Does anyone find the amount of “extras” for toku shows overwhelming?
 

By extras, I mean the Hyper Battle Videos, the movies, the various spinoff things to watch. Back when I was first getting into toku I didn’t mind all the bonus stuff so much, I would just watch all of it after I finished the show usually. The more stuff I watched though, the more often they would suddenly make another gaiden or whatever years after something I saw had finished airing. How am I supposed to keep track of all of this? Do I really want to watch another Den-O thing after thinking I had finally escaped its clutches? Gaaaah!

I kind of feel like we should ban these people from doing anything but goofy crossovers with a show after a certain number of years have passed for my own sanity. :lolol

That's a good point, even on some films too, it probably took me like 4/5 years before I finally sat down and watched the Gaim & Wizard movie!

I think it's definitely overwhelming to look at when getting into a series, and fun fact when I watched Ex-Aid I decided to do all the bonus material as I was watching it; which was absolutely a mistake!

But the thing is, well... it's right there in the title: it's extra stuff. In terms of things relevant to the narrative there's the winter crossover movie, the summer movie, and then as epilogues the next winter crossover movie and whatever v-cins you get. And frankly that is a lot and that's easily overwhelming, but the rest of it all like HBVs and anime shorts and weird Telasa specials; that's all just fun side stuff you can do any time and not miss anything. Well, maybe 'fun' and 'rider Telasa specials' shouldn't be in the same sentence, but that's the gist of it.

In short: at most the only thing that's anywhere close to necessary while you're watching that breaks up your watch order are the winter and summer movies, and those still depend on the series (Wizard, Gaim etc you don't really need to watch theirs; I would straight up recommend no-one ever watch OOO's movie war core); and the rest is either post-series material or fun side bonus stuff. It looks overwhelming and in some cases can be pretty stupid, but once you get past that I think it's not too bad.

Not really, but I don't feel compelled to watch all of them. I regularly skip movies, webisodes, and other things if I don't feel personally motivated to watch them.

While I do feel there is a tad much, I don't think it's a bad thing.
Stuff like the HBV and the net specials are clearly non-canon (Then Prime Rogue happened...), making them entirely skippable.

While series are getting more and more films, very rarely are they actually relevant. When you enter a show and you see the summer film, the movie war, 3 post series films, the HBV, and 2 more specials, most of the time the only ones that matter are the post series stuff.

I think you mean, "Then Drive happened", like in general. I say this purely because of one thing. The Roidmude's and the countdown the show talks about constantly with how many are left. Even making a board.

Because every single Drive piece of media aside from Yongou and the Blu-Ray specials I think, has a numbered Roidmude in it, so all the little weird HBV video things (Monster and Hunter, High Speed, Lupin), Kamen Rider 3 GP, the Ninninger Crossover, Movie War Fullthrottle, etc. means that they're canon in some way shape or form because of the Roidmude count.

I don't feel that's as strong, though. With over 100 roidmudes, unless you're actively keeping track, you honestly would never notice.
For example, me, just now. I only watched the film and 3 GP, and none of Drive's other ancillary media, and I didn't notice the Roidmude count :lol

Meanwhile, if you watch Build's New World Grease without the HBV, then Prime Rogue appears out of nowhere.

I mean, everything's probably 'canon' with a few exceptions, but whether or not it's actually important to following along with the narrative is what matters.

Drive is a pretty good example for this, actually. The Gaim crossover movie is one of the bigger examples people bring up of a movie that you kinda have to watch as it contains Krim's backstory and that matters to how certain events unfold and the drama within. But the HBV having a numbered roidmude that is marked on a board later? Doesn't really matter much; heck, that one's so minor I would have taken it as just something that happened off-screen like a lot of the Grongi in Kuuga.

The bigger issue for me is sorting out what's actually canon and what callbacks are important later on. This is probably the most egregious with shows that are currently airing, because it's going to take months for the movies to get subbed well after the show wrapped up.

How can I know something from the movie won't be brought up in the finale ? *cough* Gaim * cough * Lup-Pat *

For me, the saturation level can be an issue too when I reach a point where I am like, wait, *did* I watch this already or not? I got in a long debate with myself once over if I had seen the Dekaranger movie before. I am 90% sure I watched it but I literally could not remember anything about it, even when I looked at a summary. I feel like I need to keep a spreadsheet!

This might seem a little...dumb...but I interpreted the "extras" in this thread to mean the number of on-set extras in any given scene! :o

Well MyDramaList is always helpful for keeping track of those things. It's what I used nowadays. It took a bit for me to start it up cause I had to remember what I did and didn't watch.

Traditionally, I loved HBV and some web specials, but yeah we're seeing a lot of more movies and side stories. I don't really watch them because, as it's been mentioned, they can be overwhelming.

I imagine for kids who just can't get enough content, it's nice to have. This is also why I'd like to see more video games and comics- just some more variety to the content. There are certainly some shows I wish had more content after the season airs, so I totally get it.

I don't know if it's just me, but another issue I encounter when it comes to the films is turnover time when watching a series as it airs.
Most of the time, the series is over and we're already X episodes into the next by the time the film gets subbed properly. And while I do enjoy most series I watch, not all of them engrossed me enough for me to really have much interest in watching a film, especially when the film is set between like, episode 25-27, so the events of the movie are stuff that basically happened 6 months ago in the story and are long since out of my mind.

The post-show V-Cinema stuff that highlights the non-titular riders I do like cause it does give them closure mostly.

Gotta say, this made the MBJR V-cin going up on TTFC very quickly a really nice surprise! I hope this ends up being the standard going forward for at least V-cins

I definitely think it's gotten a bit out of hand in recent years, but I'm also in the camp that mostly doesn't sweat it too much if there are a few loose ends for a series I haven't seen. The actual main show with however many episodes, the big movies, and the random HBV type stuff are all pretty cleanly divided categories in my head.

Like, take Pretty Den-O – that's a perfect example of something you have absolutely no "need" to see unless you actively want that much Den-O. It's a situation where hardcore fans win and basically nobody loses, which is the ideal I think all spin-off content should be striving for. Stuff made during the series, rather than after, is where it tends to get messy, but even then, the main show usually provides ~just~ enough context to let the casual viewer stay a casual viewer if they want. Speaking from experience, not being able to watch Heisei Generations until half year a later didn't hurt too much when plot elements from it starting coming up in Ex-Aid, for example.

Boy, I thought this was a thread about "Extra characters" lol. Anyway,

ShiShiLeo got it here. It's just nice to have. Hyper Battle Videos and the TTFC content are pretty much optional extra content for people and a neat way for Toei to sell another P-Bandai toy :lol

In terms of core relevancy I feel it's just
-Main show
-Crossover with previous show movie
-Solo movie
-V-cinema

just those four, I feel.

I have to say I'm broadly in accordance with the general consensus that these additional shows are a good thing. I don't feel obliged to follow them, I guess, although sometimes I find they can provide fun ways of getting into one of the Heisei shows I never watched when they debuted.

I think my only real objection to them is when they feel like scenes that were exercised in bad faith from actual episodes, as with the Saber material. Other than that, I've always tried to just take them with a pinch of salt.