Rangerreview's "Fixing Power Rangers Ninja Steel"

The thing is, I don't believe Ninja Steel can ever truly be "fixed." It's pretty much something that kneecapped itself pretty much right from the get-go.The gameshow premise really holds this show back. On paper it's a neat spin but in terms of execution it's pretty much just an excuse to work in MotD plots. Basically no different than Finster putting a clay figure into the Monstermatic or Divatox cherrypicking a monster from her army. Also the objective? Steal the Power Star? That can't carry a year old show (At least Dino Thunder had the common sense to realize having Mesogog try to take the Dino Gems every episode would get old fast and had multiple subplots set up to keep the viewers interested). It also makes the stakes in this season such an astronomical low the franchise haven't seen since Jungle Fury cuz it's not, again, Dino Thunder where they made it clear the only way Mesogog was getting his talons on the Dino Gems was to pry them from the rangers' cold dead bodies, all these contestants have to do is go, "Look over there!" and steal them while the rangers are distracted. Hell, it's not even like the loser's planet will get destroyed if they failed, the rangers have nothing to do with Galaxy Warriors.

Trying to make this another space-themed season was also a mistake as all the mysticalism we associate with ninjas is removed and written off as being alien-tech. They only get to be ninjas when the Sentai footage calls for it, and that's even if they haven't cut it out. The Ninja Nexus Prism also ruins the show as there really no lore or world-building built around it and just give exist to spit out toys. Nothing the rangers do feels earned because they only got it because the Prism told them too.

The world of this season feels so incredibly cramped by having everything centered around the school: Where is the rangers' base located? At the school. Where do they do ninja training? At the school. Where do they hang out when they're not in class or training? At the school. Where do they have Christmas parties? At the freakin' school. And because there's no world-building the show just... does things and we're forced to accepted at face valued, making Summer Cove High feel unrealistic: Some episodes it seems like a private school, other times a public one, it's apparently rich enough to afford a indoors food truck and let the students make statues out of chocolate yet poor enough that the secretary has her office in the lobby, they host plays in the cafeteria, Mrs. Finch teaches multiple subjects at once, and they needed a student to install a filesharing program into their computer system. A 20something country music star can just enroll into the school and start taking classes (On that note, who even enrolled Brody? You can't just show up one day and start taking classes). Redbot can roam free when earlier he had to stay at the base for the school dance.

And Victor and Monty? Just get rid of them. They aren't funny, they aren't enduring, they aren't likable enough for us to care unless it's feel bad that the writers insist that they must fail even when they aren't doing anything wrong, nor are they unlikable enough to take enjoyment when they get their just desserts. They're basically two randos the show abruptly cuts away too and who the rangers themselves are larely indifferent towards. Not the mention having them get wrapped up in Looney Tunes style antics that should have either killed or severely injured them.