Is Tokusatsu becoming too mainstream?

[OOOKaiser]

If Toku becomes more mainstream there'll be more people I can talk to about Kamen Rider ;-; I like the fan subs alot though and it'll be sad to see them all go away if most of the Toku are licensed.

[MagusKaiser]

if it becomes more mainstream I honestly believe the prosperity of it being mainstream is up to the fans alone and not the companies who license it. as for the cover Holy crap aesthetic wise on the design it's as bland as an old book from the 80's and honestly why in the world is the tagline "Before Power Rangers there was" I mean come on that's just sad I get they're trying to get fans of power rangers to check this out but I doubt many of them would watch it without any predetermined opinion and enjoy it. I would've gotten a little more creative with the cover at least use more colors then BLUE on light blue with the limited amount of colors from the actual image with the zyurangers photoshopped in which is painfully obvious with goushi around his head and the image quality is apparent with the screen shots lining the bottom. when it comes to the quality of the video and subs well I'm going to let curiosity kick me in the teeth and pick this up and check it out. One question though how come TVN didn't try contacting shout factory or saban about offering to do the sub title work since you guys had up to ep 25 done

[Lunagel]

Legally it would just be a mess to try and do that.

[FaeQueenCory]

On the one hand.... Hurray! I can support Toei and the actors!

On the other hand.... ew.... americisms... (or I guess the proper is "woolseyism"?)
4kids was the worst offender of such.... bullshit. (everyone needs to youtube "4kids Higurashi" it's a hilarious parody)
But then Viz also butchered many mangas because "it's for kids and kids don't understand sex/violence/the fact that other cultures exist"...
I just don't like the idea of people making "adaptive" subs and dubs as opposed to actual translations.

Though I don't mind it when, for example, a character "is German" but only speaks terribad Jyarumin once and then never again... and so the dubbers add in some random German phrases that fit the line. (best example of this is Asuka from Evangelion, in Ep08 the Japanese line is "chya~~~nsu"... literally just "chance". It's an example of engrish they use constantly in their day-to-day life... and in this case would be translated as "now is my chance" or "this is my chance" or even "this is a perfect/good/great chance/opportunity".... the first dubbing of that line used instead "wunderbar"... which seeing as how the character JUST came from Germany... AND it fit the lip flaps... AND German people would actually say it and have it mean the exact same thing the Japanese line meant... I think it's a good "adaptive translation" of a line. It fits the character better... and when the rerecording was done for the last few episodes, which sampled that scene, they changed the dub to be "now's my chance"... which fit the lip flaps.... but made the line sound stilted due to how "chyansu" is stressed.)
However... that's a very rare thing for it to actually be done to the strength of the series.
Usually what happens is a bunch of "this hamburger onigiri" nonsense that you see from Viz and 4kids.
Not to mention that 100% "direct" translations loose the character's "speaking quirks" which typifies how that character is. (eg, dyk Haribel in Bleach speaks like an old man?? weird huh?)

What I find so amusing about such a thing.... is that it's often hated for no reason.
Take Drakengard 3... people HATE how bitchy and annoyed Zero sounds in English.... but what they don't understand... is that's how she sounds in Japanese too.
To them she might sound bored and half asleep in the Japanese... but that tone and her word use means she's annoyed and bitchy to the Japanese audience.
Sort of similar to how Howl in Howl's Moving Castle sounds like a toddler in Japanese, but is Christian Bale in English and in both is deemed "hot"... Cultural differences denote tonal inflections as meaning different things.
(though Drakengard 3's dub is far from perfect... it's not the omgsoshit dubs we've been getting from Final Fantasy...)

EDIT: It'll also be nice to, like Kill la Kill, be able to legally watch the episodes almost as soon as they are on TV in Japan...... though someone REALLY needs to explain to me why the UK gets Sherlock 4 weeks before America........ when America got Kill la Kill episodes the next day or day after next than Japan....???

[Shaider03]

My primary concern is if they edit the content of the shows they release to fit their shitty version of child friendly. As an American I know how bad and nonsensical amerians version of child friendly can be. Look I can see their parachutes despite the fact that no one is their anymore after that chopper exploded.

Has for Sentai going mainstream that doesn't bug me. Its good that people will learn the truth that Super Sentai is the real deal and came first. Although this could just be a one shot deal that will fall into obscurity within a years time. On a different note their not touching anything Kamen Rider yet or Metal Hero's and Garo. Except for the Anime of course. So if I have this urge to be the guy that likes his underground Tokusatu that the main streamers no nothing about. Well those will scratch that itch nicely. Besides even if this all went mainstream tomorrow it would change nothing except the possible loss of the cool subs made here. That I would actually miss.I'm reminded of how in the Saint Seiya subs I've scene they fucking call them Knights when their clearly saying Saint in fucking english! I think these are the subs from the US DVD package for the show which drive me insane. I Gokaiderd all my Saint Seiya stuff so I could be wrong. Oh do I wish I'm wrong.

Yeah the cover for this dvd is kind of bland. Every one looks bored and uninterested,they hide the suits on small box's at the bottom instead of having an image of the suited team behind them. How would anyone know what this is from a distance it doesn't catch the eye at all. Maybe some one might mistake it for an old martial arts flick which could work in a small way.

[JujinSan]

Taking a closer look at the supposed cover art reveals that Goushi's head is indeed photoshopped and Mei's head looks like it was moved to the right a little bit. Zyuranger should actually be in bigger print and centered not at the bottom of the cover with super sentai added to the tagline.

"Before Power Rangers, there was Super Sentai: ZYURANGER The Complete Series".

[YMCool99]

This may be irrelevant but, Toei Youtube channel began streaming their stuff internasional, so far it only Decade and Goranger.http://m.youtube.com/channel/UCEbPgdUbZgme40WpYmR0ocA

[XIII]

wow, 360p quality, thats pants

[Impact]

Taking a closer look at the supposed cover art reveals that Goushi's head is indeed photoshopped and Mei's head looks like it was moved to the right a little bit.

Oh god, can't unsee.

Mixed blessing, I say. The exposure is nice, but not sure it'll be handled as well as the fansubbers. Love seeing the splash art, the specialized text (ex. Final Wave on Gokaiger), music videos and extras. I'm not confident that we'll get that quality should it catch in the mainstream. I'll still support, of course. Just hope it's quality stuff they give us.

[Go-On Macaroni]

But then Viz also butchered many mangas because "it's for kids and kids don't understand [..] the fact that other cultures exist"...

'Cause y'know, that's why this volume of their Jojo in front of me doesn't shy away from Joseph's hatred of the Japanese culture.
'Cause, they butchered it. =P

[daburuwosagase]

I don't think toku can ever manage to become ultra mainstream; unlike anime, it's a bit more of a genre than a medium. But it's certainly true that toku's been enjoying an incredible increase in popularity these past few years. I've been seeing more and more people online who are both anime and toku fans. Offline is still the same though, there's nobody who bothers to listen to me talk about toku. Still really ticks me off when people brush it off for no decent reason whatsoever, but back to the main point. Tokusatsu tends to appeal to a variety of audiences: the children who watch it for fun, the young men and women who are attracted to the actors, the adults who haven't "grown up", and then a couple other side groups. It seems like the older age groups have become a little more aware of the existence of tokusatsu, at the very least, and from there it just spreads.

It is scary to think of what a mainstream audience -- here meaning "immature and inexperienced young adults", similar to the average audience of anime and British dramas -- would do to the fandom. I don't doubt that a lot of people would be frightened away. It's quite possible for something like this to happen, but it still might be a while off.

[TBustah!]

If I buy this thing and find that they've spliced in stuff from Dai or Kaku, I'm going to go on a murderous rampage.

Why.. why would they do that? There's nothing implying that at all and Mr. Ward doesn't seem like the kind of guy to do that.

Of course that's not going to happen, I was just making a joke.

Earlier in that post, I compared the crappy boxart to that of American adaptations of anime in the 80s and early 90s. In two of them, Voltron and Robotech, they spliced in footage of completely different shows to pad it out.

[TheLastTatlFan]

I'm honestly excited that an official release of Super Sentai is coming to my region. I'm anxious about the possibility of them messing with the terminology, but I think I could live with it because of the possibilities that could result from this release being successful: Rider one day following it, owning Shinkenger DVDs I didn't have to import, the slim chance that Power Rangers would one day rule out the "Whatever, just imitate the Sentai, nobody in the target demo will know" option entirely!

Okay, maybe that last one is a bit too much of a pipe dream; At any rate, I doubt censorship will be a concern. Between the choice of bringing Zyuranger over before Goranger, with plans to do Dairanger next (allegedly. I'll admit to hear-say on that, though they're definitely planning for this to be the first of many Sentai releases considering the brand name gets more prominence on the cover than the show's actual title, which they only included the last third of) and the tagline specifically calling this PR's predecessor, it's clear that they mean to market this to the adults who watched MMPR as kids.

[TheXev]

Well, if that's really the cover of the DVD, then I seriously doubt people are going to pick it up and say "Wow, this looks cool." Highlighting Power Rangers will catch the eyes of a few people, but I doubt they would immediately put down money for it. Another big question is how far they're going to try and push this release. If they only release it online, it's obviously only going to sell to people who already know what it is. However, if they push in to major stores, like Walmart, it could be a different story.

Do I think tokusatsu will become as mainstream as anime? No. Mainly because I know people who watch every single anime they can get their hands on and straight up laughed in my face when I started talking about Kamen Rider.

If we are truly honest with ourselves, we in the United States already had our passing Toku fad: Hercules and its spin off, Xena: Warrior Princess.

Those shows had(have) a very large fan-base when they were active, were also filmed in New Zealand, and I wouldn't be shocked if large amounts of the SFX staff worked on Sentai/Rider/PowerRangers either (the CG alone reminds me of some of the stuff I saw in Ryuki). These shows can work in the US, but it seems a more adult fanbase and story (perhaps Garoesque) would be what it would take. Syndicated programming isn't nearly as popular in the United States as it once was, so I highly doubt a new toku show would be able to reach a large base without a cable network (which would limit its appeal in rural areas).

I think original programing vs a PowerRanger/adaption approach would work best (even though Kamen Rider Dragon Knight wasn't terrible (nor was it that good), that kind of adaption time and effort wouldn't be sustainable). At least as far as Kamen Rider is concerned, if they were going to replace actors in a PowerRanger type way, they'd be best off with minimal adaptation and mostly sticking to the original plots and scripts. Still, I think the series that would have done well for such adaptions (Ryuki - Kabuto [minus Hibiki]) have long passed. I haven't even watched Rider and Sentai for the last two series because the series just bore me more and more.

[Crusader]

No. I honestly don't feel its getting to mainstream.

And frankly, I like it that way. Isolated from the dirty mainstreams (get it?!)