Jetman vs Abaranger = Inoue vs Arakawa

[live jetabare]

I like Arakawa, of course, but even in my favorite shows of his, there will be patches of the show that I have problems with.

Even Kuuga?

One big weakness of Arakawa's works, IMO, is that he's crap at writing villains, or just not interested in writing for them, because they're a weak link throughout all of his shows. (And this is why I was the only Gokaiger viewer not surprised that the Zangyaku sucked.)

So, Destruction Messenger Jannu, Dezumozorya, Abarekiller, Agent Abrella and Basco ta Jolokia are crappy villains? And they're very important villains in their respective series. And how about the Grongi in Kuuga?

 

[Guardian07]

This is just my own opinion of the two, without seeing all of their work or reading any interview of them. Particularly, I had not watch Abaranger yet.

Lynx worded it better, but I'll say it anyway. Inoue loved big ideas, themes, and is some sort of a genius when he wants or cares to be. His style is writing a story around an idea or a theme, and his characters and their situations are constructed to fit certain roles and devices he needs to "tell" the idea(hence the multitudes of "unexpected situations", "contrived coincidences" and "characters accidentally overhearing stuff they're not supposed to"). Executed well enough, and you get something like Jetman and Agito. Executed poorly...and you get The Next, Kiva, 555 etc, where the ideas and themes were cool and was conveyed(kinda) but are just...badly written and sometimes just felt slap-dashed together. I do think someone needs to "keep an eye on him" and not just gave him free rein. Really, he can do good work, the Gokaiger tribute proved that. I think he needs to put more effort like he did in the episode.

I just love Arakawa as a storyteller. He doesn't "go for the big guns" and cared more about just writing good narratives that conveyed what they're supposed to, even if it's more "low-key". As a result, even his lesser scripts are just good, tight stories and his best stuff basically award-winning material. He had this way with characterization that I really love and can't coherently describe.

Inoue's stuff tend to be a lot more fun and have a lot of "big", sophisticated" ideas that appeals to me, but Arakawa is a better storyteller who doesn't depend on wowing the audience with "deep" and "fun" ideas, and when he writes stories with deep meanings and concepts, they do the ideas justice and made a stronger impact.

 

[RicardoCerdeira]

Huh, that's an interesting comparison. Will you be willing to go into more detail about why?

Well, Arakawa is a fan of Uehara´s work - he interviewed Uehara to Uchusen Magazine when the series "The Return of Ultraman" (written by Uehara) was released in DVD.

Gokaiger and principally Dekaranger had many elements of Uehara´s "cosmic series" (Return of Ultraman, Silver Kamen, Denziman, Uchuu Keiji Trilogy, Juspion and Spielban).

 

[live jetabare]

Gokaiger and principally Dekaranger had many elements of Uehara´s "cosmic series" (Return of Ultraman, Silver Kamen, Denziman, Uchuu Keiji Trilogy, Juspion and Spielban).

And those are?

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

Even Kuuga?

Kuuga, more than his other shows, really hits spots that lose momentum for me. I still really like that show, but when I'm rewatching it, there's episodes that really don't hold up to multiple viewings and I find are really difficult to get through. (It's a bummer when you hit episodes devoted to sad-sack Kanzaki or the sad-sack artist who wants to be a Grongi or Godai's dead-eyed sister.)

So, Destruction Messenger Jannu, Dezumozorya, Abarekiller, Agent Abrella and Basco ta Jolokia are crappy villains? And they're very important villains in their respective series. And how about the Grongi in Kuuga?

They're not my favorites. I mean, I liked Jannu and Gileton, but I think Dezumozoria's a bit of a disappointment; I have a huge problem with Abare Killer (he's one-note when villainous and ridiculously worshipped by the heroes when he begins to "turn good"); Aburera is often considered one of Dekaranger's weaknesses because of the way he'd come and go -- he's basically like trying to make Pierre the only villain of GoGoFive; and Basco only looked good to viewers in comparison to how bad the other Zangyaku were. (He's too cutesy of a villain for me, the male equivalent of Furabijo or Kaze no Shizuka. Basco was pretty much Komura's thing, anyway, she did most of his episodes.)

The Grongi, I always liked how they started out. They were appropriately mysterious and the show started to seem like it was building up to something with them and Arakawa just ends up doing nothing with them. He runs out of gimmicks for them and they start seeming generic. Some of the Grongi overstay their welcome (the Bat) while some are dealt with ridiculously (the super anti-climactic way the Rose is written off; the final guy's being treated like an afterthought). It's hard to even count the Grongi when they're handled as just glorified monsters of the week, but the "main" ones that stick throughout chunks of the series are still just sidelined.

Arakawa's too wishy-washy with his villains. If they're not goofy, they're toothless.

 

[live jetabare]

Arakawa's too wishy-washy with his villains. If they're not goofy, they're toothless.

Er; question; is that Arakawa, or rather the sentai era during which he's been a main writer? Are there some post-GogoV sentai villains you've been able to enjoy (besides Jannu and Gileton that you've already mentioned in your post) ?
Besides,in Dekaranger, the show decided to put more focus on individual Monsters of the Week, which are fleshed characters, when in most sentai series, the MOTW are mostly tools used by the main villains.
And how about the villains in Agito, Faiz and Kiva ( notably the Lords in Agito)? Don't you feel that in Agito, the Lords have the same problem the Grongi had in Kuuga?

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

Er; question; is that Arakawa, or rather the sentai era during which he's been a main writer?

I'm going to say that I think it's Arakawa. Because even when he was a secondary writer on older shows, he focused more on showcasing comedic villains (his 3 Idiots arc in Dairanger) or he'd just ignore the regular villains altogether (like he does in a majority of his Jetman episodes in favor of dumb stuff like Dryer Jigen).

Are there some post-GogoV sentai villains you've been able to enjoy (besides Jannu and Gileton that you've already mentioned in your post) ?

You know that a lot of the problems I have with modern villains is that I like the actor villains and not the suits. There's still villains I like, though, like Long in Gekiranger and Takeshi Asakura...

Don't you feel that in Agito, the Lords have the same problem the Grongi had in Kuuga?

I think the Grongi needed to be a stronger force because every other human character in Kuuga is unbelievably sunny and nobody has a problem with anybody in that show. Kuuga started the trend of setting aside a regular group of villains in favor of monster of the week types, but I think Agito made up for doing something similar with the Unknown by at least having other obstacles for the heroes, like antagonists on the human side. There's nobody like Houjou or Kino or troublemakers from the Akatsuki in Kuuga. (Agito also made good use out of being the first series with more than one Rider, having them spend half the series as misunderstood opponents.) So I thought that helped make things more interesting in Agito. Subsequent shows tried their damnedest to always recreate Agito, but were lazy about it and didn't have the intricate planning Agito did, so they take that concept and fumble it and you get annoyances like Kusaka or Mutsuki, who are shoehorned into their shows and are just devices and not written in in any natural or rational way.

It's obvious Kuuga's whole thing was taking a realistic approach to kaijin attacks and how it effects the community, so you're not going to get scenes where they're like "Mwa-ha-ha, soon Tokyo will be ours," but that doesn't mean you just shove the villains into the background. (Although I always thought for how realistic the show wanted to be, they needed to hire way better actors for the Grongi instead of the hams and ex-wrestlers they did.) The Grongi are preferable to, like, the Worms or Undead IMO, but they really stick out as not meeting their potential, not having their mysteries solved, and I just think it's because of how Arakawa doesn't seem to care about writing villains.

 

[live jetabare]

I'm going to say that I think it's Arakawa. Because even when he was a secondary writer on older shows, he focused more on showcasing comedic villains (his 3 Idiots arc in Dairanger) or he'd just ignore the regular villains altogether (like he does in a majority of his Jetman episodes in favor of dumb stuff like Dryer Jigen).

Not always true; in Jetman, Arakawa has written episodes 34 and 39 who had a big focus on Grey; in Dairanger, Arakawa has written episodes 19 and 20 which are included into the Akomaru story arc; episode 33 with the Red Mask Gorma; and episodes 47 and 48 which were key plot episodes, the latter having a big focus on Shadam; and in Megaranger, Arakawa has written episode 11 which had a big focus on Shibolena, and episode 51, the final episode, which had a big focus on Dr Hinelar.

You know that a lot of the problems I have with modern villains is that I like the actor villains and not the suits. There's still villains I like, though, like Long in Gekiranger and Takeshi Asakura...

Asakura is a Kamen Rider Ryuki villain

I think the Grongi needed to be a stronger force because every other human character in Kuuga is unbelievably sunny and nobody has a problem with anybody in that show. Kuuga started the trend of setting aside a regular group of villains in favor of monster of the week types, but I think Agito made up for doing something similar with the Unknown by at least having other obstacles for the heroes, like antagonists on the human side. There's nobody like Houjou or Kino or troublemakers from the Akatsuki in Kuuga. (Agito also made good use out of being the first series with more than one Rider, having them spend half the series as misunderstood opponents.) So I thought that helped make things more interesting in Agito.

Nice point about Agito

 

[Lynxara]

Er; question; is that Arakawa, or rather the sentai era during which he's been a main writer?

I'm not sure this is really a fair question. Modern Sentai is what it is in large part due to others choosing to imitate Arakawa's writing style and Toei being pretty okay with that. The problem with imitations of this sort is that the writer's individual failings end up becoming ingrained in the formula for pretty much no reason.

Arakawa really does have a lack of interest in writing strong villains, which is just an inherent flaw of writing this sort of material by process (sort of like how "big ideas" writers like Inoue inevitably have to struggle with the temptation to simply contrive scenarios that let them write about whatever they're interested in). The commercial goals of Sentai and other tokusatsu are not fulfilled in any direct way by writing a strong villain, so generally Arakawa only writes them when his story absolutely demands such a character exist. Even then, he rarely gives them any more screen time than his strictly necessary for achieving his story goals. Otherwise, his interest is mainly in showing off the heroes and their allies/gear in interesting ways, which is absolutely a commercial requirement of the genre.

Since a lot of Arakawa's work is grounded in social commentary and using superhero stories as metaphors, he also frequently just doesn't need a strong villain to make whatever point he's trying to make. He almost does better when he can just dream up some MotW that exists mainly to criticize something that he sees as a major social failing. You are unquestionably going to get stronger villains out of a writer like Inoue, who can at his best make great use of them as mouthpieces for exploring the big themes he's interested in. Characters like Grey and Hojo speak for themselves in this regard.

I think it's fine for villains to be weak in Arakawa's own work, since he's pretty good at making the story about something else of substance. Like, I think his writing in Daimajin Kanon is so good purely because the true "villain" for most of the show is depression, and he clearly finds the idea of making that "bad guy" seem invincible and indomitable very interesting. I think you get problems when other people begin imitating Arakawa's style without entirely understanding how it works, so you get ineffectual villains appearing in stories that fail to really be about anything else. That really is a huge problem in modern Sentai, and one I do think you have to leave it at Arakawa's feet. Again, it's like how mindlessly imitating Inoue lead to a character like Mutsuki existing in a show Inoue barely worked on at all.

 

[live jetabare]

I'm not sure this is really a fair question. Modern Sentai is what it is in large part due to others choosing to imitate Arakawa's writing style and Toei being pretty okay with that. The problem with imitations of this sort is that the writer's individual failings end up becoming ingrained in the formula for pretty much no reason.

er; Magiranger, Gekiranger and Goseiger had a big focus on villains, and the first two had pretty interesting villains (notably Wolzard, Meemy and Long). Besides, Kobayashi has written three post GogoV sentai series, and she has a very personal style.
Besides, Junki Takegami is one of the biggest influences of post-Carranger sentai series, being the head writer of Megaranger, GogoV, Gaoranger and Go-onger; his influence on sentai is at least as important as Arakawa in modern sentai.