[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EpsilonX

Jetman was enjoyable to watch through, but I personally felt that the constant bickering between both the Jetmen and Vyram got tiresome. That isn't to say it isn't a great series though, it's definitely worth checking out.

The dynamic between Vyram and Jetman is literally my favorite part of that show, so obviously YMMV.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monsoon

I'm a little leery of going into the 80s, since I know it would represent a downgrade in special effects, and maybe also action and storytelling. I have no doubts that several of the 80s shows are good and have great characters, but... yeah I guess I'm just a little distrustful. I'll track down the first few episodes of Liveman and decide if it's for me.

The special effects aren't really that much of a downgrade. I'd say that for the most part, special effect quality is pretty consistent from the early-80s through the mid-90s. There is a technological leap in the late-90s, but...

A lot of the 80s shows are actually going to look better than the late-90s/early-00s shows. This is because the 80s series were mastered to 16mm film, while the late-90s/early-00s shows were mastered to extremely poor quality analog SD video tapes. Since you can get much higher "resolution" from 16mm film than the SD video of the late-90s, Toei had access to superior-quality sources for their DVD releases of the late-70s-through-early-90s shows. Because it was drawn from film, the DVD release of Maskman looks infinitely better than that of Megaranger, which-- despite being more modern and having better special effects-- was drawn from analog SD video. (The exceptions to this are Gorenja and Jetman, but that situation is more complicated than I'd like to get into right now.)

As far as storytelling goes, from what I've seen of the 80s shows, there is a bit of a difference. The characters and stories are a bit more simplistic in the 80s, but unexpectedly, they're also darker, more violent, and less overtly childish. This has to do with the timeslot for the show being in the evenings back in the day, so the content was geared more toward the whole family, not just children. Today, Sentai's timeslot is Sunday mornings, so the content is targeted more directly at children; however, the storytelling is more varied and sophisticated. (Of course, I'm generalizing, there are exceptions to all of this.)

As for action? The martial arts fights of the 80s are more brutal and intense. The 80s choreography is not quite as reliant on wire-work, so things are a bit more impactful and less fanciful. Comparing Changeman's fights to Kyoryuger's is kind of like comparing Sonny Chiba's The Streetfighter to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both are awesome, but they're pretty different stylistically.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, all eras of sentai have their merits. If you can overlook the age-related flaws of 90s sentai, I don't think it'd be a stretch to get into the stuff that came before.