I feel like doing something different tonight.
Haim Saban had tried for years to get sentai in the US for years. Long story short, his first big success was combining action footage from Zyuranger with American footage to create Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a show that more or less exists decades later. One problem the show ran into was having the American unsuited martial arts sequences look more like regular martial arts versus the sentai footage being more acted fighting sequences. Fox or somebody at Saban Entertainment wanted that changed for whatever reason, being consistency to the fighting styles between the two bits of footage.
During season two the monsters and Zord fights had to come from a new source, Dairanger, and this is the show that Mighty Morphin’ stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt was sent to observe, to see how they handle fight and “zord” battles and translate that into any US footage with actors and zord costumes, especially since they were still using the Zyuranger costumes for the main five Rangers.
At the time they were recording fights for episodes 21, “The Birth of a Mythical Ch’i Beast”, and episode 22, “The Great Secret Art Of The Tiger Cub”, which became the giant battles and introduction of the White Ranger in the Power Rangers two-part episode “White Light”. While there, Pruitt took some behind the scenes home video and in 2013 posted it to his YouTube channel. It’s been sitting in the queue for a while so I thought you might like to see what it takes to make giant robot gods fight giant monsters.
If you want to check out the episodes of Gosei Sentai Dairanger (or Guard Star Squadron Great Ranger), the series is currently available on Shout TV and through Shout Factory on home video. Season two of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers can be found on their YouTube channel and also on home video from Shout Factory.
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