Power Rangers is a team known for its multiracial nature, although nationality-wise it's usually an all American by nationality team. However I believe that these teams were promoted for racial harmony. You have different types of races but all working together to save the world. Battle Fever J in Super Sentai featured countries as motifs. On the other hand, Power Rangers is multiracial. Power Rangers kind of follows the rule of being multiracial which imo, that could be used to write scripts unique from its parent show, Super Sentai.
One of the accusations in the past which was just invalid was that it was "discretely racist" that MMPR had a black man for a black ranger and an Asian for a yellow ranger. For starters, in Super Sentai because it's an all-Japanese team, EVERY yellow ranger is Asian! Now why isn't Zack and Trini meant to be racist characters? In Battle Fever J, Battle Kenya IS a black ranger and yet Sentai fantards didn't complain about it. Now why are they always bringing the issue up? Trini is portrayed to be an extremely badass character while Zack is portrayed to be a cool character.
Kimberly for one seems to be another banner not only for fair treatment of both genders but also for racial harmony. She's a white girl and she's hanged out with both Trini and Aisha. Trini was an Asian character (ethnicity not fully mentioned) and Aisha was an African-American. Kimberly was there for her two friends.
Power Rangers Zeo had one either canon or non-canon episode where Tommy and Kat got married (BOOOOO!!!!) where an aged Tommy recalls a past event. The past event involved a battle of cultures and the Power Rangers see that they can still work together no matter what. Yeah I know that episode was stupid, the Dear John letter caused it and I still tend to hate Zeo up to this day though not Power Rangers as a whole.
Power Rangers Time Force may have been an anti-racism episode as a whole. Ransik was becoming what he hates with his crusade against normal humans, as he as a mutant born out of a laboratory accident. Ransik was doing his mutant supremacy campaign making him just as evil as the humans who shunned him. Probably Trip's existence as an alien (like Sion in Timeranger) was meant to promote racial harmony. Nadira may be viewed as somebody who sees that all the racial supremacy wars are merely turning tables against each other, not righting the wrong of racism.
Power Rangers Ninja Storm may have communicated an idea of an interracial ninja school. It was sort of a cultural exchange when three non-Japanese characters become ninjas. I just wish they gave PR Samurai the same treatment. I mean Jayden's white, Mia could have stayed Chinese as her actress and deviate much from Shinkenger but sigh, lazy Tzachor! While an Asian red was never necessary as race doesn't matter (I wish for once it can happen in a future season, doesn't have to be Asian themed since we already had two black red rangers) but Tzachor was just lazy with not deviating PR Samurai from its parent show Shinkenger.
Overall, this is one reason why I just can't hate Power Rangers.
Comments
Post a Comment