Tokusatsu Blu-rays from Discotek!

[lhb412]

While we've been waiting for Shout Factory to announce any more acquisitions or home video releases and for Mediablasters to actually give a release date to the set of films they acquired - all of a sudden Discotek comes from behind with the surprising announcement: Kamen Rider Black on blu-ray, loaded with extras, coming next year!


https://mobile.twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1584711977787543552

[Benjamin Haines]

Hell yes! Kamen Rider Black is my favorite of the seven Kamen Rider series that I've seen. The characters, the action, the designs, the music, the running story arc, the way it's halfway between the almost completely episodic approach of the original series and the heavily serialized approach of the Heisei shows — it all just hits the best balance.

It's crazy that by the end of next year there will be no fewer than three complete Kamen Rider series available on North American BRD. Here's hoping that Shout Factory can eventually release Ryuki and the original series on disc.

What else could Discotek be planning for this new Toku Time label? They've certainly come out swinging with Space Sheriff Gavan, Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds, and now this. It would be great if they kept releasing more Metal Hero and Kamen Rider shows but I wonder if they'll go for any more movies, namely other Toei films like The Green Slime or The Magic Serpent.

[lhb412]

Instead of releasing all the shows through one distributor (ala Ultraman) it seems Toei is offering up Rider series by series as different licenses. I kind of feel like Discotek might concentrate on the Showa side of things (Rider, Metal Heroes, other Ishinomori stuff) while Shout deals mainly with Sentai and Heisei Rider?

It seems we are entering a boom time of boutique labels licensing Asian genre material, whether it's Japan or Hong Kong, tokusatsu or martial arts or horror. Frankly, I think anything might be licensed in this environment. Stuff we never thought we'd get here.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ It definitely seems like anything is possible at this point. Things have come a long way from the days when the Showa Godzilla films were scattered among multiple distributors and Chaiyo had a stranglehold over Ultraman.

It looks like the new 10-episode series Kamen Rider Black Sun is already available on Prime Video. I'm currently 26 episodes into Kamen Rider Black RX, so just a little over halfway through, but that is the next Kamen Rider series on my watchlist.

[lhb412]

^ I'm excited to watch Black Sun and that new Guillermo del Toro series on Netflix, 2 shows I've been really anticipating - but my smart TV has reached a point where trying to watch anything longer than a short YouTube video makes it crash!

I'll pickup a roku stick in the next few days....

[Benjamin Haines]

Smart TV? Roku stick? Man, you're making me feel old-fashioned for still using a PS4 to watch streaming services. I just had to Google image search Roku stick because I didn't know what one looks like.

My lady and I watched the first episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities the other night. It's intense! I like how it's an anthology with a different director for each episode.

[lhb412]

^ I'm beginning to think the 'smart' part of smart TVs are about as powerful as a calculator.

As for Cabinet; it looks really cool! GDT hired some awesome directors to helm the individual episodes and largely was hands off with them aside from one respect; he was really involved with all the creature effects! There's all sorts of makeup and costume and puppet work in there!

[Benjamin Haines]

February 28 is the release date for Kamen Rider Black. It's available for pre-order now on RightStuf and Amazon, which apparently are the only two outlets that sell Discotek's products.

https://www.rightstufanime.com/Kamen-Rider-Black-Blu-ray
https://www.amazon.com/Kamen-Rider-Black-Blu-ray/dp/B0BQ5R9TQQ

[lhb412]

Kuuga from Shout in early Feb and Black from Discotek at month's end. Wow! Now we just need a date for MB's Kamen Rider movie set.

They also released specs for the plentiful extras on the Kamen Rider Black set, and they mysteriously allude to a one minute long extra that they're keeping secret for now. Speculation, of course, is that it's a teaser for a further set.

[Benjamin Haines]

Discotek will release Kamen Rider Black RX later this year!

https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1620249030822621186?cxt=HHwWhMDTnZf6o_wsAAAA

[lhb412]

Dang. And they said more toku is coming! (Also, they're releasing that Bullet Train movie I've always wanted to see).

And my rightstuf order with Black, Gavin and Ryuki should reach me by day's end!

(Almost) too much toku!

--- (edit, later that day) ---

Man. It feels surreal to have KR Black in my hands! This is something I've wanted for decades!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ All three of those shows are awesome! I look forward to reading your thoughts on them.


I watched Discotek's advert for Kamen Rider Black RX. It's not exactly spoilery but it does show a few things that I thought were cool surprises when I watched the series.

[lhb412]

Black RX has a release date of late August... but, remember, Rightstuf tends to ship stuff early!

https://www.rightstufanime.com/Kamen-Rider-Black-RX-TV-Series-Blu-ray

[lhb412]

Only partway into Gavin and haven't even started RX, but I'd just like to say that Discotek is really the peak in terms of home video presentations for this kind of material. The long-form interviews, liner notes, and packaging is just excellent. Only Arrow's Gamera and Daimajin sets surpass it.

[lhb412]

The next Discotek tokusatsu release is another Soace Sheriff, this time Sharivan. Blu-ray set releases in February!

[Benjamin Haines]

Shine!
Shine!
Shine!
Sharivan, shine!
SHINE!

Dash!
Dash!
Dash!
Sharivan, dash!
DASH!


Awesome news. I still haven't yet picked up the Kamen Rider Black or Black RX sets because they are pricey but I'm glad that Discotek is chugging right along with their Toku Time label. Hopefully they'll release Space Sheriff Shaider and more Metal Hero shows in the future.

Have you finished watching Gavan?

[lhb412]

^ Heck no! But I'm gonna preorder Sharivan anyway because I know how important preorders and early orders I general are for gaging interest.

(I'm so behind: my pile of unwatched blu-rays has become, enormous)

[lhb412]

... speaking of which: I was struggling with Gavan last year. I think it was because I had just watched two other Toei hero shows and Gavan is pretty repetitive in the early going (gotta show off those toys!). It was weird, though, as I certainly liked everything in the show, but it was hard going. Wasn't in the mood. Anyway, about a week ago I was taking down Christmas decorations and put on the first disc and casually rewatched the episodes I had already watched, the first 10 or so episodes - something about the vibe suddenly clicked i've been watching an episode or two every day since then!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ These kinds of shows built on the Kamen Rider template are indeed repetitive, including Gavan. They're shows that weren't made to be watched any more frequently than once a week. I do tend to go through them more frequently than that and I find that a good way to keep them feeling fresh is to watch two, three or four different tokusatsu shows at the same time. I usually go with one Ultraman, one Kamen Rider, one Super Sentai and one wild card series. One day I might watch an episode of an Ultraman show and an episode of Super Sentai, then the next day I might watch just an episode of a Kamen Rider series, while some days I don't have time to watch anything, and then on days when I have time to watch four episodes then they'll all be from different shows. I feel like that keeps any of them from ever seeming too repetitive. It also helps to make them all shows from different decades so they stand out from each other even more.

[lhb412]

I've never really had a problem with the repetitive nature of your typical Ultraman series because they do a few things differently:

- Generally, there are disconnected monsters-of-the-week. Evil alien, sympathetic alien, mad science thing, mutation, prehistoric thing. The monsters could be animalistic or of human-equivilant intelligence. Since the monsters are essentially the stars of their episodes it makes each episode different.
- Episodes may spotlight different defense cast members, or different groupings of them. Another big differentiator. The main hero may not be the focus character of an episode.
- While an Ultraman may stick to a certain finishing move, the fights are less rigidly structured and involve less repetitive stock footage. The defense team may help out or even defeat the monster outright when an opponent gets one over on Ultraman.
- Though certain series have a more uniform tone, generally we have variety in Ultraman episodes: a spooky one! A funny one! etc.

The classic Toei hero show seems to just be far more rigidly structured. Of course, I've a lot to learn. I really dig the more soapy, serialized format of the early '00s Riders like Kuuga and Ryuki.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ You're right about all of that. Ultraman shows usually do offer much more variety than most Kamen Rider, Super Sentai or Metal Hero shows. Even though I'm biased as a lifelong fan of giant monsters and Eiji Tsuburaya, I do think that many of the best tokusatsu shows are Ultraman shows.

Recycled effects footage is definitely more of a hallmark of Toei's franchises, especially Super Sentai and Metal Heroes. All of those are built on the core template of the original Kamen Rider series, which is the definition of repetitive, not in terms of recycled footage but in terms of its storytelling. That's why I kind of gauge how varied or repetitive any Toei tokusatsu series is relative to the original Kamen Rider, and by that measure Space Sheriff Gavan is one of the standouts. It has the distinctly early-'80s aesthetics, Kenji Ohba is terrific as the lead hero, and even though the closing action sequences tend to follow the same formula and use recycled footage, the individual stories of each episode are relatively varied.

You mentioned how Ultraman series episodes often focus on different cast members, and that's also something that Super Sentai shows are able to do much more often than Metal Heroes or Showa-era Kamen Rider. Super Sentai shows likewise tend to be relatively more varied in their storytelling. They're a lot of fun.

I agree that the Heisei-era Kamen Rider shows are a whole other kind of awesome. Kuuga broke away from the template of the original Kamen Rider and struck a whole new series template, and it seems like that influenced Toho's approach to Super Star God GranSazers and TPC's approach to Ultraman Nexus.

[lhb412]

^ Oooh. Nexus being influenced by Kuuga structurally makes a ton of sense.

[lhb412]

The next Toku Time release is Mobile Cop Jiban!

https://youtu.be/3IMChE_LjWE?si=WzZefYUZVbAG6cB4

[Benjamin Haines]

Awesome! I haven't seen that show yet.

[lhb412]

I am absolutely flabbergasted by the volume of tokusatsu releases Discotek just announced:

Space Sheriff Shaider
Kamen Rider V3
Android Kikaider
Special Rescue Police Winspector

The first three are in HD and Winspector is SD on Blu-ray.

It's like Christmas for toku fans, and this is less than half of the toku they've now licensed. Between this and Mill Creek re-upping their Ultraman slate, Mediablasters' Rider movies, and Minus One's US release the second half of '24 is the best one for tokusatsu on American home video ever!

... plus several tokusatsu adjacent live action films, most exciting for me is the punk toku art film Electric Dragon 80,000v!