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

Kai "the spy" said:
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.
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Sure, but it's weird to have it happen when the show's only a month old. I guess maybe it's to avoid the Olympics or something. Kamen Rider and Super Sentai took a week off too, but it was a week or two before this.

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.
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Despite having the same female lead playing a totally different character, as well as other regulars from one show playing guest characters in the other. And the last episode of Ultra Q was delayed, so that it actually aired during Ultraman's run. That must've confused the kids.

According to the Wiki, apparently Ultraman was originally meant to be 20 years in the future, with the SSSP organization having been founded by Ultra Q's recurring scientist character some years after that series, but it was later retconned as having taken place in 1966-7, the same time it aired. A lot like the UNIT dating controversy in Doctor Who.
 
In episode #10 of "Mirrorman", a former SGM member switched sides to create a device to trap a whole city in a single moment in time:
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Missing people are found again, but they all appear to have amnesia, in episode #26 of "Ultraman Cosmos":
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I've finished Return of Ultraman. I don't have much to say. Its not a good show, but its type of bad isn't the kind that makes me angry or sticks with me, its just generally uninteresting. There are a few good episodes (the two parter with cameos from Ultraman and Ultraseven is probably the best story in the series), and Hideki Go is a decent Ultra host, but besides that the show is mostly just boring and unimpressive. Most of the Kaiju aren't memorable, the episodes are mostly poorly written, and the supporting cast i dire, with a terrible little kid who is almost always there and a defense team that have nothing memorable about them at all.

My next Ultraman show will be Ultraman Leo, skipping past Taro for now, because I've heard its a darker show, plus it has Dan Moroboshi as the Captain. Knowing the little I know about Taro's show, I think it would just annoy me right now so I'll watch it after Leo.
 
You can't lead a horse to water, but in episode #27 of "Ultraman Cosmos", Team EYES tries their best to lead a pregnant kaiju into the ocean:
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Another special this week in place of Trigger, though it looks like it's returning next week. I watched the bulk of it this time, since it featured glimpses of some older Ultra Heroes as well as Trigger. Although "older" is relative, since they all seemed pretty recent -- as far as I could tell, only from the past eight years since the franchise came back from its last hiatus. The current era seems very different from what I'm used to. The clips they showed featured lots of scenes of Ultras talking to each other and apparently interacting as a whole community, rather than being the mostly silent figures I'm familiar with.

Also, they showed a preview of an upcoming team-up between Trigger and, IIRC, the previous season's hero, Ultraman Z. Which is weird, because I thought this show was in a different universe from the previous ones. But then, that never stops Kamen Riders or Sentais from teaming up.
 
Christopher said:
Another special this week in place of Trigger, though it looks like it's returning next week.
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Okay, this one definitely wasn't related to the Olympics, those ended on August 8.

Anyway, for the same completist reasons as last week, here is the episode:
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I watched the bulk of it this time, since it featured glimpses of some older Ultra Heroes as well as Trigger. Although "older" is relative, since they all seemed pretty recent -- as far as I could tell, only from the past eight years since the franchise came back from its last hiatus. The current era seems very different from what I'm used to. The clips they showed featured lots of scenes of Ultras talking to each other and apparently interacting as a whole community, rather than being the mostly silent figures I'm familiar with.
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Most of that footage was from the "Ultra Galaxy Fight" shows of the last two years. Those are YouTube-exclusive serialized mini-episodes of under ten minutes, or put together short movies of about an hour length. These shows are not set on Earth, but on the Ultra homeplanet and other alien worlds, and are really for the fans, as they're all about the lore and getting Ultra heroes fighting side by side.

Also, they showed a preview of an upcoming team-up between Trigger and, IIRC, the previous season's hero, Ultraman Z. Which is weird, because I thought this show was in a different universe from the previous ones. But then, that never stops Kamen Riders or Sentais from teaming up.
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The newer Ultra shows are all set in separate universes, with the Ultras travelling between them. So there is an in-universe explenation.


Also, the fifth episode of "Ultraman" went online today, featuring the first appearance of Akihiko Hirata's Dr. Iwamoto, as well as a guest appearance by Bond Girl Akiko Wakabayashi:
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Kai "the spy" said:
Most of that footage was from the "Ultra Galaxy Fight" shows of the last two years. Those are YouTube-exclusive serialized mini-episodes of under ten minutes, or put together short movies of about an hour length. These shows are not set on Earth, but on the Ultra homeplanet and other alien worlds, and are really for the fans, as they're all about the lore and getting Ultra heroes fighting side by side.
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I guess that would explain what a live-action version of the '70s anime Ultraman was doing there. He looked pretty weird next to the others.


The newer Ultra shows are all set in separate universes, with the Ultras travelling between them. So there is an in-universe explenation.
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"Newer" starting when? I had the impression that at some point in the 2000s, they revived the Showa-era continuity and stuck with it for a while. Was I misunderstanding what I read in the wiki? Were they just doing new universes but crossing them over with the Showa/"Land of Light" universe?
 
Christopher said:
"Newer" starting when? I had the impression that at some point in the 2000s, they revived the Showa-era continuity and stuck with it for a while. Was I misunderstanding what I read in the wiki? Were they just doing new universes but crossing them over with the Showa/"Land of Light" universe?
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Okay, Ultra Q up to Ultraman Leo were all set in the same universe, then came the anime series set in its own universe, after which Ultraman 80 returned to the universe established by the previous live-action shows.

The international co-productions, the animated film Ultraman: The Legend Begins, the Australian Ultraman Great and the American Ultraman Powered were set in their own individual universes. Tiga and Dyna were then set in the same universe, but Gaia was a different universe, again. Same with Cosmos, Nexus and Max.

Ultraman Mebius, celebrating the brands 30th anniversary, returned to the universe of the original shows. UltraSeven X was then set in a parallel universe, but the hero UltraSeven X turned out to be the original UltraSeven and returned to the original universe. The Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle shows were also set in this original universe, but in the future.

Now is when the movies get into play. Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers had Mebius visiting another universe in which alternate versions of the original Ultra Brothers, as well as Tiga, Dyna and Gaia existed. And in 2010, the movie Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial had Zero chasing the evil Ultraman Belial into another universe (which might be the same as the one from Ultraman Nexus, based on him encountering a petrified Ultraman Noa), and at the end he chose to spend more time in this universe.
In the following Ultraman Saga, Zero then follows a distress call into yet another universe, where he meets Dyna and Cosmos, as it turns out that this is where these heroes ended up after their shows ended. At the end, Zero returns to the universe from the previous film.

And starting with Ginga, each new show was then set in a different universe with its own new mankind unaware of the the Ultras, but having crossovers between the different characters now having become a regular thing. With Ginga S being the obvious exception, as that was basically a second season of Ginga.
This is officially called the New Generations
 
I see. It's loosely similar to the progression of Kamen Rider. The Showa-era series were all treated as a single shared universe (mostly), with recurring characters and guest appearances by previous Riders. The Heisei revival was all standalone alternate realities for most of the 2000s, but then they established a multiverse and started having annual crossovers between consecutive Riders and numerous mass team-up movies bringing back classic Riders.

There's even a vaguely similar pattern in the Godzilla franchise, though not exactly the same. You had a loose overall Showa continuity clumsily knitted together from what had initially been standalone films, then a single unified Heisei continuity, but then from 1999-2005 you had six films in five different continuities. But there the pattern breaks, because Godzilla hasn't embraced a multiverse, instead keeping different incarnations even more separate than before (in that they're no longer even in continuity with the original film).

I wonder what it was about the late '90s and early '00s that made all three franchises shift from shared continuity to multiple standalones. And I wonder if there are any other Japanese franchises that followed that pattern.
 
In this week's "Mirrorman", episode #11, a spaceship by the Invaders is shot down, and one escaping survivor loses a MacGuffin for the heroes and villains to search for:
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It just occurred to me to check ShoutFactory's site to see which Ultra series they have, in the context of the universes/eras. They have the first five series (of which I'm up to the fourth one) and Leo, skipping Taro, and they have every New Generation series from Ginga through R/B, including various movies and the Orb Origin Saga prequel. They also have Neo Ultra Q from 2013. I guess that makes sense -- they licensed the classic ones and the modern ones. Too bad they don't have the in-between ones, though. I'm interested in seeing Ultraman Gaia, since it's from the same head writer as Serial Experiments Lain and Digimon Tamers.
 
In episode #28 of "Ultraman Cosmos", EYES has to answer some critical questions from a TV journalist:
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Oops, totally forgot about the 55th Anniversary Campaign. So, from last week, episode #1 of "Ultraman Ginga S":
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From last week, episode #1 of "Ultraman X":
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And finally, from this week, episode #5 of "Ultraman R/B":
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Episode #29 of "Ultraman Cosmos" is going for a dramatic cliffhanger:
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Christopher said:
I'm interested in seeing Ultraman Gaia, since it's from the same head writer as Serial Experiments Lain and Digimon Tamers.
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FYI it's on youtube. Some episodes have been blocked by Tsuburaya productions

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Samurai8472 said:
FYI it's on youtube
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I know, but two episodes are missing from that playlist for some reason. I'm a completist and I want to see the whole thing. They have it on Amazon Prime, and I'm hoping it'll be feasible for me to subscribe to that sometime soon. Or maybe ShoutFactory will get it.

Anyway, for now I'm still working my way through Return of Ultraman. So I can wait.
 
Sorry, I'm late. This week finally saw a new episode, #5, of "Ultraman Trigger, in which Akito has a massive chip on his shoulder:
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Kai "the spy" said:
This week finally saw a new episode, #5, of "Ultraman Trigger, in which Akito has a massive chip on his shoulder:
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Not bad. We get a bit more fleshing out of Akita, and an interesting confrontation between Yuna and (pause to look up name on the Wiki) Darrgon. The show's still focusing only on the core trio, and the thief guy intermittently, while the rest of the cast remain one-note. But we're only five weeks in, so there's time, I guess. The past Ultra shows I've seen were pretty good at distributing focus episodes among the full ensemble. With this more arc-driven modern approach, I wonder if the characters who aren't tied in to the main story arc will get short shrift.

I think this is the first time we've seen one of the Giants on this show shrink down to human size, though I could be forgetting something. It's an interesting quirk of the franchise that the normally giant Ultras can optionally function on human scale, or occasionally even miniaturize themselves. With this show (and apparently the whole New Generations era) featuring more Ultra/giant characters and giving them more personality and interaction than the past shows I've seen, I wonder if we'll see the size changes happen more often to have more interaction between humans and Ultra-type characters.
 
And here is episode #6 of the original "Ultraman", in which Hoshino and friends not only spot the monster Guesra at the harbor, but also some diamond smugglers:
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