The next mighty step forward

What up my fellow blog reading enthusiasts ?

So as you may have noticed I haven't posted a lot lately since my work load grew a little and this subject's work was about done.

Though I've been really meaning to update this blog since I did sort of enjoy posting as it gave me a chance to practice another form of writing and do what journalists do (Bernie Russell on blogging 2011). Also it's been made clear to me by  a veteran blogger a blog does need a recurring subject, so I decided for the life span of this blog (since my first year is almost over) to dedicate to stuff in the media i'd like to mexpand/expand on (mexpand: moan AND expand). So this week i'm going to tackle the important subject of target audiences and suitability.

And guess whose using the most mature subject out their ?

That's right it's not me because this examples Power Rangers (mature right ?)

OK for those of you who missed the 90's the Power Rangers was one of the biggest  live action kids TV shows in the West following five (after a while six) teenage superheroes using different coloured costumed identities to fight evil by using flashy and often quite violent fight scenes and gigantic robots.
- Their 'superhero' forms
and a little giggle from another blog:
- The White one is the sixth ranger who's always considered the best and usually starts as an anti-hero but joins the team.
- A megazord. Usually made up of five robotic vechiles like animals or cars to make a Tranformer like weapon.

For those of you who aren't geeky Power Rangers it mostly a rehashed version of Japanese show called Super Sentai. A Western company just simply re-sounded the fight and villain (which explained why the fights took place in the most random of areas and why the rangers never met the villains) scenes with English voices and a Western sound track and cleverly edited all encounters to avoid any suscpion of a cheap Western re hash.

The show was a huge part of lot of my generations childhood and to be fair was quite entertaining if not a little childish and possibly a  bit over violent (the show as banned in New Zeland due to it's violent content and many parents believed this led to hypodermic needle model in which children were then influenced to behave violently to).

So here's the more meaty media bit, as we know some franchise's like Star Wars and Star Trek have a huge fan base of figure collecting lovers. Power Rangers is no different with some people my age and older devoted to everything colour co-ordinated, which leads to a snag of an audience problem.

As it's established the target audience for the show was mainly boys between the age of 6 and 10.

In my research into this subject i've found that a habit for the modern incarnations of the show seem to have a habit of pleasing the old school beyond the point it's ok to wacth kid shows and talk about group by bringing back old characters and plots (like an episode in which every red ranger was bought back to tackle an old villain, apparently it had quite a few continuity errors), which no one of the intended audience of young kids could have possibly been about to wacth unless they religiously wacthed re-runs.

So here it is, this may be occasional but it makes you wonder overall, who are they trying to please ? The older generation or the new ? because the new one will no way have an idea who have these characters are of their importance. OK it's partially Super Sentai's fault in which it's a little more acceptable to wacth these kind of shows at an older age but still when Disney owned the rights their writers bought them back in.

Which leads me onto the game. For this I need a picture:
- As you can see by using nerd vision the three smaller images on the right are the mordern incarnations of the power rangers. While the biggest image on the left is of the first red power ranger. Disney (when they owned the rights) and to an extent Saban (orginal production company who have bought back the rights) are going out their way to bring back retro themes like old characters (Sentai's fault again) and even in their own orginal media like the game hash back to the good old days. Mixing old stories with new don't work with this show, it's ran to long for such a young target audience.

So here's my resposne stop with lame fan pleasing tatics and bring back the original story in a way that efforts been put in. If they're so obessed with my generation of Power Rangers stop using re-runs and badly contunity planned episodes and bring them back with a new cast with the same powers of the original ones and have them stay on in mentor positions (most of the cast left over pay disputes and some are dead so not everyone can come back), turn it on it's head and bring some quality kid's tv. It's seems to be a huge theme to bring 80's shows so begin early and bring back the 90's. I'm sure somewhere out their some big media company would love to repeat the cash cow success of this show. You could reboot like Batman and start a fresh or Green Hornett it and move the story on  many years later and have somone inherit their abilities etc.. (movies examples I know but they worked). Or if you want to lift more out of movies do a Star Trek and create an alternate universe in which the original powers have to passed onto successors (guess what over upcoming movie this steals from).

Either way I doubt this will happen happen since the show's content is dictated by it's Japanese counterpart into what overly theme move they make next, but here's just hoping some Power range obsessed media big wig see this and thinks hmm...

DISCLAIMER: I'm not attacking Power Ranger fans here, I want them to have what they want. They're childhood bought back in way old and new can enjoy it without years of confused and muddled plots being involved.