[Aoi Kurenai]

Oh man, I love talking numbers and figures. Get ready for me to mentally vomit all my thoughts out.

ToQger's series average was 3.7 while Ninninger was 3.8. Zyuohger, as of episode 13, has an average of 4.1% and that's almost definitely going to continue to drop. (Sentai's ratings tend to be strongest in the first quarter) It's been a couple of years since Ohranger was the least viewed Sentai.

To clear a couple of things up, Carranger never saved Sentai because Ohranger was never supposed to be the last Sentai.

The show that nearly killed Sentai was Fiveman. The show came after three years of progressively lower ratings (Maskman had 11.4, Liveman 10.5, and Turboranger 7.1) Fiveman ended up getting 6.5 ratings average and was a sales disaster for the time. Going into Jetman, the staff knew that it was the last Sentai. They hoped that doing things different enough might land them a renewal, but it was still considered the final show early on in filming.

Jetman goes on to do well, Zyuranger continues that, and so on.

What the ratings for Kakuranger through Carranger do indicate, however, is that Sentai probably needed a change in time slots. This is why Megaranger moves to the current Sunday morning slot after about seven episodes.

I can personally confirm that Yuji Kishi had never even heard of the idea that Carranger might have been the last show. (we did a pretty thorough article on it)

Timeranger did have very low sales, but it was also pretty popular with older viewers, so I think that helps it in the long run.

The problem with Go-Busters was never simply "the ratings were low", that's a vast oversimplification of the issue. The problem was that, while we know how much money Sentai made that year, we don't know how much Go-Busters earned. The numbers for Go-Busters were already a little lower than normal, at around 9.6 billion yen, but that year you also had other toy lines in the Sentai series to deal with. You had the Akibaranger stuff, the continuing Ranger Keys, and the Legend Mobirates. It's likely that Go-Busters itself made less than 9 billion yen but since Bandai outright called the toyline a failure, I would wager a guess it's much lower.

In addition to that, the ratings problem isn't simply "it had the lowest ratings ever at the time".

Part of the problem with Go-Busters' numbers was that it had low ratings in a very important area. When ratings are released, they're also broken down into demographics. There's kids, teen, M1 and F1, young adult men and women, M2 and F2, essentially parents, M3 and F3, the elderly, grandparents.

Until ToQger, Go-Busters had the lowest viewing figures for the kids demographic in Sentai history. The last few viewing figures in the kids demo were Shinken: 11.2, Gosei: 10.4, Gokai: 9.6.

Go-Busters ended up with a 7.8 viewing figure in the kids demo. So it wasn't just a lower figure in that demo, it was a drop of over two percentage points, which is a huge drop. Kyoryuger's figures in that number go up to 8.2 and while ToQger's drop to 7.1

Now, here's the caveat, while the figures for ToQger were lower than Go-Busters, ToQger also had a vastly superior sales figure. (about 11.4 billion yen) So the problem with Go-Busters was that it had (at the time) the lowest viewing figures among children with an unsuccessful toy line. If you want to look at things simply by how much a toy line sold, that meant that Sentai saw two lower than average lines in three years. (Goseiger only made 9.3 and Gokaiger made 13.0) That problem finally cumulated with the disastrous viewing figures for the all important kids demo.

Getting to Ninninger...that whole deal is a mess. Sentai is estimated to have made 7.8 billion yen that year. That includes the first month of Zyuohger's toy line - the fiscal year used goes from March to March. This is how Ninninger's sales break down quarter by quarter

Q1: 3.0
Q2: 1.6
Q3: 0.8
Q4: 2.4

There are very few, if any, new toys released in the fourth quarter, so it's not unreasonable to assume that toy sales drop in that fourth quarter, probably to their lowest levels. Despite that, Q4 shows an increase. This means that a bulk of that quarter's sales were likely from the first month of Zyuohger. The 2015 press releases indicated that Bandai Namco forecast Ninninger's final figure at 12.0 billion yen. The end result is Ninninger makes little more than half of what it was expected to make.

Also its ratings weren't fantastic, 7.5 kids demo. So while it was better than ToQger, it also had a horrendous toy line. If any series could make a case for "cancel Sentai" then it was probably Ninninger, not that I think it'll happen. No one series could lead to the cancellation of Sentai. You need multiple years of bad runs and consistently lower numbers.

Moving forward, the fiscal year that correlates to 11 months of Zyuohger's run is expected to bring in 9.0 billion yen. For an anniversary series, it's not fantastic. On top of that, forecast numbers tend to go down the closer you get towards the end of the fiscal year. Of that 9.0, I would say anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 billion yen can be attributed to next year's Sentai, depending on how popular the toy line is.

We could potentially be looking at a show that makes less than 8.0 billion yen, which is not great. Sentai, on average, makes around 10.7ish billion yen. If you go back to the Go-Busters situation, that was two underperforming shows in three years (Gosei and Go-Busters). This time we could be looking at two underperforming shows in two years. While Zyuohger will definitely do better than Ninninger, it'll come in under the average.

I personally thought Zyuohger's toy line was Bandai trying to see if they could make a Sentai do well without a collectible trinket after Ninninger showed that just having a collectible in your toy line doesn't guarantee success. It was probably expected that the anniversary aspect of the show would give it a bump but, uh, they're not really doing a whole lot to make this an anniversary Sentai. Though, on the bright side, as of now, Zyuohger is going to have the highest kids demo since Gokaiger. It is pretty early on in its run though, so these numbers could drop, but I still think it'll be higher than the last few years.

So! All that said, next year's going to be interesting. Usually if a show's toy line does poorly, the next one is absolutely crazy. Gekiranger did poorly and that lead to Go-Onger. Go-Busters did poorly and that lead to Kyoryuger. That said, I think that's what Zyuohger's designs ended up being. My prediction is that we might be in for something more toned down next year. Ninninger was planned as this crazy "festival" series the emphasized "everything fun" according to the producer. Zyuohger is bright and loud and blocky. There was a time around Go-Busters when a lot of serious military themed shows were failing - Gundam Age did pretty bad, Danball Senki Wars was cut short and was the end of that franchise. If the bright and color approach isn't working, it might be time for something more toned down.