Would like to change his avatar
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- Mar 3, 2005
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No offense to rangergod or anyone that makes topics like this, but what makes a tokusatsu opinion popular or unpopular? It's kind of hard to say when the fandom pool is so small; especially here.
You'd have better luck measuring which Power Rangers seasons are the most popular. For the stuff from Japan, unless you know how most Japanese fans feel, it's kind of hard to tell which seasons of Super Sentai/Kamen Rider/Ultraman/etc. are popular or not. Seems like for everyone praising one show, there is just as many people who didn't care for it. Heck, there's more people talking about it on YouTube and other places than message boards like this.
Not to mention, even with the absolute best fansubs or official subtitles, you still lose something in translation. Unless you understand the Japanese cultural perspective, it's kind of hard to know what counts as good acting or not if all you have is a western idea of good acting. It's hard to tell what counts as a good story if different things connect with audiences from different nationalities. Nuances in performances and get lost. Etc.
Unpopular opinions among the English-speaking fandom is what the topic's about; nobody's trying to guess the thoughts of every fan in the world. (Although, if you spend time at any Japanese forum, you get an idea. And since the English speaking fandom consists of people from all over the world, you can gauge what might be an unpopular opinion within another country's fandom. Like: as Changeman Ambassador, I've talked to quite a few Brazilian fans. Changeman was HUGE in Brazil. But I remember a Brazilian poster here who didn't like it; that would be an unpopular opinion.)
Anyway, this place might be on life support, but it's not the only place out there, and the English-speaking toku fandom might be even bigger than when this place started. Social media's a shitty substitute for forums, but that's where most of the activity is. Even then, there's still other forums, sites, there's YouTube, as you mentioned. It's not hard to figure out what's popular to the English speaking fans, and whether or not there's enough consensus on what makes an unpopular opinion.
Like? The English speaking fandom WORSHIPS Kamen Rider Gaim. Worships it. But I think Kamen Rider Gaim is a really silly piece of stupid that had a couple of good ideas that it was afraid to take too seriously, so we got a really dumb show that was basically like if Katy Perry tried to write Ryuki.
Similarly, not many people in the fandom like Kamen Rider Wizard, so it would be an unpopular opinion to be like "You know what? That show was formulaic, but it entertained me, so I like Wizard and don't think it deserves the criticism when it's no different than most of the other two-episode act Heisei Rider shows."
Similarly, it doesn't take years of studying at the Actors Studio to tell when an actor stinks. I mean, it might help if you're into acting, and you can REALLY tell, when it might not be apparent to everyone else, but...the really bad ones are noticed by everyone, and tend to be the ones who are even made fun of by Japanese fans. (For example: the cast of Blade or, as already been pointed out in this thread, that terrible, terrible guy who played Fake Amazon in Decade.)
Now storytelling, yeah, that can be a little harder to tell, because the Japanese enjoy a certain style and prefer things like unhappy endings.
And for someone who bemoans the lack of activity around here, this is at least the second time I've seen you come in and complain and try to kill an active thread! And you already posted an unpopular opinion, so it's too late to complain.