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It seems to me that in the last few years Toei has been taking a little more notice of their older peripheral audience. Obviously, we've had the "retro" craze ever since Kamen Rider Decade began, which is still going strong in the Rider franchise, with barely a film going by that doesn't include at least one past Rider or a re-imagined version of characters from another old Ishinomori toku show. Sentai caught the nostalgia bug too with Gokaiger, which culminated in the 'Gokaiger vs Gavan' movie, which seemed to pleasantly surprise Toei by becoming the highest-grossing 'Vs. Series' film, despite the usual target audience for Sentai being far too young to really have any knowledge of the Metal Hero franchise.

Then in 2012 we got a trio of projects which IMO had at least one eye on an older audience: Go-Busters, Akibaranger, and the Gavan movie. Of those, only Akibaranger really seems to have been deemed a success, and it's the only one that didn't even try to be a "mainstream" toku, even actively discouraging a child audience ("good kids shouldn't watch this", etc). The comments about Go-Busters being "too dark" seem to suggest that someone at Toei and/or Bandai seems to think that not concentrating solely on their core audience has had a commercial impact, and Kyoryuger seems to be a definitive re-focusing of Sentai on it's child audience. While Toei hasn't given up on the Metal Hero franchise yet, it seems less likely that we'll get another film or a TV show.

One of the opinions that seems to be the most commonly voiced in these forums is for the Kamen Rider franchise to return to the kind of tone it had when it was initially brought back at the turn of the century, which (at least here on HJU) seems to have more appeal to the older fans. Personally I doubt it's really in the cards right now, as the franchise seems to suffer from a lack of ambition at the moment. But let's suppose for now that it was one of the proposals put before Toei for the next series following Wizard. My question is, has the performance of Go-Busters (and possibly Gavan) harmed the chances of that happening? Do you think their lower commercial success has dissuaded Toei from trying something similar with Kamen Rider, at least for the next few years?
 
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I liked him when he wasn't a god
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As I understand it, a number of older Japanese fans did not like Go-Busters trying to take itself too seriously; they complained that Sentai is supposed to be for kids. They like it that way, unlike western audiences who generally expect everything to be "dark" and "mature." Sentai is aimed at a younger audience than Kamen Rider, but since Kamen Rider is still for kids, I don't think Toei will try to inject too much "adult appeal" any time soon.

The converse of that is that Fourze, a show obviously designed to appeal to kids, has the lowest Rider ratings of all time (but good sales.) Also Gavan's problems include its dated look and it having been off the air for so long; kids don't know it outside of Gokaiger and older viewers are likely to have nostalgia goggles for the original. That's why I always side-eye the suggestion that Sentai "take a break" to revive its fortunes. It would need at least ten years to see a significant change in the pool of available staff and writers and by that time, after a generation had grown up without it, I don't think it would make a successful comeback (Kamen Rider is an older and more prestigious franchise and could make that return. I doubt Sentai could.)
 
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Dr Kain

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Go-Busters was awful because the characters were bland, the story barely ever moved an inch, the Buddy Roids were poinless (and terrible ideas), and the rangers never really did anything. What happened to the spy motive? That disappeared after the third episode.

The only thing I want from a Kamen Rider series is a bigger focus on Foundation X in the next show. In fact, I want them to be the main villains.
 
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As I understand it, a number of older Japanese fans did not like Go-Busters trying to take itself too seriously; they complained that Sentai is supposed to be for kids.

Did anybody check out the Japanese forums to know if this is really the case, or is it a load of bull from Toei in order to excuse the stupidity of Kyoryuger?
 
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Did anybody check out the Japanese forums to know if this is really the case, or is it a load of bull from Toei in order to excuse the stupidity of Kyoryuger?

That always sounded to me like a lame, pseudo-sophisticated excuse by fans of Go-Busters trying to justify why that (terrible) series has done bad.
 
Eenymeenyminymo
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Often times I think all the complaints I read here are loads of bull from foreign pseudo-fans. I know that the children loved Gobusters and are deeply delighted by Kyoryuger. Recently, a number of people have finally gotten good access to the late 80s early 90s Sentai, and seem to go into shock at the tremendous difference between those and many of the shows after. Another friend told me that the big problem is Bandai demanding that story-lines produce sales. That's how Hibiki went from exotic and cool to same-ol'-same-ol'.

Again, their best market is the children because adults have these mysterious things called limited incomes. Adults can buy things for their children that they will not buy, because of budgets, for themselves. However, many of these adult fans don't have children... see?
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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Did anybody check out the Japanese forums to know if this is really the case, or is it a load of bull from Toei in order to excuse the stupidity of Kyoryuger?

I believe Lynxara did:

It's hard to say. Where I find the notion interesting is in light of some things I've learned lately about how the Japanese fandom feels about Go-Busters. In complaints about the show on Japanese forums, there's a very passionate outpouring of the idea that Sentai should be for children, and Go-Busters is flawed/wrong/bad because it was clearly made with an older audience in mind. Really high home video sales would, in my opinion, explain where this perception that Go-Busters abandoned children in favor of collectors was coming from, and why Japanese fans were so very angry about it. (Frankly, this could also explain why Kyoryuger is such an intentionally, aggressively juvenile series.)
 
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