[Kiwami]

Super Sentai doesn’t work with a mature tone and setting IMO. I don’t know if the early Sentai series were more much serious than the later ones, I doubt it, but what Sentai has become now is impossible to work with if you want to aim the product at adults.

Why? Because if you would want to make a Sentai show for adults you would have to take away what makes it special/enjoyable or it will look ridiculous. Like of course you could make a serious setting (Dekaranger for example, Earth police hunting criminal aliens is already suitable) but you would need to get rid of things like the jumpsuits, the playful Mechas, the rolecall, the cheesy finishing-moves etc. in order to have a mature tone.

Kamen Rider can work in this instance because it started bare-bones with a setting that already was suitable for adults. Guy gets kidnapped by an evil organization, turned into a cyborg, flees before he gets brainwashed and fights said organization so that no one else would have to share his fate or one that’s worse. And Kamen Rider series that came later continued to have settings that can work for adults; they just brightened it up a bit with goofy characters and flashy moves and never had anyone die.

But you see with Amazons that it’s still really easy to make Kamen Rider work for adults: Just scrap some goofy characters and add serious ones, work on the story a bit, make the Driver silent/minimalistic instead of a toy aimed at kids that needs gimmicks to work. Done. Now, Kamen Rider doesn’t have a good track-record as far as shows/movies aimed at adults go, but Amazons works IMO and it was never the fault of the formula in the past, they just made shitty stuff.

With Sentai though? What will you do? In order to make the suits more bearable you would need to take the color down and have X-Men shit like all black suits/armor with colored details that correspond to the user. But that looks boring as hell. Then, the Mecha: Transforming vehicles can work in a serious environment (Although Michael Bay doesn’t know that) but again you would need to tone the color and playfulness of the design down to avoid it looking silly. And of course, rolecalls and gimmick weapons do not work here, at all. Unless you want to make something self aware, but that’s hard to pull off without it being too goofy.

I don't even think the upcoming Power Rangers movie attempts something like this, to me it looks like they'll revive the old formula, add some sci-fi elements and boring ass CGI Mechas and that's it. It still be guys in jumpsuits and it'll be more of an action blockbuster than a really serious film.

And as mentioned above: There’s no demand for this. Adults who like Sentai like it how it is. If it’s good that is. So do Kamen Rider fans, but I think they are aware that Rider works better in a darker setting than Sentai.

And as Matrix said: Toei doesn’t have the balls to even attempt something like this. Which may be wise, but still. I think the idea of a bad-guy Sentai is actually fun, but I feel like they want to keep Sentai as clean and child friendly as possible. Because even if the show is stream-only, they have to advertise it, kids or parents will see it.

Bottom-line: It’s not happening. We’ll get a big anniversary movie for Sentai with some familiar faces, maybe some net movies or a very short reunion-show of some kind, but nothing like Kamen Rider Amazons.