#note that this is for the show as well as the movie and super sentai

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Since you're familiar with tokusatsu actors and their journeys into BL, what kinds of careers historically have tokusatsu actors had as they start to get more credits and mature?

Thank you for the ask! This is a great question. It’s something I’ve been curious about for a while, as you know.

I never get tired of this gif of Seto Toshiki (a Kamen Rider alum with two BLs under his belt) eating cake. (It's from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, which he starred in with Iijima Hiroki of Our Dining Table fame.)

Oh, I should probably say at the outset that I'm talking about the suit transformation type of tokusatsu shows here. Technically the category is broader and also includes kaiju movies, but I'm focusing here on the kind of tokusatsu series in which human characters (or human-like ones) transform into masked heroes. I think that's what you had in mind, Ben, and it's the type of tokusatsu that tends to overlap with the BL world.

Another thing you'll notice is that I'm mostly going to talk about men here. Tokusatsu has been making some progress as a genre when it comes to gender equity, but it still has a long way to go. And since most of the progress that has happened, like the increase in female Riders, has been in the last few years, the actors who played those characters haven't had much of a subsequent career yet.

Now, to your question.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to really look at this systematically. So, definitely take my conclusions with a grain of salt. (If anyone reading this knows more about this or has thoughts about how to get more/better info, I'd love to hear them.) The main source of information I have--aside from just soaking stuff up from watching tokusatsu shows and reading toku fans' tumblrs, of course--is looking at toku actors’ entries on MDL and seeing how many roles they’ve gotten, if they’re “guest,” “support,” or “main” roles, and trying to find out about the type of shows and movies they’re in.

One of the biggest weaknesses to this approach as an American viewer is that it's usually hard for me to tell what constitutes a popular or prestigious series or film even if I go to the listings for specific shows/films. I should also note that one thing that biases my “data” (to use the term loosely) is the fact that I’m more likely to look up this information about actors I like. Well, occasionally I’ll also look at info on some sample of actors out of curiosity, like a bunch of lead Ultraman actors’ subsequent careers or something like that. But it's usually more random.

A little background. As you're aware, tokusatsu roles often go to younger actors who don't have much previous experience. They tend to function both as a way of getting a foothold in the industry (building a resume, starting a fanbase, etc.) and as a way of learning on the job. Part of the reason they work so well in this regard is that they have long seasons. Ultraman seasons are typically around 25 episodes long, which is pretty long compared to many shows in Japan, but Kamen Rider and Super Sentai seasons are usually around 50 episodes long. This means two things: a toku part gets you a lot more of the aforementioned work experience than you'd get in other genres, and it provides a solid year of consistent work with additional work to follow (particularly hard to come by in Japan's entertainment industry, from what I understand). The additional work is substantial, too. There are typically post-series TV movies and touring live shows and there are often guest spots on other series in your franchise.

When it comes to landing other roles, as in other types of media, it makes a big difference what type of role you had. This is stating the obvious, I know, but there are some specific ways this works with tokusatsu series, and it relates to who ends up in BLs and in what capacity. So, all of the big three tokusatsu franchises are pretty ensemble-based but they still have distinct leads and some degree of a hierarchy of roles. Ultraman has the strongest leads, Kamen Rider has lead/title Riders and secondary (and often tertiary) Riders, and Super Sentai shows are especially ensemble-y (the word sentai basically means "squad," after all) but they always have some kind of group leader.

When I look up subsequent work by tokusatsu actors who had sizable roles in their toku series--lead roles, or other parts that are what MDL would call "main" roles--what I see most often is a lot of supporting and guest roles in a variety of TV shows and some films. You can usually find a smattering of lead roles as well, but if you look closely they may turn out to be smaller productions (but not always). When it comes to the number/frequency of credits, there's a lot of variation but an average case would be 2-3 such credits per year. Like I mentioned above, it's hard for me to tell how desirable/prestigious/well-paying those guest and supporting roles are. But they don't usually seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel or anything. So, yeah. Lots of these actors have different paths, but this is what I see most frequently.

Given how challenging it is to make a career out of acting in Japan, this is nothing to sneeze at. Despite its relative influence, the Japanese entertainment industry is still comparatively small, and there are only so many opportunities. In that context, regularly getting guest and supporting gigs constitutes a pretty uncommon level of success.

Could these folks support themselves on this amount of work? I often see just a few credits per year, so maybe not. But when I like a one of these actors enough to follow them on socials, it usually seems like they are supplementing those parts with other stuff like stage plays, toku fan appearances, modeling gigs, or other types of performance including music. Even with these different sources of income, some probably still can't live on their entertainment industry pay alone. But it appears that some can.

So that's the most common thing. One less common outcome is leaning really hard into being a tokusatsu actor for life. It's not typical to get significant roles in multiple toku shows, but it does happen. And some actors manage to play the same character in a lot of post-series movies, miniseries, etc. stretching out for years after their actual series. For example, Tsuruno Takeshi, who played Ultraman Dyna's human host Shin Asuka, has been in ten different Ultraman things including his main series, a short series, a lot of TV movies, and a special. Dyna aired in 1997, and his last appearance as Asuka was fairly recent, in 2016. That's almost a 20-year span. Yet Tsuruno has never had a non-Ultraman main character part. (Though this is partly because he seems to have focused more on his music career and related variety show type things post-Dyna.) There are even some actors who are tokusatsu superfans whose whole career plan is centered on the genre from the get-go.

For those who are looking to branch out, there are a lot of trajectories. So I'll try to talk about some of them through a few examples.

Takeda Kouhei

You probably knew I was going to bring him up. On Kamen Rider Kiva, Takeda's character was important but not the lead (he played the main character's father in the 1980s, in a timeline that ran parallel to the present day one). That was in 2008, when he was 22. Nine years later, in 2017, he was in Kamen Rider Build, in which he was the "tertiary" Rider. This character was a potato farmer-turned-antihero. As tertiary Riders go, he was pretty popular. But Takeda seemed to be mostly hovering at a certain level at that point. Then Old Fashion Cupcake happened. It's significant that he went from playing supporting characters (albeit important ones) to a lead character in OFC. It's also helpful that OFC came out at a point when the prestige of BLs was on the rise. It seems like Takeda has had more consistent and larger parts since then. The difference isn't night and day or anything, but it's observable.

If you look at Takeda's Build costars, Inukai Atsuhiro and Akaso Eiji, here’s what you'll find. Akaso has a similar trajectory to Takeda's only somewhat steeper. His role on Build (the secondary Rider) was a bit bigger, he seemed to get slightly bigger roles overall after Build, and Cherry Magic gave him a significant boost from there. Inukai had a bigger upswing early on followed by slower growth that still had him outstripping both Akaso and Takeda. From what I can tell, his “data” more closely resembles that of Yamada Yuki, who I’ll talk about in a second, though they have different niches.

Suda Masaki

Suda Masaki was only 16 when he played the main rider in Kamen Rider W in 2009, which is unusually young. (W has a unique premise where two different people inhabit the same Rider, so Suda played a lead rider but so did his costar Kiriyama Renn.) From what I can tell, he seems to have had a pretty organic path to larger and larger roles while varying genres and styles quite a bit. At this point he's definitely a very respected actor. (One interesting bit of trivia: Hagiwara Riku has said Suda is his biggest acting role model.) He's won two Japan Academy Film Prizes and been nominated three more times. I don't know of a more successful ex-tokusatsu lead. Actually, I looked him up for this post to fill in some details and found out for the first time that he also has a pretty successful career as a jpop musician. It's almost annoying that he's that talented in yet another area.

I don't see any indication that Suda has ever played a queer character, though he has definitely done some pretty bromantic stuff. He did kiss a man once in a drama series, but it was for plot reasons and was 100% played for laughs in a gross way. He also played a gender nonconforming character in the 2014 live action version of Princess Jellyfish. (Another bit of trivia: when another live action adaptation of Princess Jellyfish was released in 2018, the same character was played by another former lead Rider, Seto Koji from Kiva.) I wouldn't put it past Suda to play a queer character, if it was for a highbrow movie or something analogous to what Nishijima Hidetoshi has done in What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but I'm also not holding my breath.

Yamada Yuki

A less extreme case. Yamada was on Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. He was the blue member of the team, a soldier-turned-pirate. It may have helped Yamada along later on that Gokaiger is an especially popular Sentai series. Post-Gokaiger, Yamada didn't have any sort of big breakout role that I can find. It just seems like fairly soon after Gokaiger, he started having significant roles in TV dramas and has pretty much continued from there, with some upward momentum but no huge changes. When he was in a drama with Akaso Eiji recently, his part was first billed and a smidge bigger. Yamada's trend line seemed to have a biggish upward swing early and then just a slight slope from there. But I just saw him in something different: he plays the younger member of the minesweeper crew in Godzilla Minus One. I wonder if that will mark any sort of shift for him.

Yamada hasn't played any queer characters as far as I can tell. His Sentai role was shippy as hell, though. It's a tradition among Sentai shows that subtext-level queer ships happen between the red and blue team members, and that's exactly what happened in Gokaiger. Sometimes the subtext pretty much became text. If magazine images from that time are any indication, their relationship seems to have been a promotional angle for the show. There's even one where they seem to be in some kind of high school AU that looks like it's straight out of a BL.

what about women?

I tried looking up a few women I know from tokusatsu roles while I was looking up these and other dudes. Some of them were still in the business, at least. Some were getting the same trickle of guest and supporting parts a lot of men do after a tokusatsu show. A few had a slightly bigger trickle. But many of them seemed to have disappeared from the public eye entirely. Not only are women underrepresented in tokusatsu, and not only are their roles often relatively small and two-dimensional, but it doesn't seem like they get even a slight career boost after these roles.

It's possible this will change for some of the actors who got bigger, more interesting toku roles in recent years. Here's hoping!

The changing relationship between tokusatsu and BL

The relationship between tokusatsu and BL has been changing as BL gains more prestige, like I alluded to when I talked about Takeda Kouhei. There was a time when they seemed to be pretty analogous in terms of how hard it was to get a role and how effective they were as rungs on a career ladder. If you went from being a tokusatsu side character to a BL lead (like Takeda), that was a step up, but only because you were shifting from a supporting spot to a lead one. Tokusatsu leads usually didn't usually do BL or, when they did, only played straight supporting roles. I think it was seen as a lateral move. But now, BL is becoming a very established next step after tokusatsu. It's like BL has moved up in status so that the consensus is that it's above tokusatsu on the ladder, but just by a little bit. It's also kind of an organic transition since we're seeing more queer ships in tokusatsu that, while they mostly happen on a subtext level, are close to being canon (and in some cases, arguably already are). It occurred to me while I was writing this that there's also another type of role that is in a similar zone of accessibility and prestige to both tokusatsu and BL. It's a franchise, not a genre, but with so many movies and such huge casts it almost functions like a genre for the purpose of this discussion. I'm talking about the High&Low movies. If you're a fan of tokusatsu or BL, you'll see actors you know in every High&Low movie and if you're a fan of both, you'll see tons.

Case in point: Here's our ol’ pal Yamada Yuki. He's in quite a few High&Low installments. If only he’d do a BL and complete the trifecta! The only person I know of offhand who’s done a tokusatsu show, a BL, and a High&Low role is Takeda. I bet there are others, though.

the new (?) prestige tokusatsu

There's another piece to this I should probably point out as well. In recent years there have been some more high-budget, prestigious takes on existing tokusatsu properties. First, Anno Hideaki, who's best known for the Evangelion anime series/films, put out three live action features that are new, well-financed takes on three big tokusatsu properties: Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider.

Last year there was also a Kamen Rider series geared toward adults that had higher-than-usual production values called Kamen Rider Black Sun. It did that “you can tell our show is for adults because it's all gritty and grimdark" thing, which I'm not a fan of. But it definitely had its points.

Really distinguished actors starred in both the Shin movies and Black Sun, including Nishijima Hidetoshi, who's about as distinguished as it gets. Nishijima was in both Shin Ultraman (in an important supporting role) and Black Sun (as a co-protagonist--and he's the biggest highlight of the series). So these are examples of toku media that are too prestigious to be a springboard into the industry for most actors.

This seems to be a new phenomenon, though I could be wrong about that. I don’t expect the trend will continue at this pace (after all, so much of it is attributable to Anno alone and I don't think he'll continue down this path indefinitely), but I bet some other shows/movies in this vein will come out sooner or later.

Here’s Nishijima doing a henshin sequence. He does these moves with such commitment. Is there anything he can't do?

before tokusatsu

As I was writing this, it got me thinking about what actors do before their tokusatsu roles as well as after. It's not uncommon for toku roles to be someone's debut, but that's not really the norm. Even when it is, most of those actors were doing something in the realm of performing or modeling beforehand. I don't usually look at this sort of information as much as I do later roles when I'm investigating toku actors I like. So I looked up some people to try to get a sense of where the actors tend to have done before their toku parts.

There's one starting point that a whole bunch of tokusatsu leads share: winning the Junon Super Boy Contest. When I first saw references to it, I thought, OK, this is some kind of national talent contest. I guess there are probably lots of them. But when I looked for others, I didn't see anything come up. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places or using the right search terms. But I think maybe this contest might be pretty unique in Japan.

It's run by a magazine called Junon and, well, if I describe how it works it's going to sound really familiar to you and anyone else who's seen Utsukushii Kare, because it's pretty much exactly the contest Kiyoi participates in. Like, if it's not what Nagira Yuu was thinking of when she wrote that part of the UK novel, I'll eat my shoe.

A ton of tokusatsu leads won, placed in, or made it to the finals of that contest. The Tokupedia fan wiki even has its own page dedicated to the contest with links to various winners' toku characters. The majority of Junon Super Boy contestants who ended up in a toku series went to Kamen Rider, but there are some Sentai dudes as well and at least one Ultraman lead.

So I guess if Kiyoi had won that contest, he probably would have ended up on Kamen Rider or something. Weird.

Inukai Atsuhiro and Iijima Hiroki both won that contest. Those are the only two Junon Boys (that's what people call the contest winners) who became tokusatsu actors and were on a BL that I know of right off the top of my head. But it seems likely that there are other toku-and-BL or just BL actors who won, placed, or made it to the finals of this contest.

Other dudes who ended up on tokusatsu shows started out in other ways. Some were simply signed to agencies as actors. There's a fair number of them who were in idol groups. (Though when an idol/ex-idol is looking for a gig as a transition into acting, BLs seem to be a more popular choice.) Some mostly did modeling prior to their toku series. Some already had quite a few acting credits, though usually not very big ones. Although he's a Junon Super Boy winner, Inukai had eight other acting credits before Kamen Rider. Takeda had the same number, and he started young--his first credit is for a TV show that came out when he was 10 (though it took another six years to get a second).

I also looked up some women who've had prominent roles in tokusatsu shows, including more recent ones. The most frequent things I found when I looked for information on their pre-toku careers were that they had been models or idols (or both). It's also not uncommon for women in toku roles to be former or present gravure models--basically models who pose in bikinis or comparably revealing outfits.

The coolest thing I found was that Imoto Ayaka, who played Igarashi Sakura/Kamen Rider Jeanne, was an award-winning ballet dancer. Which is not only incredibly cool but makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation for a tokusatsu hero role.

I mean, just check out this henshin.

Well, this has gotten ridiculously long. Sorry about that. I may have gotten a little carried away. But thanks again for the question.

And now, I have something to write for @wen-kexing-apologist...

#tokusatsu to BL pipeline #tokusatsu #takeda kouhei #yamada yuki #suda masaki #junon super boy contest #kamen rider #super sentai #kamen rider kiva #kaizoku sentai gokaiger #kamen rider w #nishijima hidetoshi

[tokuvivor]

Thanks for the tag on this one, @shychick-52! (Update: And @writebackatya.)

how many fics do you have on ao3?

12.

what's your total ao3 word count?

69,172.

what are your top five fics by kudos?

The Power of Three

Bridging the Gap

We Could Bring You a Hamburger…

One Night Ultimate Duck (Or Hummingbird, or Parrot)

Duckverse June 2023 Prompts (yes, it’s a story collection, but it still counts)

what fandoms do you write for?

DuckTales 2017, mostly, a bit for Super Sentai, did one for the Netflix show Dash & Lily, and I have a couple ideas of fics relating to other shows.

do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Yes! Someone took time out of their day to read my stuff and leave their input on it, and the least I could do is show my appreciation for it in return, and elaborate on any questions they may have.

what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Shit, I’m really not good with ending stories on a down note; I try to make the endings as satisfying as possible. But I’d say the closest thing to that is for my 6th Webby Week story, Am I Good Enough? (An Internal Battle). It’s basically just Webby wrestling over being chosen by the Papyrus in her mind. Even though it doesn’t end on an outright fairy tale note, she does recognize that it’s okay to not have something that big figured out immediately, and that it’s good to talk about it with other people if you have trouble processing it.

what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That’s a tough one. There are probably certain stories I’ll discuss in later answers, so for this one, I’ll go with We Could Bring You a Hamburger…. I mean, it’s just a sweet, simple story about something that absolutely should’ve been shown in canon (Webby getting her first hamburger). It’s just a good, satisfying, slice of life kinda thing.

do you get hate on your fics?

Well, on the second chapter of The Power of Three, I got somebody telling me that Huey shouldn’t be guilty over going against his general Woodchuck instinct and leaving Violet behind, and that he should be jealous and upset with Violet and Lena for insulting him and making him feel miserable. Jesus.

do you write smut?

No. I honestly don’t think I’d be good at it. Especially regarding a show like DuckTales. If I were to, it’d probably be wayyyyy down the road.

do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've ever written?

Not actively; if I write something with multiple fandom tags on AO3, it’s mostly because minor elements of one thing are peppered into my DT story.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. Thank god.

have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but that’d be interesting.

have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yes; I started working with @sisiwritesfanfics on her Super Sentai Couples One-Shot Collection beginning with the second story. We’re currently trying to work on the third.

what's your all time favorite ship?

I don’t know, probably Fendra? But I generally prefer fanworks of them more, especially when stories go more in-depth regarding their relationship than we got in canon. There are others in DuckTales, and other pieces of media, that I really enjoy, though.

what's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

At the moment, none. But there are a couple idea that I have that I don’t know if I’d ever start.

what are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, especially between two characters, and being able to really get into characters’ minds.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Writing full-on angst. I can incorporate bits of angst into stories, especially when it’s introspective, but a full story of it just wouldn’t be my thing (so, way longer than Am I Good Enough?). Also, losing motivation at certain points in time.

thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I’ve done bits of gratuitous Spanish or Latin in my stories before, but no full-on dialogue. But I did provide the translated Spanish dialogue between Fenton, Gosalyn, and Webby in @writebackatya’s story Let’s All Go to the Movies!.

first fandom you wrote for?

Technically speaking, I did a piece based on Wreck-It Ralph back in high school for my creative writing class. So that, I guess.

favorite fic you've ever written?

Massive toss-up for me here. The Power of Three is special because it was my first fic, and it focuses on the budding dynamic between Huey, Violet, and Boyd, which absolutely should have been explored in the show. But my other major early idea for a DuckTales story turned into Bridging the Gap. Gandra isn’t written nearly as often alongside Huey, and we only really got a resolution of her relationship with Fenton (amongst main and major recurring characters) in the show, so I wanted to build on the pieces we got between Gandra and Huey in her episodes, which culminated in what I still think is my absolute favorite scene I’ve written. I think the overall edge goes to Power, but Bridging isn’t far behind in my heart.

Tagging @godfrey-the-chaos-duck and @sparklingspidey

#ao3 ask game #ducktales #super sentai #dash and lily #am i good enough? (an internal battle) #we could bring you a hamburger… #a second chance to save a life #the power of three #bridging the gap #let’s all go to the movies!

[eliasdrid]

Three thoughts: since everyone and their mother calls build the best rider and I had a relatively mid experience with it and I see you had an awful experience with it…

number three but I put it first bc it’s the most important: why didn’t you like it? Sorry if you’ve made posts abt that—

number one, what do you consider the best rider show?

number two, have you seen kamen rider geats?

3 - Oh that wretched show (Kamen Rider Build)........................ I'll leave my full answer for last so I can just do a "read more" and spare people of spoilers for the show. The TL;DR is that I have a love/hate relationship with it, it starts really well but then it uh, it's like the show just forgets itself? does that make sense? I don't know, it disappointed me... My message to the world is: if you want to watch it (in my opinion) up to episode 33 it's pretty good, it gets worse later.

[note: edited this to be less harsh bc I liked a lot of the show in the end despite my issues with some choices and some people might think I didn't like anything at all]

1 - This kinda spoils the options for the poll a little but whatever. I got into toku this year with sentai so I've only watched Shin Kamen Rider (the 2023 movie) and then Kamen Rider Den-O (2007), Kamen Rider W (2009) and Kamen Rider Build (2017).

I don't think any of the shows are perfect but I think the most satisfying experience overall from start to finish was Den-O because it's a bit silly but consistent with it? So it's pretty enjoyable.

2 - Funny story... I started Geats but I couldn't click with it. I do think a lot of the suit designs are SUPER pretty though. Kamen Rider Geats, Cross Geats and Na-Go are my faves for sure (from the images and material I've seen).

3 - OK So let's do this. I have actually not done a list of all my issues with this show here in my blog but I have complained a lil to people I know and who have watched it (and shared my opinions). This is my personal opinion and I want to preface this by saying I'm a sci-fi nerd and I might have set the bar too high because it looked really promising to me.

SPOILERS FOR BASICALLY EVERYTHING IN THE SHOW

I'll get to issues related to characters first, I think that's easier:

Vernage could have been really interesting but she is equally under and overutilized when convenient to the point she's always doing everything with her last breath (until she does actually die... ) and shows up so sporadically you almost forgot she was still alive when she shows up again. It's wild because when she's introduced you're like? Oh? Will she give us lore and then die? Perhaps a clue to a secret weapon? Some secret power up? no!

Misora is never developed to her full potential despite going through a lot of stuff during the entire show. She could have had a more active relationship with Vernage and tap into some martian knowledge or be able to channel Vernage's power willingly but :/ Her dad literally ends in a coma and she is like... mostly unaffected? Doesn't talk about him? Idk, I'm not saying she should henshin because that's unrealistic with this show but she could have worked with Vernage to take revenge on Evolt for that (via helping the team). I WILL say, she does have her sad moments and her actress does a really good job, it broke my heart when she had her final conversation with Evolt!Soichi. But off that? She's an internet idol ^w^ and the glue that has to hold the team together even though she's like LITERALLY 18-19 and everyone else in their mid 20s and up???

Insanely enough Sawa's friend to spy to friend to spy to friend thing is decently executed so I can't complain much here.

Y'know what I can complain about though? Kazumi! Kazumi is such a character that I wanted to root for because he is so much about community once you get to know him and he has this good caring leadership vibe to him. This guy commits and this guy finds middle points and he can't forgive Gentoku but he asks anyway that he joins them and he even encourages him later to try and follow his father's footsteps. HOWEVER. HE IS A FUCKING CREEP OVER AN IDOL AND THAT UNFORTUNATELY IS MISORA. Bro is 29 years old demanding respect from Banjo and fangirling over a girl that is like... a real human being... who he actually gets to know. I thought their relationship would be... realizing she's a Real Human Being With Thoughts And Feelings but he never stops being a weirdo and it was uncomfortable... ☠

Isurugi Soichi... (not Evolt) underutilized as hell... we get this reveal that he can talk to Evolt near 33 and I thought "OH! Maybe he can influence him? Maybe this is what has been stopping Evolt from wrecking absolute havoc?" but as you might know/guess, this was not the case. There was a LOT of potential for a parallel with Him being posessed by Evolt and Misora being possessed by Vernage and Misora coming to terms with the fact that her dad got the worst alien buddy out of the situation but... they don't do this.

Evolt (Evolt)... my major problem with him is that the show literally tries to sell this "monster that didn't have feelings before" story on the last arc and it just... doesn't work? Because yeah, he's an asshole but like he clearly gets frustrated and excited and he clearly had a lot of feelings driving him around otherwise he'd not have gotten attached to the same human body for 10 YEARS and only hopped out of it when his "vessel" was complete.

Banjo, I got here finally, I deserve a medal. Not my kind of character but overall he's fine? The whole alien thing is done in the most boring way possible imo, idk how they did that but hey! The show is in such a hurry to go through as many small plots as possible near the end that it went super fast?

Sento! I can't talk about one and not the other! Overall Sento is a well done amnesiac protagonist until they make him go back to his old self to undo character development near the end for what feels like ages (I think it was just two episodes though?) and then he remembers and io and behold! he's Sento again but can remember some things from before. I have no words, it felt like he was going to stay like that for a second and all his character development would be undone. I think he could have remembered without having to go through that, I think he could have had conversations with himself without them just making him forget his friends so Katsuragi could have ONE chat with Gentoku. I think he was prone enough to monologue that he could have started remembering after Evolt by just. Literally talking to himself and finding his old self within him... like we could have had the same thing without the weird moment. I also think the whole arc with his dad suddenly coming back was poorly written... because? Suddenly he's not THE Genius and also Build wasn't "originally" meant for him even though it's hinted MANY times that it was Katsuragi who developed the Kamen Rider System entirely/mostly on his own. I think I could be ages here so I'm gonna move on by saying: it was bad.

Gentoku... my meow meow... I'm biased, overall I liked his character development and the Rogue drama was interesting? (and full of blood). His whole deal felt more straightforward than the rest and before he becomes a bit of a "joke" (with the identity fashion crisis and then the awkward moments) he has some really good moments of redemption. I really liked his speech in 39 when he feels bad about fucking up with Utsumi and is too injured to fight. ("Im not writing at 2 am edit": He has good character moments after 39 too! I understand they needed to kill the tension a little by making some fun of him and I liked some of it; the nepotism bit was really good! and his sacrifice was meaningful)

Honorable Utsumi mention because: what do you mean he was a cyborg??? That was so out of the blue and meant absolutely nothing because it's not... anything. For a show that did decent hints about things Utsumi suddenly being a cyborg because "haha his nickname was cyborg" and they maybe did one joke on an episode intro... it's really lame. Off this (which I needed out of my chest) he has a lot of missed potential and could (and should) have replaced Sento's dad as Evolt's "main" scientist because uhh he literally did the Sclash Driver and was very talented? Did the writer just... forget that? I guess so! It'd have been more interesting for sure if he had been working all along against Evolt fearing he'd betray Nanba but no.

I'm gonna go over plot things as quick as possible because I got too wordy with the character stuff:

The Pandora Box. I get it, it's a very convenient excuse but for a thing that Evolt seems to have created himself... they sure throw a last minute "but he doesn't know about this secret panel" I think... I think Evolt knows his funny little box for destroying planets and consuming their energy better than anyone on Earth...

The Sky Wall and the Pandora Tower. It'd have been SO much fun if, as I had hoped, the Pandora Tower was a massive labyrinth they had to figure out to get to the top and stop Evolt or some sort of ritual over a period of time...

The Show is called Kamen Rider Build! They do not build shit during the final episodes. I guess the Grease power up but he dies as soon as he uses it so that doesn't count. They literally got most of everything "solved" around the time Katsuragi made the Genius bottle so! They decide to reuse the Hazard Trigger to do something that is never hinted at (or makes sense if you ask me)... they don't even modify it 😭😭😭😭 They could have done something like before the proxy battle when Sawa and Sento do the modifications for Tank/Tank and Rabbit/Rabbit and have the team help Sento assemble a new device before fighting Evolt but no...

"Let's make a new world instead of properly defeating the bad guy" coward move! It also conveniently erases everyone's character development even if Sento and Banjo are "the same" in the new world it's just, a weird choice (I've been told they get their memories back in the specials or something but still ????)

Evolt destroying the world at random suddenly for his own amusement was really just an excuse to do the New World thing sellable and was really weird specially after the Be The One Movie in which he CLEARLY doesn't want Earth destroyed. He Loved Earth. He spent 10 slutty slutty years posing as a DILF and 3+ of them causing problems on purpose. BE REAL.

Also having Gentoku and Kazumi die was another way to make the "new world" thing more easy to digest because "see :( our friends died we need to bring them back :(" (idk man they were pretty decent at fighting, they could have not died!)

FINALLY. On the New World thing: A Post War scenario with the Kamen Riders helping rebuild the country and Kazumi and Gentoku in leadership positions, Misora reconnecting with her Dad and Sento trying to figure out how to use the bottles for good and more practical uses than fighting would have been much better...

anyway this got super long, I'm so sorry. Thank you for coming to my KRB talk. Kudos to you if you made it to the end, I probably have even more thoughts on this but we'd both be here forever. I'm locking this because people are weird about shows sometimes and I have seen people insist that Build is Really Really good when it's like. mid at best if you have to judge it from start to end.

additionally: I refuse to watch the specials <3 the movie (Be the One) was fine though, tbh it felt more on sync with the show than the finale. Even if they introduce the Blood Tribe guys only to kill them off. The Buid/Cross Z fusion bit was fun too!

#freezing-kaiju #ask #reply #elias toku tag #krb spoilers #edited my wording a bit after a good night sleep in case anyone finds this and wants to read it - sorry if I was too intense...

[atamascolily]

Okay, so it turns out that the crossover episode between Kamen Rider Gaim and Ressha Sentai ToQger was only a preview for the big crossover movie, Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Wars feat. Super Sentai, which is why it doesn't have a real ending and why those Heisei-era Riders randomly show up and claim they don't want to work with Showa Riders before walking away.

Anyway, remember when I said there were two options for tokusatsu crossovers, working together and beating the shit out of each other? Guess which one this is. Note that zero explanation is given for how or why this is happening, at least in the opening sequence.

lol, you can see where Marvel got their inspiration for Ant-man here.

I'm tagging this as Kamen Rider Gaim because it's technically in the series continuity even though a lot of other guys appear in it, as well as #kamen rider crossover movie.

Also, I learned that ToQger is pronounced "tokyuuger" and that it's one of the few Super Sentai series not to have a corresponding Power Rangers adaptations because Americans hate trains it's so culturally specific.

#kamen rider gaim #lily liveblogs #kamen rider crossover movie

[kathillards]

         Ranger Romance Ficathon 2018

Want a Valentine’s Day gift for your fave ship from the Power Rangers movie? Dying for more content while you wait for a sequel announcement? Maybe want to try out a rarepair ship or introduce yourself to the show ships? This is the fic exchange for you!

Sign-ups are now open for the first ever ranger romance ficathon! Stories will be revealed on Valentine’s Day 2018.

#powerrangersedit #power rangers #skyshipsquad #trimberly #cranscott #and all other ships welcome including all the ot3s and polyam ships #** #note that this is for the show as well as the movie and super sentai

[shihalyfie]

About the Adventure: reboot, the likely reason why it exists, the question of target demographic, and whether I would recommend it or not

I think this reboot has been kind of a strange outlier in terms of Digimon anime in general, in terms of...well, just about everything. I also feel like everything surrounding it has kind of been giving us mixed signals as to what the intent and purpose behind the anime is -- well, besides “cashing in on the Adventure brand”, but looking at it more closely, that might be a bit of an oversimplification.

I’m writing this post because, having seen the entire series to the end for myself and thinking very hard about it and what it was trying to do, I decided to put down my thoughts. This is not meant to be a review of what I think was good and bad, but rather, something that I hope will be helpful to those who might be on the fence about whether they want to watch it or not, or those who don’t want to watch/finish it but are curious about what happened, or those who are curious as to why this reboot even exists in the first place, or even maybe just those who did watch it but are interested in others’ thoughts about it. I'm personally convinced that -- especially in an ever-changing franchise like Digimon -- how much you like a given work is dependent on what your personal tastes are to the very end, and thus it’s helpful to understand what kind of expectations you should go in with if you want to watch something.

With all of this said and done, if you want to go in and best enjoy this series, I think it is best to consider this anime as a distinct Digimon series of its own. The relationship to Adventure is only surface-level, and by that I mean it’s very obvious it’s doing things its own thing deliberately without worrying too much about what prior series did. Of course, I think everyone will have varying feelings about using the Adventure branding for something that really isn't Adventure at all, but we are really talking about an in-name-only affair, and something that’s unabashedly doing whatever it wants. So in other words, if you’re going in expecting Adventure, or anything that really resembles Adventure, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you’re able to approach it like yet another distinct Digimon series, and the other aspects of it fit your fancy, you’ll probably be able to enjoy it much better. And, conversely, I think it’s also important to remember that this series seems to have a writing philosophy with a fundamentally different goal from most Digimon series, and since it’s understandable for most long-time Digimon fans to have their tastes built on those prior series, it’s fine and completely understandable that this reboot may not be your cup of tea, for reasons that probably don’t actually have much to do with whether it’s an Adventure reboot or not.

There are no spoilers in the following post. (Although I use some emphatic language for the duration for it, these are mostly just my personal thoughts and how I see the series and the overall situation.)

On what exact relationship to Adventure this series has, and why it’s an “Adventure reboot”

If you ask why they did an Adventure reboot, the easiest answer to come up with is “Adventure milking, because it’s profitable”, but that’s kind of an oversimplification of what the issue is. This is especially when you take into account a key fact that official has been very well aware of since as early as 2006: most kids are too young to have seen Adventure, and therefore have no reason to care about it.

That’s the thing: Adventure milking only works so well on today’s children, and Toei and Bandai know this. This is also the reason that the franchise started going through a bit of a “split” starting in around 2012 (after Xros Wars finished airing), when the video game branch started making more active attempts to appeal to the adults’ fanbase with Re:Digitize and Adventure PSP. (Although they were technically still “kids’ games”, they were very obviously aimed at the adults’ audience as a primary “target”.) The generation that grew up with Adventure and other classic Digimon anime was getting older and older, and targeting that audience would require tailoring products more specifically to them -- ultimately culminating in 2015 and the solidification of “very obviously primarily for adults” media in the form of both games (Cyber Sleuth and Next Order) and anime (tri.). Note that Appmon ended up getting its own 3DS game, but since it was targeted at kids, it seems to have been developed by a completely different pipeline/branch from the aforementioned adults’ games, so even that had a split.

So if we want to talk about full-on nostalgia pandering, that’s already being done in the adults’ branch. In fact, Appmon development specifically said that they felt free to not really care about the adults’ audience because that was tri.’s job. Of course, the hardcore Digimon adults’ fanbase is still keeping an eye on the kids’ shows, and it’s good to not upset them -- and, besides, even if we’re all suffering under the hell of capitalism, people who work in kids’ shows still tend to be very passionate about the content and messages they’re showing the kids, so they still put an effort into making good content that adults can enjoy too. But, nevertheless, adults are still the “periphery demographic”, and a kids’ show is not a success if the kids (who have not seen and do not care about Adventure) are not watching it or buying the toys. Appmon ended up being extremely well-received by the adults’ fanbase, but that all meant nothing since the kids didn’t get into it.

Most kids are not super incredibly discerning about so-called writing quality (it’s not like they don’t at least unconsciously know when something is good, but they’re much less likely to be bothered by little things adults are often bothered by), so there’s a certain degree you have to get their attention if you want things to catch on with them. Critical reception does matter a lot more when we talk about the adults’ audience, but for the kids, the more important part is how much you’ve managed to engage them and how much fun they’re having (especially in regards to the toyline). Moreover, there’s the problem of “momentum”; Digimon’s sister shows of PreCure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai have sometimes had really poorly performing shows (critically or financially), but have managed to recover it in successive years to avoid getting cancelled. Digimon never managed to get to that point, with sales nearly dropping to half with Tamers and again with Frontier. So in essence, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon were all attempts at figuring out what was needed to just get that “kickstart” again -- but things just never lined up for it to work.

So if kids don’t really care about Adventure, why would they do Adventure nostalgia pandering? The answer is one that official has actually openly stated multiple times: they want to have parents watch it together with their children. Both Seki and Kinoshita said this in regards to watching the reaction to Kizuna, and it was also stated outright as a goal for the reboot, but, believe it or not, there’s reports of this having been stated back as early as Savers (followed by an admission that maybe 2006 was a little too early for people who grew up with Adventure to be old enough to have their own kids). So the little nostalgia references in Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon aren't really meant to magically turn the series into Adventure as much as they’re supposed to be flags waved at the parents to get them to pay attention, so that they can introduce their kids to Digimon and watch it together with them, until the kids eventually take an interest on their own and they don’t need to rely on that kind of standby as much. (I say “as much” because of course PreCure, Rider, and Sentai all are still very indulgent in their anniversary references, but they’re not nearly as reliant on it to the point of life-and-death.)

This is also why Kizuna’s existence and release date two months prior to the reboot is a huge factor in this. The reason tri. wouldn’t have done it is that it never actually reached a properly “mainstream” audience. It’s a huge reason I keep emphasizing the fact that tri. and Kizuna are two separate things with completely different production and release formats, because tri. being a limited OVA screening released in six parts over three years means that, although it was a moderate financial success that did better than the franchise’s other niche products, in the end, it didn’t actually reach the “extremely casual” audience very well. We, as the “hardcore Internet fanbase”, all know people who watched all six parts, and the difference between tri. and Kizuna’s release formats doesn’t hit us as hard because of international distribution circumstances, but even on our end, if you talk to your casual friends who barely remember anything about Digimon except what they saw on TV twenty years ago, you will almost never find anyone who got past Part 1, maybe 2 at most. (That’s before we even get into the part where a good chunk of them got turned off at the character design stage for being too different.) Sticking with a full six-part series over three years is a commitment, and if you’re not someone with a certain level of loyalty to the franchise, you aren’t as likely to put aside the time for it!

Kizuna, on the other hand, was a full-on theatrical movie with full marketing campaign that was aimed at that extremely casual mainstream audience, including a lot of people who hadn’t even heard of tri. (due to it being too niche) or hadn’t bothered to commit to watching something so long, and thus managed to “hype up” a lot of adults and get them in a Digimon mood. (Critical reception issues aside, this is also presumably a huge reason Kizuna isn’t all that reliant on tri.’s plot; Adventure and 02 both averaged at around 11% of the country watching it when it first aired, but the number of people who even saw tri. much less know what happened in it is significantly lower, so while you can appeal to a lot of people if you’re just targeting the 11%, you'll lock them out if you’re overly reliant on stuff a lot of them will have never seen in the first place.) We’re talking the kind of super-casual who sees a poster for Kizuna, goes “oh I remember Digimon!”, casually buys a ticket for the movie, likes it because it has characters they remember and the story is feelsy, and then two months later an anime that looks like the Digimon they recognize is on Fuji TV, resulting in them convincing their kid to watch it together with them because they’re in a Digimon mood now, even though the actual contents of the anime are substantially different from the original.

So, looking back at the reboot:

There’s a huge, huge, huge implication that the choice to use Adventure branding was at least partially to get Fuji TV to let them have their old timeslot back. Neither Xros Wars nor Appmon were able to be on that old timeslot, presumably because Fuji TV had serious doubts about their profitability (perhaps after seeing Savers not do very well). This isn’t something that hits as hard for us outside Japan who don’t have to feel the impact of this anyway, but it’s kind of a problem if kids don’t even get the opportunity to watch the show in the first place. While there’s been a general trend of moving to video-on-demand to the point TV ratings don’t really have as much impact as they used to, I mean...it sure beats 6:30 in the morning, goodness. (Note that a big reason PreCure, Rider, and Sentai are able to enjoy the comfortable positions they’re in is that they have a very luxurious 8:30-10 AM Sunday block on TV Asahi dedicated to them.)

Since we’re talking about “the casual mainstream”, this means that this kind of ploy only works with something where a casual person passing by can see names and faces and take an interest. This is why it has to be Adventure, not 02 or Tamers or whatnot; 02 may have had roughly similar TV ratings to Adventure and fairly close sales figures back in 2000, but the actual pop culture notability disparity in this day and age is humongous (think about the difference in pop culture awareness between Butter-Fly and Target). 02, Tamers, and all can do enough to carry “adults’ fandom” products and merch sales at DigiFes, and the adults’ branch of the franchise in general, but appealing to the average adult buying toys for the kids is a huge difference, and a big reason that, even if they’re clearly starting to acknowledge more of the non-Adventure series these days, it’s still hard to believe they’re going to go as far as rebooting anything past Adventure -- or, more accurately, hard to believe they’ll be able to get the same impact using names and faces alone.

This advertising with the Adventure brand goes beyond just the anime -- we’re talking about the toyline that has the involved character faces plastered on them, plus all of the ventures surrounding them that Bandai pretty obviously carefully timed to coincide with this. One particularly big factor is the card game, which is doing really, really well right now, to the point it’s even started gaining an audience among people who weren’t originally Digimon fans. Part of it is because the game’s design is actually very good and newcomer-friendly, but also...nearly every set since the beginning came with reboot-themed Tamer Cards, which means that, yes, those cards with the Adventure names and faces were helping lure people into taking an interest in the game. Right now, the game is doing so well and has gained such a good reputation that it probably doesn’t need that crutch anymore to keep going as long as the game remains well-maintained, but I have no doubt the initial “Adventure” branding was what helped it take off, and its success is most likely a huge pillar sustaining the franchise at the current moment.

Speaking of merch and toys, if you look closely, you might notice that Bandai decided to go much, much more aggressively into the toy market with this venture than they ever did with Savers, Xros Wars, or Appmon (Appmon was probably the most aggressive attempt out of said three). They put out a lot more merch and did a lot more collaborative events to engage the parents and children, and, presumably, the reason they were able to do this was because they were able to push into those outlets with the confidence the Adventure brand would let them be accepted (much like with Fuji TV). Like with the card game, the important part was getting their “foot in the door” so that even if it stopped being Adventure after a fashion, they’d still have all of those merchandising outlets -- after all, one of the first hints we ever got of Ghost Game’s existence was a July product listing for its products replacing the reboot’s in a gachapon set, so we actually have evidence of certain product pipelines being opened by the reboot’s precedent. (The word 後番組 literally means “the TV program that comes after”, so it’s pretty obvious this was intended for Ghost Game; in other words, the reboot’s existence helped ensure there be a “reservation” for this kind of product to be made.)

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that Toei and Bandai have as much of a stake in avoiding rehashing for their kids’ franchises as we do. Even if you look at this from a purely capitalistic perspective, because of how fast the “turnover” is for the kids’ audience, sustaining a franchise for a long time off rehashing the same thing over and over is hard, and even moreso when it involves a twenty-year-old anime that said kids don’t even know or remember. Ask around about popular long-running Japanese kids’ franchises and you’ll notice they practically rely on being able to comfortably change things up every so often, like PreCure/Rider/Sentai shuffling every year, or Yu-Gi-Oh! having a rotation of different series and concepts, or the struggles that franchises that don’t do this have to deal with. And, after all, for all people are cynical about Toei continuing to milk Adventure or any of the other older series at every opportunity, as far as the kids’ branch of the franchise goes, this is only capable of lasting to a certain extent; if they tried keeping this up too long, even the adults and kids would get bored, and there is some point it’ll be easier to try and make products directly targeted at the kids’ audience instead of having to rely on the parents to ease them into it.

So it’s completely understandable that the moment they secured a proper audience with the reboot and finished up their first series with this, they decided to take the risk with Ghost Game right after. And considering all that’s happened, this is still a risk -- they’re changing up a lot (even if not as much as Appmon), and there’s a chance that the audience they’ve gathered is going to shoot down again because they’ve changed so much and they no longer have the Adventure branding as a “crutch” to use -- but they’re taking it anyway instead of going for something at least slightly more conventional.

Which means that, yes, there’s a possibility this will all explode in their face, because the Adventure branding is that huge of a card they’re about to lose. But at the very, very least, Ghost Game is coming in with the “momentum” and advantage that Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all didn’t have: a brand currently in the stage of recovery, all of the merchandising and collaborative pipelines the reboot and Kizuna opened up, a fairly good timeslot, and a premise somewhat more conventional than Xros Wars and Appmon (I’m saying this as someone who likes both: their marketing definitely did not do them many favors). There are still a lot of risks it’s playing here, and it’s possible it won’t be the end of more Adventure or reboot brand usage to try to keep that momentum up even as we go into Ghost Game, but it’s the first time in a long while we’ve had something to stand on.

Okay, so that’s out of the way. But the end result is that we now have 67 episodes of an Adventure “reboot” that actually doesn’t even resemble Adventure that much at all, which seems to have achieved its goal of flagging down attention so it can finally going back to trying new things. This series exists, we can’t do anything about the fact it exists, the period where its own financial performance actually mattered is coming to an end anyway, and we, as a fanbase of adults hanging out on the Internet keeping up with the franchise as a whole, have to figure out how each of us feels about this. So what of it?

About the contents of the reboot itself

One thing I feel hasn’t been brought up as a potential topic very much (or, at least, not as much as I feel like it probably should be) is that the reboot seems to be actively aimed at a younger target audience than the original Adventure. It hasn’t been stated outright, but we actually have quite a bit of evidence pointing towards this.

Let’s take a moment and discuss what it even means to have a different target audience. When you’re a kid, even one or two years’ difference is a big deal, and while things vary from kid to kid, generally speaking, it helps to have an idea of what your “overall goal” is when targeting a certain age group, since at some point you have to approximate the interests of some thousands of children. Traditionally, Digimon has been aimed at preteens (10-11 year olds); of course, many will testify to having seen the series at a younger age than that, but the "main” intended target demographic was in this arena. (Also, keep in mind that this is an average; a show aimed at 10-11 year olds could be said to be more broadly aimed at 7-13 year olds, whereas one aimed at 7-8 year olds would be more broadly aimed at something like 5-10 year olds.) Let’s talk a bit about what distinguishes children’s shows (especially Japanese kids’ shows) between this “preteen demographic” and things aimed at a much younger audience (which I’ll call “young child demographic”, something like the 7-8 year old arena):

With children who are sufficiently young, it’s much, much more difficult to ensure that a child of that age will be able to consistently watch TV at the same hour every week instead of being subject to more variable schedules, often set by their parents, meaning that it becomes much more difficult to have a series that relies on you having seen almost every episode to know what’s going on. For somewhat older kids, they’re more likely to be able to pick and pursue their own preferences (the usual “got up early every week for this show”). This means that shows targeted at a young child demographic will be more likely to be episodic, or at least not have a complex dramatic narrative that requires following the full story, whereas shows targeted at a preteen audience are more willing to have a dramatic narrative with higher complexity. This does not mean by any shake of the imagination that a narrative is incapable of having any kind of depth or nuance -- the reboot’s timeslot predecessor GeGeGe no Kitaro got glowing reviews all over the board for being an episodic story with tons of depth -- nor that characters can’t slowly develop over the course of the show. But it does raise the bar significantly, especially because it prevents you from making episodes that require you to know what happened in previous ones.

The thing is, the original Adventure and the older Digimon series in general didn’t have to worry about this, and, beyond the fact that their narratives very obviously were not episodic, we actually have concrete evidence of the disparity: Digimon has often been said to be a franchise for “the kids who graduated from (outgrew) a certain other monster series”. Obviously, they’re referring to Pokémon -- which does have the much younger target demographic. That’s why its anime is significantly more episodic and less overall plot-oriented, and Digimon wasn’t entirely meant to be a direct competitor to it; rather, it was hoping to pick up the preteens who’d enjoyed Pokémon at a younger age but were now looking for something more catered to them. This is also why, when Yo-kai Watch came into the game in 2014, that was considered such a huge direct competitor to Pokémon, because it was aiming for that exact same demographic, complete with episodic anime. When Yo-kai Watch moved to its Shadowside branch in 2017, it was specifically because they had concerns about losing audience and wanted to appeal to the kids who had been watching the original series, but since they were preteens now, they adopted a more dramatic and emotionally complex narrative that would appeal to that audience instead. So you can actually see the shift in attempted target demographic in real time.

Adventure through Frontier were aimed at 10-11 year olds, and here’s the interesting part: those series had the protagonists hover around the age of said target audience. We actually have it on record that Frontier had a direct attempt to keep most of the kids as fifth-graders for the sake of appealing to the audience, and so that it would be relatable to them. You can also see this policy of “matching the target audience’s age” in other series at the time; Digimon’s sister series Ojamajo Doremi (also produced by Seki) centered around eight-year-olds. Nor was Seki the only one to do this; stepping outside Toei for a bit, Medabots/Medarot had its protagonist Ikki be ten years old, much like Digimon protagonists, and the narrative was similarly dramatic. The thing is, that’s not how it usually works, and that’s especially not really been how it’s worked for the majority of kids’ series since the mid-2000s. In general, and especially now, it’s usually common to have the protagonists of children’s media be slightly older than the target age group. This has a lot of reasons behind it -- partially because kids are looking to have slightly older characters as a model for what to follow in their immediate future, and partially because “the things you want to teach the kids” are often more realistically reflected if the kids on screen have the right level of independence and capacity for emotional contemplation. Case in point: while everyone agrees the Adventure through Frontier characters are quite relatable, it’s a common criticism that the level of emotional insight sometimes pushes the boundary of what’s actually believable for 10-11 year olds...

...which is presumably why, with the exception of this reboot, every Digimon TV series since, as of this writing, started shifting to middle school students. That doesn’t mean they’re aiming the series at middle school kids now, especially because real-life 13-15 year olds are usually at the stage where they pretend they’ve outgrown kids’ shows (after all, that’s why there’s a whole term for “middle school second year syndrome”), but more that the narrative that they want to tell is best reflected by kids of that age, especially when we’re talking characters meant to represent children from the real world and not near-immortal youkai like Kitaro. In fact, the Appmon staff outright said that Haru was placed in middle school because the story needed that level of independence and emotional sensitivity, which is interesting to consider in light of the fact that Appmon’s emotional drama is basically on par with that of Adventure through Frontier’s. So in other words, the kind of high-level drama endemic to Adventure through Frontier is would actually normally be more on par with what you’d expect for kids of Haru’s age.

But at this point, the franchise is at a point of desperation, and you can see that, as I said earlier, Appmon was blatantly trying to be one of those “have its cake and eat it too” series by having possibly one of the franchise’s most dramatic storylines while also having some of the most unsubtle catchphrases and bright colors it has to offer. Moreover, one thing you might notice if you look closely at Appmon: most of its episodes are self-contained. Only a very small handful of episodes are actively dependent on understanding what happened in prior episodes to understand the conflict going on in the current one -- it’s just very cleverly structured in a way you don’t really notice this as easily. So as you can see, the more desperate the franchise has gotten to get its kids’ audience back, the more it has to be able to grab the younger demographic and not lock them out as much as possible -- which means that it has to do things that the original series didn’t have to worry about at all.

Having seen the reboot myself, I can say that it checks off a lot of what you might expect if you tried to repurpose something based on Adventure (and only vaguely based on it, really) into a more episodic story that doesn’t require you to follow the whole thing, and that it has to break down its story into easy-to-follow bits. In fact, there were times where I actually felt like it gave me the vibes of an educational show that would usually be expected for this demographic, such as repeated use of slogans or fun catchphrases for young kids to join in on. That alone means that even if the “base premise” is similar to the original Adventure, this already necessitates a lot of things that have to be very different, because Adventure really cannot be called episodic no matter how you slice it.

Not only that, even though the target audience consideration has yet to be outright stated, we also have interviews on hand that made it very clear, from the very beginning, what their goals with the reboot were: they wanted the kids to be able to enjoy a story of otherworldly exploration during the pandemic, they wanted cool action sequences, and they wanted to get the adults curious about what might be different from the original. Note that last part: they actively wanted this series to be different from the original, because the differences would engage parents in spotting the differences, and the third episode practically even goes out of its way to lay that message down by taking the kids to a familiar summer camp, only to have it pass without incident and go “ha, you thought, but nope!” Moreover -- this is the key part -- “surprising” people who were coming from the original series was a deliberate goal they had from the very beginning. They’ve stated this outright -- they knew older fans were watching this! They were not remotely shy about stating that they wanted to surprise returning viewers with unexpected things! They even implied that they wanted it to be a fun experience for older watchers to see what was different and what wasn’t -- basically, it’s a new show for their kids who never saw the original Adventure, while the parents are entertained by a very different take on something that seems ostensibly familiar. 

On top of that, the head writer directly cited V-Tamer as an influence -- and if you know anything about V-Tamer, it’s really not that much of a character narrative compared to what we usually know of Digimon anime, and is mostly known for its battle tactics and action sequences (but in manga form). In other words, we have a Digimon anime series that, from day one, was deliberately made to have a writing philosophy and goal that was absolutely not intended to be like Adventure -- or any Digimon TV anime up to this point -- in any way. And that’s a huge shock for us as veterans, who have developed our tastes and expectations based on up to seven series of Digimon that were absolutely not like this at all. But for all it's worth, the circumstances surrounding its production and intent don't seem to quite line up with what the most common accusations against it are:

That it’s a rehash of Adventure: It really isn’t. It’s also blatantly apparent it has no intention of being so. The points that are in common: the character names and rough character designs, some very minimal profile details for said characters, Devimon having any particular foil position to Angemon, the use of Crests to represent personal growth, the premise of being in the Digital World and...that’s it! Once those points are aside, it’s really hard to say that the series resembles Adventure any more than Frontier or Xros Wars resembles Adventure (which are also “trapped in another world” narratives) -- actually, there are times the series resembles those two more than the original Adventure, which many have been quick to point out. The majority of things you can make any kind of comparison to basically drop off by the end of the first quarter or so, and trying to force a correlation is basically just that: you’d have to try forcing the comparison. The plot, writing style, and even the lineup of enemies shown just go in a completely different direction after that. So in the end, the base similarities can be said to be a marketing thing; if I want to criticize this series, I don’t think “lack of creativity” would actually be something I would criticize it for. (Of course, you’re still welcome to not be a huge fan of how they’re still guilty of using Adventure’s name value to market something that is not actually Adventure. We’re all gonna have mixed feelings on that one.)

That they don’t understand or remember Adventure’s appeal: Unlikely. All of the main staff has worked on character-based narratives before, which have been very well-praised while we’re at it. The producer, Sakurada Hiroyuki, was an assistant producer on the original series, and I would like to believe he probably remembers at least a thing or two about what they were doing with the original series...but, also, he’s the producer of Xros Wars, which definitely had its own individuality and style, and, moreover, was more of a character narrative that people generally tend to expect from Digimon anime. (Still a bit unconventional, and it has its own questions of personal taste, but a lot of people have also pointed out that this reboot has a lot in common with Xros Wars in terms of its writing tone and its emphasis on developing Digital World resident Digimon moreso than the human characters.) All signs point to the idea they could make a character narrative like Adventure if they really wanted to. It’s just, they don’t want to do that with this reboot, so they didn’t.

That they misinterpreted or misremembered the Adventure characters: There’s been accusations of said characters being written in a way that implies misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the original characters, but the thing is, while I definitely agree they have nowhere near the depth of the original ones, there are points that seem to be deliberate changes. (At some points, they’re actually opposites of the original, and certain things that operate as some very obscure references -- for instance, Sora complaining about having to sit in seiza -- seem to also be deliberate statements of going in a different direction.) The lack of human character depth or backstory doesn’t seem to be out of negligence, but rather that this story doesn’t want to be a character narrative to begin with -- after all, we’re used to seven series of Digimon that are, but there are many, many kids’ anime, or even stories in general, where the story is more about plot or action than it is completely unpacking all of its characters’ heads. In this case, this reboot does seem to have characters that are taking cues from or are “inspired by” the original, but, after all, it’s an alternate universe and has no obligation to adhere to the original characters’ backgrounds, so it stands to reason that it’d take liberties whenever it wanted. (Again, the head writer outright stated that he based the reboot’s Taichi more on V-Tamer Taichi than the original Adventure anime Taichi. He knows there’s a difference!) Even more intriguingly, the series actually avoids certain things that are common misconceptions or pigeonholes that would normally be done by the mainstream -- for instance, the Crest of Light (infamously one of the more abstract ones in the narrative) is fully consistent with Adventure’s definition of it as “the power of life”, and, if I dare say so myself, Koushirou’s characterization (emphasizing his relationship with “knowledge” and his natural shyness) arguably resembles the original far more than most common fan reductions of his character that overemphasize his computer skills over his personal aptitude. In other words, I think the staff does know what happened in the original Adventure -- they just actively don’t want to do what Adventure did, even if it’s ostensibly a reboot.

That it’s soulless or that there’s no passion in its creation: Well, this is subjective, and in the end I’m not a member of the staff to tell you anything for sure, but there are definitely a lot of things in this anime that don’t seem like they’d be the byproduct of uninspired creation or lack of passion. It’s just that those things are all not the kinds of things that we, as Digimon veterans, have come to develop a taste for and appreciate in Digimon anime. That is to say, there is an incredible amount of thought and detail put into representing Digimon null canon (i.e. representing special attacks and mechanics), the action sequences are shockingly well-animated in ways that put most prior Digimon anime to shame, and the series has practically been making an obvious attempt to show off as many Digimon (creatures) that haven’t traditionally gotten good franchise representation as they can. Or sometimes really obscure “meta fanservice” references that only make sense to the really, really, really, really hardcore longtime Digimon fan (for instance, having an episode centered around Takeru and Opossummon, because Takeru’s voice actress Han Megumi voiced Airu in Xros Wars). If you follow any of the animators on Twitter, they seem to be really actively proud of their work on it, and franchise creators Volcano Ota and Watanabe Kenji seem to be enjoying themselves every week...so basically, we definitely have creators passionate about having fun with this, it’s just that all of it is being channeled here, not the character writing.

So in the end, you can basically see that this series is basically the epitome of desperately pulling out all of the stops to make sure this series lands with the actual target demographic of children, dammit, and gets them into appreciating how cool these fighting monsters are and how cool it would be if they stuck with them even into a series that’s not Adventure. The Adventure branding and names to lure in the parents, the straightforward and easy-to-understand action-oriented narrative so that kids will think everything is awesome and that they’ll like it even when the story changes, and the merchandise and collab events booked everywhere so that they can all be reused for the next series too...because, remember, they failed with that during Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon (I mean, goodness, you kind of have to admire their persistence, because a ton of other kids’ franchises failing this many times would have given up by now), so it’s a bit unsurprising that they went all the way to get the kids’ attention at the expense of a lot of things that would attract veterans, especially since the veterans already have a well-developed adults’ pipeline to cater to them. This does also mean that this series is more likely to come off as a 67-episode toy commercial than any previous Digimon series, but it’s not even really the toys as much as they’re trying to sell the entire franchise and the actual monsters in the hopes that they’ll stick with it even when the narrative changes.

Nevertheless, here we are. The series is over. Ghost Game -- which, as of this writing, is looking to be much more of a conventional Digimon narrative, complete with older cast, obviously more dramatic atmosphere, and pretty much everything surrounding its PR -- is on its way, presumably thanks to the success of this endeavor. It’s hard to gauge it; we have it on record that they also intend it to be episodic, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily prevent it from having an overall dramatic plot or nuanced drama (especially since the abovementioned Appmon and Kitaro were perfectly capable of pulling off this balance). Nevertheless, it seems to be a lot more of the conventional kind of Digimon narrative we usually expect, so, as for us, adult long-time fans of the Digimon franchise (many of whom don’t have kids anyway), what exactly should we make of this? Well, as far as “supporting the franchise” goes, you’ll get much more progress supporting Ghost Game than the reboot; I highly doubt view counts and merch sales relative to an already-finished series will do nearly as much for the franchise’s health as much as the currently airing series, and, besides, it’d probably do us all a favor to support the endeavor that’s actually new and fresh. So when it comes to a “past” series like this, it’s all just going to come down to a question of personal preference and taste: is this a series you, personally, want to watch, and would you find it entertaining?

For some of you, it’s possible that it just won’t be your cup of tea at all -- and since, like I said, the majority of us here have based our expectations and preferences on up to seven series of Digimon that were not like this, that’s also perfectly fine, and in that case I don’t actually recommend you watch this. Of course, I’ve never thought that it was ever fair to expect a Digimon fan to have seen all of the series released to date; the more series we get, the more inhumane of a demand that’ll become, and I think this franchise becoming successful enough to have so many series that most people won’t have seen it all is a good thing. (It’s actually kind of alarming that the percentage of people who have seen it all is so high, because it means the franchise has failed to get much of an audience beyond comparatively hardcore people who committed to it all the way.) But I think, especially in this case, with a series for which adult fans like us were probably lowest on the priority list due to the sheer amount of desperation going on here, it’s fine to skip it, and if you’re someone who lives by a need for character depth or emotionally riveting narrative, the fact this series is (very unabashedly and unashamedly) mostly comprised of episodic stories and action sequences means you won’t have missed much and probably won’t feel too left out of any conversations going forward. That’s before we even get into the part where it’s still completely understandable to potentially have mixed feelings or resentment about the overuse of the Adventure brand for something like this, especially if Adventure is a particularly important series to you.

But for some of you out there, it might still be something you can enjoy on its own merits. I’ve seen people who were disappointed by the limited degree of Digimon action sequences in the past or the fact that the series has gotten overly fixated on humans, and had an absolute ball with the reboot because it finally got to represent parts of the franchise they felt hadn’t been shown off as well. “Fun” is a perfectly valid reason to enjoy something. It’s also perfectly possible to be someone who can enjoy character narratives like the prior Digimon series but also enjoy something that’s more for being outlandish and fun and has cool Digital World concepts and visuals -- and, like I said, it does not let up on that latter aspect at all, so there’s actually potential for a huge feast in that regard. I think as long as you don’t expect it to be a character narrative like Adventure -- which will only set you up for disappointment, because it’s not (and made very clear since even the earliest episodes and interviews that it had no intention of being one) -- it’s very possible to enjoy it for what it is, and for what it does uniquely.

#digimon #digimon adventure: #digimon adventure reboot #digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure psi #shihameta

[biomic]

I posted 12,827 times in 2021

10028 posts created (78%)

2799 posts reblogged (22%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.3 posts.

I added 23,873 tags in 2021

#kendrix morgan died for our sins - 10048 posts

#super sentai for ts - 3674 posts

#kamen rider for ts - 3543 posts

#asks - 1838 posts

#anonymous - 1432 posts

#saber liveblog - 964 posts

#power rangers for ts - 781 posts

#zenkaiger liveblog - 663 posts

#saber spoilers// - 519 posts

#dino fury liveblog - 411 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i thot it was bc it sold poorly and they had already given it a returns movie so they were like 'well we don't need the crossover this year'

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

maleficent being a good movie was such a monkey’s paw deal bc it made disney think they could keep doing that with no limits

1019 notes • Posted 2021-05-29 02:36:12 GMT

#4

got his ass

jesus!

literally this whole exchange.

4591 notes • Posted 2021-04-05 02:25:19 GMT

#3

this show is killing me

5066 notes • Posted 2021-08-13 20:47:10 GMT

#2

it’s like a website in here

5630 notes • Posted 2021-04-17 21:09:40 GMT

#1

just found out about the vietnamese animorphs covers and they're now my favorite things in the universe

7305 notes • Posted 2021-08-09 01:18:19 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#honestly staff? pretty cute idea. thanks #kendrix morgan died for our sins #long post//

[cheiyunn]

Silver Nova [Prologue]

Note: I’m not the most familiar with Tokusatsu themes/characters, so TLs of details in the movie/scenes may be a tad inaccurate. Do poke me in DMs if I get it incorrect. 

Ren: Ha…..

Ren: That was the best…. “Super Sentai Star 5, THE MOVIE. We won’t give up! The Full Spirit Spark Soul (Spirit) !!”  *

Ren:  (I think I’ll have to watch it 5 more times… I wanna collect all the special  prizes..)

Ren: (If you come with a partner, you can collect them faster… maybe I’ll invite the band members…)

Little child (older): Hey hey! Which one did you get… I got, Star Silver !

Little child (younger): I got… ah, I also got Silver.. But Red was better..

Ren: Those kids… the got the same prize. If you have duplicates, you can exchange them…

???: ….oi

Little child (older): ? What is it, onii-san ?

Ren: (Eh, thats…)

Haruka: Do you want Red? If you got a duplicate Silver, I can trade it

Little child (younger): Eh, is it okay ? Let’s trade !

Little child (older): Eh… if we can trade, I actually wanted a Purple…

Haruka: ....I can trade both. Since I have duplicates

Little child (younger):  Yay ! Thanks ! Here you go, Silver ! Bye bye~

Haruka: Yup… with that I’m complete…

Ren: I knew it, Haruka-kun !

Haruka: Na...Nanahoshi !? Why are you…

Ren: I just finished watching “Star Five” ! I guess you were doing the same!

Haruka: I…

Ren: The movie was awesome right ! The big pinch scene with Star Silver was cool, but the part I liked the most was when the first gen Andorion came out of the wreck of the base like-

Haruka: Don’t be so loud… people are looking at us

Ren: Ah- sorry… I got really hyper. But, I’m really happy to find someone to talk about “Star Five” with

Haruka: Is that so…

Ren: Ah, thats right! 

Haruka: What is it… pipe down…

Ren: About the hero live show I went to the other day, you told me you were interested in the setting material collection I owned right !

Haruka: … !! The one that was distributed exclusively at the event !?

Ren: Yeah! I brought it to Tokyo! If you don’t mind, we can go see it !

Haruka: See it, wait a minute. Go to see it… at Argonavis’ sharehouse?

Ren: Yup. Everyone is home today after all

Haruka: (Even after Shu pulled all that shit… I just got casually invited to another band’s sharehouse? Unbelievable…)

Ren: I have other rare goods as well! Like recordings of the legendary compilations that didn’t make it to disk!

Haruka: …...I’ll go

-----

*Its written like 「超夢宙閃隊スターファイブTHE MOVIEユズレナイ！超全力Spark魂（スピリッツ)」, I wasn’t sure if I was to translate it literally or not…

#my tokusatsu boys omg its finally happening #argonavis #εpsilonΦ #aasidetranslations

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

And with that, I’ve finished Himitsu Sentai Goranger: the very first Super Sentai show, and as far as I know the second-longest running Tokusatsu show of all time at 84 episodes; not counting 5-minute things like Redman.

... I wasn’t particularly big on it.

It really does come back to that big problem I kept on saying and saying, and comparing to the original Kamen Rider: with Kamen Rider, it’s a very rough show that absolutely has many of the same issues as Goranger; but what makes it work is the very clear passion behind it and the core themes of anti-fascism. It’s certainly themes that wane and dumb down a little as time goes on and the clear demands of the TV network it was airing on, but ultimately the base story of Shocker and Takeshi Hongou is so strong it shines through that. It’s something so real and heartfelt in its message that that overrides everything else.

Goranger is just some military guys.

It just lacks anything interesting for me. It's all of Sentai's worst traits and very few of its positives; aside from a few scattered character-led episodes here and there that actually do a decent job, it's very much just stock plots and military men and it's very dull to watch. There’s no underlying themes here as it’s just some spies fighting ill-defined evil terrorists (which might be from space??), and that in particular can make it more uncomfortable to watch than the struggle of one man against a secret evil organisation seeking to infect humanity. And without those themes, all that remains is the ~craziness~ of Sentai and the strength of the characters and their relationships which... simply isn’t here. Really, this is a lot of words to get across the sense of nothing that was in the show. It’s not about anything, it doesn’t have anyone or anything interesting, it just sort of happens.

I can definitely see why it was such a hit -- multiple heroes in a toku show like this hadn't really been done much before, certainly not this many and to this extent and so dedicated. It sticks out as a very unique trait of the show at the time; alongside some of its comic relief, its Variblune/Varidreen fights, its real dedication to the spy theme... I can see why it would have engaged kids every week in the mid 70s! And obviously, well, that’s what matters the most! Surprisingly enough, the target audience for Goranger was not some scottish woman in her mid-20s who got attached to Toku through its heated drama between men and the scattered themes of kindness and anti-fascism! Sometimes, you know, it’s just fine for a mid-70s kids’ show to be something that’s entertaining for kids, and I can’t judge that!

But going back to it; watching it as someone who wanted to see Sentai’s roots... I don't know, this is one of the few times with Toku I actively feel like my time would have been spent elsewhere and that I just didn't get anything from this one. It's perhaps one of the worst notes to end on, especially with the aforementioned record length -- 84 episodes and a movie is nothing to sneeze at.

I wish there's more positives I could say of it, or at least anything interesting; but at the end of the day it's just... it's very dry Sentai. It's mostly a very boring show that does little to make most of its main cast likable, and it’s hard to recommend more than a few episodes if you’re purely interested in seeing where this franchise started. I’m certainly starting to get the impression that Battle Fever J is where Sentai owes most of its roots to (even beyond the whole giant robot thing), and that’s jumped up my watchlist a little because of that. And talking of this franchise’s roots? One thing I am going to take away from this is that Super Sentai is the Toku franchise that I am very glad to see keep evolving and not necessarily keep in mind what it started with. Ultraman’s modus operandi is basically capturing the magic of its Showa origins and Kamen Rider is something I feel could very much stand to go back to its core starting points more, but Sentai? When the original had no underlying passion or anything to say, and was just about a special ops unit of the military with some uncomfortable implications, where it seriously feels like Ishinomori wasn’t exactly trying with this one? ... I’m quite alright with it getting further and further away from Goranger with every season.

Farewell, Goranger. I may not have had a great time with you, but I am at least happy to have seen where everything started.

#Himitsu Power

[nerdgatehobbit]

8/31/21

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog status post. Oops. There hasn’t been that much progress but I’m still going to talk about it.

As I had hoped, I adored the first official Ultra Guardians episode. To be fair, it would have taken a lot for me to dislike it, as it combines Pokémon, Super Sentai (localized as Power Rangers for the USA), and wormholes. I’m very excited to see what’s to come!

Lost Galaxy’s ending was definitely an odd note to end my journey of watching the first boxed sets. It was one of the more uneven seasons I’ve seen, although I’ll acknowledge there were extenuating circumstances. Plus I did rewatch “Day of the Dumpster” on Saturday.

I don’t think I had seen the 8th episode of Princess Tutu yet when I made the last post. The stakes are rising and the characters are getting more complicated. I’m enjoying it so far.

Star Trek wise, I’m eleven episodes into TOS. It’s been rather serious so far. The reusing of the original pilot footage is a clever conceit, but uh, it is pretty clear that the original pilot was the rough draft.

My SG-1 rewatch for this month was “Prometheus Unbound”, which I still love. “Camelot” & “Bad Guys” are up next, with different types of posts for the last two months. I still need to figure out how exactly to celebrate the 25th anniversary next July.

I’ve read another chunk of Blood Ties, which has brought up Rodney’s grief over Carson again. On the one hand, it is hard to read. On the other, I have to appreciate that the author isn’t glossing over or ignoring what Carson meant to Rodney. They get a special tag for a reason, after all.

The Earth-based subplot is getting somewhat convoluted, though I’m still enjoying the psychic dinosaurs back in the Pegasus Galaxy. Also I’m already queued up for Sparktober so be prepared for that.

I like getting Gwen screencaps from BBC Merlin, and it’s been a good way to ease back into doing it. Soonish I’ll post a few more, this time from mid season 3. After I’m done with her costumes, I’ll likely take an afternoon to get screencaps from the 2014 Beauty and the Beast and Love & Friendship. Not to mention some Grant Jansky pics too...

At this point, I strongly suspect my OUAT reviews will be more general analysis topped by costume discussion. Because the plot would be a lot to keep track of. Not to mention all the resulting face palms. There’ll probably be brief notes though, more for my sake than any readers’. Listen, my feelings regarding OUAT are messy and that’s likely to be reflected in my reviews.

I don’t think I’ll do a review of them, but I did recently watch Porco Rosso & The Power of Us (one of the newest Pokémon movies). Both were pretty fun! Up next are Barbie as Rapunzel and Bedknobs & Broomsticks, hopefully to be reviewed on their upcoming anniversaries.

I still need to watch “Remember Nothing”. I really wish XWP’s first season finale hadn’t spooked me so. :/

Now, confession time. This actually happened earlier this summer. I opted to watch the first episode of an apparent miniseries called Wizards. And, well, I spent the entire time going 0.0 due to the overload of characters, worldbuilding, and the general awesomeness.

A Google search revealed that there were actually two previous series that informed Wizards, so no wonder I got overwhelmed. I went back and saw the actual first few episodes and liked them. I was particularly pleased about Jonathan Hyde playing Strickler, since I liked him in the original Jumanji and the Dinotopia TV show. (Note to self, add the latter to the list of ‘needs screencaps’.)

It’s since been on the back burner, but I’m curious to hear if others think I should delve into the Tales of Arcadia verse.

Also, I do have a pretty big pile of screencaps from before 11/19. Mostly Power Rangers & Stargate, obviously. Anyone have any preferences to see what I deemed noteworthy enough to be put in my blog posts? I keep them primarily to avoid starting all over in case of lost links or disaster striking the blog. Or if I ever decide to hit the restart button on it. And to use as laptop backgrounds (my new Gwen folder is the current slideshow).

#my ramblings #it’s extra accurate this time #sun & moon anime #prlg #princess tutu #st tos #stargate #sga novel #ouat salt #tales of arcadia

[entamesubs]

Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS Episode 14 Sub Release

Despite the minor hiccup, everything is proceeding smoothly for this week! Unfortunately, there is no raw available of this episode without the clock, so I had to make do.

Sub file only: click here! Video torrent with soft subs (720p): https://nyaa.si/view/1277718 DDL GDrive*: click here!

(* please read all associated warnings in the “Other SEVENS videos” folder before downloading anything there)

If there are any corrections you wish to make, please put them through the submit box! For questions, use the ask box, but please make sure to read the FAQ first.

Below are extended translation notes for this episode, so spoilers ahead (and they are very long).

------------

研ぐ (togu) “Let’s rice and dice!”

A visual gag at Gakuto and co.’s expense. There’s actually a little more I couldn’t get into in the episode.

When Gakuto was first telling Romin how to prepare the rice, he specifically uses the verb 研い (migai), which can mean “to polish, shine, or grind” (in relation to cleaning the rice). However, it can and is commonly used to describe treating metal! 

This came back to bite him in Romin’s use of 研ぐ, which means both “to sharpen, hone or grind” a knife as well as “to wash rice”.

As usual, I tried to preserve the pun.

超法規的三身合体TOｰ3モード (chouhouki teki mitsumi gattai TO-3 moudo)

超 (chou) means super, ultra, etc. The easiest one of the bunch.

法規 (houki) means “laws and regulations”, while 的 (teki) is used to make that an adjective (a more formal way to do so as opposed to な)

三身 (mitsumi) means “3 bodies”, more specifically “trikaya” - the three bodies of Buddha. In Mahayana belief, this is the physical body of Buddha (the original Siddhartha Gautama), the reward body one gains upon completing vows as a bodhisattva, and the cosmic body that transcends the universe (akin to a more godlike entity).

合体 (gattai) means combo, or union. You’ll hear this one a lot in super sentai shows.

TO-3 is actually engineering jargon for metal semiconductors. TO stands for “transistor outline”.

If I were to try to translate this more accurately than just a name (as I did in the subs of the episode), then it would be more like “the Ultimate TO-3 Union of the Trikaya, who enforces the laws and regulations”.

I feel like translating this gave me a headache that persisted overnight.

ラディッキオ・ロッソ・ディ・トレヴィーゾ・タルディーボ Radicchio Rosso di Treviso Tardivo

This note is for me, because I’ve never heard of this vegetable before I had to look it up for this episode, haha. I think most people will know it by “radicchio”.

The hardest part about translating this was figuring out what Gakuto was trying to say with his Japanese accent.

戦国大魔神ロボ (sengoku daimajin robo) Warring Devil Robot

Kaizo uses a lot of adjectives to refer to itself this episode, but they were all relatively easy to translate. The only one I had trouble with was this one, which made it into the subs as “Warring Devil Robot”.

戦国 (sengoku) is the same word from Sengoku Jidai, or the “Warring States Period”. Warring States Devil sounded a little too weird, so I dropped the “states” and kept the rest.

大魔神 (daimajin) more literally translates to “big devil”. When I looked it up, I got the results for a movie that was made in the 1960s. I’m not quite sure if that’s connected, so I erred on the side of caution and decided not to link it.

edit: someone pointed out to me that Kaizo may be referring to GoShogun, which is a lot more plausible than a movie made in the 1960s! 

スパイだけにスパイスも効いている “I guess spices are part of a spy’s flavor profile.”

Another pun, but this time in English! Both “spy” and “spices” are the same in Japanese as they are in English, so this pun was a lot easier to transliterate.

It originally was translated as “I guess spies are good at using spices”, but with the help of a friend, the pun got upgraded. 

出港 and 出校 (jukkyou) Goha Fisheries Elementary is about to be as-sailed!

出港 means to set sail or leave port, while 出校 means to go to or from school. Both are pronounced the exact same way.

Luke is making a pun here with the title of the next episode and also the fact that they’re going to another school. Again, special thanks to a friend for helping me with all these puns.

As always, puns are preserved to the best of my ability!

#yugioh sevens #yugioh #sevens spoilers #yugioh sevens spoilers #ygo sevens #entamesubs release #e014

[isitreallyok]

Super Hero Time and My Very Own Kamen Rider Club

[A quick note before we get started here.  In this post and likely in all posts to come names of people in my personal life have been changed to maintain anonymity.] After last week’s heavy topic regarding the pressures of positivity, I thought it would be better to at least start this week off lighthearted. It’s very likely that the vast majority of the readers of this are going to be from the US and as such likely have grown up with or at least seen an episode of Power Rangers. While there are a lot of things that the Power Rangers franchise does that are beyond silly and seem absolutely ridiculous to many of us that see them as adults, the things that are presented in these shows seem absolutely incredible to their target audience. These shows are marketed towards children in case that wasn’t obvious.

Power Rangers is a nostalgic thing to watch for me and I still greatly enjoy it!

Well dear reader, I am glad we agree on that. I grew up watching Power Rangers and as time has gone on I have found that I still enjoy the monster fighting, transforming, masked heroes presented therein. There are even a number of series in the franchise that I have enjoyed even as an adult. Though as I have grown older, and in turn begun to use subtitles on everything I watch, I have developed a fascination with Asian television as a whole since it tends to feel vastly different from most of what is made available in the US. This fascination extends to tokusatsu television shows including but not limited to Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.

For those who aren’t aware, Power Rangers is actually based on the long standing Super Sentai franchise in Japan. Each week on Sunday mornings, similarly to the Saturday morning cartoons of yore, a television block called Super Hero Time airs. This consists of the most recent annual series for both Super Sentai and the annual series of another long standing series called Kamen Rider. Both of these play into the gimmick of transforming masked heroes that have a different theme with each season. Of late I have been enjoying watching episodes of each of these series with a small group of folks on Discord and let me tell you all about the joy of finally finding a group of lovely people that are interested in these series the same way I am.

Sounds like it’s time for a story. Shall we queue the “Long Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away…” scrawl?

You know what. That sounds fun. Lets imagine this as an opening to a cinematic experience. Lets travel back to June of the COVID times, a mere six months that feels like it is 87 years ago . At this point depression had grabbed a hold of me and thrown me so deep into the pits of despair that I wasn’t sure where I was going to find a light at the end of the tunnel. I had just been through a breakup with my first girlfriend in four years, I was living at an extended stay with my father taking care of him as best as I was capable, all while sacrificing my own ability to take of myself and cope with the emotional break down that was happening as my social life and many of my friendships were falling to shambles.

Enter Kenshiro. I started interacting with Kenshiro on Twitter earlier in 2020 and saw that he posted a lot about One Piece (which I was actively catching up on at the time) and things in the tokusatsu genre. Eventually I noticed that he had posted about a small group of folx who ended up getting together on Tuesday nights to watch Sentai together. I managed to quickly, and very temporarily, overcome my social anxiety and asked if it would be possible for an invite to this group. Kenshiro had a “the more the merrier style” approach to this group and I was welcomed in with open arms. Thus beginning a journey that has lasted six months and is still going today.

I think it’s wonderful that you managed to overcome your social anxiety to get into the group, but don’t social interactions overwhelm you regardless?

Though I was able to get an invite into the server and start enjoying these watch parties with the crew, the social impact was still quite overwhelming. On any given night that we were watching Sentai shows there were between 14 and 20 people all typing (we mute our mics when we watch) at the same time and the wall of text that forms while there are four to six different discussions going on about the show was really overwhelming at first. I struggled to really feel like I belonged even though people were engaged and encouraging me with everything that I was talking about.

That all changed when Ex-Aid started up Rider Time on Thursdays. When I first joined up we were watching intermittent episodes of both Carranger and Gokaiger on Tuesdays and it was a blast. Carranger, the series that Power Rangers Turbo was based on, was easily the most 80s nonsense I’ve seen in a long time with multicolored jobber baddies that ended up being completely over the top and I loved every second of it. Eventually though we moved towards watching Gokaiger, a pirate themed anniversary season of Sentai, in its entirety. Once we moved to the stick to a single series and watch it all the way through it only made sense that someone would start up a different night for us to watch Kamen Rider.

This was originally an effort spearheaded by Ex-Aid to further the scope of the tokusatsu shows that we were watching as a group. We were running Sentai on Tuesdays, Kamen Rider on Thursdays, and Ultraman on Fridays. It was a wonderful time to have such an incredible community to surround myself with even if I was a little bit intimidated by the amount of interaction on some of the busier nights.

It sounds like a really nice time. How did you manage to overcome your social anxiety though?

Oddly enough, it came pretty natural to me when I started actually plugging myself into the Thursday night crowd. When we first began the Thursday night watch parties it started off with Kamen Rider Drive. This was a series that I had tried to get into before but never really managed to enjoy so I was a little hesitant to go through it because I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. Since we were only watching 3 episodes a week I figured I could carve out an hour and a half of my time to watch some stuff with like minded individuals even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of what we were watching. Guess what, it turns out that my gut reaction to the series was completely wrong and now I absolutely love it and am excited to revisit it when the show is a little less fresh in my mind.

The first few times I tuned in on Thursdays I was a little bit shy. I didn’t say much, I didn’t want to really engage because of the smaller atmosphere, and I sure wasn’t willing to divulge anything going on in my personal life to this new found group. Within two weeks that all changed. I began to joke around with people and participate in the call and response type stuff that we now do during opening and endings even if it’s just typing in all caps the English lyrics in the opening song.

I think the small environment really did wonders for my anxiety because since I wasn’t heavily invested at the start if I felt like I butted heads with any of the group I could have just politely backed out and stopped watching with that small group. By having this group of four to six other people instead of the routine fifteen to twenty that we were drawing on Tuesdays, in time, I felt much more comfortable putting myself out there and letting my voice and opinions be heard. In a very short time, I managed to get very comfortable with this small group and even was more confident and open during the Sentai streaming on Tuesdays with the larger group as well.

Though I absolutely adore the entirety of this community that has been built surrounding both One Piece and tokusatsu shows as a whole, I particularly enjoy the time that I’ve spent with my very own Kamen Rider Club!

Kamen Rider Club?! Frankly that sounds a little childish when worded like that.

It kind of does, doesn’t it? It is what we in the Thursday night crew call ourselves. It is also a reference to what the main cast of Kamen Rider Fourze call themselves. One thing that this weekly gathering of the fans has taught me it is that its okay to enjoy childish things. I’ve even bought myself some of the toys that have come from various Kamen Rider series as I have seen them during our very own show and tell segment where we all showed off our collectibles and various toys. So while yes show and tell is a bit of a childish thing to do it brought joy to our little group. The amount of serotonin I have generated in the last few weeks by playing with the aforementioned toys is astounding. Getting in touch with my inner child and remembering that it is actually rather fun to play pretend has been a real delight.

As adults, we often work ourselves day in and day out to take care of mundane tasks that are essential to our survival. We wake up, go to work, come home, make or order some dinner, eat, and then get ready for bed. I’ve chosen to add finding happiness in doing the things I wasn’t able to do as a kid to the list. Staying up late to find that next save point in a game, buying toys neither myself or my family could afford as a kid, watching nostalgic b movies that brought me some joy as a child, and following along with all the tokusatsu shows my heart can desire are just a few ways I’ve managed to embrace my inner child and cater to my own personal and emotional needs in doing so. There is nothing wrong with being a little childish from time to time. Doing this has introduced me to so many people that I never would have met otherwise.

It really does sound like you’ve managed to build yourself a group of friends here. Isn’t it pretty cool what can happen when you trust that others aren’t going to have your worst interest in mind.

You’re right. I let some people in and was actually surprised with the results. I absolutely adore this little crowd I’ve got. They have all done so much for me without ever realizing it and I am beyond appreciative. Ex-Aid started the KRC on Thursday nights and drops some incredible trivia all over the place. OOO and I have a ton in common and they are an absolute delight to talk to. I am always excited to see them pop into a conversation on the Discord because we tend to have a similar line of thought and form of humor we do have some differences in personal taste that account for unique perspectives and I absolutely love hearing about them. Epsilon and I both are not afraid to make lewd jokes about what we are watching. Tastefully of course. … Most of the time. Epsilon has also offered to be a conversation partner as I continue to get back to my study of the Japanese language! Zi-O has managed to convince me to revisit series I had otherwise written off because I didn’t think they would be of interest, but they managed to sell me on them so I now have an expansive list of series that I want to watch and a planned order to revisit them. Kiva and I aren’t particularly close as I haven’t done much to actually talk to them, but I’m excited to see things develop more in that regard because they seem like a really fun person to talk to. Finally there is Chaser. They are our newest member of our Thursday night group and they have managed to have me laugh so hard I’ve done spit takes. I appreciate each and every one of our little Kamen Rider Club more than words can ever say.

Quick aside and mushy feelings bit here, but if any the KRC are reading this I want you to know that you all have absolutely made 2020 better for me. We’ve had an incredible amount of laughs together. We’ve seen each other through being both happy and sad. Frankly, you all have reminded me that I do have people who I can call friends on days where I didn’t think there was anyone who wanted anything to do with me. I appreciate you, I absolutely adore each of you, and words can not express my gratitude for the warm welcome that I have received into this lovely community. You all have helped me grow as a person in ways that I didn’t expect going into this group. Shaking off my depression blues and finding confidence to embrace my love of these silly kids shows has been in large part thanks to you all. I love you all. Thank you.

Outside of our usual Thursday crew there are so many more people in this community that have put a smile on my face and some joy in my heart, but there is one other person that I would like to take a moment to express some gratitude for. Scipio was one of the first people I actually felt comfortable bantering with in the Tuesday community before the creation of our Rider Time segment on Thursday. They had an incredibly warm and friendly demeanor about them and naturally I didn’t mind bantering with them during the Sentai watch parties. After a while I followed them on Twitter and recently I reached out to them there and they were willing and able to listen to me when I was feeling overwhelmed about the state of chaos in my life and that alone solidified my feeling of being appreciated inside of this community. Thank you Scipio for taking the time to support a stranger and make them feel like they are a part of something bigger.

I’m so glad that you managed to find these people. It seems like they are really helping you in a lot of ways.

They truly are. The joy of it is that they aren’t even doing anything special. They are simply treating me like a comrade and that alone has done wonders for my self esteem. This year has been among the most challenging in my entire life for a myriad of reasons and just having this community to be a part of has honestly saved my life. I don’t know where I would be without them, but I do know that I would be a lot worse off.

So to wrap things up here for today I want to challenge my readers to do two things. Firstly take a moment to appreciate the people in your life that make you happy. If you feel inclined to tell them how much you appreciate them that’s great. If you just take a moment to reflect on it that’s great too. Secondly, I want to challenge everyone to embrace the things that might embarrass you if you talked about it to your friends with more conservative interests. Embrace the wild things that you enjoy. Don’t let anyone take the joy that these things bring you away. Finally as a reminder to all of you, you are stronger than you think, you are beautiful, and by goodness you are worth it. Lets go into this week ready to kick some butt and join some fandoms.

#tokusatsu #inner child #friendship #fandom #Mental Health Awareness #depression #coping mechanism #watch party #appreciation post #Kamen Rider #Super Sentai

[almasexya]

Monster Monday: Mars Needs Moms (The Mysterians, 1957)

After Rodan the previous year, Toho again shifted course, creating something completely different than what came before.

It is a stretch, I’ll admit, to lump The Mysterians in with the rest of Toho’s special effects catalog, and I’m including it in my lineup even its relationship to every other movie in this series is a bit tenuous. That said, this movie marked the first time Toho dabbled in alien invaders, and it certainly wasn’t about to be the last, though the titular Mysterians have a bit more going on than the space megolomaniacs that haunted some of the latter Godzilla efforts.

This is my first time watching The Mysterians, and unfortunately as with Rodan, my copy is a bootleg as the official release is long out of print.

The film starts with a festival at a small village near Mt. Fuji that is quickly interrupted by an aggressive forest fire. Scientists Joji Atsumi (Kenji Sahara) and Ryoichi Shiraishi (Akihiko Hirata, playing another tortured soul) investigate the unnaturally powerful blaze, but Shiraishi abruptly disappears. Before long, a giant, radioactive robot has shown up, stomping around the nearby small towns and irradiating everything in its wake, before the army finally manages to put it down by blowing up a bridge as the automaton is crossing it.

Meanwhile, Atsumi discovers the missing Shiraishi’s notes on a mysterious fifth planet between Mars and Jupiter that head astronomer Dr. Tanjiro Adachi (Takashi Shimura, again playing the knowledgeable scientist) dismisses as nonsense. We know we just saw a giant robot, however, and robot plus missing planet equals aliens.

It doesn’t take long for the eponymous Mysterians to show themselves, digging out from the earth in a strange looking dome with drills on the top and bottom. While there are certainly goofier looking aliens in our future, the super sentai rejects that inhabit the Mysterians are oddly charming, even with their robotic, monotone voices and penchant for weird hand signals. They have that “I just raided a costume shop” look to them, and the collared capes they wear really don’t help lend them any presence as a credible threat.

The Mysterians, like any decent alien invaders from a 50s movie, have demands. Specifically, they want three kilometers of land to establish themselves on earth, as well as the right to reproduce with earth’s women (the Mysterians come from a place devastated by nuclear war, representing another trend that we’ll see from Toho’s other alien invasion flicks). The fact that the alien invaders have already claimed the patch of land they want and freely admit to having abducted several women to reproduce with doesn’t sit well with the Earthlings, who almost immediately set to work on ejecting their new guests.

Kaiju fans here for big rubber monster action may be disappointed, however. Moguera, the robot the Mysterians use to dig their tunnels and stomp on model cities, doesn’t get much screen time before it’s dispatched (though in the Japanese cut a second one makes a cameo appearance near the end of the movie).

What we do get is lots of shots of the military shooting at the Mysterians’ big dome ship, which fires lots of death rays back at them, and this more or less goes on until the very end. Aside from some really iffy looking matte shots the effects are quite good, and there are lots of them.

The Mysterians themselves have probably the most depth of any of Toho’s alien antagonists, having destroyed their own world with nuclear weapons, they want to take over earth to prevent humanity from doing the same. Many of their children die from radiation sickness, and they genuinely seem to believe they’re doing the right thing in attempting to forcibly guide earth along a different path.

The military response is also fairly well done, and the film contains scenes that more of these alien invasion plots really ought to: collaboration. While Japan still heads the counterattacks, they work with the UN, and every nation in the world has a vested interest in how the conflict turns out. Far from treating the Mysterians as a national problem, the film treats it as an international one, something all the world’s countries need to get together and help solve.

While not likely to make anyone’s favorite kaiju movie list, (least of all because it doesn’t really contain one) The Mysterians is a great way to see Toho’s alien invasion trend kick off, and I’m not sure they ever did it better than in this film. Ishiro Honda’s style is very evident here, and while Takeshi Kimura’s story could very easily have come off as completely absurd, Honda’s deft hand lends the plot the gravitas it needs. Akira Ifukube once again returns to work on the score, and his themes compliment the wealth of special effects work supervised by the now veteran Eiji Tsuburaya. The Mysterians’ reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, with some terribly unconvincing shots of a flood overtaking a city standing out, and the death rays have that cheesy, 50s look to them, along with the neon nonsense that comprises the interior of the Mysterians’ ship.

That said, this one is still worth watching, though I’d save it for fans who have seen most of Toho’s other works, or at least the ones readily available outside of Japan.

#monster monday #the mysterians

[precuredaily]

Precure Daily Halloween Special 2019

Episodes: SPC 37, HaCha 37, GPP Movie, MPC 38-39, KKPC 37, HUG 38, STPC 37 Dates watched: 30-31 October 2019 Original air dates: Sunday in October 1-2 weeks before Halloween, 2011 & 2016-2018, and the Saturday of Halloween, 2015

Is that little girl in the witch hat dressed as Akko from Little Witch Academia in a nod to her seiyuu, Han Megumi, playing Hime or is this just a coincidence? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

You may remember the PCD Christmas Special I did last year, where I watched every Precure Christmas episode and compared them to each other, charting the common elements and evolution in how they handle the subject. Well, I really love Halloween, but for a while, Japan didn’t celebrate it. It only started to catch on in the late 2000s and into the 2010s, and so despite several episodes of Precure airing on or near Halloween night over the years, the first time it was brought up in the franchise wasn’t until 2011′s Suite Precure. You can read more about how it became acceptable to celebrate and the ways in which the Japanese people enjoy themselves in this article, but the important takeaways are that Halloween events are more about food and festivities, and trick-or-treating is a highly organized activity, no going door-to-door.

At this point in the shows, all extra heroines have been introduced and the team is usually on the cusp of acquiring a new powerup. The villains have suffered significant losses and are preparing to pull out some form of trump card (this will facilitate the team getting their new attack). Typically, the monster of the week will be made from a Jack O’Lantern or some other Halloween decoration. In more recent years there’s been a tendency to explain what Halloween is about, but they don’t always do this. The biggest draw of a Halloween episode, though, in my opinion, is getting to see the characters in costumes. I’m going to briefly run down each Halloween episode (or movie) and then compare common elements at the end.

Note: At the time of writing, I am about 6 episodes behind in Star Twinkle Precure, did not wish to skip ahead for the purposes of this article, and didn’t have the time to catch up. I will add my thoughts on STPC 38 at a later date, and I will announce when I have done this via a reblog to @pcd-status​. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Star Twinkle section added 12 Nov. 2019

Suite Precure 37 - “Wakuwaku! Everyone Transforms for Halloween!” Original air date: 30 October 2011

With Mephisto freed of his brainwashing, Falsetto takes charge of Trio the Minor and leads an attack on the girls. Ako has decided to stay in the human world, and the older girls take her to a Halloween celebration to brighten her spirits. Ako isn’t really enjoying herself, but some younger kids rope her into playing with them and that brightens her up. When Trio the Minor turn a pumpkin into a Negatone, they try to perform a new attack with Crescendo Tone: Precure Suite Session Ensemble Crescendo, but it falls apart, so Ako uses her invidual attacks while the older trio uses their group finisher. At the end, Falsetto sings an incomplete Melody of Sorrow to speed up Noise’s revival.

Costumes and references: Hibiki is dressed as a pirate, but specifically she resembles a genderbent Captain Marvelous, the red ranger from the contemporary Sentai series Gokaiger. Kanade is dressed as a pumpkin witch. Ellen is dressed as a black cat, an allusion to her true form, and Ako is a dressed as a princess, which she is. (not digging very deep for this)

HappinessCharge Precure 37 - “Big Bang, Defeated! An Unbelievably Strong Enemy Appears!” Original air date: 19 October 2014

Oresky, Namakelder, and Hosshiwa are all feeling weakened after taking the Happiness Big Bang attack, so Queen Mirage concludes they may not be useful to her anymore and prepares her next agent. Meanwhile in Pikarigaoka, Megumi encourages Blue to join them at the town’s Halloween festival, and he agrees. They all begin to share pumpkin cakes with each other, a local tradition. Seiji shares his with Megumi, Megumi eagerly shares hers with Blue, and the other girls look on from a distance as they recognize the love triangle unfolding in front of them. Oresky appears, trying to ruin the Halloween festival that makes people happy and attempting to prove his worth. He really wants to be the number one general in the Phantom Empire, as he feels that if he’s not first, he’s worthless and he doesn’t want to be replaced. The girls transform, and begin to persuade him that there’s enjoyment to be had in fun things, and it’s okay if you’re not first. They hit him with Happiness Big Bang and it begins to purify him, when suddenly an attack interrupts it. As the smoke clears, their new opponent is revealed to be a corrupted Cure Tender, Iona’s missing older sister.

Costumes and references: Megumi is wearing a Halloween-themed dress, orange with jack-o-lanterns on it. Hime is dressed as a princess, which much like with Ako, seems kind of low-effort since she’s an actual princess. Yuuko is dressed as a witch, and Iona is a fortune teller. Also, Blue is dressed as a vampire.

Go! Princess Precure: Go! Go!! Gorgeous Triple Feature Original release date: 31 October 2015

The Princess movie was experimental, being made of three shorter films: a chibi short with no dialog, a 50-minute traditional feature, and a 20-minute all CG adventure. The film leaned hard on its Halloween theming, with Pumpkins and Halloween being prominent motifs in all three parts. I’ll break them down individually.

Cure Flora and the Mysterious Mirror

This is a cute sketch where Cure Flora finds a fancy crown, puts it on, and accidentally startles some mischievous sprites on the other side of what she thinks is a mirror. They have the ability to transform, so they take on her appearance and mirror her, but they forget to duplicate the crown and eventually they begin to compete with the real Flora, doing tricks. She accidentally breaks the crown, so the sprites decide to transform into a special pumpkin outfit for her, just as the other girls come in. The 5-minute short uses a super deformed art style with all CG animation and has no dialog.

Costumes and references: Cure Flora’s pumpkin dress and hat.

The Pumpkin Kingdom’s Treasure

Haruka, Minami, Kirara, and Towa are transported to the wondrous Pumpkin Kingdom, where the royal chancellor Warp is hosting a Princess Contest to find a princess for the kingdom. Towa, being well-versed in evil schemes, smells a rat and is on edge. Haruka finds the true princess of the kingdom, Pumpururu, who is locked away, and learns that the Pumpkin King and Queen are under Warp’s control. Minami, Kirara, and Towa each win their rounds in the contest, but the former two are captured while Towa is able to avoid capture. Haruka participates, even managing to snap the monarchs out of the control. She transforms, frees the others from their capture, and Warp transforms to a giant monster. Pumpururu, the sprites, and the Precures’ strong feelings summon Halloween Dress Up Keys that the girls use to defeat Warp and save the Pumpkin Kingdom.

Costumes and references: The girls get special outfits to wear for the Princess Contest (not halloween themed), as well as Mode Elegant Halloween dresses that feature pumpkin flowers on them.

Precure and Leffy’s Wonder Night!

This is an episode-length feature using the CG animation style from the dance endings. Haruka discovers a doll on her desk, when she’s suddenly transported to the Pumpkingdom, already transformed, and the doll is now a girl named Leffy. Leffy tells the cures they need to defeat Night Pumpkin, who has taken over Pumpkingdom and stolen the daylight from them, making it always night. What follows is essentially an ongoing chase through the city to the top, where they fight and defeat Night Pumpkin and restore daylight to Pumpkingdom. Haruka is then transported back to her room, and the Leffy doll is gone. It’s worth noting that Leffy appeared as Pumpururu’s doll in the previous portion. The connection to this section of the film is unclear. Also, Minami, Kirara, and Towa do not appear in their civilian forms at all.

Costumes and references: Leffy isn’t overtly pumpkin themed, and nobody else gets any special forms in this one. However, there is a glorious moment where Flora accidentally bonks Night Pumpkin on the head.

a proud Precure tradition

Maho Girls Precure 38 - “Is it Sweet or Not? The Magic Pumpkin Festival!” Original air date: 23 October 2016

This isn’t explicitly a Halloween episode, because the Magic World doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but they have fall traditions that involve pumpkins and sweets so it counts. Their tradition is to chase a Pumpkin Bird that appears every year. It shoots candy from its mouth, and if it hits someone, they turn into a giant piece of candy. If you capture it, you get a special prize. One of the villains brings up the actually valid point that the creature may not like being chased and that’s why it runs, but Mofurun talks to it and finds out it just has a cavity. The girls transform into Topaz Style to fight Shakince in a creatively silly battle. When they beat him, Mofurun gets the credit for “capturing” the Pumpkin Bird and so she gets presented with its prize, which turns out to be a seed that grows into a tree which sprouts toothbrushes. I am not making that up.

Costumes and references: Mofurun gets a special orange and yellow dress to wear when she receives the prize but it’s never shown in closeup from the front. Also, there is a cameo appearance by Watanabe Mayu, who sings the insert song for the Maho Girls Movie that was in theaters around this time, and also served as the ending theme for episodes 38 and 39 (only on the TV version, on home release they use “Magic a la Domo”). She makes a special appearance as herself. Even better, in a flashback, she’s seen beside giant statues of Mipple and Mepple.

Maho Girls Precure 39 - “This is Halloween! Everyone, Smile!” Original air date: 30 October 2016

The girls from magic school come to visit the non-magic world and learn about Halloween! But Jun, Kay, and Emily have to be reminded, even when things seem bad, to not use magic to help out. The students of the non-magic world are running a crepe stand and the magic world students decide to chip in, and after being scolded for using their powers, they learn how to do things the old-fashioned way and appreciate the value of hard work. In the middle of all of this, Ha-chan changes costumes almost every scene. Benigyo is extremely confused by all the Halloween festivities and doesn’t understand what the girls want when they tell her to stop ruining it. They never do give her a proper explanation, but she summons a Donyokubaaru that blows air and the girls have to transform to Sapphire form to fight it off. There’s a small plot point about Mirai’s grandmother recognizing the magic school Headmaster from her own youth. At the end of the episode, it’s implied that Liko’s father has made a big breakthrough about relations between the magic and non-magic worlds, and more ancient powers. Kind of a disjointed episode.

Costumes and references: Mirai is dressed as Mofurun, Liko is dressed as a cat in an orange and purple dress, Mofurun is dressed as Cure Miracle, Chikurun is dressed as a bunny, and Ha-chan is dressed as:

an alicorn

a sarcophagus

a mummy

a sphinx

a UFO

and a thunder god (Raijin)

And just a cool thing I noticed, the final stage for the ending dance was updated with a Halloween theme. I’m really curious why, since they replaced the ending with “The Right Way to Use Magic” in the initial television broadcast of this episode, and I don’t think the Halloween version was seen in any previous or subsequent episodes.

Kirakira Precure a la Mode 37 - “Salut! Ciel is Going Back to France!?” Original air date: 22 October 2017

Ciel’s old boss, Madame Solaine, finds her and tries to get her to come back to Paris and work for her there, feeling that Ciel’s talent is wasted in this small town. Not wanting to admit that she initially came searching for her brother, and that she’s got responsibilities as a Precure, she tries to demonstrate what she likes about Ichigozaoka. Everybody is worried that Ciel is going to leave, and even lowkey encouraging her to do what’s best for her career, but she wants to stay. Ultimately she wins Madame Solaine over with a dish inspired by Ichika’s cooking style. Elisio is the antagonist of this episode but I honestly found the battle to be completely irrelevant. The most notable point for the villains is that Grave makes some kind of discovery at the end of the episode.

Costumes and references: Their costumes here are modifications to their patisserie uniforms. Ichika is a jack o’lantern, Himari is an angel, Aoi is a devil, Yukari is a cat (of course), Akira is a vampire, and Ciel is a witch.

HUGtto! Precure 38 - “Charged with Happiness! Happy Halloween!” Original air date: 28 October 2018

Hagukumi town is going to be hosting a Halloween Party, with Papple’s business providing food and entertainment. Daigan is tasked with food prep, but he gets frustrated with a very delicate task, and a visit from Bishin has him questioning his loyalties. The girls are ready to hit the town, and have even prepared costumes for Harry and Hugtan. They made a lot of costumes for Hugtan, in fact, but Ruru detects that she doesn’t really like any of them, so they ask her what she wants to be, and she responds “Pwecyua!” They set to work making her a Precure costume in short order, but an Oshimaida attack secretly requested by Daigan threatens the party. The girls transform and make a show of it to keep people’s spirits high, finishing the monster off with Cheerful Attack. Papple knows that Daigan was responsible and chides him for defecting, even momentarily, and informs him that everybody loved his food. Up at Beauty Harry, the girls finish Hugtan’s costume and show her to Harry, who briefly has a flash of Cure Tomorrow.

Costumes and references: Hana is a witch, Saaya is a lolita devil, Homare is a cowgirl, Emiru and Ruru are pirates, Harry is a werewolf (because he’s.... hairy, IDK if that was the joke), and Hugtan is dressed as Cure Yell. Foreshadowing ahoy!

Star☆Twinkle Precure 37 - “Cryptids Will Win! The Halloween Costume Contest” Original air date: 21 October 2019

Mihoshi Town is having a Halloween costume contest with prizes for best group, so everybody brings their A-game. Except Yuni, she takes the chance to walk around in her true Rainbownian form. Everybody is having fun and the girls get to explain Halloween to Yuni and Lala. Unfortunately, Kappard is hanging around, reminiscing about what happened to his planet, and he doesn’t like the festivities. Everyone thinks he’s just dressed as a sexy kappa and they want pictures with him, which annoys him even more, so he steals one arguing couple’s imagination and goes on the attack. In an effort to guide him away from all the people and hide their identities, when the girls transform, they claim to be the Mihoshi Stars and do a full Sentai roll call, finally settling the debate over Milky and Cosmo’s color designations. (I was probably one of the last people to maintain that Milky was blue by this point, tbh) They lead him away from the festivities and then try to talk him down, but all he can say is he doesn’t believe different species can live in harmony, that Lala and Yuni are living a lie by celebrating Earth customs, and he doesn’t understand this holiday at all, so they defeat him and return to the festival. Elena wins prizes as part of two different groups, but Kappard is declared the overall winner. Too bad he’s MIA. This episode doesn’t do much for the plot, but it does give a little backstory to Kappard, as we see that his planet got destroyed by a non-native species monopolizing all of their natural resources. Considering what we see of Eyewan and Tenjou in the next few episodes, it’s possible we’re aiming to redeem the villains. Hard to tell with an ongoing show.

Costumes and references: Hikaru is a yeti, Lala is a tsuchinoko, Madoka is a cat, Elena is a flower (with her family) and a cat (with Madoka and Yuni), Yuni is herself, Fuwa is a sheep I guess, and Prunce is the Michelin Man (TELL ME I’M WRONG).

Analysis

Halloween episodes, unlike Christmas episodes, don’t have as much of a running theme. Halloween is more of a dressing than an opportunity to explore feelings. The placement of these episodes in the series means that things are usually starting to ramp up, but none of them features a major conflict. In a few episodes, the fight with the villains felt downright inconsequential, while it was more meaningful in others. There was a trend in more recent years to explain the origins of Halloween, as a gathering of spirits, but otherwise there aren’t as many identifiable patterns or shifts in patterns as there were in the Christmas episodes, it’s mostly been “this is Halloween, have fun.” The Go Princess movie had the opportunity to make the most of their halloween theme, but instead they just focused on pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins without really diving into what makes Halloween as a holiday special or significant. It’s an alright movie but it’s a sour note on an excellent series that knew what it was doing. HappinessCharge probably utilized Halloween the best as a setting, using some Halloween traditions to create romantic tension, and I appreciated Maho Girls’s attempt to create a Halloween-ish fall holiday for a fictional culture, and then also bringing those people in to explore our Halloween. Since it’s a newer holiday for Precure to work with, only getting regular exposure since 2014, we might see them figure out more ways to spin Halloween in the future. Honestly I hope so, and I’ll be here to write about it for you.

Happy Halloween, everybody, and look forward to more Yes 5 coming soon. Hopefully I’ll finish that by the end of the year. Hopefully. (yeah not likely)

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Suite Precure #HappinessCharge Precure #Go! Princess Precure #Maho Girls Precure #Kirakira Precure a la Mode #HUGtto! Precure #Star Twinkle Precure #PCD Halloween

[fyrapartnersearch]

Stories with Fandoms

bocajinsurgenc1

Hello there’  I decided to post a new post, given all the extra time I have! 

Let’s stay with quick things about myself!  -I am 23 years old and live in EST time-zone. -Usually, I have a part time job. Which is really part-time right now considering everything. -I ask that my partner and I write in 3rd Person, Past tense. -Reply/Post length can be set. As a bare minimum, I write a paragraph. More than happy to write more. 

-I am looking more than just having a ship together in a Roleplay. I want a plot. If that makes sense?  Not just romance.   Now onto the Fandoms.  Anything mentioned under, is a suggestion of thought I may Have on said Fandom. Of course, nothing here is needed to be used to build upon. We can build from the ground up.

Open to all sorts of genre themes like:

-Canon divergent,

-Canon-Rewrite/Rework,

-AU’s. What-If’s.

-Timey-Whimey problems. Groundhog Day,

and so much more.  Also, any Fandom with a *, is higher up on the list right now! All are open! *Star Wars: Considering (as time of writing this, May the Fourth two days ago), this is very fresh on my mind! I have seen all Nine-Saga Films, the Side Stories, and all the animated series of date. Not too caught on comics, thought. And my Knowledge, of the ‘Legends’ is very limited. So, ideally, I would want to stick to Disney’s Canon.  Open for all eras, to write with. Or, taking some of the Scrapped Battlefront IV art work of the What-If stuff and basing a story around them. Like Sith Luke and Leia, Redeemed Vader, etc. Or! I really liked the idea of a Imperial Navy Six like team, of Inferno Squad (Dice’s BFII). But, not have them jumps hip. Have them be Empire, ya know? *Final Fantas VII/Remake/Crisis Core:  I have finished the Remake and rather love it! I kinda hate seeing and hearing people on Youtube and online saying: Oh, its just Noruma adding his Kingdom Hearts logic to FF.  First, I don’t think KH is that hard to follow, and second. A HD remake of a story people already know, might not be so well received. Why not just play the original than? However! I love it! So, if we want anything to deal with the Remake, or the Crisis Core characters, I am so game. My good-boy Zack~ Kingdom Hearts: ‘None of this, makes any sense to me’ -Sora, Yozora.  Ahh, Kingdom Hearts. A series I love. Its precious to me. But, despite my love of all the games, and the story, I am more than happy to Re-work or Rewrite anything. Personally, I’d change up KHII alittle. Maybe go in a slightly more somber/dark route. Or, we can have our favorite characters in some AU, or Non-Canon adventure! Xion is my precious favorite character. Who is yours?  DC: First, I would mention I am a big fan of the CW shows. And, part of me (while I did enjoy Crisis on Infinite Earths, wanted a little more.) So, my first thought, would be to Re-write Crisis. One thing that really disappointed me, was the lack of Reverse Flash. He claimed, last Cross-over we would see him. And then just doesn't show up.  I would also, like more work in the fights and such. There wasn't much. Maybe more time with the Seven, who are stuck after they fail the first time around.  Another bit I wouldn't mind working with, would be the forgotten Synder Verse. I rather liked Batman V Superman, despite everything. It is one of those guilty pleasure type things. So, why not expand further where that universe was left off on? Power Rangers:  For this series, I have two major wants. (Of course, we can go in completely different route, too.) First, being a continuation of the 2017 Movie universe. I loved everything about that movie, and am heartbroken it will never go on. (Officially). Do what the cast suggested, and have a Female T.Oliver join the gang. Adapt more from MMPR.  The Second, would be a reWrite of Super Mega-Force (first by workshopping that name,) I am a fan of the Super Sentai Source of the season, and felt PR dropped the ball. We could create a new team for the pirate suits, have more Legendary Cameos and stories, and what not!  *Dragon Ball: From DB, to Z, Super, GT and Xeno-verse, I love most things Dragon Ball. I quite fancy the SSJ4 look, and Xeno style of Goku and Vegeta.  Though, in terms of plot ideas, I saw this Fan art of the Goku Black stuff from Super. However, Future Gohan was with Trunks, rather than Vegeta or Goku. I thought that could be a fun story! Or, we can play around with the Universe Six Saiynas. I rather enjoy them, so why not dive deep with Cabba, Caulifla and Kale? Persona 5/Royal:  The only Persona I have properly played; though, I am not fully done with Royal. (Aware of some spoilers, so no worries there). I love the world and characters quite a bit, so I felt the need to put this on the list, as the next entry as well.  Fire Emblem: Three Houses: I won’t lie, I haven’t finished all playthroughs yet. I was failing hard when the game came out, but given all the time I have had, I’ve been playing more! Another case of loving the characters and wouldn’t be against working out an idea!  *Pokemon: I know the games more, than anything else. Though, I have liked the concept of Re-Working Colosseum’s story. Give Wes a personality, actually. Not just the Silent-Protag trait. Maybe adapt some of the newer Pokemon into the region, as well. Explore what caused Wes to betray the Organization he worked for, what was the line they pushed that caused him to say, ‘I’m done, I can’t do this anymore,’ Perhaps we can even given him a reluctant attitude towards it. Not trying to stop Snag’Em, rather trying to keep his head down low at first.  Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Quick note, I am not fully caught up with Part-8. Thank you.  That’s it for now! Again, anything here is not needed. We can build from the ground up!  My contact stuff, as I do like using Email first, before maybe moving to a different platform, is: [email protected].  If interested in anything, let’s get in touch! Thanks for reading!

#multiple paragraph #para #semipara #long term #email #fire emblem rp #pokemon rp #dc rp #submission

[peachlover94]

Lion Voltron I: ALR - concept movie treatment

LION VOLTRON I: A LEGEND REBORN

written by Robert D.C. Barnes III (PeachLover94)

Inspired by Voltron: Defender of the Universe created for World Events Productions by Peter Keefe, John Teichmann and Toei Animation

Based on Beast King GoLion created for Toei Animation by Saburo Yatsude (Katsuhiko Taguchi, Itaru Orita and Susumu Takahisa)

30 East Trillium Circle

The Woodlands, TX 77381

936-231-8467

TREATMENT: 07-22-2017                         [email protected]

NOTE: This proposal is the property of New Frontier Cinema (PeachLover94 's production company) produced in partnership with DreamWorks SKG (Storyteller Distribution Co., LLC), World Events Productions (WEP LLC) and Toei Company, Ltd. Any unlicensed exhibition, copying or redistribution without written consent of the mentioned parties is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

Lion Voltron I: A Legend Reborn

Story Treatment

The Logline

In the Far Universe (Denubian Galaxy), five young space explorer cadets from the Galaxy Alliance of Earth are captured by the Galran Empire of the Drules over their destroyed space colony Olympus. Escaping with the help of a princess to the princess' home planet, they seek out the Lion Voltron to save the galaxy.

Main Characters

1) ALLURA ♀ - Age: 22. Full Title: Princess Allura Fala of Planet Arus (Altea in the ancient texts). Species: Arusian (Altean in ancient times). Homeworld: Arus (Altea). Physical Features: Relatively human-resembling phenotype of Medium-Tall body, Blue eyes, Light Olive skin tone, Round human ears, Yellow Blonde hair in a long feathered (Farrah Fawcett) style, and a medium register voice. The last surviving heir to the throne of planet Arus in the wake of the deaths of her father King Alfor Raimon and her mother Queen Melenor, Allura secretly took up training in the arts of war and espionage in the dead of night so to protect her people from encroachment by the Galran Empire of the Drules. The eventual paladin of Black Lion, her soft spot is for the Space Mice family of planet Arus.

2) KEITH ♂ - Age: 22. Full Name: Keith Akira Kogane. Species: Terran (with distant Arusian/Altean and Galran ancestry). Homeworld: New El Dorado, Planet Olympus (Earth colony in the Denubian Galaxy/Far Universe). Primary Physical Features: A Human phenotype of Medium-Tall body with a swimmer’s build, Brown eyes, Medium skin tone, Round human ears, Black hair in a long mullet style, and medium register voice. Having lived as a sullen orphan with little to lose as a lone wolf, Keith's outlook changes when he sees both the beauty of Allura and the depths of cruelty being committed across the Universe. Matching his drive in battle and earlier temperament, Keith is destined to become paladin of the Red Lion of Fire which is located in the ancient Arusian volcano of Pyros.

3) LANCE ♂ - Age: 21. Full Name: Lance Charles Isamu Kurogane McClain. Species: Terran. Homeworld: New Havana, Planet Olympus (Earth colony in the Denubian Galaxy/Far Universe). Main Physical Features: A Human phenotype of Medium-Tall body with a swimmer build, Blue eyes, Olive skin tone, Round human ears, Brown hair in a bowl style, and a medium register voice. Confident and cocky, Lance is the class clown of the paladins and is something of a ladies' man. However, he is actually quite sensitive, reflective, and distant at the times when it comes down to it. It is said he is the only one who can break through Keith's shell. His laid back, easygoing nature makes him the perfect paladin to pilot the Blue Lion of Water which is located in the Arusian lake of Volturnus.

4) PIDGE I ♂ - Age: 11. Full Name: Darrell Hiroshi Suzuishi "Pidge" Stoker. Species: Terran. Homeworld: New Kerberos, Planet Olympus (Earth colony in the Denubian Galaxy/Far Universe). Physical Features: A Human phenotype with an age-appropriate height, Green eyes with glasses, Caucasian skin tone, Round human ears, Brown hair in a layered shag style, and age-appropriate register of voice. Pidge graduated from the Academy at a young age, and his specialty is science. He is well-trained in the ways of Ninjutsu, and uses his size and agility to his advantage. Pidge is not afraid to speak his mind, but his heart is often in his words. His deep connections to forests balancing with technology suit him as the paladin for the Green Lion of Forest kept in the forest of Arboria.

5) HUNK ♂ - Age: 21. Full Name: Tsuyoshi Seidou "Hunk" Garrett. Species: Terran. Homeworld: New Apia, Planet Olympus (Earth colony in the Denubian Galaxy/Far Universe). Primary Physical Features: A Human phenotype of Medium-Tall body with a muscular rotund build, Brown eyes, Dark Tan skin tone, Round human ears, Brown hair in a mullet with orange bandana, and a medium register voice. Hunk is an engineer in spare time - being a gentle guy with a large appetite, Hunk is the heart of the team, lifting them up and making peace between them. Seeing desolation and misery of Zarkon's conquests, Hunk is determined to free those enslaved. His connection to land will serve him as paladin for the Yellow Lion of Earth which is hidden in the canyon of Terrae.

6) SVEN ♂ - Age: 22. Full Name: Sven Takashi Shirogane Holgersson. Species: Terran. Homeworld: New Oslo, Planet Olympus (Earth colony in the Denubian Galaxy/Far Universe). Primary Physical Features: A Human phenotype of Tall body with a swimmer build, Grey eyes, Medium-Light skin tone, Round human ears, Black hair in a long shaggy style, and a low-medium register voice with a Norwegian accent. Sven or "Takashi" is the eldest of three triplet brothers who also go by Sven as well, and he is an ex-member of an elite Galaxy Alliance Navy trainee squad. With him being a natural, decisive leader as well as second-in-command in tandem with Keith, Sven is calm and always in control - originally intended to be the paladin for the Black Lion of Sky kept in the cliffs of Nephele.

7) CORAN ♂ - Age: 55. Full Title: Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe Raible. Chief Strategist of Arus (Altea in the ancient texts). Species: Arusian (Altean in ancient times). Homeworld: Arus (Altea). Primary Physical Features: Relatively human phenotype of Tall body, Blue eyes, Medium Tan skin tone, Round human ears, graying Red hair in a shag and mustache, and a lower-medium register voice. Coran is noted for being kinda foppish, goofy, and a little of a traditionalist who can be opinionated and overprotective at times, but is very wise and is a force to be reckoned with. He is the commander of the Castle of Lions, once it becomes battle-worthy, and especially if it needs to travel off planet. After Alfor and Melenor died, they entrusted Coran with the five bayard keys to Voltron.

8) NANNY ♀ - Age: 44. Full Title: Court Lady Nanette "Nanny" Hys - Assistant and Bodyguard to the Arusian Royal Family. Species: Arusian (Altean in ancient times). Homeworld: Arus (Altea). Primary Physical Features: Relatively human phenotype of Medium-Tall body with a supposedly chubby frame that is actually Amazonian muscle, Brown eyes, Light skin tone, Round human ears, graying Brown hair in a crowned and braided braid style, and a low-medium register voice with a Germano-Scottish accent. Nanny's first concern is for Allura's well-being. Despite her peaceful and demure/ladylike inclinations and preferences, "Nanny" is not one to be messed with - what with her fifteen years of service in the Arusian Special Forces. Leave it to Allura to show she must not be babied.

The Background

Long in the past of the Denubian Galaxy NGC 7610 (termed the Far Universe by the Galaxy Alliance), the five-piece fighting humanoid robot known as the Lion Voltron was known as GoLion (King of Five Lions) by the peoples of Altea and Heracles - now called Arus and Pollux. GoLion or Lion Voltron was a sentient being, renown across the galaxy for its feats of heroism and bravery. GoLion went by gender-neutral pronouns based on the gender of the pilot. Ultimately, this led to Lion Voltron developing something of an ego, as it challenged both the wicked witch Druid Haggar I and the goddess Denubia to battle. Denubia, having sensed the egotism brewing in Lion Voltron/GoLion out of simple ignorance of its own power and not out of sinister malice, defeated but spared the mighty robot.

In a rage, the Druid Haggar disguised herself as Denubia and tried to destroy Voltron while succeeding at murdering Denubia. With her last acts, Denubia managed to save Lion Voltron/GoLion by splitting the robot back up into its five component lion robots - Black of Sky, Red of Fire, Green of Forest, Yellow of Earth, and Blue of Water. They were flung through space until they crash-landed on Altea, there to spend a great deal of time defending it from the forces of evil in the Denubian Galaxy until some force caused it to go into dormancy until the time was right. Now the time has come for a rebirth of Lion Voltron with a return of the Galran Empire of Galra (Planet Doom) by the Drules, to threaten the Milky Way, Hyperion and Denubian galaxies. The bayard keys to Voltron are hidden.

The Premise

Historically, the Lion Voltron Force story arc of Voltron: Defender of the Universe was adapted from the 1981 anime series Beast King GoLion but was adapted to be part of a much bigger storyline. Here, the Voltron story takes on more of a mythical Greco-Roman/Medieval fantasy style with elements of space opera and regular science fiction thrown in. Taking the team of heroes premises that are found in the Japanese Super Sentai/Power Rangers series, the galaxy-spanning adventure of Star Wars, the epic mythic fantasies of Arthurian legend and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium (Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion), and the appeal of mecha and big robots found in both the Gundam and Transformers franchises, Voltron is ready to take to the stars for battle and saving the world.

In this four-quadrant five-act epic mecha space fantasy film, a team of five space explorers from Earth and an enchanted humanoid alien princess must break out and flee their alien captors à la The Great Escape, but end up crash-landing on the princess' home planet out of Arthurian legend. Meeting with her royal staff, the princess and the space explorers must trek across the many lands of her planet to reunite the bayard keys that activate the five lion robots that form Lion Voltron - Defender of the Far Universe. In a globetrotting quest out of Lord of the Rings, our heroes must get the people of the war-torn planet's help to overcome the obstacles so they can launch and form Voltron in time to stop a Star Wars-like attack by the enemy's space forces. Only with Voltron will Arus be saved...

The Nemeses

Aside from normal human squabbles and quandaries that face teams of people trying to survive, Lion Voltron and its team of pilots have to contend with the new horrible menace threatening the Denubian Galaxy. The Galrans of Planet Doom fit the tradition of the classic "empire of evil". Most of the Galrans in power are of a pathological diagnosis of needing control, physiologically depending others' misery for their survival. With fleets of starfighters and space battleships; as well as armies of tanks, Ultra Black Corps shock troops and Robeast mecha monsters, Galrans are the muscle of the Drule Empire in the Denubian Galaxy. Currently, only one planet dares to stand in the Galrans' way - Arus.

1) ZARKON ♂ - Age: Late 40s/Early 50s. Species: Galran Drule. Homeworld: Galra (Planet Doom). Eye Color: Yellow. His full royal title is Emperor Zarkon Daibazaal of Planet Galra. King Zarkon is an immensely powerful fighter, having killed Alfor in a climactic duel to the death. Zarkon is to be revealed as a skilled mecha pilot, having once been the paladin for the Black Lion of Sky as a young king who tried to corrupt and convert Lion Voltron to the side of the Drules and Galrans before being rejected by Voltron. The Galran King has little tolerance for failure among his subordinates, and often threatens them for failure. Though he appears to have a slightly higher tolerance for Haggar, she is not immune to being threatened for failures to claim Arus and other planets for the empire.

2) ROBEASTS - Wherever one goes in the Empires of the Drules, there will always be such mighty things as Robeasts to challenge the Voltron Forces and threaten the peace of the Near, Middle and Far Universes. Robeasts from Galra (Planet Doom) sent to battle the Lion Voltron are humanoid monsters created through an unholy combination of super-science and Haggar's magic, most often from the many prisoners of war that are reared in sadistic gladiatorial combat, though some of them are simply colossal robots piloted by Ultra Black Corps troopers. A platoon of fifteen robeasts is ready at a moments notice to travel with fighters, tanks, space battleships and Ultra Black Corps armies to lay siege to whatever may get in their way. They are tricky but not impossible to annihilate.

3) HAGGAR XIII ♀ - Age: Late 60s. Species: Galran Drule/Arusian Half-Breed. Homeworld: Arus (Altea). Eye Color: Yellow. Hair Color: White. Her full title is Court Sorceress Haggar Yoba Honerva. Haggar the Witch Queen is the one responsible for creating the Galran Beast Fighters or Robeasts that Voltron must destroy. She is notorious for her dark magic to cast hypnosis and control spells over people. Though she was once a good and beautiful, she is now evil and ugly by her corruption. It is implied throughout this first film that she is Zarkon's amnesia-stricken wife. Haggar has the power of quintessence at her fingertips, being able to shoot bolts of energy and manipulate it to her will for defense and levitate objects to battle enemies of the Empire. What other secrets lie with her?

4) ULTRA BLACK CORPS - Say hello to the mixed organic and cybernetic shock troopers of the Galran Empire. They serve as the backbone of Galran (Planet Doom's) military forces. Ultra Drones have no built in weapons, instead using the same weapons as their organic counterparts. Drones are capable of squad-level infantry tactics and understanding vocal commands These androids somewhat resemble Galrans and other Drules, appearing to wear charcoal-black armor. In fact, some of the living soldiers appear identical to the Ultra Drones. In addition, Ultra Drones can be used for scouting planetary environments full of every kind of hazards, are more durable, and have no fear of utter destruction to claim the victory. Many a senior soldier here relishes serving Supreme Commander Yurak.

5) YURAK ♂ - Age: 40s. Species: Galran Drule. Homeworld: Galra (Planet Doom). Eye Color: Yellow (Left) and Cybernetic Red (Right). His full title rank is Supreme Commander Yurak of the Galrans, who also travels under the aliases of Sendak and Sadak. He is quite a sadistic, leather-lunged and powerful fighter who is not to be underestimated. His loyalty to King Zarkon and adherence to military hierarchy is without question and only obeys the commands given to him. His fighting style relies primarily on the use of his cybernetic arms, his own energy sword and terrifying piercing claws. He is also athletic, able to dodge and move around quickly to evade attacks. This is despite his large size, topping at about eight feet. If he were a Parris Island drill instructor, he would fit right in.

The Heroes and the Twist

Each member of Lion Voltron's super force of space explorers is reflective of aspects of ourselves that we all have been at some point in our lives the class clown, the lone wolf, the young genius, the tough guy who is also a mediator, and that young person destined for life greater than their backyard. A major bend in the story comes when the original intended paladin to pilot Black Lion - Sven - is badly injured by Galran Drule Ultra Black Corps troopers and on the verge of dying. Princess Allura, who is traveling with him to find Black Lion, has to take his place and fly Black Lion so she can save Sven, his teammates and Arus. But ultimately, Black Lion intended for Allura to be the team's leader from the start. Can Allura rise to the occasion and lead her new team to free Arus?

The Story Breakdown

Prologue

1) From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the Universe, comes a legend. The legend of the Voltrons: Defenders of the Universe. Three mighty robots, loved by good, feared by evil. As the Voltrons' legend grew, peace settled across the galaxies. On Planet Earth, a Galaxy Alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of our Solar System, they maintained peace throughout the Universe until new, horrible menaces threatened the galaxies. The Voltrons are needed once more. This is the story of the super force of space explorers. Specially trained, entrusted and sent by the Alliance with the ancient secrets of how to assemble and bring back, Lion Voltron: Defender of the Far Universe. And the first chapter of a great saga begins with a faraway planet...

Act I

2) We open in orbit of planet Olympus, a human space colony of Earth's in the Denubian Galaxy - termed the Far Universe. A good-sized Galaxy Alliance light cruiser the Pioneer approaches it. Aboard her is a team of five bright and young space explorer cadets returning for summer leave from their senior year at the Galaxy Alliance Academy. In command is Sven Holgersson (black/navy blue) who leads Keith Kogane (red) , Hunk Garrett (yellow), Lance McClain (blue) and little eleven-year-old Pidge Stoker (green). What they are about to return to is a home destroyed - the dreaded King Zarkon Daibazaal of Galra (AKA. Planet Doom) has just ordered his space fleet to provoke war between the districts of Olympus. Zarkon's evil has left the people of Olympus to die via a thermonuclear war. These images of catastrophe echo the fears of Earth during World War III.

3) Keith, Lance, Hunk and Sven are devastated, while Pidge is disgusted by the petty nature of fear Zarkon uses to force his enemies to annihilate each other in one cascade. The leveled cities and irradiated corpses mean there are few to no survivors currently to be found, and a Galran slaver ship soon catches sight of the Pioneer - drawing her in by tractor beam. Under the leadership of the Galran Drules' Supreme Commander Yurak, the slave ship departs Olympus to return to Galra with fresh slaves to be delivered for Emperor Zarkon and the Witch Queen Haggar's approval. On Galra, the five human space explorers watch helplessly as hapless prisoners including Hunk’s older sister Lisa are sent to the arena for gladiatorial combat which either way will result in their potential eventual demise.

4) Those prisoners ruthlessly slaughtered in the arena are to become food for Robeasts, and those prisoners who managed to survive are themselves turned into the bio-mechanical Robeasts for Zarkon to sic upon the galaxy. In their cell, Lance is about to go stir crazy when a female voice tells the five she may just be able to help them escape if they help her escape back to her home planet. Keith and Sven ask her who she is, and the voice is revealed to be that of the divinely beautiful Princess Allura Fala (pink) of planet Arus - now conquered and facing enslavement by the Galrans' imperial forces in this galaxy. Pidge, having been trained in the ways of ninjas, is able to jump with his agile and nimble body up to the bars over the cell windows to the outside. If they free others, they can flee.

5) On the night before Allura and the space explorers are to be sent into the arena, Pidge takes their rope made from rags, blankets and scraps of clothing up to the bars on the windows. Hunk is the first to climb up so he can bend and breaks the bars of the jail cell. After him, the others free a swarm of many other prisoners and climb up and out before the guards can report of a break. Sighting the Galran Vultures, the six escapees each grab on to the legs of a vulture and steer them down and away from the prison castle. Allura is the first to jump, and she makes a perfect landing in the dumping ground of dead prisoner skeletons stripped clean to the bone by the Robeasts. The five space explorers along with the escaping prisoners soon follow, and declare Zarkon will pay for his cruelty.

6) Allura, Keith, Sven, Lance, Hunk and Pidge; having made their escape, scurry across the dead plains of Galra to the airfield where a fleet of skull ships (Galran space battleships able to carry Stinger fighters) await to be launched. Knocking out a night guard guarding an armory, Allura takes a sword while the others grab guns and start shooting up the Ultra Black Corps troopers guarding the airfield and the skull ships. They manage to launch a skull ship and fire its heavy laser cannons at both Zarkon's castle and the remaining skull ships on the pad before lifting off into the sky. News of the prison break reaches Zarkon, who orders all capable ships to retrieve the missing skull ship, or failing that, blast it and its crew out of the stars. Yurak attempts to follow in his ship, but our heroes escape.

Act II

7) Making the jump to hyperskip, our heroes' skull ship comes under attack upon exiting hyperskip by a few remaining Stinger starfighters left behind to blockade any escaping space traffic from the planet below them. Allura plows the skull ship through the Stingers, but the ship is damaged and begins to fall out of the sky towards the surface of her home planet Arus - known in the ancient texts as Altea. In the moments before bailing out, Allura has Pidge send a coded signal to what she calls Castle Control on frequency 198.1 MHz - that the Princess is on her way home in a crashing Galran skull ship. Allura and the space explorers bail out and float down to land on the ground. Safe in a clearing, the six watch as the giant skull ship falls from the sky towards the bluest oceans of planet Arus.

8) The night soon begins to fall as Keith, Sven, Lance, Hunk and Pidge are led by Allura back to the source of Castle Control - the Castle of the Lions. Allura had been taken prisoner by the Galran Drules just one Earth week earlier by her own calculations, but the princess' safe return brings joy to her strategist Coran and handmaiden Nanny's hearts. Grateful to the five space explorers who aided Allura in her escape from Galra, Coran is the first to pledge whatever services he, Nanny and the people of Arus can provide. After the team introduces each member by their full names, Keith speaks up that he and his team would like to use the Castle and Arus as a base until they can find a way to defeat Zarkon. Upon hearing this, Coran leads them all into the lower chambers of the Castle.

9) Low yet eerie sounds echo and illuminate the lower chambers of the Castle of Lions as Nanny and Coran lead our six heroes down to the Royal Tomb. Trailing behind is a royal family of Arusian Space Mice with the father Chitter Platt, the mother Cheddar Chuchule, and their children made up of Cheeser, Cheesy, Pip, Squeak, Mousie, Prince, Toady, Inky and Suki watch as the humanoids uncover the sarcophagi of Allura's father King Alfor Ramon and his wife Queen Melenor. Chitter and Cheddar come up to sit on Allura's shoulders for comfort as Coran sadly recounts how Zarkon had betrayed her father Alfor, fought him in a sword fight for Lion Voltron, and murdered him and his wife Melenor. Zarkon, however, did not obtain his prize - Lion Voltron as the keys to the lions had disappeared.

10) Back on Galra, Yurak reports to Zarkon and Haggar that the stolen skull ship was ditched into the oceans of Arus and that its crew and passengers both have managed to survive bailing out. Instead of lashing out at his underling, Zarkon is lost in thought. He remembers that Arus is home to the one force in this galaxy that could defeat them - Lion Voltron. Haggar reveals to Yurak that Zarkon is an accomplished mecha pilot who in his days of youth tried to become the paladin to pilot the Black Lion of Sky and convert Lion Voltron to the Galran Drules' side. In a flash of inspiration, Zarkon has a new mission - let the escaped prisoners on Arus lead them to Lion Voltron, defeat them in battle, and claim Voltron for use by the Drule Empire. Yurak promises to bring the empire victory or die trying.

   11) Nanny continues on with telling the story that Coran had started down in the Royal Tomb of Arus to our heroes. When King Alfor died, he took the secret bayard keys to forming Lion Voltron with him and his wife Melenor to the grave so the Galran Drules could not get their hands on them. Alfor's last testament he gave to Nanny was that Allura and a team of space explorers would inherit and hopefully use the keys to the five lion robots that make up the Lion Voltron to battle the forces of evil threatening Arus when the princess came of age. Now that Allura is of age, she must lead Keith and his team across the lands of Arus to the five locations where a component lion of Voltron may be found. There are five keys that must reach their lion located in a distinct landmark of the planet.

Act III

12) Each member of the newly created Lion Voltron Force must bring a key to a certain cavern in which a lion resides, deliver the key to the lion, and pilot it back to the Castle of Lions. Keith is given the Key of Fire in which he must journey to the Volcano of Pyros to reactivate the Red Lion of Fire. Pidge is given the Key of Forest, so he must journey to the Forest of Arboria to recover the Green Lion of Forest. Hunk is given the Key of Earth and will need it to access the Canyon of Terrae to retrieve the Yellow Lion of Earth. Lance is entrusted with the Key of Water, so he must find the Lake of Volturnus and awaken the Blue Lion of Water. Allura will have to accompany Sven with the Key of Sky to recover the Black Lion of Sky from the Cliffs of Nephele as the Black Lion is the overall leader.

13) In front of legions of Ultra Black Corps shock troopers, companies of laser tanks, and fourteen Robeasts waiting to board the mighty fleet of skull ships, Yurak addresses his forces from his self-modeled Robeast. The mighty platoon of Robeasts known as the Batbeast, Dieklops, Exospike, Mogyula, Bokar Snake, Poison Bugblade, the Loathsome Lion, Buffaloon, twins Beyel and Zebub, the Deathsail, Mammoth, Armordillo and Evilroots lead all the assembled forces of the Galran Drules in cheering for Yurak and their battle. Proudly, Yurak proclaims that their victory shall be a day long remembered through history. With that, the Galran forces begin to load onto the skull ships to prepare for blastoff on the campaign to conquer Arus once and for all. Little do they know it is a death trap.

14) Coran dispatches teams of soldiers to head for the ocean where the skull ship was ditched as a distraction to any incoming forces of the Galran Drules who may try to stop the Lion Voltron Force from reaching the Lions in time. In the meantime, our heroes have suited and packed up their stuff to begin heading out on foot to journey across the ruins of the once proud, innocent and peaceful planet of Arus. Being armed only with a sidearm laser pistol and their keys that can turn into energy bayards which form weapons suited to the fighting style of the Lion Voltron paladins, our six heroes are really taking their chances. For you see, the Galran Drule space fleet has jumped through hyperskip to arrive on Arus' far side. The time to put the bayard keys to the test will soon be coming.

15) The air temperature is climbing rapidly as Keith braves the heat of lava flows and gulfs between cliff faces to navigate the area of the Volcano of Pyros to find the Red Lion. To keep from going crazy, he takes his friend Lance's advice and starts talking out loud to himself. Just then, the Loathsome Lion arrives and tries to trick Keith into coming towards it, but Keith activates some hidden power from within and sees through this attempt at deception and uses his bayard's energy sword to battle the Robeast and slay it. The blast flings Keith up and away into the volcano, but he is saved by Red Lion. In triumph, Keith boards the Red Lion and they together launch out of the volcano back for the Castle of Lions to find Dieklops leading a charge of soldiers and tanks towards it to launch an attack.

   16) Hunk, meanwhile, is getting a wonderful workout running and jumping from clifftop to clifftop across the Canyon of Terrae which reminds him of once going up and down El Capitan back on Earth. The lovable lug is already planning on cooking up a feast to celebrate the victory of his team against Zarkon's forces, but he still thinks of all the prisoners on Galra sent to die or become Robeasts, remembering their names and faces by heart. A break in his concentration comes with the arrival of the Deathsail ready to fight. In a jolt of speed, Hunk starts his bayard's energy cannon and fires off salvos at the Robeast to keep him away from the cavern where Yellow Lion is sleeping. With a mighty roar, Hunk arrives and uses Yellow Lion to destroy Deathsail before escaping.

Act IV

17) Seeing Red and Yellow Lions finish off their Robeasts and start back for the Castle now that Poison Bugblade is leading its charges in the surge forces Allura and Sven to hurry towards the Cliffs of Nephele where the Black Lion cavern is located. As they approach the Cliffs, a legion of Ultra Black Corps shock troops led by Exospike lands and attempts to shoot them down off the cliffs. Sven soon activates his bayard's energy sword to cut away at the shock troops while Allura lays down cover fire with her laser pistol. This is all they can do to safeguard the Black Lion. A flung spike from the Robeast injures Sven and Allura rushes to duel Exospike with the sword and kill the Robeast. Allura forces herself to carry the critically injured Sven over her shoulders towards the cavern of Black Lion.

18) In the meantime, the Arusian Special Forces have succeeded in reaching the ditched Galran skull ship, floating on the ocean near the castle. Aboard the ship, they manage to activate its defense turrets and torpedo launchers to keep the Galran Drule Stinger fighters from doing bombing runs on the Castle. A few more launch the downed skull ship's own Stingers to conduct a Trojan horse attack on Yurak's leading skull ship to assist the Lion Voltron Force. The attack costs them their lives, but it does manage to cripple the skull ship and force Yurak to board his Robeast and lead four others in abandoning ship for their attack on the surface. He sees Red and Yellow Lions attacking his Robeasts as he charges forward. Seeing the Lions return makes Yurak lose his composure.

19) Volturnus Lake is a welcome sight as Lance makes a mad dash for it as he sees shock troops being dropped along with Bokar Snake to fight it out. In a fit of retribution-seeking adrenaline for all those Zarkon has made suffer in the arena, Lance lays down the law with his bayard's energy rifle on the swarm of the shock troops before giving a face full of fire right into Bokar Snake. He spots Blue Lion resting in the lake and makes a dive for it just before things can get even more out of control than they have already. During the swim down towards the cockpit of the Blue Lion, Lance tries to calm himself and telepathically bond with the lion before boarding and reactivating it. With that, they see Buffaloon and his forces on the move and they shoot to the rescue in order to protect the Castle of Lions.

20) At least Pidge is grateful for the cover that the dense brush of trees in the Forest of Arboria is providing as he scurries his way for the cavern of the Green Lion. Evilroots barely manages to cut through the treeline before Pidge activates his bayard's angular katar to go one on one with the toxic Robeast and become a true eco-warrior and tree hugger. In a burst of natural inspiration, Pidge uses the bayard katar's shock prod ability to set the Evilroots on fire when he reaches a safe clearing before darting away into the cavern. Here, he and Green Lion finally get acquainted before he boards the Lion. Pidge and Green Lion see the Mammoth charging for the Castle of Lions as they attempt to race back and head off the opposing forces. Now all they need is the Black Lion to help them.

21) The Castle of Lions fights back against Armordillo, but tanks and soldiers are moving in for the attack. Inside the cavern of Black Lion, Allura holds the key up to the lion-shaped robot. The Black Lion welcomes her and tells the princess it has been awaiting the day she would come of age and be ready to pilot it and lead the Lion Voltron Force to victory over evil once again. Seeing the fleet of Galran starships approaching orbit of Arus and the four other lions in need of help fighting the Robeast army, Allura rushes Sven into Black Lion. With Sven safely aboard in the passenger compartment, Allura scurries to the cockpit and inputs the key to launch Black Lion out and into the skies of Arus to join the others in battle. With a mighty roar, the Black Lion shoots out into the skies.

Act V

22) Keith and the other space explorers are surprised by Allura showing up in Black Lion to rescue them. Coran has to prevent Nanny from losing it. Now it becomes a real battle as the five lions fly up to cripple Yurak's space fleet and crash it down to Arus. Swooping back down to the planet, they see only four Robeasts left along with Yurak and the self-modeled Robeast he pilots. This is the signal Allura takes so to call for the paladins to form Lion Voltron. Activating interlocks, connecting their dynotherms, bringing up their infracells, and setting their mega-thrusters to go; the Lion Voltron Force is go to form and battle evil. Allura's Black Lion forms the body and head, Keith's Red and Pidge's Green form the arms, and Lance's Blue and Hunk's Yellow form the feet and legs.

23) The sight of the Lions coming together to form Lion Voltron both stuns and horrifies Yurak and his few surviving Robeasts. Over subspace radio, Allura offers one last chance for Yurak to surrender and receive a fair and public trial for his crimes. Yurak denounces this compassion as a deathly weakness and instead charges with his Robeasts towards our heroes, forcing a combined Eye Beam and Lion Torch attack on Beyel. Zebub locks in a struggle with Voltron so he can avenge his brother, but gets a mouthful of Sting Ray Missiles. Batbeast goes for a bite of Voltron, but a combined Electro-Force Cross and Ion Darts blows him to kingdom come. A Lion Head Attack takes out Mogyula while a flung Spinning Space Blade hits the Galran Drule ships still in orbit with no air cover.  

24) Now trapped on Arus and without much fuel to make it out of the Arusian system, Yurak draws his Robeast's energy sword as he alone is in a position to take down Lion Voltron mano-a-mano. Allura and the team then draw out Lion Voltron's Blazing Sword, ready to fend off an attack. Changing tactics, Yurak calms his Robeast down and contacts Lion Voltron over subspace radio in order to use his enemies’ weakness against them. Speaking softly but firmly, Yurak orders the Lion Voltron Force to set the Blazing Sword down, step away from it, and he may show clemency if they surrender. Allura is not buying it, as she and the team still have the images of the cruelty of Zarkon and his followers fresh in their minds, causing Lion Voltron to charge their foe with the Blazing Sword.

25) Yurak holds out as long as he can, loudly berating our heroes for their acts of cowardice and betrayal of the empire, but he is no match for Voltron. Lion Voltron and its pilots escape the blast radius just in time before Yurak and his Robeast explode in a mighty conflagration as he curses their names for eternity. With the destruction of both the Galran space forces in orbit and the Galran land forces under Yurak's command, cheers of the grateful survivors of Arus echo across the planet for Voltron. Meanwhile, Sven is still badly wounded and close to the point of dying, so Allura then orders Coran to send for a transport to carry Sven back to Galaxy Garrison on Earth for critical treatment before it is too late. (In the Japanese version, Sven or Takashi actually dies and is laid to rest).

   26) With how wonderfully Allura led the Lion Voltron Force to victory over Yurak, Nanny reluctantly allows Allura to become the leader of the Lion Voltron Force with Keith and the others' blessings. But Nanny still wishes to be able to protect the Princess if need be, which means Allura is forced into the unenviable position of reactivating Nanny's commission with the Arusian Special Forces - effectively drafting her Nanny back into service! With a little time to celebrate, the people of Arus gather in the Castle of Lions in salute of their heroes. Allura leads Keith, Lance, Hunk and Pidge down in a procession to where they are awarded medals for their heroism. With her royal sword, Allura knights herself and her teammates as the paladins of Lion Voltron Force as the gathered masses cheer.

Epilogue (Preview Summary for Lion Voltron II: Prince Lotor Unleashed)

27) And with the final defeat of the dreaded Supreme Commander Yurak; the names of Voltron, Lion Voltron and planet Arus would again strike fear in the hearts of the Drule Empire and its Denubian Galaxy vassals the Galrans. Even so, Zarkon's enigmatic son Prince Lotor Sincline is determined to make a name for himself and claim Princess Allura as his bride. Taking a platoon of Robeasts with him to throw Voltron off the scent and secretly hold planets Balto and Arus' sister world of Pollux (Heracles in ancient times) in captivity, the Lion Voltron Force departs Arus and sets out into space to free the planets and the Galrans' hostages, among them Sven. In the midst of a fierce battle of wills and swords, Allura carries a terrifying truth about Lotor and the Galran Royal Family...

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