at a time. No need for Zombats anymore.

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Levira embiggens Tentacus and three Bruisers. Gosei calls and tells the Rangers they have new zords and a special Skyship. They summon the ship and they hop on.

“Port side! Fire!”

They release the individual zords.
Super Mega Wheeler! Super Mega Sub! Super Mega Racer! Super Mega Jet!

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And after a few shots at Tentacus, they combine to form the Legendary Megazord.

“Full speed ahead!”

They use their cannons and the final strike, a Super Mega Storm Burst, to finish Tentacus off for good.

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“Super Mega Rangers, that’s a SUPER MEGA WIN!”

Jake, Noah, Emma and Gia are back at school the next morning and everything looks perfectly normal.

Noah asks the girl he found in the lab yesterday how everything is going. Great, she says, but now they need a teacher and she asks where Mr. Burley is.

Noah goes to look for him and finds him trying to keep his archaeological artifacts from falling off the shelf. Noah helps and Mr. Burley thanks him. How could I ever repay you, he asks.

Noah says he needs to go out and teach again, the students need him!

They head back to class and the students applaud. Mr. Burley reminds them of last year when he asked the question “Which species will outlast all the others?”

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He remembers one student saying that “if humans work together, they can achieve anything. You all proved that to be true. I could not be more proud of each and every one of you. It’s very clear that when faced with great adversity that the human spirit will always prevail.”

Jake turns back to smile at Troy, but he’s not there. He’s on the beach wondering where Robo Knight is.

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Episode Thoughts
Busy Power Rangers weekend we have here.

Super Megaforce has begun (officially on Saturday) and it’s pretty much what you would expect if you’ve seen any of Megaforce. It was flashy with plenty of fight scenes, but still completely hollow.

First of all, the first act of the episode. They make it seem like the city’s been leveled and is in ruins. The mall looks like it was attacked then looted. The school looks like a bomb ripped through it. And yet the Rangers can just casually stroll back into the command center. Or later, see the school is all cleaned up, good as new the next morning.

Uh… what? That’s probably the best example of how Megaforce has been so “hollow.” Grim images, dire warnings from Gosei and yet, everything else appears to be typical monster of the week insanity.

Instead of being all riled up that this army of aliens has declared war on Earth, it still feels like they’re fighting Bigs and Bluefur or something.

And what was with that whole “We need a teacher! Come back Mr. Burley!” stuff at the end? Did he quit teaching or something? Was he so depressed that he couldn’t teach anymore in the hours after the invasion. That girl seems to have overreacted because she made it seem like the school has been teacherless and they’ve all been living like The Tribe or something. (Shout out to all Tribe Ranger alums!)

All that “Humans need to stick together, especially now!” nonsense means nothing since they didn’t really establish just how dire the situation is.

The Legendary morphs were fine. I must applaud them for using the morphing calls when they morphed into Samurai and Mystic Force. But then why no morphing calls for SPD or Ninja Storm? Also, I wish they used the theme music for the season they’re morphing to as a music cue like they did in “Once a Ranger.” That’s the least they could do.

I know people are complaining that they should’ve morphed into Mighty Morphin first. But as I’ve said before, since I don’t put MMPR on some high, unreachable pedestal, I could care less if they morphed into MMPR first. They could’ve morphed into Turbo for all I care.

Really, they just made do with the Gokaiger footage which had them henshin into the Gorengers first then Shinkenger than Majiranger.

But speaking of the Gokaiger footage. EEEK! at that horrible editing job they did when they demorphed out of the all-Red back to Super Mega Mode. They did fine with the original footage of Overdrive Red instead of Gosei Red in the beginning of that sequence, but ouch at the horrible job they did replacing Gosei Red with Overdrive Red at the end of it. That was more than noticeable.

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Maybe the best parts of the episode for me were all the scenes aboard the Armada command ship. They did a pretty good job with Prince Vekar and company. Good voice acting, solid dialogue. It was hard to distinguish who was talking when, but they still did a good job. Especially in making Vekar much less of a whiny brat that Warz Gill was. Just like Vrak was one of the few bright spots in the first half of Megaforce, so could his brother for this second half.

How Much Different Was Power Rangers From Sentai?
Corresponding Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger Episode (s): Episode 1 – “The Space Pirates Appear” and Episode 2 – “This Planet’s Worth”

Obviously very different even though later episodes this season will lift full episodes from Gokaiger. But for this episode, they filmed quite a bit of original footage before smashing together the morphed fight scenes from the first two Gokaiger episodes.

Because of those two episodes and all the exposition they had in the first half of the episode, it definitely felt too rushed. That contributed to the hollow feeling since there was so much exposition about everything instead of having the events naturally play out on screen. There was no chance to even think about what was going on.

And then this random, but beautifully shot water running scene in the opening credits:

What is happening!?!?1?1?!!

Like the first half of Megaforce, this first episode of Super Megaforce was all a bunch of pretty things to look at and nothing to care about. And for someone like me who’s seen Gokaiger, the Legendary morphs aren’t even all that novel especially if they aren’t even going to play the music or yell out the morphing call. It was an okay episode. But “Mega Mission” was an okay episode. Then look what happened after that.


Celebrate Power Rangers‘ 20th Anniversary on DVD!
The first 18 seasons, from Mighty Morphin to RPM on four complete DVD sets!
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4 thoughts on “Recap: Power Rangers (Super) Megaforce, Episode (1) 21 – "No, not Ultra. SUPER MEGA!"

  1. why no mo9rphing calls for SPD and Ninja Storm? they just want to erase everything about the disney era ranger series. those are nothing more than nondescript forms they transform into now. though i think they had no choice with that of mystic force, hehehehe! and i am guessing that thing about jake’s key being green will never be answered at ll coz they don’t have an answer. at all.

    1. It’ll be interesting just how they do treat the Disney Era Rangers since a lot of the tribute episodes that they will be translating and bringing over feature those teams.

  2. Even though this episode had most of Megaforce’s usual flaws,

    – Gosei pulling powerups out of nowhere he could have atleast said he spent the last year building the morphers ,
    – everyone talking about humanity,
    – for some reason Burley getting applause for doing nothing)

    and did some stuff I was worried about

    – like spam Supermega puns all the time (will never get used to that)
    – or making Jake act like Gokaigreen (though the dialogue did mask it a bit)

    to be perfectly honest even though this ep should get a 2.5/5 i would give it a 3 mainly because i thought it was enjoyable and for the first time in like 3 years it felt like the writers were actually having fun with the episode, scenes like them trolling us with the green ranger key, or announcing the past morphing calls, or even some of the dialogue in the fights made the episode a lot of fun to watch despite its flaws

    personally i felt that for the first time in like 3 years the writers, weren’t just trying to translate the sentai, or force some MMPR stereotype, or some pointless generic moral, they were actually taking some enjoyment in making the product,

    did they necessarily do a good job? maybe not, did this have the rock solid writing an anniversary season should have? heck no, but did i have a lot of fun watching this episode? honestly yes i did.

    also:

    Gia: “we tried contacting you Gosei but the armada must have knocked out communications”

    Gosei: “yup that’s totally why I didn’t answer your calls, i definitely wasn’t napping like i was during C2D where my mentor apparently died to stop an even worse invasion that nobody in Harwood seems to know about and I didn’t mention to you rangers.”

    1. Yeah, it was fine, I give it a 3. Which is definitely a relative score. I liked it alright, but I still got a hollow feeling. It was pretty and all and the legendary morphs were still fun even without the WOW! feeling if I hadn’t seen it already. But it didn’t excite me.

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