That Tokusatsu Thread

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
My favorite villains, visually, would have to be Bioman's. Just the combination of makeup and suits really works for me, plus they all get a fair amount of focus. Monster (Baldy) is my favorite :)

Neo_Empire_Gear.jpg


Granted, they have NOTHING on Vyram, but Vyram had the biggest bastard in sentai history. Jetman may be a good sentai series, but the villains were done far, far better.

Vyrams.jpg
 
I think Jetman suffered by casting their Rangers into forced stereotypes (Ako = Tomboy, Raita = Fat Guy, Gai = Jerk, you get the idea) and didn't really allow for real chemistry within all of them. On that episode where Raita goes back to prehistoric times, all of a sudden he was acting like he's been in love with Kaori, where nothing before ever suggested it. Then there's Gai, who… I really don't know what everyone likes so much about him? It seemed like he took way too long to accept his Ranger duties, and his extended behavior outside of being a Ranger kept showing him off as a very condescending and womanizing jerk with no gold heart at all. During that arc where the Bird Men show up, he point-blank decides to quit being a Ranger, for no reason. He was… just so annoying. Granted, maybe his behavior improves after episode 30 or so, because that episode where they go to Hell (literally) was just so flat out stupid and horrendous and since Jetman had already provided me enough stupid episodes by that point, I stopped watching.

Later on, I did get to see the Jetman finale, and it was better than the Zyuranger finale (but thats a whole 'nother rant) and I thought the wedding scene was handled real well. Many websites say that nobody notices Gai was dying, but looking at the way Ryuu and Kaori were talking about him and looking at him, I think they did know.
 
Tackling that post in order:
1) Forced Stereotypes. Jetman was playing homage to Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, an anime that predates sentai. That said, by playing homage to those characters I felt the Jetman team was more defined individually than other Pre-Zyu teams.
2) Raita liking Kaori. It was mentioned once, when Gai and Ryu had that big fight over her. You know the one, where Kaori wanted to go to a concert with Ryu, Ryu declined because he still loved Rie, so Kaori went with Gai which ended up pissing him off. Raita, like Ako, never got enough focus because he wasn't a major player in the love triangle (a flaw of the series).
3) I think people like Gai because he was so...not like any other ranger before him. Gai was pretty much a novelty as a result. I've seen people make similar claims of Time Fire's counterpart, Eric, in Power Rangers. Personally, I wonder if Gai is bipolar or just self-defeating.
I'm more of a fan of Ryu myself. I went from thinking he was a parody of a red ranger to using him as my go-to example.
Once Tran evolves into Tranza, the show becomes incredible. The focus is primarily on the changing dynamic of the villains, with Radiquet being every bit the bastard we love him for. The love triangle is dropped with Kaori and Gai getting together (although Gai drops it when he feels the social difference between them is too vast), we get an evil commander with his Neo-Jetman arc and Ryu/Rie comes to a heartbreaking close.
The first half is OK-Good, the second is nothing short of amazing.
 
Gai is like one of my favorite sentai characters ever. He's one of the first anti-heroes to join a team, at least begrudgingly. Not every sentai warrior has to be the same. My main complaint with the second half is that you have Yutaka Hirose, one of my favorite toku actors by far, playing Tranza. In the first episode he appears, he kicks ass. In a lot of the episodes after that, he's sitting on his throne. It's Yutaka fucking Hirose. The guy is amazing, and you have him sitting on a throne. Let him do some stuff.
 
There was another thing that bothered me about Jetman. There was a 2 episode arc that had Radiguet kicked out of Vyram by his superior, and he ended up with amnesia, being befriended by a woman. I guess I'm all cool with him being a bastard and shit, but what the hell was the point of this plot? It had seemed to me that somewhere inside, Radiguet did have some sort of heart. At the end of the second episode, there's a moment where the woman pleas with him not to turn bad again, which is followed up by a shot of him looking down and thinking, with his "evil" blue skin removed to show his "good" human-skin, and this shot took quite a long time, making it seem like Radiguet was actually thinking things over, but then, nope.

This incident is never even mentioned again.
 
It was just an arc to establish that yes, Radiquet IS that much of a bastard. It is never mentioned again because to him, it was Tuesday and none of the Jetman knew her.

I have to disagree with Darkhorse though. The strength of Jetman's villains were that each one of them was used, and used well. If it was all Tranza, all the time the dynamic would be thrown way off. Best example I could think of is the common complaint against Kyoryuger and how it focuses so much on Daigo. That is what Jetman would be if they focused solely on Tranza, Kiryu Sentai Daigoger.
 
I'm not doing Animorphs for my next review project. Videos I downloaded were not that good. Instead, I'm going with this.
Already ordered off Ebay.
 
I can't really get into Super Sentai because there's something about it that strikes me with the childish atmosphere I'd always get from Power Rangers. I watched the original Mighty Morphin' as a child, but wasn't overly enthralled in the series to choose to watch past the original. I've also known a lot of really assholish manchildren that're Power Ranger fans to the grave, so they've basically spoiled it for me.

I am really into Kamen Rider though. I've only watched a few serieses, namely/in order OOO, Den-O, W, and I started Kabuto but haven't finished it yet. From just watching those three/four(however you want to look at it), I have to say OOO is the one I've enjoyed the most just because all the elements in the story felt like they fit. Den-O was great,
but I really felt Kai was rushed in at the last second as the villain. I wasn't overly satisfied with how in like the last 10 episodes of Den-O he almost came out of nowhere, especially with Ryuutaros having his voice in his head. I felt that if "the voice in [his] head" was introduced earlier, then slowly came with Kai creeping in as opposed to suddenly showing up and out-dancing him, it would've fit better.
 
I've always wanted to make a Lokar cosplay

00_greatsatalokar.jpg


For real. Ever since I revived my interest in Power Rangers, I've just loved this guy. He's this awesome silvery-blue shade and I love silvery-blue. The headdress is going to be real complex to make though, but I can just imagine how wicked this would look. His character was depicted only as a floating head, but my idea of what the rest of his body looks like is that it's all covered with a silvery-blue poncho, normally you don't see his arms and legs but he does have arms with long, thick claws that he does use in fights. Plus, the makeup is just crazy too, with these flaps under his eyes and a beard seemingly made out of crystal fragments.

Needless to say, seeing this character on Tv as a 7 year old freaked me out.

Once I ever do get around to having a Lokar costume for Halloween, I can't wait for all the people to ask me who I am for me to answer "I am Satan" and to see their confused looks. Because in the Japanese version, his name WAS "Great Satan."

Good luck and enjoy that Gaim costume. I'm frankly not into Time Force because of the horrid villain design that season, but I've heard all about Frax's mental breakdown.
 
I'm not sure why you're referencing Time Force. I have a replica of Kouta's hoodie from Kamen Rider Gaim (the t-shirt is still coming).
HT1JRweFz8cXXagOFbXb.jpg
Also on a Shinkenger kick since Overtime released another batch. As much as I love Samurai as a wonderfully bad dub, I enjoy the sentai counterparts more. Well, we'll see how Genta fares against Antonio.
 
Oh, thats because Gaim was the name of one of the villains in Timeranger. My mistake.

Not much of a watcher of Kamen Rider.

Edit: Well, now I'm double the moron. Gien, is the name of the Timeranger villain.
 
Last edited:
Kamen Rider Black RX said:
Also on a Shinkenger kick since Overtime released another batch. As much as I love Samurai as a wonderfully bad dub, I enjoy the sentai counterparts more. Well, we'll see how Genta fares against Antonio.
Click to expand...

Just to warn you, I'm one of those weird Takeru/Kotoha shippers. There are these extremely vocal Takeru/Mako shippers who are nuts and dismiss their relationship as a big brother/big sister relationship (well, just one shipper who has tons of followers even though she is insane and obsessed--she thinks she is Mako and has a crush on Takeru's actor. She also thinks that it's okay to pester a guy even if he tells you to stop because that means he loves you, or some shit like that). You start to notice that the show is actually hinting at a possible Takeru/Kotoha relationship in the future. Their stories mirror each other, and the narrator even says that she has feelings towards him after the Lord Butler episode.

The relationships amongst them are different than the ones from Samurai, which probably took one of the earlier episodes of Chiaki and Kotoha bonding after Kotoha pwns him, and used it for the rest of the watered down abortion of an adaptation.
 
I'm about to go on a spergy tirade… but the Power Rangers always meant so much to me. It was the first non-cartoon show I ever watched and loved, and every year the ongoing Saga kept getting better and better, and after what I thought was the abysmal Season 2 even back then, Season 3 comes in, with all its developments and serious moments.


Then, after waiting cliffhanger after cliffhanger (the arc where the new toys, er, Zords get introduced was in four parts, waiting every day back then was the longest forever) we finally got the new Zords, and I thought they were absolutely awesome. Then, the Megazord goes and straight out PUNCHES the villain to defeat him! No sword, just its PUNCHES. This was the same monster who tore the old Megazord to pieces, and this new one just punches him. It was pure retribution, and I was amazed back then. This is still among my top most memorable moments in this franchise.

You know, I actually don't watch Power Rangers regularly and haven't since about 2000. But still, the "Zordon Era" and now the Lost Galaxy era means a lot to me.
 
Same here. I hold it in part of a holy childhood trilogy alongside Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Digimon. Part of me thinks that's why Megaforce erks me more than any other bad season, it's trying (and failing) to be something that means a lot to me.

Well, that and Megaforce is uninspired, sexist, boring and a little insulting to kids.

And what I came here to post today:
Shout! Factory has announced an American release for Zyuranger. Repeat, official Zyuranger DVDs are coming to America.

Here's hoping for Kyoryuger, Dekaranger, and Shinkenger releases in the future.
 
Last edited:
:surprised: I……. :heart-full:

THAT IS AWESOME!

It was done with Voltron's Japanese show, so it never was out of the question!
 
What I think really made Gai so memorable was that his actor, Toshihide Wakamatsu just had a certain screen presence that Kotaro Tanaka lacked when he played Ryu. When I watched Jetman, I could never really get invested in Ryu's episodes because Tanaka was just so...meh...even when he was screaming in agony he sounded like he was straining. His character was good but he didn't have the actor to carry it. Gai mostly did things that made him look edgy like playing pool or riding a motorcycle. But Wakamatsu just brought so much more to the role. Like when Gai of all people was trying to make Ryu get his shit together, I could see emotion in his performance. Nothing Oscar-worthy, but enough that I could legitimately get invested in the character. If there is one flipside to killing off Gai at the end of the series, it was the awesome Jetman tribute episode in Gokaiger where he showed us he was still just every bit as awesome in the afterlife as he was in life.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom