100 Things I Love About Toku 3

The inexplicable queer resonance.

Granted, this is mostly in reference to Power Rangers, but it is still a thing I love.

But seriously - I can trace so many facets of my own queerness back to this show it's not even funny. And I mean, I fell out of PR fandom before even realizing I was gay, so that is kind of... something I don't have a word for right now, but it is something.

I mean, my tastes in guys, the particular flavor of my camp sensibility (hell, probably my fondness for camp itself), my approach to my closet (I don't come out unless there's a context for it, but I only make the decision to never out myself to someone if they show signs of strong violent reaction) and activism (FUCK YEAH, ACTIVISM. LET US ALL CHANGE THE WORLD THROUGH SIGNS AND PETITIONS AND SHOUTING! WE CAN DO IT!) are all in some way or another informed by this show. I personally credit blame the second season morphing sequence for my appreciation of fine arms, for instance, and the whole closet/activism approach has its roots in the almost simple-minded drive for civic responsibility and bettering the world in small ways the early teams had.

Plus oh dear god the camp, but that really deserves its own post.

And I mean, I didn't get into the Japanese series until after having revisited Power Rangers and having realized this, and while they lack almost everything I've singled out about PR (yes, Henshin Heroes are campy, no, they are not campy in the same way Power Rangers are), they still have something about them that holds the queer eye. Part of it is definitely just the fact that there is homosocial interaction that is perfectly normal within Japanese culture comes off queer to a Western viewer, and there's also the fact that the heroes cast "for the moms" are pretty much going to appeal to gay men, too, but idk. There's something else.

I mean, somebody watch Ultraman Nexus and tell me that isn't, in part, a gay soap even though I know it wasn't written as such. (Especially once Ren shows up. Good god.)

I don't feel like I'm making this up wholesale, either, because it's not just the livejournal corner of fandom that is unusually full of queer people (which is kind of to be expected because hey, LJ). Even on Rangerboard, which is your standard dudebro/comics-fandom kind of cesspool of a gathering place, there's room for a number of prominent queer posters, and the mods generally (in my experience there, mind) come down on homopobic idiocy rather than brush it off. (Not enough, and it would be great if they took sexism and racism and so on down the list seriously too, but that a board like that can be bothered to oppose ANY *ism is notable.)

Also, rainbows and spandex.