What's your TN origin story?

[takenoko]

I'm sure we have a few of these threads, but I didn't see one at the top of this forum, so here we go~

I wanted to make this thread because I was talking with the donors for our recent drive and was surprised by how many of them have been following the group for over 10 years (see associated poll). So my question is, how long have you been following the group and how did you find us? What's your origin story?

As for me, I was just a guy that liked collecting anime and drama fansubs. I happened to see Ryuki (and maybe a bit of Hurricaneger) on a trip to Japan and came back and wanted to find more Ryuki. I think I found #tokusatsu on dalnet on IRC and when Kingranger, Drax, Mechadave, adekii and others abandoned the channel to form #TV-Nihon, I just sort of followed.

Maybe a year or two later me and Shadowhunter approached someone in the group saying we could translate. I think Shadowhunter did Faiz while I did Deka and some random animes?

I think the group first gained its fame or infamy October 2003 when we worked on the subs for the Sailor Moon tokusatsu. It put our group on people's maps and brought in both anime and toku fans.

[Blackcondorguy]

I've been into sentai since childhood because Bioman, Maskman and Liveman were broadcasted almost entirely in France in the late 80s. And I heard of tv-nihon from a friend when you were doing Faiz. Faiz was my first rider show and it blew my mind.

I took a break for some years and came back around the time you were doing Gekiranger, and began watching the series I have overlooked. Now, thanks to you, (and the elder series raw) I'm up to date with super sentai!

I've written a few times before but it doesn't seem to me I've thanked you all enough for your hard work and dedication. Is it even possible to thank you enough? Keep up the good work, and be sure it's very much appreciated!

[Dark Ren]

I'm following T-N since the rise of Den-O. So I guess 12 years already and still counting.

Being a Black and RX fans during childhood, I watched Kuuga that aired in my country during 2002 but they only aired for 18 episodes, I think. They re-aired Kuuga again around 2004, and then Agito, Ryuki, Faiz and the last aired here is Blade.

Around 2007, I was moved to another city to go to college. During that time, Den-O gain popularity among otaku fans. I had hard time because I was not familiar with torrent, DDL and IRC, so my sempai provide me with his toku collections.

For about a year, I'm learning about internet and how to get stuffs from it. I guess around that time I found your website, but I only decided to join your forum in 2010. Our college had this kind of folder-sharing which they can access from our university's wifi. One year later (around 2009), I was one of primary uploader for Tokusatsu and Anime until 2012 when I moved to another city to get a job.

Anyway, that's make me wonder. Is there any original / founding T-N staff member(s) that still around until now (aside from takenoko, i guess)?

[erikhol]

About 11 years for me as a viewer. I remember it clearly, I was with my family in the middle of a move and Power Rangers Jungle Fury caught my attention. Being trapped in a hotel room with my family for a month I had a LOT of time to use YouTube. Jungle Fury lead me to Gekiranger where I saw many clips that just astounded me, for their sheer awesomeness or maturity.

I eventually found where the clips on YouTube where coming from and watched Go-Onger. Shinkenger was when things hit me, as for the first time I was able to follow the show in relative real time — and it was just incredible! I began collecting directly from japan with that series, painstakingly saving money for all the mecha (The Bull Mecha was a gut punch to ship for Christmas, but worth it!)

I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say something like tokusatsu and TV Nihon changed my life —— but if I’m being super honest it often feels like it did! It was like reconnecting a part of myself from childhood, liking Power Rangers, and bringing that to the present and fully being able to embrace it all. I’m less ashamed of liking things that might, to others, seem juvenile— (when I was watching jungle fury there literally was a guy who was like “your watching Power Rangers?”) and there’s now a direct arc I can trace in my life, from early liking of Voltron, Power Rangers and Anime, to enjoying it all fully as an adult. I’m proud of that arc in my life, and how much it’s culturally enriched me through my interest in japan, tokusatsu and mediums in general. I’ve even found a great buddy who I’ve been able to introduce and share Gaim with!

Sorry to ramble on. It’s just TV Nihon and the window you’ve opened for me to experience Tokusatsu, that seemed to be missing in my life, and was sorely needed, I just can’t express my gratitude enough.

[decade368990]

Back in 2006, I watched Kabuto in english sub on YouTube. At that time, I wasn't familiar with TV-Nihon because I didn't know much around the internet. I thought those english sub were created from random users who chopped videos into parts and uploaded them on YouTube. I didn't aware it was TV-Nihon actually subbing Kabuto at that time. I skipped Den-O and Kiva. On 2009, I watched the first episode of Decade and I was excited to see more Kuuga in that series. I went through different posts on YouTube to find proper english sub in the hope of watching the series. I searched TV-Nihon on the browser and here I am; I started collecting episodes of W, Kabuto, Ryuki, and then Faiz.


Around sometime on 2012, I was in the first year of my university. I tried to sign in as a member on the forum to identify the sub mistakes. I got the trouble for being repeatedly too annoying and got banned from accessing the mistake thread. I kept downloading stuff for a few months without responding on the forum. After Takenoko paid his money to create our own wiki, I have been actively involved on the wiki since then and being partially involved in QC stuff.

[AncientLemurian]

Well I've been following TV-Nihon for about 11 years now. Around 2007-2008 I was rewatching classic Power Rangers and eventually learned about Super Sentai, leading to TV-Nihon and that opened the floodgates.

I ended up acquiring my first WD 500GB hard drive in 2009, eventually needing a second one I believe by late 2009 or early 2010.
That kept me good for a while, but by mid 2011, I ended up getting a larger 2TB hard drive, and by early 2015 at 4TB one.
WD was my preference. Archiving is something I learned to be good at. I eventually built spreadsheets to keep track of files,
listing name, format, version #, resolution, corresponding CM files related, quite a challenge.

For favorite shows I would say that Keitai Sousakan 7 became one of my favorites. I loved the interaction between Keita and Seven, and was ecstatic when a Blu-ray version was released.
Early on, I was thoroughly enjoying the episodes of Megaranger and Dairanger that were subbed back then. I was looking at all the details and comparing with what I remembered from
the American adaptations back then. I remember watching Go-Onger and seeing all the talking engines, learning that each show would operate for one year. I was sad to see Go-Onger end,
but when I saw the promos for Shinkenger, it completely blew me away.

I saw bits of Kamen Rider Kiva and enjoyed it, but Kamen RIder Decade was my first I saw from beginning to end. I really liked how it showed a bit of everything related to the previous decade
of Kamen RIder shows, a bit like a crash course in themes of the various riders. Sure it was only 31 episodes, but it was a fun ride (pun intended).

W came, and it was awesome, and early on I recognized Asuka Rin from Keitai Sousakan 7 so that was fun. The writing of the show was excellent, and the W Forever film was really well done,
this one actually fitting into the main canon of the series, which made it even better. OOO was enjoyable, by then I even acquired some of the DX belts which I still have to this day. Fourze
was also fun, and I enjoyed Wizard very much. It was harder to find one character that was my favorite in several of those shows, but for Wizard, Rinko was certainly my favorite one.
Gaim I followed very carefully, Takatora being my favorite, analyzing the show in more detail than most. That one really deserved its follow-up films excellently, just like W.

When Ex-Aid came around, I really, really enjoyed that one especially. Hard to have a favorite character, since I was really enjoying just about everything about that show. From shows like W, to Gaim
and then Ex-Aid, the production companies were really taking greater risks, and challenging themselves to make motifs and thematic work in such a setting--and making it fun!

Learning about all these productions, seeing some performers achieving greater successes later on, and spending as much time as I do on archiving, cataloging, and researching all aspects here, I
think to myself, all this from re-watching Power Rangers again back then? I's say it was worth it. I even took a Japanese language class in Fall of 2012, and showed my Japanese tutor some of the
shows I watched. His favorite I gave to him was Akibaranger. Do I feel old now? Maybe.

[Catastrophe]

11 is missing from the poll. I'm only being pedantic because that's how long I've been following.

At the start of 2008, I stumbled onto Sentai. I'm not sure how exactly, but given Power Rangers was one of the first shows that I was obsessed with as a child, it clicked with me. I started watching Gekiranger and eventually Go-Onger as it was airing. Was streaming the episodes on I think Crunchyroll before they distributed offical stuff.

Eventually found the forums when I was looking to cut out the middleman. Found Rider when I was here and never looked back. Lurked for a year before registering for the forum though.

[FlyingAceCMX]

To keep things (relatively) short, I stumbled on TN shortly after I started college. I remember looking for Super Sentai episodes (and not knowing where to look) while taking advantage of my newly-acquired high-speed dorm internet. Before long, I stumbled onto TN and immediately became obsessed with Dekaranger and especially Kamen Rider Blade, which were airing at the time. I've been on TV-Nihon ever since.

[Vraptor140]

I've been following 11 years too, and actually remember most of how I got here.

In 2008 when was revisiting old cartoon episodes uploaded to the Veoh website, I think it was a recommendation I got for episodes of Go-Onger that someone was uploading there.

I was a pretty big Power Rangers fan at the time, and it just so happened to be that due to schedule conflicts I wasnt really keeping up with Jungle Fury. So I gave the sentai a chance, and pretty quickly finished the backlog of Go-onger episodes, that pushed me to come to this site to get them directly every week. I ended up watching even more shows like Keitai Sousakan 7, Rescue Fire and Kamen Rider Decade and since then I've been coming back on and off depending on what shows interest me.

[Lunagel]

Fixed poll to add 11, but it reset all the votes so everyone has to re-vote.

I was first here in 2006 with Gekiranger but didn't join staff until late 2007 when I was a college freshman. I realized that I was spending far too much time playing dumb Facebook games (not Farmville) and decided to try doing something more useful(ish) with my time.

[Hariken]

I had been a member (and subsequently an @) in #tokusatsu on DALnet since about 2000/2001-ish but there was some kind of war brewing between the Malaysian/Brazilian @s and the Americans/everyone else. Sort of like a control thing. Very cliquey. It was their group originally and they saw it as all us western folk coming in and trying to take over. Something kicked off (I was on holiday at the time so missed it) so Drakkhen/KingRanger and metaldave (IIRC he was "co-founder") took their allies/friends/clique and split off from #tokusatsu, creating his own group. When I got back from my holiday I think he immediately invited me to become @ at #TV-Nihon with the rest of them.

Unfortunately the power seemed to go to his head and we were losing members and reputation rapidly because he kept banning everyone for stupid little things, forgetting that it's just a little chat room on the internet. At some point I did something that he disliked and I was gone too - I really wish I could remember what it was.

I steered clear for a few years until I heard he'd handed the group over to takenoko (who I always remember as more of a lurker, very quiet, how things change! ). Now I'm the lurker, basically idling in the channel and collecting the files to archive, despite my interest in Tokusatsu as a genre dying about 10 years ago.

[Raziel-Faustus]

still new relatively speaking but around the time i was looking up something on youtube pr related and while i had known of sentai i had not seen it. i found a channel called the tokucast also general compilations decided to start with kiva as i have a thing for vampires and other horror themes. tv-n is the only group to my knowledge and then just sorta fell in love with the extra effort like the splash effects.

[akinaAE86]

Been here since KR Decade

[fartboy]

I found out about you guys back when Gokaiger was on and Power Rangers was apparently dead. I Googled "gokaiger subs" and you were the first result. I haven't watched PR in years.

[ShepardRahl]

I voted 13 years, but that is just a guess. I suffered a severe head injury in 2006 which caused gaps in my memory, but I know I was following TN at the time. I just don't remember how I found it. As far as I know I've been following TN for as long as I can remember.