Power Rangers Ninja Steel Episode 5 Review: Drive To Survive

This Power Rangers Ninja Steel review contains spoilers.

Power Rangers Ninja Steel Episode 5

Is it any shock Victor and Monty are my favorite part of this episode? It’s strange how even the official twitter page (in a now deleted post) is trying to make them seem like characters we should be rooting against, but I’m behind them one hundred percent. They have a real chemistry (perhaps romantic?) that is leagues and bounds ahead of any of the Rangers. Yes, even the two Rangers that are actually a couple.

Victor was so willing to back Monty up in his crazy scheme and Monty looked so elated that Victor offered to help. It’s more than I can say for how the Rangers treat them. Yeah, let’s talk about how the Ninja Steel team officially just became bigger assholes than the Mighty Morphin team.

(The now deleted tweet. Thanks to No Pink Spandex for that.)

Newsflash, your superheroes look like giant dicks when they point and laugh at two civilians in serious danger. This wasn’t just your standard pie to the face, Victor and Monty were careening through the air and if that web had popped they could have been seriously hurt. The Rangers don’t do anything to help them. 

I’m sure you could argue that Victor and Monty are supposed to be bullies but… have they really done anything that bad? Monty’s a diva and Victor is a little full of himself. Is that enough of a justification for the Rangers to laugh and watch them fly to their deaths?  I guess the series’ main lesson about teamwork and friendship only applies if you’re a Ranger.

As much as I love Victor and Monty, the antics they’re getting into are too cartoonish. Yes, I understand this a universe with giant robots and chainsaw swords but civilian side characters are supposed to ground the story. You can still have them get into wacky high jinks but the more cartoonish you make it the less opportunities you have to flesh them out as people. What’s the point of having Victor and Monty if they’re solely there to laugh at?

Look at Dino Thunder, which perfected the civilian side characters. Yeah, Cassidy and Devin started off a little one note but they very quickly got to show off different sides of themselves. They weren’t just given wacky cartoon plots, Cassidy wanted to be a reporter and Devin got an internship. Even if they were there for laughs, we still were given reason to care about them.

I give a lot of credit to Chris Reid and Caleb Bendit for doing their best to ground these two characters even when the plots aren’t giving them any chance to. They’re the real MVP’s of this episode.

Oh yeah, I guess some Ranger stuff happened to. I do enjoy the show committing to Calvin and Hayley’s relationship. Hayley supporting Calvin by driving him around was actually really sweet and something I wish they had explored more.

Dealing with fear is something any kid can relate to, but Calvin gets over his fear way too quickly. The fact he’s able to go from too afraid to drive a car to passing his driving test in the span of a few hours undercuts the fear angle. Couldn’t we instead have had Calvin slowly learning to drive throughout the next few episodes? It doesn’t have to be big; he can just be in the background with Hayley as she teaches him.

Ninja Steel needs to get rid of that giant magical mcguffin ninja power star. When you have an object that can give you literally anything, it completely kills any sense of danger. At least in Lightspeed or Dino Charge they had characters that would invent new powers. Sure they could seemingly invent anything that was needed, but at least that took effort. Here it’s just, WE HAD A VISION OKAY TIME FOR YOUR NEW STAR.

Also, how did the Rumble Tusk Zord burst out of the Earth? How does that work when it’s an ancient Zord the legends told of? It isn’t set up by the plot or anything, it’s just given to the team because I guess the footage told them to. What??? Kind of awkward when Wild Force was able to pull of a better elephant Zord intro episode, just saying.

Ninja Steel has yet to deliver an episode that knocks it out of the park or even one that manages to be solidly enjoyable. There’s so many issues plaguing the show and they’ll need to do some serious work to get it on track.

Or they could just focus on Victor and Monty more.

Stray Thoughts

– Wow, Sarah is right up there with Ronny from Overdrive in loving technology a little too much if you know what I mean.

– Did anyone else notice how needlessly slow that first team morph was? Cut to another shot or something.

– So instead of freeing the Rangers, Calvin instead frees the motorcycle. Okay???

Shamus Kelly advises everyone to find someone who looks at you the way Monty looks at Victor. Follow him on Twitter!