Sunday, February 3, 2013

Remember when...

Remember when tokusatsu shows were willing to be a little looser and switch things up -- like, say, dropping something from the show that doesn't work? Remember that painfully unfunny Alfred Molina-looking inventor dude who was supposed to be the comedic relief in Spielban? Maybe you don't, because that show realized how bad he was and wrote him and the characters related to him out of the series. Remember how the Bioman early on could talk to animals and get help from them? What happened to that?

It seems like a lot of the newer tokusatsu shows just cling to characters and ideas that, in an older series, would have probably been cut for the better. There's an unwillingness for the series to change -- usually what you see at the beginning is what remains for the entire series. Like...why won't Toei ever let their actors get a goddamn haircut? Either they keep the hairstyle they have at the start of the show, or are allowed to just let it keep growing -- it's like they're not allowed to get it cut or change the hairstyle at all. (If Juspion was made now, we'd have to put up with an entire series of his friggin' Afro.)

These are some of the pointless things that popped in my head looking through Kyoryuger stuff. Like, doing a samba dance to henshin is one of the stupider ideas to come from a toku show, and one that would probably have eventually been eliminated in an older show, but you know Kyoryuger's going to stick with it, and probably get even more annoying with it if they get power-ups. Kyoryu Blue has an obnoxious Juspion Afro going, and they ain't going to let him cut it. Look at Go-busters -- Hiromu's hair got so long that he's practically become Captain Caveman, eyes, nose, and a mouth poking out from hair. Gone are the days where Change Pegasus will have a goofy mullet for several episodes before wising up and getting his hair cut.

Heisei Kamen Rider shows LOVE having a cast of 100, useless supporting characters, but they're never willing to cut any of them out of the show, no matter how useless they are or how little the writers are able to come up with anything for them to do. Drop those characters, dammit!

6 comments:

  1. Go-Busters let Beet's actor get a haircut, why couldn't Hiromu get one? I'm a fan of D2 (the idol unit that's given us a lot of actors from recent series) and I noticed that the guys playing Enter, JK and GokaiBlue all rushed to cut their hair after filming wrapped on those shows, guess they couldn't stand it any more ...

    Early Heisei shows like Kuuga, Agito and Blade that are generally seen as better than later instalments had big casts, but most of those were supporting characters who felt like part of the show but could come and go from the storyline as needed. It seems to me that works better than the approach of Fourze (where all the KRC were treated as main characters that had to be in every episode and every plot, thus making the show feel crowded) or Wizard (where people complain that too much of the action is based around one-shot characters that no one can be invested in.)

    Tis lazycoconut from HJU by the way, I'm STALKING YOU

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    1. lazycoconut! Thanks for checking my blog out.

      I feel like the overpopulated casts have been with Rider since the beginning. (Whenever you see a useless character, you can thank their ancestors, the Tachibana Racing Girls.) I even feel like Kuuga had too many unnecessary characters. (The honky, for one.) Agito's one of the only ones to put all of their characters to good use, IMO.

      But I just finished rewatching Faiz, and that show is just...the worst at handling this. It has SO many unneeded characters, but so little going on -- it moves at a slower pace than the worst soap opera you can imagine -- that...just...why do you need that many characters when you're doing nothing with them!?!

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    2. You're welcome!

      At least Faiz had a high death rate I suppose, if the cast is mostly recurring characters it's easier to write them out or not bring them back than if they're all treated as main cast a la Fourze or OOO

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  2. "or Wizard (where people complain that too much of the action is based around one-shot characters that no one can be invested in.)"

    And people realized that just now? The "troubled-person-of-the-week" has been a major problem with Rider since Den-o. I thought OOO and Fourze gave them even more screentime than Wizard, which at least tries to match someone from the main cast with the guest.

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    1. I don't know why now! I found the "victim of the week" characters in Den-O worse than those in Wizard, but they seem to be one of people's number one complaints about Wizard

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  3. Well... let's wait until we've seen a few episodes of Kyoryuger before we judge it.
    But there are stupider ideas than doing a samba dance to transform. Last week I was talking with a friend about an idea about rangers who bite of chickens' heads to henshin. (yes we were drunk...)

    Never forget it can always get worse... or BETTER!

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