The Toku Unpopular Opinion Thread

[lazycoconut]

I'm talking about appearance/physical quirks. Gai Yuuki's hairstyle, jacket, the way he speaks might be similar to what I'm thinking of

 

[Black Fang]

But the point still is that they seem to be ignoring what the characters do and say (how moral they are, so to speak) and liking him because of certain quirks. Just disregard Ankh's development for a moment: as the show progressed you can argue he obtained some "humanity", as Maki even observes, but at the beginning he is clearly just another monster threatening people. You can dismiss it as them being kids, but even you've commented many times about how these shows should consider what they're getting out of them.

It's almost like how some adult fans seem to disregard the immorality (or at the very least dubious) of Kougami because he dresses absurdly, likes cake and spazzes out at random.

 

[Bouken Green]

Ok, here's mine, I dont really know if these are popular or unpopular, but these are my opinions:

Sentai needs to come up with a different sixth color. Seriously gold and silver is all they do lately.

OO and RPM are the worst power rangers EVER! but Saban isnt really doing anything to improve power rangers either.

Fourze may or may not be the best Kamen Rider...but Gentaro (not sure on spelling) is.

I love in the opening theme for Kyoruger when the narrator does that loud scream before the song actually starts.

Kiva is better than I first gave it credit for, and I think a lot of why people hated it was they were tired of Vampire ****.

Go-Onger is still my favorite Sentai, I loved just how over the top silly it got

Enjin-Oh G 12 is fucking awesome!

Not related to Toku, but Star Trek is better than Star Wars. (I'll probally get killed over this one)

 

[Glamador]

Kiva is better than I first gave it credit for, and I think a lot of why people hated it was they were tired of Vampire ****.

Kiva's 1986 arc is considerably better in my mind. It's not that I don't like Wataru, I just don't like his story. Nor do I like his supporting cast. It really feels like Kiva is two stories....and in my own personal rankings I split them up, because it's really difficult to judge them as a single series.

 

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

Kiva's 1986 arc is considerably better in my mind. It's not that I don't like Wataru, I just don't like his story. Nor do I like his supporting cast. It really feels like Kiva is two stories....and in my own personal rankings I split them up, because it's really difficult to judge them as a single series.

If the entirety of Kiva had been the 1986 arc (except with villains that actually die instead of running away only to show up 22 years later), I would have enjoyed the show a whole hell of a lot more. If anything, I think that the show should have had two main writers instead of Inoue writing almost every single episode from beginning to end. Inoue could handle the 1986 storyline (since it was actually full of neat ideas and far more interesting characters) and someone else like Kobayashi would ideally handle the 2008 storyline.

Kiva is better than I first gave it credit for, and I think a lot of why people hated it was they were tired of Vampire ****.

No, a lot of people disliked it because it tried WAAAAY too hard to emulate Den-O's success. The vampire craze hadn't even hit its peak yet; Kamen Rider Kiva started airing in January 2008 and the first Twilight film didn't come out until November of that year.

 

[Lynxara]

Maybe because his quirks appealed to kids (the hairstyle, ice lollies, climbing trees, etc?)

People tend to get mad at me when I bring this up, but Ankh is basically the Trix Rabbit. He really, really wants a thing that he can't have. That's a motivation any little kid can understand and find sympathetic. Kids also want a lot of things they can't have for reasons they don't entirely understand, and this is often their first brush with the fundamental unfairness of the world.

Little kids for decades have mailed boxes of Trix for the rabbit to General Mills, and little kids reportedly mailed Medal toys to Toei for Ankh. It's natural for those little kids want to share what they have with their "friend" who's pining for it. By "helping," those little kids can feel like they're making the world just a little bit fairer.

I am to this day amazed that Takebe and Kobayashi were able to come up with Ankh, and yet not really understand the character's potential. They were planning to turn a guy into a villain who, honestly, should have been the protagonist. His conflicts and character potential are simply superior to Eiji's, and he doesn't suffer from Eiji's problem of being grossly derivative.

Now, if OOO had to be about Eiji, turning Ankh into the villain would've made the show's plot much more interesting. The Purple Medal stuff had good intentions, but the show was unwilling to explore that concept to its logical end, and Maki just struck me as a placeholder to make sure there was something big to punch at the end.

 

[Glamador]

In a way, Uva is one of the most tragic characters in OOO. He doesn't even spend most of the series being particularly *bad*. He gathers medals fairly quietly, was the only one smart enough to use pseudo-yummies, and was the only Greeed to stick it out all the way to the end. Even Ankh was dead-man-walking by the time Uva met his fate.

He didn't rampage, he was careful, he was patient, and for that we don't see as much of him for most of the series AND he gets to play the chump at the very end...it's sad, really. Uva had potential as a final villain, or even a sympathetic begrudging ally.

OOO, for all its pacing issues and somewhat missed potential, is just so full of things to really ponder on. It also falls in line with my own philosophy with the whole power-of-desire setup. Every character feels worth looking into further and there's plenty of room to speculate. So maybe there's a silver lining to all that missed potential in terms of discussable content?

But Lynx, I recall you saying at one point that you thought Ankh was a user and didn't deserve redemption, didn't you? Yet you advocate for him as main-character material? That seems a bit at odds...and then again it doesn't. Flawed characters have the most interesting personal arcs, after all. And the story doesn't even necessarily have to be one of redemption, more of a warning of sorts. Like a gangster movie, where the idea is to put it into people's heads that behaving that way is a self-destructive endeavor.

I like how OOO turned out though, as I've said before. And I guess that's the unpopular opinion here. It doesn't suit OOO themes to play up desire as a negative trait. They went to great lengths to keep Kougami's world view plausible and present the power of desire in a neutral light. And if they had made Ankh give into his baser greed then they'd have slightly gutted the message they worked so hard to drive home. Especially with Eiji having the biggest desire of all.

 

[Bouken Green]

If the entirety of Kiva had been the 1986 arc (except with villains that actually die instead of running away only to show up 22 years later), I would have enjoyed the show a whole hell of a lot more. If anything, I think that the show should have had two main writers instead of Inoue writing almost every single episode from beginning to end. Inoue could handle the 1986 storyline (since it was actually full of neat ideas and far more interesting characters) and someone else like Kobayashi would ideally handle the 2008 storyline.



No, a lot of people disliked it because it tried WAAAAY too hard to emulate Den-O's success. The vampire craze hadn't even hit its peak yet; Kamen Rider Kiva started airing in January 2008 and the first Twilight film didn't come out until November of that year.

Ok. guess I got tired of Vampire **** a lot faster. After all, there was Buffy, Blade, Under World. I was really tired of Vampire **** by the time Kiva came out.

 

[Murphy]

One thing about OOOs - and I enjoyed OOOs plenty - is that everything they did with Eiji they also did much better with other characters. Struggling with turning into a villain? Ankh did it much better. Mysterious, potentially dark past? I find Date's past much more interesting (where did he learn to fight? How did he get his 'friends in low places'? What work has he done before that he appears to be Kougami's first choice for medal-collecting mercenary?). Torn between two conflicting goals that are irreconcilable? Hina had the exact same problem, and it had much more meaning for her because Shingo was her brother. Inner emptiness caused by a total lack of desire? Ehhhh, Dr. Maki pretty much had that covered, and he had interesting warped memories and murdering his sister to hammer it in.

Any of those first three would have made better main characters than Eiji. And I liked Eiji just fine, but if he had left thirty episodes in, I would've been fine. But one of the reasons that Eiji seems so bland at times is because he's surrounded by a much more interesting supporting cast.

I quite liked how OOO turned out. But in general, I think you could carve out Eiji and replace him with another member of the cast, and the show would've been improved for it.

 

[kuroihikari]

I think that was half of the point with Eiji: He was just like everyone, except that he had nothing, and yet has everything he really needs. And he was fine with all that.