Super Sentai is ending [My thoughts]

Okay, this is pretty surreal, but after 50 years on air, the Super Sentai will end, with the conclusion of its final season No.1 Sentai Gozyuger, at the beginning of January.

It makes me feel a bit sad, even though I am not a die-hard fan of the franchise. There are plenty of other enthusiasts who have knowledge of the show superior to mine, who have seen all the seasons, and who collect toys as well, but I’m still sad because Super Sentai is like a Japanese cultural landmark that will cease to exist.

My first (unconscious) encounter with Super Sentai was the same as in the case of many children of the 1990s in Europe and in the United States, through Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Back then, I really liked the mecha battles and the suits, but cared little for the human characters. I wondered who came up with a show that is so bipolar because on the one hand, we have high school shenanigans of the heroes, and real tokusatsu action on the other. It was not until the early 2010s when I learned that the Power Rangers show is a re-edited version of Super Sentai.

In 2018, I watched Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger for the first time, the season that the original Power Rangers were based on. In my opinion, the formula of Super Sentai made much more sense in its original unaltered form. In each season, we are introduced to a new group of humans/warriors/aliens who have the power to transform into superheroes and fight evil. It’s an uplifting fairy tale for children with lots of action!

After Zyuranger, I watched Ohranger, Carranger, Megaranger, Timeranger, and the spoof called Akibaranger. This was mainly between 2019 and 2023, and back then I thought to myself that since Super Sentai is so big and ongoing, I will never watch all the seasons, so I stopped at that.

But here we are, at the end of 2025, and it turns out that Super Sentai is going to be cancelled after 50 years… My social media feed on Facebook is literally flooded with all the cries and speculations from the fans across many Toku groups. Actually, just a month ago, it wasn’t certain that the series would be cancelled because there was just a statement from TV Asahi that they will not broadcast it, but the definite confirmation came from an interview with a Toei executive Shinichiro Shirakura, the English translation of which can be found here.

In the interview, Shirakura is very, how to say this, eloquent, when talking about the reasons behind the cancellation of Super Sentai. But on the basis of what he says, and other sources on the internet, we can piece together as follows: there is a shrinking child audience (because of Japan’s birth rate problem), the age of streaming creates further competition for Sentai, MCU craze across the globe is ongoing, and there is also a crippling deal with Hasbro who own Power Rangers (allegedly, for 30 years, Bandai could manufacture and profit from PR and Sentai toys, but now the company is denied of that. PR merch is made by Hasbro, which plummeted the toy revenue for Bandai and Toei).

Fans claim that this is a conscious strategy on Toei’s part. That they will just put Super Sentai on hiatus and bring it back once the deal with Hasbro is over and they reclaim the toy rights, but I don’t believe in these hopes. I think Toei has lost faith in the franchise. Yes, Ultraman and Kamen Rider still go strong as Toku IPs and their toy sales are also (allegedly) satisfactory, but these shows have experienced hiatus periods in the past. This has never happened with Super Sentai before. Is it going to share the fate of Doctor Who? Will it return in 10 years time? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

But this media stir only inspired me to go back and watch more seasons. In particular, I want to watch all the seasons from the 1990s and the 1980s. I hope I will make it.

PS Toei will replace Super Sentai with a special Project R.E.D. that is a show called Super Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity, which I believe is another reinvention of the Space Sheriff Gavan show from the 1980s.

Image attribution: CNA