Super sentai and storytelling

[lazycoconut]

Remove the fanservice and the anniversery aspects of Gokaiger and you'd get a series not a lot of people would like, I'd argue.

I'm not so sure. The fanservice/anniversary is the main attraction. If they'd had fewer guest appearances (as was originally planned) or none at all, then the show would have had a different story and focused more on other things. I think this is why a lot of people say they think that Gokaiger should have been more like Boukenger or Gaoranger and focused on its own characters rather than past ones. Even I agree with this to some extent, and I really loved Gokaiger. (It's also why I hope Toei will re-use the pirate theme ten or fifteen years down the line)

 

[Painted_Outlaw]

Looking back, it's kind of weird how they had those returning villains from more recent shows, but avoided tie ins with pre-00s Sentai villains

Zaien was pretty much Professor Bias in a rubber suit, would that count?

 

[Auvers]

Funny, because from what I can tell Gokaiger suffers from this far more. If you ignore the GokaiChanges as the gimmicks that they are, all the fanservice left is whatever Gai spouts out, or "old guys".

Gokaiger has very little else beyond the returning cast members, who ultimately don't do much, mostly. There are exceptions, which I've noted earlier.

And my point is this. Strip away the gimmick of the Gokai Changes, and you lose most of the stuff that holds up the series.

Well as far as them "not doing anything", as I mentioned before this was a rush job and this is ALOT of actors returning as opposed to Ultraman which had... what 7? 10? out of a 50 episode show. Most of which were voice only and several didn't even have their original voices. The majority of the non-voice cameos were also mostly in a film just like Gokaiger.

Also there's TONS of other references to previous series besides them taking on the fighting style/traits of whoever they change into. The early episodes had them going to Snack Safari which was a hub/base in Sun Vulcan. They had an entire episode devoted to the sentai troupe of the Pink Ranger taking on multiple disguises in order to defeat the villain in a nonsensical manner. They had a Kuroko appear in an episode which I don't remember if it was a Shinken themed episode or not...

The episode titles of several episodes where in the style that they would be for the other series such as Gekirangers way of having Jyan style of talking or Magirangers way of having a spell as the subtitle of the episode or Dekarangers way of having titles that are composed almost entirely of english words. There was the Gaodom Heart which is one of the Gaodom Precious from Gokaiger. There's the scene where they become Ohranger and and Gai shouts "Ole" but no one else does the pose. In the abararanger episode they parody the eyecather scene. There's tons of more examples but I'd have to rewatch some episodes, but there's lots of sentai homages throughout the show in dialogue as well as visual gags and in backgrounds. Just because they weren't blatant doesn't mean they weren't there. It basically does the same thing as Mebius but easier to understand even if you haven't seen the previous series. You have cameos, you have previous villains occasionally, you have little in jokes and references to story lines from other shows.

Mebius doesn't have that holding it down. The closest it has is a reuse of Windam and Miklas, who are redefined here and are pretty much characters in and of themselves.

Whenever an old hero shows up in Mebius, it's few and far between but it matters a hell of a whole lot and really adds to the message of the episode.

Because the series is about more than the fanservice. It takes the fanservice and blends it into the story, so it gives us neat moments like Twintails and Gudon fighting again, a classic moment of the franchise, while giving us a good story and great character development spaced across the series.

Gokaiger's fanservice just feels fluffy in comparison, more flat and meaningless, by and large. The best bit was the Jetman episode, as I've said before. If all of Gokaiger used that as the baseline, the series would have been a lot better in my opinion.

It didn't. Instead, Gokaiger is just really a lot of flash without any real substance, junk food for the eyes and a quick shot of nostalgia.

Remove the fanservice and the anniversery aspects of Gokaiger and you'd get a series not a lot of people would like, I'd argue.

Remove that from Mebius and you still have a damn solid show.



Carrying on from above, simply that the show itself is solid before the fanservice. If you took away all of the returning characters and Gokai Changes from Gokaiger, you're simply left with static pirate characters fighting bland, misused and underdeveloped villains until all the bad guys blow up. Though Gai would be a fair bit more interesting, I think.

Do the same with Mebius, and you still have that great character development, those great villains, and the unholy master of disaster Enpera himself showing up.

OKAY. I read through this entire thing and I had actually typed up a response to like everything but when I got hear I pretty much realized that wasn't worth it because I feel like THIS is the most important part of the ENTIRE argument and I'm kind of tired from editing and going through everything in this to respond but at this point I think after seeing this last couple of paragraphs in this specific quote that this isn't going to go anywhere else. And neither of us is going to make a dent in the others reasoning so I will end with this.

Gokaiger is an anniversary show. Gokaiger is supposed to be an anniversary show. You are complaining an anniversary show is an anniversary show and THEN saying that isn't anniversary enough. That doesn't make any sense.

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

Sounds like fans of the other franchises still have Gokaiger envy. :loltongue:

 

[Lynxara]

Ultraman Max was pretty much the same. They make a big deal of introducing the monster and it's clear that the entire episode is hanging on the audience having a "wow it's that guy" reaction.

This is a huge, huge problem that the majority of Tsuburaya's post-Nexus Ultraman projects have when it comes to breaking through to the Western audience. Nothing is self-contained anymore, nothing is presented as if it is going to be viewed with entirely new eyes. Everything Ultra these days is steeped in nostalgia, and always written with the assumption that everybody already understands the old and complex Ultraman mythos. Maybe that's true in Japan or parts of Southeast Asia, but it's not true for most of the English-speaking fandom.

This approach to Ultra is a logical consequence of the failure of the N-Project and the relative success of Max and Moebius, but it's essentially pushed Ultraman to the fringes of the English-speaking fandom discussion. People don't watch modern Ultra projects anymore, unless it's something like Ultraseven X or the Ultraman Zero movie that comes off as relatively self-contained. Even those projects aren't half so accessible as projects like Tiga, Dyna, Gaia, Cosmos, or the N-Project.

Gokaiger was a flawed show, but it was mostly very good about presenting the returning heroes and their universe to an audience that might not know anything about them. Cameo characters got brief introductions that explained enough to understand their role in the episode, and viewers clearly got the feeling that anything unusual about an episode reflected on the show being homaged. The only time the show really got caught up in dense continuity was the time-travel episode.

I think Ultra fans don't realize that to the average modern tokusatsu fan, every episode of every recent Ultraman production is just as incomprehensible as parts of the Gokaiger time-travel episode would be to someone who hadn't seen Timeranger (or the right parts of Goseiger, or Goseiger vs. Shinkenger). Only it's possible to at least catch up on Goseiger and Goseiver vs Shinkenger easily, or to wade through Timeranger's raws with good episode synopses. Slogging through Ultraman's massive back catalog of shows is a more daunting proposition.

From what I've read in previous threads, I think the SHT block's ratings really took a kick in the nads when another channel started airing new episodes of pokemon at the same time.

It's more that the talk show portion of Pokemon Sunday started releasing news about upcoming games. For instance, Go-Busters's first episode went toe-to-toe with the announcement of Black and White 2. Even a lot of Sentai fans I know watched Pokemon instead.

Sounds like fans of the other franchises still have Gokaiger envy. :loltongue:

More like "having a TV show consisting entirely of original footage" envy... :disappoin

 

[BoukenSilver83]

sorry to be off topic but the one thing i love about ultraman is that you dont have to buy a ton a of merchandise accept the henshin device to enjoy it, you can just mimick his hand to combat moves while watching it and dont have to worry about spending a fortune.

 

[FlashNeko]

Zaien was pretty much Professor Bias in a rubber suit, would that count?

As much as I dislike Gokaiger, I will give it credit for its tribute episodes being able to make monster suits that evoked the look of the monsters from the original shows but upgraded with modern materials.

For example the one from the Jetman episode could have been some kind of lost Vyram commander, and the guy from the Carranger episode was one who could have easily hung out in Bykergang's space bar.

Sounds like fans of the other franchises still have Gokaiger envy.

I'm more annoyed at it having senselessly wasted so much of what riches it could have had. So I guess on that level they really were just like pirates.

 

[Goty]

This is a huge, huge problem that the majority of Tsuburaya's post-Nexus Ultraman projects have when it comes to breaking through to the Western audience. Nothing is self-contained anymore, nothing is presented as if it is going to be viewed with entirely new eyes. Everything Ultra these days is steeped in nostalgia, and always written with the assumption that everybody already understands the old and complex Ultraman mythos. Maybe that's true in Japan or parts of Southeast Asia, but it's not true for most of the English-speaking fandom.

This approach to Ultra is a logical consequence of the failure of the N-Project and the relative success of Max and Moebius, but it's essentially pushed Ultraman to the fringes of the English-speaking fandom discussion. People don't watch modern Ultra projects anymore, unless it's something like Ultraseven X or the Ultraman Zero movie that comes off as relatively self-contained. Even those projects aren't half so accessible as projects like Tiga, Dyna, Gaia, Cosmos, or the N-Project.

That's pretty much how i feel. I never cared about Ultraman, and although i did watch (and like) a couple of the older series - like Seven - when i was a kid, i couldn't get into Mebius, and i tried (twice). I don't think it holds much value as a series for one who's not an established fan of this world, at all. Same happened to Max, which i found even worse.

After failing to renew its fanbase, it's like they gave up on it. Could Ultraman ever be put to a permanent retirement?

sorry to be off topic but the one thing i love about ultraman is that you dont have to buy a ton a of merchandise accept the henshin device to enjoy it, you can just mimick his hand to combat moves while watching it and dont have to worry about spending a fortune.

And do you think you need to buy merchandise to enjoy other franchises? Really?

 

[Glamador]

And do you think you need to buy merchandise to enjoy other franchises? Really?

You said it. Really? It's the other way around for Glamador. He needs the show to enjoy the merchandise.

 

[Goty]

You said it. Really? It's the other way around for Glamador. He needs the show to enjoy the merchandise.

Yes, of course. I'm not usually a merchandise buyer, but when i do buy something like a SH Figuart is exactly because i like the series, not the opposite.