What about the newer stuff like X and Orb?

I personally would say Max or Orb.

X and Orb have what I call "the Decade problem".

If you want to get someone into a series, I feel it's best to give them a non anniversary, or celebratory season.

One that stands on its own with cameos, or forms that resemble past Ultras, or fusions like that.

Afterwards, go nuts and enjoy, but at least know what a standard Ultraman is about before you're downed in fusions of Taro and Mebius, not even really knowing who this Orb guy you're watching is to begin with.

I personally think Orb or X stand on their own and I say that as a person who never watched an ultra series before those two.

Orb easily. It was my girlfriend's first ULtraman series and she loved it.

Max. It's a really good, modern take on the classic Ultraman format that isn't dependent on previous shows outside of some cool Easter eggs. I like Nexus, but using it as an entry point is like getting someone into Kamen Rider with Amazons: "Hey, if you liked this there are also a lot of other shows that are completely different from it tonally!"

Has anyone been able to watch Orb Origin yet?

Max and Mebius and Orb.

This guy's got you covered (at least, until the official Amazon subs are released.)

https://twitter.com/thepowerrider/st...23305575026688

https://twitter.com/thepowerrider/st...23527764140032

Quick question. Does Bandai own part of the Ultraman series like it does Kamen Rider and Super Sentai?

Yeah, they own like, 49% of Tsuburaya.

Really? Damn that's a lot. It still surprises me just how much stuff Bandai has under its belt.

Yep. The number of cash cows they have are crazy.

Watched episodes 15-17 tonight of Leo and those were pretty good episodes. Actually, scratch that, episode 16, about this ghost flower monster girl, was a damn good episode. It felt like a missing episode to Ultra Seven that was updated for the new characters. It was also refreshing to not have Dan yell at Gen for losing a fight for a change. It also had some badass camera work and the fights were pretty cool. Although, I don't think they needed to grow big as it would have worked just keeping the ghost the way she was with a quick confrontation that is ended in a more clever manner over another battle. Still, great stuff nonetheless.

So yesterday I watched episodes 18-26 of Leo. There were some really great episodes and then there were meh episodes. One episode I was confused with though had Leo's brother appear out of nowhere. This is the first time we have ever heard of Leo talk about a brother, who died years ago when they were kids, but then he randomly shows up in the middle of battle to help him defeat the monter brothers because he didn't die, and then just leaves. WTF? You haven't seen each other in years, Leo thought you were dead, so you don't even turn into human form to chat? That makes no sense whatsoever.

EDIT:

So yeah... I just got up to the introduction of Commander Black. I need time to process what just happened.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel that they killed off the entire cast. Except for Dan and Momoko, none of them were remotely developed in any form outside of one or two moments, and that was really just Takeshi with the werewolf girl episode. The entire MAC crew were pointless. It makes me hard to care that they died. I'm also not a fan of them just offing Momoko pretty much off screen like they did because it feels more like it was done for shock value rather than advancing the story. I can understand not doing a big thing on the MAC crew, but she was a prominent character and deserved to either have a final moment or to at least have Leo say his goodbyes with a corpse.

Okay, so moving to the episodes before that, I ended up watching some truly specatcular ones today that were also mixed in with some terrible ones. I enjoyed the Momotarous and Kaguya episodes as they were fun ones. On the other hand, the episode with the flower dude and the little **** who needs a spanking that bullies a monster because he doesn't like doing homework were awful. I don't get Astra though. For someone who was thought dead, he sure doesn't really do much to catch up with his brother or even explain how he survived.

The episode with the mirror monster was quite good and I really loved the two parter with the Ultra Brothers. In fact, that episode kind of felt like it could have been the series finale to the show with the way it ended. It was cool seeing the original Ultraman while I could not help but laugh at the fact that the other dudes name is Ultraman Returns. Seriously?

Oh, but my favorite moment in the series though was far was the narration that went something like this, "After seeing Ultraman Returns, Ultra Seven, and Leo, Ashura decides to get the heck out of there," and then it shows the Inhumanoids monster running for his life. That was great.

Lastly, I also noticed that one of the useless MAC girls is the actress who played Katsura in Terror of MG.

After watching Jeo I've been saying you could have written MAC out of 95% of those first 40. episodes and not change a thing. I've only seen the Ultra shows that have been released over here but MAC was the most "just there" attack team I've ever seen. But yeah episode 40, I was not prepared for that much of a massive shift in the show's direction and cast.

I watched Leo on crunchyroll so I don't recall him being called that, but no that wasn't his name. The show he was on was called Ultraman Returns, or at least it was supposed to be since it was supposed to be the original Ultraman returning. Before they decided to make him a different character and rechristen him Ultraman Jack.


On a side not Ultraman is getting a little more love this year it seems, Tysubura official youtube channel posted a music video that features Neos and Baltan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDS-Usij94U

From my understanding - and keep in mind, I've never seen Ultraman Returns - Jack is never actually called by name on his show. They joked around with that in the 8 Ultra Brothers movie, where Mebius just addresses him as "Returned" and "Man who came back." His official name is Ultraman Jack, though.

Yeah, I'm watching Leo on Crunchyroll and they called him Ultraman Returns.

I just got done with the Ultraman Nexus Movie after putting it off for several months because of procrastination and, I've got to say, I really enjoyed it. Ultraman movies in general, in my opinion, much better then Kamen Rider/Sentai movies and this one was no exception. I felt that the movie did a really good job of keeping things interesting and, while there were a number of characters that were kind of there just to be there, I thought it handled all the important characters really well. Its kind of a shame there weren't more Nexus character cameo's but that isn't exactly a complaint. Besides, this movie came out before the TV Show started right?

yeah should have said later on when I typed that, thanks.

Weird, granted it's been a while since I've seen it but you'd think that would have stuck in my head. I might have to go back and rewatch that episode now.


EDIT: Yeah he's listed as Ultraman Returns, how did I not notice that?

Nexus movie? I thought the only movie from the Nexus universe was The Next, which came out months after Nexus hit the airwaves?

That's the one I was talking about. I was reading about Ultra N Project and assumed the movie came first. My apologies.

It takes place before the series, but if I remember correctly it came out around the show's 2/3rds mark, about the same time they swapped heroes from Himeya to Punch Hopper.

Has there been any English subs for Ultraman Ginga: Theater Special Ultra Monster ☆ Hero Battle Royal! (the second Ginga movie)? I've found some for the first Ginga movie and the Ginga S movie but none for that one.

Try TV Nihon. They did the first Ginga series and most of its extra content so they're probably your best bet.

Well I watched episodes 41-48 thus far and I am finding myself bored (I couldn't even watch them all in one sitting). None of the new characters are all that interesting and every episode is pretty much the same. Black Star Commander orders a new monster, monster arrives, something happens, monster is defeated by Leo, BS Commander orders new monster, episode ends. Over and over and over again. Is he going to get any development? I mean, you would think the guy who wiped out the entire cast of the show would be given at least some sort of character development.

Another thing that bothers me is that Gen never mentions he was part of MAC at all. Like there was one episode with two brothers and an episode with this selfish father who he tried to help, but neither party listened to him. Why didn't he tell them he used to be part of MAC? They would have listened to him then. It's like all traces of MAC have just disappeared. Or has MAC become a disgracful name? If so, we probably should know this.

Then we have Astra, who once again showed up for plot convenience and then left because reasons. Is he unable to stay on Earth for more than a few minutes? Does he not have the ability to change into a human form? How did he even survive the fire Gen thought he died in?

Don't get me wrong, there has been some cool stuff in these. I liked the episode with the tentacle saucer monster thing that was sucking the blood out of people and the one that featured Izumi was also well done, but these episodes are so repetitive that I just don't care. I want to be done with this show.

EDIT:

Well I decided to just go ahead and finish the last three episodes of Leo since I had nothing better to do tonight.

Okay, where do I start? Well first, I did think episode 49 was great. The Teru Teru Bouzo was a pretty cool episode and the fight at the end is by far one of the best from the entire show, if not THE best. I loved the red tined over the screen and the rainy look.

Then episode 50 happened and I have no idea what was going on here. The alien dude brings Gen to Commander Black, but Black has no idea who he is. HUH?! He only confronted him three times before when he wasn't transformed into Leo, so how the hell does he not know who he is? That doesn't make any sense. Also, I found it to be utterly pointless for them to slice Leo up when Ultraman King was easily able to put him back together without there being any repercussions for it.

However, I can get over that, what I can't get over is how lame of a villain Commander Black turned out to be. The dude got killed by freaking children. CHILDREN!!!! How does that even happen? Even Sentai has never gone into the realms of making a villain this pitiful and I just watched a show where the main villain was a planet eating asteroid. Commander Black went from becoming one of my top favorite Ultraman villains to one of the lamest. He didn't even get a lick of development.

Another issue I had with the final episode was Astra never even showed up. WTF? What was his entire purpose in this show? Why did he even exist in the first place? Oh, and is Seven dead dead? Because if so, how does he have Zero? Also how come the arm band Leo received from King is sometimes there and sometimes not?

Good god, this show as a whole was a complete let down. It started off rocky, but it got better in the teens, which featured a ton of exceptional episodes. Then the forties hit and this show quickly crashed and burned to the ground. For being a 51 episode series, there was little to no development, MAC is hands down the most useless defense force I have ever seen, and the tone of this show is all over the place. It feels like Tsuburaya had no idea who their target audience was. It's too mature for kids to watch, but it has way too many childish episodes that adults would find annoying. It's monsters are over the top dumb and cheap looking half of the time, which means even Kaiju fans would be turned off. It rarely has enough science fiction in it to please the sci-fi fans and it seemed like the show stopped doing horror-esque episodes in its first half, so it wouldn't even attract the horror fans for that long. The romance barely occurs and it is completely irrelevant in the end, so it couldn't be for women. Who the hell were they targeting this thing towards? Fish?

Now that isn't to say there weren't things I enjoyed in this show because I said earlier, there was a lot to love. However, it gets bogged down in its formulaic nature and doesn't try to do anything new that the original and Seven didn't already do better. My favorite episode is hands down the one with the ghost flower woman who turns people to stone (??). I also did love the one with Akumiya (called Demoniya on the subs) and the one with Ultraman Returns. On the other hand, my least favorite episode is a toss up between one that featured a monster that decides to use a smoke stack to inflate itself and the one about a kid with a monster in a jar. Those were both just miserable episodes to sit through.

If I were to score Leo, it would be a 2/5 and it is right now my second least favorite Ultra show. As such, my current rankings go (for only series I have completed):

1. Ultra Seven
2. Orb
3. Ultraman
4. Tiga
5. X
6. Leo
7. Seven X

Will they ever make Ultraman have his own offspring? It's kinda weird seeing how Seven and Belial has their sons yet the OG Ultraman still doesn't

Fun fact: The actress who played Rena in Ultraman Tiga is actually the daughter of Susumu Kurobe who played Hayata in Ultraman.

Probably not. Despite being the original, Ultraman himself rarely comes off as being one of the more important heroes. In-universe, Zoffy is more powerful and has a higher rank, while in the real world Seven is more often viewed as the big iconic hero among old school toku fans.

Yeah, Ultraman is pretty overshadowed especially from Seven. If he wasn't the original I think he would've been forgotten.

Ultraman's case really isn't help by the fact that there really *isn't* anything special about him outside of being the first Ultraman to come Earth in the Showa Universe. Ignoring that, there's very little about him that stands out and, because of the Multiverse, his status as the first Ultraman isn't really true outside of real life and, as I mentioned earlier, being the first Ultraman to come to Earth. He really doesn't even contribute all that much to the Multiverse as a whole.

What also doesn't help Ultraman's case though is that he didn't have much of a personality since his human form was not his own, but a guy he accidentally killed. Therefore, the little development there was, was for Hayate and not Ultraman, unlike Seven who was just as much Dan as he was Seven.

Damn, poor Ultraman. Ichigo certainly doesn't have this problem.

Though on the other hand, it's not like Sentai's first team gets anywhere near these two's recognition or love.

That's a part of the main reason why I'm not a fan of the whole "Ultra grants life to a courageous person just as they're about to die" thing. While I'm more forgiving of this in shows such as Nexus or Tiga, which treat their Ultras more like guardian spirits rather then actual characters, shows like Max where the Ultra has a home planet and allies and things like that but rarely talks with his host really annoy me. I mean, you'd think two people forced to share a single body would have more to talk about... That's why I'm kind of afraid of watching a Showa era Ultraman show, since they all take place in the same universe. I pray that Taro has an actual personality.

Well of the three Showa shows I have watched, the original is the only one without a personality. Seven and Leo both have human forms. Hell, Seven is hands down the best Ultra show ever.

Nice to hear that it still holds up despite its age.

Nah, that development was all for Ultraman. At the end of the series, when Ultraman leaves his body, Hayata has no memory of anything that's happened after Ultraman possessed him. What we saw during the series was Ultraman using Hayata's body as his own. This is probably why in later appearances there isn't much distinction made between Hayata and Ultraman as two different characters.

If you've ever seen Ultraman Zero the Movie, this is what was being referenced when Run had no memory of Zero using his body.

Nope. I've just been getting back into Ultraman. In fact, this year was the first time I have watched Ultraman since Nexus was first airing.

So which Ultraman series kaiju do you guys like? Interested to hear everyone's favorites.