Meanwhile on Netflix, an animated Ultraman film premieres. It was originally a Ultraman "inspired" project that had been kicking around for years before finally being produced).
Ugh, the Seven Seas official translation of the Kamen Rider manga had plenty of that. I don't know what it is with the need to make superhero media a quip fest.
Shocking, I'd never heard of this film before and it's something I thought would have popped up on my Toku-dar ages ago.
From Taiwan, it's the comedy-drama Machi Action. Wilson Chen Bo-lin is Tienan, who is also Spacehero Fly, a costumed hero who is a little bit Kamen Rider, a little bit Ultraman and sundry. Tienan has played the role of Spacehero Fly for a number of years now on a once-popular kid’s program on Taiwanese TV that always ends with the hero yelling ‘Transform!’, growing to huge size, and battling a guy in a rubber monster suit while knocking over buildings in a scale model of Taipei. The man who wears all of those suits, nicknamed "Monster" (Chiu Yang-Shiang) is also Tienan's best friend, who is getting into running a noodle shop as a side gig.
Tienan's biggest fan was network owner Chairman Su who brought Tienan on board and has kept the show on despite the declining ratings, but he is old and unwell. After he passes away, his daughter Ying Ying (‘Puff’ Kuo Xue-fu) returns from America to take over running the network. She won’t outright cancel Spacehero Fly, but she does call in consultants from Japan to revamp it, which includes getting ride of Fly and bringing in arrogant pop star FACE (‘Owodog’ Zhuang Ao-quan) as the new hero Spacehero Face. Tienan and Monster find themselves dismissed from the show and looking for work, a series of misadventures which leads to Tienan accidentally auditioning for a role in a very child-unfriendly production, and to he and Monster hawking products on home-shopping TV.
Something close to a happening far more in the style of what's popular on the Farms just happened
The upcoming Super Sentai season, Bakusou Sentai Boonboomger, had the suit designs leaked. For a while, one of the main "teasers" of the design was an obese bald homosexual kinda-lolcow known as Matt "Dukemon" Hunt.
Some context for those less interested in stupid shit: Matt Hunt mainly posted his information on Rangerboards. Sometimes he had insider information, but 95% of the time he was recycling information from Asian forums, typically 5ch and Baidu. A lot of people dislike him because he's self-aggrandizing, arrogant, and a frequent pathological liar.
One instance of "drama" with him was a breakdown when a Toei employee went to 4chan and posted leaks for Kamen Rider and Super Sentai on the site's main tokusatsu board, /m/, becoming known as "Netabare-san" as he revealed things with evidence right before they were announced, and even revealed the motif and color layout of Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger - stating that the heroes would be dinosaur-motifed instead of dragon-motifed like Matt Hunt had been claiming - and this had upset Matt Hunt to the point he was claiming Netabare-san was lying.
After it turned out that yes, the show was about dinosaurs, he acted like no such own happened and would later go on to claim every leak of his was right.
There's various other instances of him lying or taking credit for others' leaks but that's ultimately irrelevant and gay compared to what just happened today.
The designs leaked with these images:
The relatively innocuous watermark, not even using cursing as it lightly teases a prolific lolcow in the community, set a small firestorm in the community immediately in its shittier parts, namely X (Formerly Twitter) and his main stomping grounds, Rangerboard.
Matt "Fatt Cunt" Hunt himself did comment, implying the images came from him.
He then deleted his Xitter.
To note, Hunt here implies his "trust was betrayed" - this plus some comments in prior days by friends of his indicates he was circling around the initial images, someone got their hands on it, and leaked it with the new watermark.
Mind you, those diagonal watermarks aren't for stylization. Under those are watermarks for the retailer who received the pictured catalogs. Just this past couple of weeks, Kamen Rider Gotchard's final form was leaked with the same style of diagonal watermark:
This one, for example, reveals the photographer was a man named Kenichi Yano. Hunt was more than happy to distribtute this plus another image, both of which had Yano's name, all over X (Formerly Twitter) while using official hashtags that Toei and Bandai actually look at. So not only is he thin-skinned, he's a raging hypocrite.
Unfortunately, he'll probably slink back into the English-speaking scene, but it's fun seeing him get a taste of his own medicine for once.
I somehow missed out on this short indie toku film that was released this Jan. 2023, normally this is the kind of thing that would ping on my toku-dar ASAP. A 45-minute movie shot on iPhone, with two characters with a frog-motif, ORK.
A shy and withdrawn art student is given a strange stone by a witch that allows him to see visions of the future. In one vision he sees his childhood friend and classmate being killed by a mysterious red figure named "Gowm" and is determined to prevent this from happening, but not all is as it seems...turns out you can't trust mysterious witches who ham it up.
The movie's pretty boring and more just a good proof-of-concept, but it apparently was successful enough it's getting a mini-series sequel called Ork's Room.
The biggest "neat" part about it is the designer, writer, etc did storyboards for Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, as well as several monster designs for the newer Ultraman series.
A fucking leaker whining about his "trust" being "betrayed". Did this guy not think for a second that leaking what is basically corporate secret doesn't also count as betraying people trusts?
A fucking leaker whining about his "trust" being "betrayed". Did this guy not think for a second that leaking what is basically corporate secret doesn't also count as betraying people trusts?
He doesn't care. He never really cared outside of clout - frankly, every English-speaking Tokusatsu "Influencer" or "E-Celeb" is about the same, with the exception of Tom Constantine who at least earned his stripes and doesn't rely on outsider speculation and leaks for material. He just dislikes someone made fun of him. He had a similar meltdown a few years back and left, and he'll likely be back before February because he's addicted to the attention.
Even his attempt to martyr himself burnt out, people already stopped caring within a couple of days. The most impact made so far is that Rangerboard hid a few threads he frequented, which is pretty pointless since he was the only one keeping that sad site alive. Apparently at some point a guy pinged Shinichiro Shirakura (Toei exec, pretty much the one in full control of their tokusatsu wing, produced a bunch of their shows, google 'em) with images of the leaks who also namedropped Rangerboard. Whether or not anything comes of it, we probably won't know until it becomes overt like a public lawsuit or something but that's highly unlikely.
I would do deeply unchristian things to get another series like Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight. Either another adaptation of a Kamen Rider series or another toku done in a similar style. Garo would be fuckin sick to see.
It's pretty unique, if nothing else. Wouldn't mind another new gimmick for the next team though. It's usually always dinosaurs, cars or magic. Sometimes cops.
Its an all green-screen series. There isn't a single real set. So everything feels really fake and cheap.
The red is terrible. He's of the energetic, child-like retard mold. The other rangers have to constantly save him from his own stupidity.
The story is just bad. Its just endless infighting between the red ranger, his brother and a bunch of insect people over who should be the king. While that is a premise that lends itself to a lot of intrigue, King Ohger handles it with the subtlety of a typical sentai series, which is to say, none at all. It just feels so tedious to have the same thing happen in every episode, endlessly.
Kiramager, Zenkaiger and Donbrothers is, in my opinion, the best run the show has ever had. King Oh-ger is a massive step down from those three series.
Its an all green-screen series. There isn't a single real set. So everything feels really fake and cheap.
The red is terrible. He's of the energetic, child-like retard mold. The other rangers have to constantly save him from his own stupidity.
The story is just bad. Its just endless infighting between the red ranger, his brother and a bunch of insect people over who should be the king. While that is a premise that lends itself to a lot of intrigue, King Ohger handles it with the subtlety of a typical sentai series, which is to say, none at all. It just feels so tedious to have the same thing happen in every episode, endlessly.
Kiramager, Zenkaiger and Donbrothers is, in my opinion, the best run the show has ever had. King Oh-ger is a massive step down from those three series.
I dunno, I've tried watching Sentai and it doesn't click. It all feels the same. Rider has some variety and feels unique in almost every season. Ultraman has fallen into the same trap it fell into years ago: same shit, different toys.
Maybe i'm biased but to me, Sentai is too goofy to be taken seriously 99% of the time.
I don't know what the consensus is on Shoutfactory but I love them for putting out Kuuga and Ryuki on Blu-ray. I'm almost praying they get the rights to distribute Agito at some point, but it seems like that time has passed.
I dunno, I've tried watching Sentai and it doesn't click. It all feels the same. Rider has some variety and feels unique in almost every season. Ultraman has fallen into the same trap it fell into years ago: same shit, different toys.
Maybe i'm biased but to me, Sentai is too goofy to be taken seriously 99% of the time.
I dunno. Most modern toku are way too twee for me to take seriously. I grew up in the era of the syndicated adventure show (Xena, Hercules, etc.), so I like a little goofiness mixed in with the adventure. Adventures are supposed to be fun.
The only thing I would want is more real stunts and less CGI, but sadly, I think that ship has sailed.
The newest season of Garo (Garo: Heir to Steel Armor) uploaded it's first episode to the official channel with subtitles a few days ago. It's nice to see them going back to basics after Versus Road.
