News Stay At Home With ULTRAMAN| Ultra Science Fiction Hour on YouTube

I was tempted to post it myself, but I didn't want to steal your thunder.

 

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ne...man-z-win-at-52nd-seiun-sci-fi-awards/.175403

Ultraman Z won the Seiun Award, the biggest award given out for sci-fi in Japan. It's the first time since Dekaranger that a tokusatsu hero show wins it and just the fourth time in total (Kuuga and Tiga were past winners). This puts it in the company of movies like the original Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange, and Alien.

Ultraman Z beat out freaking Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Train to win the award. It beat out the most successful Japanese movie ever, that's huge.

 

The rerun of "Ultraman Z" has reached the final episode #25:


The "Ultraman" run is still at episode #2, though, so have fun reliving the introduction of Baltan:

 

As they did with the first Z-episode last year, after the two-week period was over Tsuburaya has re-uploaded the episode #1 of "Ultraman Trigger":


And this week's episode #8 of "Mirrorman" thankfully has English subs again:

 

Was a bit busy yesterday, so here is episode #22 of "Ultraman Cosmos", the second part of the two-parter in which Team EYES goes to another planet hurling towards Earth:


And today's upload in the 55th Anniversary Campaign is episode #38 of "Return of Ultraman" (aka Ultraman Jack), which featured the second series appearance of UltraSeven, and the first time Shin Hayata's original Ultraman returned since his own series ended, and can thus be considered the first Ultra Brothers episode:

 

If you're desperate for a fix of rival doppelganger trope, episode #23 of "Ultraman Cosmos" has you covered:

 

With this week's episode #39, "Gridman" comes to a conclusion:

 

Trigger episode 4 was tonight. It's still too broad and comical for me in a lot of ways, but it's still a novelty for me to see an Ultraman series plotted more like a Toei series with serial arcs and evolving mysteries and characters actually in on the hero's identity. When Kengo told Akito he wanted to learn more about Trigger, I said "Finally!" to myself, since it's always frustrated me how little Ultra-franchise shows I've seen explore what it means for the lead character to be an Ultra Warrior, what they think about it, etc. Although the payoff was disappointing, since it was mainly just exposition and a vision setting up a plot mystery.

And I'm still loving how detailed the miniatures are. I love the little things they put in the foreground to give the miniature set some character, like a playground or a bike rack or newspaper vending machines. Although they do seem to have a reused gag of a couple of buildings that are designed to tip over to a diagonal and then sort of bounce as they settle, which isn't very convincing.

 

Ultraman Trigger, episode #4:

 

On Trigger, I do find Kengo quite annoying, especially his "Smile, Smile" catchphrase. The Ultra series has so many examples of optimistic and upbeat lead characters how aren't annoying, last year's Z's Haruki being a prime example, but this one, so far, is. The rest of the show is still very good, and hopefully, there's going to be some development with Kengo.
The opening of episode #4 had a nice Lovecraft feel to it, with the vision of ancient times with god-like creatures committing evil. A lot of similar elements appear in many Ultra shows, but this is the first time, to my recollection, that there's a distinctly subjective vision of falling prey to powerful villains as was such a common theme in Lovecraft's work.


Now, today saw the upload of episode #3 of the original "Ultraman", featuring the invisible kaiju Neronga:

 

Which was also Go-On Yellow's catchphrase in Engine Sentai Go-Onger, so it's not even original.

I've noticed that a lot of tokusatsu shows have characters talking about wanting to preserve people's smiles or make people smile or whatever. I've wondered if it's a Japanese idiom, smiles meaning happiness, or if it's just because these are kids' shows.

 

Considering how heavily this is drawing from Tiga: Final Odyssey, it's safe to assume that Kengo is in for some angst when he figures out what the next word in Yuzare's dream comment likely is. "You are Light and..." almost certainly ends with Darkness. Kengo's overwhelmingly annoying optimism will be more fun once it's actually challenged and he's faced with the alternative in a meaningful way.

That said, Akito is the more interesting character thus far. Although his relationship with Yuna could get very awkwardly obsessive very quickly, I expect.

I'm honestly wishing the treasure hunter was the lead.

 

Let's hope so. I just reviewed the plot of that movie on the wiki, and it reminded me that there was a Dark Sparklence there that turned Daigo into Dark Tiga. And we've seen the dark-colored original artifact that Kengo's GUTS Sparklence was based on. So you could be onto something.

Although I'm still disappointed that this is looking more and more like a remake/reimagining of Tiga rather than a continuation of the Neo Frontier universe. I mean, they revived the original Land of Light continuity, so why couldn't they revive this one too?

I don't like him at all. Even aside from the rapey way he wants to "steal" Yuna as if she were an object, he's just kind of annoying. Although I did find his fight moves interesting in that first scene in Yuna's home -- his technique was focused on evading and deflecting attacks and pushing his opponents back without harming them. That was deftly done, and revealed more about his character than the actor's less-than-charming performance has done so far.

Maybe Yuna could've been the lead. Why can't we have an Ultrawoman for a change?

 

There's a series of explosive attacks, Dr. Mitarai and Yuki are missing, and a giant kite appears in the sky, in episode #9 of "Mirrorman":

 

Shoutfactory is now streaming "Ultraman R/B"

 

In episode #24 of "Ultraman Cosmos", a teenage ghost is warning of a monster. But unfortunately, only Ayano can see him:

 

Just in case there's anyone in this thread that doesn't also read the Power Rangers/general tokusatsu thread:

Tangent Knights 1: Caprice of Fate, the first book in my new, tokusatsu-inspired original audiobook series from GraphicAudio, is on sale today, at an introductory price of just $4.99 if you buy digital!



More on my blog: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2021/08/03/tangent-knights-1-caprice-of-fate-is-out-today/

Tangent Knights is most strongly influenced by Kamen Rider and somewhat by Super Sentai, but there are some Ultraman influences/homages as well.

 

An alien girl, a creepy doctor, some douchebags from the Defense Force, and some regular douchebags are the guest characters in episode #25 of "Ultraman Cosmos":

 

Well, that's weird. It's only the fifth week of Ultraman Trigger, and instead of a new episode, we get a recap special hosted by a cute kiddie-voiced monster. I don't need a recap of stuff I've seen within the past month, so I gave up watching once it became clear what it was. (I almost said I tuned out, but that doesn't really work for closing a YouTube window. Technology outpaces language!)

 

Yeah, I think last year had a couple of "special" clipshow episodes, as well. To be fair, US shows often take a break for a week, only they usually show a repeat instead of a "special" clipshow. But the principle is probably the same, there might be some holiday, or some big television event that they don't want to air a new episode against.

Anyway, for completist reasons, here is the special:


And here is episode #4 of "Ultraman":

This one actually was a sequel to "Ultra Q" episode #20, establishing the two shows as being in the same universe.