Hello all, Aro here. Player of Amberdrake, Saitama, Priss Asagiri, and Alleyana Lavellan.



Once upon a time in the late nineties, Power Rangers had ended its fifth season and the curtain call was coming. The franchise wasn't doing so well anymore, and it was given the go-ahead for one more season to wrap things up. In Space was the name of the next season, after the American team was led to believe it would be... well... space themed. What they got from Japan (PR is based off a Japanese series, Super Sentai) had nothing to do with space and was instead some crappy Virtual Reality plot.

Deciding that to hell with it, this was their swan song anyway, the American writers took some of the footage sent over from Sentai -- though much less than previous seasons had. They took the more interesting costumes, re-purposing them for new characters as they wrote an entirely new plot... with an entirely new villain, to boot.





This villain, Astronema, eventually reduced our familiar Angel Grove to a post-apocalyptic nightmare full of refugees and barrel-fires, and conquered all the known galaxies with her armies. Yes, for real. After watching Astronema battle through layers and layers of brainwashing that left her unable to predict her own actions half of the time, this wasn't much of a surprise. In Space got dark, long before the heroes lost.

Naturally, when In Space actually did well enough to allow the Power Rangers franchise to continue, the ending had to get a dues ex machina so that the next Ranger team could start fresh. (...Ish.) So, in the last ten minutes or so of the season, Zordon's energy tube gets destroyed and the good power from him literally wipes out all the evil in the universe. Including, supposedly, the evil in Astronema (IMO oh look more braaaaaaainwashing, but it's okay when it's the good guys doing it, right?) And a good number of 'monsters' who had proven themselves to be better than many humans.

Ah, black and white, good and evil... Astronema's least favorite concepts.

And now she's here, taken from just before that blast would have brainwashed her "back to good". Her season was the first with so much original footage, the first to not have that classic monster-of-the-day theme, and the only to have the villain later become a Ranger in a following season. And if you like any of the seasons that came after 1998, you have the complicated Astronema and her story to thank for saving the franchise. Here's a good, detailed review on the season, for anyone interested in learning more: part 1, part 2.

Astronema is easily my second most powerful character on this game, second only on my roster to the god-like Saitama. Priss will eventually match Astronema once the plot with Galatea comes full circle, but that's a long ways off.

And for good measure, one of the videos I cut together of Astronema a few years ago. (I started playing her in 2006, so I've made a few of these.)