Televi-Kun (てれびくん, Terebikun) is a monthly Japanese magazine that has been in circulation ever since May 1976. The target demographic is pre-teen boys, focusing on Tokusatsu heroes such as Ultraman, Super Sentai, Kamen Rider and Metal Hero amongst anime and other popular Japanese media. The magazine is published by Shogakukan.
Starting in 1992, certain issues of Televi-kun would feature special exclusively packaged VHS, and then DVDs since 2005 such as the Hyper Battle Videos (usually for Kamen Rider series) which would feature a special movie and a promotional item only for subscribers. Similarly, see concurrent Kodansha's TV Magazine with Super Sentai series from 1994 to 2015.
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Original manga serialized by Televi-Kun
- Denkou Choujin Gridman: The Demon King's Counterattack (1994)
- Kamen Rider SD: Bottakun - Yuuji Hosoi (1999)
- Doraemon manga - Fujiko F. Fujio (2011)
- Kamen Rider BLACK manga (2022)
Televi-Kun provides examples of:
- Ascended Meme: One for the Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger fans: Kashiwa mochi!
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: Unsurprising that a magazine dedicated to popular Japanese action media frequently features Godzilla on it's covers.
- Edutainment Show: While it's meant to be entertaining, the magazine occasionally gives out fun facts related to the date of publication - the October 2023 issue explains that Halloween is based on an ancient Celtic festival.
- Fake Crossover: In one issue, Spider-Man received a helping hand against the Iron Cross Army from Kamen Rider V3.
- Fanboy: The magazine is aimed at fans of Japanese cultural phenomenon such as Tokusatsu and anime.
- Pokémon: Pick a cover from any year and there's a good chance a certain yellow mouse will be on it.
- Insistent Terminology: The magazine refers to Ultraman Zero Darkness as Ultraman Zero Darkness to differentiate him from that possessed form of Zero.
- Meaningful Appearance: Sougo Tokiwa has a crown-like Cool Helmet. The caption Celebrate the birth of a new king clues in those who aren't familiar with the series that he wants to be a king.
- Parody: The magazine runs a parody manga of Kinnikuman, Bokumaman, a superhero who battles adversaries such as "the fart monster".
- Product Placement: Televi-kun regularly promotes Kamen Rider, and ever since the Heisei era started they've distributed a "Hyper Battle" Bonus Episode DVD each year (and for a few series they've released multiple Hyper Battles). These episodes in turn often reference the magazine, and many later series include promotional Transformation Trinket collectibles featured in the episodes and packaged with the magazine. In Saber, said trinket is a toy version of Televi-Kun itself.
- Red Is Heroic: Many magazine covers have the red Sentai hero emblazoned on the cover, likely because it's common for them to be the protagonist.
- Shōjo: While the magazine is aimed at boys, it knows it has accumulated a female readerbase over the years and has thus included some serialized manga for the girlies as well.
- Shout-Out:
- While it's aimed at fans of Japanese series, in some issues it acknowledges the Marvel Cinematic Universe and American Comic Book series in general.
- One issue honoured Tadao Nagahama by putting the titular Super Robot of Combattler V on the cover.
- While it's aimed at fans of Japanese series, in some issues it acknowledges
- Toilet Humor: The aforementioned fart monster.
