Kamen Rider (and Super Sentai for that matter) is an anthology series. So why should this get split and not shows in the same vein like American Horror Story?

They're not anthology series, they're both franchises. (Though your point on the Power Rangers report stands for that series, I know Power Rangers a lot less than Super Sentai, Kamen Rider or Metal Heroes)

The title and most of the team behind the series changes every year. The original creators are different each year as well. Shotaro Ishinomori was only responsible for the original Kamen Rider, not the following series.

It's a thing unique to the tokusatsu genre in Japan, so I understand that it doesn't really have an equivalent outside of Japan, but they're are very much advertised, produced and aired as separate things. They're very differently from something like American Horror Story.

Kamen Rider, Super Sentai (and, if you want to be complete, other things Metal Heroes) are sort of like Star Trek, NCIS and other shows like that. They share the "Kamen Rider" or "Sentai" theme, but they aren't the same show at all. Contrary to those shows, though, they often don't share the same continuity.

In Japan, each year, the new entry into the franchise is presented as a completely new show that replaces the previous one on the channel it airs on. In a Kamen Rider Amazon (1974) advert, for example, it tells the viewer that a "brand new show" is starting next week.

Again, tokusatsu is sort of unique, but it really shouldn't be thought of as "anthology series", nor has it ever been presented that way by anyone in Japan or in the worldwide fanbase (Saban is not a reference here either, as they very much never cared for what the thing they bought footage from was).

Kamen Rider & Super Sentai are not like Star Trek & NCIS though. Those shows last for multiple seasons, whereas KR & SS reboot themselves every year and rotate the crew (head writers, lead directors & stunties) around. This is the exact definition of an anthology series.

They are also franchises in that they have spin-off shows (Amazons, Akibaranger) that are produced separate and standalone movies.

Super Sentai even more so than Kamen Rider falls into this because Toei, as of late, has been super into letting you know exactly what season number they are on. But also both shows celebrate episode milestones as if everything is all one show. Like Kamen Rider OOO's 1000 episode celebration and Zyuohger's 2000 episode celebration. (And, if they were counting franchise episode numbers, Zyuohger's milestone episode would have been earlier because of Akibaranger.)

But really, neither of these opinions are not wrong per se. It's just that over time Toei has adopted its "franchises" into single "series" and is blurring the line more and more between each season. 70s Toei? Yes, it's a franchise of multiple separate shows. 2010s Toei? Eh, not so much.

I know it's been a while, but I noticed that all the other tokusatsu franchises are now individual series, which seems to be a shift from the policy discussed above.

All of Super Sentai, Metal Heroes and Ultraman now have individual shows listed and no "master series" like it was a few years ago.

Did the policy of "these are anthology series" change in any way? If so, what would be needed to split/reorganize Kamen Rider into individual shows to match the other franchises?

@MrTimscampi said:

If so, what would be needed to split/reorganize Kamen Rider into individual shows to match the other franchises?

This will be done at a later date, not yet defined. In the meantime, Kamen Rider should remain listed as one single show.

Why are regular users not allowed to help make these separate entries, they just get deleted? You're not doing it, but you also don't want anyone else to do it? Explain?

Because there are things that can't be moved by the users and we will have more work afterwards...

A full year and still no progress on this? Let the people make separate entries.

It's been done for Super Sentai and Metal Heroes and it really is time for the split to be done for Kamen Rider. I also would like my contributions not to have been for nothing.

@superboy97 Any news on this? It's been a while and there doesn't seem to be any movement from moderation on this.

A lot of the shows have duplicate pages as a result, get deleted, then remade by random users, which probably creates more issues for moderation in the long run, I'd guess.

FYI, a new series starts on September 3rd, which would probably be a great time to make the switch.

I would like to add my two cents on this. It makes no sense whatsoever to treat Kamen Rider any different than say Super Sentai, Metal Heroes or Ultraman for that matter.

All of these shows have yearly iterations with a different take on the same theme (sometimes with breaks in between, skipping some years). They are only loosely connected through cross over movies or specials at best, the TV series themselves are completely self-contained.

Somehow for all of these series, separate entries per season are allowed, EXCEPT for Kamen Rider.

That doesn't make any sense and is illogical. Either none of these series are allowed separate entries or all are. Heck, Kamen Rider airs right after Super Sentai on the same channel in Japan, it's clearly identical in nature.

The most obvious course forward would be to allow separate entries for all of these series, that way, those that prefer to have them as 'seasons' in the same series can have it their way, but those that prefer to have each iteration as a separate TV series can also have it their way as well. Personally, I believe the most logical way forward would be to have each series separately.

Let's look at a US example. The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking dead are more connected than Kamen Rider: they take place in the same universe and you even have characters crossing over from one series to the other, sometimes referencing what happens in the other series. Yet, both have separate entries. Another example: Star Trek: all series take place in the same universe yet all have separate entries (Star Trek, Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise, etc)

So why would you force all Kamen Rider iterations in the same entry, even though the are not connected in the way these US TV series are, yet allow for the US TV series to have separate entries? Or do mods just go by the title of the series without having watched the content?

I really don't get the logic behind this. There is no rhyme or reason to removing separate entries of each Kamen Rider series. Absolutely none. The longer mods wait with the split, the messier it will become. Let's get this sorted.

@Kyo28 This has all been addressed before, and I'm sure moderation understands all of this (If you look at the history of this, I very much made the same arguments as you back in 2017, about 6 years ago now)

The issue (why they're not allowing separate entries currently) is because the main Kamen Rider entry already has all the information and moderators are the ones that need to divide the series up into separate entries, as some things cannot be moved by users themselves.

That likely takes some backend work, and unless I'm mistaken, most of the mods for TMDB are volunteers.

So we mostly have to wait for moderation to intervene, although it would be nice to have somewhat of a timeframe for this, especially with the new series coming soon (as it'd avoid a bunch of new duplicates that will inevitably show up, and add even more work for moderators, both in squashing duplicates and in moving data once that's in progress).

+1 for this. Would really like them in separate shows with the proper metadata, as trying to organize all of them in a way that makes sense on Plex is ridiculous, unless I put all of them under one season which just looks weird. Especially considering all of the specials/miniseries etc.

@superboy97 said:

@MrTimscampi said:

If so, what would be needed to split/reorganize Kamen Rider into individual shows to match the other franchises?

This will be done at a later date, not yet defined. In the meantime, Kamen Rider should remain listed as one single show.

Later date when.

Completely agree that Kamen Rider should be split into separate shows.

Worse -- recently there were efforts into splitting it into multiple shows, but some users kept reporting them to delete them. That's not nice when it was just people trying to better organize using a different ontology.

The insistence that "Kamen Rider" is a single TV show is certainly a misunderstanding. It is a "TV show series", not one TV show with multiple "Seasons". Fitting this into a "seasons" approach is fitting a square peg into a round hole. If you prefer the one show with multiple seasons approach, keep it. For people who wish to use multiple TV shows to represent Kamen Rider shows, please let us keep our approach too.

The current "multiple years into one TV show" arrangement has many issues, such as:

• specials across all Kamen Rider series are all clumped together under "Specials", making it very difficult to name and number individual videos.
• on Plex it is impossible to make individual shows show up as a "TV show", it is ridiculous that I have to see the original Kamen Rider poster from 1971 every time I watch a new Kamen Rider show.