Tokusatsu for Adults | Beyond Kamen Rider Amazons & Black Sun

Sometimes, us adults just need a... VIOLENT BREAK.

The real question is why do these adult toku series have to be reimaginings of older properties. We need more like Garo; adult-oriented toku shows that are their own thing and not tied to any preexisting IP.

I actually want more mature Kamen Rider shows. Doesn't have to be a reimagining of an existing character and story but rather create an original story with some elements inspired by existing Rider stories.

A really underrated tokusatsu that is for an adult audience is the series Girl Gun Lady (2021). It's 10 episodes, each 24 minutes long, and Bandai literally described it as "a tokusatsu series for adults in a new era." It's also one of the few toku out there with a majority female cast, as well as being fairly well written. Though, it may feel a bit odd to people more used to Rider or Sentai which use suits all the time and GGL being completely devoid of suits, opting for a motif of building plastic models for the girls to use as their weapons in the Girl Gun Fight in the show. Really annoying though that the show WAS actually able to watch legally while it was airing on the Bandai Spirits youtube channel but they since took it down from the channel so the only real option to watch it is to sail the seven seas. Still though, PLEASE give Girl Gun Lady a watch it deserves so much more attention and love.

well obviously every toku I enjoy is for adults because I am very cool and mature and definitely not insecure about watching shows for children

I definitely count Akibaranger as an adult show, considering the level of innuendo, adult jokes and the fact that the villains in S2 do the deed.

For me the problem lies within "In Your Face" treatment of the adult toku genre. Makers think that just showing some gore and blood will make the show "Adult" content. The things need to be subtle. My first series was build and to this date it's most mature series I've seen. Things like Political Division, Capitalism, Civil War, Class divide and Poverty were discussed in a very subtle and mature manner(People might disagree with me). That's what i consider mature content not adult. Things need to be "Subtly Mature" not "Aggressively Adult"

I’d honestly love a Kuuga reboot that takes inspiration from the manga.

Voicelugger, written by og creator of Rider, Ishinomori. It’s a parody of sentai that eventually becomes darker, but maintains the spirit of it. The full series is on YouTube.

This is the kind of discussion we need to have here with regards to Western Toku fandom. Kids toku and adult toku are both valid and deserve to be in the zeitgeist. As you and the team mentioned, that risk for adult re-imaginings to overshadow the originals is definitely there, but that's for sure thanks to the lack of Showa Toku history in North America. Shin Ultraman won't overshadow the original Ultraman in Japan obviously since it won't be hard to find the show in Japan (in either video or streaming), but for us here in the States? Well, thanks to Mill Creek and Shout, that problem won't be as pronounced. KR on the other hand is another story (but thanks to Discotek, at least there's legal means for anyone here in the States to dip their toes in KR Black with regards to KR Black Sun). Nice editing for this video and good chat overall gang!

We need another Garo series. Vanishing Line is not just my favorite entry in the series but also one of my favorite anime of all time and I want to see where the story goes from there.

"Did you see sunrise" -Kotaro

14:13 I kinda agree with you here from my own personal experience. A while back I managed to get some of my friends to watch Kamen Rider Amazons. They were all interested by the concept, and one of them binged season 1 with his own friend group and loved it. To the point where he himself saw other seasons like Kuuga or Zero One, and even Shin Kamen Rider on opening night.

LMFAO at the abrupt offhand reference to Giga Toku series like Wakusaver.

This is a beautifully explored and well written post, by you! I also love that, when Sentai is referenced, shots of Dynaman are used. That's my personal favorite Sentai show. "Just get in a rock quarry, on some stunt wires, and blow shit up, with rapid zoom lenses for every shot!" It's the BEST show, in my opinion, Bioman just ruined everything with "plots". For me, I would also include Shin (not recent Shin), but Showa Shin, ZO, and J (the 90's movies) as adult iterations of Kamen Rider. First and Next were made more purposefully for adults, and they're basically perfect! There is a scene from Barom 1 (1972), where one of the boys is strapped to a medical table, and the henchmen are all dressed as surgeons, with masks on, and they are there to extract his eyes! There was a cultural, like Yokai, horror element to Tokusatsu that has long-since retreated. Violence and horror is probably the reason that these early shows couldn't be translated earlier. Kamen Rider Ghost should have been a horror-drama, but it was played as a kindergarten show. I've been watching a lot of Battle Hawk (1976) this weekend. It's AMAZING! It also looks like every Toei super robot anime from that time! It's just pure Go Nagai designs, with no adjustments for live action. Heroes and villains look like it's an amateur stage show, wearing pajamas! Yet, it's super violent and fun! I'm certainly not against shows like Amazons and Black Sun (I knew about the student protest movements in '60's and early 70's in Japan, so I loved that it was included) but I think you can find plenty of adult material in older shows before this. In Ultraman Taro, there is an episode where there is a haunted young girl who is irredeemable, by the end. The villain of the week is conquered, but she is still unsaved.

I think the reason why “adult”-type media of something for young demographics don’t work, is because the writers believe they HAVE to have everything be 18+. Despite adults are (probably) already watching shows and movies for younger viewers. Even in “kid”-type media, there are dark moments throughout. Amazons S1 worked for me, because the writing was great and the characters were interesting. Then with S2, it felt like there was no effort put in. Black Sun could’ve been great, if the episodes weren’t 45 minutes to 1 hour and if the show was written by someone who was very experienced with toku already (or at least, Rider itself) GARO works, because it’s similar to other toku: changing leads and monster of the week stories, followed by being 20 to 30 minutes per episode.

I would love a Tokusatsu app come out worldwide. I would pay monthly for sentai and kamen rider.

I think the reason why I enjoyed Amazons and Kuuga so much was because the shows took themselves very seriously, whilst still providing plenty of moments for lightheartedness and kindness, the creators of said shows were very aware of the dark and cruel worlds they crafted, yet they still treated its characters with care and respect, they felt like mature stories rather than just a stew of violence and grimdark edginess Wish we got more Tokus that took themselves seriously and didn't shy away from mature themes without falling for the trap of shallow edgyness, that was why Heisei era Kamen Rider succeeded where Shin Kamen Rider Prologue failed

The most recent episode of Geats had a pretty Kuuga moment with Keiwa/Tycoon Mf beat the shit out of a bunch of Jyamato without even equipping his Desire Driver

As a big fan of Nexus, I actually like that they ended it within 37 episodes. The thing about Nexus was that the plot kept moving forward with almost no filler-like episodes that you'll often see in typical Ultraman shows and that made Nexus a solid season.