I grew up on (the American version of) Ultraman, so when I saw that Netflix put out a new series of it, I was interested. Just finished watching it last night. I love it! It’s completely different, animated instead of live action. But the animation quality is very high. You can tell it’s done with computers because the frame rate is super high. They have slow motion sequences that are smooth, the characters sometimes slow-blink, hair waves in the breeze and the character’s movements are realistic as if they were motion-captured.
The story is delightful. Hyata and Ito from the 1960’s series are older now, white haired patriarchs mentoring the new generation of utramen. One of which is Hyata’s son Shenjiro. Lots and LOTS of callbacks to the original, including a delightful statue of Hyata’s Ultraman in the lobby of the Space Patrol (which is hidden behind an Ultraman Museum front, thus the statue). Some callbacks to the old monsters and some new monsters. Also the story is well-written. I can’t wait for another season!
I also watched the original on one of our local independent stations as a kid, but had no preconceived expectations going into the Netflix series. It was okay, I liked it, TV Tropes filled in some blanks for me wrt Ken Moroboshi and other Ultraman lore.
I didn’t pay attention to the music while it was happening, but yes, the new Jr. Ultraman does swing a Jr.-sized Godzilla-like rogue alien around a bit.
They used to air reruns of it in the when I was a little kid (not even school age) and I liked it. Liked it better the other days when it wasn’t on, though, because those days it was Johnny Sokko, and man, little me loved that one.
After those days, I used to watch the 90’s UM series, but don’t remember it being that great. And TNT used to show old eps of Ultraseven for a while, and I occasionally saw one of those, but I wasn’t really a big follower.
But, I did see this was on Netflix and I guess I’ll throw it on the pile of stuff to get around to watching as time allows.
I watched the first three episodes but it just didn’t grab me. It felt like a standard trope: boy has superpowers and now he’s been “Discovered” by the agency which has put him in power armor fighting monsters. I wanted to see the GIANT Ultraman. I did like the references to the original, like the cheesy “Science Patrol” logo and the use of the original SP building. Also, I like that of all the members of SP, it’s the goofy comic relief guy who’s still around along with daddy Ultraman.
I suspect at some point Shenjiro will discover that he can become massive, but we haven’t seen that yet. I love the big statue of the original Ultraman in the museum because of that, it’s sort of an homage. I also liked that Shenjiro discovered his powers only one by one as he got into fights that tested him to the limit of his strength.
I was wondering if the older Ito was the cheesy comic relief character. He’s not funny or goofy at all in this series.
I used to watch the original version way back when (and I also remember a cartoon movie that came out in 89 or so where a pilot becomes Ultraman). I do like this new series – I think they’re doing a decent job of showing how Shinjiro is growing as a hero, how he has to decide if killing aliens is right or wrong, and how maybe not everyone in Science Patrol is all that great. I’m not into the lore of the shows so I know there are callbacks and such but I don’t recognize them all. I’m only about halfway through the season as well.
I caught the first episode, and the weird rotoscope puppety look of the figure animation is not appealing to me. I like that it’s directly referencing the 1966 Ultraman, but I don’t know that I’m on board with some of what they’re doing with the characters, particularly the whole business with Hayata having Ultra-powers and those powers being passed down to his son, and it’s all in the service of a fairly tedious “chosen one” narrative.
My husband mentioned this was on, and since we both grew up watching it, and loving it, we want to check it out. We haven’t done so yet and I’m not sure how I’ll feel about the animation, but we do want to try a few episodes at least.
I haven’t seen the new one, but it better have “The energy that Ultraman receives from the Sun diminishes rapidly in Earth’s atmosphere” voice-over speech every time he fights a monster for over 3 minutes.
LOL, it doesn’t. Also although he (and the other ones also) does have the light on his chest, it doesn’t seem to function as a “you’re out of energy dude” timer. I think it blinked in one episode, not sure.
I enjoyed observing the difference between the ultramen. Shinjiro (I looked it up online and found I was not spelling it right) seems to mostly fight hand-to-hand. Moroboshi fights with a kick-ass katana. Another character has sort of a laser-cutter-rope thingie. They all have other weapons and skills of course, but those seem to be their individual hallmarks.
I’m pretty clueless about anime, so this is a naive question… Does anybody know why some characters are drawn with the big round eyes and others are drawn more realistically?
I started it, turned it off as soon as I realized it was subtitled. I understand the preference for subtitled anime when it is in the original Japanese, but why make a show for an American market in Japanese, and then subtitle it in English?