The Red Hero's True Aim: Toei Entrusts Its Future to Super Sentai's Successor Gavan

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On November 24, 2025, Toei announced the launch of a new series, Project R.E.D., to succeed the Super Sentai series, which will end its broadcast next year. The first installment will be a direct successor to the 1980s hit series Space Sheriff Gavan. Following on from the first part, where he explained the reason for the end of the Sentai series, Toei's senior executive officer Shinichiro Shirakura (age 60) spoke about the objectives of the new hero that will take up Sentai's time slot.

Super Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity will begin airing after No.1 Sentai Gozyuger. The Space Sheriff series, which included Gavan, Sharivan and Shaider, was highly popular in the 1980s. Does this mean a Metal Hero series will replace Super Sentai?
No, this will be different from the old version of Gavan, but will retain its qualities. At the time, Gavan innovated because of his chrome armor design, and because his battles were in an alternate dimension. The Metal Hero Series subsequently declined after much trial and error, and after a long hiatus, the series passed the baton to the Heisei-era Kamen Riders (starting with Kamen Rider Kuuga in 2000). I don't plan to bring back the Metal Hero Series outright. The new Gavan will retain the old Gavan's good points, like the alternate-dimension battles, but will be something completely different, now that it's taken over from Super Sentai.

— When they hear the "Red" in Project R.E.D., tokusatsu fans naturally think of the Red Rangers from Super Sentai. Did you have Sentai in mind for this title?
R.E.D. stands for "Records of Extraordinary Dimensions", but yes, of course. There are some hurdles to overcome in creating a series themed specifically around the color red, but I think there are benefits to that kind of creative constraint.

— Red is a color that's symbolic of Super Sentai. It's the first color that comes to mind when you think about superheroes.
I think red used to be considered a feminine color. But, thanks to the Super Sentai Series, nowadays it's considered a heroic color associated with courage, strength, and passion. It all started with Shotaro Ishinomori-sensei's Gorenger. I'd like to create a diverse series focused on red characters while carrying on the traditions of Super Sentai.

— Will we see giant robot battles in the new Gavan?
Well, there have been giant robots in previous Space Sheriff shows... We're considering all sorts of things. How do we carry on the Space Sheriff DNA while building upon the giant robots depicted in Super Sentai?

— One of the challenges for Super Sentai is that its audience was primarily preschoolers, and they tended to grow out of the series earlier than Kamen Rider. Are you aiming to reach a wider audience with Project R.E.D.?
We're definitely looking to broaden the demographic. We know that children in the upper grades of elementary school watch a lot of TV. Maybe the pandemic accelerated a shift away from television, so younger generations have lost the habit of watching TV. Regarding merchandising strategies, Japan heavily caters to toys for younger children, but overseas markets, like the US, China, and more, are different. There's a clear disconnect between toys targeted to very young children and toys targeting elementary-aged kids. Unless the content is slightly more mature, global expansion might not be so easy.

— It looks like Project R.E.D. will have a very different feel from Super Sentai.
I'd like to talk about the fundamental differences. Every tokusatsu work differs in whether or not they have a shared continuity.
For example, in Super Sentai, you watch the final episode of a season and you think the world has been saved—but in the next week, there's a new show, and the villains show up again. It really makes you wonder, "where'd the previous heroes go?" But these are parallel worlds, whose stories do not intersect. Even in Super Sentai, heroes from previous series sometimes come back for guest appearances. Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (2011) was set in more of a shared universe, with retired Super Sentai heroes lending their strength. However, the premise of Super Sentai is that each world is parallel to each other. In contrast, you'll find shared continuities in series like Marvel's Avengers, and Star Wars. Shared universes can make stories more complex and less flexible, but they have the advantage of making stories deeper and richer. Whatever the case, that approach has its pros and cons. Because the story and world gets "reset" every season, Super Sentai has the problem of not having much difference between seasons. In the future, as part of Toei's tokusatsu works, we'd like to explore settings in shared worlds. That's the novelty of Project R.E.D.

— Will past tokusatsu characters appear and develop a world where their stories intersect?
Maybe, maybe not. We haven't considered what to do specifically after Gavan yet, but it could happen. In fact, starting from the series that will follow Gavan, we want to expand the scope of our work beyond the Super Sentai format. It might even deviate from the superhero genre.

— Does that mean it might not even be a superhero show anymore?
Its rivals are superheroes like Kamen Rider and those from American comic books. We'd like to come up with a type of entertainment that takes a detour from the concept of superheroes. Of course, it would be a live-action battle series. But what we really need to compete with isn't other live-action action shows: it's anime. Japan's animation industry continues to produce worldwide successes, like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Chainsaw Man, and we really need to compete on that same level. Sure that live-action has its limitations compared to anime, but that's not an excuse to settle for less: we need to think about challenges that will propel us worldwide. I'm sure the creators driving the current anime boom were deeply obsessed with some kind of anime as children. That's how Japanese culture develops: former fans become creators and reproduce the culture they indulged in. We want that to happen with tokusatsu, too: that's the care we're putting into Project R.E.D.

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Pub: 03 Dec 2025 22:41 UTC

Edit: 03 Dec 2025 22:46 UTC

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