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Ultraman Discussion Thread
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12-06-2019, 11:26 PM
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1456
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Back sometime around when Taiga started airing, I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to watch his dad's own series. What better time could there possibly be to watch Taro, right? Uh, besides when it apparently gets an official Blu-ray release next year, of course. Obviously that's something I didn't see coming 20 or so weeks ago.
All the same, I've been working my way through the show since then, and now that I've finally finished it up, I figure the least I can do is hype it up a bit, because it was a heck of a journey!
Now, this is my first proper foray into Showa era Ultraman (the closest I came beforehand was watching a quarter or so of 80), so I'm not in the best position to go into detail about Taro's place in the larger series. I understand it's something of a deliberate oddity in terms of style, taking cues from fairy tales and having an overall lighter tone that, apparently, stands in contrast to Ace before it, and most certainly Leo afterwards.
That's all super interesting, I'm sure, but I can only truly focus on Taro as its own entity, and say that I consistently had quite a bit of fun watching it. The show itself is maybe a bit less consistent. That's not me knocking the quality of the episodes, by the way. What I'm talking about is how the show spent an entire year experimenting with its identity while still getting an episode out every week. It has an almost frontiersman-like attitude that I guess must come with the decade or something. If the 70's was a time when Kamen Rider could find a way to keep on kicking without its own lead actor for several episodes, before just replacing him altogether... well, anything that happens in Taro seems pretty tame by comparison, actually. Aside from the completely
scandalous
cross-company cameos by Kamen Rider V3's face, and no less than
both
Kikaiders.
Yeah, I just really wanted to point that out.
Still though, there are some weird oddities every now and then that suggest to me either occasional production hiccups, or simply the show seeing room for improvement in the formula and just going for it. Most notably, ZAT's roster early on is a bit on the bloated side, and the show proceeds to course-correct a bit by replacing one of the characters before the episode count even hits the double digits, before permanently trimming things down by jettisoning the replacement. It genuinely does help tighten things up, too. I remember Nishida so little, I had to go look up his name, and while Ueno gets considerably more time to leave an impression, he simply wasn't adding anything to the show that was enough to make me miss him all that much. In his absence, the core team starts gelling together that much more, and I especially have to applaud the show for regularly letting Moriyama out of her chair whenever an extra pair of hands is needed. I guess it's small potatoes coming off of Ace, but for 1973, having the secretary be entirely capable of hopping in a space-age super jet and shooting lasers at giant monsters with the same level of calm and collected competence she applies to working the radio isn't anything to sneeze at.
Something else that's fairly impressive for the time are the effects, which, while not without their own occasional hiccups, are quite well done and often rather creative. The show seems to give particular attention, especially early on, to having plain old tiny humans directly interacting with the monsters. Koutarou especially makes something of a habit of clinging onto tails and whatnot for dear life and always somehow managing to survive, even if he has to temporarily become an obvious puppet to do so! Okay, so again, it's not all super believable, but in scenes like that, Taro is going for pure fantasy anyway, so why bother complaining?
Speaking of Koutarou, he's the glue holding the whole show together. Just a wonderfully charismatic lead who's as heroic as can be, a friend to all children, and brave to an almost absurd level, which only makes him that much more endearing. No matter what elements of the series come in or out of focus, or what crazy premise the plot has in a particular episode, he's always there to keep things on track.
And some of those premises really do get crazy. It's not every day you see an episode of Ultraman where the monster's entire goal is just to get drunk. There's a lot of variety here, despite pumping the "random kid has problems" well a bit
too
often, and while I think the episodes guest-starring previous Ultras have a tendency to be the highlights, a lot of the most creative, out-there ideas happen in the ones without any of them. Later on, a lot of the episodes don't even involve Taro having to kill the monster in the end, which as a Cosmos fan is always going to get a thumbs up from me. What also gets my approval is the fine line Taro walks in how it uses the existing Ultra family. Their appearances are paced out in a very considered manner that keeps it clear whose show this is, while still making them feel like a regular thing, and keeping the feel of that bigger universe it takes place in.
All in all, while not every episode is some kind of masterpiece, the ones that nail it do so impeccably. It probably helps that it's the freshest thing in my mind, but I have to say, Taro also has an
excellent
finale that pulls everything together. In just one episode, it brings things full circle by calling all the way back to the premiere, and while Koutarou's big decision towards the end is a famous enough bit of trivia that I've known it for years, I was caught off guard by the
why
of him coming to that conclusion, which was genuinely pretty touching and emotional. The climactic showdown is also extremely memorable for not taking the obvious route. It's as good a note to end on as any show could ever ask for.
That about sums it up, I think. I'm glad Taiga's premise gave me the push to get around to watching Taro. Ginga was my entry into the franchise, so I have something of a natural affinity for the guy, but without Taiga, it's likely wouldn't have gotten around to this for a while. Even if Taro in his own show was basically a completely different character than he became later, and even if Taiga seems more interested in homaging Return of Ultraman that anything, there's an inherent joy I get from seeing that slightly dopey-looking mug of Taro's, no matter the era.
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