Anno is very close to the medium, and as much weight as what he says might have, he's not going to be the most objective person in the world regarding the subject.
If we're going to bring objectivity into this, and say Anno is too close to the medium to really judge fairly, then let's turn that critical eye inward and examine ourselves as fans. Are we perhaps too far from the medium to really judge fairly?
HJU frequently attempts to apply the term tokusatsu to basically any TV show with special effects. That said, we do not generally try to seriously apply the term to Western films that use a lot of effects. That is, I haven't seen a post around here arguing The Avengers or Pacific Rim is tokusatsu. I think this is important. I think this betrays the internal bias that drives us to want to call TV shows tokusatsu, but not films that are basically the same thing with a higher budget. I think this distinction is very important. When we do this, are we not betraying just as much bias as Anno? And a far less excusable one?
Here's why I hold this opinion. The Hollywood film style is so distinct, so strong and profound, that no on would seriously try to argue a Hollywood film is anything but. It would look totally absurd, and would be completely indefensible if a true film buff showed up. It's too easy to compare Hollywood effects films to foreign films and see the totally different approach in philosophy and aesthetic, on top of what is probably a vast gap in budget.
So we fans don't even try to go there. We don't try to argue that Super Hero Taisen is somehow the same sort of thing as The Avengers, even though there's just as much grounds for that as arguing that Ultraman and Star Trek are basically the same sort of thing. But with the TV stuff, we do make the argument, and I think it's because of perceived cheapness and quickness rather than any real assessment of the effects techniques being used. And also, I think when the argument is made with TV, we make it not because it is logical, but because
it is emotionally gratifying to us.
If tokusatsu is Japanese, then it is a world we as foreign fans are completely shut out of. We can observe, but not participate. Every country in the world except Japan is shut out of it, in fact.We can never make something that might be called tokusatsu, nor could we look to something a countryman made and go "see, that's tokusatsu!" And I think this bothers us, because fans don't want to be passive observers. They want to feel like they have the possibility of participation in the medium. They want to call their fan-films tokusatsu. If they go into the TV business, an attainable goal for some of us, they want to feel like they can make tokusatsu TV shows. They want to feel like the works of their country could be counted among the great Japanese works as equals... even though there's no desire to count tokusatsu film as equivalent to Hollywood effects films.
So the definition we're seeing here, I think, isn't about creating a practically useful, descriptive term. It's fans trying to satisfy their own cultural bias, by creating a definition that gives Westerns valid cultural participation in the tokusatsu tradition. If Armor Hero, Doctor Who, and Star Trek are tokusatsu, then the Japanese don't have the market cornered... never mind that it's patently absurd, on the face of it, to use a Japanese term to describe types of shows that we already have perfectly good English terms for when we're all English-speakers. And if Anno is arrogant to say that tokusatsu must be Japanese, are we not more arrogant to say that it shouldn't be, simply because it makes us feel better to say that it isn't? And that is the only justification I can see for saying that tokusatsu, something we've accepted has a Japanese name, is arbitrarily not indicative of a Japanese thing.
As for Lynxara's comment I would actually like to get her feedback on that because I've head that claim made before, but have yet to see anything where a non-Japanese production is refereed to as "tokusatsu." In fact the only way I've ever heard the term used by Japanese people is in reference to their own productions.
The big revelation for this was when I was downloading a made in Japan, for Japanese people, album of tokusatsu song covers. Everybody likes tokusatsu songs, right? And god knows you could fill dozens of albums with covers of just songs from Toei or Tsuburaya's stuff, which couldn't be too expensive to license. And yet when I was going through this album, there were covers of... well, of the Knight Rider theme, and the Star Trek theme, and the Thunderbirds theme.
For me it was like the time I saw this Japanese list of the top 100 anime that included Tom and Jerry. This only made sense of "tokusatsu" was just a word that indicated special effects, and would be understood as Japanese people as such. Similar to how, to Japanese people, anime is just "cartoon," and "American anime" is not a contradiction in terms. So when I was in Mandarake in Shibuya, books about Star Trek and Star Wars were piled into the "tokusatsu" section. Superman rubbed shoulders with Kamen Rider, and I felt like I understood why.
