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So, full disclosure: I've had a harder time watching tokusatsu this year. Work schedule was a bit of that; like last year, I've fallen behind on all the current shows, especially Sentai. Mostly, though, it's just that I've had a harder time finding the attention span to sit down and watch something that requires reading subtitles instead of something I can listen to without having to keep my focus entirely on the screen. Still, I'm doing what I can to stay on top of things and it's not like I'm back off from the genre or anything.

Favorite New Show of 2023
This one is easy, it's King-Ohger and it's not even close. I almost skipped this show, but positive response to the first episode got me to try it out and I've been loving the hell out of it. I never expected Sentai to swerve into such a heavily serialized story with some pretty large stakes and dramatic moments while also staying frequently silly and stupid at the same time.

Favorite New-to-You Show of 2023
Ultraman Mebius. Haven't finished it yet - haven't made it to the halfway mark, even - but it's both the best older show that I've checked out for the first time and also technically the only older show I've checked out for the first time (unless you count watching one episode of Neos, but I don't think Neos probably counts for anything).

Favorite Movie, Miniseries, or Special of 2023
So I still haven't watched Shin Ultraman or Shin Kamen Rider yet, despite having immediate access to both. I'm having a hard time sitting down to watch an episode of a show, much less a full movie. This falls, then, by default, to... pause to look up title... Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad, which is the only thing I watched to completion this year that fits in this category. In all fairness, I did love that arc where all of the secondary Ultras got sent on a mission together.

Favorite Rewatch of 2023
If you've paid attention to my posts here over the last few years, you probably assume that this will be Ultraman Max, the show that I've both praised effusively while also expressing my continued frustration at the fact that its DVD boxset was taking forever to come out. Well, the DVDs are out so obviously I rewatched the whole series, right?

Yeah, nothing for this category this year. Maybe next time.

Favorite Male Lead Character
This is a really tough one, there are a lot of good candidates this year. I'm going to go with Gira Hastee, aka Gira Husty. He can be kind of a moron sometimes, but I rarely fail to be entertained by his unique blend of good heart, foolhardy bravery, and theater kid dramatics.

Favorite Female Lead Character
This one was not tough. There is no possible universe where Rita Kaniska is not my favorite character of the year, not just in tokusatsu but in every form of media I've consumed. Everything about her shtick as the (secretly not-so) sane person in a group full of dysfunctional idiots is so goddamn delightful.

Favorite Male Supporting Character
I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting someone here, but my current instinct is to go with Sebastian from, again, King-Ohger. The retainers are all a fantastic collection of fun side characters, even the annoying one, but Sebastian tends to rise to the top of the crowd for me as the real standout.

Favorite Female Supporting Character
Emi Aobe from Blazar. Sunred credited her as a lead and I can see that, but I tend to consider most Ultra officers more in the supporting category, personally. Either way, she's a really fun character and I like how the show has been using her espionage focus in both her main storyline and some of the individual episodes.

Favorite Villain
Another easy one, although the Abyssalis Sisters are really growing on me as Gotchard keeps going. Can't give them nod over R[a]c[u]les Hastee and/or Husty, though. This smug son of a bitch is so fucking terrible I just want to reach into the screen and punch him right in the face. That's the mark of a well-realized villain.

Favorite Returning Past Character
I haven't watched any of the new Power Rangers stuff this year, neither the MMPR reunion nor Netflix Morphers. Still, very glad to see Billy Cranston back. Easily my favorite of the original cast by the time he left and a character that was due for a revisit, for both on- and off-screen reasons.

Favorite Actor
Echoing the love for Masashi Ikeda as King-Ohger's Jeramie. Dynamite performance.

Favorite Actress
Following up on the Rita love by also praising Yuzuki Hirakawa as an actress. She is so good at being amusingly stoic; I love it when toku humor skews more subtle and she's so good at it. I haven't seen the episode where she has to be an idol yet, but I'm sure it's going to be hilarious.

Favorite Writer
Probably no surprise at this point, but Minato Takano for the absolute masterclass that is King-Ohger.

Favorite Director
This is probably just going to keep going to Kiyotaka Taguchi every year, although Rider and Sentai are definitely stepping up their games to be more visually dynamic.

Favorite Suit Design
Might be recency bias, but I am loving the heck out of Kamen Rider Dread. Gotachard's suit game is usually on point, but the black skeletal armor interspersed with iridescent details and white scarf make for an incredibly striking suit.

Favorite Weapon/Vehicle/Mecha
Blazar's Tilsonite Sword. Congratulations, Tsubaraya, you managed to make a weapon that doesn't make Ultraman look like an adult holding a child's roleplay toy.

Favorite Fight Scene
Blazar vs. Demaaga. Not for the fight itself, but the major twist of the moment that can best be described as "Stop hitting yourself, Blazar." Almost made my biggest surprise moment and definitely a scene that made me very excited to see where the show was taking this.

Honorable mention to the absolute curb stomp that was the Abyssalis Sisters and Dread vs. literally all of the heroes in Gotchard. For a relatively light and fluffy Kamen Rider series, that show can be brutal sometimes. Like I said above, the Sisters are really great villains.

Favorite Dramatic Scene
Dagded Dujardin's "do you even know how fucked you are?' conversation with Gira. The original leader of the Bugnarok never did much for me to begin with, but Dujardin showing up and taking Gira into an LED Wall exposition dump of how he's basically a bored god who destroys worlds for fun did such a great job of both establishing him as a villain and showing exactly how big of a challenge the team is going to have to deal with in the back half of the series.

Favorite Comedic Scene
It's not even a scene, really, it's a text caption. The reason why Rita was in jail after King-Ohger's time skip was so funny I had to pause the video until I could finish laughing.

Biggest "WTF did I just watch?" Moment
This was actually the thing that stumped me the most this year. There was a lot of odd and crazy stuff this year, but nothing that really seemed out of step with normal tokusatsu weirdness. Then I watched last week's episode of Gotchard right before this and saw Kajiki's karaoke performance and, more importantly, idol costume. That's exactly the kind of "what the hell is going on here?" headscratcher that I was looking for.

Honorable mention to Gento persuading a washing machine to help him fight an alien, though. That happened.

Favorite Song
Zenyroku King is one of the all-time greats. If there's a Mt. Rushmore of tokusatsu opening themes it belongs up there with Gavan, Kuuga, and Savior in the Dark.

Favorite Piece of Merchandise
Mill Creek finally released the Ultraman Max boxset! And I still haven't watched it!

Biggest Surprise of 2023
Yasunobu's abs. See GrandComplete's post. I was not expecting this dude to be that ripped. I have no idea how Blazar could make an episode about him struggling to pilot Earth Garon when g-forces should clearly be intimidated by him, not the other way around.

Biggest Disappointment of 2023:
Notice a show that I haven't mentioned anywhere yet? Besides Donbrothers, which only aired a few episodes this year and therefore I don't really factor into this? Kamen Rider Geats. This show... man, this show just was not for me. I lost interest very steadily over the course of the year and the final arc being based around Darth Tycoon just absolutely killed any willingness I had to continue. This is the first time I've failed to finish a modern Kamen Rider series* since I started watching in '09.

* This is not counting Amazons or Black Sun, both of which I dropped because life is too short to suffer through a whole series of edgelord-y "adult" Kamen Rider.

The Onari Memorial Award for Single Worst Thing in Tokusatsu, 2023 Edition:
Hat Guy. He has a name. I don't know what it is and I don't care, it's Hat Guy. If you've watched King-Ohger you know who I'm talking about. Fuck this guy. Fuck his stupid hat. Fuck his cultish devotion to an objectively terrible and nakedly corrupt despot. Fuck his loud and aggressive ignorance in the face of any attempt to present him with common sense or reason. Fuck his inability to differentiate a real snail taxi from a dude with a cardboard shell on his back. Fuck. This. Guy.

There is a non-zero percent chance that I rename this category to "The Hat Guy Award" next year, that is how much I hate this character: arguably even more than Onari.

Most Anticipated Tokusatsu Project and/or Merch of 2024
There's a lot of promising stuff coming next year. I'm always down for more Dekaranger, so the new reunion should be fun. I'm legitimately amazed that we're getting a proper new Garo series with a real budget. The last two Sentai series have been unexpectedly great, so I'm kind of curious to see if the seemingly underwhelming Car Sentai Tire-Face-ger follows suit. All of that pales in the face of Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Regained. I've really opened my eyes to re-evaluating Faiz in the last few years, and the chance to see a continuation from the same writer and with much of the same cast has me unbelievably excited. Is it going to be a heart-wrenching tragedy that both depresses and frustrates me? Almost certainly. Still can't wait to watch it.