thread: News

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  1. #1
    Administrator Shir's Avatar
    Mar 2011
    420

    News

    A little announcement.
    As for today we will continue with our Maskman releases. We are sorry for the wait.

    Also we have a new member on our team. Filadelfo, the former translator of EJF has decided to join GUIS to work on Fiveman.
    A handful of scripts are ready for a last QC. You can expect the project starting in a few weeks.

    Also the co-founder, MaskedShuuyu, will have more free time soon. In other words we'll have Bioman for you guys soon.

    And last but not least. After I come back from a little trip from Japan we will rampage through the Liveman V2s and a special project our perverted member virushopper is working on.

    All good news.

    Meanwhile please enjoy Zyuranger and Maskman.
    Last edited by Shir; 10-13-2012 at 05:46 PM.

  2. #2
    Junior Member
    Dec 2011
    28
    OMG Fiveman!!! Thank you so much!!!!

  3. #3
    Junior Member
    Mar 2011
    28
    Fiveman? I read somewhere that Fiveman was the worst Sentai program next to Dynaman. Particularly, people were turned off by the whole notion of their being such an overt educational aspect, and less of an emphasis on action and violence.

    *shrugs* looking forward to more Maskman and Bioman, and its awesome that you guys are so close to finishing Zyuranger, which is more than can be said for TVNihon's efforts. In addition, i'm glad you guys are going to plow through the Version 2's of Liveman. Looking forward to what you guys have in store.
    Last edited by BiomicSolider3000; 10-14-2012 at 04:40 AM. : too short

  4. #4
    Super Watch Panda
    Mar 2011
    296
    Fiveman? I read somewhere that Fiveman was the worst Sentai program next to Dynaman. Particularly, people were turned off by the whole notion of their being such an overt educational aspect, and less of an emphasis on action and violence.
    Reading someone's opinion and watching the actual the program are two totally different things.

    Watch it and make up your conclusion.

  5. #5
    Junior Member
    Mar 2011
    28
    Reading someone's opinion and watching the actual the program are two totally different things.

    Watch it and make up your conclusion.
    Good point. I'm always curious about various Tokusatsu programs, and no doubt there's much to appreciate about certain programs that aren't ncessarily the most popular or even the most widely known.

    still, I always like to be well informed about things, plus the critique I read was very informative and didn 't seem as colored by personal opinions, and is more or less dictated by well researched facts. here's the review itself:

    Continuing with the trend towards a "kids-only" mentality for the Super Sentai series that started with "Highspeed Task Force TURBO-RANGER", Toei went to the extreme with this program, making FIVEMAN perhaps one of the most baffling and inane Sentai entries ever, alienating the older viewers completely in favor of a 100% focus on kids.

    Most of the stories in FIVEMAN were lesson-oriented, mainly because the motif and the professions of the team members were scholastic. Each episode tried to "teach a lesson" and ended with a lot of warm, heartfelt, and "mushy" conclusions. While this may be acceptable or even expected from the heroes, the same situations applied for the villains, as the members of ZONE suffered their weekly defeat because they lacked the comprehension to learn a lesson. Many times in the season, the ZONE villains were completely made out to be fools and almost became a joke on their own, as they suffered through plots such as "We're subservient to our faceless legions of goons for one day" or "We're stuck in a merry-go-round and we're getting dizzy" scenes.

    Because of this kid-friendly approach, a lot of the stories involved the kids in the school that the Fiveman team taught in, and the only "tense" sub-plot was that the Hoshikawa family didn't know if their parents were still alive on Shidon, which once again brought the focus back to what kids usually wish for above all else--to be a complete family with mom & dad.

    The kids-oriented plan also made the writers cut stories at locations that were kid-friendly, such as amusement parks, carnivals, the schoolyards, at kids sporting events, etc. This intense focus on doing "on location" episodes at places like circuses or ballparks only heightened Toei's commitment for a safer, gentler Sentai program.

    With the Fiveman team being the first all-family Sentai force, there was also a big emphasis on "obeying the sibling structure" of not disobeying the eldest brother, or older brother coming to help little sister out, which once again came back to the lesson-of-the-week idea.

    The acting was standard--not horrible, but nothing noteworthy about them either. Only actress Ikezawa Haruna (Five Yellow) returned to play another role in tokusatsu in "Ninja Task Force KAKU-RANGER" and actor Fuji Toshiya (Five Red) came back to play a cameo role as one of Shurikenja's multiple secret identities in "Stealth Wind Task Force HARIKENJA". Actor Konishi Kunio (Five Black) started out as a semi-regular on "Mobile Police JIBAN", but otherwise, the rest of the cast did not do any other notable tokusatsu features.

    The action scenes were standard as well, but FIVEMAN did something no other tokusatsu feature ever did again, which was trying to cut costs on filming scenes. While its a given that a lot of TV shows find ways to cut corners and save money on filming scenes, it was FIVEMAN's method of connecting scenes in between and saving money that nearly destroyed the Sentai franchise for any viewers older than the age of five.

    To save film, or to cut budget, or if it was just simply a horrible idea, Toei decided to introduce in episode #23 the "Five-Kun Ningyos", five plush hand puppets in the shapes and colors of the Fiveman team, plus a plush, non-threatening version of Zone Commander Garoa as the Five-Kun Ningyos' foe "Garoa-Don". Each time a scene was exercised out but needed to connect the previous scene with an upcoming scene, a scene with the Five-Kun Ningyo hand puppets would appear, and explain what was happening offscreen (which the viewers did not get to see due to budget restrictions) and then with their super-high pitched kiddie voices, would humiliate the Garoa-Don hand puppet with childlike jokes and quips, which then would cause the Garoa-Don puppet to go back underneath the table.

    This "feature" went on for numerous episodes, always at moments where the filming required the Fiveman team to simply be at a totally different location, but how they got there was never filmed. The Five-Kun Ningyos would "tell the viewers" where the team was at, then tried to parlay another cute lesson or moral before the scene switched back to the team for real. This was also done to cross-promote the Five-Kun Ningyos on sale at the crane game skill machines where kids could go win toys.

    This process was so unbelivabely horrifiying to any Sentai watcher over a decent age, especially for the older teen-to-young adults crowd that remained loyal to the franchise. The fact that plush, soft, cuddly, hand puppets with shrieking toddler voices was explaining the plot to them was enough to plunge the ratings to a startling all-time low. Droves of viewers hoping that the toys would go away were subjected to more appearances, and by the time the feedback of poor ratings finally reached to the production executives, the damage was done, and the older viewers permanently stayed away.

    The Five-Kun Ningyos were eventually phased out, but not before the show had lost a lot of credibility. This idea was so reviled by fans that many books on Super Sentai have not acknowledged the Five-Kun Ningyos at all. The most glaring omission of the puppets came from the tokusatsu industry standard publisher, Terebi-Kun, which puts out their annual "Chozenshu" (Super Complete Encyclopedia) of each tokusatsu program they help sponsor. Terebi-Kun has sponsored nearly every tokusatsu program for over 30 years, and their Super Sentai Chozenshus have completely ignored and deleted any mention of the puppet version of the Fiveman team, which is incredible considering that the books cover every bit of a program and is considered the definitive tokusatsu compendiums by both producers and hardcore fans as a "bible" on any show they cover. To this day, other Sentai book publishers have conveniently "forgotten" to mention this public relations debacle.

    With weak plots, unmemorable acting, standard action scenes, and a serious mistake in helping to promote toys by including them as plot essential devices, FIVEMAN became one of the least liked Sentai programs of all time and a ratings disaster. With their public relations faux pas, Toei decided to win back their older fans (who were the ones with money to buy Sentai items in the first place), by going 180 degrees different with the next Sentai show--a move that not only saved the franchise's image, but offered what the industry, the critics, and the fans have considered the greatest Sentai program ever.

  6. #6
    Super Watch Panda
    Mar 2011
    296
    Heh, just watch the show when it comes out.

  7. #7
    Junior Member
    Mar 2011
    28
    Heh, just watch the show when it comes out.
    I'll give it a shot, at least, and then decide accordingly.

  8. #8
    Junior Member
    Jul 2012
    France
    19
    oh god Fiveman, that was unexpected, thank you \o/

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