Really loved the premise of the latest episode of Decker. I know it's probably a real challenge to come up with 20+ reasons for a kaiju to attack a city every year, so I always appreciate it when we get something unique and while I know we've seen "monster for sale" before, I think this is the first time we've gotten "please enjoy a free demonstration of destructive kaiju; operators are standing by!" That is a ridiculous premise and I love it.

I also retract everything I said about the monster fights last week. The showdown between Decker and the fire-breathing lizard was fantastic. Also got a huge kick out of Decker expressing Kanata's frustration at Hanejiro's impression of him.

Oh yes. I want more of this. An interesting (and kind of messed up) spin on the weaponised kaiju story, really good miniature work and action scenes and jokes that made me genuinely laugh. This was a great episode.

Plush Hanejiro

Slight detour from Decker, but between yesterday and today, I watched a couple of the last Ultra Fight miniseries - New Generation Heroes, and Absolute Conspiracy. And... yeah, they're enjoyable! NGH is definitely the weaker of the two, having a barebones plot in exchange for an ever increasing amount of CGI fightscenes, but having Rosso and Blu around (plus Geed a little) helps out since I know who they are. Also, Ribut best boy.

Moving onto Absolute Conspiracy, and Ribut continues to be best boy. As the movie/miniseries progresses, you can sum up 90% of fights as "Ultras almost lose, but are bailed out by a different Ultra who gets their theme music", but theme music makes all fights cool, and even though I don't have any emotional connection to any of these guys, the choreography and effects are great. I do wish we had some better miniature work, the constant CGI backdrops would be my main criticism there, but I get it, YouTube miniseries while Z gets the bulk of the filming there. Character-wise, this one fairs a lot better, getting into the backstory of Tregear (Hey I've seen the R/B movie I know this guy!) and Bellial (Hey I've been an Ultra fan in the last decade, I know this guy!) and having them be, while not sympathetic, given some nuance in their falls. It's unfortunate they overshadow Tartarus, who I assume is meant to be a big impressive villain, but he falls flat, caught between the emotional drama of our two regular villain Ultras, and the immense casting call rota of the Ultra side. Because there are a lot of Ultras here! For someone like me, who's seen like 2 series, you just have to go with it. These two (Cosmos and Justice) can fuse together? Sure!

Spoilers for Return of Ultraman (The Jack Series)!

WTF! This series has a weird handling of its characters. The initial Team Captain is switched out and then they go further with the sudden and callous fate of the Sakatas during the Alien Nackle and Black King episodes.

I can only ponder if there were reasons behind this or if this was planned.

Yeah, the Sakatas getting killed off was PRETTY brutal and it's just how some Showa series rolled in attempts to get better ratings (admittedly not exactly dissimilar to modern Rider...)

Something like it would happen to an entire defence team in another Showa Ultra. And yeah the actor for the original captain just left for reasons iirc, that also happens in a bunch of other Showa Toku

Resuming my Ultraman run I watched Ultraman USA/The Adventure Begins, which was rather good for what it wanted to do. When I saw the Hanna-Barbera name I was expecting the usual H&B animation quality but it was actually better, almost 80s Toei film quality which was nice to see.

English voice acting was a bit of a hit or miss since it was Ultraman "USA" and the majority of the cast was speaking in stereotypical American accents it gets laughable across the movie. The three Ultras did fine, but their characteristics were a bit on the flat side. Though I wouldn't say it's entirely their fault since this was meant to be a pilot for a series that never never got made and so they didn't get the chance to explore and do everything they planned to do.

I'm amazed they got Adrienne Barbeau (DCAU Catwoman) in this.

Did more Tiga on Tubi, and "Toku Stitched Version" is now a very loose phrase cause the few that I did had "Take Me Higher" in the opening and during the battle with the Kyriel! I was seriously under the impression that they didn't have the rights. Given that the earlier clip show opener is subbed and TMH is not, I almost feel like this is a recent addendum to the streaming version.

Take Me Higher was left intact for Episode 3 and 4 only nobody no why this is. But every other episode has the replacement op. Also as far as I can tell toku stiched means. Nothing as other Ultraman shows like Dyna and Gaia also have that.

I wish they could've kept Take Me Higher as an insert song for a few more episodes...