XX MILEENO aka MAD MIKE - CARRANGER & POWER RANGERS TURBO

C'est une idée de Mad Mike, cuire vos adversaires dans une pizza ! Considered by many as a dark moment of silliness, in an already lousy season of the Power Ranger franchise, when our heroes found themselves being cooked within a giant pizza and microwave oven... Though to be fair, it's not really the pizza-making monster's fault.

The 1996 series "Gekisou Sentai Carranger" was purposely made as a comedic parody of the Super Sentai franchise, especially after the previous year's entry "Ohranger", which was a little too downbeat and grim even by Japanese tokusatsu standards. As such, the villains of this humorous series, the intergalactic biker gang dubbed The Space Bosozoku Bowzock, were based on extreme human caricatures. And like said caricatures, they all had hobbies and / or professions which were reflected in their individual designs and abilities.

XX Mileeno appeared in episode 27, and was the Bowzock's best pizza chef (and lone Italian) who wanted to make his coronary masterpiece, a "Carranger Pizza", and was sent down to Earth to do just that! XX Mileeno succeeded in trapping the Carrangers within his giant pizza dish, but before he could devour the twisted concoction, the robotic police officer SingalMan (Blue Centurion in the US version) arrived, and freed our heroes.

XX Mileeno then ate a special Imoyoukan Pizza, which made him to grow giant size, but was defeated and killed by the giant Carranger robots Sirender and RV Robo.

In the American adaptation "Power Rangers Turbo", XX Mileeno was remade as Mad Mike; the title mascot of an Angel Grove pizzeria, who was magically brought to monstrous life by the space pirate Porto (Inventor Groth in "Carranger"), but only as a desperate, last minute thing. Other than that, Mad Mike's story line followed the same as his Japanese counterpart, giant pizza of doom included.

In the context of "Carranger", XX Mileeno / Mad Mike works splendidly, but fails miserably within the garish nature of "Power Rangers Turbo" - a series which does the age old mistake of making the villains overly comical, especially when compared to far more serious (bland) heroes and the fictional world that they inhabit. Although truth be told, that's true with every season of "Power Rangers", minus very few exceptions.

Despite this detail, Mad Mike is the only pizza-related monster in fiction to be done with some noticeable creativity, as opposed to simply making a pizza itself come to life, or having a psychotic, but otherwise human pizza cook, on the rampage. And the design itself isn't half bad, with obvious reference to the Italian Renaissance, which makes perfect sense, seeing how pizzas were invented during that era of the late middle ages.

Pizza monster, pics, text and art sent by Raf C Gonzalez, visit his deviant art page, thanks !