It all started with Odagiri Joe. Before he played Kamen Rider Kuuga, the Kamen Rider series was almost dead in the water.  It hadn’t been on TV in years, and it was kept alive mostly by boys who wanted to grow up to be Kamen Rider and tokusatsu fans who had never really grown up.

With OdaJoe, the series discovered a third, even more profitable audience than young boys: the housewives who watch TV shows with their children.  The housewife crowd gobbled up OdaJoe’s wild good looks, calling him an ikemen (short for iketeru men, or “hot ‘n’ hunky dudes”) and throwing money at the Kamen Rider franchise.  Video sales, merchandise sales, even the ticket sales to the live shows went up thanks to Odagiri Joe’s primeval masculinity.

Always happy to squeeze extra money where they can, the production company went all-in on the ikemen hero.  Kamen Rider Agito featured not just one, but three sizzlingly hot kamen riders to draw in the ladies (reference pics available on the Toei site, like this picture of two smolderingly sexy Japanese men from ep 1 of Agito). Kamen Rider Ryuki in 2002 was probably the largest gathering of ikemen ever assembled outside of Johnny’s, as 12 (well, 13, but it’s a long story) smexy Kamen Riders were pitted against each other in a constant struggle to see who could make the poutiest faces at the camera and make the ladies swoon. Kamen Rider 555 (Fives/Phis) went one step further, turning even the monsters into adonises when they were in human form.

There are some interesting pieces of fallout to the Kamen Rider series’ discovery of a new audience to draw in.  First, the tokusatsu shows are fascinating sociological studies these days, as you can usually find a few kids who want to go home because it’s too hot out or they’re bored, but their parents keep them put because they want to see that cute hero come on stage.  Second, all of the other tokusatsu shows, from the annual X-ranger sentai shows to Ultraman, have taken the lesson and enlisted their own casts of good-looking people.  Gravure idols often fill out the pink ranger suit these days, while Ultraman… well, just take a look at Ultraman Dina’s blog.

And, for tonight’s final brain-breaking note on how the tokusatsu genre has changed to attract more diverse audiences, here’s the Mahou Sentai Magiranger (AKA Power Rangers: Mystic Force) ending sequence. Note that this was on the air a full year before the Haruhi dance thrust otagei into the spotlight…

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Burning, Fandom, Television, Win-Myun Kim, moe. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.