Lynxara
Nice post!!
Well, there's more than one type of writer. For some of these guys, I just don't think I'm familiar enough with their work to say anything of substance. For the ones where I feel like I can venture an opinion...
Noboru Sugimura doesn't really write in the "big idea" or "process" style. His shows are never about making big statements or attempting to create the illusion of a consistent world. Sugimura's work I feel is on a surface level about eliciting strong emotions from his audience, which is why I think he always presents a work's details in a way that he thinks is most appropriate to his target audience. If he's writing for children, you get stuff like Zyuranger and Dairanger. His video games targeted older audiences and resulted in his extensive contributions to the Resident Evil series. (Sugimura is the creator of the characters Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, Leon S. Kennedy, and he wrote the games Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica, among many others.)
Sugimura I think is very distinct among tokusatsu writers in that he has a strong interest in surrealism. You really see this taken to the hilt in his video game works, while his tokusatsu work tended to make his scripts into springboards for extremely memorable, reality-shattering effects sequences. Sugimura had a clear interest in encouraging his audience, whether young or old, to question reality and understand the world around them in more imaginative and less literal ways. Tokusatsu fans tend to approach narratives from a literal perspective, and so I think Sugimura's work in tokusatsu is currently under-appreciated. Zyuranger is no logical superhero story, but it's an absolutely fantastic fusion of surrealism and superheroes. Dairanger I think actually suffers from having too many normal episodes that obey the rules of conventional logic, rather than the dream logic that Sugimura excels at manipulating.
Yoshio Urasawa's style is primarily comedic, as one would expect from a guy who cut his teeth on Fushigi Comedy and the weirder Metal Heroes. Comedy is a fundamentally subversive act, inviting audiences to invert their values and expectations in surprising or cruel ways. In Urasawa's shows, this comes through as a tendency to ground the heroes' adventures in social commentary. Poitrine and Carranger are at their best when they lampoon the social obsessions of the day, and point out the absurdity of people's behavior in day-to-day life. You also see this in Urasawa's contributions to Gokaiger and what I've seen of Abaranger. His grounding in comedy I think can make his work unpalatable to people who want their fictional heroism to be straight-faced and sincere, as Urasawa's heroes often defy conventional ideas of what sort of people can be considered heroic.
I have a hard time pinning down Kobayashi's style. She writes strong dialogue, whether she's going for humor or a drier style like Go-Busters's. She has a clear interest in grounding her superhero shows in character, and the plots of her shows are often grounded in a certain character arc that the protagonist(s) must go through to be better people. She's very good about not rehashing her old ideas, and most of her shows are conceptually or stylistically distinct from each other. Her villains are far from stereotypical for tokusatsu, but sometimes stray too far afield for their own good. Otherwise, her style is conventional, and her plots are nothing too unexpected. I don't think I would consider her one of the medium's greatest writers, since she doesn't really try to invest her shows with much of substance beyond memorable characters. She's not as funny as Urasawa, as poignant as Inoue, as disciplined as Arakawa, or generally as memorable as Sugimura.
Takatera as producer works solidly in a "process" style similar to Arakawa. He devises his core themes, then tries to build his shows as plausible little worlds that express those core themes. He clearly likes to do a lot of location shooting so the worlds of his shows feel big and convincing, rather than the miniature dioramas that usually contain tokusatsu stories. Takatera is very gifted and his best shows really push the boundaries of what can be done with a given tokusatsu's genre. Some shows, like Hibiki, suffer from perhaps pushing a given franchise's boundaries too far. He is also prone to disastrous acts of self-indulgence, similar to Inoue.
Utsunomiya cares nothing for settings or big ideas. Utsunomiya is a producer all about style. His shows are clearly all about reinforcing a certain feel, first and foremost, one that appeals enough to audiences to get them tuning in even when nothing in the show is really happening. His protagonists are cool and self-confident, and defeat their opponents with authority. His villains are fearsome opponents of humanity, who would be terrifying if the heroes weren't quite so strong. Utsunomiya isn't afraid to add silly or comedic elements to a show to humanize his heroes, but seems to feel that at the end of the day a superhero show should be melodrama first and foremost. While the style of Utsunomiya's shows is pleasing, I wonder if it's really a priority for him to make his shows really about anything yet. There's something superficial in his shows that could easily make them feel forgettable, save when the writer he's working with is making sure to invest the heroics with meaning.
