2011 Super Sentai - Rumor Thread

[Blade Dancer]

By the way, I co-sign Lynxara's suggestion of having a Robotic Sentai team.

ROBOTIC SENSHI FTW!!!! :buttrock:

So I take it you aren't one of the ones she would be afraid of getting lynched by if it ever came to pass? :laugh:

 

[Sage Shinigami]

Yeah, the only robots I've seen the team really care about lately have been the "little monster" types like the original five Origami or the Go-on machines or the Miracle Headders-- the ones that have personalities.

I'm okay with this as long as the mecha don't start talking. Jesus hell, I hate it when that happens because Toei pretty much ends up writing the robot like a Digimon, and that's such an off dynamic for Super Sentai.

This is pretty much one of the two things that keeps me from getting into Abaranger, I just detest everything about the robots.

I believe I'm firmly in the minority here when I say I LOVE talking mecha. In fact...I'm kinda annoyed when fantasy series have sentient robots/animals but they DON'T talk. This stuff bugs me:

Mecha: *indeterminable animal sound*

Senshi: "You say *insert translation for audience here*?"

Vomit.

I'd love to have a season with talking vehicles. (Go-Onger doesn't count.)

 

[GWolf]

I enjoyed the mecha in Abarangers. They were actual characters, so much better then the portrayal in Dino Thunder...yes, the episode where the Triceratops is turned into a human is weird, but still.

 

[Kamen Rider Rage]

when do the new Sentai news start coming?:disappoin

 

[GoukaiRed]

when do the new Sentai news start coming?:disappoin

I wonder too!

 

[garfield15]

I believe I'm firmly in the minority here when I say I LOVE talking mecha. In fact...I'm kinda annoyed when fantasy series have sentient robots/animals but they DON'T talk. This stuff bugs me:

Mecha: *indeterminable animal sound*

Senshi: "You say *insert translation for audience here*?"

Vomit.

You mean like Gaoranger? (Or was that just Wild Force?)

Yeah, the Bakuryuu in Abaranger were really awesome and I thought they were tons of fun. I'd like something like that again.

 

[Lynxara]

Having someone translate for the robots is cheesy and dumb, yes. I like it better when a sentient or quasi-sentient robot has ways of making its feelings known without need for a translator, generally through its actions. This means that thought has to go into the robot's body language.

I think once you give the robot a voice, you've sort of broken the idea that it's even a metaphorical vehicle and get into questions like "Why does it even need to be piloted?" and "Why isn't it just the star of the show, why do we have lead human characters at all?"

I call this "the Transformers paradox" since generally in Transformers, the robots really are just the main characters. I believe wanting to avoid the Transformers paradox is why very few anime mecha shows will let the robots communicate directly with the pilots or audience.

The main non-TF franchise that did this was the Takara's Yuusha franchise, where the talking robot tended to be presented as main character and the humans as its sidekicks. The few Yuusha shows that try to make the human more important than just a mascot treat him directly as a superhero that acts as the Robin to the robot's Batman.

There are a lot of shows that will allow indirect communication (not through a translator, but through facial expressions or the robot occasionally taking an action in emergencies) and a lot of shows that just treat the robots like vehicles, but otherwise the robot is left silent to make sure the pilots still have agency. Plot stuff happens when the human decides it is.

This doesn't work too well in Super Sentai, where a core aspect of the formula asks us to identify with the five lead humans as the main characters. They really need to have most of the plot agency. So if you give the robots full sentience-- either you're letting them have too much agency, or it feels arbitrary that they still behave like conventional robots and need pilots instead of being properly alive.

It's possible Super Sentai will eventually cook up a way to do the Digimon-like robots that works, but I think the series would need to dramatically change some of its structural elements to get there. I'd really rather just see teams stick to traditional non-sentient vehicle robots or quasi-sentient "silent friend" type of robots. (I find "silent friend" robots more emotionally affecting, anyway.)

 

[dukemon22]

I'm biased in my love of Abaranger; I openly admit that lol, but everything else you said I agree with.

Except that; both in the case of Aba and Go-onger, the rangers were needed for the gattai.

And if you want to be technical, the humans were the partners in Go-onger, not the other way around.

What I mean is, this loophole in the logic leaves a place for the rangers to take prominence, when the mecha are characters themselves.

 

[Lynxara]

What I mean is, this loophole in the logic leaves a place for the rangers to take prominence, when the mecha are characters themselves.

I find this "loophole" really unconvincing and uninteresting unless the show is just willing to admit that the robots are the main characters. If all you need the human for is to gattai? That human is not a protagonist, it's a helpful sidekick.

It just really clashes with the basics of the Super Sentai formula if the heroes are filling a role usually reserved for helpful sidekicks. I'm not saying it renders the show nonsensical or terrible, but it absolutely doesn't work for me. I don't think it even works as a way to approach mecha in Super Sentai's formula without some serious refinement.

(Actually, if I remember what Zyuranger did with Daizyujin correctly, I believe I liked how it handled working a clearly sentient robot into a Super Sentai plotline. It could talk to them but generally didn't and there was a strong, specific explanation that detailed precisely why Daizyujin and the rangers needed each other.)

 

[garfield15]

Digimon Sentai would be awesome!