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7/14/2025, 12:30:08 AM
>>23384301
>>23384286
Now one might ask:
>"Why wouldn't Shirakura just make his power play through Metal Heroes if it was the strong horse when he was entering Toei?"
As stated before, Metal Heroes was mainly part of a way to get JAC (becoming JAE soon after Shirakura's big break and were losing power) hopefuls into showbiz by showing off their stunt and acting skills. When Sonny Chiba stepped down, he handed off power to Osamu Kaneda. Kaneda, while lacking the full casting power of the JAC, was always a force to be reckoned with because of his seniority and favored treatment and kept a very strong influence on Toei by always being able to threaten to withhold stuntcrew (who were at that point more than half of the production). He'd have to get through an iron wall, effectively.
He couldn't do the Fushigi Comedy route because that was a mix of Ishinomori and the Saburo Yatsude anonymous clique of Toei writers, who also all had seniority (Imagine trying to go up against an entire pack of Inoues). His only angle was Super Sentai, with admittedly VERY strong successes but nothing that couldn't be seen as flukes without two things:
1. Amemiya, a creative hopeful
2. Power Rangers, a creative decision that made Toei VERY fast money for VERY little work
From there, he had enough Sentai power to at least SUGGEST thigns to the more influential Sentai creatives.
Kamen Rider had no creatives left - Ishinomori wanted to do God's War and his other projects, Hirayama had cast off Kamen Rider entirely. So by using those two points of power, he could convince Toei to let him work with their subsidiary Toei Video for some Kamen Rider movies for some money. In spite of Western rumors, none of the movies did so poorly so as to result in rewrites from the original trilogy idea - Amemiya and Shirakura just changed their midns and liked the idea of an anthology better. It was cheaper and it meant they could be more guerrilla in production.
(Was 2/2, now 2/3, it's a lot of lore!)
>>23384286
Now one might ask:
>"Why wouldn't Shirakura just make his power play through Metal Heroes if it was the strong horse when he was entering Toei?"
As stated before, Metal Heroes was mainly part of a way to get JAC (becoming JAE soon after Shirakura's big break and were losing power) hopefuls into showbiz by showing off their stunt and acting skills. When Sonny Chiba stepped down, he handed off power to Osamu Kaneda. Kaneda, while lacking the full casting power of the JAC, was always a force to be reckoned with because of his seniority and favored treatment and kept a very strong influence on Toei by always being able to threaten to withhold stuntcrew (who were at that point more than half of the production). He'd have to get through an iron wall, effectively.
He couldn't do the Fushigi Comedy route because that was a mix of Ishinomori and the Saburo Yatsude anonymous clique of Toei writers, who also all had seniority (Imagine trying to go up against an entire pack of Inoues). His only angle was Super Sentai, with admittedly VERY strong successes but nothing that couldn't be seen as flukes without two things:
1. Amemiya, a creative hopeful
2. Power Rangers, a creative decision that made Toei VERY fast money for VERY little work
From there, he had enough Sentai power to at least SUGGEST thigns to the more influential Sentai creatives.
Kamen Rider had no creatives left - Ishinomori wanted to do God's War and his other projects, Hirayama had cast off Kamen Rider entirely. So by using those two points of power, he could convince Toei to let him work with their subsidiary Toei Video for some Kamen Rider movies for some money. In spite of Western rumors, none of the movies did so poorly so as to result in rewrites from the original trilogy idea - Amemiya and Shirakura just changed their midns and liked the idea of an anthology better. It was cheaper and it meant they could be more guerrilla in production.
(Was 2/2, now 2/3, it's a lot of lore!)
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