Analysis / Yasuko Kobayashi

There are many, many ways Yasuko Kobayashi defies the expectations of the genres and franchises she works on. Here are just a few examples.

Note: The lists below are based on assumptions made through observing her various works.

Yasuko Kobayashi's generally-favoured writing techniques:

• Kobayashi doesn't seem to like playing a trope straight, especially if it's related to an important point in the story. When she's the lead writer, there can and will be subversions, plays, double-subversions, aversions and pretty much anything under the "Playing With" category, in any possible order and combination that fits the situation. Once you've become familiar with her works, it makes you wonder if she has something against trope "norms" and clichés...
• "Show, Don't Tell" is the mantra. It will be a main element in her stories. She won't tell you anything outright, and instead convey through hints, dialogues and character emotions.
• Kobayashi will have multiple plot threads going on, but she'll focus mainly on two - one main and one background, going on at the same time.
• Lots of characterization: definition, exploration, development,... This is especially prevalent in her Tokusatsu works, which turn out to be more than just Battle-of-the-Week routines.
• In a Five-Man Band, characters are almost guaranteed to be of different backgrounds and philosophies. Don't expect them to get along immediately; that's always for Character Development.
  • Especially evident in Timeranger and Shinkenger. In fact, Shinkenger makes the band not knowing each other a rather vital part of the series, as each of the Samurai Sentai's number have their own issues and secrets. Making them unknowns to each other to start, and even putting a gulf of separation in time between the two that are childhood friends, allows us to discover the characters as they do, bit by bit.
  • In fact, Kobayashi could be said to practice Jigsaw Characterization along with her plotting.
  • Majorly Subverted with Toqger.
• Major villains, especially ones portrayed in a sympathetic light, can turn out to be Well Intentioned Extremists.
• If the main character of the story is a male, he, more likely than not, would end up as a Nice Guy.
  • Shinji Kido, Tatsuya Asami, Ryotaro Nogami, Joseph Jobson, Takeru Shiba ^note Notably, though, he started with a jerkass front, instead of directly as a Nice Guy. He warmed up quite soon after., Eiji Hino, Hiromu Sakurada, Ryuji Iwasaki, and Right all fit the bill.
• Hints of a Bittersweet Ending in varying amounts, depending on the series. Even if the ending is mostly optimistic, there'll most likely be at least a sad subtext in the whole series' context.
  • As seen in the endings to Ryuki, Timeranger, Den-O, Blassreiter, Shinkenger, OOO, and Go-Busters.
  • Surprisingly, this seems to be subverted with Tokkyuger's ending.
• The majority of her earlier works have been Darker and Edgier, but it's not generally a guarantee; with Den-O, Shinkenger, and most recently Tokkyuger, she's also proved that she can handle humor rather well. This doesn't seem to apply to her Anime works so far though.
• As a rough rule, don't expect regular romance in her stories. If there's one, she's already plotting something to do with it...
  • On the other hand, she doesn't seem to mind throwing some Ship Tease now and then, when it fits the atmosphere.
• May have some I Work Alone tendencies as the lead writer; this is especially notable if you look at the episode credit tables for each series on Wikipedia Japan.
• Kobayashi’s writing can lead to accusations of "She Changed It, Now It Sucks", and VERY much so. Due to her habit of throwing in elements and concepts never/rarely used before which conflict with not only expectations but the very foundations of the franchises she writes for, the audience's initial (and at times, permanent) reception of her stories tend to range from lukewarm to cold. AS such, she as often been desribed as a "Hit-or-Miss" writer depending on how forgiving one is of such or how those elements gel with one-another. Often it has been said that what she writes would work outside of an established franchise's metrics due to how consistently she can do wrong by them if she was not previously familiar with them.
  • The most notable example: When Kamen Rider Ryuki aired, the massive load of liberties she took pretty much almost derailed it from being a standard Kamen Rider title, and this threatened the show's ratings the later into the run the show went, almost to the brink of cancellation. This would in fact be a state the franchise would in fact wrestle with and be on the verge of for several years following as the popularity of Ryuki's elements continued to clash with the ideology of the show, resulting in it falling into a Death spiral through 555 and Blade; the following Heisei Kamen Rider stories having a variety different concepts and formulas can be partially attributed to her breaking down the barriers - perhaps in conjunction with Agito - as it desperately tried to re-invent itself and fix what Ryuki broke, and would not be until after Decade ended that the show would manage to end them and actually Recover.
    • In an interview while she was working on Ryuki, she revealed she'd not only never seen a Kamen Rider series before ^note While she had worked on episode 28 of Agito, said episode was very stand-alone, and can be watched by itself without having seen any other episodes of the series, the reason why was she was actively and highly derisive of the concepts of heroism Kamen Rider's seemed to represent, which she did her utmost to destroy with Ryuki. Considering what she did almost killed the franchise, she almost succeeded.
• Not to say Kobayashi doesn't have a few favored themes and Aesops. While her protagonists often must deal with the fact that there are things beyond their control, the reccuring answer is that they decide how to deal with it — she's a big fan of Earn Your Happy Ending. Even when it's really Earn Your Bittersweet Ending. She's more interested in the latter than former however.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plots. She always goes extra lengths to set up intricate stories, split them up into tiny little bits, shuffle them thoroughly and drops piece by piece in front of the viewer one at a time. she used to receive praise for it, but more recent series and rumination on/Rewatches of many older ones have resulted in the pieces not actually fitting as planned.
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki is a prime contender among her Tokusatsu works all Heisei Kamen Rider series...despite most of the full picture not making any sense and many of the pieces contradicting each other. How one would get a wish from a deathgame being one of MANY questions never answered in Ryuki.
    • Kamen Rider OOO followed the same path from #1 in its own unique ways.
  • All 3 of her Anime works. Period.
• Tends to pick Nice Characters as leads; so far, pretty much every main character she created herself.
  • In fact, her most common trope is to put such a sweet/nice character in adverse situations that they almost don't deserve, and have them overcome it over the story's course. As long as they don't run into a Bittersweet Ending.
  • Conversely, Kobayashi also has a problem with characterizing Nice guy protagonists into them being Idiots who Ignore the reality around them, which in fact are the direct causes of most of the adversity they face. the biggest example of this to Date is Right(Raito) Suzuki, whom the fandom has nicknamed "Wrong", due to how often he is with the decisions he makes, despite the story them making him right in contrast to what should have been a solution to a given situation.
• She's arguably among the few Tokusatsu writers that can weave all the merchandises into their source series without it seeming like blatant advertising, as well as assigning them appropriate significance in the series. Yes, she can dignify merchandises in-series.
  • Kamen Rider OOO: Oh dear... where can we begin? Vending machines that can turn into motorcycles, soda cans that turn into robots, singing transformation belts... A lot of this isn’t given so much as a handwave, though it can be hard to notice, given the World Limited to the Plot.
• She also has a tendency to weave technically accurate scientific conventions into her stories when they're required. Timeranger follows a quantum mechanics model in its usage of time travel, while Den-O makes extensive use of real theories about singularities.
• There's a high probability that at least one major character will be suffering from a fatal, usually incurable illness. This illness will not impede their daily life or heroics in any way, except during plot-appropriate moments. However, true to the severity of such a illness, their condition will form a vast proportion of that character's motivations and outlook on life.
• Most of the villains in her works have pretty human goals in like from cheating death to feeling "complete".
  • On the flip side, the only kind of downright villains in Yasuko's works are Omnicidal Maniacs.
• Significant age gaps between The Hero and Sixth Ranger are a thing. Even if the actors are not cast this way, expect it to be there in the story.
  • Ryuuga and Hyuuga, Sailor Luna, Yuuto Sakurai, Akira Date, Masato Jin, Akira Nijino, and Alpha and Omega Amazon are all examples.
• If you don't like non-human sidekicks, then you're probably not going to like Kobayashi's works because she has a lot of them. From small, flying creatures (Bokku, Tock), to sentient hands attached to the body of someone else (Ankh, Ticket), to full on posses of people in suits (the Imagin, Buddyroids).

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Looking deeper at some of her works:

Kamen Rider Ryuki

Taking the most basic assumptions about Kamen Riders: Riders are allies of justice? Not in Ryuki. Instead, we get 13 Riders (there hadn't been more than 3 Riders in a series before this). And they're less concerned with justice and more with an Elimination Battle Royale against each other. And the candidates in the Rider war are hardly typical Riders. We have:

• A Wide-Eyed Idealist — more so than any prior Rider, even Kamen Rider Kuuga. And here, while hope may win the day in many Rider series, The Wide-Eyed Idealist routine is subverted to hell brutally pulverised to the point that the main character himself begins to doubt whether his beliefs are wrong after all. The irony is that in the very end, in the finale, his ideals come full-circle back to where they started, albeit he dies before he can see this play out.]]
• A Blood Knight
• An Amoral Attorney— though he turned out to be actually nicer than he looks.
• An Omnicidal Maniac Blood Knight
• And the others are of even more dubious morals and/or sanity.

Kamen Rider Den-O

Who says Riders need to be tough, manly men? Here, we have the most softspoken and innocent pushover of a lad with the worst fortune in the world as the main Rider. As well, after several seasons of dead serious Kamen Rider shows, in Den-O we have lots of humor— so much so some fans on both sides of the Pacific were left kind of off balance.

The source of Rider powers have been mostly from science, and a few from mysticism. Here, we have Demonic Possession. Featuring a boy and five time-traveling demons.

And while she's at it in that recurring theme of Kobayashi's on dealing with what you can control and accepting what you can't, she manages to take a hammer to You Can't Fight Fate and Screw Destiny.

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger

Super Sentai has been highly theatrical ever since its beginnings. Here, we see that turned up a notch as Kobayashi marries Sentai to Jidaigeki. The result is a very theatrical series and you even see the influence of Kabuki as implied by one of the character's backgrounds.

Kobayashi also gets her favorite theme of earning things in adversity in early— the members of the Shinkenger are at varying degrees of skill and bring vastly different attitudes to that training. This leads, more often than not, to that oh so prized clash of personalities she mines to bring out the rich characterization she's known for.

Something that was a major theme in Den-O becomes even more important here— the concept of True Companions. Who are you loyal to? Why? What makes you worth the loyalty others give you? What's the difference between duty and friendship? All these questions are considered over the course of the series, and the climax throws them into stark focus.

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