Director: Katsuya Watanabe
First aired: 1992
Contains spoilers
Power Rangers may have been a popular franchise in the US and UK, but they were based on a Japanese series called Super Sentai, with new live action footage, including actors, cultural references and plot. This episode of the Super Sentai series Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger (Dinosaur Squad) saw aspects cut into a couple of the Mighty Morphin’ episodes and the vampire aspect, which had Japanese actors, was lost in that. The episode title translates to Papa's a Vampire!?
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| hiding in foliage |
A young girl is walking in a park when, within the foliage, we see a monster emerge named Totpat (voiced by Shinoda Kaoru). He bemoans that he has vampire blood but has never drunk human blood and goes after the girl. When he springs out on her she cries ‘Monster’ and this is heard by a young girl called Michi (Fujita Miki) who runs up, baseball bat in hand, and the monster flees.
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| prone to exaggeration |
Dan (Fujiwara Hideki), who is one of the Zyurangers, is walking along when he sees Michi chasing a policeman (Iba Takashi) with her bat, shouting that there was a monster as the policeman denies any such report. Dan asks the girl if she really has seen a monster but the policeman intervenes and says that he is Michi’s father and she is a good girl but prone to exaggeration. Dan, however, goes off with Michi believing her story.
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| Papa's a Vampire!? |
Meanwhile, Bandora (Soga Machiko), the evil witch who is the enemy of the Zyurangers is presented with her new monster, Dora Argus (Tokumaru Kan). She sends him to Earth to harm children and to help Totpat to be able to suck as much blood as he wants. Dora Argus is made up of eyes and he lures Michi away with a floating eyeball until she is alone and isolated and confronted by a giant eye (the monster’s primary one). He pulls her into a world of hallucination. Within this world she sees a vampire sucking blood from a victim. He looks up and it is her dad.
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| Zyurangers |
She emerges back into the real world and walks, trance like, with Totpat ready to strike until she is nearly knocked over by Zyurangers Boi (Hashimoto Takumi) and Mei (Chiba Reiko). Michi cries that her father is a vampire. Most of the Zyurangers are sceptical, bar Dan who believes her tears. He and Michi are left as the others investigate and they are confronted by the eye, this time both of them being pulled into the other world and Dan seeing the vampire for himself. Will they get out and will Michi trust her (innocent) father again?
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| convenient cross |
There isn’t a lot of vampire lore in this, but we do get a smidge. The vampire’s cloak acts of its own volition, fighting with Dan and knocking a cross (that Michi conveniently carries) out of the young girl’s hand when she tries to ward 'her father' with it. Of course it would be a case of belief in vampires, if not for Totpat who is a vampire (though perpetually incompetent at sucking blood, it seems). The episode itself is primarily geared towards the fight between the Zyurangers and Dora Argus, and the subsequent fight between the latter in kaiju form and the mecha of the Zyurangers. The Michi story is interesting but throwaway. That said it does work, albeit that it vacillates between simplistic and overly convoluted (as a plan to suck blood). 4 out of 10 for the episode as a standalone.
The episode's imdb page is here.
The complete series on DVD @ Amazon US
The complete series on DVD @ Amazon UK
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