KyoRyuger Production Interview & Color Logic
 

A recent interview with new Super Sentai chief producer Takahito Ohmori gives us a few early insights into this new team, and the apparent logic behind one noticeable color choice:

Members, do we agree with this logic? Will it possibly affect the future storytelling elements in this new series? What are your thoughts?

yeah, hasn't been a male Yellow since....Hurricanger? it's a predominantly female role....
Plus I like the color shake up.

MagiYellow was a dude, actually.

O...oh. My favorite color isn't manly enough. *sniff*

Alright. I-I get it.

And AkibaYellow.

:lol

I don't really see the logic myself. Even with kids, I think masculinity/femininity is going to be judged more on behavior than what color they wear. Male yellow rangers have always been rare, even before Huricaneger, but that didn't matter, it was still a great show and I don't think it affected the perception of the character at all. And honestly, would a feminine-seeming male hero really be the end of the world anyway?

But the reasoning aside, it's nice that they're not always using the same exact colors I guess.

No they weren't, there were 6 female yellows when Gaoranger was around, compared to 16 male yellows at the same time.

Why did they make it 4-1 males to females?

Because they can't have a "ridiculously strong" team of characters that are more than 1 part woman.

ki yellow is male
denji yellow is male
goggle yellow is male
dyna yellow is male

Which is the most ridiculous logic I've ever heard. It's sad to see how sexist sentai can be sometimes. Especially when it comes to color designation.

red- black - blue - yellow - pink
red- black - blue - yellow - pink
red- black - blue - yellow - white

Yeah, and it's[sarcasm] not like Yellow is more of a male color since there's more male yellows than female[/sarcasm](though it's only a 3 senshi edge).

I don't see why we needed an explanation for there not being any yellow. As long as kyoryuger is good (which it is), who cares? I didn't even give it a single thought, I just thought it was a color shake up. I'm happy with the results.

Plus, yellow would look freakin' stupid in the costume design, regardless of sex.

Also, yes, when I was a child, I associated yellow rangers with girls. So I can understand their logic. Whether I give a Damn, is another story.

QFT. One of these days Japan has to get its head out of its ass and give us a strong female Red.

Oh well, I didn't want to watch Kyoryuger anyway due to dumb dinos.

The real explanation is that during development they decided yellow would be the accent color for the costumes. Then they came to the realization that the shade of yellow they wanted to use was the same as the shade they would have used for a yellow ranger. Yellow on yellow like that wouldn't have worked. I read an interview with the production staff a few weeks back that contained that tidbit. They even created a Kyoryu Yellow design but again the yellow on yellow didn't work in their eyes.

I don't normally think much of the Japanese version having only 1 female member because it's not THAT uncommon. But when one of the production people draws attention to it, and states reasoning like that... it does make me feel like it's thinly disguised sexism.

Am I the only one wondering what Saban will do with this series considering their tendency to make male Sentai Yellows into female Yellow Rangers to better diversify the teams' gender ratios?

I figured that was the real reason, when the pics were leaked and the sash/shoulder pad thing had yellow teeth designs and the higher res pics showed that the helmets were lined in yellow, it wasn't difficult to piece together that, while it works as design accents on everyone else, they would just blend with a Yellow Kyoryuger and be nonexistent.

As for sexism, Sentai is a boy's show and figures of the women don't sell well.
It's not just Toei being sexist because they want to, it's them knowing what makes money.

Yes! Because obviously we're morons who make snap judgements about a character based on what gender has usually been that color in the past. Thank you Toei! We needed someone to save us from ourselves...

never fails to amaze me how we all stumble over each other to cry how un-sexist and enlightened we are over "that other person" people keep having to go back to OLD SCHOOL Sentai to justify the statement the guy was wrong. Yellow is more often a female character than male in modern sentai.... in the 20 years of power rangers it's a 3/14 ratio......that may not hold up to Sentai, but it still holds up.

The fact more female than male actors have been Yellow, wasn't what I was drawing attention to. It was this guy saying that because more have been Yellow that we would some how, in our little fanboy minds, draw the conclusion the male actor was feminine. That was my problem with it.

That's what I heard as well. But in the grand scheme of things who cares. Yes, a producer said something stupid but just watch and enjoy the show.

Thats a better explination then Toei thinking we're idiots.

More logical than the explanation we were given.

And alot less condescending.

I for one am all about some gender equality in my TV programs. Especially ones aimed at children as it gives everybody a fair role model to look up to. Would it really be so bad if little boys AND girls in Japan had strong men AND women to look up to consistently?

The Kyoryu Yellow reasoning is much more sound and far less insensitive that what was said in this interview. From a design stand point a Yellow wouldn't have worked, I get that. But this whole thing about mistaking a color for a specific gender is just ridiculous. There have been plenty of female Blues which use a shade very close to Kyoryu Blue. Aren't kids going to confuse him for a woman now too? Come on Toei :eyebrow

Right? Nothing like someone representing them to belittle their entire fanbase in one swoop of dumbassery. Least the second explination makes more sense. The Yellows would clash with each other, and make for a bad uniform. But you're right about something else.

Especially in Kamen Rider. When was the last time there was a strong Female Rider that didn't spend most of her time getting her rounded backside kicked? Exactly. There have been some strong female characters, though. Moune, Luka, for example. Even Ahim could beat down some Zangyack (Had to add that, OOO would've drop kicked me). I hope KyoPink turns out well. And not another useless pink who bakes cakes instead of fights... Sorry Eri. You know it's true, I know it's true, you were useless.

But of course, if she can go from prim and proper princess to badass princess who can dual wield guns in one hand, you know she can throw down :lol. And does Toei know that a lot of their out of country fans don't just include male fans, but female fans too? Seriously, they need to be careful what they say and just say the design was the problem. Or they could've done like what I did with my Sentai Designs and invert the colors a bit or add different colored accents to the design.

And :lol at the Eri comment

Female Riders need to be their own characters. I was looking at female rider characters in Wizard, but they're just "Girl Wizard" and not their own character (Try to point out the aesthetic similarities between Wizard and Beast) and I realized that every female Rider was just Girl [Blank].
Femme (Knight), L'Arc (Chalice/Glaive), Kivala (Kiva), Nadeshiko (Fourze).
There might've been a female Rider in Hibiki who had her own design, but Hibiki had like, 30 Riders, didn't it?

It seems when they make women Riders, they just piggy back off another design, rather than make it their own, which might make it a self fulfilling prophecy as to why they fail in sales, thinking about it.

As for Kyoryu not having yellow, it's not them talking down. You all would honestly be surprised with what parents (And some kids) would get confused by.

Oh, and what spurred the female yellow trend, anyway? Power Rangers, possibly?

Doubtful. Bioman had a female yellow well before Power Rangers had theirs. And so did Flashman, Maskman, & Fiveman. So there were female yellows long before Power Rangers. They've alternated between male and female for that colors for years. Of the 21 yellows that came from Zyuranger to Go-Busters 12 of them were female.

I'm just curious as to what was the major factor to make yellow a female character rather than male.
My suggestion of Power Rangers was based on the fact that Yellow has been female in every PR series outside of Ninja Storm and Mystic Force (Not counting Alien Yellow and SPD A-Squad Yellow).

It could be because of something like Flashman or Fiveman, though.

While I quite like the colour shakeup, this isn't a particularly good reason for it *sigh*

That and female rider's tend to die...a lot... *sigh* You also left off Delta from Faiz who was a strong willed female at one point...and then killed off to be replaced by... well lots of people. Sorry for the potential spoilers, but the show is 10 years old now, which makes me feel kinda old...

vul panther is male
it saban falut - he is one change yellow tiger ranger from male to female

It's not the best explanation, but I think we are also forgetting the context here. Some of us are talking about non-Japanese and older fans, I don't think Toei really cares that much about us. We're not their main buying market, after all.

Personally, I think the real reason, besides Den-O's reasoning about the yellow accents, is that they wanted a male majority team so that it would sell better to Japanese kids. Toei and Bandai are probably pretty desperate for Super Sentai to be a big ratings-pull as well as a toy-selling vehicle. Since the theory goes that male-characters sell better toys, why not just increase the number of male characters?

Sure am glad all us 20-30 somethings are here to point out that this guy was wrong about MODERN Sentai by pointing out sun Vulcan and how he was wrong about whats 6 year old might think using our 20-30 year old perspective. JEEZ get over yourselves guys.

A comment like
In response to some Forum posters GUESS about what the "real reason" was.

Or

It just boggles the mind that less than a year after a sentai with a 5 female 2 male cast lineup we're getting haughty comments like this.

Reading this thread is like watching the courtroom scene from Mission Hill.

I don't really see what's so hard to understand with the color choices here.

As stated, every modern Sentai for like over the past decade, with the exception of Hurricanger and Magiranger, has had the same color formula: Male rangers are typically red, blue and green/black while female rangers are typically pink and yellow. That's what kids recognize. So since they want to make a predominantly male team this time around, instead of making Yellow a male they'll just replace the color instead. It's not sexism, it's consistency. It's a well-known formula and they just want to keep it that way for now.

Wait, when did that happen?

But yeah I agree. It's been about 8 years since we had a male yellow, so even the top end of the target market probably wouldn't be able to remember anything other than female yellows. 'kids' to a PR (as in public relations not power rangers) guy would specifically refer to a target demographic and not just in general...

Plus Toei do a ton of research each year to see whats still cool with the 'kids.' Heck the only reason that red is a leader each time is because its pretty much been the number one colour all the time (super sentai probably helps to keep it there too though), or at least enough consecutive years to make it a staple of the franchise. Chances are when we have had a Male yellow in the past 20 years or so, it's been because the colour was popular amongst boys for some reason.

I think in the end it just boils down to how they handle the female characters. One strong well written female is surely better then two lesser representatives? And it is ultimately a young boys TV show... I personally can't think of many shows aimed at boys that feature an extensive cast of females....