How long should a tokusatsu season be?

Personally, I'm a fan of the roughly 50 episode, not counting movies and specials, season ep count. But, that's just me.

The dip in quality on Kabuto started when Hyper Kabuto properly debuted, from that point on, Clock Up battles were more or less nonexistent, replaced by the less impressive Hyper Clock Up

As for Sentai, Donbrothers is anything but episodic, at least so far, the monsters and fights are almost like an afterthought and takes a backseat to the story/drama

This was a really interesting video!

Good job to the new editor, you did a great job! (Also thanks for shilling History of Ultra Q)

I feel like debating this is fun and all but it doesn't really do much because we are not the one in charge of the company. A shame but it is what it is.

Personally I think 50 episodes gets to be a problem when its 50 Episodes plus plot relevant side content. if you can skip the movies and Vcinema releases and not miss anything then 50 is honestly not that bad.

Plus Episodes of toku tend to be Half length episodes. most shows, especially in the west, will have 45-50 minuite episodes in seasons of 24, where as your average Kamen Rider episode is only half of that, clocking in at about a 25 minuite runtime in seasons of 50. this means that, again, ignoring Movies and side content, the actual amount of time to complete a rider season is equivalent to the amount of time it takes to finish almost any other TV show.

But also shorter shows are great and the epiosode counts make it hard for people to get into some of these series's so... yeah.

25 to 30 in my opinion. Nice video :3

TL;DR around 50 episodes in a year

The bigger question IMO is balancing plot-heavy episodes vs "filler"

40-50's good. 65 is too much. Looking at you, Ultraman Cosmos.

Heres what i recommended if anyone is staring an already finished season. Take Build for example a 49ep season sounds long but when you cut it down to 3eps a day, which is about 90mins. It only takes about 17 days to finish it.

As someone who watched Ex-Aid as their FIRST ever toku season in general....


Fuck do I regret it lmao, way too much to start with.

I'm goin need this for my rider animation series xD





Also Tokufun ftw-

On the subject of anime with a tokusatsu flair, I strongly recommend Shikizakura.

If you've seen any Kamen Rider from the past 3 years, you will pick up on this show really quickly.

Short seasons only work if the plot of the show allows it do. Ultra Series like Ginga, Orb, R/b etc. work as shorter seasons because they are non traditional Ultraman shows. While a series like Trigger falls sort because they are more traditional In approach, yet they lack the episode count to tell a “complete” story.

I'm fond of thirty-something episode seasons, a la Zubat, Metalder, Sazer-X, Stronger, or Disney-era Power Rangers. I've been watching a lot of Sentai recently, and sagging in the middle is a very common issue with them. Shorter seasons as with older Garo can work well (especially if they're largely episodic like Flower of Makai,) but too much plot leaves no room for one off episodes (especially with a 12 episode season), which I really value in tokusatsu

Someone force Marco to watch SSSS Gridman.

I have gotten my GF into watching Double with me. She seems to enjoy it. And laugh every time slipper girl dose her slipper gimmick....i just don't like her to make it easy to explain.

I think it all depends on how much room the story needs to breathe. Some Toku stories are pretty straight forward, some are really convoluted. I thought Amazons could have used more episodes, cause season one spends tons of time on set up and exposition, and the show doesnt really get to let loose with the drama till season two. On the other hand, a show like Agito spends tons of episodes on weird and irrelevant plot points, and could benefit from having less room to indulge in that stuff. But imo I actually like the longer shows in general even when theyre messy or a little boring. Theres so many cool ideas in Kamen Rider I would rather see them explored than not.

I grew up watching mighty morphin on vhs then years later one of my closest friend came to me with kamen rider i started with exaid as my first dive in the source material and got hooked ever since

Honestly, for most of the series I'd say the 45-52 episodes are worth it. Some of them can be boring but you can appreciate parts of them. Wizard severely suffered from having 80% of the series be episodes with nothing to appreciate (alongside having terrible side characters and a meh main and secondary rider) due to having very little story to tell. If the story of Wizard was told in 25 episode max, it would have been seen in a much better way in the fanbase, I think.

I love Kamen Rider Build. It's my favourite KR series (I watched, on that order: Kabuto, Build, Ex-Aid, Black, Faiz and Dragon Knight). What do that people means by "the 14 first episodes are all you need to watch"? Following this advice, you would lose the "Three States War" Saga and the Evolt Saga, and the big plot twist about Sento Kiryu!

Also, Ex-Aid is my second favourite KR series. I loved how the 4 main characters were modeled after real-life medical archetypes. I liked this series so much that I'm even writing a superhero story where the protagonist is inspired on Ex-Aid.

when talking about episode length it is hard to particularly do so, when tokusatsu is really diverse with many goals. for example, Ultraman( not a particular fan ) and Garo are more monsters of the week stories usually since they rarely focus on the main plot much which is not a bad thing unless it leaves things loose thus annoyance of why waste the time on those when the main plot is being ignored so much(original season of Garo for example). while I would say Kamen rider black and onward focused on their own stories while having filler episodes that are good one and done( with character moments ) with an overarching plot so that plot just keeps on happening with no breathing space. which can work well enough unless, of course, the writer doesn't want to actually focus on that cough agito* cough*.
is 50 to much? sometimes? like agito could have been shorter if it wasn't so strangled to be that long with stupid pointless conflict sure. or with ryuki just ending on episode one with none of it matter. that not to say that filler isn't good it just depends on what the show doing since sometimes it needed to just let the audience breathe since sometimes its plot can be buried and be too dense to make you care since it now basically dumping a lot on you with little regard. on the other hand, the bad filler is just wasting time while being just bad with nothing of real interest (ex one piece.)though you can also have great filler like one piece since you can get a fun side event with the story and maybe let you connect to a character you didn't like previously.
is 12 to 25 enough sometimes again it depends on the plot itself and what their main focus is on. I dont think it bad idea to less epsidoes overall but at the same time, it not like really losing anything by having it longer ( not showa level length no just no ).

But if the seasons are shorter, what happens with the forms and upgrades?
It's better to get lesser or getting new ones every 1-3 episodes?

Ex-aid: The Neo Heisei's Den-O

So not recommending Ultraman?

Glad I’m not the only person who feels this way about Kamen Rider, I love it but there are a lot of seasons I’ve caught and felt were bloated. I think the two-episode-structure of the early Heisei Phase 2 shows made this issue especially glaring

Never thought I’d see Tokuzilla used lol

As someone who got into Toku very gradually by coming from being a lifelong Power Rangers fan, I'm very much used to long, episodic series. But on the other hand I'm also one to prefer shorter more serialized shows in recent years, which having only in the last couple years gotten into Kamen Rider feels like that'd be the better way to handle those sorts of shows (particularly because Revice is the first I've actually been watching and good GOD does that show drag). I've not gotten into Ultraman or Garo yet, but I definitely have been wanting to try the former so hearing that the seasons are far shorter is definitely a bonus

The perfect episode length for how long a Tokusatsu show should be for me personally would be around 40-45 episodes 👍

to me its based on its theme and how large or well developed its cast are.

if the cast are great but their characters tend to jump from one development/personality then i tend to want it to be shorter but if the story follows a growing cast then i tend to wish its longer in order for them to reach their full character development.

Considering how episodic and slow these tend to get - the less the better. I wish toku lasted the same as standard seasonal animes do. 12-26 episodes. 30 is max.

year long, please.....and I'm lookin at YOU Tsuburaya...start making NEW kaiju for every episode

Very "legal" ways

i currently started watching gime (( idk how to spell it right XD )) so far i like the start

Personally I would like kamen riders season to be 48-52 episodes and 1 season should be divided into 3 or 4 story arc. Each arc will have 12-13 episodes. The current story arc can have a setup plot/foreshadowing for the future story arc without disturbing the main plot of the current arc, meanwhile future story arc will be new main plot and should not heavily rely on the main plot from the previous story arc so that it can be an easy guide for the viewers to choose from what story arc they wanted start to see. Filler episodes should only have 1-2 episodes each arc but no filler episodes in the final arc. Special episodes, short movies, vcinema and etc should not heavily related to the main series main plot but only focus on the side characters that exist in the main series. The side characters doesn't need to be a kamen rider or becoming a new kamen rider in their side story cause I'm tired of this trend. As for the movies, each kamen rider seasons should've 1 movie, 1 crossover with previous season, 1 crossover with future season, 1 anniversary movie/short movies/vcinema and etc. Their crossover movie like heisei generations should be released every 5 years.

I think it should be 20 episodes

I'm getting the feeling that Gekko Kamen has some inspiration for Great Saiyaman

Yeah am I bringing Exie is good except for the level of zero suit yep it’s one of the most ugly suits just saying it looks bulky and I don’t know why

I think it should point out that the original showa era kamen rider series were typical monster-of-the-week show, just like sentai. I have no problem with filer episdes as there were plenty of good ones. The recent Ultraman series often filled rushed even there were episde. Garo Venus is another example where it seems to be rushed and the story felt incomplete.

Yo

I feel like it depends on the show, but the current year long 45-50 episodes works best. For Sentai for example it has 5 main characters so you need lots of filler and MOTW stories to get to know all of them, since in most plot arcs only a few characters get focus. 12 is too short, UNLESS it's only about a single hero with a small cast of characters. 25 works for Ultraman because it usually doesn't have as many heroes as Sentai or Rider, but other than older Rider shows with only one hero I think it would be too short for Sentai or modern Rider because characters would get left ignored. As it is there are still some characters that are criminally underused. If you are just tired of a show and ready to move on by episode 20 or whatever that's more a flaw in that particular shows writing. There have been shows I'm just sick off past a certain point but most of those shows I don't really care for in general.

As far as spinoffs and follow ups I actually love those since it's nice to see what characters are up to and that their adventures didn't just end after their year was up, and it's usually been long enough since we've seen them that they're kind of fresh again. The only problem is when they keep bringing the same characters back over and over though I understand a lot of that is due to actor availability and usually it's the same people that want to come back while some others are so busy and famous they never will.

Yeah, the length and sheer amount of toku in general is what keeps me away from being a bigger fan. I've dedicated the time to a few full seasons here and there, but because I have other interests/I'm a working adult, sinking that much time into toku is daunting as hell. I'd love to watch more, but I'm a movie buff first and foremost, and I can watch, like, a dozen films I've never seen before in the time it takes to complete one toku season.

Toku fans outside of the USA and NA are still screwed for anything that isn't Ultra

I think one year it’s enough to for a Toku series. 50 episodes is good number. But if the series is good enough, I am in favor of a second season.

I think 45-50 is the bare minimum for tokusatsu shows, newer ultraman series are in the 20 episodes because of ratings and toys and other stuff being shoved in every commercial break, but I can look past fair for the characters, heroes and monsters

my favorite era is heisei phase 2

I haven't found a toku show that I have watched all the way through. Almost everything I've seen is not very good. Over acting, screaming and that silly surprised look that the actors get on their face. I just can't take it seriously.