#And desperately wishes he was Yasuko Kobayashi and/or Toshiki Inoue

[kizuike]

I think I haven't had the bit about why I won't fb if you mostly post Madoka in my dni in a while so if anyone has questions as to why: I recognize how much it means to the large amount of people (especially WLW) who watched it as tweens/young teens and had some Realizations because of it, and I have nothing against the vast majority of its fans, but I'm not very comfortable with frequently seeing uncritical praise of a series about young teenage girls written by a man whose other best known work is a lolicon eroge (which is something I almost never see Madoka fans acknowledge outside of still very rare vague "Urobuchi is kinda weird" statements)

[des-shinta]

Been watching older Super Sentai, heard from some friends that newer super sentais have been suffering in ratings/sales than the older ones. Do you have any idea why that is?

4 answers I can give you, and in the grand scheme?  it’s likely all of them compounding each-other.The first is, there’s just a LOT more television stations out there than there used to be.  toei’s “Super Hero Time” block is 18 years old, and our equivalent of it (saturday morning kids programming blocks) Died in 2014 because there were cable stations out there which superceeded it.  That, and TV Tokyo’s programming, on average, has been far stronger for the same timeslot.  To not even get into streaming and digital media services that are also competing, which also did coincide with the original and most singificant viewership drop that began with Boukenger, but mostly seemed to stabilize with Go-Onger through Gokaiger.

2; this is the largest issue for the most part; Japan’s population is stagnant and declining.  Fewer Children have been born per year since the 90′s primarly because of the “Lost Decade” I mentioned in my reviews of Ohranger; people are more focused on trying to get by monetarily and often live at home (And yet are not called lazy by their parents for doing so as if it’s not something shameful, I hate millenial condemnations), and due to social/cultural constructs it’s more difficult to get attached to others romantically due to the expected distance and detachment in public settings; thus a large amount of the population are single and not looking to date; not helped by how their media rarely showcase people trying to date; harem comedies and similar wish fullfillment media a more preferred form of outlet for some than going out to try and connect with a real-life person.Or, in women’s case, there’s a similar societal expectation that once a woman becomes married and/or pregnant, they must permanently leave their job to become a stay-at-home parent and never return to employment, so many that wish to have a business-career in the modern age intentionally forgo dating. Made worse by (as an additonal stigma) single-income family’s not being able to support themselves anymore; so coupled with the prior points about social constructs concerning Mothers working, any money they might spend to spent on essentials, and less on Toys/games.So on both sides, No relationship?  No people making babies.Thus, Toei, with how they’ve been directing their shows to be more adolescent, are doubling down on monopolizing an ever-shrinking market, instead of trying to make their shows more accessible to a wider demographic….or their attempts to do so end up juvenile garbage, so default back to the more blatantly silly stuff.

This is the biggest one, as it’s something which has been mapped already by people studying the phenomena, and Sentai’s decline in ratings perfectly matches this population curve; but is still compounded by the former and following 2 points and informs why they’re influential, as due to a series that’s run for over 40 years there’s teen/adult fans that still exist which can choose to pick up the slack if it appeals outside the aimed-at child demographic like their shows used to.

3: Inflation and the appeal of merchandising.  This is a big one, as coupled with the increase in Merchandising via toyetic gimmicks since Go-Onger it’s something that makes it more difficult for collectors to collect stuff.  Due to the merchandising gimmicks, it’s encouraged fans to buy more, thus inflating sales to offset other cost-based issues.  But if the gimmick isn’t appealing (Ala Gobusters), that can severely hurt sales for a series that otherwise would not have been viewed a flop.  This is one of the more critical things, as it’s more important for toei and bandai to see that end-of-sales paycheck than anything, which means they’re ingoring other problems and thus leads to…

4:The writing’s just sucked, repetitious, been censored or been found unappealing by the masses.  Now this is three-fold; Toei has a lack of talented people to write for them right now, either from draining their talent dry over years and years of using them (Yasuko Kobayashi, Toshiki Inoue), scared them off from their horrific mismanagement and the disrespect shown to them from a caustic production environment (Riku Sanjou, Shigenori Takadera/Takatera, I always forget if it’s a T or D), or not giving the correct oversight to their newer talent so their writing flaws are more prevalent among producer mandates and anything else at toei that may be conflicting with their make.the second  Part of this comes from the ever-frustrating moral guardians which neuter Toei’s better productions.  Pretty much every time Toei tries to do something cool, over-protective moronic parents come out of the woodwork to complain, and those complaints have more weight than people criticising more critical things, as they have the backing of censorship board that after complaints will look at a show more critically even when it’s unecessary.  As Usually the parents that complain are those that don’t actually bother to watch the shows with their kids, so don’t actually know what the fuck they’re talking about.I mean, we have that right now in the US with both adult/mature cartoons and video games being complained about their content, despite moron parents buying their kids copies of call of fucking duty (and yes I’ve seen this happen) as they think just because it’s a game/animated it’s all automatically kids stuff and don’t bother to do actual parenting by explaining crap to their kids.  They’d rather just censor it wholesale instead of have them learn what they should and should not do, and sometimes actual educational shows can be just as damning with broken Aesops even the young kids can see plain as day (The starlight glimmer mess for MLP FIM I’ve mentioned elsewhere on social media in how they have yet to not make her act like a sociopath and have thus ruined other more interesting or liked characters by proxy).

In example of this for kamen Rider, I read an article containing a Gen Urobuchi interview about his tenure on Gaim (http://00tn2.blogspot.com/2016/04/katarou-555-blade-hibiki.html), who revealed that Fourze  (despite being the Second highest-selling kamen rider series PERIOD after OOO to the tone of 27 BILLION YEN!)  was considered a black-sheep at toei (and why Sota Fukushi’s apparently been blacklisted by them) because these parental watchdogs complained about how Gentaro Kisaragi looked like a traditional Hooligan/Teenage gangster and thus bad influence…WHEN THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF WHY HE LOOKED THAT WAY!  His character and mannerisms were made to contradict and destroy an outdated perspective on that, as part of the series theme was looking past the basic appearances of those around you to see the truth of that person.

But as a consequence of these asinine assholes, Toei is very afraid to do anything new, and thus the third part of this subset: they copy or straight rip-off what they think are their past successes,so such can be a nice safe show for them in bank on as that worked before…only for it to be found they have done them in worse ways nearly every time.  Because…THEY DID THAT SHOW ALREADY!  And the NEW show is not giving any new nuance to what was already done before, or sabotages any chance for there to be something good in and of itself as either A: they don’t give it, instead preferring to rely more and more increasingly on stock character roles which can be plugged into any situation; or B: Someone or thing superceeds that focus with respect to both story and character.

In this last case, it’s what I have been condemning with Toei’s shows for some time, Inappropraite stuffed-into-the-show comedy (A recurring thing with Toei that does go back Decades) and/Or Insufferable red Sentai that steal the show from the other cast members.  And we’re having that problem right now with Kyuranger; Idiot red hero, and once they hit the fourth episode everyone came to the realization that they’re ripping off Gokaiger

But they only put in that silliness and began to glorify the idiot (thus tying all these points together) to try and appeal down to the Shortbus brigade demographic of small children that are shrinking in number every year after there was that one show where it seemed to work (kyoryuger) because it was actually well written even if it was flawed.  The more juvenile it gets and the less justified it’s comedy and story focus are, the fewer people from older demographics that were fans will watch it, as there is now PLENTY of other things they could be watching now that will appeal to them more.  And the less people pay attention to the show, the fewer people will buy their merchandise until they get desperate, and thus the cycle will start all over again.

That’s all I got.