Henshin!

Motor revving

Initializing Vector Quantization*

Cathode ray tuning

Henshin!

Wrapping over manifolds

Tec, Tec, TEC, TEC!

Exponential mapping finished

Kamen rider τέκτων

So you probably would be surprised to now i was really into Tokusatsu when i was but a wee lad. Like very much so. Formatively so. Of course back then i did not know it was called Tokusatsu i only knew the name was Power Rangers and love it.

There was something meditative about watching the formulaic team of color coded heroes fight the monster of the week. But my real interest was the giant robots. Seeing the Ultrazord form in the 90s rewired my brains in ways that I have yet to fully comprehend.

Show got me into robotics, no even in a Hobby way, tiny me spend many a days trying to figure out what do “the robots have inside” and eventually i did a Masters on Electrical Engineering and my dissertation was on Robot Mapping and navigation. I have a paper on some journal somewhere. No you can’t read it.

But despite irreversibly rewiring my brain since i was like 8 in ways only Nintendo would ever compete i did eventually aged out of Power Rangers when i was like 16.

It would not be until like 16 years later when i tried to reconnect with the franchise.

Despite Power Rangers, or Super Sentai back in the land of the rising sun, being the much better known franchise it was not the only IP Shotaro Ishinomori ever created not even the first. A couple years before Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, the first ever Super Sentai show, was aired first aired in 1975 Ishinomori already had created Kamen rider in 1971.

I was not that into Kamen rider when i was a child, mostly cause unlike Power Rangers which adapted a lot of the Super Sentai shows Kamen Rider saw few adaptations. But i do recall seeing Kamen Rider Black adaptation on Mexico public Television channel Canal 5. I absolutely adored the BattleHopper Bike

If you are not as terminally online as me you may not know that Toei, still makes both shows. Well kinda, Super Sentai is in an hiatus and we have Metal Heroes at the moment with Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity. But they are still putting out Kamen rider to this day.

Latest iteration is Kamen Rider Zeztz and i been watching it. I only expected a mid 20 minutes toy commercial, good to reminisce, but honestly it is punching way above and caught my attention with themes of identity, duty and honor.

Honestly this is meant to be just budget TV and yet it is, as kids say nowadays. Peak more often than not. Sure it is cheap, you can tell that, Tokusatsu has always been cheap that is the point but the budget limitation really brings out the creativity.

Modern TV tends to be either prestige multi million dollar investments or dirt cheap reality TV for the masses. We have very little middle budget AA TV nowadays. Something like CSI or even old Law and Order shows. I think Netflix and streaming did killed that range of TV, good but not mean to cost millions of dollars but episode. Streaming needed new users and threw money at the problem until it ran out both of money and new subscribers. By the time it was done it had warped the landscape of TV completely. Sure they are still serialized content at the end but act more as long form movies that can be consumed over many days but often are binged obsessively.

Kamen rider and Tokusatsu sit at the anti-thesis of that. Refuses to be prestige TV, it can’t unlike marvel i won’t print money. But also refuses to be cheap filler and you can see the heart and the passion on the suits, the choreography even the writing. All punching way above its weight. In short it shows us what a sustainable show with a good business model looks like. Yes Kamen rider and Sentai both exists primarily to sell plastic toys to kids and yet they still try to tell a story and connect emotionally with their audience.

It also help every season is self contained. You can drop in Zeztz today with no prior idea of what Kamen rider is and enjoy it, you may skip next 2 seasons, around 100 episodes, and drop in next seasons and no issue. Which feels incredibly fresh compared to the new MCU movie which requires 12 hours of TV as homework only to understand the basics plot and still get a product optimized for retention and designed by committee to hit targets.

Which do not get me wrong Toei also designs these shows like that and yet still manages to put out better television at a fraction of a price. Which is something western TV could learn from.

And it is not even the format itself. I like it but it is a acquired taste. But the production philosophy: Good mid budget TV. Thing old Adam West Batman or Xena the warrior princess, even Star Trek. Wish if you notice we do not make shows like that anymore.

So I go and watch a guy in a Grasshopper costume fight a guy dressed as wolf meant to represent the concept of hunger to not only remind me of good old power ranger but about a time you did not need a few millions to make a decent TV show.