Well, that was awesome because we spent half of the movie waiting for the fusion to happen, and when it finally did, we were treated to the arrival of a character so powerful that he pretty much turned the whole power level spectrum upside down.
Ultraman Zero on the other hand, gives the same impression of being overwhelmingly powerful, but we spend 10 minutes watching him be awesome.
10 minutes is an eternity when dealing with awesomeness.
As was the case in populating a movie with, literally, over a hundred unique monsters, sometimes less is more.
Anyway, personal objections aside, Zero cleans house in epic fashion, taking out all the monsters, and pwning Belial like a little bitch without so much as breaking a sweat.
"SHIENKYAKU!" Brownie points to all those that recognize the reference!
Eventually, Zero blasts Belial with possibly the pimpest Ultra finisher in franchise history, sending him into a volcanic ravine.
You would think that would be the end of the battle, but being as this is an Ultraman movie, Belial decides to come back for one more round by combining the fallen souls of his 100 bitches into a single massive, rod-puppet controlled body.
So rubbery... So very rubbery...
With the arrival of this most impressive super monster, Ultraman Leo and Astra finally decide to show up.
No sign of Ultraman King though, lazy bastard.
Everyone jumps into battle against the largely immobile super monster, launching their respective trademark attacks, and unfortunately inflicting little to no damage in the process.
Oh yeah, you know Dyna tried to put it in his mouth. However, even a dick licker like Dyna couldn’t fit 100 cocks in there at once…
Just when things start to look grim for our heroes, Rei gets the bright idea to use his Battle Nizer to take control of the still functioning Pimp Cane that Belial dropped in his battle with Ultraman Zero.
Apparently, this is what it takes to steal internet from Comcast these days...
Sure enough, the plan works beautifully, and the super monster is thrown into spasms and seizures, as the 100 monsters comprising it’s body begin to rebel against it.
Ultraman Zero approaches the Ultra Spark, (yup, it hasn’t moved since Belial planted it in the ground almost an hour ago) and uses it’s power to transform his twin Eye Sluggers into one of those Klingon blade thingies.
Yeah, this time YOU know what it is, not me. Fuckin' Star Trek, bein' all complicated n'shit...
Following this, Ultraman orders everyone to, you guessed it, use their trademark attacks to distract Belial (he’s mounted atop the super monster’s head) and the monsters so Zero can land the killing blow.
From a distance it almost looks like the end of Ghostbusters...
Cue epic explosion:
Sorry, no George Lucas Special Edition "Vertical Rings" though. Maybe in 20 years.
With that, Belial is finally defeated, and peace restored to the universe.
Ultraman Zero returns the Ultra Spark to it’s rightful place, thereby redeeming his past wrongdoings and freeing the Ultra homeworld from it’s icy state.
"Okay Taro, you can have your ice cream back."
Asuka and the ZAP crew are invited back to the Ultra homeworld for “thank you’s” and mutual, emphatic nodding.
Unfortunately, they aren’t allowed to tour the planet, as apparently the radiation of the Ultra Spark will, well, kill them.
Dyna escorts Rei and the humans back home, and then Ultra King brings our film to an end with a nifty little speech that isn’t all that dissimilar from the one at the end of Starship Troopers.
"They'll fight, and they'll win! Join the Mobile Infantry today! Would you like to know more?"
Oh yeah, and then there’s a last minute reveal where we find out Belial’s still alive and will likely show up whatever Ultra whatsit they decide to follow this movie up with…
But you wouldn’t care about that.
Hope you enjoyed the experience of READING a plotless movie, I know I did.
Hopefully, I’ll never do something like this again, don’t think my brain can take the stress…
While Galaxy is a decent enough show, with a fun concept and plenty of kaiju battles, the acting and production values feel decidedly below average for an Ultra series. This, coupled with a distinct lack of Ultraman blowing the shit out of monsters has led me to give up on Galaxy for the most part.
Not only that, the first show I ever watched was the outsourced, Australian iteration, Ultraman Towards the Future, which is universally regarded as one of the worst Ultra series of all time, second only to the American Ultraman Powered.
Despite this, as a child I loved it! I remember waking up at obscene hours of the morning to to catch one of the 13 episodes every weekend, (kind of like how we all used to watch the same 2 or 3 Ren & Stimpy episodes every weekend) and loving every minute of it. To this day, I still have some of the action figures, the playset, and even the terrible Super NES game.
Whatever, this stuff was the shit when I was 5.
As a child Ultraman died to me the day he started airing at 5 AM on TNT.
I remember getting psyched after seeing a commercial for Ultraseven, where a giant ape man shot blue lasers out of his eyes, and Ultraseven struck a pose and yelled: “YAH! YAH! YAH! YAHHH!!!!”
For about a month straight, I remember getting out of bed, running out into the living room and flipping on the TV, only to find that Ultraseven was not on.
A few times I remember seeing some scary shit on in that time slot, I remember some movie about creepy old Native American ladies with bleeding eyes scared me back to sleep one time.
Knowing me, I probably just mixed up the time slot for the show, but unfortunately I never got to see that awesome commercial again, so I never found out.
Haha! Yeah, that's the one!
Following this, I abandoned my love for Ultraman for a very long time.
I remember Ultraman Tiga aired on Fox Kids when I was in middle school. Unfortunately, I was 12, and was thusly too “cool” for Ultraman. Guess I was too busy failing at swearing (“Shit balls! Damn, fuck-sauce!”) and being fat to care about Ultraman.
Then a funny thing happened.
Flash forward to 2005: I’m in college. I’m bored. I’m finally getting old enough to the point where looking back on life holds meaning. I’m finally old enough to admit that I miss Ultraman.
So what do I do?
I learn about this new fangled invention called “torrenting” and type in “Ultraman” as my first query.
Much like my experiences in the 90’s with the Heisei Godzilla series, I was very much surprised to find that Ultraman had carried on just fine without me.
Ultraman Max served as my ambassador back into the world of Ultraman. Max was good fun. Every episode was colorfully executed with obvious enthusiasm. The cast was smaller than most Ultra shows, but in many ways I feel that was its strength. Every character was well defined and seemed to serve some purpose, even that haole guy, Sean.
One of these things is different...
I loved how schizophrenic the show could be at times.
Directors and storylines rarely lasted more than 1 or 2 episodes, resulting in a show that changed identities and mood from week to week, and quite successfully at that.
Most impressive to me is the fact that I don’t even like Takashi Miike, I’ve always thought of him as being seriously overrated.
I never finished Max, but it remains one of the my favorite series.
Unlike this 'merch hawking whore...
After I was done with Max, I took a step back and decided to watch the much heralded Ultraman Nexus from the previous year.
Nexus was a revelation. It did all the things Ultra series don’t do.
It worked from a single continuous storyline.
It was consistently serious in tone.
It had monsters that took entire story arcs to defeat.
It had a budget and was spectacular from beginning to end.
Nexus represented a great experiment in trying to tweak the format of the Ultraman series. From what I’ve heard, it’s deviation from the status quo caused it to lose a lot of fans, but for an older, wiser Azn Badger, it was just what the doctor ordered.
Good God, someone get that child away from there!
Around this time I started following the Ultra movie series with the release of Ultraman: The Next.
It was pretty good, with exceptional effects work, great suit designs, and a killer soundtrack by the lead guitarist of B’Z, Tak Matsumoto.
There was some hokiness to it in the form of lame homages to the Top Gun anthem on the soundtrack, and an oddly placed freeze frame moment, (“MAKI!!!!!!) but for the most part it was a good time.
Oh yeah, and it tied into Nexus, so yeah, brownie points there.
Skip to 5:08 for “MAKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Ultraman Moebius (yes I know the Japanese phonetics have it as “Mebius“, but fuck that noise) represented another falling out between Ultraman and I.
I don’t know if it’s because I got too old, or was fatigued from all of the Sentai and Kamen Rider I was watching at the time, (Den-Ou! WOOT!) but something just didn’t click for me.
I remember liking the feel of the show, and how it paid homage to the Ultra shows of old through its use of sound effects and intentional use of outdated special effects (even more low tech than usual), but as a whole, the show just kind of felt, well, lame.
The characters were varied and well-defined, but for the most part it just felt like a bunch of airhead pop-stars with an absurd amount of inane high school drama and baggage that somehow tied into finding the methodology necessary to defeat the monster of the week.
Yes, I am aware that I just summarized pretty much every Sentai or Ultraman show ever, but what I mean to say, is that this felt particularly pronounced in the 14 or 15 episodes of Moebius I managed to watch.
You see what you missed out on? Moebius punching Birdon in his chin balls, that's what!
I think part of why I didn’t really care much for Moebius, is that the action felt kind of tame in comparison to Max, Nexus, or even Gaia.
The camera work was typical of an Ultra series, with lots of on-rails camera movement, and lots of zooms to highlight the action, but for the most part the choreography felt less complex and somewhat slow.
Nexus contained some really visceral and intense fight sequences throughout, largely highlighted by the Ultra on Ultra fights with Dark Mephisto and to a lesser extent, Dark Faust.
Max on the other hand, featured choreography with a lot of character to it. The fighting was conducted at essentially the same pace as in Nexus, but given the quirkiness of the storylines, and the overall light tone of the series, much of the choreography allowed the suit actors to do a lot of pantomime that really added to the fun.
Whoever the suit actor for Max was, I’d like to shake their hand.
Although I would be even more honored to shake this man's hand. No, the guy on the right, dumbass.
Despite my general dissatisfaction with the series, Moebius proved popular enough with the kiddies to have a few movie tie-ins, the first of which being Ultraman Moebius & The Ultra Brothers.
I felt it was actually very good, good enough for me to own without feeling shame.
The second one however, Superior Ultra 8 Brothers, was not so hot. Aside from some splashy effects work, I felt like the story was a little bit too fantastical and far fetched, even for little kids.
Oh yeah, and as good as the effects could be at times, the fight between Moebius and King Gesura was embarrassingly hideous to look at. *Shudder* Gives me the willies just thinking about it…
In short, Ultraman Moebius was alright, probably worth watching for most fans, but not really my favorite. Which leads us to a series that I did finish, but really wish I hadn’t…
Ultraseven X was the last “proper” Ultra series, and in my opinion, it’s spectacularly epic shittiness was most likely the reason we haven’t seen an Ultra series since 2007.
It was a miniseries, it tried to be “edgy” and “different”, and for the most part it sucked a big, fat, Blackanese cock.
When I first saw the production stills for the show, I was mightily impressed by the suit design for the title character… and little else. The characters were bland and needlessly quirky, (tough girl with chocolate addiction, huh?) and the theme song was truly terrible ENGLISH J-Rock song that was as forgettable as it was skippable.
From the first trailer it was clear that the show was attempting to create a mood of sorts, unfortunately the costumes, props, and sets were a far cry from the standard set by GARO (FUCK YEAH!) the year before, and thusly, it came across as a pale imitation.
In case you couldn’t tell, Ultraseven X was a fucking disaster.
For an example of pretty much everything shitty about Ultraseven X, click below:
The action was sparse and uninspired and story was convoluted and full of holes despite the condensed length of the series.
Oh yeah, and the soundtrack, often times a highlight of any tokusatsu or Ultraman experience, was composed of minimalist, electronic turd-fuckery.
To be fair, Ultraseven X could’ve been alright had it been shot as an Ultra Q series and omitted any traces of Ultraseven or kaiju battles in general, but as it so happened I was left with a seriously sour taste in my mouth after watching it and desperately needed something to cleanse my palette.
Unfortunately, it’s been 3 years and my palette has yet to be cleansed.
Galaxy Legend THE MOVIE came out on DVD today and I am ready to be wowed. Reviews are positive, tickets sales were exceptional, Ultraman Belial looks like Carnage from Spider-Man, and the trailer looks FUCKING SWEET.
Yeah, don’t forget to change your undies cowboy.
I’m sure it’s not the best movie ever.
I’m sure it’s going to drag at points and have a shitty script.
Despite all this, I am excited for to see this movie because deep down, I want to like it.
I don’t want to be a cynical adult that shamefully picks apart the things he loves, I want an excuse to get back into Ultraman and be that kid waking up at 5 AM all over again.
It’s a wonderful feeling, having something to look forward to.
Outside of a brand new Ultra show featuring one of the original Ultras, (an idea I think would be a lot of fun) I can’t think anything that would make me happier than a rip-roaring, epic Ultra movie.
Here’s to fandom. I’ll let you know how the movie was in a few weeks.
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