Okay, Seriously...When Are We Getting A Cool Sentai Series Again?

[Punk]

Am I the only one who is tired of animals and random gimmicks? They have added Animals into every Sentai since Gekiranger. It needs a break.

How hard would it be to do something cool like a high tech Sentai Series? With suits designed similar to Megaranger or Timeranger and with a touch sensor changer like an iPhone? It's not that hard to do and it would be marketable.

Something NEW please. I love Goseiger but watching it and seeing the same old stuff recycled that we saw last year and the year before that.

 

[Kaji Motomiya]

If it makes you feel any better, Super Sentai has a reoccurring Gattai theme of animals and vehicles. In Go-onger, they combined both!....But they talk!

 

[RagnorokKing]

Cause hearing talking cars could never get old...
It's Sentai.
Animals and Gimmicks are like 50% of the show.
Sometimes the other 50% is character development and plot, other times it's not.

 

[B Samurai]

I'm with ya Punk on the switching back to tech based Sentai, but to me, it's not as personalized as animal themes. The main thing would be the suits, I personally like it when the suits embody the animal.

 

[MetalSymphony]

Kid's these days like Animal's (and related motifs) over technology.
Thats why most (8 out of 11) of the Sentai Mecha of the 00's are animal's.

If tastes change then so will the themes.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

I can remember reading that mecha toys sold better than animal stuff, guess that was just in the 90s? I don't really mind either way since I'm not the biggest fan of giant robo battles, but I do like creative designs and at least the early Shinkenger stuff went that route.

Something I would like to see again, though it didn't work out too great in Shinkenger, is to have a main writer do the majority of the episodes. I think Shinkenger was one of the first times in the modern era where a main writer actually stuck and penned the majority of the series while only having a few others do filler episode. Much as I like Goseiger, it kinda sucks to see the main writer has only done 12 out of 28 episodes, and not even a lot of the pivotal ones.

 

[chronoxiong]

We just had a cool Sentai series. That was Shinkenger from last year. Then before that, we had Gekiranger.

 

[Quattro]

Something I would like to see again, though it didn't work out too great in Shinkenger, is to have a main writer do the majority of the episodes. I think Shinkenger was one of the first times in the modern era where a main writer actually stuck and penned the majority of the series while only having a few others do filler episode. Much as I like Goseiger, it kinda sucks to see the main writer has only done 12 out of 28 episodes, and not even a lot of the pivotal ones.

Thing is, the secondary writers are important because they can make up for weaknesses in the main writer. Look at Megaranger: while Takegami was a fairly weak writer, it was still an awesome show because over half the series (including the finale) was written by Arakawa and Kobayashi. Or Magiranger: Maekawa was bloody awful, but it was still watchable because Arakawa wrote some awesome episodes. Go-onger was mostly garbage, but the few good episodes were Miyashita's work. Haven't seen Goseiger yet, but I hear Arakawa's episodes blow Yokote's out of the water. And even when the head writer is good, it helps to have another writer to provide an alternate perspective; e.g., some of my favorite episodes of Jetman were written by Arakawa, and my favorite Dairanger episodes were written by Arakawa and Inoue (yeah, I keep mentioning Arakawa; that's because he's been the best damn writer on Sentai since Soda left). Even Hirohisa Soda had help from Toshiki Inoue for most of his run.

Also, a secondary writer can take care of characters that the head writer can't think of anything to do with. Going back to Dairanger, all of Shouji and Rin's focus episodes were Arakawa's work. For Megaranger, Yuusaku's focus episodes were all written by Kobayashi.

IMO, it's the interplay between writers that creates a really good Sentai.

 

[Demi-Fiend]

You know Punk is right about the gimmicks though, would it kill them to use a tech based gimmick again? I'm really missing it. The last show to have tech based weapons was Boukenger.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

Thing is, the secondary writers are important because they can make up for weaknesses in the main writer. Look at Megaranger: while Takegami was a fairly weak writer, it was still an awesome show because over half the series (including the finale) was written by Arakawa and Kobayashi. Or Magiranger: Maekawa was bloody awful, but it was still watchable because Arakawa wrote some awesome episodes. Go-onger was mostly garbage, but the few good episodes were Miyashita's work. Haven't seen Goseiger yet, but I hear Arakawa's episodes blow Yokote's out of the water. And even when the head writer is good, it helps to have another writer to provide an alternate perspective; e.g., some of my favorite episodes of Jetman were written by Arakawa, and my favorite Dairanger episodes were written by Arakawa and Inoue (yeah, I keep mentioning Arakawa; that's because he's been the best damn writer on Sentai since Soda left). Even Hirohisa Soda had help from Toshiki Inoue for most of his run.

This might be true in certain cases, but I think it often leads to a general lack of direction when it's something done very often. Sentai doesn't do it as much as I'd like it to, but I think the series that have a main writer do a majority of the episodes tend to have more of an overall idea of where they're going. Now, those series that you mentioned are fine, because they do play to the strengths of multi-writers, but I was specifically talking about Goseiger in my post. It's a good character driven show, but feels like it's going no real direction and, to borrow a term from anime, falls more into the "slice of life" genre than anything else. I'd like to say it's something Sentai hasn't tried before and it rocks for doing something new, but I can kinda see why it hasn't been done, it's something that doesn't quite work for Sentai, and certainly not for such a long series.

I know it doesn't work all the time, but I do much prefer the idea of a really good writer making a great show and think Akira Yamatoya would have made a better head writer to see carry out Goseiger.

Personally I'm not the biggest fan of Arakawa and have only really liked what he did on Kamen Rider Kuuga and (I believe) episode 31 of Magiranger with a various other episodes sprinkled throughout that I thought were good. Though I do think Magiranger is one of the better collaborative efforts. (and I do think it's a very good series to begin with)

I'm not saying these collaborative efforts are bad, I just prefer a mostly single writer series.