Originally posted: May 20, 2006 @ 11:45pm PST

Don’t mean to start this on a downer note but I just found out that one of my favorite Japanese actresses passed away last week. Machiko Soga, known to most United States Power Rangers fans as Rita Repulsa (She’s mentioned here!) from the first season of the series (in Japan, she was known as Bandora), passed away May 7th, 2006.

Many sentai fans will miss her. I first came across her on Power Rangers and always wondered what she was really saying (since she was dubbed with a voiceover) as well as anything else I might have been missing. So I did everything I could to research into the original shows and learn as much as possible. This led to my interest in sentai and I quickly sought out a place where I could acquire the original Japanese shows. Luckily I found a site that hosted four Zyuranger episodes (If you can believe it, I found the soundtrack!), a Carranger (And a soundtrack to that, too!) aka Power Rangers Turbo episode and the Ohranger/Kakuranger movie (Yet another soundtrack, folks!!) (what American audiences got as a two part episode of Power Rangers Zeo).

I encourage anyone who’s interested in these series to search as much as you can for them and anything else you enjoy (or enjoyed) as a child. There might be a whole side of your favorite series that you might have missed out on, not knowing any better. I almost forgot to put this in - it’s a video of Machiko Soga as Bandora, singing a song as she’s going down to the beach to meet the Dragonranger on Zyuranger. Some of the footage was used in Power Rangers, but naturally the song was cut out:

Sorry.. the video’s gone now

The song is really fun and upbeat. Makes me wish I knew what she was singing.

 

Update: Red Hawk found us a new video! You can find it by clicking: THIS LINK

-- by Red Hawk of http://www.happyhorror.com

Tags: carranger, japan, japanese, kakuranger, memories, power rangers, Sentai, soundtracks, voice, zyuranger

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 3:36 am and is filed under In Memory.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.