There are, as the saying goes, only three truly original American art forms: jazz, comic books, and Power Rangers. I'm not being cute, either—there's nothing more American than Power Rangers. Twenty-five years old this week and still chugging along, the franchise is one of the most singular entities in entertainment. There's nothing like it, and it had to happen here in these United States. Power Rangers, quite frankly, couldn't have happened anywhere else.

The first thing you have to understand about Power Rangers is that it is a monster of mad science, cobbled together in a lab by a businessman who saw an opportunity to turn around a show kids would love for cheap. Haim Saban is the first reason Power Rangers is uniquely American, and only partly because he's the reason why the show exists. Born in Egypt to a Jewish family, Saban would eventually immigrate to the States in the '80s to start Saban Entertainment.

One day Saban, the story goes, saw the Japanese show Bioman, and never got over it. Bioman was a super sentai show, the umbrella term for a nearly unbroken string of shows originally produced by Toei Company usually featuring a team of people who could transform into superheroes to fight an evil force bent on world domination. Designed as children's entertainment, super sentai shows were formulaic and cycled out roughly every year, with an entirely new series replacing the old one.

Saban, seeing potential for super sentai shows to take off in America, wanted one—so he cut a deal with Toei for the rights to its latest series, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, a show about ancient warriors powered by dinosaur-gods brought to the present day when their nemesis escapes after a millennia of imprisonment. Here's where things got truly wild: Saban didn't want the whole show—he only wanted the action scenes, with the Zyurangers fully costumed, fighting monsters and piloting robot dinosaurs.

In between those scenes, Saban would inject new footage with American actors, creating an entirely new show. Original stories kicked off by scenes featuring a diverse cast of "teenagers with attitude" would then segue into footage from Zyuranger, dubbed in English with lines that made sense for the new plots Saban had crafted. The result was Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the Frankenstein's monster of children's television, and an overnight sensation.

Like a lot of millennial boys, I grew up with Power Rangers. I was engrossed by the sudden introduction of Tommy Oliver, the evil Green Ranger, his redemption and loss of powers, and his dramatic return as the White Ranger. I watched the show every day after school and did all the moves.

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was a soap opera for children. Tommy and Jason were romantic rivals, original cast members made heartbreaking exits, new ones joined and the whole thing—as the show's creators ran out of Zyuranger footage behind the scenes—ended in a sweeping, dramatic fashion, blowing up literally everything kids had spent the last couple years thrilling over to bring the cast over to a new show, Power Rangers Zeo, in order to adapt footage from a brand-new super sentai show.

This would continue for years. Themes and cast members would be swapped out as needed (and they were needed often—despite its massive success, Power Rangers was low-paid, non-union work) all in the service of one giant continuous story that concluded in 1998 with Power Rangers in Space. Following that, the show became more like the super sentai series it adapted, resetting every year or so with little carryover, bringing old favorites back for special occasions.