Today’s deck is the Founder’s Tarot.
Such a nice deck of minimalist aesthetic whose description and name has zero indication of any of these qualities.
Today’s reading reflects the general vibe of independence and thriving of lately, but warns against being too rash or not noticing things along the way.
A good warning any day.
Today was on the whole a slow day.
Gas employee woke me up via the doorbell to check on the apartment’s meter, had my Japanese lesson which doubled as nice practice for when the Venezuelan news become a conversation topic.
I bought a shelf so that my wifi router isn’t on the floor, but I was very low energy so I ended up just staring at the cieling for a bit and returning home where I dissociated while playing The Binfing of Isaac in between other small tasks like a last minute bank transfer I had to make.
Through the whole process there’s been a silly thought bouncing in my head.
You see, I think a lot about how fundamentally different Super Sentai is from Power Rangers and how fascinating the differences are.
One of the big ones which is something more endemic to the American media landscape is how they treat legacy. Super Sentai builds its traditions and then makes them into small nods that are so agnostic to the franchise that they’re easy to make a nod out of elsewhere.
For example, if you’ve ever seen a yellow-coded character like curry in Japanese media, that’s most definitely a Goranger reference.
I haven’t kept up with Power Rangers since… SPD, but that was skipping Mystic Force (I have no clue, I just ended up kinda skipping it somehow), and I only remember it’s SPD because they made Doggy less furry in Power Rangers and that’s a COWARD’S move.
Anyway, while I haven’t kept up since then, what little I know outside of it keeps trying to anchor things in the Mighty Morphin’ era of stuff one way or another. No space for a legacy to be built, just cannibalize the recognition into oblivion.
It’s kinda why I disliked the whole 2019-ish to 2021-ish era of Digimon, the one where they released Tri, and the movie where they’re all adults, and also the season that’s Adventure except the plot is completely different but they reused the cast anyways (this, mind you, after the aforementioned movie was all “you can’t be dwelling on the past, you gotta grow up”).
So anyway, today that ball bounced on a thinking about how the transformation calls in Power Rangers feel like they have a Trademark symbol attached ala “Ivan Ooze™“.
Take for example Time Force which is admittedly one of my favorite Power Ranger seasons (a qualification slowly overwritten by its Japanese counterpart as with all others), they go “Time For Time Force” and while that’s a banger call it feels very… branded? Especially compared to Timeranger’s simple “Chrono Changer!”.
And tying back to the point about legacy, the combination of the call and device ends up feeling like a deliberate callback to Jetman with its Cross Changer. Sentai built its legacy in a way where they can homage and honor old seasons that way instead of just making another Dinosaur season and adding Alpha to it or whatever.
Also excuse me, even if the Quantum Ranger is literally Vergil from the Devil May Cry series, Timefire transforms like a Metal Heroes character while “TIME FAIAAAAAH” plays in the background and that’s rad as hell.