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Just something I was thinking about earlier. In tokusatsu we know it's not uncommon for a henshin hero or villain to die but in the US versions they often will have a human that can henshin lose their powers instead.

I don't know about you guys but I'd rather go down in battle than to be stripped of my ability to henshin & going through life without the power I once had. Kind of a fate worse than death, especially if your enemies & allies still have theirs.

Yeah, but if you can't henshin, how could you make sure the good guys win? Imagine losing your powers & then seeing a giant kaiju is stomping your city. That's like losing your purpose for living depending on how dedicated you were to the cause.

Plus on the villain side, losing your powers, minions & all of that good stuff then expected to go through life as a commoner...that's just humiliating.

You think those giant robots just fix themselves?

I mean, maybe they do, if you're in one of the more magical sentai series, but even then, you'd probably be able to do research into the villains, because they've probably been around for millenia and been written about in various ancient texts.

There's a R&D department for Gekiranger's weapons, even if they do use their ki or whatever to create/control the giant robot.

If you lose your powers, becoming an engineer, or a research assistant, or in some cases, maybe even a spy is possible. It depends on the enemy's modus operandi.

You think Tachibana Tobei's useless? Makino Morino? Ryousuke Taki? Again, there are usually plenty of people without powers who help the heroes. It's not living the glorious life of the hero, but it's making a difference.

I don't think losing your powers makes you useless, unless you aren't willing to work harder to accomplish what seems like less.

And, at the end of the day, even if the heroes don't need your direct help, you can still be an ally of justice by joining the police, becoming a firefighter, or becoming an EMT. Saving lives and righting wrongs is what's important as a hero. If you didn't get that when you had your powers, you were never a hero to begin with.



Sure, for a villain losing your powers is possibly a fate worse than death. Or a fate the same as death if your allies/underlings decide that you mistreated them.

Yeah, gotta love that Go Nagai. It's hard seeing one of his robots go down but you know an even better one is only a few scenes away...

Well yeah, if you have a team or scientist in your back pocket, a loss of powers may not be the end for the hero. But even then, sometimes the inventor of the technology died or something & the crew you have around can only perform maintenance, not build an improved device.

Doing something else meaningful aside from a henshin hero sounds useful & all but by the time someone gains a decent level of expertise, the bad guys may have already won. At best you'd be part of a meager resistance that would probably be crushed. You'd get a 2nd chance to go down fighting but it won't be so close a fight. The guys that help the hero are nice to have around & all but none of them could fight the fights that a henshin hero can. Even the science teams in Ultraman series can only do so much before they need an Ultraman to step up.

The only way I'd be somewhat accepting about losing my powers permanently would be if I knew such a sacrifice would save the world "once & for all". Like say, whatever powers my henshin device is the key to sealing the gate to Hell where my enemies had been pouring out of.

It's pretty much all in the matter of the storytelling by each culture.

The Japanese are more lenient on creating a superhero story where heroes can die, while in America it's a little bit more strict because they don't want impressionable American kids to think it's okay to die, or some s**t like that.

It's what you can use in your story to fit the needs of your culture's censorship limitations I guess. Even though I personally would think it would be a more vibrant storyline to have certain people die while at the same time certain people lose their powers. XD

If you ask me, I'd muh rather lose my powers than die. Just because you don't have powers doesn't mean you can't have merit. Case in point, in Kiva, there's a good handful of episodes that have Megumi and Nago fighting without transforming. Then again, if you threw them up against a Sentai monster that's gone Kyodaika, or a Kaiju from Ultraman, that might be a problem (-_-;