[EpsilonX]

The short answer is I love seeing the suit work and I love mecha and kaiju stuff. Sentai combines all of that.

The slightly longer answer is I got into Godzilla a couple years ago and really loved it. The culture behind it, the production and aesthetics of it, the cheesiness of the rubber suits and miniature models, the cool monster designs. Then somebody I know got into it, and he's the type of person that gets so into something that it annoys everybody else around them. So literally every other word out of his mouth had something to do with Godzilla. To make matters worse, another friend of his was into it and they sort of amplified the annoyingness of each other's fandom - all the while knowing that I was into Godzilla as well, but never even tried "celebrating" the fandom with me. So I was both annoyed and felt left out, which just about completely ruined Godzilla for me at the time. But I needed my giant monster fix, so I started watching Gamera stuff. I kinda became a Gamera hipster "oh the 90s Gamera movies are some of the highest rated kaiju movies of all time" but it was the only way I felt I could express my interest in it without coming off as one of this guy's followers. (as petty as it sounds, it happens a lot, and it pisses off everybody that knows him that gets him into something)

Anyways, one day my girlfriend saw a couple of Ultraman episodes on DVD at the store and picked it up for me. She said it looked super Asian and like something i'd enjoy, so I checked it out and loved it. From there, I discovered the world of Tokusatsu, and had to look more into it. Now, I knew that Super Sentai existed, but I never really knew what it was aside from "Japanese Power Rangers." But getting into Ultraman and somebody else I know nostalgia-ing over Power Rangers inspired me to check out Zyuranger, and from there I instantly fell in love.

It was a bit hard at first. I loved Zyuranger, but much of that love was fueled by nostalgia. Once I finished the series and realized that not every season of Sentai was exactly the same as that nor were they as PR nostalgia-heavy, my love affair with it almost ended. Dairanger had almost none of the elements of Zyuranger that made me love it, and just felt completely different. Gone were the awesome mythical warriors from the past, gone were the mecha that talked to them. Gone were the color-coded warrior outfits. Instead, we got a group of 5 random guys chosen to fight monsters. Part of why I loved Zyuranger was because of how different from Power Rangers it was, so when Dairanger didn't share the same differences, I hated it. Of course, I don't still have those problems with Dairanger, since i'm more familiar with toku, but at the time it bugged me. I went through a couple of episodes of a few seasons - Kakuranger, ToQger, Battle Fever J, Megaranger, Gokaiger, until I finally settled on Jetman. Jetman had enough similarities to Zyuranger that I started to take off the Power Rangers nostalgia glasses and see Sentai for what it really was.

At this point, Ninninger had just premiered, so I decided to check it out. I don't really know what it is about that series, probably a mix of the awesome mech suits, cool monster designs, and great ranger suits, but I absolutely loved it. I was finally free of comparing everything to Zyuranger and Power Rangers by the time I finished Jetman and got a couple of episodes into Ninninger, and have been enjoying Sentai ever since, and all for the same reasons I enjoy Godzilla (check the second and third lines of this post if you forgot)

Of course, Kamen Rider is (at least from what i've seen) more popular and generally considered to be better than Sentai, so I decided to check it out. However, I took a different approach; not knowing where to start, and wanting to avoid the mistakes I made with Zyuranger (such as thinking what made Zyu unique from other Sentai were actually some of the tropes of the series) and decided to start at the very beginning.

Now i'm finishing up Ninninger as it continues to air, and working my way through Kamen Rider. I recently started Kyoryuger, but I don't know how I feel about it. I'll give it a couple more episodes before I decide to continue it or not.


TL;DR: friend got obsessively into Godzilla and ruined it for me, turned to Ultraman and Sentai for my asian men in rubber suits fix.

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Originally Posted by Kiwami

I also tried Garo but that is just unwatchable. I hated every second of it.

If you don't mind my asking...I generally only hear positive things about Garo. What didn't you like?

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So I stick to Rider most of the time. While it has it low points (Wizard)

I'm only in the Showa era of Rider (i'm trying to watch as much as I can in order) but Wizard is one of my favorite suit designs, and because of that has been one of the ones i'm more looking forward to watching. Is it really as bad as everybody says?