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[Christopher]

I had an offbeat thought this morning. We know that, at least in the Land of Light universe, the Ultramen protect the whole universe, not just Earth. So do they ever merge with hosts from species other than humans? Might there be, somewhere in the multiverse, a Metron or a Zetton or something that can lift up a henshin device and transform into an Ultraman?

I think the only nonhumans I've ever seen as Ultra hosts are humanlike aliens -- Ignis in Trigger, Run in the Ultraman Zero movie, technically Yuko in Ace (since she turned out to be secretly a Moon princess). As far as I can tell from the wiki, there's never been a non-humanoid Ultra host onscreen. But it stands to reason that there should be, doesn't it? There must be plenty of peaceful nonhumanoids out there that the Ultras protect, and some of them must live in planetary environments that Ultras can't function in for long, requiring a merger with a native host.

Unless Ultras are only capable of merging with humanlike species. Mebius and the Ultra Galaxy movie gave the Land of Light Ultras an origin similar to the one from The*Ultraman, where they used to be human in appearance and size but were transformed by their power source into Ultra forms. So maybe they can only merge with, or shapeshift into, a compatibly humanoid species.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Unless Ultras are only capable of merging with humanlike species. Mebius and the Ultra Galaxy movie gave the Land of Light Ultras an origin similar to the one from The*Ultraman, where they used to be human in appearance and size but were transformed by their power source into Ultra forms. So maybe they can only merge with, or shapeshift into, a compatibly humanoid species.

That might be an in-universe explanation for it. Of course, the real world reasons are of a budgetary and consuming habits nature.

Episode #10 of "Ultraman Ace" brings back some characters from the previous Return of Ultraman series:

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And, also, Shin Ultraman will get its North American premiere at the Fantasia Fimfest in Montreal, Canada.

 

[Christopher]

Of course, the real world reasons are of a budgetary and consuming habits nature.

I don't see budget being a factor. Toei has done shows where inhuman suit characters have transformed into armored heroes, like Doggy Cruger in Dekaranger, about half of the Kyurangers, and 4/5 of the Zenkaigers. And the Ultra franchise has done whole movies and video specials focusing exclusively on suit characters without a human in sight (like Hikari Gaiden), or having only a minor human presence (like Ultra Fight Victory, which I just watched -- though only after the Ultraman X 2-parter that was a sequel to it, because I hadn't realized TokuSHOUTsu had it on their movie page). And they've had series with alien regulars, like Dr. Gourman in X or Marluru in Trigger. So there's no reason they couldn't introduce a supporting or guest Ultraman who was bonded with a non-humanoid alien.

Episode #10 of "Ultraman Ace" brings back some characters from the previous Return of Ultraman series, including the hero Go/Jack:

Didn't they actually call him Shin (New) Ultraman at the time, since "Jack" wasn't coined until 1984?

 

[Kai "the spy"]

I don't see budget being a factor. Toei has done shows where inhuman suit characters have transformed into armored heroes, like Doggy Cruger in Dekaranger, about half of the Kyurangers, and 4/5 of the Zenkaigers. And the Ultra franchise has done whole movies and video specials focusing exclusively on suit characters without a human in sight (like Hikari Gaiden), or having only a minor human presence (like Ultra Fight Victory, which I just watched -- though only after the Ultraman X 2-parter that was a sequel to it, because I hadn't realized TokuSHOUTsu had it on their movie page). And they've had series with alien regulars, like Dr. Gourman in X or Marluru in Trigger. So there's no reason they couldn't introduce a supporting or guest Ultraman who was bonded with a non-humanoid alien.

Okay, I was thinking more about main characters. The Ultra Galaxy Fight shows don't have any hosts, only the Ultra forms. And while these, and other shows like the Hikari Gaiden have all suit actors, they also barely have any miniatures, and the sets are usually very basic, so they save a lot on that end of the budget.

Side and guest characters, I guess, would be a possibility to explore the idea, but then, again, it's ultimately what's easier to shoot and delivering what the audience expects. It's the same reason why all live-action hosts have been Japanese or of Japanese descent. Also, a lot of guest Ultras haven't had hosts at all (or none that we saw), like Zoffy or Xenon.

Didn't they actually call him Shin (New) Ultraman at the time, since "Jack" wasn't coined until 1984?

I guess?


Episode #20 of "Ultraman Chronicle D" retells the finale of Ultraman Dyna:

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[Christopher]

Okay, next question: Should I watch Ultraman Orb before or after The Origin Saga? I'm leaning toward before, since that's the order they were released in, and I feel that's generally the best way to experience a series for the first time, since the release order affects how the stories are told -- e.g. any mysteries in the original work might be spoiled too soon by the prequel, and the prequel might reference things you don't understand as well if you didn't see the original first.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Can't help you there. I've only seen a few episodes of Orb in the anthology series Tsuburaya does on occasion on their YT channel, and I've not seen a second of The Origin Saga. My instinct, though, would be to watch it just as you described.

 

[Christopher]

My instinct, though, would be to watch it just as you described.

Yeah, I searched for opinions online and found some comments agreeing with that, but I still wanted your opinion. Well, I guess that's what I'll do, then.

I just finished X, and it's definitely one of my favorites. There were some really good, clever stories, a nice approach to the monsters (very Cosmos-like in trying to coexist with them), good character development, and impressive production values. Although it's weird that they never explained the origin of the Spark Dolls in that universe. I guess the implication is that the Dark Spark War from Ginga caused Spark Dolls to be scattered on more than one parallel Earth.

X is certainly the most talkative Ultra yet, at least among those bonded to human hosts -- he's trapped in digital form, so he speaks to Daichi through his phone/device, and ultimately to the rest of the team through theirs. It's an interestingly different dynamic, sort of like "Belt-san" in Kamen Rider Drive, and lets X have more character development than most Ultras. And it made it weird to watch the movie where X teams up with Tiga and OG Ultraman, because I'm not used to Ultra battles being waged wordlessly anymore. Heck, even the classic Ultras have been more talkative since Mebius and the Zero movies.

 

[Samurai8472]

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That's cool. Dr Maki from Kamen Rider OOO's has a role in the series.


https://www.amazon.com/Ultraman-Mov...ocphy=9017961&hvtargid=pla-966956174597&psc=1

Is Ultraman X pretty self contained? I know there's some interconnectivity with past Ultraman series based on these retrospects by Christopher.


At one time I was mulling over whether to buy Ultraman X's figuart figure. I also saw the blu-ray for the series/movie at bestbuy at one time.

 

[Christopher]

That's cool. Dr Maki from Kamen Rider OOO's has a role in the series.

Ohh! I thought I recognized the captain from somewhere, but I didn't think of a villainous role.

Is Ultraman X pretty self contained? I know there's some interconnectivity with past Ultraman series based on these retrospects by Christopher.

It's in a standalone universe, but it has multiple guest appearances by past Ultras from parallel worlds, and nearly all its monsters are reuses of classic monsters. You can follow its stories on its own, but you can get more of the references and allusions if you've seen the earlier shows. (For instance, one of the later episodes makes a very deep continuity cut, bringing back a monster from the very first Ultra series Ultra Q, before there was even an Ultraman, and implicitly casting itself as a sequel to that episode even though it took place in the Showa Ultra universe (Land of Light) rather than X's World of the Ultra Flare. But it's subtle enough that you could still follow it as a standalone; it'd just be a bit weird.)

At one time I was mulling over whether to buy Ultraman X's figuart figure.

X is a fairly good Ultra design, unusually high-tech. I'm not that fond of his Exceed X power-up form, though. And the monster-based armors are a bit silly, but I guess they're no worse than the various attachment forms in Kamen Rider.

I also saw the blu-ray for the series/movie at bestbuy at one time.

The whole thing streams free on ShoutFactory's TokuSHOUTsu, including the movie. They have every Ultra TV series from 1966-80 and every series, movie, and video miniseries from 2010-18 (2019 if you count the R/B movie).

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Episode #37 of "Ultraman Mebius" features the Father of Ultra:

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[Christopher]

Well, it turns out it doesn't really matter whether you watch Ultraman Orb or The Origin Saga first, since they have very little connection. That surprised me, since Orb is a series that depends very much on its backstory stretching back more than a century. Gai/Orb and his nemesis Juggler are introduced as old friends-turned-foes, they have a shared history involving a tragic event in Gai's past that links to the show's female lead Naomi, and at the start of the series, Orb has lost his true power and has to rely on borrowing the powers of past Ultras that are somehow contained in cards, with each of his forms being a hybrid of two Ultras.

So I'd assumed that The Origin Saga would be fleshing out that backstory and explaining how things got to that state. But instead, it just tells Orb's first mission when he was a rookie Ultraman. Gai and Juggler are the only connections to the main series, but while it plants the seeds of their later rivalry, their personalities are so different that far in the past that they barely seem like the same characters. So the two series are virtually independent of each other and could work in either order. (Apparently the backstory for the main series is explained in a canonical tie-in novel.)

It took me a while to warm up to Orb, since it started out with kind of a silly tone. But it turned out to be a very good series with strong ideas and character work, and the humor was generally pretty effective too. It's certainly different from the norm, since instead of a defense team, it centers on a comical trio of paranormal-investigator bloggers (led by Naomi) that Gai gradually starts hanging around with and drawing closer to. Naomi's uncle is with a more conventional defense team, but it's in the background most of the time, and the uncle is usually played rather comically as well.

Gai/Orb is a unique Ultra as well. He's neither a human bonded to an independent Ultraman or an Ultraman disguised as a human. He's a humanoid who was granted the power of Orb, but that power has no personality attached to it other than his. It's more like it just imbued him with the ability to change from human to Ultra, much like the Ultra Mind of the anime series did for the people of planet U-40, but just for him instead of his entire species (and indeed Gai's homeworld was apparently called O-50, which seems like an intentional homage). It's quite a contrast from Ultraman X, where X had the most individuality of any Ultra I've seen, with X and Daichi more like partners than the usual merged being. They went in completely the opposite direction here. By the same token, Orb had no guest appearances by past Ultras, just their card avatars.

The Origin Saga is also pretty good, but quite different in tone and approach -- a lot more serious and dramatic, and telling a single 12-episode story arc about a misguided pacifist trying to forcibly eradicate free will in the universe and thereby end war. The villain, Dr. Psychi, has a comical character design (a humanoid with floppy doglike ears) and a cute-robot sidekick, but is a rather sympathetic and nuanced villain. It's interesting to see an Ultra on his first mission, untrained as a warrior, with Gai needing the more skilled Juggler to coach him while Juggler resents not getting the power himself, setting up their rift.

Also, unlike the main series, Origin has plenty of guest Ultras. Dyna/Asuka and Cosmos/Musashii are major players in about the first half and the final episode, and Gaia/Gamu and Agul/Fujimiya are featured in the latter half. Indeed, I thought that the "other universe" the story was set in was meant to be Gaia's universe, but it turned out to be a distinct one that he and Agul were summoned to for the crisis, like Dyna and Cosmos were. I wish they'd made that clearer when Gamu first appeared. Other than that, it handled the returning leads' characterizations fairly well.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

In episode #11 of "Ultraman Ace", a monster attacks a radar base, and there was a group of young women cycling in the area, so of course that's suspicious:

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[Kai "the spy"]

And this week's episode #21 of "Ultraman Chronicle D" presents the first part of the retelling of the film Ultraman Saga:

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[Christopher]

I'm about 9 episodes into Geed, and I have mixed feelings. It's got some good character work and drama, and it's another departure from the traditional defense team format, with some interesting twists. But it annoys me that it uses the exact same transformation gimmick as Orb, with an Ultra combining two collectible items to turn into one of several hybrids of past Ultras, and with the initial story arc being about collecting more such items to acquire new hybrid forms. And there isn't even a decent justification this time for why Geed needs to borrow powers from past Ultras rather than just manifesting a form of his own.

It also more or less rips off the same backstory setup as Ginga, with the collectible items created in a vast war sometime in the past that involved many Ultras (apparently just Land of Light Ultras this time, yet somehow the power items include multiversal Ultras' powers). Plus you've got these incredibly long, complicated henshin sequences with reciting stock phrases and inserting the power items in the gizmo and scanning it with the other gizmo... it's just overdone. They got by just fine for decades with just holding the gizmo up in the air.

It's basically a sequel to the Ultraman Zero movies, since Geed is the son of Belial, and Zero is a supporting character. Apparently main director Koichi Sakamoto thought of it as being in the Land of Light universe, but it's officially in a separate universe called Side Space, which makes sense (sort of) because the Zero/Belial movies were supposed to be half a century in the future. The different Ultra universes are evidently not temporally aligned, given how often Zero shows up on various present-day Earths, and given that Orb's Origin Saga took place partly on a 21st-century Earth despite being, apparently, thousands of years earlier in Orb's subjective timeline than his main series which was set on a different 21st-century Earth.

I find the New Generation series kind of paradoxical -- every one is its own brand-new universe, yet they're all utterly dependent on past continuity, with Geed being the pinnacle of that.

 

[Christopher]

Well, Geed turned out to be excellent, despite my annoyances with its derivative premise and transformation gimmick. The character work was terrific, and there were some good stories. The finale was pretty moving at times. I particularly liked the female leads -- Laiha, a hardened swordswoman who had a really beautiful, powerful fighting style (I think it was kung fu), and Moa, the hero's childhood friend, who was charmingly bright and bouncy and fun with a brilliant smile. They also did interesting things with Ultraman Zero, who was the regular secondary Ultra, and the human he bonded with, a salaryman (office worker) with a wife and young daughter. I like it when the Ultra and host have distinct personalities and interplay, and that was done nicely here, especially since the host and Ultra were such polar opposites in personality and lifestyle.

One supporting character I found interesting was Zenna, an agent of a sort of reverse Men in Black, an all-alien agency (except for one human member) that policed aliens on Earth and kept the peace. He used a holographic disguise to appear human, but it was a nearly immobile disguise with no facial mobility except the eyes, so the actor just kept his expression deadpan and moved his head and body while a dubbed-in voice delivered his lines (the same voice actor as Zyuran from Zenkaiger). The actor is usually a suit actor, and the role was basically suit acting without the suit. It seemed like an easy gig at first, just standing there without expression, but I came to appreciate what an interesting performance challenge it was to keep his face completely immobile no matter what mood or emotion he was miming with his body, and in fight scenes as well. That must've taken a lot of discipline. Plus it's kind of ironic -- tokusatsu has so many characters whose heads are immobile masks presented as living flesh, and here was an actor whose real, living face was presented as an immobile mask.

So that's three excellent seasons in a row, after the weak start with Ginga/Ginga S. I wonder how long they can keep it up.

 

[Samurai8472]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1539461865662820353

Two new dvd's coming soon

Cosmos

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4PVZBJ...1655871121&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-2

And Neo's

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4Q1GMG...1655871121&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1

 

[kirk55555]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1539461865662820353

Two new dvd's coming soon

Cosmos

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4PVZBJ...1655871121&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-2

And Neo's

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4Q1GMG...1655871121&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1

Neos will probably be the first main release I don't buy, because I've watched it and its probably my second most hated Ultra show after Neo Ultra Q, I even liked Trigger more then Neos.

But Cosmos should be interesting. I'm glad they're going with 8 discs, I know Millcreek prefers to stay at 6 discs or under, but with so many episodes Cosmos just wouldn't have worked with six DVDs.

It looks like Millcreek is skipping August for releases (these release in September, and Ultraman Zearth and Ultraman Kids 3000 are the July releases). While I'm planning to get most of the remaining stuff (outside of Neos), and I already got my most anticipated show (Mebius), I'd say of the remaining shows I'm most interested in Ultraman Nexus (which is apparently coming with its connected Ultraman: The Next movie, based on what they said when they announced all the stuff they were releasing) and Ultraman Max. Hopefully Millcreek end up extending their license, I'd love to have Ultraman Taiga and Ultraman Z on DVD or Bluray.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Episode #38 of "Ultraman Mebius" has our team working with an ace pilot from GUYS Ocean against a monster that is incredibly fast both in the skies and under water:

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[Christopher]

So that's three excellent seasons in a row, after the weak start with Ginga/Ginga S. I wonder how long they can keep it up.

I think I jinxed it, because Ultraman R/B (pronounced "Rube," essentially) was not as good as the previous three. The first half was pretty weak, going for comedy to an extent that felt a bit forced, and featuring a really obnoxiously hammy comic villain. There was some attempt at meta commentary with the villain complaining about these modern Ultramen and how they talk too much and don't know how to be a proper hero, but it was undermined by the fact that he was obsessed with, and trying to turn himself into a version of, Ultraman Orb from just two seasons before. The show centered on two brothers who became Ultras, but I didn't think their personalities were all that clearly defined, e.g. the younger brother came off as the more intellectual, thoughtful one at first, but then was treated as a hothead who didn't think things through. And their father was a one-note joke character in the first half, and their kid sister wasn't much better.

The second half was considerably better, as they brought in a new main villainess with a nuanced personality, a poignant backstory, and a complex relationship with the kid sister. There was also an intriguing mystery involving the sister that led to some more engaging character work with her and the father (though I didn't care for the actor playing the father). There was some effective drama there, but I still wouldn't put it on a par with the previous few seasons.

Perhaps the most annoying part is the trend of increasingly long and convoluted henshin sequences, compounded by the fact that it had two Ultramen, so you tended to get both their full transformations back-to-back, taking more than a minute at a time, at least until later when they edited it down to a simultaneous henshin. Also, they continued the tiresome trope of the heroes getting their power from collectible devices containing the powers of past Ultras, but it didn't really make any sense this time. There wasn't a decent origin for the power crystals or why they had past Ultras' powers. And in practice, the main crystals represented the four elemental powers that the two Ultras would switch between, and the attempts to identify the elements with past Ultras were lame. I mean, they used Ultraman Ginga for water, just because he had blue crystals in his design, even though Ultraman Agul actually was the spirit of Earth's oceans and would've made more sense. And they used Taro for fire because he has one explosion-based finisher move, and Tiga for air because one of his three forms is flight-focused. At least Victory for Earth sort of makes sense since he came from underground, but surely Gaia, a literal Earth spirit, would've made more sense.

There were some very good action scenes and miniature work here and there, though. There was a damned impressive fight scene in episode 5 that maintained an effective illusion of a continuous, unbroken take as one of the Ultramen flew into battle against a kaiju and fought with it for some time while the camera stayed close to his POV or hovering near him. I didn't time it, but it went on impressively long.

This was another season like Orb where the heroes were just imbued with Ultra power rather than bonding with Ultras who had their own sentience/personality. Indeed, it ultimately turned out that they had the same origin as Orb, and the whole series was sort of an indirect sequel, despite being in a separate universe.

It also struck me that it uses the same gimmick as Kamen Rider Revice, in that it has a team of two heroes who eventually gain the ability to combine into a single merged form whose name is the title of the show (although it's romanized as Ultraman Ruebe rather than R/B).

 

[Christopher]

A 10-minute clip from Shin Ultraman is up for a limited time (without subtitles):

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The opening montage seems to show the origins of the SSSP, using updated Ultra Q monsters along with that show's theme music. The rest has kind of a Shin Godzilla feel with a bunch of people in suits looking at computers, but the music seems to be right out of the original '66 show.

When Ultraman finally shows up, he's pure silver, no red. I wonder how that changes.