Funny, I think that shows like OOO and Fourze target "3-5 year olds".
I am reasonably sure that Rider's target age range is a bit higher than Sentai's, just judging from the toys. I'd guess that Rider is more of a 6-11 show and be surprised if a producer said otherwise. Rider is also a lot more conscientious about including elements to appeal to its significant adult secondary demographics (toy collectors and housewives, respectively).
So it's not just children who didn't like those shows ...
We have absolutely no proof yet that Go-Busters does especially poorly with children. We just know that the standard ratings are low. We won't be able to say for sure that Kids aren't into Go-Busters until we get demographic breakdowns of the ratings.
3-5 years old? In other words, SS is aimed at an audience younger than PR, which is 6-11?
The toys absolutely are, which I imagine is why the PR line tends to reuse very little of the Japanese toy line these days. The actual writing of the shows, is... well, aspects of it are clearly hammering the 3-5 demographic, but there's a lot of things in the typical modern Sentai that would simply go over the target audience's heads.
I would guess Sentai can get away with this because it's a bit of a national institution, and a certain segment of adult viewers will always be curious about what the show's doing that year. That seems to be the segment of viewers that gets really excited by stuff like Shinkenger and Gokaiger, but tunes out of more kiddie or idol-oriented series.
You can't really pull a Kuuga on a franchise like Sentai.
People said that about Kamen Rider before Kuuga was made, too. Never say never. The right producer with the right creative staff and the right timing could probably get away with it.
I think at this point, it's time that we just let Tsukada stick to being the head producer for the "Kamen Rider Movie War" series........since it's clear he's the only head producer right now that can connect all of the post-W Rider series together into a crossover movie in perfect harmony.
I think it's more that Tsukada is the only producer thus far who really gives a **** about doing it. W makes it very clear that Tsukada felt Heisei Rider had strayed a bit too far from the franchise's roots, and goes out of his way to reintroduce many discarded Showa tropes (mooks, persistent worldsetting, multiple villain factions).
Takebe was a veteran of the "all movies are AUs" days and clearly just didn't care that much about what went on in them. As for Utsunomiya... well, who knows what his approach would be? I imagine it will be more along the lines of Tsukada's, though, judging from the nigh-obsessive use of continuity details in Gokaiger.
Tsukada is starting to fall into the same trap as Shirakura himself fell into with the previous 10 Heisei Rider shows where his producing style is starting to grow stale with the audience.......which it is clearly being shown with Fourze in its re-use of the "W formula."
I dunno. To be in Shirakura's ballpark, Tsukada would have to make the same show six or seven times, despite persistent diminishing returns. I would he's a bit cannier than that, and if he gets a third Rider series under his belt, he actually changes up the formula a bit more. Granted, I would also be just fine with Tsukada leaving the Rider franchise to work on Sentai after Fourze.
And the same can go for Riku Sanjo, Hasegawa and Nakashima.........it appears their writing styles for Fourze is starting to grow bland after they've rehashed previous concepts from W.
I don't think Nakashima is the problem... well, not directly, anyway. I think Nakashima's episodes generally do a good job of showing how Fourze has a very different feel and tone than W, for all that its plot skeleton is quite similar. I think the problem is that Nakashima has written rather fewer episodes of the show than one would expect. Sanjo and to a lesser extent Hasegawa's episodes do tend to feel rehashy, probably because they've already done their take on Tsukada's pet tropes.
At this point, those 3 writers will become the new Inoue and Yonemura in a sense that they're writing styles will become very bland, uninteresting for the audience to want to be inspired to watch.
I dunno. Again, to be in Inoue's ballpark, they would have to write basically the same plots about five times. I think Fourze would be much better off if Nakashima was writing more of the series, so I feel like Toei knows not to just blatantly make the same show over and over again now. I suspect Fourze's real problem is that Nakashima couldn't keep up with a year-long weekly schedule, and so more of the show than is desirable was written by Sanjo and Hasegawa.
