What Kamen Rider Amazons Could Mean for the Future of Toei Tokusatsu
With the premiere of Kamen Rider Amazons there seems to be a sense of change in the air for the Toei franchises of tokusatsu. A sense that maybe, just maybe, things may be changing in the house of Ishinomori. Are these good changes? Bad changes? Or are they going to happen at all? Well let me guide you through a couple potential things that Amazons could be suggesting about the future.
Well first thing’s first, with Amazons it feels like that Toei is seemingly going to be more willing to embrace darker and more violent content. Now on first glance this seems a bit pandering and very superficial; what better way to draw in a larger crowd than mindless violence? Now I do think this line of thinking still holds true, but on a more positive note it is a bit more liberating from an action and storytelling standpoint. It means that Toei won’t be limited to stories and action set pieces that are appropriate for children, thus freeing them up to a wider range of choices. However I am a bit worried that this might end up with violence and edginess for the sake of violence and edginess and that dark things will happen in programmes, but without any purpose; something that puts me off of shows such as Game of Thrones where I feel the darkness is there sometimes for shock value.
A willingness to embrace a darker tone may also in fact affect the visuals of later programmes as well, if they follow suit in the same manner as Amazons. There may be darker colour palettes, less clean mise-en-scènes (an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production); sparser designs overall and overall a grittier look. Again this could go both ways as too much of it would just be frustrating, but just enough could be new and interesting. But overall a willingness for darker tinged programmes and tones could bode well for future Toei Tokusatsu projects.
However there is a clear and distinct reason why Toei may be and is pursuing a darker tone: streaming. Possibly to follow in the footsteps of Netflix originals, but mostly likely not considering that Toei and Japan on the whole hasn’t embraced the streaming service and its ethos, Kamen Rider Amazons is being released by the most obvious play on words ever, Amazon Prime. Now as I said earlier this allows for a different kind of content as Toei is now not afraid of TV standards and practices; which could mean, again, darker programmes that break the usual mould of Toei tokusatsu. But more series being streamed online also means a great shift in length and pacing, as evidenced by Kamen Rider Amazons’s episode length and planned number of episodes (46 minutes and 13 episodes respectively). With a longer run time and a shorter amount of episodes, two things could happen: more focused stories that have less fillers due to fewer episodes needing to be written; and more time for plots to breathe in each individual episodes. The first possibility is quite self-evident, but the second requires a bit more explanation.
With most Kamen Rider and Super Sentai series’ they either have single episodes stories that are truncated so as to fit within just one episode, or have stories that run over two episodes. Now for followers of my work you know I hate this, but for those who don’t I’ll explain why. By splitting episodes across two episodes, all the time rather than sparingly, cliff-hangers become less impactful and with Toei tokusatsu, they tend to be solved within the first five minutes of the second half. Sometimes this works in the case of mystery focused series like Kamen Rider W, but most of the time it falls flat. What having longer episodes mean is that we get a mostly full plot within an episode, there would be no more pointless cliff-hangers that remove all tension. If Toei elects to have longer episodes with their series and shorter series’ overall, we could get more quality out of their tokusatsu.
Another thing that streaming Amazons suggests is that, well, Toei seems to be more willing to embrace the internet and how a large proportion of the population consumes media. As I was looking for various bits of information for this article on the Japanese Amazon site, I noticed that they have a lot of past Kamen Rider and Super Sentai series and movies available for Amazon Prime members to stream. I don’t know how long they have been there, but it does certainly bode well for Japanese viewers since it means that these older series can be watched easily. Combine that with the knowledge that Toei is allowing for the subbing and release in the west of older Super Sentai series, we could MAYBE one day get Kamen Rider and more recent Sentai being streamed in the west. But again, Amazons’ release suggests a greater embrace of streaming platforms.
Additionally, Amazons suggests that Toei may be willing to make projects that are less fuelled by toys and concerns surrounding the selling of those products. Yes there is going to be a DX Kamen Rider Amazons henshin belt to be released, however beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be any more toys coming out of the series. This means that Toei is willing to make projects that aren’t shackled down by toy release schedules and gimmicks that affect the premises of their shows, at least on smaller projects. This just means more freedom to create for Toei and I welcome it, as long as they maintain this attitude with their smaller projects. Why? Well if they got rid of this attitude with their main TV shows, they would lose a lot of their revenue and I personally feel like the toys are sometimes the most enjoyable parts of the programmes.
But the fact that the series exists in the form it does in the first place has major implications in regards to future projects. Again, apart from the darker tone, Amazons suggests that Toei is willing to gamble and genuinely try new things, rather than sticking to the tried and true formula available on the airwaves now. From now on Toei may want to produce smaller, more out there experiments like this that try something new with the properties and resources available to the studio. There is now a chance for Toei to move beyond what they already do and genuinely innovate like the used to before. I don’t particularly hate the way Kamen Rider and Super Sentai series are done nowadays, in fact I love it. But to have smaller weird experiments like Amazons on top of that? Sign me up.
