A victory for things based on things not as rooted in this medium as the rest.
Bracket
What's this!? We've finished our first two rounds of voting! You know, nominations have been really great and varied, but I feel like we don't really have enough representation of the roots of tokusatsu in that real "wow this was shot on FILM '70s vibe. So please indulge me in lending a little time in the sun to some oldschool baffling stuff.
... OK honestly we have some of the earliest super sentai stuff, Spiderman, and Godzilla all over the place, I just got recommended that and had to share the bit with "Hitler's treasure." Oh and speaking of Godzilla...
FIRST BATTLE!
Godzilla (TNT promo edit of the Blue Öyster Cult song) submitted by
@Torzelbaum
Godzilla (honestly kind of a grim disaster movie more than anything) came out in 1954, with a sequel the next year... but then that was it. Until a weird bit of international film distribution/promotion shennanigans brought about King Kong Vs. Godzilla a full decade later, after which point we wouldn't go more than 2 years without the big G having a new movie out all the way up through 1975. Then after taking a decade off, there was just a slight pause after his return, then another 4 year breather in the mid-90s (3 if you want to count the awful American one), while otherwise getting right back into that pace through 2004. His recent American outings have been a little slower but still quite steady, but to be fair, that's a longer commute.
VS.
Credit on that.
Charge! Issei and Yoshi (Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still) submitted by
@Bongo
I want to share more trivia here, but what to choose? Random Water Margin research, the true origin of the characters whose theme we're listening to? The Day the Earth Stood Still, the OAV these (partly gender swapped) versions of them come from? Or perhaps O.G. Giant Robo, which was, you know, an actual tokusatsu thing? Right. So the original Giant Robo, like... honestly basically every heroic character from Japanese media that doesn't do the young kid gets pulled into a situation thing was originally created by the very evil organization he fights against, Big Fire, and despite being a compromised prototype pretty consistently wins out over all their later attempts to improve on their original creation. Seriously, that basic setup is just EVERYWHERE.
NEXT BATTLE!
Revolution (Kamen Rider Ryuki) submitted by
@RT-55J
The Kamen Rider shows from the '70s weren't generally silly per se (in spite of the above clip collection), but they had a real Big Strong-jawed Heroes Vs. Cartoonish Nazi Stand-ins sort of thing going (the original Kamen Rider's actor was Segata Sanshiro even). Then in the 90s there was a weird reinvention effort that was pretty body horror focused, which was a bit too big a swing into darker territory. When things properly came back in 2000 though, it was with a pretty dark tone. Things were still fairly kid-friendly and toyetic but there was a real grim grounding for a while, with Kamen Rider Kuuga having like... police procedural stuff about serial killings, and one of Agito's multiple leads being a bit monstrous himself. So it's not too strange that the third Heisei series would go straight up tragic fight to the death.
VS.
Justiφ's (Kamen Rider 555 opening theme) submitted by
@Hilene
Continuing that last bit of history, since 555 directly followed Ryuki and all, this early 2000s grimness had an edge to it that took a good bit to dull. I'm pretty sure 555 here and Blade both kept things pretty serious in tone, and Hibiki having this whole... becoming oni and taking out the more people-eat-y sort of yokai thing that alienated people and lead to drastic rewrites, and that, I think, was the end of this generally quite serious-minded run for the franchise. The next few would progressively lighten things up, at least tonally, before really hitting the perfect sorta melodrama/toyetic balance with W and mostly keeping to that going forward... at least for another good half a decade.
DAMN this is a hard one for me to vote on. Particularly this second matchup. Gonna have to go with Godzilla and Ryuki though. Big dragony times.
I'm in sleep schedule hell, so vote by probably dawn-ish?
