30 Years Ago Today, It Was Friday in California

Three decades ago, on a Friday no less, Super Sentai inadvertently stumped us for the ages, through clanging surgical instruments, a very Japanese American cop, and a simple statement of fact.

Social media loves the weekly meme of Daniel Craig’s joyful announcement Saturday Night Live from arrival weekend To FuturamaFry reminds us that it’s Saturday night (even if not all of us have Shasta bottles and All-Rush mixtape). But one of the highlights of the last few years has been It’s Friday in California, which of course has joined the crowd of its own special accounts on social networks to let us know every Friday that it really is Friday in California too. The absurdity of it all – the hospital setting, the policeman rising menacingly from the frame, the accented English – makes this clip perfect for going viral on the Internet. But its source, a 30-year-old episode of Japanese superhero television, only makes the context even more absurd.

The clip is taken from the 46th episode of the series. Ninja Sentai Kakurangeris the follow-up series to the long-running tokusatsu franchise. Zyurangerwhich as you know, provided footage of combat operations For Mighty Morphin Power Rangersand he himself will find his suits used for a short time Alien Rangers The New Year’s Manga Hell miniseries is a seasonal, timely tale in its own right. The story centers on Team Blue Ranger Saizo, who, along with the rest of the Kakurangers, visits a local temple to pray for the new year. He buys a fortune from a temple, but becomes paranoid when it turns out that his fortune is actually a daikyo, or “great curse”, promising trials and hardships in the coming year, but everything immediately goes wrong once the team is caught in trapped by the machinations of a youkai named Mujina.

Mujina, the art monster of the week, has spent the previous year creating a cursed manga to trap the Kakurangers, which he finally sells to a withdrawn boy named Akira, trapping the Kakurangers in the pages as they are forced to do so. to face his narratively destined doom. The entire group has a bad time in the faux manga world, but especially Saizo, who is unable to transform into the Blue Ninja to protect himself due to the temple’s curse. What follows is that the poor guy is mercilessly beaten and attacked as the manga moves from one ridiculous situation to another, culminating in Saizou being attacked by a biker and rescued by EMTs… only, well, you know what to do. happen:

Of course it is Super Sentaiso our heroes (with a little help from Akira) manage to escape the manga and defeat Mujina in a fair fight, and everything returns to normal – presumably including Saizou’s fate, given Kakuranger ended just seven episodes later. But it is remarkable that it is not because of its connection to heritage that it is thriving all these years later. Power Rangers franchise – if anything, it still largely exists in its shadow, never receiving a “full” adaptation at the height of Mighty Morphin era, like other post-Zyuranger show would go further– but as a source for the internet’s weekly crap post.

Today may be Monday, but in our hearts it is Friday.

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