For the Power Rangers fans who have looked at, dissected, analyzed, and maybe even obsessed over the era that is known as “the final episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1 and the first handful from season 2″, this is, honestly, akin to finding the Holy Grail. For those of you who do not follow Power Rangers that closely, you’re probably wondering what the heck “zyu2” means. Well, let’s get in to that real quick.
When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first hit the airwaves, no one expected it to become the huge pop-culture phenomenon – not Fox, not Saban, and not TOEI. The thing was it DID become the huge major success that has lasted 20 years now. Now for a bit of a history lesson.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was an adaption of Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger. The Sentai show lasted 50 some episodes, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers took just about every usable piece of footage they could from its Sentai counterpart. And that’s when the unthinkable happened – there was no more Zyuranger footage to use – and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had become the biggest toy line and kids show of the 1990’s. Frankly, Saban couldn’t afford to let the show end. It was at that time that Saban reached out to TOEI (the creators of the Super Sentai franchise) and they struck a deal – new footage would be filmed by TOEI for use in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Saban then negotiated the rights for use of Gosei Sentai Dairanger, which result in both the Thunderzords and the White Ranger, as well as all the monsters.
That footage that TOEI created became known to the fandom as Zyu2 – short for Zyuranger 2 – and for years fans have speculated on a literal frame-by-frame analysis. See, there’s a number of monsters from the Zyu2 period that were filmed fighting the original Megazord and Dragonzord, but Saban introduced the Thunderzords early (yay toy sales!), meaning a handful of monsters at the tail-end of the Zyu2 footage had cut/paste battles (ie: you see the Thunder Megazord throw a punch, then cut to the monster who sparks and falls back). The editing was sloppy and at times you can easily make out the original Megazord in the battle when the Thunder Megazord is what the show is intending you to think is fighting the monster. Or in some cases, the monster didn’t grow to super-size to fight the Megazords, which was almost a 100% certainty in the show.
And an announcement came from GrnRngr of GrnRngr.com that he has come in to possession of never-before-seen Zyu2 footage and will release it via his website soon. To prove his point, he released a short video clip show-casing the Bloom of Doom and Invenusable Flytrap growing for a Megazord battle – something they didn’t do in the actual episodes. The footage is in forms of episode blocks, and he states that for each block, there is anywhere from 20% to 50% brand new footage that has never been seen. This could be anything from fight scenes with the Power Rangers to Megazord battles with the Dino Zords and Dragonzord that was cut out in favor of copy/pasting Thunder Megazord footage.
It’s kind of a big deal for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fans. You have to see it to believe it – click here to check out the GrnRngr.com teaser! So what do you think? Are you excited about this never before seen footage? Do you care? As GrnRngr.com updates the fandom on the Zyu2 footage, we will feature his updates. Until then, check out his site – it is an excellent resource for toys and Zyu2 and Zyu 1.5 footage.
http://news.tokunation.com/2013/12/2...rngr-com-13678
http://www.grnrngr.com/zyu2/teaser/
What do you think?
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It's a quick video of Invenusable Flytrap and Bloom of Doom doing a "grow" scene, which they didn't do in the show.
I'm glad John found this and not someone else. He deserves it, and would get a lot of flack from other members on Rangerboard because they "didn't believe him."
I always said if you only speak when you're 100% absolutely certain of a subject, you'll always be right.
The time he's put into the fandom over the last 15 years is highly impressive, and I eager await to see the rest of the footage!
This is quite awesome!
Is is bad that the first idea that springs to mind is me using the new fottage to make custom megazord battles?
Eitherway, I'm always game for thought lost footage.
I always said if you only speak when you're 100% absolutely certain of a subject, you'll always be right.
The time he's put into the fandom over the last 15 years is highly impressive, and I eager await to see the rest of the footage!
Holy grail is right, for years i was afraid all the zyu2 footage was destroyed or lost in some old saban/disney vault never to see the light of day again. I'm glad we'll be seeing this soon, the idea we'll see never seen footage of the original megazord costume in action is kinda amazing.
For our Transformers fans don't see the significance of this...
Remember when Sony BGM re-released the animated movie? Through the work of Paul Hutchins, one HELL of a guy and obscure Transformers collector, Sony BGM went in to the Sunbow vaults and attempted to find any Transformers footage from the animated movie they could find that wasn't included in the theatrical release.
You see, with the 1986 Transformers The Movie feature, they used a number of animation companies. There's a few scenes that were storyboarded that were not included in the film, and there was always whisper that a few scenes were actually created (ie: Optimus Prime shoving Ramjet's head in to the ground as the scene of Optimus standing back up from this is kept in the movie ... or the Sweeps quartering Ultra Magnus, as the scene where the beams shoot out to lasso him was kept in, but the death was reanimated so that he blows up).
So, in a room sat Tony Bacala, Paul Hutchins, Joe Moore, and Rik Alvarez during their commentary session which was being included in the DVD release. They throw up the projector and proceed to play a scene (with no sound) of the Decepticons retreating from Autobot City after Optimus and Megatron have their battle to the death.
Imagine the screaming and jaw-dropping when the familiar scene of Astrotrain blasting off then pans over back to the Autobots and we see numerous figures rushing to Optimus Prime.
That wasn't in the movie. That wasn't in the storyboard.
They went nuts.
The Zyu2 footage? This is the equivalent of that.
Full Thread: New Zyu2 footage found by GrnRngr.com
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