[Librarian]

It's a matter of demographics.

Campiness is viewed as a niche market or for kids.

Seriously handled scifi though, tends to still do well but it's rarer.

Like for example, the South Korean show "Are You Human Too?" It's essentially a more serious handled life drama about a robot. So if more scifi angles were used like that, the genre could take off more.

The problem isn't that the genre isn't 'taking off' the problem is the limited adult series because monetization/merchandising is easier with kids. So we only get limited adult ones. That in turn means the content is handled less seriously since younger demographics can deal with more absurdities than older demographics.

Amazons, Garo, and other similar more adult series have managed to get their hooks in fine as well as on the world stage. But the amount of the show types to that aren't as plentiful as they once were. Shows that could market to both could do well. Even scifi series still do well. Discovery did well enough, the 100 has been doing well enough to warrant another show like it with "The Outpost". And various other CW hero dramas are doing well. And it's because they better balance the content away from the campiness, and approach the material in more real to their world ways.

So material that was more catered to that blend could hold. It's one of the reasons Garo does so well even with a healthy dose of campiness. It's built in a fantasy modern world mix.

But right now, we aren't getting that many shows like Mirrorman Reflex, Ultraman Nexus, even Amazons was really a rare treat in itself. And Cutie Honey the Live even managed to do rather well. It's creative genre trends in a way. We had a period of darker more serious Toku in the mid to late 2000s. Right now it's back to colorful, bright and cheery with stronger emphasis on merchandising, and soon we'll see a trend back to more mixed between the serious dark overtones and colorfulness.

You can borderline feel the want to do it by creatives from various studios too. The darker aspect of Shin Godzilla that was more rooted in how would the world react to this. The flippancy of Pacific Rim but still maintaining to its own in world rules. Aspects of Ghost and the Ichigo movie where they tried to bring more real world gravity to it. Even bits of Build built in more political upheaval aspects of divided world affairs.

So give it a few years, and we might see a genre turn with various Tokusatsu areas experimenting again as audiences are more receptive to it from the slow build of wilder scifi shows that cover more random topics. Whether it's Timeless on NBC, the super hero shows and zombie shows on CW and AMC, or even the more daring scifi mixes(and time travel stories!) over in South Korea, the more audiences become receptive to ideas and are opened up to concepts, the more those concepts can push the envelope in new ways.

Now with South Korean media though, you also have to keep in mind a lot of it is very love story driven, so they do build on the more universal softer heartfelt moments and on less flash. So their material tends to be more universal character driven with less emphasis on the effects even if it's a heist series like Mad Dog, or robot scifi show like "Are you human too?"

But I wouldn't say that an "armored" type hero show isn't possible, and if anything, as audiences and creatives get more daring to try new things because of what they've already done, it's more likely to come later.

Still do think a remake of Mirrorman Reflex and other mid-2000s toku (Shibuya 15, Ultraman 7X, Akihabara@Deep, and others) could do well for a comeback though. In many ways, much of that was before its time. With Amazons rather showing the timing for material like that is getting better now with stronger demand again.

These things often come in waves too. Design trends that are popular at the time. For the past few years we've been in a more absurdity heavy toku period. Relishing in their outlandishness. So whatever the next trend is, will likely determine a lot, but with as strongly responded to as Amazons was in season 1 & 2. I think we might see some more serious takes on properties again, but this time more balanced to be a little less violent. Granted Amazons needed to be violent to homage the original Amazon.

So it really depends on where the upcoming genre trends decide to lean. But like many forms of scifi or other genres, they do tend to come in clumps for small stretches of time before the next one takes hold.

Though there is no direct reasoning why one country's media is doing well in the modern world and tokusatsu currently is more child fare.
There's kind of an inherent flaw in that thinking by assuming since South Korea is Asian media then why isn't other Asian media doing better. Because it has nothing to do with it being Asian media or not, but in content and approach of the programming itself. As your references point out, the wider k-drama appeal is because of the universal undertones of the stories that's easier to relate to. Also doesn't help that several K-Dramas are remakes of american shows too. Like Suits, Leverage(Mad Dog in south korea), and some others. Which were already well proven strong premises to begin with.

During the early boom of the mid to late 2000s, the same was true for Japan with how Densha Otoko took notice, Shibuya 15 tried new things, Akihabara@Deep celebrated geeks and handled social anxieties before it came into demand more in programming and was trendy to talk about. Heck, Shibuya 15 and Akihabara@Deep were well ahead of the curve in the topics they talked about and handled, including interesting casting choices that these days you would hear non-stop whining about "pandering" if they did it today. Many of those shows don't get the credit they deserve in what they tried to do and show to audiences before it was "trendy" to do so.

But to suggest because one area of Asian dramas is doing well, why aren't others since they are asian material too(and some are! J-Dramas have some strong life right now too in various topics, just not the overtly campy ones get much attention right now), is kind of rather problematic in itself. The genres do well because of how they play to audiences and their content, not because an Asian country made it.

On that note though: Seriously cannot recommend "Are you human too?" enough. It is outright genius and heartfelt and wow. Feels kind of like an inversion and serious take on the old Disney movies about Chip and his scientist dad, but then with an interesting love story and having a strong female protagonist that was a former MMA fighter. It honestly kind of feels like a romance show made by someone that binge watched a lot of 80s-90s anime and disney shows. And Mad Dog was an outright thriller and joy to watch that really felt like the Legacy of Leverage lived on but was conformed to the cultural proclivities of South Korea to better fit. Using insurance fraud investigators was an inspired original choice, but in the characters and music you can feel how much they were inspired by Leverage to do the show their way.

That's one of the things about South Korean and Japanese cinema and shows though. They'll push the norm even before it was trendy to push the norm. Taking films to even deeper questioning areas than much of american cinema, except some rarities, often fear to tread. So in a world that's constantly looking for media to fill this void of modern questions and wider approaches, these shows stand out more. Even Kamen Rider W tends to stand out in that regard with breakout performances and more varied approaches to clothing styles before that was the constant talk of modern american society. That's part of what made a show like Sense8 work so well. I wasn't afraid of 'diversity' and embraced it worldwide as the show needed.