Seen a lot of people comment on Daigo’s actor not appearing in Heroes Odyssey and I wanted to shed some light since I think people in the toku fandom by and large only have a vague idea of who/what Johnny is.

“Johnny” is Johnny Kitagawa, who was the lead of a talent agency known as Johnny’s and Associates, often shortened to just Johnny’s. When I say talent agency, it’s not necessarily in the western sense.

Talent agencies in Japan will often have a unique gimmick that makes them stand out from other agencies. Johnny’s thing was that its talent were “multifaceted” members of boy bands who could dance and act.

The groups part of Jonny’s have been pretty big ever since the 80s and as such, they often command a hefty fee when their actors appear in projects. Daigo’s actor, Hiroshi Nagano, being cast as the lead in Ultraman Tiga was huge news for the time.

V6, the band Nagano is part of, had recently debuted and were pretty big at the time, so to suddenly have one of their members take time out of his schedule to play the lead in a show for an entire year was pretty big.

However, after the show ended, things associated with Nagano and Johnny’s, namely the character of Daigo and the opening theme “Take me Higher” were oddly absent from a lot of things that mentioned Tiga.

The few times Nagano has returned have been the only moments of note that the actor’s image was used.

Johnny’s had this very tight grip over their members and when and where their likeness could be used. It was so bad that there were often promotional images for TV shows starring members from the various bands that either had to put weird filters over the members

As this mostly happened in J-Drama, which don’t typically have crossover fans from the otaku world, no one really noticed. But! A member of Johnny’s, Ryosuke Yamada, was cast as Edward Elric, the lead character in the live action Fullmetal Alchemist.

Since Johnny’s has complete control over when and where their talent’s likeness can be used, this lead to the really weird circumstance of two “key visuals” being created in promotion for the movie

One, used in cinemas and stuff, featured the main cast all fine and dandy. The online version? Yamada was nowhere to be seen and it was weird, and I think this is the first time you see anime fans even known what a Johnny’s is.

Now, while Johnny’s is still around and kicking as an agency, Kitagawa himself recently passed away. Many believe it was Kitagawa who placed such stringent rules over when and where members of the agency could be represented via their likeness.

People also blame Kitagawa for holding the various bands associated with Johnny’s from reaching a true worldwide audience as in the era of social media, they had a rather pathetic presence.

In the time since his passing and his niece, Julie, taking over, there has been change at the agency. Arashi, who are without a doubt the biggest boy band of the last three decades in Japan, were finally allowed to do stuff like release music streaming beyond Asia.

They were able to establish an English language presence (in their final year before their “hiatus” no less). They even released a bunch of songs in English to further cement that push towards a global audience.

So while I think what happens with images of Daigo and the usage of “Take me Higher” from Tiga itself is up in the air, I feel like the actor reappearing in some capacity has a more realistic chance of happening than ever.

(the actor himself still speaks very fondly of the role and does interviews)

HOWEVER! While V6 and Nagano himself aren’t the super A-list stars they once were, they’re still pretty big names, moreso for tokusatsu, so if he were ever to reappear in an Ultraman TV series, it would be *huge* news that you can bet the media would cover as a crazy big story.