What does Godzilla have to do with the Power Rangers? or What is Tokusatsu?

Source:https://tokutoystore.com/2019/03/07/toei-announces-100-hours-of-heisei-kamen-rider-for-golden-week/

Have you ever seen Power Rangers spark when they are hit or summon a giant robot and try to stop a monster from destroying a very obvious model and you thought, what bad effects, with CGI would have been much better, because all those bad effects are part of Japanese culture and it's something that in itself has a lot of charm.

But that doesn't answer the question: What is Tokusatsu?
In Japan the word Tokusatsu is used to describe the action of using practical effects to make a film (in fact Tokusatsu is an abbreviation of tokushu satsuei which means "special effects") and the film genre that categorizes this type of series and films that use practical effects created in Japan, Usually these series are focused on action and science fiction but can have elements of terror, comedy and drama, in some cases we can see that there are tokusatsu made in other countries, but using some of the sub-genres of this, because if the tokusatsu has its sub-genres, let's start with the one that started it all, the great Godzilla

Source:http://nightmarenostalgia.com/2018/07/21/old-school-kaiju-fans-rejoice-newest-godzilla-king-of-the-monsters-trailer-and-images-reveal-some-titanic-icons/*

Godzilla was released in 1954 when director Tsuburaya Eiji made several films with this classic monster inspired by the King Kong movies, but using very realistic models to stage the battles between these giant beasts that in Japan are called Kaiju, Tokusatsu genre to which Godzilla belongs and all movies where there are battles between giant monsters even if they include some robot, such as Pacific Rim which is American Tokusatsu, because although it uses mostly CGI is based on the genre Kaiju, therefore is Tokusatsu.

Another very famous Hero of Tokusatsu is Ultraman that is a mix between Henshin Hero and Kaiju, but what is a Henshin Hero? ; a Henshin Hero is a super hero that uses a device to perform a transformation that consists of a suit that gives him powers or in the case of Ultraman that makes him take a suitable size to face the extraterrestrial Kaijus that threaten to destroy the earth, here we can mention the most famous ones are Kamen Rider, The Super Sentai and the mentioned Ultraman, the Kamen Rider are heroes that transform themselves using a belt and shouting the word "Henshin", Besides using a characteristic pose, this pose is not spontaneous but I will talk about this later in another post, during the filming of Kamen Rider the main actor was injured and another actor replaced him, when he recovered, he returned to the series along with his partner, the producers saw that he had more viewers with more characters on screen and decided to make a separate series with more Heroes, from there Super Sentai was created, which were several characters with a characteristic color, usually 5 people, From Fact Sentai means squad and well Super Sentai is Super Squad, I think you can already guess where Power Ranger fits into all this, in 1992 an American businessman named Haim Saban would come to an agreement with Toei(Super Sentai producer) and he would make an adaptation of Super Sentai for America, "Adaptation" is technically speaking a copy and paste, where they used Japanese footage but used American actors for the scenes where they didn't have the costumes and sometimes changed the story a little, with the time Power Ranger started to include their own elements inside the series that were not in the Japanese footage, another subgenre that we can mention inside these is the Metal Heros, basically the same as the Henshin heros but these use a metalic armor and while the henshin heros have devices that can be magic, technology or both, the Metal Heros are only of technology, even some can be androids.

*Source:https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/97096-metal-hero-series?language=es

Currently Tokusatsu has focused on Henshin Heros, being the most popular Kamen Rider that goes for its 30 season and Super Sentai that goes for its 44 season, each season has its own history and its own protagonists, so it varies from one to another, in some cases there may be crossovers, especially for movies, it is a pretty good genre and although when we think of Japan, we think of Anime, the country of the rising sun has much to offer.

This text is an English translation of this post:https://hiveblocks.com/hive-186377/@dragonplateado/que-tienen-en-comun-power-ranger-y-godzilla-o-que-es-el-tokusatsu