You think your parents are strict? This guy’s dad wouldn’t even let him become a ninja. Talk about overprotectiveness. There’s wanting the best for your children, and then there’s just being no fun. Since I can’t provide Cam with therapy, I’m just gonna present you with the thirtieth Zordon Child as I normally would.

NAME: Cameron Watanabe
RANGER DESIGNATION: Green Samurai Ranger, Power Rangers Ninja Storm
BASE OF OPERATION: Blue Bay Harbor
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Prelude to a Storm” – Power Rangers Ninja Storm
LAST APPEARANCE: “Thunder Storm Pt 2” – Power Rangers Dino Thunder
PERSONAL WEAPONS/GEAR: Samurai Saber; Lightning Riff Blaster
ZORDS: Samurai Star Chopper; Mighty Mammothzord
PORTRAYED BY: Jason Chan

PROFILE

The son of master ninja Sensei Kanoi Watanabe, Cam served as a sort of assistant at the Wind Ninja Academy. While not a student himself, he was very intelligent and developed weapons and Zords for the Power Rangers. Reluctantly.

You see, Cam wanted very much to be a ninja, as do most teenagers and also me. When his uncle Lothor came down to Earth to blow up the Academy and kidnap its students, only three remained: Shane, Tori, and Dustin. Knowing these three to be dim-witted slackers, Cam was bitter when his dad – turned into a guinea pig by Lothor – assigned them Morphers to become the Wind Power Rangers.

Cam’s bitterness was accentuated by his sarcastic nature and overall pessimism. He believed himself to be worthy of something greater, destined to be more than just the guy sitting at the computer working behind the scenes assisting the main players. He’d often be the first to mock the Rangers when they screwed up. Some times were more justified than others, like when Tori brought a stranger to Ninja Ops and he turned out to be one of the evil Thunder Rangers and kidnapped his dad. Oopsie.

It’s not like Cam was entirely wrong. He did have a fair amount of his own ninja training and could hold his own against a small gang of Kelzaks no problem. But Sensei continued to insist that he “had his reasons” for keeping his son out of the fight whenever possible. When he eventually did catch Cam going out into the field and getting into scraps with aliens, the lil guinea pig finally had to fess up.

Sensei explained that when his mother got sick after he was born, he promised her that he would never allow any harm to come to their son. Even though Cam asserted that he was obviously not a dumb little baby anymore, Sensei doubled down: a promise is a promise. But I guess that promise was “Don’t make Cam into a ninja please,” because he eventually told Cam that he’d train him in some non-ninja ways. We love a good loophole in our promises.

One way or another, Sensei’s hand was forced when a monster that looked like a city skyline sucked the color out of the Rangers and drained them of their power. Using the Scroll of Time that they had lying around, Cam jumped into the past to retrieve the one thing that could restore the Rangers’ powers: the Samurai Amulet. He was transported to the Wind Ninja Academy on the day that his mother Miko became its first female student. Cam’s father and uncle were also present, and will henceforth be referred to as Baby-Sensei and Baby-Lothor, respectively.

Cam went undercover as a new recruit at the Academy. Baby-Lothor stole the amulet from Miko. Baby-Sensei pinned it on Cam. It wasn’t long before Baby-Lothor was revealed to be a big ol’ meanie jerkhead. Sensei Colonel Truman banished Baby-Lothor to space because that’s just how we take care of business around here. Miko passed the amulet on to Cam before he returned to his own time. The amulet was also a Cyclone Morpher, and his mother’s approval was all he needed to become the Green Samurai Ranger.

Upon rescuing the Rangers and restoring their powers, Cam’s first mission was hunting down a bug monster. He immediately got stung and transformed into something of an insect himself. First impressions are a little rough, but he used his Super Samurai Mode to confront Sucker once more and reverse the infection.

“But Gordo,” you might be asking, “who’s gonna operate the computer back at Ninja Ops if Cam isn’t sitting at the desk? Is the guinea pig gonna have to hop around on the keyboard like my grandpa hunting and pecking to type out an email?” Well, dear reader, we have a simple solution for that:

Cyber-Cam.

A virtual replicant? I’m not sure what that means. But Cam created a holographic duplicate of himself to hold down the fort while he’s out doing Ranger things. Billy Cranston? Hartford Robotics? Who needs em? He was incredibly life-like, to the point where the rest of the Rangers were convinced he was just Cam with some new clothes and some of that signature dude-speak lingo. And extreme sports talent. Cam quickly reprogrammed him to stop being so cool and to just man the computer instead.

Less Ninja Ops duties also meant that Cam had time to get out more. Sometimes this was hanging out at the sports shop learning cooking lessons and getting brainwashed by Lothor. This was all in one trip, by the way.

Other times, it was fetch quests for his dad.

The Museum of Asian History wanted to give the Academy an ancient and powerful artifact, presumably in recognition of all that they’d contributed to Ninja History and society as a whole. Cam retrieved the crate that contained the item, but not without encountering one of Lothor’s goons who wound up resurrecting an ancient warlord named Shimazu. One way or another, the Rangers were instructed by Sensei not to open the crate unless there was an emergency.

Lucky for toy stores around the world, Shimazu’s wolf monsters proved to be a bit of an emergency when the Thunderstorm Megazord couldn’t even take them down. Cam pulled Yet Another Ancient Scroll from the crate, revealing the method to open the Portal to Another Dimension yada yada yada the new toy was a guitar that summoned a giant Mammoth Zord. The combined power of these toys was enough to take down the wolf guys. You know how it goes. Also, it turned out Cam was pretty good at playing the “ax,” as the kids call it, and even participated in a talent competition for a reality show.

All of this Ranger activity, and Cam still found time to develop new Zord technology. He even made a new Power Sphere set that allowed all three Megazords to combine into the Hurricane Megazord. He also developed a really cool robot dragon spaceship thing and flew it to Lothor’s ship in an attempt to rescue the Academy students. What a cool guy. Hope they sold a lot of toys with that one.

The Green Ranger’s infiltration plan was foiled by his evil uncle, and though he tried to fight him head-on, he couldn’t quite get the edge on him. He teleported out in time to help his team fight off Condortron.

On the day of a big sports thing or whatever the hell these kids do, some Kelzaks showed up to the fairgrounds and seemed to be very interested in the area. After Cam and Hunter scared them off, the Samurai Morpher practically turned into ice. Turns out the Rangers were competing on top of where the Abyss of Evil happened to be, and Lothor was ready to splooge a hot load of evil upon the world. But first, he needed to make sure there was no interference. Oh, and the Samurai Amulet was necessary to open the floodgates and do the splooging.

While Vexacus made quick work of the Zords, Lothor invaded Ninja Ops with a reprogrammed Cyber Cam and wrecked the shit out of it, kidnapping Real Cam in the process. The Thunder Brothers saved him while the big bad ninja man was busy doing the splooging or whatever I said earlier. Even after Lothor stole their powers, the Rangers shoved him into the sploogehole. 

Cam went on to graduate from the Wind Ninja Academy with his five comrades and became… actually, it’s not clear what he did once he got his ninja diploma. He got a cool black robe thing but his dad said he didn’t have to be a teacher. So I guess he was just back to doing what he normally does. Cool. Yeah.

Later on, he and his friends got their powers back for a short time to help the Dino Thunder Rangers put Lothor back into the sploogehole. The Green Samurai Ranger later returned for the Legendary Battle, but he sounded an awful lot like another Green Ranger with a golden shield on his chest.

RANKING

Okay, so Cam is kind of a douche sometimes. Especially in those early episodes where he just makes fun of the Rangers for being dinguses. But Eric is a bigger douche and I’ve ranked him pretty high, so I can’t just pretend that matters in the grand scheme of things.

Cam was just a 30-something kid with a chip on his shoulder. He always meant well and just wanted to realize his full potential. He already carried a lot of responsibility, but he wanted more. Gotta give him props for ambition.

And his suit is really fuckin cool. Even with my Ninja Storm bias aside, I think I’m still gonna have to put Cam on the list as the new number 8 in the Children of Zordon. Sorry, Koda, but you never created a Cyber Koda.

Are you one of the sweethearts that voted for Cam in my poll? Or did you vote for someone else? Or do you have no idea what I’m talking about? That’s fine. Go check me out on Twitter if you want to keep up. Maybe if you need a rabbit hole to fall down you can read everyone’s entries on The List here.

Okay I definitely didn’t do this on purpose, but the next on my to-do list is Mia Watanabe. From Samurai. No relation. Just a happy coincidence. Or unhappy, because I have to sit through multiple episodes of Samurai. But my word is my bond, and eventually I’m gonna document all of these fuckers.