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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Lucha

Look at the public's perception of old Godzilla movies. Look at people's perception of Power Rangers. I wouldn't exactly say they're 100% positive. Many mainstreamers, if they watch this stuff at all, do so ironically -- like, MST3K style. They watch to make fun of the men in suits, or to laugh at the bad dubs, or to giggle at the swarms of histrionic Japanese people feeling from giant monsters. And hey, that's a fair way to derive enjoyment from these things. But it's not a mindset that screams, "I think of this as a legitimate, high-quality artistic accomplishment."

I think the low budget and toy-focus establishes certain expectations in the minds of mainstream viewers -- namely, that the show will be cheap, juvenile, and not worthy of sincere appreciation. If that's a viewer's first impression, it's gonna be hard to change.

Yeah, the first impression stuff is important. Rider at least has an episode of dramatic build up in many series' first episodes to get an initial dramatic significance into the viewers' heads before the fights. Maybe Faiz would be the best for something like that given Kiba gets hit by a truck in Episode 1 and loses both his parents.

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Well, if you're posting on here, you're obviously more open to Japanese culture than a lot of Westerners. I don't think our attitude toward these cultural differences is indicative of mainstream America's. I think we're probably more open-minded, more willing to challenge ourselves, than the average mainstream viewer.

When I hear mainstream American audiences talk about anime and Japanese culture, it's usually with a hint of racist disdain. They say shit like, "oh, Japanese people are so fucking weird, look at their tentacle rape porn and fixation on cartoon pedophilia," as if that's all Japanese media has to offer. That's a gross mindset, but it's hard for me to look at all the racial grossness happening in America today and not find it reflected in the mainstream's attitude toward Japanese cultural exports.

Tone is also, I think, a very real concern. There's a lot of unusual tonal juxtaposition in Japanese media that doesn't really happen in American media. In Kamen Rider specifically, we're used to seeing OTT slapstick comedy in one scene, brutal violence in the next, and heartfelt melodrama in the scene after that. That tonal mishmash happens in some American media, but not to the extremes it does in its Japanese counterparts. That whiplash could probably be alienating to mainstream American viewers who are more accustomed to a consistent tone.

It sucks that most of mainstream America isn't culturally as open as we are. I find that really ironic considering there are so many different types of people living and working in the states, that you'd think a universal cohesion on one attitude would be impossible given the diversity. I don't know how you get people to be more open to other cultures though.

I was listening to a podcast, where someone who works for IGN (Jared Petty, if you guys want to look him up) lived in Japan and he was explaining the tonal disparity thing. He has the way Japan balances things out, is by having the opposite extremes of light heartedness and darkness. And example he provided was a sign with cute cartoony drawing of a character jumping in front of a train, advising people to not commit suicide. In America, the sign probably just say "Please do not get on the tracks". It's not light hearted, but it's not dark either. So I finally have an understanding for that view.

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I totally agree, and with Shout's Super Sentai and Cruchyroll's Ultraman releases, we're seeing the niche audience expand every day. I can only imagine that expansion will continue with Amazons.

And you know what? I'd love to see Kamen Rider, Sentai, Ultraman, Garo, et al break out into the mainstream. I just don't think it's realistic to expect it to.

As long as it gets as mainstream as anime is and keeps growing from there, I think it will. Attitudes will change.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Lucha

I hear you. But pretentious or not, foreignness is a huge barrier of entry for a stunningly large percent of Americans. The number of times I've heard, "I don't want movies with subtitles," is astonishingly large, even among educated people. And then on top of that, there are a ton of cultural nuances that need to be understood to fully appreciate even these goofy ass kids shows (there are honorifics, gender dynamics, foods, social hierarchies, and a ton of other things that do need to be explained to people unfamiliar with anime and other Japanese media).

I have an idea of having some of the people living on my college dorm room floor watch the first few episodes of a rider show with me if I have the opprotunity to put something on. It'll be an interesting little experiment. Granted, it might be skewed given that I go to school in a more culturally diverse and accepting city than most.

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And getting over (or coming to appreciate) the goofiness itself is a huge challenge. I'm half Japanese, I have a ton of familiarity with anime and other Japanese cultural exports, and I was a massive massive massive Godzilla and Power Rangers fan as a kid -- and even so, getting used to tokusatsu's bizarre tone took some effort for me (not a huge amount, but it wasn't completely effortless). It's probably possible to enjoy these things without this knowledge, but it can be confusing, which is a very real deterrent. Even a whisper of confusion keeps Americans from engaging with this stuff, especially in a world where countless, high quality American shows -- shows that don't require any effort to understand -- are competing for the mainstream audience's attention.

Gotcha. And I agree. There are a lot of factors, only a few of which I've addressed.

Not to mention within all those high quality American shows, there's superheros that are draw in the average viewer easier based on previous exposure to their namesake. Flash, Batman, e.t.c.