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12-26-2015, 02:27 PM | #1 |
AMAZON!!!!!!
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Okoto
Posts: 1,119
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I'm wondering how you view toku, why you enjoy it and how you found it.
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12-26-2015, 02:48 PM | #2 |
Dai Shogun
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Germany
Posts: 7,529
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Found it through the airings of the old Godzilla-movies during my childhood, I loved those. I continued to like Godzilla and collected the movies, but I never saw anything outside of Godzilla. That was until I came back to collecting figures last year and saw pictures of the Gaim Figuarts. I really liked those, and back over another forum I used to visit there was a Kamen Rider-topic so I asked from which series the figure was and where I could watch it.
I admit, it looked like Power Rangers to me initially. I could not distinguish it properly. But after I gave Gaim a go I was in love. I loved how real the action as (most of the time), and I loved the armor designs. I was unsatisfied with the story at first (street dancing…) but when the show got darker and more interesting to watch I enjoyed it a lot more. Since then I’m hooked and I watched some Sentai and Ultraman too. Sentai I can’t stand, I get very little enjoyment out of it, but Ultraman is cool. I also tried Garo but that is just unwatchable. I hated every second of it. So I stick to Rider most of the time. While it has it low points (Wizard) and the newer shows since Gaim which can’t really grab me, I watch a lot of older stuff and have a blast with those. I go through the Heisei-era currently and really enjoy these shows. |
12-26-2015, 04:21 PM | #3 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2015
Posts: 2,934
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Well ignoring the Power Rangers I watched as a kid, I got into toku last year. Last summer...ish? I started getting into Japanese action figures around that time. (I'd gotten a D-Arts back in 2012, and that was cool, but it was about all I could afford at the time and it was plenty). I started getting figmas. Like, lots of figmas. Mostly I was in it for the cool toys, so I got a bunch from stuff I hadn't watched or had that much interest in. And one of the earliest figures I got was of Kamen Rider Spear, because I love that design.
However turns out once you have figures of something you kinda wanna know where it came from, so I started watching Ryuki a couple months after I got Spear. And I loved that, so of course, I didn't really watch anything else after that. Until this past summer, anyway, when one of my friends got me a figuarts Abyss for my birthday, and then I started getting figuarts. Like, lots of figuarts. So I started getting more interested in Kamen Rider and in the last half year I've watched through, like, five other series and parts of four more. I'm getting interested in watching some Sentai and other stuff, but mainly I'm into Kamen Rider now. So...yeah, toys, basically. I'm in it for the toys. By which I mean, the cool designs, more or less. Though at this point I guess I'm more into it for the franchise, the designs are still pretty important. And lack of toys for a given thing saddens me, because I got into this whole mess by getting cool toys, and so I'd like to get some more of more cool stuff. I think that's part of why I like to stick with Kamen Rider--most of the series is well covered in the figuarts line. On the other hand, with Sentai that's like a big old heap of disappointments. I watched RPM and the lack of good accessible toys for Go-Onger is already killing me. Of course, that's not to says I watch for the pretty things and don't care for anything else. Cool designs will hook me, but the show itself is what keeps me. |
12-26-2015, 04:31 PM | #4 |
Tokusatsu Hero
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Maryland
Posts: 6,223
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My gateway for me was Godzilla when I was two and half years old. I grew up with the Showa movies and would rewatch those a lot. I also grew up with Ultraman 1966, Power Rangers, Beetleborgs and Masked Rider. I do remember seeing bits of ZO and Five Riders vs. King Dark at a collector's shop in the mid 90's and I thought it looked cool. There was also the time when I saw the Gaoranger anniversary special RAW on VHS back in 2002. I didn't really watch Kamen Rider and Sentai until 2012. I mainly grew up on Godzilla and Ultraman. Kamen Rider was something I always knew about for years, but never fully watch it until I saw W in 2012.
What I love about Toku is the special effects. I love suits and miniatures. It's so cool seeing different type of creative monsters in Japanese special effects films and TV shows. Even if it has no monsters or superheroes, I still like seeing Japan doing things the practical way. That's what Toku is, Japanese special effects. |
12-26-2015, 05:13 PM | #5 |
Stronger Than You
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: nyet
Posts: 25,326
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Godzilla got me into Toku, and it holds a special place in my heart. I love that franchise to bits. It was my mom's fault because she loved Godzilla, so growing up I'd watch a lot of the Showa era movies on VHS (Most of them the lame cheesy ones, but hey, I still loved them ). Then there was PR, which was probably about 90% of most 90's kids Toku memories, and I was there with them.
However, that's just how I got into it. What I enjoy about Toku is the breath of fresh air it gives me. It lets me see things in real life that I never thought possible. While I know toku predates a lot of popular franchises, being an American meant I never saw a lot of the Toku first. So I thought that giant robots were only allowed in cartoons, armored heroes wore power armor larger than they were, and victories were won with bigger lasers, not by fist fights. So come Power Rangers, which showed me heroes flipping and kicking like a comic book, rather than charging in with lots of guns, and come the Heisei Godzilla, which had a lot better series of fights and a darker tone. For me, I just love Toku because it offered me something new in an era where parental control was so heavy that guns fired lasers and swords only cut robots, and just fired lasers at other living things.
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12-26-2015, 06:43 PM | #6 |
The Patient Observer
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Wakanda
Posts: 1,093
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It lets me watch live-action superhero shows that put more effort into the action than the drama, as that can get rather distracting if not annoying.
It presents different ideas, some really crazy ideas on what to model a hero's powers around, what their motivations are, and if nothing else it acts as a second option of things to watch. Maybe I feel like putting up with Oliver's brooding or Barry's over reliance on his team, or maybe I'll watch Fourze ramble on about friendship or just watch Garo be awesome. Also, while I would like to see some "After the End" stories for various Riders or Sentai, they have the decency to have a nice long season that by the end, usually feels like a completed story. It's not that I want X-men or Avengers or Superboy to eventually end, but there's a nice feeling knowing that the story want get fucked up by the next writer coming in (Frank Miller, Loeb, Quesada, etc). Only bad thing is some of the CGI quality. I appreciate the effort, but it does make showing otherwise great shows hard to other people when Hibiki is fighting a painfully clear fake monster on screen.
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12-26-2015, 09:06 PM | #7 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: CA
Posts: 2,497
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The short answer is I love seeing the suit work and I love mecha and kaiju stuff. Sentai combines all of that.
The slightly longer answer is I got into Godzilla a couple years ago and really loved it. The culture behind it, the production and aesthetics of it, the cheesiness of the rubber suits and miniature models, the cool monster designs. Then somebody I know got into it, and he's the type of person that gets so into something that it annoys everybody else around them. So literally every other word out of his mouth had something to do with Godzilla. To make matters worse, another friend of his was into it and they sort of amplified the annoyingness of each other's fandom - all the while knowing that I was into Godzilla as well, but never even tried "celebrating" the fandom with me. So I was both annoyed and felt left out, which just about completely ruined Godzilla for me at the time. But I needed my giant monster fix, so I started watching Gamera stuff. I kinda became a Gamera hipster "oh the 90s Gamera movies are some of the highest rated kaiju movies of all time" but it was the only way I felt I could express my interest in it without coming off as one of this guy's followers. (as petty as it sounds, it happens a lot, and it pisses off everybody that knows him that gets him into something) Anyways, one day my girlfriend saw a couple of Ultraman episodes on DVD at the store and picked it up for me. She said it looked super Asian and like something i'd enjoy, so I checked it out and loved it. From there, I discovered the world of Tokusatsu, and had to look more into it. Now, I knew that Super Sentai existed, but I never really knew what it was aside from "Japanese Power Rangers." But getting into Ultraman and somebody else I know nostalgia-ing over Power Rangers inspired me to check out Zyuranger, and from there I instantly fell in love. It was a bit hard at first. I loved Zyuranger, but much of that love was fueled by nostalgia. Once I finished the series and realized that not every season of Sentai was exactly the same as that nor were they as PR nostalgia-heavy, my love affair with it almost ended. Dairanger had almost none of the elements of Zyuranger that made me love it, and just felt completely different. Gone were the awesome mythical warriors from the past, gone were the mecha that talked to them. Gone were the color-coded warrior outfits. Instead, we got a group of 5 random guys chosen to fight monsters. Part of why I loved Zyuranger was because of how different from Power Rangers it was, so when Dairanger didn't share the same differences, I hated it. Of course, I don't still have those problems with Dairanger, since i'm more familiar with toku, but at the time it bugged me. I went through a couple of episodes of a few seasons - Kakuranger, ToQger, Battle Fever J, Megaranger, Gokaiger, until I finally settled on Jetman. Jetman had enough similarities to Zyuranger that I started to take off the Power Rangers nostalgia glasses and see Sentai for what it really was. At this point, Ninninger had just premiered, so I decided to check it out. I don't really know what it is about that series, probably a mix of the awesome mech suits, cool monster designs, and great ranger suits, but I absolutely loved it. I was finally free of comparing everything to Zyuranger and Power Rangers by the time I finished Jetman and got a couple of episodes into Ninninger, and have been enjoying Sentai ever since, and all for the same reasons I enjoy Godzilla (check the second and third lines of this post if you forgot) Of course, Kamen Rider is (at least from what i've seen) more popular and generally considered to be better than Sentai, so I decided to check it out. However, I took a different approach; not knowing where to start, and wanting to avoid the mistakes I made with Zyuranger (such as thinking what made Zyu unique from other Sentai were actually some of the tropes of the series) and decided to start at the very beginning. Now i'm finishing up Ninninger as it continues to air, and working my way through Kamen Rider. I recently started Kyoryuger, but I don't know how I feel about it. I'll give it a couple more episodes before I decide to continue it or not. TL;DR: friend got obsessively into Godzilla and ruined it for me, turned to Ultraman and Sentai for my asian men in rubber suits fix. Quote:
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So I stick to Rider most of the time. While it has it low points (Wizard)
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Last edited by EpsilonX; 12-26-2015 at 09:11 PM.. |
12-26-2015, 11:27 PM | #8 |
Tokusatsu Hero
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Maryland
Posts: 6,223
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Wizard started off great and got worst over time. I thought the last few episodes are decent. Not the worst rider series, but I find it to be alright. I like it better then Drive.
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12-27-2015, 01:36 AM | #9 |
AMAZON!!!!!!
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Okoto
Posts: 1,119
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Wizard is a lot better of a show to "binge" than to watch week by week. It's like most tokusatsu in that sense, getting it in big dumps can be better than in small doses.
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12-27-2015, 03:39 AM | #10 |
Dai Shogun
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Germany
Posts: 7,529
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Quote:
As soon as they fight its (bad) CGI only. None of the action is real. And that's not what I seek with my Toku. Quote:
The action scenes are cool though, that's the only redeeming factor. Very well choreographed and nice to look at. I watched it and got some enjoyment out of it, but man there’s just so much better Rider-stuff around, Wizard is the worst out of all the Rider-shows I've seen so far. |
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