Nerding Day: Tenko and the Guardians of The Magic 🌭

“Play the hits,” they say. Nobody wants to hear your new material — they want the stuff they grew up on. So be it, I say to my trio of muscular, younger men as I begrudgingly rise from the bed we all sleep in together. It’s been eight weeks since mama wrote about some forgotten ’90s bullshit, so go crank some ’90s in Fortnite for a couple of hours while I crank out a few thousand words about, sorry, this says “an American cartoon based on a real-life famous Japanese magician?”

Well, in the words of my close personal associate Super Mario, “here we go.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Saban Entertainment in possession of a Power Rangers, must be in want of two dozen more. We know that Haim Saban and Shuki Levy went fucking nuts in the 90s. We have the proof. Creating the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went to their heads. It was a simple formula: intersperse existing Japanese action show footage with scenes of badly-paid and worse-treated American actors talking to a robot with an anxiety disorder. It was perfect. It defined a decade. You might even say it was a kind… of magic. Mightn’t you? For the sake of the premise of this article, please visualize the words “I agree” in the 1-900 HOT DOG Psychic Terms of Service before continuing.

“Hi, I’m Amy Jo Johnson, but most of you guys probably know me as Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger,” Amy Jo tells the camera with a little shrug.

Watching this now, thirty years later, is it a Zen-like acceptance we detect in that statement, or else bitter resignation? There’s no way of knowing. Does it matter? The entity that is Saban Entertainment has already claimed her life for its own dark purposes. It is no longer enough that she fly around in a pterodactyl Zord, or shoot a bow on the rare occasions the Power Rangers use their weapons, or turn all evil and sexy and… sorry, what was I saying?

Oh, right. Amy Jo Johnson is introducing Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic.

Released in 1995 just as the original Power Rangers series was winding down, Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic — and yes, it’s “the” magic, I checked — is located firmly in Saban’s “sicko phase.” See, latter day Haim Saban spends his time penning drunken emails to the President urging him to send Israel more guns pls, but ’90s Haim Saban was busy greenlighting literally every idea anyone brought in front of him that had anything to do with Japan, monsters, or teens. Thank whatever god you send military weaponry abroad in the name of that we never got a western adaptation of Legend of the Overfiend.

Here’s one of the emails, by the way:

Because seriously, Saban Entertainment was just doing whatever at this point: VR Troopers, Big Bad Beetleborgs, a co-production of a Creepy Crawlers cartoon with my longtime favorites Abrams/Gentile. Hell, they put Ryan Gosling on a fucking boat that was also his high school in a show called Breaker High and you can trace a direct line from that series to Kenergy.

Rather than being a cheaply-produced live action series, Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic was a cheaply-produced cartoon. It is, however, based on a real-life pop idol turned stage magician named Princess Tenko.

You’ll sometimes see the show called “Princess Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic,” but crucially the word “princess” is not in there, to avoid tainting what could be a perfectly good franchise about ancient wizards that just happens to be led by a female character with the stink of girlhood. The ’90s were not well.

In any case, it’s a deeply weird concept. Would it not have been enough to just have a cartoon about a magician and her gang of handsome boy-toys fighting mystical antagonists? Was the addition of the Princess Tenko branding and her appearance in closing segments where she performs stage magic really what pushed the premise over the top? To me, there’s only one possible explanation: someone — possibly Haim Saban himself, possibly series creator and Yu-Gi-Oh! card namesake Roger “The Executive Producer” Slifer — was desperately trying to flatter/sleep with a famous Japanese magician.

They pulled out all the stops — this introduction with Amy Jo is a full half-hour special, also featuring appearances by magicians Max Maven and Earl Nelson.

Were kids in the ’90s familiar with them, these men who appeared to be the Platonic Form of a stage magician and the oldest man alive, respectively?

Presumably, but can we get back to the whole “Guardians of THE Magic” thing? Every time I hear the announcer say that I feel an itch in the back of my brain. “The” magic? Like this is the only magic there is, and they’re the ones responsible for guarding it? I’ve never been so baffled by a definite article. It’s Izzy and The Torchworld all over again.

Amy Jo is at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. She talks up Princess Tenko as one of the most famous and mysterious magicians in the world, then tells us that if we watch carefully, we might pick up some magic tricks we can use to impress our friends. We immediately cut to Tenko on stage, a dubbed voice telling us “remember kids, I trained many years to perform this magical trick. Please, do not try this at home.”

Ok, so which is it? Am I supposed to learn how to crawl inside a folding box while flamboyant samurai dance around and shove swords into it in a clear representation of group sex or not? For a company that created the Power Rangers, one of the biggest flashpoints around violence in children’s media in recorded history, Saban is giving the pre-teen set an awful lot of credit regarding their ability to tell fantasy from reality. To make matters worse, after she completes the illusion, Tenko steps out, gestures towards the camera, and the same voiceover says “remember kids, the magic is within you.”

It feels like they wanted to get sued. It’s as if at the peak of his influence, Haim Saban was daring the powers that be to challenge him. How else do you explain the fact that each episode of Tenko ends with either a dangerous, complex stage illusion involving bladed weapons or a segment where she teaches viewers the equivalent of the old removable thumb trick? Any court would see this as de facto child endangerment. It would be like if G.I. Joe episodes only sometimes ended with a PSA about messing around with the stove, then the rest of the time demonstrated the proper technique for pistol whipping an unarmed civilian.

Back to Amy Jo, who is talking with Max Maven and Earl Nelson, the former flubbing the title and calling it, sensibly, “Tenko and the Guardians of Magic.” They try to paint Tenko as a real-life magical superhero, setting up her role in the cartoon, but they’re acting like this is all stuff that actually happened. Max tells us Tenko learned real magic from her master Hikita, and that his two other students Jana and Jason were pissed when she was named his successor, leading them to attempt to steal the powerful Starfire Gems. They got a couple of them, allowing them to merge into a giant two-headed dragon, but the rest were flung across the Earth.

Watching this man with Vegeta’s hairline casually talk about the magical powers of the Starfire Gems to summon animals and turn people into dragon monsters is the quickest way to understand the insanity of an entire decade. But it gets better: Earl Nelson then claims to have some gems “from the same region of Japan” as those bestowed on Princess Tenko. Is he about to summon an ancient demon?

Yes, if by “summon an ancient demon” you mean “perform some basic sleight of hand.” So is magic real, dangerous, and awesome, or is it all about trickery and showmanship? This special comes down firmly on the side of “yes.”

Finally, long after most kids have changed the channel to an episode of The Mask: The Animated Series, we learn something about the upcoming cartoon itself — presumably the reason we’re here in the first place. Princess Tenko has three friends, an ethnically diverse crew of hunks who obey her in all things. All things? I mean, probably. In the vernacular of anime, Tenko is essentially a reverse harem magical girl series, complete with spinning transformation sequences.

We’ve got the white dude, Bolt, who Amy Jo describes as “brave and handsome.” He’s voiced by Neal McDonough, a man famous for losing work because he refused to do kisses on-screen.

Then there’s the brilliant Steel, a black guy who — hey, hold on! You put a black superhero named “Steel” in your show? And he isn’t this guy?

Wild. That brings us to the Native American character, Hawk.

One guess as to how Amy Jo describes him. It’s “street-smart” and “fast-talking,” naturally. Oops, sorry — I got my ’90s racial clichés mixed up. It’s “wise and mystical,” forcing even the Wikipedia entry for Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic, one of those really long ones that was clearly written by fans who imprinted on the show at a young age, to admit that a Native American man named Hawk Windwalker has a “somewhat stereotypical” connection to nature.

“Princess Tenko descended from a ninja and a samurai, which explains where she gets her bravery from,” Amy Jo just casually mentions. Look, I know it’s the ’90s and we’re just naming random Japanese stuff because it sounds cool, but fucking what? Like, Tenko seems pretty cool and all, but can we get a show about her great-grandparents teaming up to kick ass and discovering that the greatest magic of all… is love? No, we can’t. We have to go back to Max Maven showing us an optical illusion for babies.

Oh, the gray squares are actually the same shade? Great. Maybe this counted as entertainment on a summer afternoon in 1995, I don’t know. But it fucking sucks, man. Tell me more about the ninja/samurai romance.

No dice. Tenko shows us how to lift an ice cube out of a glass of water with a loop of string. You use salt. Cool. I was learning better magic than this in the ’90s from drunk uncles at family dinners. Sure, they’d swing me around the kitchen by my ankles sometimes, but there was always a sawbuck in it for me when they sobered up and felt guilty at the end of the night.

Speaking of, we’re out of time. But before we go, the eerie, disembodied voice of Tenko addresses itself directly to Amy Jo. “The magic is within you,” she repeats, a statement that Amy Jo doesn’t seem quite sure how to react to. “Gee, I sure wish the ‘getting paid more than $600 a week was within me,” she’s probably thinking.

Were there toys? Sure there were toys. But despite the show’s gestures towards gender equality, with Tenko leading her testosterone-heavy crew into battle each week, none of the male characters got figures. Instead, we got a bunch of different Tenko dolls that were actually just altered designs from an unproduced Wonder Woman line.

As for the show itself, there were only thirteen episodes. Tenko and her guys go on adventures, collect various Magic Starfire Gems and combat ancient demons. You might expect there to be some kind of romantic tension between Tenko and the various boys, but actually, the show positions her rival Jason as her main love interest, going so far as to suggest they get married in the future. It’s true what they say: women love tormented bad boys with period-appropriate hairstyles who wield mind-controlling magic disks.

In any case, it certainly wasn’t the next Power Rangers. Do you know what was the next Power Rangers?

It was Power Rangers, a series that has run so long that a few years ago it got its own gritty comic series and video game about trauma for millennials who can’t let go, in which the Green Ranger goes mad with power and fucking kills Rita Repulsa then tries to murder all rangers across all possible dimensions. It’s kind of like Jet Li’s The One except it ends up with a guy with a ponytail banging two different versions of the Pink Ranger. Probably. Man, what was it with the ’90s and bad boys with ponytails?

Regardless, I kind of forget what I was talking about and I’m sure as hell not watching all thirteen episodes of Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic, so cue the Animal House wrap-up!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme:Michael Dillon, whose parents were a ninja and a samurai, making him a ninjurai and the victim of much discrimination.