DSPR is a fanedit and Cascadianization of the 1992-1993 children's tokusatsu Japanese TV series Dinosaur Squad Zyuranger and its 1993-1994 US re-edited adaptation Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. It is an attempt to combine the best aspects of both series: the original show's well written villain Bandra and her character arc and origins, while keeping the new footage of new actors filmed for the non-special effects footage of the rangers who would become so beloved because they weren't all tossed out at the end of the season. This was the initial idea, but really it extends to the best segments of each show which have been woven together under my own direction to create a new, third interpretation of this series which will just never die (complimentary).
Each show was filmed in a different language, so no matter which I picked I was always going to have to redub somebody. Since English is my first language and my understanding of Japanese is very rudimentary, that choice was easy, which means right off the bat Bandra's original lines are going to be dubbed over. It can't really end there, though, since a lot of the setup is altered in Saban's version, so some creative liberties have to be taken in order to get these two plotlines to play nice with each other. Since Bandra's scenes are dubbed over anwyas, it's easy enough to alter her dialogue to push it in that direction - especially since I'm not translating the original script, I'm making a new version of it - but this also extended to Zordon. As the primary exposition machine of Saban's series, Zordon, like Bandra, ended up needing to be almost entirely replaced as my puppet to string all this together.
Long story short: the tape is haunted. The mere presence of Bandra's evil Satanic magic has cursed the VHS tape the show was found on in Sadam's dumpster. Long story long: there was a framerate mismatch. The project was set to the framerate of the US show, and the Japanese one didn't match that, and so as a result in the render some edits didn't come out as clean as I was hoping. While this initially was perceived as a problem, after viewing the finished product on stream during its original airdate on June 30th, 2025 while very high and deliriously tired, I came to the conclusion that the tape was just haunted and that was part of the show now, and I wasn't going to change it. So now it's just kinda part of DSPR's identity. Specifically, the way I explained it is that no matter what happens in the future, the version of the episode shown for the anniversary had to be "complete" on its own, and so should be regarded as legitimate in its own right, regardless of what state it was in. Since then, the ReMistress'd™ version was made for the encore presentation on the July 28th, 2025 episode, and so true to my word I am making a clear distinction between the original "True Version" and the ReMistress'd™ "Definitive Canon Version." Both are alike in dignity, and both are VERY haunted.
I promised that I would have episode one ready to show on my June 30th, 2025 anniversary show, and I did. However, getting to that point was a struggle for me, and because of problems I'm still unable to identify, the struggle extended all the way up to a few hours before the show because the damn thing wouldn't even render in full. This original version, then, is made up of 6 different mp4 files which have yet to be re-rendered. This version has audio mixing that I wasn't totally happy with but I didn't have the time to alter. Other elements changed too. In MMPR Bulk and Skull - the silly comic relief characters - threaten physical violence against underage women because they refused to go out with them. This is totally inappropriate for a children's show, at least from my cultural perspective as a Cascadian, and so I dubbed over them in order to make them less rapey, and so the idea from there was to just make Bulk and Skull nice, since otherwise they'd just be boring and annoying and unfunny and rapey. I wasn't able to fully realize this originally because redubbing scenes with characters already speaking English who didn't disrupt the plot was a very low priority, and also, there were some lines I just didn't have any good ideas on what to change. The ReMistress'd™ version finalizes these ideas with new dubbing dialogue. There is also a Freak Preview™ during the commercial break for the, at the time of the original airing of the ReMistress'd™ version, next special episode of MMMM, the 2025 Odaiba Day (August 1st) special.
The biggest change, however, is the name change of the tyrannosaurus dinozord from "Lehayimeltron" to "Zordgnatheos." The decision to swap from Hebrew to Greek roots came as I was working on the AD&D2e supplement and realized it was more fun to use the same roots I already know from dinosaur names for the dinosaurs. Basically what happened is that the mammoth Holy Beast was always going to be "tooth of god" because, y'know, the tusks, but I don't know "tooth" in Hebrew and I do know it in Greek and "don" always makes for an instantly cool monster name, hence, I was hoping I could just call them "Donel" and get away with it. But "Donel" is a bad angel name, so then I thought, well, what if we went full dinosaur genus name and called them "Dontheos" instead? It means the same thing, roughly, and it sounds cooler, so I went down the line and... yep, those are the names now. So Gnatheos is still the jaws of god (because tyrannosauruseses had the strongest bite of any animal in known history), it's just translated into a more "Urthian" name that sounds better. There's a spoiler too, in that they're... well, you'll see, but not using Hebrew angel names works better for lore reasons as well. That said, "Lehayimel" for the original Holy Beast and "Lehayimeltron" are still technically correct names, and if anyone were to translate episode 1 into Hebrew, I would want it to stay that way, so Gnatheos doesn't necessarily replace it.
Personally, whether you consider the "True Version" to be canon or the "Canon Version" to be true is up to you. I don't care, because it's not real, it's a TV show, it's fake, it's made up, zords aren't real. What are you, stupid? Call them whatever the hell you want. As for whether I'll ever release the "True Version?" That's a hard no, but I wouldn't be opposed to publically releasing a hypothetical "True2 Version" which combines the original 6 parts into a single part, with no other edits to the content. I feel like this isn't unreasonable and would probably be seen as the most sensible way to do so. However, currently, I have no real plans or compelling reason to release this version. If you REALLY want to see it that badly, come on my show and tell me so, otherwise it's going to rot in the Disney vault like the international dub of Godzilla 2000.
As mentioned earlier, Zyuranger was an early 90's action show for young children, ages ~5-10 or so. Many western fans have made an enormous deal over the cultural differences between what is and isn't allowed on children's television in Japan vs. the United States, and so often the original series is placed on this pedestal of being "dark" and "edgy" and "too adult for lame babies like you." This is, of course, absolute nonsense. While it is true that the final big bad of the series ala the way these shows have worked since the 80's is, in fact, a character only called "Great Satan," this is only "dark" if you assume that the presence of a fictional monster as the bad guy in a kid's show is "dark." That's the cultural difference, that there seems to be some sort of expectation that using Abrahamic mythology makes it "taboo," which is something that's not a part of Japanese pop-culture, and, frankly, isn't a part of US pop-culture either outside of the very religious and very young. The honest truth is simply that both shows were written for the same core demographic, and while their differences can tell us a lot aboot the respective environments they were written in, the tone remains unchanged. The matter of whether a given story has weight is entirely dependent on the specific episode, and so every time you scoff at Saban's adaptation because the kids had a food fight, if you're not taking that same attitude back to the Zyuranger episode that was 90% fat jokes, then you're not being honest with yourself. Children's TV does not, of course, have to be inherently "bad" or "dumb," and there are many fantastic examples to prove this point. However, although there are certainly exceptions for certain episodes and even rarely whole series, the whole Power Rangers (inclusive) franchise is not the appropriate place to expect well written "mature" storytelling.
My perspective is, of course, very different from the people behind the original show or anyone working for Saban. I did not make this for kids, I made it for me and as way to express affection for my small but loyal audience for my weekly twitch horror host show Maly's Monster Movie Monday, who's first Ossifal™ episode was on July 1st, 2024. I had been talking aboot making this edit ever since that first month of the show, and so to celebrate the anniversary (53rd week) I finally buckled down and finished episode 1. So while the show could potentially play to kids, unlike the previous iterations, it wasn't meant to. Does that mean I made it "dark?" Oh fuck no. Power Rangers, as mentioned, is incredibly silly and juvenile. My primary interest in combining the two was first of all, just to see if I could, but also it's part of a long running bit of my obsession to force Abrahamic mythology into Japanese monster movies, and Zyuranger already gave me that chance. What you have to understand aboot Dino Squad is that it is the culmination of "What if I could make the rangers I grew up with as a little kid fight Satan while Zordon prattles on aboot the blood of Christ? Wouldn't it be funny if that happened?" You can see that the goal is the same on paper, but again, it's the cultural difference that gives it the flavor. Is there a version of this mashup that could be taken completely seriously? I put it to you that no such thing is possible, because you would then have to take shit like Zordon and "I must have cross molecularized the microwave impulses" at face value. I don't think it's possible - and history proves me right in this regard - to make make a version of this show for adults that isn't in some way inherently ridiculous, intentional or otherwise.
On top of all of that, you have to remember that Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was NOT the first US adaptation of the series, as that honor goes back to the 1988 Night Flight dubs of Dynaman, the 1983 iteration of Power Rangers. This was my first experience with the series, and while some of the humor went over my head at the time, and some of it didn't age that great, it can't be denied that it is a fantastic show. It lacked the one-zord-per-ranger rule that made Voltron and Zyuranger so great, but in every other aspect it was everything great aboot the series, and in the US dub it came with bonus jokes. The Night Flight version is so important to me that I simply can't deal with the original, and when I attempted to compare and contrast the original episodes with their Night Flight counterparts, it ended up becoming the very first of the few times on my show that the plans for the episode changed during the show. The original series just wasn't that interesting, and my audience didn't care for it, they wanted more Night Flight, and I completely agreed. The show has since become one of the foundational pieces of "lore" for my show and so just as it's become one of my personal core "kid's media you never stop loving," it's likewise an important part of what I wanted to celebrate for my anniversary stream. In short, there was never going to be a version of Dino Squad Power Rangers that didn't have Billy Idol music or refer to the rangers as "rainbowheads." DSPR owes just as much to Night Flight as it does Saban or Toei, and I consider it a direct successor to the "Power Rangers parody version" tradition that Night Flight began nearly 40 years ago.
So that's it then? It's just a parody? I've bemoaned more and more often, louder and louder, the slow death of media literacy. The older I get the more it eats away at me the way I see capital and commodification mutate the concept of art. People arguing aboot 'canon' in a TV show, or who don't get the punchline because they have no self-awareness, cultural diffusion being treated as something illegal to be shamed and censored, the immortality of the author, the death of the audience, and so on and so forth. As our media becomes more sophisticated through technology, it plays a larger and larger role in our lives, and too often I see it being treated like a new effigy trying to replace all the gods of the past. In a perfect world, I would have confidence that me making a fan edit where a beloved children's show my generation grew up with is altered to reference Dynaman and conspiracy theories and recurring bits from my stream, where the everything is celebrated for what it is, with the shit that doesn't make any sense being able to stay just a punchline, and the shit that was unironically the coolest thing any 5 year old had ever seen could be just as cool 30 years later. To me, these things are not in conflict with each other, and have no reason to be. Some parts of the story have a lot of lore, and that lore can help the goofy parts feel more goofy, but it never has to hurt your enjoyment. Tone is not a replacement for content, and there are many beloved children's properties that are still discussed today by adults with the same kind of nerdy fervor that they were on the playground, and that's a beautiful thing. So rather than trying to break down DSPR into a category and label it as "serious" or "stupid," since in this day in age the author is immortal, the word of god is: let it speak for itself. Let it be dumb, let it be cool, let it be silly, let it have internally consistent logic when it makes things better, let that logic die when it needs to.
This is why I don't view this question as black and white, it's more complicated than that, and frankly I can't answer the question for you because that has to be up to you. You need to do your part as the audience and have your own opinions and interpretations, at some point you have to stop looking to authority and figure it out on your own. If you don't want to think aboot it, if you just want to view this project as a big goofy joke, and that's what makes it make sense to you and that's how you're able to enjoy it, then you have your answer. But I can tell you that, for me, the making of this was an extremely intense process. I worked myself sick, I poured everything into this, and I did it way too fast. I did it because I've been doing my show for a full year without missing a single week, and although some shows don't go as well as others, the whole journey was one worth having. DSPR is, to me, an elaborate expression of love for the original series, the US version, of Dynaman, for my MMMM audience, and the culmination of the entire past year of effort I sunk into this sinking ship. It's kind of personal. So it's not some throwaway little thing for me, everything aboot it is there for a reason, and I spent a lot of time on making it that way. A little bit of every part of me is in DSPR. So I think it's a lot more than just a parody, personally. I want it to make people laugh, but I also want people to fist pump at the final monster fight, to listen to Bandra and realize she's actually right, to get excited to roll up characters for Zordon's Homebrew Campaign Setting, to remember how good Billy Idol music is, and to file away Bandra's peril-type predicament scarios in your brain for future reference. It's meant to be fun. It's a fun show. You're supposed to have a good time watching it.
The current plan is that the first "season" of the show will consist of three episodes, which are made up of the first 6 episodes of Zyuranger, which is a series of 3 2-parters culminating in the first formation of the Megazord. MMPR condensed these into one episode each, and so will I, because I don't like 2-parters, in fact I don't really like TV shows at all, I like stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and TV shows don't end. Whether or not these episodes are finished as planned remains to be seen, but I've already proven to myself that I'm capable of it and so I'm optimistic that this planned first season will be finished. So, when can you expect to see episodes 2 and 3? Well I'm definitely giving myself a hell of a lot more time than the week and a half I had to work on the first episode. The two major places left in the year to air major projects like this are in Falloween during Sansculottides, and in November during the birthday week. This would mean the tenative airdate for episode 2 is at the end of Sansculottides/the fall equinox/Falloween Day on September 22nd, 2025 while episode 3 would premiere on my birthday which is a week after Godzilla's on November 10th, 2025. Both of these dates are regular Monday episodes, so while I do want to make sure there is an understanding that this could change, I don't want it to change and those are the dates I want to have them ready.
No. There is no reason to do all 50 episodes of Zyuranger and all umpteen bajillion episodes of MMPR, because most of this stuff is boring formulaic filler that has no value outside of nostalgia and wouldn't be worth the effort to make. However, the goal back when I came up with this idea was never to adapt the first episode of the series, it was always to adapt the Frankenstein 4-parter where the super clay and Satan are introduced, because, for me, the entire rest of the series (aside from possibly the green ranger arc) is just fluff surrounding the only part that matters, which is when Satan mutates Frankenstein so that it can kill robot dinosaurs. Of course, when it came time to buckle down and actually make the series, I couldn't start from the middle, because too much had been established at that point and if I really wanted to fuse these things together I'd have to build it up from scratch. Sure, outlining and planning ahead is one thing, but no one's ever attempted this before and I had no idea how it would go, and I didn't even know if it was feasible. So, while I've learned a lot so far, I'm still not confident enough to adapt episodes out of order. This means that I will, at the very least, have to adapt the green ranger arc and the Frankenstein arc if I want to complete my initial ambitions for this project. Note that this doesn't include the finale. Aside from that? I really want to do the two episodes Keita Amemiya directed, not because they're particularly good, but just because. There's some more lore scattered throughout the filler episodes before the green ranger shows up that I kinda can't skip, particularly in the Chunky Chicken episodes. The monster that Jason jumps inside of to kill its heart after getting Burai's dragon shield is really cool. I've also always liked the one with the turtle with the stoplight... and so on. Ideally, one day, I would like to finish the whole series, but right now I have to take this one step at a time. So, should season 1 be successfully completed, the goal for season 2 will be to get us to the green ranger, and season 3 will get us to Frankenstein. Anything after that is so distant that it's little more than a dream at this point. But, hey, maybe?
Here are the events that would need to transpire in order for me to tackle that project: