#ik part of it is because the early art was so much less refined

[mushroompollution]

wait earlier I was talking about how much I hate aging in this manga and like

these are all 14 year olds

[himitsusentaiblog]

Hi I need to do some research about classic toku do you have some series that you would recommend

Sure and thanks for the second part as well, that narrows things down just a little bit.

If you are going to look to classic tokusatsu, you need to start at the roots and that’s the work of Eiji Tsuburaya.  Tsuburaya pretty much pioneered what we think of as tokusatsu today through his work at Toho Studios in the 1950s and 1960s.  Everyone known his work (if not his name) because he was the director of special effects for Toho classic kaiju films including 8 of their Godzilla films (though he was only supervising on 3 of the later ones). He also worked on tons of other movies and I highly recommend some of them such as Frankenstein Conquers the World (Frankenstein vs. Baragon), The Mysterians and Matango.

However, it is his TV work that I absolutely love.  In the mid 1960s Tsuburaya decided to form his own production company and start producing high quality science fiction and fantasy programming for television.  His first series was Ultra Q, a weekly show about mysterious happenings and monsters that brought the thrill of kaiju home to the masses that they usually had to go to the theater to see. 

However, it was the follow up series, his first in full color, that really proved to be the huge hit he was seeking.  That show started the Kyodai Hero (Giant Hero) genre of tokusatsu TV shows by introducing a gigantic superhero to battle the monsters and aliens that would appear each week.  That show (and hero) was Ultraman.

I cannot stress how absolutely crucial Ultraman was to the history of TV tokusatsu.  There had been heroes on TV before (such as 1958′s Moonlight Mask and 1960s National Kid) but nothing like Ultraman. It is the series responsible for kicking off the second kaiju boom and taking tokusatsu out of the movie theater and into homes on a weekly basis.  

Though the first series is massively groundbreaking, I would actually venture that the second Ultra Hero show, Ultraseven, is the better series. It has a refined sense of storytelling, improved effects and better set designs than its predecessor.  It also has my favorite hero of the franchise in the title character.

Fortunately, all three of these series are available on DVD in the US at reasonable prices (seriously, if you shop around the Ultraman DVD set can be bought for like $10).

With any success comes imitators and those came fast on the heels of Ultraman. Shows like Ambassador Magma*, Iron King and Spectreman flooded the airwaves until by the early 1970s there was a glut of giants rampaging Japanese airwaves.

Heck, Toho even threw their hat into the ring with shows like Ike! Godman, Ike! Greenman and Ryuusei Ningen Zone (Zone Fighter) the last of which tried to up the star power by bring in Godzilla as recurring guest star.

By this point though, there were just too many giant heroes and the formula was growing a bit stale.  Tsuburaya could still get big ratings with Ultraman sequels but the derivatives were proving less and less popular with audiences.

That’s when the human-sized Henshin Heroes brought new life to the genre, starting with Kamen Rider. I won’t get into him too much as you already know his story and success but along with the Rider franchise came others, some from the same genius creator, Shotaro Ishinomori.  These shows included the amazing Jinzo Ningen Kikaida (Android Kikaider) about a robot hero battling the evil organization DARK while protecting the children of his creator and searching for their Father who is wandering Japan suffering from amnesia after escaping the forces of darkness. It spawned a sequel, Kikaider 01 that told the tale of the main hero’s android brother, an earlier prototype.

There was also Akumaizer 3, the story of three demons who have escaped their service to evil to defend humanity from their former allies.

It also had a sequel called Choujin Bibyun, which featured heroes based off of rejected Kamen Rider designs! The three heroes here were the reincarnations of the heroes from the previous series.

Oh and for recommendations, I would be remiss without mentioning Kaiketsu Zubat, a very unique show about a man travelling Japan and battling evil to find the man responsible for the death of his best friend. It has a very interesting hero named Ken Hayakawa who may actually be more interesting out of costume than in!

There are so many more I could talk about here like the Go Nagai created series Star of Pro-Wrestling Azteckaiser and Battle Hawk.

However, I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t mention the series that lead to me creating this blog, the first of a franchise that’s lasted to this very day, Himitsu Sentai Goranger.

This was the very first of the the Super Sentai series (though it wasn’t called that at the time), the series that would come to rule the airwaves in the next decade (the 1980s).

This is really only scratching the surface.  There are so many more shows I could go into but these really are the most important to the development of the art of tokusatsu on television.  I hope this helps with your research and thank you for the question!