HJU is almost ten years old...

[Shougo B'Stard]

And I never thought the place would get this quiet. It's depressing. It kind of reminds me of Japan Hero's final days where there would only be a couple of new responses per day, usually just about whatever oh-so-wonderful Kamen Rider was airing.

 

[145zzz]

Couldn't agree more.
I usually lurk nowadays, but I do come here often to read what people post and I enjoyed it for the most part.
But now there's really nothing to see or do since it's so quiet, which sucks since this was like THE place for talking about toku and other related stuff.
I guess I should start posting again to try to help since sitting here doing nothing won't.

 

[Kivat]

Usually I'm at school so I'd miss a million things here, then when the holidays came round I'd be able to come back home and join the party. This place, right now, is not the holiday party it once was. Now it's like I missed nothing.

But hey, if you're busy you're busy.

 

[big_j_ny]

I think a lot of the CORE MEMBERS that were highly active on the forum have now got some higher priorities in their actual lives right now, and as you can see it has affected the morale of the forum as whole.

In comparison, it is actually like Shougo says.............it is damn near as identical to how Japan Hero was towards its final days

 

[145zzz]

I think it's also due to the lack of any interest in the current shows.
No one really bothers to make any ep discussion thread for Drive or ToQ, and even when someone does, there's not much going on in them.
When Gaim was on the air, this place was pretty active, even if most of the activity came from Gaim related threads.
Hopefully Ninninger revives some kind of interest and make this place a bit more active.

 

[Milky Rose]

I would agree. While, admittedly, I don't post often, I do post in the ToQger threads. Man, those threads could barely get past the 1st page, whereas the Gaim threads, and I think even the Drive episode threads, go on for pages.

 

[big_j_ny]

I think it's also due to the lack of any interest in the current shows.
No one really bothers to make any ep discussion thread for Drive or ToQ, and even when someone does, there's not much going on in them.
When Gaim was on the air, this place was pretty active, even if most of the activity came from Gaim related threads.
Hopefully Ninninger revives some kind of interest and make this place a bit more active.

I do think that relates, but you have to remember the forum was slowing down even when the last couple of GARO shows were airing. And as I recall, GARO shows always has high interest from most members of this forum (even when it does air some mediocre seasons).

But another thing we need to keep in mind too, the online toku fandom has evolved very rapidly within the last 5-7 years or so.

Remember that about 6-7 years ago, HJU and Japan Hero were basically one of the only "non-Power Rangers centric" tokusatsu communities on the internet (Rangerboard doesn't count, as I specified in my quotation marks). When Japan Hero started to lose its steam, HJU started gaining steam due to the toku fandom still being very small in comparison to the other online otaku fandoms.

Flash-forward to about a 2-3 of years ago, sites such TokuNation started being created as the alternative to HJU. Of course, we also had the rise of "groups" in Facebook which basically served as another alternate medium for online fandoms to interact with one another.

So once you combine the fact that CORE MEMBERS HAVE BECOME BUSY WITH THEIR REAL LIVES and the fact that there are now alternate ways for members of the Toku online community to interact with one another outside of the HJU forums, it has basically culminated to where we are today.

In summary, the toku fandom has just grown too much for even HJU to keep up with now.

HJU is no longer the "go-to place" for the Toku fandom to interact with each other as it was years ago

 

[FreedomR8G6B1]

Unless Steve Wang announces that he's adapting Kabuto or Faiz or he's doing Guyver III as a SyFy Original Movie...HJU will be in silent mode


Unless Den-O returns at a climax to annoy Keith

 

[Toku Prime]

I don't think it's as simple as people not liking the current shows. IIRC Garo season three and Kyoryuger received fairly mixed reactions but people would still post to discuss the aspects that they didn't like. Gaim bucked the trend of declining conversation and kept it at similar levels to Wizard (and probably Fourze, although we didn't do episode-specific threads back then so it's difficult to compare) but Drive has joined the rest.

When I first got into toku in 2010 it seemed that most of the English-speaking fandom were Power Rangers fans who had discovered toku after RPM finished and it seemed that the show had ended. I vaguely recall that in some podcast Lynxara mentioned that statistically most people will be a part of a specific fandom for around 5 years. If that's accurate and RPM ended in 2009(?) then maybe that wave or 'generation' of fan have started to move onto other things?

Of course even with a fandom as tiny as toku's (and let's not kid ourselves, we're still a miniscule fandom) there will always be more people coming along and getting into it. But a forum on it's own doesn't attract people to your corner of the internet - you need content. What with one thing and another, 2014 seemed like a quieter year for site content. HJU Radio was as enjoyable as ever, but there were only 5 episodes compared to 2013 where there were 12 plus a large number of specials. A lot of HJU's "big name" content creators went quiet too whether due to jobs, house moves, babies etc or because they were amongst the number that jumped ship to The Tokusatsu Network (and while I wish them every success I can't help but feel a liiittle bit like they've "broken the band up" - my hopes for an eventual Girls in Trouble reunion seem forever dashed :disappoin).

Of course the one thing that I don't doubt is Keith's passion for his subject and the site. I have faith that our captain will steer our (gokai) galleon through any waters and we'll be able to enjoy ourselves for a long time yet. atriotic:

Unless Den-O returns at a climax to annoy Keith

Well Zeronos is back in the next Taisen film :sweat:

 

[Khaiden]

Many forums around the internet have had reduced activity due to the rise of social media. Those that are still active tend to mimic social media in that you see posts have only a few words. Fewer than the ones in this very post.

News & rumor threads are still very active, though... when there are news, of course.