I already saw the movie back in Jan when both it and the X movies were shown in theaters. That is what reignited my interest in Ultraman after 13 years. Aside form growing up with Ultra Seven episodes, I never actually watched a show until Tiga hit DVD and then I started to watch Nexus, but things got hectic at that time, so I lost complete interest in the franchise. Sucks to becasue I sold off my Tiga DVDs for 75 cents a piece and now it is like $200 to get all four volumes again.

EDIT:

Trophy Acquired - Completing Ultraman Ginga!!!

Yep, we just finished the last four episodes and they were pretty great. The Zetton Scissors was pretty badass, although the Deathscythe version from Orb is still cooler. The ending itself was really well done and I liked how everything came together. However, man, that friggin queen of the Underworld needs to fight more often since she just One Hit Killed everything. lol It was nice to see that they didn't totally forget the girl who was exiled. On the down side, Arise, Gouki, and the commander had very little in the way of development, especially the commander. It would have been nice if they had at least dedicated one episode to him, but I guess that is the downside to the show only having 16 episodes.

I did like how everything played out, although the Chibull was not the greatest villain to have be the main leader. He didn't really do much of anything and he was kind of boring.

Oh, now I wish they would hurry up and release the damn movie on video already as I really want to watch it again now that I have full context of everything. Overall, the second season was highly enjoyable.

Unfortunately though, for as much as I enjoyed it, I have to grade the show as a whole, and that first season was just crap, so it sours the entire experience. If I were to grade Ginga, it would end up being a 7/10 because of its first season. Ranking wise, I would put the shows like this:

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

With that said, Nexus is going to be the next show my g/f and I watch together, but first we have to watch The Next.

Two things I wanna talk about this time. For starters TV-Nihon did me a solid and subbed Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact, which I've been wanting to see for a couple years now. To be blunt, it didn't live up to my hype. It's a very competently made movie, and I wouldn't exactly call it bad, but it just utterly lacks any kind of hook.

There's no real arc to any of the characters or the story and as a result the whole thing ends up feeling rather bland. Little kid Musashi doesn't have the same drive as his TV series self, which should go without saying since he's, well, a little kid, but rather than focus on how he became that person, the film decides to portray him as ~kind of~ already that person, and his "arc" boils down to getting people to accept how right he is about things. Despite being the protagonist he's lacking in agency (which, again, little kid, but still) and doesn't have much impact on the larger story beyond one or two admittedly important moments.

The other big focus here is a very generically delivered moral about always trying to find the peaceful solution and whatnot. As someone who genuinely thinks the series proper does a fine job with this message, here it's just... so lacking in depth as to be rendered meaningless? I mean, they named the standard "evil military guys" the Sharks, and that's not even one of the things I have a problem with.

So yeah, I think this might sound a little negative for my standards but there's simply no way I can talk this one up. It's a harmless and fun adventure for the kiddies, I guess? It honestly isn't awful but there's not much to get out of it. Even from the angle of being a prequel to the show, my biggest takeaway was "Ah, so that blue rock Cosmos gave to Musashi WAS indeed a blue rock. That Cosmos gave to Musashi. Neat".

The other thing I'm here to talk about is way less depressing.

I can actually totally vouch for this. I mean, I wasn't a young child, but watching the episode of Retsuden that immediately preceded Ginga's premiere, which essentially recapped a bunch of origin stories (i.e. first episodes and stuff like, funnily enough, The First Contact) of various Ultramen to get peeps hyped for Ginga's own debut the next week.

One of the series included was Ultraman Mebius, where they showed its very unusual take on a first fight. This immediately stuck with me. I had always vaguely heard that Mebius was a big love letter to the franchise and good and all but had never been told anything that got me interested in it. This did. Now I had to see more of this show, and that's just what I did.

Quite frankly, Mebius is one of the best TV shows I've seen in my life, period. It isn't necessarily my favorite, but I struggle to think of anything to complain about in it. Mebius might genuinely be as close to perfection as you can come. It was an absolute blast to burn through and without Ultraman Retsuden there's a good chance I still wouldn't have seen it by now.

And since it was so awesome I decided to go ahead and give another watch to a couple of personal favorite episodes (2 and 22) on Crunchyroll before moving on to Ginga S, if only to get a better handle on this whole subtitle situation.

I'm really glad I did. I don't know how you go from those Ginga subs to this because these were fine. Just fine, but after the borderline train wreck of that other show? It's a great job. They even subtitled the lyrics to the opening, inexplicably. Again, they didn't do it that well, but it's competent. That's all I'm asking for at this point. It at least feels like something somebody calling themselves a professional worked on.

I completely agree with you about Mebius. Its amazing how one show can so perfectly encapsulate the meaning of an entire franchise.

Just stumbled across subbed copies of the colourised Ultra Q episodes and damn, even though I only just finished the show last month I kinda want to watch it all over again now - the episodes look superb in colour.

I mean I'm glad I have the DVD and all but wish this version could be released in the West too :(

Ultraman The Next - An interesting take on the original Ultraman story. I love that he has two forms to represent the two different suits used on the show. Although, I couldn't help but feel like Ultraman merged with Lord Zedd given the red muscles beneath his silver armor. Unfortunately, the CGI is awful and the characters just aren't all that interesting to watch, especially the scientist girl who was more wooden than a forest. Still, it was entertaining and again, I liked the unique feel of it. I should watch this movie more often as I haven't watched it since I first got the DVD back in 2005. Tsuburaya's subtitles could use a little work though. They aren't bad, but they aren't great either. I'm quite vexed as to why this has never been released in the US at all before. You would think someone would have killed for the chance to bring it over when it first hit Japan. Anyway, I give it a 7/10.

hey dr kain
are you gonna watch ultra man gaia after nexus?


also
what do you think about ultra man upgrade from that use other ultra man power?

No idea. It's up to which series my g/f wants to check out. Although, I'm thinking we are going to do the 2000s trio of Nexus, Max, and Mebius.

What do you mean? Like what Orb, Ginga, and Geed do? If so, I have no problem with it.

Halfway through Ginga S now. The good news is the show's absolutely awesome! The bad news is the subs still aren't, and I'm not done venting my frustrations with them yet.

To be clear, they're far better than those for Ginga's first season. Simply remembering to translate the episode previews already qualifies them for that, but in general the lines are written a bit less clunky and I've yet to come across any notable errors or blatant mistranslations. But I really don't feel comfortable accepting what is allegedly a professional job as "good enough", and there are still plenty of outright gems like this line:

http://i.imgur.com/IZNfjXP.png

I'm pretty sure even without context you can see what's wrong with this, but to elaborate: This is Arisa casually expressing frustration with the fact that Hikaru always seems to run off whenever there's trouble. Classic secret identity lampshading. Unfortunately, due to the way the line has been rendered here, it almost seems more like foreshadowing her turning out to not be human, given that she sounds more robotic than the actual robot on the show usually does.

This isn't the most egregious example of a poorly phrased line, but the reason I chose this one to focus on is because it's the perfect illustration of my problem with a "technically correct" translation like this. None of these people speak differently from each other. Character voice goes completely ignored and as a result a ton of personality is just gone from the show.

I'm not imagining this being a problem, right? Like I always see people crap on TV-Nihon, often deservedly so, but in my opinion this isn't any better than their stuff, yet I haven't seen many people talk about how mediocre Crunchyroll's Ultraman shows generally are outside of X onwards. I suppose you could make the argument that you can still see all the emotion visually happening, but I've seen way too many people say that reading subtitles for a show or movie takes a lot of their attention, or who just take whatever is written completely at face value, to not feel like anyone watching these shows this way is getting a bum deal.

I'll try and lay off Crunchyroll and actually talk about the show itself next time, but if something really awful comes up I can't make any promises. These are the people who think "Earthian" is an acceptable translation of 地球人, after all. Not to mention calling Victory's King Joe Launcher a "Rancher" in two different episodes before finally realizing in a third that it's a gun that launches projectiles. Agh!

We watched the first 6 episodes to Nexus tonight and it is as good as I remember it being. Although, the CGI is worse than I remember. I also forgot how sluggish the first arc moves. That aside, they were great. I loved how they spent time to develop Komon as the central character before they started to develop Jun. It brings an interesting dynamic that the series before it did not do.

I do have to say though, the Night Raiders' planes take forever to take off. A monster could have half of Japan destroyed by the time they leave their hangers. I'm also waiting to hear them say, "Chester Beta, Chester Gamma, Chester Delta, and Chester Cheetah, TAKE OFF!"

I like how there is already a connection between Nagi and Zero One from The Next. Can't wait to watch more.

Oh, and lastly, the subs on Crunchyroll are pretty mediocre. Episode 5 had a moment where Jun's reporter friend was talking and twice in a row it said, "LINE MISSING." WTF? Did the people at Crunchyroll just not feel like translating those two sentences? God damn that was lazy and unproferssional. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised based on what I have heard about the employees who work there.

So is Ultraman Dyna subbed or is it in the same boat with Taro and Gridman? Cause I'm interested in checking it out, but it looks like just another series with a handful of episodes subbed and that's it.

What's wrong with Gridman?

As far as I know, there are no Dyna subs. I'm a little surprised that Crunchyroll hasn't touched it, because as far as I know there was never any official US release for it like there was with Tiga. Crunchyroll has done Gaia, too, which was part of that trilogy of late 90s Ultra shows.

Episodes 7-12 of Nexus... DAMN!!!!! Wow, shit, damn, that friggin sucks. Ouch!

I really liked these episodes, especially the stuff dealing with Faust. I do hope they start to give more focus on Jun though as he is the title character and he's been pretty much a side character thus far. I'm really enjoying the show a lot and how they are handling the monsters. I thought I had seen the first 20 or so episodes, but I do not remember Rika's story, so maybe I saw less than I had. If I had any major nitpicks it would be the CGI is pretty awful and some of the effects look a little too fake. Other than that, no complaints.

Oh, but I do need to ask, the marksman girl looks familiar. Not Nagi, as she is the woman who plays Jabi in Garo, the other one. Is she one of the sisters from Kamen Rider Hibiki?

No, she wasn't one of the Tachibana sisters. Those were the late Miyuki Kanbe and the incomparably gorgeous Mayu Gamo. According to Wikipedia, this actress from Nexus is named Keiko Goto and I can't easily find out anything about her other than she had a minor guest appearance on Mebius.

Ironically, it stopped being fansubbed because everyone thought it'd just end up on Crunchyroll.

It's got like three episodes subbed. Which is sad because I also really wanna watch more of it as well. I hope something'll finally happen with the upcoming anime and all.

That is unfortunate. Perhaps there is a silver lining in that, given that it leaves the possibly of fansubs picking it up once more and- as I understand it, pretty much everything made before X has been treated with ambivalence in regards to quality by the CR subbers.

That's because the subs aren't done by CR for the series before X. Those subs are provided by Tsuburaya themselves.

Blue Ultras. Thoughts?

We watched Nexus episodes 13-18 tonight. This show continues to impress and I'm liking the design for Mephisto quite a bit. The Xenomorph-Cerberus monster was pretty awesome too. Glad to see Nagi getting a tad fleshed out more. Now if they could only do the same to the other Night Raiders members. It was also nice to see Jun's former partners back, even if it was only for a short time right now. I'm really curious to see how this plot develops and if we are finally going to get some city battles. Lastly, I really need to look up the composer for the show as there are a few tracks in it that I know I have heard before. Well, nothing else to really say other than I'm looking forward to the next batch of episodes we watch tomorrow.

I love Blue Ultras and desperately think we need another one with blue as his primary color. The closest we've had since Cosmos is Ginga. Blue feels criminally underused as a primary color for a Tokusatsu.

They're fine. I still feel a little embarrassed about confusing Cosmos for Agul during the run-up to Geed, though.

Well I love the color blue, and I love Ultraman, so I'm hardly going to say no to combining the two.

I'm not actually a big fan of Agul and Hikari (they're 'aight), but I've mentioned my love of Ginga's glowy bits before, and Cosmos is just plain awesome.

All right, so the battle between Nexus and Mephisto in episode 24 was freaking awesome. As was everything leading up to that point. I really enjoyed the mysteries, the fights, the characters, all of it. The UFO club was pretty out there, but is the one fat dude with the glasses the actor who played the commander in Megaranger? It looks and sounds like him.

Episode 25 was super annoying because if there is one thing that is worse than a clip show, it is a an episode that is half a clip show that also gives pertinent information we should have been told about in a real episode. It was nice to hear them talk about The Next for a moment, so I hope more comes of this and this is not the only connection the movie has to the show. Neverthless, interesting, a sad version of Nexus? Sweet.

And then episode 26 happened. I already hate Ren. This feels like an entirely different show suddenly. It's jarring and makes no sense. This dude just comes out of the blue without any warning and I'm supposed to believe he is worth of replacing Jun? WTF? The only character worthy of replacing Jun is Komon! We have had him built up for the last 26 episodes and now he is suddenly being pushed to the way side and become a side character? OH HELL NO!!!!! Oh, and isn't it just convenient that we now learn there is a spy within the TLT and then it cuts to the MP walking with a girl we have never seen before? Hmmmmmmmm, I wonder who it ever could be...

Episode 27 wasn't bad, but I really really hate Ren. Was this dude forced in to please the child audience? He doesn't fit with the tone the rest of the show was conveying. And again, he is not worthy to be Ultraman when Komon is right freaking there!! I know I said I wanted Nexus to have a bigger role, but when I said Nexus, I meant Jun, not this annoying brat. UGH! Oh yeah, and the MP girl is hands down the worst spy ever. Lastly, HA, they all said PP. Juvenile laughter for the win.

I wouldn't worry to much about the light heartedness of episode 27. While the show does get a bit lighter going forward, that's simply because of the departure of Jun and the wrapping up of the girlfriend stuff with Komon, not because the show's changing its tone. While I can't promise that you'll accept Ren as Nexus over Jun, since how much you like him is based on how much you like the standard toku hero over non traditional ones like Jun, he has his place in the story and the show return to its dark tone pretty quickly.

On a side note, its around episode 27 when the show starts moving at a much faster pace since, as you may know, it was reduced from its intended 49 episode run to 37 episodes, not counting the extra episode and a director's cut episode. While I don't think the pacing effects the show's quality, it becomes more apparent the closer you get to episode 37 that they're cramming 20 episodes of information into 10. I'm warning you about this because it results in a lot of... quick fixes to problems that really should have lasted longer. Just wanted to warn you.

Also, another thing to remember is that Crunchyroll didn't translated the 40+ minute long EX episode, which takes place in between episode 31 and 32, or the director's cut version of episode 29. I didn't see either of these while I was watching the show and I was completely but the EX episode is Hiraki's only focus episode so if you're interested in watching those episodes, Tv-Nihon are the only ones who have translated these as far as I'm aware.

I always felt like Ren was Nexus trying to be more like Kamen Rider, possibly in response to its own failing ratings. Ren feels a lot like an early Heisei Rider protagonist, Shouichi in particular, and the show's overall tone starts feeling more in-line with Kamen Rider, too.

So we just finished episode 34 and I've got mixed feelings on these last 7 episodes. I still do not like Ren, but at least he hasn't taken over as the star of the show like I initially feared. On the other hand, these episodes have made a lot of missteps. For one thing, what was the point of bringing Shinya back from the dead only to kill him off in the most cliche way possible? Jun's departure was so abrupt and out there, but at least he had accomplished his goal. Or rather, he had until all of it was undermined by bringing the dude back and have him "redeem" himself before he dies. God damn that was so freaking stupid and completely ruins what Jun accomplished.

On the positive side, I did like the explanation given as to how everyone knows next to nothing about the events from The Next. They really should just call them what they are though, the Men in Black.

Sadly, there are several more let downs. First off, oh, the plot with the dude who has been taking pictures of Shinya has now gone nowhere. It was some TLT dude the whole time? Not only is that lame, but it was a complete waste of time since the dumbass girl from The Next movie put an end to his cure plan. Thanks lady, thanks for turning this plot point irrelevant. I want to hit my head into a brick wall repeatedly for wasting my time on this. I can only imagine how much worse this was for people who had been watching this show on a weekly basis, having 9 weeks go by on this for no reason whatsoever. It's like Kamen Rider 555 all over again.

Next up deals with Negoro and Sakuta. Where the hell are they? Sure, Negoro got his memory wiped, but where are the UFO people he hung out with? Why isn't Sakuta doing anything to expose the truth? You would think that she would be trying her best to make Negoro remember his story. Or maybe have Negoro uncover the recording he did with Komon and end up remembering the truth. Somthing. ANYTHING!!

Granted, we've still got three episodes left, so there is still time for this to happen, but I have low expectations of it happening at this point. Well, we will see. Time to eat dinner and then finish this show!

Something to keep in mind as you wrap up Nexus: the show was meant to run longer. It was cancelled because of low ratings and the entire Ultra N project, which was supposed to reinvent and reinvigorate the Ultraman franchise, was scrapped. The ending of the show is pretty rushed because they had a lot less time to wrap things up than originally planned.

All right, so we have completed Nexus and outside of our Crunchroll stream dying 12 minutes in the final episode, they were great.

Thankfully, the ending to the Ren arc was stronger than it began. I still don't know what the point of him was as he didn't really do anything that Komon couldn't have done as Ultraman, but his finale was bitter sweet. I really liked the design of Izmeal (are the subs sure it wasn't supposed to be Ishmael??) and the final battle was cool. Oh, and it was nice to have been wrong about them dropping the Raphael plot.

Unfortunately, I have mixed feelings on the final episode. The reveal of who the traitor was came out of left field, which would have been cool, but was I supposed to feel upset about this? Maybe if the dude has received some development over the course of the series I could have, but he didn't, so I was left rather lukewarm. It also seemed kind of like a last minute, "We need a major plot twist," type of scenario. It was very Japanese in a cliche generic kind of way.

Also, the stuff dealing with Nagi was pointless. This should have happened in place of Ren. Of course, this part was irrelevant because it lasted all of 4 minutes only to give the role of the hero to the person that should have given it in the first place when Jun left. The design for Black/Dark Nexus was pretty badass and the final battle, while feeling a bit rushed, was good. Nexus' final form was bad ass, although I'm not sure what the point of the wing shoulders was. That seemed a bit overkill. I do find it funny that a boy who probably isn't even old enough to know what happened in The Next was the first one to remember the event. Oh, and the MP lady's face when everyone started to remember was priceless. The epilogue could have been handled better. Maybe they should have made it also be the ending credit sequence so it could have been fleshed out a bit longer. Oh, it also sucks that they couldn't even be bothered to show us Negoro and Sakuta in the epilogue.

Well anyway, I highly enjoyed Nexus. I can't say it is the best Ultra series I have ever seen (that still goes to Seven and Orb), but it is definitely up there. The first 24 episodes were outstanding, while the last 13 juggled with mediocrity. I do applaud that the show tried to do something new and switching out the title heroes was a bold move even if I found Ren lacking. The fight choreography was pretty top notch even if the camera work wasn't as impressive. The minatures in the last few episodes were serviceable. The only major nitpick I have in the area of effects was the extremely cheap and outdated CGI. There are still some lingering questions I have that will probably never be answered, but that is a the nature of the beast, especially for a show that had its run cut down. Nevertheless, it was a solid show and if it ever comes to BD in the states, I look forward to revisiting it. I just hope that whoever releases it actually gives it a proper translation instead of that halfassed job Crunchyroll did.

Next on our list is Max.

Enjoy. Max is, as I've mentioned several times, my personal favorite. It's also really fun and refreshing to watch after Nexus.

I've heard great things about Max, so I hope so. I'm actually really looking forward to the Metron episode because one of the New Type THe Live magazines I own has some images from that episode and the Metron looks like he is stichted up through the middle. It has me really curious because the Metron in Ultra Seven was sliced in half, so I'm wondering if it is meant to be the same one. Either way, I'll find out when we get there. Although, I'm not sure when we might have time to get through Max since we have a bunch of other stuff to get through first.

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to say this but it was awesome seeing Kenji Sahara in Nexus.

It was the first show after Nexus and they have a back-to-basics approach to it in terms of tone which is why I think it is one of the best gateway shows from the early 2000s other than Mebius.

Oh man, if you like seeing actors from classic tokusatsu you are going to fucking love Max.

Just an FYI, TV-Nihon have begun subbing Ultraman Dyna and have released the first 5 episodes. It'll be a while before its done of course, if official subs aren't released in the meantime, but just something to keep an eye on if anyone's interested.

Nice. I may check that out when they finish it up sometime in 2023.

In their defense, when they returned to finish Timeranger for real, it only took them a bit over half a year. That's pretty good I think, for a 50 episode series.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask something like this. Since all the discussion for Tokusatsu shows have now been consolidated to one single forum, is it possible if we can start getting individual discussion threads for Ultraman episodes? With how widely available the series has become thanks to Crunchyroll, I feel it would help raise a bit more interest in the franchise.

I've put the suggestion to the rest of the staff for discussion :)

I honestly feel this discussion is just fine.

I think they mean for the weekly Geed episodes.

There is one for Geed though.