The biggest issue is that this is not really an issue of gender politics.
It's all about toy sales. It will always be about toy sales.
And when the toys of the female characters are cited as being worse than their fellow characters, then they won't get the prominent role people want them to hold.

The simple counterargument is typically "Then add more female characters. The numbers are so low because there's so few female characters to begin with." But that's not a real solution. Boys want to project themselves onto the main hero, which is a difficult issue when they don't even share a gender (Note: Difficult, but not impossible). (Most) Children aren't watching Kamen Rider for the deep, intricate story (Despite what most Gaim fanatics will try to tell you), but just for escapism and to project themselves onto their favorite heroes. By severing that link or making it much harder to connect just for the sake of a weak attempt at equality isn't worth the risks.

the difference between those cartoon and Kamen Rider, is that theres over 35 years of history with male heroes, and one of the others started with the female cast from the start, and Korra was still in the same universe, and many of the fans of Korra watching it were people who grew up watching the first airbender.

and even then, Korra was taken off the air for the third season because of low viewership.

You forget however, that those toy sales and salesmen are still dictated by these politics, which then, goes back to my previous arguement about the issues of blaming kids for something that is created by adults.

I'm not sure how the former exactly causes conflicts with what I'm saying, and I was mostly talking about the boys' initial reaction to Korra and how easily they accepted her. The show's eventual outcome has more to do with general management more than anything.

if a kid doesn't want the toy of the hero, it's not the kid's fault, it's the show's fault. I don't anyone is blaming kids for a show not succeeding in toy sales.

Exactly. Kids will like characters if the show does a good job at it.

But unfortunately, reality is toymakers are satisfied only with the bare minimum.

it was already established that the avatar could be male or female in the last airbender from episode 3, so there was little to no nonacceptance of Korra being female in the first place.

like I said with Kamen Rider, it has a lot of years where the males were the lead, and it grew to have a large fanbase of young males.

BUT at the same time, alienation of one part of your audience solely to draw in another can also account of failure.

I think you are forgetting kids don't have the same amount of acceptance to the idea of canon as adults have.

I doubt any kid actually praised Korra for being the natural extension of the fictional rules of a fictional universe they would most likely are not that aware of.

But like I said before; kids are not that stubborn.

Now I'm not saying that everything can just be changed willy-nilly, because realistically of course suddenly having a female main Rider immediately is impossible and Toei's infamous pig-headed attitude is all too familiar to us by now, but I'm saying kids should not be blamed for a system completely outside of their control.

No, they're not.
Toy sales are dictated by one thing, toy sale. And as redundant as it sounds, it's true.
Kids aren't to be blamed by what they do or don't buy. In all actuality, it's the adults who follow what trends the children are into and want.

It's a very circular cycle, but you're trying to pin the blame on the adults with the argument that they "Instill these values into our children" when it's not always the case.

Korra is actually a rather weak argument, as it alienated older fans and younger fans were rather uninterested with the weak ratings the series received.

Yes.

Yes it kinda is. Kids don't exist in a bubble.
My arguement had nothing to do with what happened to Korra afterwards. I was strictly speaking in terms of how the character was received initially.

What happened later is far more complicated.

Actually, they are.
After all, we're talking about a franchise originating from a country infamous for it's desire for rebelling against the system, for it's want to change the norm.
However, when it comes to fantasy mediums, kids will always be kids. When you present a viking man and an amazon woman to a little boy, they'd be more likely to gravitate towards the male, not because of the system, but because they can see more of themselves in the character they share the gender with. They can simply just identify easier.

No, it's not.
A child can be influenced by their environment, but that doesn't mean their surroundings determine who they are and what they are interested in.

And a positive initial reception doesn't mean much when met with a far more lukewarm reception upon viewing the actual character. People were excited for Korra upon reveal, proving that yes, boys are, in fact, willing to accept a female protagonist in a show made for a male audience. But with waning interest right out of the gate, what does it say about her?

And I'm telling you, as someone who has worked with kids and looked into child psychology: No, they are really not.

I didn't make myself clear; I am not arguing that character identification doesn't exist and that boys won't prefer boy character, but I'm simply pointing out that kids aren't as inflexible as people think they are and that kids aren't exclusively won by just gender alone, even if it is one of the major factors.

I am well aware in the toy marketing reality, those are simply not the risks people want to take, when it does admittedly require asking for Toei to do more than they have (even if that reason is as simple as "women are not from Venus").

That the show failed to deliver what it was promising? That the writing sells the character not gender alone? I mean, its either that or implying that kids somehow gradually evolved to become more misogynist, which at that point would really only have one source to blame...

Well, why are you taking how Korra did afterwards away? The show clearly did not identify with as many girls or boys. The "system" may be "broken" but that is how the world is. The people who do these things want have the best possible toy sales, not to try and change a generation. The world has in the past few hundred years been accepting women into society, but there will always be the argument about things being boy things for kids. One of those is superheroes, which Rider falls under, and less boys are willing to go for a female lead than a male lead.

As I said before, I know that and I'm not denying that. I'm just saying we should not single out kids as the sole reason for this.

there not really anything to point to in the first place.

My thing here is that why wouldn't they try to make the toys appeals to both genders? Why only get one side's money?

The fun & gotta-catch-em-all mentality of rider gimmicks would not drop to such a low degree that they go out of business. At worst they'll probably end up like Fourze, as far as recent memory goes. And even if it does get lower I doubt they'll end up going bankrupt. They'll just get lower-than-desired income because of the monstrous cycle they've helped created & breed. And no; no business ever wants lower-than-desired income. Ever.

They don't want that yet were dumb enough to not give Go-Busters a collectible gimmick or plethora of auxiliary mecha, which resulted in lower revenue that year as far as Sentai sales tend to go. And that was just due to their own stupidity of making less than their average amount of merchandise. Make a toy line that's very addicting like Gaim's or Kyoryuger's & put in a female main character. That'll at least soften the inevitable girl-drives-away-boys'/boys'-parents'-money blow.

Not to mention the fact that Rider has a much wider age range in their audience than Sentai does in Japan. S.H. Figuarts are proof of that. With a bigger audience than Sentai, plus the fact that Rider tends to make more money than Sentai anyway, Rider is the better option to attempt having a female main character since any loss in sales won't be nearly as damaging as it would be to their other franchises.

Because that's how demographics work. That's why there's boys toys, and girls toys. Hitting both sides with one franchise is hella harder than with two.

Action cartoons don't appeal to girls like they do to boys.

Avatar: Legend of Aang & Korra. Adventure Time. Countless anime. It might not be easy to make everyone individually happy but it's not impossible to make people of different groups happy with the same thing.

And just because more girls don't like action series like boys do doesn't mean the boys should be the only ones that are catered to. If 70% of sales for a show's merchandise came from boys why do companies feel the need to thrive off of only that 70%? They're ignoring the other 30% that bothered to give them their attention, time & money without being even considered by the company. So while it is extremely difficult to make the "perfect" 50-50 split for media & it's demographics, that shouldn't be what the goal is.

If you ended up receiving 100% viewership & sales from just one kind of group & that one kind of group only then it makes sense that you focus on that one group because that's all you have. But that's not how fan bases & audiences work. Percentages don't mean anything.

So more girls like this type of movie than boys do. So what? A small percentage of boys still saw them. They willingly gave the movies support without having to be thought of. So if these companies stopped trying appeal to the majority like it's some kinda voting system then they could potentially have extra sales.

Don't segment potential audiences that could care about your product just because they don't take up the majority of the pie chart. The fact that they're even on the pie chart is something you should be embracing & trying to make a profit out of.

The difference?
They don't have a 40 year legacy of expectations to meet.

I'm not saying it's not a viable tactic to try to market to both gender groups, but the primary difference is that, as a franchise, attempting to do so would be a major shift in how it operates.

Here's an example. Look at the full title of the brony documentary.
"Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony"
It's not quite the same scenario, but it'll suffice for the comparison. MLP holds a stigma of being for adolescent girls, and when the newest series was announced, it still held that stigma. Friendship is Magic was created not to intentionally attract fans of all genders and ages, but merely to appeal to them at some level (Primarily so that fathers watching with their daughters wouldn't want to chew their own faces off).
However, even the most die hard of fans *Cough* can admit that, ultimately, the series still targets the primary audience of adolescent girls, still being a series fueled by toy sales.

My Little Pony and Kamen Rider are both decades old franchises, and they actually do the same thing in aiming at the market that will net the most sales. However, FIM's attraction to alternate audiences wasn't an attempt to draw them in and get their money. It was just a unforeseen incident, and even with that, they still put most of their efforts in the toys that appeal to the younger fans, rather than boys and older collectors.
Kamen Rider intentionally trying to get the little girl market wouldn't necessarily be successful, and would just as well run the risk of alienating their main market, ending in a major collapse. It's just not worth the risk for a small chunk of the market.

That's all true. But whether periphery demographics are done on purpose or by accident doesn't matter. What matters is they exist & that they're there now. Tossing them a bone once in a blue doesn't seem like asking for much. It won't reformat the entire franchise.

Damage-taking moves would be like what Digimon did with Frontier. They've never been able to recover from that because they shook up their concept to the point where the show & toys were borderline unrecognizable. Having a main character of a different gender than the norm won't leave that kind of mark on Kamen Rider, it'll just be different. It'll most likely be, as I said before, more akin to Go-Busters' sales at worst.

Not to mention that change can't ever occur if people keep holding on to these silly ideas of "legacy" & "tradition" for a franchise. They can be successful for years & stick around for however many decades they want. But at some point they're gonna run their wells dry & fans will take notice. I don't want that to happen to franchises I like, especially not Kamen Rider.

It just feels that Toei has a very knee jerk reaction when it comes to decisions, wanting to pin the blame for low sales on an easy target, such as rumors that they blame Hibiki's low sales on Shuki.
So when I couple that willingness to blame the one off beat change with sales akin to Go-Busters, all I can picture are a group of higher ups going "See, we tried. It failed. Not doing that again" as if they're unwilling to look at any other trouble points and just picking the easy target for what caused the failure.

Despite how I may sound, I'm not against a main female Rider in the slightest. I guess I'm just more afraid how poorly it'll be handled and used as a scapegoat for why a series is bad.

one thing you guys need to take note is that Toei has had Kamen Rider go into ratings death TWICE, both leading to a long hiatus, so they probably aren't too trustworthy of new ideas or different things, because it doesn't matter if the end product is good or bad, the ratings do matter. ;-;7 Amazon deserved more love back in the day.

I say the slow and steady route of slowly introducing some secondary female riders would be the safest bet. you get to have more females, but not take the spotlight, and when you've got the idea of more female riders situated comfortably in the public eye, THEN you can work on a female rider. I don't think ANYONE is opposed to a female main rider, but if it were to be NOW, no. it would be too big a risk for Toei to take a chance in.

but take note, the last thing you want to do is force a new idea as something special. keep all the tokenism out of the character.

I don't think any of us are against the idea. Nor are we so desperate to see it that we'll die painfully if we don't get it. We just have varying levels of confidence & faith in them for trying it & doing it right.

Like you said, they're quick to blame their creation for mishaps despite the fact that they created it themselves. Rather than trying to make it better next time they'd sooner sweep it under the rug.

My feelings & thoughts are, though, that a change in marketing & merchandise (Go-Busters) is different than a change in a cast member (main female rider) because of fans' responses. It's pretty easy to guess that people will be vocal about a change in a line of heroes' gender after so many years & strong opinions will arise because of it. Both good & bad of course, but they're there & they're loud. That's what's important.

It's more likely that people are more passionate about that than how one year's mecha toyline were made & distributed. That's why it's easier to blame Go-Busters; not nearly as many people are offended by it. If they tried to make a female main Kamen Rider a scapegoat it wouldn't be as easy because people would eventually speak up. I can't say how much when comparing countries, but I'm sure someone somewhere in Japan wants to see a female main rider just as much as we do, if not more.

All we need is that one Kamen Rider heroine to get their foot in the door. The one that can get people talking. Mind you, that won't guarantee success or equality. But it's a chance to get there, one that hasn't been there before.

Another thing to consider is Toei owns both Precure and Sailor Moon so why would they change either SS or KR to appeal to little girls when they already have that demograph covered?

It's less people wanting it to appeal to young girls, and more for Kamen Rider to be a show to appeal to all demographics.

That doesn't necessitate having a woman in the suit though.
Hasbro considers Transformers an appealling to all demographics franchise despite there being only 1 woman on the team.*and even that's spotty at best*

That's a substantial difference due in no small part to Transformers having a huge cast of characters.
Additionally, the most recent series, Prime and RID, feature a female character in a lead/important role.
While Arcee may not have been the most important character in terms of plot development, she was arguably the main character of Prime.

The equivalent would be having a Sentai where the lead character would be one of the female rangers (She may not necessarily be the leader of the team, but the character the audience is made to follow and connect with).

It's harder to create a brand that appeals to all demographics when the "Main character" spot is, often times, a solo hero.
Note: Not impossible or implausible, just harder.

That makes sense.

Y'all do know that Arcee's been around since the 80's right?

And was irrelevant in the original series.

And it took her 20 years before she got to do anything beyond being "The chick."

Just saying. She's been around for a while. Not to mention she was a strong moral/emotional character in the 86 movie.