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

I've reached the part of Ultraman Leo where they decided to dial back the darkness and make it more kid-friendly, including a 7-episode sequence of stories based on Japanese legends and folklore. The last one, episode 32, is based on the classic The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, about a couple who finds and raises a baby that turns out to be a princess from the Moon. Here, as in some versions of the tale, the infant princess was sent to Earth 15 years ago to protect her from enemies who have now been defeated, so it's safe for her to come back home. That got me thinking, though -- Yuko Minami, the female co-host of Ultraman Ace, also turned out to be a Lunar princess, who returned to her reign a couple of years ago at this point. But if she was the reigning princess at the time that this princess's partisans were still fighting their enemies, does that mean they're from opposing Lunar factions? Has Yuko been overthrown?

Yes, obviously they were ignoring continuity, but it's amusing to wonder. Apparently Yuko did return in a couple of much later series, but the whole issue of Lunar dynastic politics doesn't appear to have been addressed.
 
Episode #22 of "Ultraman Mebius" reveals the secret of Mirai's human form:
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Episode #6 of "Ultraman Chronicle D" tells of Ultra team-ups:
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Wow... I've just reached the point in Ultraman Leo where they did a soft reboot. They'd just done a big 2-parter that finally brought in all the previous Ultras except Taro, ending with Leo being officially adopted as an Ultra Brother, but then right after that cataclysmic story, they did another cataclysmic story where a new archvillain attacked and destroyed the entire MAC organization and killed all but one of the supporting civilian cast. So it looks like the last dozen episodes of the show are doing something unprecedented to this point -- ditching the format of the Ultra serving on a military team and having him be a solo hero, with the new family he ended up living with as the only supporting cast. I'm only two episodes in, but it seems like it requires more contrivances to get Gen/Leo involved in a monster story, since they can no longer just have MAC's radar pick up a monster. Also, the new monsters are no longer suit characters but flying saucer-like creature puppets.

I guess this was one last desperate attempt to try to hold onto the show's dwinding audience. This would be the last one for a few years.
 
Episode #34 of "Ultraman", featuring the super-heavy monster Skydon, goes for a very comedic tone:
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In episode #39 of "Mirrorman", the Invaders go Body-Snatcher on a scarcely populated island. When Kyotaro goes to investigate, it leads to a confrontation with Invaders and a boy believing his father was murdered by Kyotaro:
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In episode #23 of "Ultraman Mebius", Marina is asked to help in an investigation of several missing people:
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In episode #7 of "Ultraman Chronicle D", the spotlight is on characters' motivations:
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In episode #35 of "Ultraman", the SSSP discovers a Monster Graveyard in space and decide to hold a ceremony to honor the creatures they had to fight, when the ghost of a monster inadvertantly is brought to Earth:
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In episode #35 of "Ultraman", the SSSP discovers a Monster Graveyard in space and decide to hold a ceremony to honor the creatures they had to fight, when the ghost of a monster inadvertantly is brought to Earth:

That was a weird one. I appreciated the sentiment, but it was too little, too late in a show whose general approach to strange creatures and aliens was to default to killing and ask questions later.
 
In episode #40 of "Mirrorman", the female SGM member Yuki Nomura gets to be in the spotlight when she heads the investigation to the sighting of a space ship in a lonely mountain village:
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Well, I've finished the uneven, mediocre Ultraman Leo and jumped forward five years to the last Showa series, Ultraman 80. (I might check out the anime eventually, but I want to complete the original continuity first, which I guess means just 80 and Mebius are left.) It's fairly entertaining so far, trying something different where Takeshi is a schoolteacher by day and a secret member of the monster-fighting organization by night, though I gather they drop it after 12 episodes or so. I hope the show doesn't follow its predecessors' habit of brutally murdering the supporting characters in order to write them out and reset the status quo.

It's kind of a weird show, since Takeshi/80 is like Ultraseven and Leo, a pure Ultra in human disguise, but he acts entirely human. And he has no origin story, at least none that's been given so far (though Seven didn't get his origin until late in his series). Ultraman 80 has an interesting design, going back to a more basic look after the elaborate crests of his predecessors, with the top and back of his head painted red, and without the usual rear fin to hide the zipper (there's a full-head helmet with an invisible seam). Somehow I find 80's face younger-looking and more earnest than most Ultras, I guess because of the size and shape of the eyes, and because he's generally smaller than the monsters. He's also unusually silent in combat.

One weird thing: The announcer often stresses that if anyone sees Takeshi transform, he'll have to leave Earth forever. But in episode 2, one of his students doesn't exactly see him transform, but somehow recognizes 80 as Takeshi, and even tells the other students, who don't believe him. So there's this kid out there who knows his secret, but he disappears after episode 2 and his knowledge has no impact on Takeshi's presence on Earth. Why even establish that rule if they were going to break it right away without consequences?

Although I liked it how in one episode, Takeshi's UGM colleagues complained that he's always disappearing at key moments. It was a bit early in the series for that, but it was nice to see someone actually notice that.

I just finished episode 8, in which an archaeologist shows the team an ancient stone tablet telling of an Ultraman-like Giant of Light who battled a prehistoric kaiju thousands of years before, and I wondered if I was seeing a prototype for Tiga.
 
In episode #24 of "Ultraman Mebius", an Open House event at Crew GUYS headquarters is interrupted by the return of Yapool:
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Ultraman Decker has been revealed. Show will start in July.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1504485337367678977

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Ooh, color timer not at the center of the chest. That's new. I like it.

Also, new poster for Shin Ultraman:
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In this week's episode #8 of "Ultraman Chronicle D", we're treated to the time Tiga appeared to help Trigger, and then the time Ultraman helped out Tiga:
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Turns out I didn't have to worry about Ultraman 80 killing off its supporting cast when it dropped the "teacher by day" angle and went back to the usual full-time focus on the military organization. It just quietly abandoned the school stuff without comment or explanation. Even though the final school episode, #12, had the villain attack Takeshi on school grounds, which would've been a logical incentive for him to leave the school for the safety of the students and faculty.

I'm sorry they dropped the school angle. It was kind of sitcommy, and tried too hard to give the students cute nicknames like Super and Professor and Fashion, but at least it was a change of pace from the usual stuff, and it grounded and humanized Takeshi (even though he's an alien) by giving him more everyday connections and a love interest (who was really rather lovely). Although I guess it was a bit overcomplicated giving him two nested secret identities -- his Ultra identity secret from UGM and his UGM job secret from the school characters (besides the principal).
 
In episode #36 of "Ultraman", the monster Zaragas can adapt to any attack:
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In episode #41 of "Mirrorman", Yuki is held hostage by the Invaders:
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