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

New trailer for Ultraman Arc

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Interesting bit was stating Arc uses the armors when his color timer starts blinking. That's... An unique way to have the hero resort to a power-up/form change
 
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Samurai8472 said:
Interesting bit was stating Arc uses the armors when his color timer starts blinking. That's... An unique way to have the hero resort to a power-up/form change
Click to expand...

I like it. Not only is it a fresh variant on the standard trio of balanced, strong, and fast/flying/etc. forms, but it makes sense that Ultras would devise an armor technology to counter the vulnerability that the flashing Color Timer indicates (assuming they're using it to signal weakness/injury like Blazar and a couple of others, which it sounds like they are).

On the other hand, it sounds like Arc is a character that the hero imagined and is able to bring to life thanks to the cube thingy, rather than a pre-existing member of the Ultra species. That would be quite a novel twist on the usual origins.
 
Just watched "Ultraman: Rising", the Netflix animated film. Really fun and sweet.

There is the one thing that's mentioned early on, and anybody even mildly familiar with Chekov's Gun knows that this will come up again. Not in this movie, but there's a mid-credits scene picking up on it and doing some heavy sequel-baiting. Though I wouldn't mind a sequel at all.
 
Since Rising is apparently set in Japan, I'm tempted to watch the Japanese dub. It wouldn't really feel right for Japanese characters in an Ultraman story to be speaking English. But conversely, English is its original language, so that's the truest version of the film. So I'm torn. I guess I could watch both.
 
Okay, I watched the English version of Rising; I'll revisit in Japanese later. Pretty good movie, interpreting Ultraman in a way that mixes authenticity with novelty.

So this is a universe where Ultras try to avoid killing kaiju, which actually puts them at odds with the defense force -- shades of Cosmos. I like it that they went for Japanese-style nuanced villainy, with Dr. Onda having a sympathetic motivation for his actions, seeing himself as a protector rather than being out for world domination or something.

A lot was left undefined about this Ultraman and the nature of his powers -- or rather, their powers, since it seems to be hereditary. He's not merged with an alien, he just has the powers intrinsically, a human who can turn into an Ultra, like Orb or Rosso & Blu or Trigger, more or less. And he doesn't even need a device like they did, but can transform by will alone, like Ultraman Jack. Interesting redefinition of the Color Timer -- neither a "time's up" warning or an injury/low-energy warning, but a warning of stress and imminent loss of stability of the transformation. Well, judging from that mid-credits scene, it looks like we may get some answers in a sequel.

The English-language cast was effective. Tamlyn Tomita's voice is always nice to hear. Julia Harriman as the reporter was interesting. Apparently she's a composer who made her acting debut here, at least according to her IMDb page. Her voice reminds me very strongly of Melissa Benoist's.

I wonder if the Japanese will give this Ultraman a distinct name. The Ultra wiki just calls him Ultraman. I suppose they might call him Ultraman Rising.
 
Well, the New Generation Stars clip-show series ended today at 22 episodes. It was mildly interesting in that sometimes it showed clips from several episodes with voiceovers of the framing characters watching them, and sometimes it was just reruns of entire episodes with a brief frame sequence. They did two full episodes each of Ginga S, X, Geed, and Blazar, and one full episode of Z, not in that order. There was a fair amount of Trigger and Decker in the compilation episodes, but for some reason, they gave considerably less attention to Orb and R/B, and showed hardly anything from Ginga's first season or Taiga, as far as I recall. Sometimes the attempts at a thematic justification for why the framing character was being shown those particular events were quite tenuous.

Next week is an Ultraman Arc preview special, and Arc premieres the week after that. I hadn't realized we were so close.
 
Ultraman Arc press conference highlights


It's funny that they have a 2nd tier godzilla of their own with a similar roar

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Preview of the opening song


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A jump to the sky turns to an Ultraman specium beam...............
 
Samurai8472 said:
It's funny that they have a 2nd tier godzilla of their own with a similar roar
Click to expand...

No, Jirahs and Gomess are the ones based on the Godzilla suit. Red King is, well, basically a big walking ear of corn. And is not actually red.

Here's a video of the theme song with the lyrics translated:
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I don't find the theme song as engaging off the bat as the last few, but sometimes they grow on me with time.
 
Samurai8472 said:
Ultraman Arc press conference highlights


It's funny that they have a 2nd tier godzilla of their own with a similar roar


A jump to the sky turns to an Ultraman specium beam...............
Click to expand...

Hey, don't disrespect Red King like that. He's my favorite Ultraman Kaiju, and he deserves more respect.
 
I just watched the Japanese dub of Ultraman: Rising. Yuki Yamada of Godzilla Minus One plays the lead, and his voice reminds me of Nathan Fillion. A nice touch is that Ami's grandmother is played by Hiroko Sakurai, the female lead from Ultra Q and the original Ultraman (as two different characters).

I can only follow so much of the Japanese dialogue, but it was interesting how much of the English dialogue (which the subtitles convey accurately) had to be substituted with different things in Japanese. For instance, every instance of "My God" was substituted with something like "Uso da ro" ("It's not true") or "Maji ka?" ("Seriously?") or "Taihen da" ("This is awful/an emergency"). There was a lot of idiomatic phrasing that they just completely replaced.

I noticed a passing reference that may have been a hint about the origin of these Ultramen.
In the cabin, Professor Sato/Ultradad said that his wife "taught me to be human." Which implies that he may not be human, but an Ultra living in human guise, like Ultraseven, Leo, 80, or Mebius. That would explain how he and his son can change into Ultras. It's fitting, too, since the premise of the film -- that the elder Ultra suffered a debilitating leg injury and had to step aside for a younger Ultra -- is very reminiscent of Seven's role as Leo's mentor.

I'm surprised I didn't think of that possibility before. If it's true, it makes the film's approach to its Ultras more authentic to the lore than I'd thought.
 
Apparently the dubs are going to be hosted on a separate channel from now on:


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Ultraman Arc episode 1

English version

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Multi Language version


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And the official OP/ED music videos

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Here's the first episode of Ultraman Arc, "Arc to the Future." Great Scott!

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Not bad. Interesting to start in medias res, with Arc's origin left a mystery for now. Pretty good climactic battle, done to look like a single continuous three-minute-plus shot.

I like the idea of focusing on an organization dedicated to studying kaiju rather than fighting them. Whether that makes any difference in how Arc deals with the kaiju remains to be seen.
 
Apparently the Hanna-Barbera co-produced Ultraman: The Adventure Begins is going to be screened at a US convention called G-Fest this month, as a lead up to Millcreek releasing it on home video next year

https://collider.com/ultraman-the-adventure-begins-screenings-g-fest/

(Note: The article calls it a "lost" movie which isn't accurate, while not available legally in the US up to this point its easily available online, I've watched it, and in Japan it has even gotten a bluray release).

Between Millcreek announcing a Ultraman Taiga release and now this, I'm really excited to see what new stuff Millcreek has licensed now. I thought it would just be Taiga and some (or all) of the series up to maybe Blazer, but if they got the rights to The Adventure Begins that really opens up the possibilities (I'm hoping for the two English language produced live action shows personally).
 
Arc #2, "Legend in the Woods":
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Pretty good one, with some impressive action and directing. The highlight was the "Arc's eye/kaiju's eye view" sequence, actually zooming inside the giants' heads and looping around to look out of their eyes -- which made more sense in Arc's case, since Ultras are supposed to be "Beings of Light," essentially semi-energy beings.

I was disappointed by how the fight ended. It seemed that Arc and SKIP were trying to end the fight just by sedating Leodo and reburying it, but then they added that bit where he got dragged in and evidently had to kill it to escape.

We get a glimpse of how Arc communicates to Yuma. He seems to be another nonverbal Ultra like Blazar, appearing in a mirror to attract Yuma's attention.

It looks like next week might finally explain the origin story. I'm reminded of Toei's '80s and early '90s Metal Heroes series, which often devoted the first couple of episodes to pure action before finally starting to define the characters and their motivations.

According to the commercials, they're putting out remastered Blu-Ray sets of The*Ultraman and Ultraman 80. I hope they get a US release with decent English subtitles on The*Ultraman; the only available subs are atrociously translated.
 
It looks like Ultraman: The Adventure Begins is getting a new Dub for its upcoming US release

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I was already surprised that they managed to get through the rights issues to release this in the US, so I'm assuming making a new dub was part of that process (since it had an english dub from the beginning, but the rights to that may not belong to Tsuburaya)
 
The Adventure Begins was made in English to begin with, so the English-language soundtrack was not a dub, it was just the soundtrack. So do they mean it has a new Japanese-language dub? Or do they mean they're replacing the original English soundtrack with new English performances?

Anyway, it was a joint production of Tsuburaya and Hanna-Barbera, so I don't see why Tsuburaya wouldn't have rights to it, unless there's some tangle with Warner Bros. now owning H-B's catalog. But I'm not sure that would've applied to an Ultraman co-production.
 
In context its definitely talking about a new English Dub, they wouldn't be promoting a Japanese dub on a post about a screening at a US convention. The term dub isn't just used for literal dubbing over anymore, at least colloquially I've seen it used as just talking about a different language tracks regardless of the products actual origin.
 
Hmm, I guess I can understand why that misunderstanding of the word's meaning could arise, but it's confusing to people like me who interpret words more strictly.

Anyway, why would they re-record the English soundtrack when it was made in English to begin with? That doesn't make sense. I could understand replacing a poor (actual) dub with a better one, like they did for Akira, but replacing the original soundtrack seems pointless and wrong to me.

Or is this some cheap move to avoid paying residuals to Chad Everett, Adrienne Barbeau, etc.?
 
Heres another tweet from Ultraman Connection, which an official US Ultraman website/company/etc.

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Then, when someone asks in a reply to this tweet if the old dub might be a selectable option in the new US release, one of the guys that presented the film at the con said its "still being researched". So, to me that says that Tsuburaya don't seem to have the US rights to the dub, which I'm assuming would probably belong to Warner brothers (because they bought Hanna-Barbera).

Honestly, if that track was the part of the movie owned by Hanna-Barbera I wouldn't be surprised, since the actual movie was animated in Japan with seeming no involvement from English animators anyway, just a few Hanna-Barbera people listed as "consultants" or "creative directors" while all the actual animation roles are Japanese people. The english language track on the other hand seemed to have been done by Hanna-Barbera people based off the credits (with Andrea Romano being the casting director, interestingly enough), and it makes sense that the English track would be their responsibility on the co-production.
 
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