Sorry for the slowness here. I've been working on a comic book series inspired by all things tokusatsu! I'll let you know when you can preorder it as I'm sure all fans of Sentai would get a kick out of it!
I feel if people didn't know the behind the scenes of Ohranger they wouldn't make such a big deal about the supposed tone shift. A lot of seasons start very dramatically and then have lighter episodes. It was never THAT dark before or THAT light after compared to other seasons.