Cat SCRTCH Fever

I just watched Jungle Fury’s first episode “Welcome To The Jungle” and sure as the 80s song says, there were fun and games.

Let’s take this thing apart by looking at it in four sections, Story, Characters, Battles and Mythos

Story
An ancient group of Kung Fu enthusiasts have built a secret order to protect the people of our world from harm. The biggest harm being an evil being known as The Dai Shi. Hmm, reminds me of how a lot of kung fu action movies start out. Hmm still, and like the rest of those movies they don’t keep that said evil under a lock and key!

There were to be three top students who would move up in the ranks, Jarrod was one of them, but his disdain for other students and lack of respect for others (and himself for that hair cut) caused him to lose the chance at better Chinese outfit.
Master Mao(played excellently by Mr. Nathaniel Lees chooses a cub(think Jedi padawan) as Jarrod’s replacement. This cub, Casey has shown himself to have a humble spirit and the strength of the tiger power, plus he isn’t wearing a mullet.
I’m not giving details because I barely understood the vast proverbial aspects of “Whoops I dropped the box of doom!” but lets move on to the fact that The Dai Shi escaped and took Jarrod as a host for his powers.

Mao body is destroyed, or becomes burn energy, or what happened when The Guardian and a few other ranger allies got hit too hard, but just before he fades away ala Yoda in ROTJ, he orders the students to find their new mentor somewhere in the city. When they find that their new leader isn’t a old guy from Asia, but Keanu Reeves…erm RJ(which until otherwise proven, I say he’s Righteous Justice!) who is a pizza flipping master of the martial arts, the students are soon given the power to morph.

Now what should strike all of you readers as interesting is that the martial arts training school didn’t offer Ranger Power 101 in it’s core curriculum. In fact RJ mentions that he had to actually pull strings with a couple of people who knew some people in order to get morphers that would tap into the Morphing Grid…bet if was Dr. O.
I like the pacing of all of this so far, it seems like Jackie and Bruce pulled off a nice serious pilot, the story is so much better than last year’s, but we shall see if execution will be on PRDT o r SPD’s level.

Characters

Dai Shi
Excellent so far, perhaps someone who can actually give Mesogog Zedd a fair fight, because honestly, Flurious should have played second fiddle to the Ninjas last year. This season feels more like we get another chance and Kamdor and Miratrix, but this time the writers seem to care about them, imagine that?

Camile
Wow

Theo
One for the record books. Absolutely someone Carter, Alex and Skywould be proud of as far as coloring inside the lines go. He really stands out for the pack though, the acting was solid and his deliveries were on the money. Certainly one of the top Blue’s in PR’s 16 seasons-quote that

Lilly
She reminds me a lot of Ronny from Overdrive, except without a Rose to share the spotlight I think I might actually get to know and like this girl. Hopefully she won’t slip into total obscurity as her Gekiranger counterpart did. Of course Gekiranger didn’t have five more Ranger’s showing up after the initial three, or a battlizer. Or a bike. Or other Zords. Or villain introduction. Or team power up episodes…egad.

Casey
Not as tough looking as Casey Jones but he’ll do. I know the thing that I like about him is the fact that he seems a lot more willing and able than Red’s have been lately. Similarly I felt and still feel about Mack. But Casey seems to have a cool almost Luke Skywalker quality that I’m sure they’ll exploit to make him more heroic.

RJ “Righteous Justice!"
One of the BEST CHARACTERS IN POWER RANGER HISTORY !!!! I like this guy so much I almost wish I was being sarcastic. But this One really brings a fresh feel to the role of ranger mentorship. Some might say he’s just a slacker, but you could tell that’s just a front, he’s actually stronger, smarter and overall better than the entire team, just he doesn’t show it for some yet to be mentioned reason.

Fran
What could have been horrible turns out to be not that bat. She reminds me of Emerie(if that’s her name) from Abaranger. But regardless of her origin, I dig the glasses.

Flit
I’m going to be looking forward to hearing his jokes and such, really seems like he’ll be fun to listen to throughout the fights. Shoot, it adds a little spice to them anyway.

The Jungle Pride Megazord
Best Megazord in years! Fluid, realistic weapons. Man the Ninja Storm Lightening Megazord was good but this guy is great.

Mao
Was awesome in The Matrix and was awesome in the five minutes here, I just hope we get to see him in a more catty form soon.

Battles( AKA I want to see all the fan made music videos set to Micheal Jackson and Survivor that will come out of these)
Oh boy there was a lot of kung fu going on and a lot less “LASERS! “ flying around. Thanks to there being no laser guns this year we had some pretty tight fights with great movement by the actors, stunt men and Ranger guys and girls. I actually thought everyone pulled off their stunts much better this year than last year. In fact I think PRJF will be on par with PRSPD, which had some of the best unmorphed fights post NS/DT.
Kudos for calling Tonfas, Tonfas and not fight police batons. And stick fighting is always beautiful.

Now I just hope we can see the Nun Chuku often enough.
As I just mentioned in the Megazord’s character slot up top, this is a fantastic megazord who is fluid enough that you’d think the trained him at the school too. And calling the Setsu-Kon by it’s real name was a plus

Mythos
Finally I have to say, this show is going to be a mytho builder like PRDT and PRSPD. It is kind of disappointing that Overdrive SHOULD have been (Kamdor should have been the Lothor Kiya mentioned in Samurai Journey) but this show seems to make up for it. Gotta love that Morphing Grid line. And I am sure that won’t be the last of the throwbacks, lets just hope the throwbacks don’t overtake the modern concepts because I really want to see just what’s in store, and for the first time in a long while it might actually be more than status quo.

This season has been hyped for months as possibly being the final live action installment to the ever expanding Rangerverse. Rumor are jus t that until proven, rumors. And at the moment the facts are speaking that Power Rangers has a new season to take on and I’m keen to watch how it develops.