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.
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