{Taffy Tuesday #1} Regarding Tokusatsu Thursdays...
Hello, Internet, and good mornight to you all!
My name is Taffryne, shoppekeeper of Midnight on Memory Lane, and it is my absolutely delight to welcome you to our first ever Taffy Tuesday!
'Tis a pleasure, 'tis a pleasure.
For this Taffy Tuesday, I wanted to go ahead and provide some clarity on what exactly the background and plan for Tokusatsu Thursdays is. I've realized that some of you might not exactly be familiar with Toei's long-haul Kamen Rider and Pretty Cure series. Ergo, allow me to explain!
Kamen Rider
If I had to summarize Kamen Rider, I would say that it's basically "main character is a masked hero using a specialty belt and gadgets to transform, ride a cool motorcycle/vehicle, save the day, and every season has a different gimmick, overarching theme, and style". Each season, while in a connected universe, is its own standalone identity (except for the joint movies and anniversary seasons) and a new one has aired every year since the great ol' year 2000. If you'd like a more in-depth (but still generic) description, then click here to see what tvtropes.org has to say.
Given that Kamen Rider is 95% not a connected storyline, there isn't exactly a "watch order" unless A) want to make sure you get the crossovers correct or B) you want to start from the 2000s series (Kuuga) to the most recent (MY-TH, not yet aired). For our purposes, I've decided to choose Option B. Now, Option B seems daunting at first because of all the crossover and movie math...but, blessed be, a mysterious citizen of the internet known as "Cressy (Sam)" has been dutifully compiling everything into a beautiful spreadsheet which you can see here. I owe this person a debt for putting in all this work so none of us have to.
Thusly, we're starting off with the first of the Heisei Phase One series, Kuuga. Once it airs, we'll also be talking about that weeks MY-TH episode. A Kamen Rider double-feature of our own. The only part where this gets tricky is that while MY-TH will have one episode per week...I'm intending to get through one of the old Kamen Riders each month. How that affects you is that you'll start seeing post titles like "Episodes 5-15". Currently, the plan is that each post focusing on an old Kamen Rider will cover up to ten episodes per post, but I might end up adjusting this as we get into the groove of things. The currently airing series will only ever cover one episode or one movie/special at a time, though.
Pretty Cure
Pretty Cure's summary is a bit more difficult because the series has evolved so much over the various seasons. We start as a duo-to-trio but eventually there will be trios-to-quartets or even quintets, their colour motifs change, the mascot types change, transformation items are different, etc. However, basic summary is just "magical girls (*and eventually boys) from not-magical land work together with magical future marketable plushies to save said magical land from the big bads". Again, I highly recommend you check out what tvtropes.org has to say here (they're much better at it).
While Pretty Cure does have the same separation of seasons between each year, towards the beginning they have more overlap (one is literally a sequel season) and they also recently* got a comedy series that combines a ton of the different cast. I believe there's also an anniversary series planned that shows a few of the past precures as full blown adults. Yet, once again, we are saved from this horrible math by a citizen of the internet, u/LilyTheFoxMechanic on reddit who made this complete and detailed watch order list of every Pretty Cure to ever. I, also, owe this person a debt because holy smokes they even included justifications and alterations??? I bow, I bow.
So, in similar fashion to Kamen Rider, I will also be going through one of the old Pretty Cure seasons a month alongside the weekly episode of the newest one. Star Detective has already started airing though, so we'll kick off the current part with 2027's Pretty Cure. Same rule of ten episodes per post of the old series, and one episode per post of the new series applies here.
In conclusion, this is how Tokusatsu Thursday will eventually grow to be a quadruple-feature here on the blog. I really hope that's not going to be overwhelming for people. Hopefully, the beauty of blog posts is that you can always just follow your own pace and come back to each post once you're ready! I'll absolutely be receptive to feedback when I finally get communication lines open.
According to my current schedule, we should be caught up with Kamen Rider and Pretty Cure in roughly ~2.5 years! Whether any of you are in it for the long haul with me or simply want to pop in and out for your favourites, please know that I truly appreciate you spending any of your time on my blog at all. Time is the most expensive currency we can give, so I am wholeheartedly grateful for any time you bestow upon me.
Manga Monday Mishap
If any of you happened to be around yesterday, you might have noticed the glaring absence of Manga Monday #1. You see, what had happened was, I pulled a dumb and currently cannot find my record of what I wrote down for that post. To let you behind the shoppe counter a little bit, I take all my notes and draft all my posts in a notebook before taking them to the computer. Each day's programming has its own dedicated notebook for organization and recordkeeping. It's easier for me to scribble things down on paper when reading/watching something than it is to keep flipping to a notepad tab on my laptop. Unfortunately, that ease has come back to bite me. I am absolutely certain that I have placed it somewhere within the many shelves of my shoppe and workspace, but that specific place yet alludes me still. I am tossing everything around to find it as soon as possible. I most humbly ask of you to please bear with me. So long as I can find it before the next Manga Monday, I'll just go ahead and post #1 and #2 at the same time. Again, I am so, so sorry.
Thanks for Reading!
Thank you so much for giving me your time and attention on this lovely mornight. It truly means a lot to have you all visit my little corner of the internet.
This caps of this week's gathering for Taffy Tuesday, so off into the nighttime we go in preparation for tomorrow! I hope you'll come back tomorrow for the next Wednesday Watch Party.
May we meet again when the clock strikes 12:00!