Tokusatsu

The roots of the tokusatsu genre date back to 1954, with the first Godzilla movie. Godzilla stood out because of two things: First, the technique used to create the monster, called “suitmation”. Suitmation consisted of an actor wearing a costume of the monster; it was a cheaper alternative to stop-motion, the “CGI” of the time. This technique revolutionized Japanese film-making, and it is still used today, as Power Rangers can show. In my opinion, this is much cooler than stop-motion. The other factor to the King Of Monsters’ success was the fact that the movie is an allegory to the atomic bomb, a tragedy that ravaged Japan. Godzilla is a destructive creature, obliterating everything it encounters while leaving a trail of radiation where it passes. However, it does not do so out of malice; the big lizard is a victim of atomic bombs just like the Japanese people, it is in pain just like everyone else. Godzilla started a trend in cinema called “Kaiju Boom”, with many giant monster movies being made. Some years later, in 1966, Tsubaraya Productions released Ultra Q and Ultraman, two shows that transported the kaiju genre from the movies to television, and the latter even spawned a number of imitators, creating the subgenre of “kyodai hero”: Giant heroes fighting giant monsters. Then, in 1971, came Kamen Rider. Kamen Rider revolutionized the tokusatsu genre in many ways: First, it feature a regular sized hero fighting humanoid monsters (the “kaijins”). Second: The hero, despite already having a body much more powerful than the average human, had to train in order to become a proper combatant. Third: Both hero and monsters had the same origin: They were genetically and cybernetically altered humans, created by the evil organization Shocker. This overlaps with the fourth item of the list: The monsters are victims of Shocker just like the hero and the very people they kill. The only thing that prevented Kamen Rider from becoming a kaijin under Shocker’s command was the fact that he managed to escape from Shocker’s laboratory before suffering brainwash. This makes the hero reluctant to fight the monsters, and regretful in destroying them. Four years later, in 1975, came Himitsu Sentai Goranger, a show featuring a group of five color coded heroes fighting monsters that become giant after being destroyed. This is the first show of what would become the Super Sentai franchise, which would in turn have its shows adapted to western audiences as Power Rangers. My interest for the tokusatsu genre started with the shows Madan Senki Ryukendo and Kamen Rider Dragon Knight – and adaptation of the Japanese show Kamen Rider Ryuki. Although I have already known about Ultraman, it were these two that sparked my liking for the thing. I think what made me so involved with those shows was the solid and mature storytelling they provided –even Ryukendo, that is very comedic-. Since I met these shows I began to research about tokusatsu on the internet to learn more about the genre. After some time, I decided to create my own tokusatsu hero. At the time I thought the word “Slash” sounded pretty cool, so I decided to call my hero “Slashman”. Slashman was created as a comic book, since I used to make a lot of -terrible – comics at the time. I made a total of sixteen issues that you can read here: http://hfablogs.blogspot.com/search/label/Slashman I spent my whole teens working on this story, until the day I realized I was running in circles. Fortunately, now I have –or at least I think I have- a better understanding of how things work and I hope I will to finally find the destination of my journey, wherever it may be.