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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.
 
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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.

Who, me? :) That seems a little uncalled for, don't you think?
And to think I was REALLY loving everything you had to say, but then you added in that last part...

I admit that sometimes I can be a bit abrasive, and I apologize for that. I can be a downright pessimistic so-&-so sometimes, and I probably need to do better. But I've never tried to kill a thread's activity, and if that's the impression you get from me, then I can assure you that you are reading/projecting too deeply into it.

Notice in my previous reply, I opened with a question: "What makes a tokusatsu opinion popular or unpopular?"
From the very beginning, I was encouraging further conversation. That's all I ever wanted. If I wanted to kill the activity here, I could have easily just said something like "There is no realistic way to measure this stuff, and this thread is a waste of time", but I didn't. And bringing up the lack of activity here was just me further illustrating that it's a little harder to collect an opinion census. I love this place! And I sincerely wish there were MORE people here! If I really thought less of this message board, I would have left a long time ago.
But hey, maybe you're right about something. Maybe delving into a related topic is still the same as going off-topic, maybe voicing my "unpopular opinion" completely null and voids my right to make social commentary about it completely, and I should therefore just shove it or save it for a new thread entirely. Which is completely fair; a perfectly legitimate point to make. I'll try and stay on topic from now on. On that note, should I go ahead delete my previous reply? The last thing I want to do is ruffle any feathers. ;)

(And just this once, I wish I could change my viewable username to "Samurai Bemoaner"...)
 
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Would like to change his avatar
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^ If that's the case, my bad. I thought it was unusual, because I remembered you'd as an affable guy from Japan Hero.
 
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^ If that's the case, my bad. I thought it was unusual, because I remembered you'd as an affable guy from Japan Hero.

We're cool, fam.
*On Google search for "affable" later...* Ah! Thanks (I'll be sure to remember that word for later). I'm glad I left a somewhat positive impression. :D I'll admit, I didn't always have positive things to say there, but I'm glad my best self was mostly on display.

And since we're going there...

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.)

[...]

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.

I don't think the topic starter specified English-speakers only or everyone in general, but I'll go with your logic for now. This speculation topic was made for English-speaking fans. :) Maybe it means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I'm always a little surprised what is or is not popular/recommended among Japanese fans.

I know, for a while, many Japanese people were talking about KakuRanger. To me, that's surprising. I would have assumed that, since ninjas are part of their culture, Japanese fans wouldn't care that much about a show about ninjas. But then again, Naruto also got really popular, so maybe it's about how the story/subject matter is handled, like you pointed out.

...Also, really? That's news to me. Decade's Amazon aside, I thought the acting in Blade was fine. I may need to go back and watch it again, but I didn't really take away any negative acting experiences. But I think I understand what you are trying to say. Even if we put cultural differences aside, taste is always subjective, and what people consider "good acting" will always change from person to person. Is that right, or am I reading too deeply into your message?

[...] The poster boy for bad fanservice has to be Koichi Sakamoto, who has a long history of creating unique (and often great) action scenes but then in recent years has begun insisting that every project he's directing includes an action girl wearing a tiny pair of shorts. He then spends the action scenes zooming the camera into close-ups of their thighs while they do high kicks - sometimes to the extent that you can't tell what is happening in the scene at all - just so he can leer at them. And yes, actress Mikie Hara did confirm in an interview that it's totally because he has a leg fetish and enough clout that nobody is willing to tell him to knock it off. The guy needs to get laid and stop spoiling his action scenes.

[...]

I suppose I can better understand the Decade hate now that I'm watching Zi-O and finding the way that it treats previous heroes to be really grating.

I agree that the actor for the AU Amazon was pretty weak, but I really liked how they managed to show this bleak situation where he's the last free man on the run in a world otherwise completely taken over by Shocker, trying in vain to find a way to save the brainwashed population. Plus the re-imagined 10-Faced Demon has to be one of the best re-designs of a villain ever.

Did Koichi Sakamoto direct "GIRLS IN TROUBLE - Space Squad: Episode Zero"? While I don't automatically agree with your stance on fan service in tokusatsu (I think it depends on how its done), I remember watching that prologue, and not liking it at all. The whole thing just gave me this creepy, uneasy feeling. It was a grind to finish; like I was watching someone's fetish turned into a sleazy horror movie with a superhero afterthought finale. I don't think that special even had any plot significance to the actual "Space Squad" movie.

Again, cannot agree enough with your views on Decade's Amazon. Everything else was great, but as an English-speaking fan from America, I really can't get over how lazy it sounds when he yells "A - ma - zon!". Just doesn't have that same wild oomph as the original.

Also, would you believe you're not the first to dislike Zi-O? I still stand by my opinion that it's one of the greatest Kamen Rider anniversary series so far, and that this is what Decade should have been. But I talked to a friend on DeviantArt recently; not only were they a big fan of Kamen Rider Decade, but they really didn't like how Zi-O was presenting the previous Riders.
 
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ToQger was not a well written show, but pretty much every other aspect of the production was really well done. In particular the music managed to make transformations and mech combinations seem awesome again, and the actor who played Akira (ToQ #6) was an MVP.
I thought the acting in Blade was fine. I may need to go back and watch it again, but I didn't really take away any negative acting experiences.
There's a longstanding rumour that Blade is a bit notorious amongst the Japanese fandom specifically for it's acting. The rumour goes that the directors of Blade encouraged the actors to speak as naturally as possible during their dialogue scenes, even if it meant that they didn't say their lines perfectly clearly. Supposedly they took this to the extent that the show got a reputation for it's "constantly mumbling" characters.
Did Koichi Sakamoto direct "GIRLS IN TROUBLE - Space Squad: Episode Zero"?
Oh you bet he did. He also did the Kyoryuger movie where the villain, DeathRyuger, had two female assistants whose names were derived from the Japanese words for "chest" and "legs". And the Fourze/Wizard crossover movie (Ultimatum?) where pretty much every big fight scene is an excuse to look at one of the female characters' legs.

To be fair, I made out in my last post as if he always does this and it isn't all the time by any means. For example he was one of the main directors on Ultraman Geed and while that show does indeed have a main character who is an action girl constantly wearing tiny pairs of shorts, I can't recall any point where the camera drools over her. So either he has some restraint or Tsuburaya can still rein him in.
Also, would you believe you're not the first to dislike Zi-O? I still stand by my opinion that it's one of the greatest Kamen Rider anniversary series so far, and that this is what Decade should have been.
Oh I got the impression that Zi-O generally went down about as well as a fart in a crowded elevator, at least until Decade showed up and dragged it in another direction.

But I guess that goes back to your point that it's difficult to tell which opinions are common and which aren't. For example, if I look at my twitter feed I might get the impression that general opinion on Kamen Rider Gaim has drastically fallen. Or it could just be that I follow Shougo and he's one of the only people still tweeting about that show after five years.
 
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Gaim has been a heaven sent at the time, because franchise was dying from the lack of the originality and that series was a breath of fresh air for both me and many other fans.
Nowdays we have more competent shows like Ex-Aid, Build and even Drive (which I dislike, but it does some things pretty well) doing Gaim's stick arguably better than Gaim itself, so people can evaluate it more critically.
Gaim is okay show. It does have great moments, sort of falls apart during Overlord arc, but doesn't really suffer from this much and ends up a solid character-driven show, not to mention one of the more different Urobuchi works.
This one deserves its popularity.
 
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Ultraman Max is overrated, I know a lot of people really enjoyed it and if you did more power to ya, even mention the show by name when somebody ask where they should start first, but it was the closest I ever came to hate watching something. It was mainly the comedic tone of the show that soured me on it. I mean when it did a serious episode it did it well, and as strange as it sound the one episode I actually like was the one with the giant round space cats, mainly because that's where I though all the cheesey stuff actually worked. Amd it's not like I don't enjoy slight comedic or lighthearted shows, I flew through Ultraman 80 and enjoyed Den-O, hell I grew up watching reruns of 60s Batman. It just that a lot of it felt forced to me.
 
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It just that a lot of it felt forced to me.

Don't sweat it. I completely understand where you're coming from, even though I never saw Max outside of the first one or two episodes.
Comedy, especially in higher abundances, has always been something that has left the fandom divided (at least the English speaking side of it, anyways). It kind of speaks to what I lightly mentioned about how hard it is to find majority opinions on stuff in Tokusatsu.

For example, AbaRanger was once infamous for not being enjoyed simply because the series had a bit more comedy in it. This was being said during a time where Chinese bootleg subs were the only subs available. If you examine other earlier Super Sentai, you will find there are plenty of shows that had comedic tones, but somehow AbaRanger was getting negatively critiqued for this. (Maybe because older shows from before the 2000's and some of the 90's don't count for some reason?) And yet, years later, the fans began to change their tune. I began to see more and more people saying AbaRanger was a good series. Even I saw it in full, and I enjoyed it. (Could this be because the series was finally subbed by Imagination Station, and therefore more readily available for people to watch and enjoy?)

And of course, it's also an interesting look into what each individual person wants. There are fans who just want an action-heavy series that takes itself "seriously" and don't want anything funny, optimistic, friendly, or encourages "the feels". EZ Rider, a toku reviewer with his own video series, completely hated Fourze simply because Friendship was a central theme and the heroes found other ways to win besides mindlessly killing enemies in the usual tokusatsu flair. However, I'm of a different mindset. I don't think tokusatsu needs to be dumbed down to these base elements. (I mean, for goodness sake, we have rainbow colored heroes in spandex. Relax!) If tokusatsu is ever to grow or to be taken seriously by the public, they need to allowed to explore different themes and different narative ideas. This means every once a while, we need to see things like a show where Friendship = Power, fruit themed samurai warriors, doctors who are gamers, and so on (and yes, I loved all those shows). Not every show or story might pull it off perfectly, but even if they don't, it's a good learning curve at least. It helps make "better" shows in the future. And if comedy is subjective, then different expressions of said comedy will hopefully connect with someone.
 
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EZ Rider, a toku reviewer with his own video series, completely hated Fourze simply because Friendship was a central theme and the heroes found other ways to win besides mindlessly killing enemies in the usual tokusatsu flair.
Not killing enemies is pretty common tokusatsu theme. It's usually made for kids after all, so plenty of creators took a more kid-friendly approach. Good example are early (and well... recent) Ultraman shows, where many monsters often weren't really evil (being simple animals and all), Ultraman let plenty go and even helped some. Or Carranger where almost ever villian ended up good in the end.
Accusing Fourze of this is weird to say the least, not to mention show had plenty of much bigger issues.
 
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far as toku songs are concerned, I take Project DMM over Rider Chips any day (and I'm more of rock fan). It's just that I find DMM Ultra songs to actually feel like songs that fit the genre while I find many of Chips songs to be just generic rock songs in my opinion
 
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