[TokuKnight89]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

Well, in heroic tokusatsu, when putting a ban on killing people, the question invariably arises: ?Who should be considered people?? ?Why is it possible to kill a kaijin, but not a human?? Of course, W, Fourze and some Sentai avoid killing, but still these are rather exceptions. In fact, in my subjective opinion, Janperson handled this best. He destroyed robots because they can be restored if the memory chip is not damaged. And he fought with human criminals much more delicately.

If you watch the "Let's Talk Toku" docu-series by TokuSHOUTsu, you see them briefly touch on the idea of Sentai being partially symptomatic of Japanese xenophobia.

To be honest, the Tokusatsu approach to villainy is not unlike "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer": Humans and Demons are initially treated as both potentially threatening, but humans are subject to pre-existing laws while Demons and Vampires hide in the shadows and are a supernatural threat that aren't well understood by most humans and the protagonists tend to draw a clear delineation between killing a demon/vamp and killing a human. In later seasons and the spin-off "Angel", the line becomes more and more blurred and the arbitrary elimination of demons and vamps is treated as a moral conundrum especially when they aren't threatening anyone's life.

Honestly, the best answer comes from Page 17 of Saban's Power Rangers: Ultimate Visual History by Insight Editions: "One person who had no doubts was Fox Kids Network president Margaret Loesch, who ordered a large number of episodes that would air in late summer 1993. But Fox executives were still worried about the action-packed sequences, which involved the Power Rangers using martial arts to fight the bad guys. Nervous Fox affiliates asked about Loesch's plans for damage control if the high-kicking action led to a backlash from concerned parents. But the savvy executive stuck to her guns: "This is an action-adventure show, and these kids are karate experts," she says, "but we always tried to get across that this show is a fantasy, and in real life, you've got to solve your problems with means other than fisticuffs."