Image from Broadcast Thai.
Sport Ranger was a Super Sentai (or Power Rangers if you like) series produced and aired in Thailand last year. Unlike the Power Rangers series in America, which features completely identical Sentai designs from Japan except the story and cast, Sport Ranger is a 100 percent Thai production.
As the name suggested, the theme for this Sentai team is sport. Each member in the team specializes in a certain type of sport, which becomes his or her super power and ranger form. The five sports chosen to represent Sport Ranger include boxing, football, tennis, swimming and gymnastic.
Pretty cool eh? ^^ Their suit design reminds me of Cybercop. Anybody remembers Cybercop? ^^
Nice... I mean the whole team of course, not just the girls ^^;
Images from Exteenblog.
Being a Thai production, it's pretty natural for the writers to put boxing as the 'lead character' I suppose. ^^ Also, you can't expect skiing to be in instead right? ^^;
On the other hand, like other Sentai series, Sport Ranger have their mecha as well, or Zoids as Power Rangers fans call them. That has got to tell you how serious the producers are in making this series as attracting and entertaining to the audience. Interestingly enough, their mecha have nothing to do with sport whatsoever, but are vehicles instead. Then again, you can't really have giant boxing gloves or football as the mecha right? XD
You can read more about Sport Ranger on Wikipedia.
There are several video clips about Sport Ranger on Youtube as well.
The opening theme, which seems very similar to Mahou Sentai Magiranger to me.
If you can't see anything, follow this link to Youtube.
The 'gattai' (transformation and combination) of their giant robot, called Spirit Robo.
Hmm... it's a robot with a hat ^^;
If you can't see anything, follow this link to Youtube.
So, what do you think? ^^ For me, the quality of Sport Ranger is still very far behind what the Super Sentai in Japan is capable of today, but at least the Thais are trying, and I really like the theme of sport being used for Sentai series as well. It's a good idea in encouraging kids to exercise more and to promote sport as well. Even if you're not a big fan of any of the five sports, you can always enjoy Sport Ranger as a very localized Sentai series ^^
