Super sentai and storytelling

[Lynxara]

Would it be fair to suggest that Gekiranger's poor performance made this worse?

It certainly hasn't helped. That said, I don't think anything about Geki's story really contributed to the show's under-performance. I subscribe to the theory of the Gekiranger producers, that what really killed their toy sales was having to compete against Den-O. Kids did watch Gekiranger in fairly large numbers, we have the ratings to prove it.

In general, I think this is one of the more serious problems facing Sentai right now. There's enough overlap in the target audiences for Sentai and Rider toys that the two franchises are effectively competing against each other, and in that fight Rider always wins. The fact that the Jungle Fury line did so well overseas seems to bear this out. Release Gekiranger toys into a market where Den-O is a non-entity, and suddenly people want to buy them.

Toei has to know this is not a sustainable status quo for the franchise. Sentai cannot survive while it's getting maybe one unit from an expansive line into the Top Ten each month. Sadly, nobody seems to have a good solution to this problem beyond, "Make Sentai toys more like Rider toys were about two years ago, act surprised when kids are bored."

Although Kyoryuger might be able to turn this around. If Sentai going forward is going to center its toy line around original collectible gimmicks, that might be able to rope kids in. Toy trends come and go in every market, but the Japanese market right now seems to be all about huge lines of individually cheap little collectible widgets.

 

[live jetabare]

Lynx, Lazy
Thank you for bringing a great discussion and interesting ideas into that thread.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

What I find interesting is that this overlap is hurting Sentai more when it was Sentai that started the recent idea of collectable trinkets with Go-Onger and then Kamen Rider doing Decade the next year. Even though there were Kamen Rider shows based on cards in the past, they didn't market them as the stars of the toy line until Decade and the Gambaride stuff came along. Sentai did the Cardass thing and that wasn't nearly as successful as it was for Kamen Rider - though Decade also had the advantage of a toyline rife in reissues and new toys based on old Riders.

Those discussions about which franchise Toei would cancel if they ever had to end one come up often enough, and it seems that with its longevity, Sentai would be the one, but it's been nearly five years now that Kamen Rider has more nearly double its profits on a yearly basis.

Given the whole Juuden pun, we're probably going to see some sort of toy batteries as the collectable items. (and we'll need batteries for the batteries)

 

[Lynxara]

What I find interesting is that this overlap is hurting Sentai more when it was Sentai that started the recent idea of collectable trinkets with Go-Onger and then Kamen Rider doing Decade the next year.

I think this has a lot to do with Go-onger running opposite Kiva, which had an extremely weak toy line compared to either Den-O, or... well, every single show that's aired after it. Again, if you buy that kids ignored Sentai toys when Rider was more interesting, then naturally they'll be more interested in Sentai toys when Rider is being (relatively) boring.

Your points about Decade are interesting, but I'm not sure I'd agree. I think the current approach for Rider really begins with W's Gaia Memories, and IIRC, Tsukada developed them along with one of Go-onger's original toy designers. If Tsukada does indeed turn out to be the Kyoryuger producer, then he's effectively being asked to repeat that process.

Decade did have a successful toy line, but its sales are completely dwarfed by W or any of the post-W shows. Decade was sort of the last gasp of Rider's original approach to toys, in addition to a way to flog Ganbaride during its launch year. I do think Decade sort of treated the various old Rider designs as "collectibles," which may have helped attract kids.

Gaia Memories, Medals, Switches, and Rings seem to entertain kids even more, though... and maybe next year, it'll be Batteries?

 

[Glamador]

Glam is still emphatically suggesting batteries.

What you say is not entirely senseless, and there is of course evidence of toy-pushing overtaking narrative in many aspects. But what is increasingly becoming obvious (to Glam) is that modern Rider shows (Kabuto onwards) are NOT the kind of show where the overarching narrative is even a concern. It exists to provide a loose line of consistency between what has become a series of 20 or so short stories with common elements.

It's perplexing that some fans have taken so badly to it, considering it is basically identical to the Showa format but given the necessary running time to expand on the characters involved in a way the older shows never could. What was once rote formula has become an emotional examination of the characters involved. And it's remarkably different in each mini-arc.

From what Glam has heard of Sentai around the net, was this not also the mode of storytelling for many older Sentai series? In the KR Black thread it was said that Zyuranger had a procession of stories about "throwaway children" being targetted for a variety of reasons?

If Kabuto and its successors are a resurgance of Showa era values with flashier effects as Glam hypothesizes, and Sentai was better "back in the day" and they're bringing in the guy that revitalized Rider's sales by further incorporating toys into the formula, and we can expect that they will emulate the structure of Masked Rider now in an effort to emulate its successes....then is this not a good thing for Sentai fans?

 

[Lynxara]

If Kabuto and its successors are a resurgance of Showa era values with flashier effects as Glam hypothesizes, and Sentai was better "back in the day" and they're bringing in the guy that revitalized Rider's sales by further incorporating toys into the formula, and we can expect that they will emulate the structure of Masked Rider now in an effort to emulate its successes....then is this not a good thing for Sentai fans?

I don't think I entirely grasp the larger point you're trying to make here, due to your highly creative use of subjunctive clauses, but I'll attempt to respond to bits and pieces of it.

Tsukada is not confirmed, by any reliable source, as Kyoryuger's producer yet. At the time I wrote my last posts, he seemed like a lock for it, given the identity of the writer and director. It has since emerged that he's already got a different project lined up for 2013, which makes him producing Kyoryuger seem unlikely. It is difficult to imagine who would be producing instead, and the list of potential candidates is quite short.

I've seen a lot of Showa Rider. I don't see any direct connection between Kabuto, Kiva, or Decade's writing style and Showa Rider. Those shows are pure Toshiki Inoue, even when somebody else was writing them. I can see a bit of Showa in Den-O, given its big emphasis on the main character, and that carries forward into W and the post-W shows. I don't think it's an intrinsically good or bad thing, it's just a different style.

Sentai's writing style was always a bit different than Rider's, even in the Showa era shows. It's hard to quantify how it's different, since there are common elements, but typically the two genres have a very different feel. Showa Sentai actually tended to have more of an emphasis on plot, while Heisei Sentai moved to an emphasis (in theory) on character. I just don't think you can really directly compare Sentai and Rider's evolution, though there are some common trends that affected both franchises.

 

[BoukenSilver83]

if this generation is about selling toys with kr vs sentai shows, then how were kids entertained in the old days with kr and sentai that no big toy gimmicks?

 

[Liquid Chris Sentai]

if this generation is about selling toys with kr vs sentai shows, then how were kids entertained in the old days with kr and sentai that no big toy gimmicks?

Uhh...the same way the current generation were entertained by Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, but with less toys.

 

[Goty]

I don't feel the characters were lacking in anyway either. One thing Gokaiger did that alot of other series neglect to do is have the characters shine their personalities through all the time. The cast of Gokaiger was pretty much brimming with it whether you liked it or not. In the way they fought, in their reactions to things or even if they were just doing something in the background, you could tell alot about them just from those little things so they didn't need an entire episode focusing on them for you to get the gist of who they are.

That's all true, and the main reason Gokaiger is one of my favorites. Appealing main characters' is the basis of a good Sentai in my view, and the Gokaigers had undeniable presence and chemistry.
And unlike the stale Go-Busters, the things that happened to them used to affect the characters in a permanent way, with consequences. They all got some sort of personal development or change through the series (some subtle things, like the way Luka treated Ahim in the beginning as a replacement for her lost sister), and Gai was the best sixth in like forever, breaking a recent trend of extra heroes who get neglected some time after their introduction. It was just more obvious with Marvelous and Joe because they had recurring rivals - but then again, most Sentai only give Red a rival.

Those personal reactions you mentioned, even in the backgrounds, were also a great touch that humanized the characters, made them look real. I really don't see much of that in Sentai - heck, while they showed who they were even by those small details, the Go-Busters rarely display their personalities, ever. You could tell a lot of effort was put in the series' direction.

And according to some articles it seems apparently the series wasn't meant to have nearly as many cameos as it ended up having so it seems alot of this stuff was added last minute and if that is all true and this was a rush job it's probably one of the best put together rush jobs ever. To manage to get all these actors back and make these homage episodes and have them not be horrible is kind of amazing. The show just carries itself on the fundamentals of the franchise and just does it in a bigger more over the top scale than usual, that's usually how anniversary things work.

Yeah, that information gave me even more respect for this series. Even with such little time for planning and i imagine a lot of improvising involved, 90% of the time the guests were used to help the story or develop one of the characters in some way. Not to mention it managed to keep a sense of coherence and tightness, which is more than i can say for most Toei series lately - even when pulling episodes like the Timeranger one, managing to tie different series and events together in a very satisfying (and impressive) way.
It's a miracle it didn't end up as another Decade, and i think Naruhisa Arakawa deserves mad props for that.

HA. I'm assuming this means you've never watched any Showa era sentai.

I do agree that, in the 2000's, Toei series had its narrative strongly influenced by anime, and i see why that can put people off....but most showa shows used to have very, VERY simple/flat main characters who would rarely get any sort of development, and honestly, Sentai was almost never about plot. We would have 40-ish episodes of MOTW that barely mattered and 10 to move the plot.
The "slapstickness" was there too, it was just a different time. But it's human nature to be harsher with the new.

 

[Burkion]

I have this to note.

Gokaiger is a pretty shitty anniversary series because it, on its own, does not make for a good story.

Even when looking at it, the only thing it has is some actors from the past, and the ability to change into past powers.

That's it.

The plots are weak, the characters are stereotypes, the villains are two dimensional at best...

And yes I can complain about this. Why?

Ultraman Mebius. Ultraman Mebius did everything short of turning into the past Ultra heroes and it did it better in every single way. That was how you do an anniversary series.