[FairyKing]

To answer your question about mooks in toku, I think it very much depends on what the show is using them for.

In shows with large numbers of heroes who reliably work together, I figure you kind of need mooks just so that the whole team has someone to fight without spending the whole battle just ganging up on the main monster. I mean, multiple heroes fighting the same monster is a good very literal representation of the power of friendship/teamwork/trust/etc., and you can justify it by saying the monster is that much more powerful that the heroes need to team up to have a chance of defeating it, and no one said heroes have to always fight fair anyway, but there's still only so far you can stretch 5-on-1 fights before they just look boringly one-sided.

In shows with small numbers of heroes, or where the heroes aren't always even on the same side let alone working as a team, it gets more complicated. Having a lone warrior cutting down a whole horde of weak enemies is a great way to show off how cool the hero is, but it can easily devolve into just padding out the fight scenes. Personally, I like it best when the mooks have some relevance to the plot besides just being there, like if instead of accompanying every monster they only show up for major villains or evil organizations. That way, even if the mooks are still no threat themselves, their presence raises the stakes because it indicates a greater evil has gotten involved.