It’s been a long time coming but we’re finally here! After nearly 5 years as a community, TokuNation has hit a huge milestone. You’ve enjoyed our articles, our convention coverage, our on again off again podcasts, our thinkpieces, episode reviews, comic reviews, and everything in between. But you’ve also enjoyed something we’ve been striving to make better and better from the day we opened our doors – our Galleries!
For nearly 5 years now the Photo & Content staff here at TokuNation have been bringing you in hand image galleries of your favorite old and new collectibles. Plumbing the depths of Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Power Rangers, Godzilla, Ultraman, Garo, Mystic Knights, Pacific Rim, Beetleborgs, and anything else we can! From day one we wanted to give you a great experience. Looking back at our first efforts now, it’s clear we had a long way to go before becoming your #1 source for photos and content. But we were committed to bringing content in any form we were able to. And that’s what’s brought us to today.
Now after 5 years of hard work, we can treat you to something a little different from our usual galleries. For our landmark 500th Gallery we have assembled an array of incredible action shots, dynamic poses, fight scenes, and just plain fun photos. There’s no theme to this gallery, no specific figure featured, not even 1 particular franchise. This gallery runs the gamut of fun and interesting figures we had on hand and wanted to play with! We just wanted to have fun with this one, and in turn let you have a good time as well.
Shots were contributed to this gallery by myself and Den-O. As the years have gone on, he and I have become a tandem, a duo if you will, who push each other to be better with each shot. And we’re poised now to bring you even better quality pictures than you’ve seen before!
So this 500th gallery is about more than just celebrating the number. It’s about celebrating the fun community we’ve built in the last 5 years. The progres we’ve made as photographers. And the progress our collections have made as our focus has shifted and changed over time. We plan to continue bringing you new and exciting galleries of vintage & modern figures forever. But for now, please enjoy this montage of shots we really just had fun with. We’ll see you again in another 500!
Nearly five years ago, I sat down with Tony_Bacala (owner of TFW2005.com and ToyArk.com) and pitched my idea for a website. "The Power Rangers is going to celebrate their 20th anniversary soon - I think we can capitalize on that." To this day, Tony_Bacala still has no idea WTF we watch, why we watch it, or what the hell a Sentai is. But he stressed one thing - take pictures. "People like to look at sh!t" he so lovingly said. "Words suck. Pictures are cool. Give them cool sh!t to look at, they'll come back."
Five years later, I will comfortably say we have the largest gallery database of tokustasu available. And we haven't even scratched the surface of what's out there. Our goal has never been to catalogue an entire toy line or franchise, never to take pictures just because pictures. Taking pictures is a passion, a hobby, and we're able to take our passion for our hobby and share it with you.
Nearly five years ago, Sentai Tamashii (aka Tom or @SoulInkChu) volunteered to help take some pictures to start our galleries off while I focused on learning the in's and out's of photography. Our first pictures are embarrassingly enough shot with an iPhone 4. They are part of the reason we decided to go back and do some older stuff but with our new tech.
And here we are - our 500th gallery. We struggled on what to do with this one. We wanted to do something awesome and exciting, but not one single figure seemed worthy of the title. And we wanted to do something more than just something to do something - so we decided that we would do a gallery of our favorite things to do when we shoot galleries - awesome shots!
So please join myself and my glorious second in command, Den-O (aka Jordan), as we celebrate 500 times of sitting down for a couple of hours to do a photo shoot only to spend another couple of hours editing the pictures so they are at the quality we feel you deserve. And we wouldn't be where we are without recognizing some of our former photo staff for their contributions over the years. So here's to you - Sentai Tamashii, MoonBaseTom, Reigner, OtoyaKurenai, Brainchild, conundrum, ryan, Jmann, KamenRiderOOO, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting - thanks for helping us get to this point!
We're excited to share what we have in store for you next. Thank you for your support and for enjoying what we do!
More pictures!
Happy 500th Gallery guys! Here's to not just another 500, but many, many more!
I'm really incredibly proud to see us at this point. When I joined our staff 5 years ago I never thought I'd be doing site galleries, let alone so many over the last several years. Seeing us get to 500 is just so satisfying to me professionally & personally. I can't wait to see the next 500 we manage to come up with!
Congrats on achieving quite the feat/milestone.
Looking forward to that 1000th gallery.
Congrats! This is a great acheivement. And yes, looking forward to the next 500.
If only we could've gotten a Monster Art in there to cover all the bases
Glad to know we made it to 500 galleries~
Great job! You've come a long way!
I love this gallery so much I could hug it. I disagree with Tony Bacala on words, though. One of the things that make me love TokuNation's galleries is that they're not content to be galleries alone. I love the text pieces that accompany them.
Discussions and conversations attract a lot more around here.
Keep reading: Our 500th Gallery - Page 2
Not a member yet? Join TokuNation Now!