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12-04-2016, 09:58 PM | #111 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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I'm actually more surprised here by the implication that most Sentai writers DO go into a show with a detailed plan, given how episodic they usually are. Kind of makes me wonder if they'd ever do a full-on serialized... er, series. Kyuranger's already giving us nine heroes to juggle, maybe it could switch the plot structure up the same way. It'd be a nice change of pace.
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12-04-2016, 10:21 PM | #112 |
Oldtaku
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I have to agree with this. True, a better writer will likely roll with the punches like a pugilistic pro - but the very nature of these things makes it more likely to be seat-of-pants style over master-plan.
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12-04-2016, 10:54 PM | #113 |
Victorious Knight
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More often than not, tokusatsu writers have an idea of where their show is going and have most of the major story beats in their head. Zyuranger, for example, either has the most or second most two parters in all of Sentai with most of them contributing to a larger narrative. Dairanger is focused on various characters having their own arcs, Kakuranger is split into two distinctly different halves. (Kakuranger in particular is more subtle but there's a narrative that follows the team seeing the enemies as enemies and then realizing that wasn't necessarily the way things had to be too late for it to matter) Double's planning stages were meticulous as heck, Inoue had most of Agito worked out early on and decided to write all but a single episode because of that. Noburo Sugimura eventually left tokusatsu because, after Ohranger, the emerging market of story heavy video games offered him the creative freedom earlier tokusatsu gave him.
Shows won't always be planned out to the extent of say, Gaim, but most tokusatsu writers do go into these shows with something of a master plan. They're very malleable, yeah, this is why you get quirks like Natsuki's precognition never showing up again after the first episode. (Sho Aikawa, Boukenger's head writer, felt it made her too powerful of a character) Or why certain characters who turn out to be more popular than expected stick around longer than intended (Date in OOO) or get new forms. (Kaito in Gaim) There are even writers meetings so the people who only contribute a small handful of episodes have a road map to stick with. This one is a bit more recent for certain franchises, Ultraman didn't start it until Gaia but that's because Ultraman's very nature was episodic. Though it also depends on how involved your producer is. Naomi Takebe (OOO, Gaim, Go-Busters, Ninninger) often likes to stick to the day to day aspects and gives a writer greater control. The one exception I can recall is the Kogami stuff in OOO. Sho Aikawa didn't like where Decade's producer wanted it to go and ultimately stepped down as head writer after 14 episodes due to this difference in vision. Shinichiro Shirakura, the architect of the Heisei formula, has a relationship with Toshiki Inoue that gave the writer a great deal of control over the story. Compare this with Den-O where after years of falling ratings and toy sales, Shirakura wanted it to be about the characters rather than the story, so Yasuko Kobayashi adhered to those wishes. As much as people dislike Kyoryuger, its producer and writer got along famously and hashed out a very detailed vision for it early during production. In the 90s, Toei prided itself on its writing staff's credentials and even made it a point to publically declare "Toei is not a place for new writers to get started" after they began to gain such a reputation. It's even theorized that Yasuko Kobayashi wrote most of Juukou B-Fighter using her mentor's name because of this. All that said, I think it's possible to have a detailed idea of your show, the story, and its characters, and still push out an episodic show due to Sentai running for a full year. This is something shows, even kids shows, rarely do these days. This turned out to be a lot longer than my initial "Yeah, they tend to plan stuff out" post, but I sorta just vomited what I know all over the place so you'll have to excuse my incoherent ramblings. (also it's hella late for me and I just got done with a rigorous study session so I'm fried, but I hope yall got the gist of what I was trying to say) Last edited by Aoi Kurenai; 12-04-2016 at 11:07 PM.. |
12-04-2016, 11:32 PM | #114 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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Anyway, I guess my point here is that while Ninninger might not have started with a clear vision in mind, a plan clearly started to come together as it went along. It's not like the guy never thought ahead. I think you could even argue there's some merit to that style of writing, especially for shows like these that do have somewhat messy productions from time to time. You can just sort of naturally build on things without having to worry about fitting everything to whatever plot beats you've committed to or having the rug pulled out from under you. I think Gaim actually suffered a fair bit from that, forcibly rerailing things that got off track (the final few episodes sort of abruptly getting everything to match up with the premiere's opening scene mostly for the sake of it), or failing to fit things into the existing story with any real purpose (why does Youko exist again?). Don't get me wrong though. There's a nice happy middle in-between these two extremes. But a show like Ninninger doesn't really call for a big plan the same way a show like Gaim does. As long as the stuff you're making up as you go along makes sense, you're good.
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12-06-2016, 04:37 PM | #115 |
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Oh boy, do I have a lot to say on this topic...
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Ninninger's main writer, Kento Shimoyama, didn't actually have a series long story planned out. According to one of the entries on Toei's website for the show, he branched the story off into the direction it went based on production constraints. He had points A and Z in his head but literally didn't plot anything in between out in advance. (so basically he knew a family team would eventually beat a bad guy with one or all of them becoming The Last Ninja and that's about it)
That's not to say I think Kento Shimoyama is a bad writer -- he's actually really, really great with characters and interpersonal conflicts. He wrote one of the best episodes of Zyuohger a few weeks back, and his work on Gokaiger and Goseiger was pretty stellar. There are even a dozen+ great episodes of Ninninger. And don't even get me started on the joy I feel when watching "Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters Returns vs. Dobutsu Sentai Go-Busters." But to know that he went into a head writing position without his series arc planned out is just... it's infuriating. He was given an opportunity that dozens of writers would kill for, and he went in half-cocked. It's enough to make me scream. Not to get too insider baseball (I try to keep what I do professionally off of my posts), but the reason this upsets me is that I understand the impulse to do exactly what he did. I feel it every time I'm working on a pitch for a new show -- that sense of "why the hell do I have to plot out everything when they haven't even picked this up? And even if they do, I know production/commercial constraints will force me to change a lot." But you know what that feeling is? LAZINESS mixed with ARROGANCE. Laziness because... when I feel that way, I know it's because I don't want to do the hard work, and I'm making excuses not to do it. Arrogance because... I think I'm so damn smart and clever that I'll be able to figure out all of the problems on the fly when they crop up (this is almost NEVER true). Advanced plotting forces you to think a lot about what you want your show to be, and what you don't want it to be. Even if you end up being forced to change parts of your story, at least you've learned what it's about at its core, what it's supposed to feel like, how your characters interact, and generally what kinds of events need to happen and where those event need to fall. In a weird way, advanced plotting makes it easier to improvise later on when something doesn't work exactly like you thought it would, or if you get a brilliant new idea... because you still have a structure to provide boundaries for your creativity, which helps keep your story from getting derailed by new stuff. Yes, it was, and it contributes to a lot of the problems I've expressed to you in previous conversations we've had about Ninninger. As you know, I deeply enjoyed the first 30-or-so episodes of Ninninger. But when I got to the last 12-15 episodes, it became glaringly obvious that Shimoyama had zero clue how he was going to wrap up the show. And that palpable uncertainty lead to one of the most unsatisfying, paint-by-numbers finale arcs in a Sentai since the 80s. Here's what happens when you don't structure a longform story: you get to the end, and you find that you haven't laid out all of the beats necessary to make the audience feel the emotional crescendo of the finale. You also find yourself with all of these dangling plot threads you don't have the time or space to tie off. While you may have successfully spun plots on a granular level for majority of the show, the ending comes off as limp and unsatisfying because you weren't thinking about the big picture. I call this Stephen King Syndrome because he's famous for writing by the seat of his pants, and it's the main reason so many of his endings are disappointing, Deus Ex Machina affairs. Quote:
If it's anything like American kids TV, at the start of pre-production the head writer gives the producers a 10-to-15 page outline that lays out the series' main story arcs. The head writer and the producers workshop that outline, and when everyone is satisfied, they apportion the main series arc beats into the episodes that fall toward the beginning and ending of each cour, and to the episodes that correspond to Bandai's next wave of the toy releases. These main story arc beats usually account for 10-30 episodes (more or less depending on the show). Then, the rest of the episodes are likely divided up (possibly based on character focus) and assigned to the secondary writers, who pitch stand-alone stories to the producers and head writer. As the series moves into production, all the writers then expand their overviews and pitches into outlines for each episode. They then move on to the script stage, and finally to shooting. That's just a guess based on how American TV works, but I'm pretty confident it resembles how Sentai production works as well. Quote:
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I think you could even argue there's some merit to that style of writing, especially for shows like these that do have somewhat messy productions from time to time. You can just sort of naturally build on things without having to worry about fitting everything to whatever plot beats you've committed to or having the rug pulled out from under you.
But weekly toku production doesn't have the time for revision like that. And because episodes are produced weekly, you don't have the luxury to go back and fix things -- when an episode is in the can, it's done. So if you want to maintain a certain level of quality and/or consistency, it's important to have a road map you can stick to when things get messy. I'd agree with that, sure. I think the best shows are ones that start with a strong structure but are willing to improvise along the way. The key is providing yourself enough room to play within the complex lattice of the plot. Last edited by Kamen Rider Lucha; 12-06-2016 at 04:49 PM.. |
12-06-2016, 04:55 PM | #116 |
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vilians are lost kingdom
main villian be aries the evil ruler of lost kingdom 9 heroes 's mentor be zeus or venus
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12-07-2016, 08:57 AM | #117 |
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It will premiere on February 12, 2017.
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12-07-2016, 10:11 AM | #118 |
The Immortal King Tasty
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Yes, it was, and it contributes to a lot of the problems I've expressed to you in previous conversations we've had about Ninninger.
As you know, I deeply enjoyed the first 30-or-so episodes of Ninninger. But when I got to the last 12-15 episodes, it became glaringly obvious that Shimoyama had zero clue how he was going to wrap up the show. And that palpable uncertainty lead to one of the most unsatisfying, paint-by-numbers finale arcs in a Sentai since the 80s. Here's what happens when you don't structure a longform story: you get to the end, and you find that you haven't laid out all of the beats necessary to make the audience feel the emotional crescendo of the finale. You also find yourself with all of these dangling plot threads you don't have the time or space to tie off. While you may have successfully spun plots on a granular level for majority of the show, the ending comes off as limp and unsatisfying because you weren't thinking about the big picture.
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12-07-2016, 01:01 PM | #119 |
Tokusatsu Hero
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I hate to be "that guy", but can we get back to the subjet at hand, Uchuu Sentai KyuRanger?
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12-07-2016, 01:42 PM | #120 |
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If Shimoyama came at Kyuranger with a strong series arc in mind, and a producer who understands Sentai better than Naomi Takebe, I wouldn't mind seeing him in the head writer's chair. The guy is a fundamentally good writer. I tend to echo Aoi's sentiments. I'd love to see Kobayashi as head writer if she's given the leeway to do something more like Timeranger, Ryuki, or Shinkenger than ToQger or Den-O. What I'd prefer most is to see someone cool from anime take a stab at the position, but like Aoi said, those folks tend to be reserved for Kamen Rider. I reallllly hope they don't elevate a secondary writer this time around. I don't think there's anyone good enough to promote. I know Jin Tanaka has written a bunch of episodes of Zyuohger *cough*they'reterrible*cough*, but he doesn't seem quite up to the task yet. I know it'd be controversial, but every year I hold a secret, futile hope that Toshiki Inoue will come back to Sentai. It'll never happen, but a guy can dream... Last edited by Kamen Rider Lucha; 12-07-2016 at 01:56 PM.. |
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