Unpopular Opinions.

[SamuraiEchidna]

Not killing enemies is pretty common tokusatsu theme. It's usually made for kids after all, so plenty of creators took a more kid-friendly approach. Good example are early (and well... recent) Ultraman shows, where many monsters often weren't really evil (being simple animals and all), Ultraman let plenty go and even helped some. Or Carranger where almost ever villian ended up good in the end.
Accusing Fourze of this is weird to say the least, not to mention show had plenty of much bigger issues.

Like I said, some people in the fandom just want a tokusatsu show that takes itself "seriously". The darker and grittier it is, the better. EZ Rider always seemed like the kind of guy who likes that kind of thing. And I think that's fine in some things, maybe for western/American super heroes. But even that can get dull and boring after a while. Or as some people call it; try-hard.

But it's cool that Fourze is not the only one guilty of exploring these themes! That makes me want to explore more Ultra titles.

far as toku songs are concerned, I take Project DMM over Rider Chips any day (and I'm more of rock fan). It's just that I find DMM Ultra songs to actually feel like songs that fit the genre while I find many of Chips songs to be just generic rock songs in my opinion

I remember Project DMM from Mebius. I agree, their music was really fitting! They aren't afraid to make orchestral music that is uplifting/inspiring/whimsical/heroic. After Mebius, I always thought they should be the official band of Ultraman.

As for Rider Chips, I liked them as the official band of Kamen Rider. They brought in the attitude that the franchise needed, but they understood the appeal of the Kamen Rider brand. However, in later years, the band kind of got stuck in their own genre, while also wanting to explore a career outside of Kamen Rider. For most Rider shows, I think they work. However, for some shows, I think it's better to let other bands have a chance. For example, I don't think a Rider Chips song would blend well with Hibiki, Double, Gaim, and Ex-Aid (and maybe Ghost too). In fact, you could argue that they barely work for any of the Rider shows after Double.

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

Rider Chips did a few songs for Wizard, so I'd say their presence slowly vanished after that.
I find both RC and DMM extremely dull music bands. Former is just pretty average rock music which has very samey feel and gets old very fast. DMM is another of those groupes that apes "old school" aestetic (for Ultraman in this case) and their songs start to blend together after a while as well.
They have some decent songs, but as far as I'm concerned Project R blows both groups away.
Also, I wish doa did more tokusatsu stuff

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

I began to see more and more people saying AbaRanger was a good series. Even I saw it in full, and I enjoyed it. (Could this be because the series was finally subbed by Imagination Station, and therefore more readily available for people to watch and enjoy?)

I've loved Abaranger since it aired, so I know what its reputation has been like -- at the time when it divided people, and more recently when it's been more accepted. I think what happened is...Abaranger was a very, very quirky show. It wasn't just comedic, it would throw some really off-the-wall stuff at you at times. (It had a crossover with a cartoon, for cryin' out loud!) There had been comedic Super Sentai shows, of course, but not one that really reveled in quirkiness. Add to this that, at the time, the English-speaking fandom was worshipping Heisei Kamen Rider -- shows like Ryuki, Faiz and Blade, where everything was overly dramatic! and super serious! So, Abaranger just looked stupid to a lot of those people.

Well, little did anyone know what bizarre turns toku was going to take. The people who thought Faiz and Blade deserved to be on HBO could have never predicted something like Den-O. And Den-O, with all of its success, has influenced so many of its successors -- both on the side of Rider and Sentai -- to be big, bright, bonkers, toyetic. So, if you're accustomed more to toku from the past several years of decade, and you go back to Abaranger? What was once a show jarring in its weirdness just seems like business as usual. Remember when people used to get so hung up on the time one of the dinosaurs played a piano? Well, what's *that* compared to some of the nutty stuff seen since?

Another thing -- the current climate with Marvel movies being so popular, and those movies being fluffy yukfests that don't take themselves seriously. So, nobody wants ANY superhero thing to take itself seriously anymore, and everybody wants every superhero show and movie to be goofy. Goofiness is now way more accepted. After years of trying to get superhero tales taken seriously, it's now opposite, and that's a shame. Not everything has to be Watchmen -- I kinda hate Watchmen -- but not everything needs to be Captain Planet.

Not killing enemies is pretty common tokusatsu theme. It's usually made for kids after all, so plenty of creators took a more kid-friendly approach.

Well, I also think that's just something that's keeping with a lot of Asian philosophy, and things like Japan's warrior codes and whatnot. America likes their violent tales, dammit, and we need to make sure the bad guy or the one who's been pestering our heroes gets his comeuppance, preferably a bloody one! It's violent, but it's cathartic! And we like our happy(ish) endings -- we need our happy(ish) endings. If you want your hero shaking his villain's hand at the end of the story, then you're a pinko hippie.

I can't speak for that guy who disliked Fourze for its friendship stuff, but for me it never worked because it all seemed so flat and phony. Gentaro didn't have a personality, he just had that character habit he'd repeat. He was like a robot with a program, not a person, and certainly not a person who cared genuinely enough to change psychopaths like Miu or Shun or JK so easily or quickly.

And I think there's just a sort of "This is what we get?" reaction for the 40th anniversary of Rider. That corny guy who, despite being dressed like a punk, is a pinko hippie, with no real Kamen Rider-ness to it. (Koichi Sakamoto being its main director doesn't help that the show feels like the closest Kamen Rider's ever been to Power Rangers.) It's still weird to me that Japan, in 2011, thought a show which paid homage to '80s John Hughes movies (but IN SPACE!), was the winning idea that kids would go for.

far as toku songs are concerned, I take Project DMM over Rider Chips any day (and I'm more of rock fan). It's just that I find DMM Ultra songs to actually feel like songs that fit the genre while I find many of Chips songs to be just generic rock songs in my opinion

The Rider Chips were GREAT when they first started out -- back when it was about Yoshio Nomura seeking out mainstream rockers with a similar love for Kamen Rider in order to give the newly returned and refreshed franchise a similarly new sound. The band's music not only came from love of Kamen Rider, they wanted to push the music to new areas. What the Rider Chips were doing was pretty different for Kamen Rider; songs that sounded more hip and mainstream and not like the commercial jingle a traditional theme might sound like.

And, since they would use different vocalists, there *was* often a different sound to each song. What glam rocker ROLLY contributed was different from '80s blues fan Diamond Yukai, which was different from what eccentric Kenji Ohtsuki contributed, etc.

Things took a turn for the band when the label forced them to take on Ricky as permanent vocalist. Ricky's not a guy who has a love for the franchise, so that same magic wasn't there. Ricky sings every single song in the exact same way, so that contributes to a lot of the songs just sounding the same. I feel like the original Rider Chips trio have stopped enjoying it all. I feel like they no longer have the love for it.

I don't really like Project DMM. I'd like for Project.R -- Super Sentai's band -- to be a little less sloppy, though. There's 320 members and growing, and a few of my least favorite Sentai singers are members. So, for me, the bands representing each franchise are all a little disappointing. (Project DMM and Project.R even share a member! But Tsuyoshi Matsubara's not one of the Project.R members I have a problem with.)

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

I can't speak for that guy who disliked Fourze for its friendship stuff, but for me it never worked because it all seemed so flat and phony. Gentaro didn't have a personality, he just had that character habit he'd repeat. He was like a robot with a program, not a person, and certainly not a person who cared genuinely enough to change psychopaths like Miu or Shun or JK so easily or quickly.

I think Fourze did relativly better on that front than something like Kyuryuger to which I'll happily apply all those arguments (King is like a hundred times worse than Gentaro). With Fourze I really caught myself not hating Gentaro nearly as much as I expected. Show managed to restrain his overbearing presence with Yuki and especially Kengo, so I never felt he was taking too much screentime. Him not really being relevant to the main story at all is also a positive thing here which helps him.
Still not very fond of the series, but I think Fourze managed to strike a nice balance with the type of character Gentaro is supposed to be compared to many similar shows. Even if that doesn't excuse how show treats supporting cast.

 

[Black Fang]

What Shougo said about Gaim, "a couple of good ideas that it was afraid to take too seriously", I say describes Fourze more than it does Gaim. Gaim and Build have been more successful compared to most other Phase 2 Heiseis in delving into its material, and I still think Gaim is one of the best shows of that period. Fouze had a disturbing setup, what with an alien-worshiping cult running a high school looking for recruits, but the show never wanted to stray too much from being cheery and "UCHUUUU KITTAAAAAAA!" Especially when they started breezing through the remaining Horoscopes: there was an opportunity for a multi-episode Liveman-esque setup with Yuki/Aquarius and JK/Capricorn. But nothing really came out of it.

 

[Bennu]

Rider Chips did a few songs for Wizard, so I'd say their presence slowly vanished after that.
I find both RC and DMM extremely dull music bands. Former is just pretty average rock music which has very samey feel and gets old very fast. DMM is another of those groupes that apes "old school" aestetic (for Ultraman in this case) and their songs start to blend together after a while as well.
They have some decent songs, but as far as I'm concerned Project R blows both groups away.
Also, I wish doa did more tokusatsu stuff

In my opinion DMM's entire Ultraman Mebius soundtrack blows away anything Project R has done and that includes the 8 Ultra Brothers movie tie in.

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

In my opinion DMM's entire Ultraman Mebius soundtrack blows away anything Project R has done and that includes the 8 Ultra Brothers movie tie in.

I'm fine with Mebius songs and I think that's my main issue. I want to feel more than "fine" from the best tokusatsu anniversary show ever made.
DMM usually try to sound grandiose and glorious, but still have that calm and unenergetic feeling about them. That's fine sometimes, but DMM almost always does this thing. You listen to Project DMM song and you know it's a Project DMM song. They feel empty like a lot of early 00s mech themes that try to tap into that 70s shows energy and just don't sound sincere (not all of them fail, but plenty still do). I want to feel pumped up about watching Ultraman, same way most of Sentai openings make me hyped. Even less than stellar series like Kyuryuger, Ninninger or Kyuranger still have some of catchiest and most energetic songs in recent toku (especially compared to how badly Riders struggle with music nowdays). No matter how bad a Sentai series can get, at least I can look forward to music albums with knowledge that at least some of songs would be good (or maybe even great) and I contribute that fully to Project R.

 

[Toku Prime]

This was inspired by the 'Post Gokaiger Sentai' thread but I figured that it should probably go in here instead:

Yes, Super Sentai is basically "red ranger and his amazing friends". They are the main characters. This is not an ensemble show.

I'm not saying the seasons are better because of this (points at GoGo V and how it's red was an a-hole to his siblings throughout only for the show to continually congratulate him on how well he "takes care" of them) or that people can't enjoy a show more if it proves to be one of the rare exceptions to this.

I just don't understand why there are still people who are shocked when a new show begins and the red ranger takes center stage? It's been the default state of the franchise since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.

Ultraman Max is overrated, I know a lot of people really enjoyed it and if you did more power to ya, even mention the show by name when somebody ask where they should start first, but it was the closest I ever came to hate watching something.

I do like the super-catchy theme song, but otherwise I can't say I really enjoyed Max either. Crunchyroll should have put Mebius out first lol.

Also, Max was the show where they made new suits for a lot of classic Showa era monsters, and Tsuburaya really need to do that again because it's been over thirteen years since then and they're STILL using those same suits every year. Considering how hot the actors get inside those outfits, they must smell like sweaty death by now. It can't be pleasant (or hygienic) to put them on. And some of them look really tatty now. Poor Eleking is just a mess of wrinkles.

Fouze had a disturbing setup, what with an alien-worshiping cult running a high school looking for recruits, but the show never wanted to stray too much from being cheery and "UCHUUUU KITTAAAAAAA!"

They were pretty upfront about that though. I think from the very first press conference they were very clear that as the first toku show to go into production after the tsunami they wanted to provide kids with some light-hearted escapism while the real world was a horror show of missing people, destroyed homes, and potential nuclear meltdown.

I think Fourze really handled it's big emotional moments well, but sometimes it's sense of humour was "I need to switch this off and go do something else for a while" levels of awful. It has some of my favourite and most hated moments in all of Rider, all in one series.

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

I just don't understand why there are still people who are shocked when a new show begins and the red ranger takes center stage? It's been the default state of the franchise since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.

Red-centric shows are fine if they done well.
I'm not a big Shinkenger fan, but it handled (literal) Red-worship aspect expertly.
On the other hand you have annoying Reds like King or Leo basically robbing everyone else of good character moments and just foricng their way into scenes where they _are_not_needed_ I can't count how many times I was angry with Lucky butting in what should feel like big emotional moments for Stinger or Kotaro.
Not to mention, both Kyuryuger and Kyuranger had 10/12 Rangers in team and having such big focus on a single one sticks out even more. Lucky was always go-to guy for pep talk with other members, all while Spada or Hammy could be basically removed from the show without changing anything. Give them SOME of the Lucky moments at least. He's Red, he's already in the center of attention.

 

[Black Fang]

(points at GoGo V and how it's red was an a-hole to his siblings throughout only for the show to continually congratulate him on how well he "takes care" of them)

What are you talking about?

I just don't understand why there are still people who are shocked when a new show begins and the red ranger takes center stage? It's been the default state of the franchise since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing. And frankly the 90s shows weren't that Red-centric anyway, especially when you compare them to the recent shows where Red gets almost all of the new trinkets, not even any special development or plot significance necessarily.

They were pretty upfront about that though. I think from the very first press conference they were very clear that as the first toku show to go into production after the tsunami they wanted to provide kids with some light-hearted escapism while the real world was a horror show of missing people, destroyed homes, and potential nuclear meltdown.

Which is a mistake to me. They did the same thing with Ohranger, and the result was a schizophrenic mess of a show. A theme of "triumph over adversity" would make complete sense after such events as the tsunami and Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attack.

But if they insist on a "light-hearted" show, then don't have a plot that screams for something more "dark".