[Switchblade]

Okay, answers time.

Also, for what it's worth, I eventually remembered Beast Morphers name about five minutes after I posted this thread.

Best New Show of 2019 - It has to be Zero-One, doesn't it? Not necessarily because of a lack of competition - although let's be fair here, it has not been the strongest year of tokusatsu in recent memory - but because it's just a really damn enjoyable show. It's not perfect, but I really love the story, the characters, and the action scenes.

Best New-to-You Show of 2019 - I haven't really had a chance to sink my teeth into a lot of stuff beyond the current shows. I did get the Ultraseven blu-ray set for Christmas, so I guess I'll rank that here even though I've only watched two episodes so far and I'd already seen one of them.

Best Rewatch of 2019 - I'm not finished with it yet because work damn near killed me this fall, but it's definitely Kamen Rider Fourze. It's been a lot of fun revisiting this show and waiting for the moment when Yuki goes completely insane.

Best Movie of 2019 - Haven't seen any full new films this year. I have the Zi-O/Build movie sitting on my harddrive, but I just can't bring myself to watch it. I really don't want to see any more Zi-O at this point, and I'm especially not thrilled about going back to early Zi-O, with Geiz's constant waffling between "I must kill Zi-O!" and "eh, maybe later."

Best Male Lead Character - Aruto from Zero-One. On paper, the whole terrible comedian angle should be incredibly repelling. I suspect that if he was a Sentai character, he'd probably be Lucky-tier obnoxious, in fact. But Zero-One doesn't leave Aruto as a one-note caricature. Aruto has a really good range of personality and I really like how he can switch between concerned, angry, and "that's how you know it's Aruto!" when the situation demands.

Best Female Lead Character - I've been trying to decide whether to count Izu as a lead or supporting character, but I think I'm going to settle for placing her here. She's a weird character, but I've been completely won over ever since that early episode where she was just quietly hopping up and down in the background to see something that taller characters were looking at. "Slowly humanizing robot girl" may not be the most original character in Japanese media, but I still really like how Izu turned out.

Best Male Supporting Character - Another Zero-One character that took a bit to grow on me: Fuwa. I thought I had his whole deal figured out early on, but like Aruto he's turned out to be much more complex. I love how his defining trait is determination, even in the face of much stronger enemies and his own injuries. It also helps that he has the most badass henshin sequence in Kamen Rider history.

Best Female Supporting Character - And here's where I break the Zero-One streak. I like Yua so far, but I feel like the show hasn't really sunk its teeth into her as much as it's going to. I suspect she'll get the nod next year, but I don't feel like she's hit peak development yet. I'll give a repeat vote to Tsukasa from LuPat here because I'm sure as hell not going to write anything positive about Tsukoyomi.

Best Villain - I have high hopes for the Zaia guy on Zero One, but he hasn't really done much yet. Unfortunately, that doesn't really leave me with any villains that felt that stand-out to me. I barely remember the main villain from LuPat and Zi-O's Shwartz was complete bullshit.

Best Returning Past Character - Man, I remember when this was a category that was kind of a rare treat. Between Zi-O and the Sentai miniseries, though, we have a huge bounty of returning characters this year. Part of me wants to say Kagura from ToQger because she was my favorite character on that series, but we got Shouichi from Agito back. Agito holds an enormously special place in my heart and Shouichi was one of the best cameos Zi-O pulled out. The show made great use of the character, in both the action scenes and the character moments.

I'm going to give second place to Agito's Mana here, too, for literally no reason other than the show gave me one more "Shouichi-kun."

Best Actor - Zero-One's Ryutaro Okada. Like I said above, I'm really impressed with Fuwa and a lot of that comes down to how well Okada plays the character.

Best Actress - Agreeing with the consensus here on Noa Tsurushima. Izu looks like an incredibly difficult character to play and Tsurushima absolutely nails it.

Best Writer - Definitely Yuya Takahashi. The minute I heard he was coming back for Zero-One I was incredibly excited. This guy won me over hard with Ex-Aid and Zero-One has only validated my opinion on his work.

Best Director - I had to look this up, but I'm going with Kazuya Kamihoriuchi, the guy who directed the first big mecha fight in Ryusoulger. I don't have much to say about that show - I only got three episodes in - but the mech scenes were amazing.

Best Suit Design - Recency bias may be in play here, but I freaking love Shining Assault Hopper. Or, as I can't help but think of it, Mecha Shin.

Best Weapon/Vehicle/Mecha - Probably the AIMS Shot Riser. I've had a lot of issues with tokusatsu weapons over the last few years as they look less and less like real weapons and more and more like giant plastic roleplay toys. The Shot Riser does work for me, though. It's reasonably minimal and leads to some cool transformation sequences for Vulcan and Valkyrie.

Best Fight Scene - There was no contest here. The second "Believe Yourself" started playing Zi-O won this one with the team-up between Agito Trinity and Climax Form Zi-O easily took the cake.

Best Dramatic Scene - Even if it probably turned out to be temporary, the reunion between Kenzaki and Hajime was a beautiful moment for this longtime Blade fan.

Best Comedic Scene - I don't think anything made me laugh harder than the "mind eraser" gag in one of the first episodes of Ryusoulger.

Biggest "WTF did I just watch?" Moment - I never saw the LuPat movie. I honestly forgot there even was one by the time the show ended. So the moment where the finale hinged on the sudden appearance of Jackpot Striker made absolutely no sense to me. Even after looking it up, the whole thing still feels like a complete ass-pull.

Best Song - Since using something from 2001 feels like a cheat, I have to go with REALxEYEZ, which is a total banger and easily the best Rider theme song since Ex-Aid.

Best Piece of Merchandise - The Mill Creek Ultraman steel box sets are so damn good. I have two of them so far and I plan on getting all of the others. The blu-ray remasters are amazing and the sets come in gorgeous cases with informational booklets that add a ton to the whole package.

Biggest Surprise of 2019 - The Hasbro buyout of Power Rangers. Obviously Bandai America was dropping a lot of balls, but I never thought Saban would unload the property again, especially so soon after reacquiring it.

Biggest Disappointment of 2019 - Man, where my Garo at? I know that we finally got the long-gestating Raiga movie (in Japan; fansubs available sometime next year), but this was the first year in awhile with no major Garo presence. Add to that the apparent end of the Kraken Releasing blu-rays and it's been a really disappointing year for one of my favorite toku franchises.

The Onari Memorial Award for Single Worst Thing in 2019 Tokusatsu - I'm not going to rag on Zi-O as a whole. I could. Easily. Very easily. But I'm not going to. I'll be more specific than that: after some really, really good tribute episodes that made it feel like the show finally got its shit together, we got to the episodes dedicated to my favorite Rider show, Kamen Rider Hibiki. And who did Zi-O bring back as the main character to represent Hibiki? Kiriya fucking Kyosuke. The jackass from the bastardized Toshiki Inoue era. No. Bad Toei. No biscuit.