Red Ranger
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was everything to me at twelve. Not the sequels—those don’t count. The originals. That was it. A group of teenagers with a secret, fighting in giant robots against obviously cheap monsters, the same setup over and over. It probably shaped me more than my actual teachers did, though I might be romanticizing it now.
The red ranger was the coolest thing alive until some guy in a white suit with a ponytail showed up and I had to reassess everything.
The Fine Brothers made a video where they show kids today the original series. Their reactions are exactly what you’d think—they’re watching plastic monsters get thrown around in phony little dioramas, terrible animation, the whole amateur operation. But I remember thinking it was transcendent. I remember it feeling completely real. So either I had shit taste at twelve, or there’s something about that kind of earnest, low-budget spectacle that only works if you’re the right age for it. Probably both.