Hello again, lovely readers! We are very happy to see that you share our appreciation of tokusatsu and even happier that you share it by visiting our website. Since you were so kind to choose us as your source for everything relating to the art of Japanese special effects, we thought it only made sense to return the favour by telling you more about our blog and about us.
This is why we dedicated this section to the background of the blog, which details how we first got into tokusatsu films and why we decided to make a whole blog about it. You can also learn what sort of articles you can expect in the future.
So We Are…
Our journey with tokusatsu began as many others did before it – one of us discovered it online and made sure that all their friends knew about it too. If we have to be honest, not all of us were very excited to watch sci-fi and action films that were older than our parents at first.
However, we are extremely grateful for our friend who promised us that we wouldn’t be disappointed. That’s exactly what happened when we watched the mother of all tokusatsu films – Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla (1954). We didn’t expect a monster movie to explore existential questions; we also didn’t expect that the special effects would be so good, it was the 1950’s after all!
Despite liking the movie and realising how much of the original and complex context was lost to Western audiences, we still didn’t expect to find so many more wonderfully made and acted tokusatsu films. It seems that the more we watched, the more we were impressed by the narrative and, naturally, the practical special effects.
Story of the Blog
We should mention that we are in our early twenties, so we are so used to expensive CGI that anything else seems ancient. We, however, learned to appreciate “the ancient” special effects and the work that went into creating them despite the limitations of technology back then.
We are sure we are not the only ones who absolutely refuse to watch old sci-fi films with little to no CGI, so we thought that the best way to educate our peers is to create a blog dedicated to the most iconic, and more underappreciated, tokusatsu films.
These films are there to be enjoyed, but we understand it might be hard to find them if you don’t know what brings them together and what makes them unique. We hope our blog helps you discover these works and that you like them as much as we do.
Blog Contents
In order to give you a better understanding of tokusatsu, we dedicated our first post (the welcome post) to the art of tokusatsu. We defined tokusatsu, as well as how to apply it in the practical sense. We suggest you first read this post before you read any of the articles.
The articles, on the other hand, would take a look at famous and not-so-famous tokusatsu films and television shows. We will discuss the development of each production, the story, and of course, the special effects and how they were created. If you want us to discuss a favourite of yours, you can contact us with your suggestions.
Thank You
Thank you for taking your time to read this post and thank you for your support in our newest venture!