Eiga Sentai Scanranger/YMMV

"Imperiled Friend of the Week: "Your friends are all that, and a bag of chips.."
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In “The Good, The Bad and General Ug” the Scanrangers are checking out a paintball blitz place when suddenly they turn into cowboys and have a shootout.
 * Designated Hero: True, the Scanrangers do routinely thwart the efforts of aliens who want to suck our planet dry, but they're also the people who not only seemed willing to let B.C. end the universe if they couldn't convince him to go back to his own time in the crossover, they consider him the glue that holds the team together. And insulted someone who brought up the downsides of their protection, and people who have different fashion sense than they do, and people who enjoy partying at Spring Break.
 * Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Two episodes seem to be saying friends provide false alibis for each other if they get in trouble with the police: “Gangsta’s Paradise Lost” (where B.C. says an accused friend was studying with him when said friend was in fact at a house that was being robbed, even though he was trying to stop the robbers) and “Voodoo to You Too” (where B.C. tries to get Toni to vouch that he was asleep when he was supposedly vandalizing another student’s room. As she isn’t likely to be his roommate, at least not during the school year while they're staying in the dorms, she probably wouldn’t know).
 * There was another in the Christmas Episode where the heroes seemed desperate to prevent the ornaments and tree from being destroyed, as if the trimmings and trappings are what Christmas is all about.
 * Humor Dissonance: B.C. A hundred thousand million billion trillion times B.C. The following is an actual one of his jokes:

B.C.:"No..Nacho Cheese tortillas, actually..""

"Vin: "And do me a favor..SPEAK ENGLISH!""
 * Fridge Logic: One episode has the Scanrangers finding out they look just like the members of a popular boy band, and agreeing to impersonate the band for a while. At the end they even transform on stage and have a fight with MAYHEM, meaning the world thinks the band is the Scanrangers. What happens to the reputation of Kunio’s doppleganger a few episodes down the line when he’s forced to bequeath his powers to someone biologically incapable being in a boy band? After all, the female uniforms are slighty different from the male ones, even if the anatomy isn't supposed to be noticable.
 * Scanranger was written in large part to let the author vent his anger at the people behind Power Rangers for stripping out nearly everything but the most superficial stuff from the original Super Sentai shows and releasing a different product. How does the author feel then about Japanese Spider-Man, which is essentially the same kind of thing as Power Rangers and which popularized the whole Make My Monster Grow concept that became a staple of Sentai? And which is a concept wholeheartedly embraced by Scanranger.
 * Idiot Plot: In "What a Tangled World Wide Web We Weave" four of the rangers’ powers mysteriously fizzle out in the middle of a fight, turning them back to normal (because they tried to use special attacks the villains had stolen). They don’t tell their superiors because "it's nothing", even though they have no idea why it happened or if it could happen again.
 * Just about any time a character gains a bit of important information (Kunio learns the identity of the mysterious Sixth Ranger, Alex knows the identity of the mysterious Badass Preacher, ) and revealing it to anyone would ruin a dramatic moment, the character keeps the information to themselves just because. The example from "What a Tangled World Wide Web We Weave" is just the worst of the heroes' policy of non-communication (Alex apparently knew the rangers couldn't use their old attacks but didn't tell them), because it doesn't go anywhere and is forgotten in the next episode when Vince seems to realize the Scanrangers are faced with a task the five of them can't possibly accomplish without Nick's ability to clone himself.
 * Another nice example is in "From Here To Fraternity" where Vin thinks he sees something weird about a procession of Greek pledges going by. He doesn't mention this to anyone, not even Toni and Carmen who he was talking to when he noticed it.
 * The second act of There's Something About Toni has a few choice moments: 1) Vixen attacks the Valentine's Day dance with a monster whose powers the rangers already know how to counteract. This is okay because they forget they know this. 2) Vixen planned to attack the dance but was unprepared for the guest superhero who would be performing. Despite it being advertised on the dance's posters. 3) When the monster tries to shoot said guest heroine with a bow and arrow, Toni jumps in the way to take the arrow for her. Even though her Weapon of Choice is a shield. One moreover that she's supposed to be able to throw with Captain America-like skill.
 * In "Carmen's Baptism of Fire" MAYHEM somehow fails to notice a hundreds-foot-tall robot approaching the place where they're fighting. That is, where they're fighting at human size.
 * Marty Stu: Our Redscanner could sure pass for one. Vince Jones is the author, Vin Harlock is the team leader, so the character’s name sounds similar but cooler to that of the creator of this obviously Writer on Board piece. What’s more, Vin knows it’s okay to be comfortable with who you are as he endured the mockery of changing his name in homage to a cartoon character. He grew up in the ghetto but emerged as a fun-loving and idealistic young man, not to mention inherited a love of Asian culture from his dad who served in the military in Okinawa (if not Asian heritage from his other parent) while not actually demonstrating knowledge of Asian culture. He’s “almost close to a third degree black belt” in aikido as well as an expert in fencing which makes him just as deadly with a katana or cutlass as with a foil, and he gets to deliver unto the leader of Jetman a lecture on the ups and downs of being a hero. Whenever the villains try to mind-control him, all times but the first he not only resists with ease but is strengthened by his rage at someone violating his mind. To top it off he’s supposed to be a great leader despite no significant evidence existing of strategic skills or charisma on his part. Oh, and he’s "raking in the dough" despite no mention being made of where his money comes from. About the only thing keeping him from being an out-and-out Stu is the fact that he's only about as badass as your average Red Ranger.
 * All the heroes are to some extent. The Valentine's day episode has a prolonged epilogue where Vince Jones is basically jacking off all over the internet with each Scanranger getting four or five celebrity valentines. Vin, conspicuously, received seven.
 * And if the Badass Preacher is to be believed, God endorses the work they're doing.
 * Hell, their school is practically one. Every student's individual needs are met, it's known as a place where a lot of cultures are blended, and the academic program is awesome, unlike the awful school the writer attended.
 * Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Every member of the regular cast with XX chromosomes is an out-and-out Action Girl, even Alex when the need arises. More than once the writer went out of his way to portray Toni as an independent woman who doesn't need the boys to watch out for her. This is undermined a little by how when someone on the team is delegated "soft" jobs like crowd control it's always the girls, and Toni pilots a GIANT BATTLE BALLERINA.
 * Unfortunate Implications: Voodoo is actually a religion, not a form of black magic. Worse, Vince Jones seems to know the difference based on a line about Hollywood’s take on the matter during the big fight of the episode. And yet, when he has his Badass Preacher walk all over the Hollywood Voodoo monster, one gets the feeling he’s trying to make a point about religions.
 * In the clip show B.C. seems mad at Power Rangers for having culturally diverse teams. In a story going for family friendly and politically correct this is bad enough (Vin’s not black, he’s African-American, and "bastion" has become an insult to avoid using actual curse words), but it gets worse when you consider Scanranger’s membership is predominantly Asian: B.C., Kunio and Takeshi are from Japanese families, Toni’s Filipino, and it’s within the realm of possibility Vin had a Japanese mother.
 * The Association of Online Fanfiction Readers would like to bring you this message about cultural diversity:


 * Villain Decay: Arguably starts in the second episode where Nick easily knocks Key out and impersonates him before he even has a chance to fight. That being the first time the Scanrangers ever encounter one of the villain officers.
 * Ug’s supposed to be the villains’ tough guy, but more than once he’s been taken out by a single attack. In “The Good, The Bad, and General Ug” he even ran away from a fight he appeared to be winning.
 * What an Idiot!: In "Scanranger vs. Jetman" it suddenly seemed to dawn on Vin that people in Tokyo would probably speak Japanese. Well after they’d established that’s where they were.
 * The last survivor of a destroyed planet visits Nick and explains how the first Psycho Ranger group wiped out his people. Nick, a member of the only group in the universe (and apparently a couple others) that's ever won a fight with them, asks what it has to do with him.