sentai writers: Kobayashi the serious vs Arakawa the comedic

[live jetabare]

Looking back at super sentai writers, I've noticed a trend with Naruhisa Arakawa and Yasuko Kobayashi, as SENTAI writers (I'm not talking about Kamen Rider)
- Kobayashi seems to want to have a serious tone in the sentai series she's involved in: Timeranger, Shinkenger, and as it looks, Go-Busters have a pretty serious tone, and Gingaman, despite being fantasy based, is also written in a much more serious tone than other tribe based sentai like Zyuranger and Goseiger. Her characters are depicted usually with a realistic tone. Moreover, when one lloks at the sentai series where she's secondary writers (Megaranger, Gogofive, in a a lesser way Boukenger) those are on the "serious" side of the sentai spectra.
- Arakawa seems to really like to writ sentai much more with humor, and loves goofiness in his series; Abaranger, Dekaranger and Gokaiger play a lot with gimmiks (dinosaurs, police, pirates), and don't really try to be realistic, but rather, bring fun to kids; the comparison between the two police themed sentai, Kobayashi's Timeranger and Arakawa's Dekaranger is very telling. His characters have strong personalities, but are less realistic than Kobayashi's heroes (look at the protagonists of those sentai).Even if all those series have their serious side, it's obvious that Arakawa loves parody in his series. It's even more obvious when you know that he's Carranger's secondary writers, and that he wrote soem of the goofiest episodes of Jetman, Dairanger, Go-onger, and others. Besides, it's interesting to see that although he's written episodes in almost every sentai series since Jetman, the ones he hasn't are on the "serious side" like Ohranger, Gogofive, Timeranger and Shinkenger) No wonder Arakawa is involved in Akibaranger.
Your thoughts?

 

[The 2nd Evil]

I don't think you can write a series as long as a typical Sentai Series is and keep the exact same tone throughout.

Gingaman, while it took its story very seriously, but also had a whimsical side to it that prevented it from being too serious.

Go-Onger, while its tone could be described as Shonan anime with ADHD, that gave episodes like Souske getting rusted that served as an incredible counterpoint to the goofy series it normally was, by playing that as serious as possible.

I find it strange that TimeRanger, while the heroes actually capture the criminals just comes across as so damn cynical most of the time, and the more optimistic DekaRanger, has the heroes doubling as executioners right there on the spot.

 

[Smilodon]

Except Timeranger didn't kill a single villain, rather just freezing them down.

 

[Black Fang]

Well, Gien died. And didn't Geymark get killed when he tried to escape in shrunken form?

 

[FlashNeko]

I find it strange that TimeRanger, while the heroes actually capture the criminals just comes across as so damn cynical most of the time, and the more optimistic DekaRanger, has the heroes doubling as executioners right there on the spot.

Hey! They gave the criminals a fair trial!

.... A very FAST fair trial but a fair trial!

 

[Artic_Rival]

Kobayashi is a pretty good writer. Allow her to write all the episodes for one show, and she can probably craft a well-told story that's so good, if people are adapting it, they'd have no choice but to copy her story to retain some of the quality of it, only to have it be bogged down because of that very same fact.