Comedy Or Serious?

[Sefiros]

I have not watched Carranger except for the Gokaiger tribute. But I've read up on it and can safely say that it was meant as a comedy/parody of the Sentai shows. Hence I can safely say that Carranger was a failure. Now people are saying that Kyouryuuger is a lighter, more comedic Sentai to hike ratings up after Go-Busters' low performance. If so, then just kill me now and get it over with.

[Magenta]

But I've read up on it and can safely say that it was meant as a comedy/parody of the Sentai shows. Hence I can safely say that Carranger was a failure.

considering Carranger single-handedly saved the franchise, that's a pretty good joke.

[Sefiros]

the carranger tribute was the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. How did it save the franchise?

[locuas]

it's a very interesting story.
you see, oh-ranger was supposed to be a very serious and realistic series, and you can see it in the first episodes.but what happens? an earthquake happened(or tsunami, i'm not sure right now) and that kind of affected the show. so, because of this, people could not watch a show about cities being destroyed because it made them remember the incident. so, it had to be toned down. but the damage was done, and it had one of the lowest rating in sentai. and cancellation was something to be sure.
and then they decided to make a parody of sentai. which helped improve ratings and saved super sentai.

[butyoumight]

the carranger tribute was the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. How did it save the franchise?

Also, a funny thing called 'personal opinion' and 'target demographic'. You might not like humor/comedy/camp, but kids generally do get a laugh out of stuff like that. So, you might think it was a "failure" (without seeing any of it for yourself, and no, Gokaiger tribute episodes are not a complete indication of the tone of a season, see Liveman), but the kids probably loved it.

Also, if a comedic parody of Super Sentai is always a 'failure', then why is Akibaranger getting a second season?

[Magenta]

Ohranger was a heavily military-themed sentai, that took things very seriously and had a sort of evil machine empire that happily committed fairly realistic atrocities upon the citizens of Earth. And then, very soon into its run, some subway bombings occurred in Japan. It's a very similar thing to what happened to Power Rangers Time Force - that had sympathetic terrorist villains and then 9/11 happened and any trace of "sympathetic" got taken out of its itinerary. Similar thing happened with OhRanger: the show got massively changed to avoid drawing any parallels with the subway bombings that just occured, etc. This left it basically floundering without its point anymore, and the show bombed massively. (In fact, it had the lowest ratings for a Sentai ever, a title it held until Go-Busters came along.)

At that point, Sentai had been floundering for a bit anyway, so the production team were basically told: "Hey guys, we've already got the timeslot and stuff booked for next year's show, we can't back out of that commitment, but we appreciate you're in a bit of an impossible situation. Just... make whatever you like, really." And so we got Carranger, a parody Sentai show that had this amazingly wacky sense of humor and totally played on all the Sentai cliches. It told a good story and had good characters on top of that, mind, but because nobody expected anything from it and there was very little executive concern about what they did, they just got to make a fantastic Sentai season without having to worry about appeasing the bigwigs.

It's a genuinely funny season, and actually a genuinely good one even if you don't take it as the deconstruction of the medium that it is. It did quite well - not amazingly, but better than Ohranger did - so the series was renewed and moved into a Sunday morning timeslot, and thus ended the primetime family show era and the show become the outright kids show it is now. Voila!

I dunno, it's just outright stupid to go "Oh, this show is a parody, therefore it's automatically a failure." Especially considering, surprise, this is a kids show marketed at 6-year-olds, and 6-year-olds love cheesy! One has to approach this from the perspective of it being a show for Japanese 6-year-olds that it's nice we can enjoy as foreign adults, and going "well I don't like this thing therefore it's bad and evidently no-one liked it" is frankly ridiculous.

[Sefiros]

Okay fine. I crossed a line. I'm sorry. I just don't have a good vibe about Kyoryuuger. I'm not sure I can take it seriously with all the samba music during morphs and mecha combos.

[Robot Detective]

What everyone means is that not everything is meant to be taken seriously, and it's not automatically bad because of that. Samba morph included.

[psychogoatee]

I think it might be overstating it a bit to say that Carranger saved the franchise, though you hear that kind of thing in the behind the scenes of many things. It's the show that was after a show that was rocky, so it is nice that it wasn't also rocky, since that may have gotten the franchise cancelled. But saying "this is a season that did okay and didn't get cancelled" doesn't sound as impressive I guess.

Plus we don't know what would've happened if the franchise really did get cancelled, for all we know it'd just have a year or two off and be right back. I'm sure they'd be negotiating and trying to get it back. We'd have to accept that the series genuinly would have died to consider one season to have really saved it, and personally I'm not sure the series really would've stayed down for too long. Long story short, just nitpicking I know, but I'd like a time machine and time to study several alternate timelines of where the franchise could've ended up to properly judge that situation.

Also, if a comedic parody of Super Sentai is always a 'failure', then why is Akibaranger getting a second season?

Now, I couldn't say if Akibaranger is all that successful or not, I don't have the data on if it's making money etc. But a short low budget season getting a second one isn't necessarily that impressive of a thing, I mean does this make say Party Down a success? Not that I didn't like Party Down, was a fun show.

That said, this topic of whether something is successful financially is something we see discussed a lot on the net these days, we're always concerned with if the things are making money etc etc. Personally, while sure I'd like for these franchises to continue, I think relative to us the show is a success if we like it.

Anyways, on the comedy or serious topic, I dig both but I would personally like the pendulum to swing a bit more on the serious side for Super Hero Time. I love anime for example, but I feel like the zany comedy spectrum is so well served there that these toku shows could just feel like more of the same if they stay in that area. For example, for me Kamen Rider Fourze with it's reaction shots to a whole club of people and it's cliches/tropes all well seen in anime, it felt like it had no identity of it's own. But on the other hand, a uniquely done comedy could be fun to see. But anyways, we all have our own taste, and I like even the zany stuff to have an element where danger or caring about the heroes is present, since it is supposed to be an adventure. I think say, Gokaiger and Dekaranger did a good show there, as heavily comedic and well done sentai.

For starters, personally, just make sure you don't set it in a school. Not even a culinary school, I know cooking school rangers is probably lined up for 2014, but I'm just sayin', please don't do it Toei.

[takenoko]

Yeah, that does seem like a silly hyperbole. Let's look at the numbers

Oh had a 4.5% average rating.
http://www10.atwiki.jp/shichouseiko/pages/65.html

Car had 4.8% A .3% increase, they're saved!
http://www10.atwiki.jp/shichouseiko/pages/66.html

(Kaku, the show before Oh, had 5.7% and Mega, the show after Car had 6.5%)

I mean, maybe it was just MegaRangers switching over to Sunday mornings that saved Sentai? Or maybe Sentai never needed saving in the first place.

[Go-On Macaroni]

Yeah. While Mag's post isn't exactly incorrect, saying "Car single-handedly saved Sentai from the evil clutches of the Ohranger empire!1!", is pretty much just a silly rumor that's been going around for god knows how long.

[JT515]

it had the lowest ratings for a Sentai ever, a title it held until Go-Busters came along.

your right about that but i think Go-Busters is ratings is just low because how tv today is just low as people are watching the shows online or recording it and watching it later. but as for Comedy or Serious? i like both and i think im going to like the new series just like how i liked go-onger because we havent had a season like that since and now we have it.

[Sefiros]

who thought my one compliant would generate such a conversation. My little thought grows. I'm so proud.

[JT515]

who thought my one compliant would generate such a conversation. My little thought grows. I'm so proud.

Yep and thats what makes it great

[kirifuda]

See, we're all forgetting the fact that there are seasons out there - mostly the older ones - that are just pure crazy cat drugs. So people can want serious, they can want comedy, or they can want craze-balls.

I mean what season was really meant to be the first "serious" one and which one was meant to be the first "comedy" ? All of them have their serious moments and all of them have their comedy moments and then there are just moments were you're like "what the hell did I watch I need an adult right now."

A lot of the older seasons were pretty downright terrifying in some of their costumes, amounts of copious wtf-ery, and overall blood and violence. Would they be considered "comedy" though or "serious" when the first episode has a bunch of people getting killed off angry....only to have a few episodes later the group dressing like Japanese school girls?

It's all in the mind =|

Ps: Crazy cat drugs is the best