I’ve had to help some people out with this recently and decided having a post up on here is way better than having to type up shit on twitter every time.
What Is Tokusatsu and Why You should Give It a Try
Tokusatsu are essentially Live-Action TV shows that make regular use of special effects, especially practical effects. An easy example of this would be rubber suits rather than CGI suits, although that’s not to say Tokusatsu shows don’t make use of CGI, especially today.
There’s not a whole lot to say about specific reasons to watch Tokusatsu, actually. At least, I don’t have a lot of words for it. If you’re the type that enjoys shonen anime, Japanese-developed video games, superhero comic books/cartoons, or even just Kung-Fu movies, you’d probably like Tokusatsu. They’re very much cut from the same cloth as a lot of other content you probably enjoy if you’re someone I linked this post to/who found their way to this blog naturally. Honestly, if you’re around my age at the time of writing(early-mid twenties) or older, the best sales pitch I can give you is that Tokusatsu are a great way of seeing a good version of all the shitty live-action anime adaptions we’ve had to sit through over the years. You’re tired of all that live-action slop that Netflix/Marvel/Whoever keeps throwing at you? Check out some tokusatsu series. They’re a stellar palette cleanser at worst in this scenario.
You know what you like. Do you like transformation sequences? What about cool fights with usually minimal CGI? Upstanding heroes and their quirky friends? Chances are that the answer to at least one of those was yes, and that means you’re in the right place.
What Are The Big Notable Franchises?
The ‘Big 3" of Toku as we’ll call em for now are Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Ultraman. These are the longest-running and most popular franchises in the genre, Rider & Sentai being owned by Toei and Ultraman by Tsuburaya. The Big 3 all have a new entry every single year. Think of them like Final Fantasy or Tales of games; each entry usually has nothing to do with the one before it, so you can always just pick the one that looks cool to you and jump in.
Kamen Rider typically follows a lone hero fighting against the odds, usually with powers with the same origin as those he’s fighting against. Super Sentai typically follows a team, sometimes uniform, sometimes dysfunctional, fighting against a threat. Lastly, Ultraman is usually a kind young man who ends up bonding with a giant of light, consequently gaining the use of said giant’s power and using it to defend the earth alongside a defense force that he usually hides his Ultraman identity from.
Outside of these, we have some smaller, but still notable fan-favorite series like Garo, Gridman, and more recently, Dogengers.
How Do I Watch(legally)?
Legally speaking, you are very limited in what and where you can find these series.
Power Rangers + Super Sentai
We are all familiar with Power Rangers. If you’ve seen Power Rangers, you’re already kinda-sorta halfway toku-pilled, my friend. Power Rangers, for the vast majority of its existence on TV, has been the action segments of Super Sentai with american actors and plotlines making up everything else. Our boy Tommy Oliver(RIP JDF!), the Green Ranger? In the OG Japanese Sentai, that’s Burai, the DragonRanger.
This is one of the easier transitions. If you’re a fan of PR, you’ll def be a fan of SS. Granted, not all the PR adaptions are 1:1, but you get the idea.
Staying on Power Rangers for a second, if you feel like having a nostalgia trip, several entire season are available officially on Youtube .
Sentai, to my knowledge, is available primarily on Shout! Factory.
Carranger (PR Turbo) Dairanger (No PR Counterpart) Gaoranger (Wild Force) Gingaman (Lost Galaxy) GoGoFive (Lightspeed Rescue) Hurricaneger (Ninja Storm) Jetman (No PR Counterpart) Kakuranger (Had some footage in MMPR season 3 & Alien Rangers) Megaranger (In Space) Ohranger (Zeo) Timeranger (Time Force) Zyuranger (MMPR)
Kamen Rider
Kamen Rider is barely here. To Toei’s credit, most Kamen Rider series have their first 2 episodes available on Youtube with subtitles. Besides that, it’s mostly Shout! factory again and Amazon randomly having Kamen Rider Agito & Crunchyroll having the W anime.
Agito on Amazon 555 on Amazon Shin Kamen Rider on Amazon
Ultraman
Shout! / Amazon
Orb Ultraman 80 Ace Cosmos Dyna Gaia Geed Ginga Leo Max Mebius Neos Nexus R/B Taro Tiga X
Youtube
Z Z English Dub Trigger Decker Blazar
Garo
Gridman
Gridman The Hyper Agent SSSS Gridman SSSS Dynazenon
I’m Willing to Raise the Flag!
If you’re not familiar with this, the primary way to watch most tokusatsu series is to torrent the shows. You download a bittorrent client(my preferred client being Deluge) , go to The Cat Site , filter to “Live-Action - English-Translated”, search the series you want, download your torrents, and open em and download em in your client.
Torrenting is a rabbit hole, and it’s very easy to get too comfortable and end up downloading something malicious. That being said, in my 2-3 years of downloading torrents for the specific purpose of watching tokusatsu, I haven’t had anything negative happen.
Some trusted names at this point would be Over-Time, Genm Corp, EiGo, & IzuSubs. There are some other folks I missed, but those names should be the most common ones you see.
Now, if you’re willing to torrent, the biggest jump in catalog size goes to Kamen Rider and Garo, who basically have their entire libraries open to you should you be willing to raise the flag.
You can find Dogengers batches at this wonderful blog .
Which Ones Do I Recommend to Start?
For kamen Rider, I usually recommend one of Kamen Rider Kuuga or Kamen Rider Geats. Kuuga is the quintessential Rider story; a lone hero fighting to protext the smiles of those around him despite all the enemies against him. It’s a simple story, but a moving one nonetheless, and you can’t go wrong with it. Geats, on the other hand, is basically modern Rider’s current best outing in my opinion. A confident, swaggy protagonist, an interesting plot, and fight scenes that modern comic book movies wish they could pull off. I know I gave it a bunch of shit back when it ended, but it is the best of the current bunch as far as I’m concerned and a very good look at how modern rider is.
For Sentai, Iwant to recommend Jetman and Donbrothers as starters, but they’re very atypical sentai, so while I love them, I wouldn’t necessarily tell someone to start with them if they’re trying to see if they like sentai. I think Timeranger is a much safer bet here; really solid story, and if you’re old enough, can give you some nostalgia for Tiem force while still giving you a new experience.
Ultraman Z is my recommendation for Ultraman. It was my first Ultraman and it got me in the vortex convincingly. Ultraman, and Garo/Dogengers/Gridman too, benefit from these more standard 25 episode seasons. Sentai and Rider can feel like they’re just doing whatever sometimes because they have 44+ episodes due to being year-round. Ultraman doesn’t have that problem.
For the other series I mentioned, It’s generally best to go in order; the seasons are much shorter(24-5ish compared to Rider/Sentai’s 40+) and there are generally less entries, so you don’t have much to chew through.