I should note before starting this that I’m not a huge follower of super sentai or its fanbase. It’s just been a slow news cycle when Avengers reports are a few trailers I don’t care about and trying to convince us they totally have a script despite no evidence of it as it enters post-production, the comics aren’t any more interesting with DC’s Contest Of Champions knockoff and “we can totally make this even more dark and depressing by blaming Darkseid” and I totally gave up on Marvel a long time ago outside of watching it self-destruct. Hollywood’s current stupidity is politics focused and video games is simply watching AAA games fall apart as corporate media ruins everything because they don’t know what they’re doing and keep hiring people for projects they don’t care about and only matters to an audience they look down upon. I’m going for a deadline here, but it’s still an interesting topic. Just realize this is an outsider’s perspective.
That all said, you’ve probably heard by now that Toei is dropping their decades long “super sentai” series. The super task force was a long running superhero franchise dating back to 1975. The short version is that some evil organization, usually from space or the underworld, wants to conquer/destroy the planet and five young people (later six) are charged with stopping them. They have similar outfits of different colors, gain superpowers in those costumes, and protect humanity. I tried watching Jetman but I couldn’t get into the series. However, other sentai shows look interesting and I’m hoping to look into the whole thing in the future.
Most American audiences would know them better as Power Rangers. Haim Saban had tried for years to get super sentai brought over to the US either dubbed or replacing the Japanese actors with American ones. His first success was a parody dub of Dynaman but this kids show only had two episodes on Nickelodeon. Instead USA Network added it to their late night “Night Flight” anthology, including a comedic parody of where are they now reunion shows that also interview fans. It wasn’t until Fox Kids picked up what became Mighty Morphin Power Rangers that Saban’s dream came true. The franchise did gangbusters in the Western world, but in recent years it looks like interest is waning. The same may be true of Sentai. So is that why it’s going away? And is it going away for good? History shows…maybe not.
I saw Kamen Rider Black RX, and “wacky sitcom” is not how I’d describe it.
The shows not doing well is one reason given for the end of Sentai, or rather that the toys haven’t been doing well. Then again, if the show was doing well, so would the toys. Sentai and even Power Rangers are show-first, with the toys helping pay to make the show. It’s a cycle most “toy ad” critics overlook. When the US couldn’t produce shows based on toys, you still had toys based on shows, with kids gravitating to toys that allow them to play out adventures from that show. It could be action figures or it could be role-play, where a kid could have an “actual” phaser instead of trying to find the right stick on the ground that kind of resembles one if you hold it right. Even in the 1980s, when the FCC’s rules lightened up on what could be the source of a show (if books, comics, and movies, why not toys?) you still had shows that had toys but weren’t the source material. Thundercats, Centurions, Bravestarr, and others had toys but it was the show that was the source material and what all the merchandise was based on. Toys pushed for more characters to sell toys on after all the kids who wanted Lion-O figures had one (provided they could save up their allowance or their parents could afford it) and they needed something new.
This is also true in Japan. The Gundam franchise wasn’t created to sell model kits, but that certainly influences their more recent series. The original Megatron figure came from a Japanese toyline where the robot guns were pretending to be toys from a spy role-play set, since shows like The Man From UNCLE was oddly doing well in the Land Of The Rising Sun, and thus had role-play toys there like they did in the US. Super Sentai may or may not have been created to sell toys (I’m not a sentai historian) but it certainly became a factor when those toys helped pay for all those special effects scenes the US was ripping off in their shows.
Another potential reason, as nothing official has been dropped to my knowledge, is that the Power Rangers license made pushing sentai in the US difficult due to Toei having to let the Power Rangers, and whomever holds the license, decide what to do with the way Sentai is presented in America. I’m not so sure about that. Sentai still gets distributed by Shout Factory, who only does certain shows for Hasbro, on home video and through their Tokushoutsu streaming offerings. In addition to streaming on YouTube you have a 24/7 channel on free streaming services and on demand offered through Shout Factory TV and Tubi. The shows are doing fine.
It’s the merchandise that is stuck with the Power Rangers brand, and currently it’s like the rights holders don’t care. Despite being a toy company, Hasbro is letting Playmates handle the figures, and like with Transformers currently the emphasis is on the original series despite fans of later installments and Power Ranger teams now old enough to be nostalgic while a new generation of kids would want their own series. Then you have showrunners, who went from one who was so obsessed with the Sentai that they basically rewrote the Japanese show for the US show instead of doing something new (missing the point) to ones now who want to ditch the Sentai footage altogether and go it on their own, draining all of the Japanese out of it and possibly even just go animated. It was the US and Japanese flavors that set Power Rangers apart from Super Sentai to the degree that Japanese fans enjoyed both versions while in the West we never really got to see Super Sentai in its original form until recently. Then the format snobs get involved so we’ll move on.
So why does Sentai have a future if it’s going away? Yes, it is going away…for now. The franchise began in 1975 with Secret Squadron Gorenger. Yes, I know most people go with the name in Japanese and I don’t care. Outsider, remember? “Anime” is short for “animation” and “manga” means “motionless pictures”, aka comics. Get over yourselves and stop using random Japanese words in subtitles when they have an English translation. I expect sushi to be called sushi, but things go according to plan, not “kekakku”. You aren’t cool or culturally sensitive. You’re just showing off, baka! (Yes, I know what it means.) At any rate, the franchise has lasted until the most recent No.1 Sentai Gozyuger, which will be replaced by Project R.E.D. (Records of Extraordinary Dimensions), which will now take Sentai’s slot in the “Super Hero Time” block alongside the Kamen Rider franchise.
Gavan was used for JB and Caitlin’s Trooper armor, while Ryan had two different shows as the previous one ended.
I did see it noted in quicky research that some are referring to Super Sentai not as ending but going on hiatus. History does side with this term. The Kamen Rider franchise took a huge break in time, as did the “Metal Hero” series. Those hiatuses came at a time when they were getting Power Rangers style reworks. VR Troopers went into syndication because they couldn’t work the story for Fox Kids, and given what happened with their shows I can believe it. Originally meant as a new show for breakout star Jason David Frank until Fox saw how much the kids really liked Tommy and gave him new powers instead, VR Troopers used footage from three different Metal Hero shows, one of them being Space Sheriff Gavan. The Beetleborgs shows used a different franchise, Beetle Fighter, while Saban fully translated Kamen Rider (“Kamen being “mask”) to create Masked Rider. That didn’t do so well because of how dumbed down Fox Kids made it due to backlash to Power Rangers violence…despite doing nothing to the Power Rangers in that area. Some parent groups think they can keep kids from being kids. However, it was the ending of those franchises that led to their American counterparts being shut down.
Then the resurgence of Kamen Rider, which had gone into TV hiatus but did get a trio of movies, led to all new shows about heroes with belts that gave them powers, though the original insect motif has pretty much vanished. We even got a better American rework in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, based on Kamen Rider Ryuki but taking the mirror dimension (not to be confused with a mirror universe) and card-activated weapons idea in a completely new direction. I don’t even think the helmets in the current Kamen Rider Zeztz has compound eyes, just really large ones to match the motif. With one main hero and belts that can unlock new abilities through extra toys gear, the franchise is bigger than it’s ever been.
And look who Project R.E.D. is bringing back for their first show: it’s Gavan, or rather his heir. The Metal Heroes are making a comeback, though we of course have yet to see if they’ll be as successful. We can’t all be Iron Man. You don’t even have to stick to Toei, as both Ultraman and Godzilla have taken time away and made glorious returns, while Ultraman’s parent company allowed Gridman (reworked in the US into Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad) to return in anime form with SSSS Gridman (see what they did there?), which itself has sequel series–plural. Ultraman has found new life thanks to Tsuburaya Productions seriously pushing the show into the US and other non-Japanese countries and languages via YouTube, something Toei is finally figuring out by partnering with TokuSHOUTsu to bring Zeztz internationally while doing almost nothing with their YouTube channel after posting two episodes of some of their library and calling it good.
So I don’t think Sentai is dead. Instead it’s doing what some fans of pre-Disney Marvel Studios and Star Wars are asking for: a break to reassess what’s going wrong and trying to fix it. The Metal Heroes took decades off, Kamen Rider and Ultraman less so. Toei may just want to figure out what’s working for Kamen Rider and hoping Super Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity is the first step to seeing where the magic is. If they can successfully bring back the Metal Heroes, Super Sentai may yet follow the Kamen Riders and Ultramen in making a comeback. Meanwhile Hasbro seems ready to let the Power Rangers die off or at least become something unrecognizable beyond following the Transformers formula and just redoing the original over and over. Japan seems to have the better idea. Who knows? Maybe someday the brightly colored spandex wearing teams will return in their giant robots that are made of five smaller machines they never do anything with beyond forming the robot. (Or maybe they should fix that last part.) Nostalgic comebacks are all the rage these days.
BW Media Spotlight 