Ultra Q was good. Some WTF episodes, recycled monsters, stock footage, but enjoyable. Hard for me to pick 1 best episode. There's the Goro episode, Baron Spider, Gamaron 2-parter, Kanegon, 2020 plan.

Well, I guess I named my favorites here. :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgDGy24H6Ns

I feel pretty confident in doubling down on what I said last time?

Taro's a great pal, don't get me wrong, but it's like he's reading off a platitude of the day calendar this whole episode.

Not to interrupt Absolute Conspiracy - this episode had quite a few moments, but Tregear is still just not a character I enjoy at all - but I somehow completely missed that Ultra Action Figure is doing Dyna and Gaia in February?!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...96/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...16/unknown.png

Not an unfair assessment. Seems like he has very little to offer someone close when they're in a personal/philosophical crisis.

I'm not all that familiar with Tregear's backstory (or the brunt of it that has transpired up to this point), but it felt like a deep-dive by tying Tregear into Hikari's backstory. Granted, Tregear didn't realistically exist back when they did the OG Side Story for Hikari, but still an interesting approach. When one Ultra gives into darkness, it's such a shock to everyone that it can have deleterious effects down the line.

This didn't do the whole "Remember this character? We're bringing them back!", but I suspect we're getting close to something big.

“When you realise Taiga’s name is the last remnant of Taro’s and Tregear’s friendship.” Saw that in the YouTube comments section and it was really sobering.

Though I do like that they did a contrast between Belial and Tregear when it came to their backstories. It does help make the differences between them stand out more.

"I wish I was able to join the inter galactic defense force and fight instead of create things!"

Well, Tregear, now I see what's the problem here. You're blue!

I'd consider that worthy of an interruption, actually. It's really cool to see Ultra Action Figure is still quietly hanging out in the background, doing exactly what Rider Kick's Figure was supposed to but kinda gave up on (including keeping the prices both low and consistent), and all while being a height people care about, to boot! :p

I didn't really expect them tying those two backstories together, but I thought it worked pretty naturally. In general, really, I was pretty satisfied with what this episode did with Tregear, even though there's a part of me that's still of a part of me that wanted all this backstory to be in the hypothetical 50-ish episode version of Taiga that will only ever exist in my dreams. Which is definitely a "me" thing! So it's not like I was really going to begrudge the episode for that in the first place.

Besides, the fact that Absolute Conspiracy has all this genuine character drama on top of the action has been one of my favorite things about it so far compared to the first Ultra Galaxy Fight. An easily accessible and fun series on YouTube with appeal to fans of a wide range of works from the franchise is honestly a super great place to cover the backstories of popular characters!

Interesting thing about this episode is that it directly pulls every major event from a side story published after Taiga that went into Tregear's backstory -- his friendship with Taro, his jealousy of not being able to fight, Hikari being his chief who went missing, going to that planet. I bring this up because it's disappointing to see how the Taiga spark was named - in the original story, Taro named it the Taiga spark partly because it was what he would want to name his son one day, which I thought was really sweet. In this it comes off as the opposite; he names his son after a piece of technology!

So, an Ultra cloak means you're pretty much a veteran Ultra, right? Wouldn't there be Ultras older than Zero who should have cloaks or is there something I'm missing? And would there be more older Ultras down the line getting their own cloaks? Like Tiga or something?

The red mantles signify the wearer's status as one of the six main Ultra Brothers. Zero's is unique to him.

The Borthers have one to Mark their status as part of the Brothers, Father and Mother get them to show their status, and Leo and King received theirs as a defensive option.

10 episodes in the original Ultraman and I'm noticing a glaring problem: the titular Ultraman is not a character here. He's more of a plot device used when needed to fight the monster of the week and then leaves. It doesn't make a difference if he and Hayata were separate characters or a transformation of Hayata. We don't know anything about him or his personality so it's hard for us to get a reason to like him other than "cool giant alien fighting monsters". We don't even know his real name. Maybe because Ultraman Z was my first series and I got used to its formula, but this series needed some character building moments between Ultraman ans Hayata the same way Z and Haruki had there.

That’s kind of how the Showa/Heisei ultra series go. They focus more on the human host, with the Ultraman only showing up to have a fight scene.

Man's a bit interesting, mostly in that well, I'll be real when I say they don't really truly explicitly touch on Man's whole deal until towards the end in regards to him sharing a body with Hayata.Honestly it results in one of my favorite lines in 66' as well.

What I will say vaguely though is, we're not seeing the whole picture in regards to each's personality, especially Hayata. But yeah I mean this was really the first step into Ultraman in general so it makes sense that there's not much to really go on. Granted we seem to fix that issue immediately since with Ultraseven I believe it's a disguise not a host.

Next year is not only the 55th year of the franchise, it’s also the 25th year for the “Odyssey” Ultras, Tiga, Dyna, Gaia and Agul

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqFJE4eX...pg&name=medium

And it’s the same release as always, among the P-Bandai items continuing far into the future, but we’re living in the moment of a rerelease (man that wording was awkward). It’s the Ultra Replica Tiga Spark, 25th ver., based on the iconic item owned by Daigo Madoka (in the show)/Hiroshi Nagano (in real life).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqFJE5uX...jpg&name=large

Nice! As someone who's watching the show right now and is enjoying it a lot I can't deny I'm tempted by this goofy little thing

Episode 6 of The Absolute Conspiracy is up! I suppose this ends new Ultra material for the year, right?

- The Ultra Brothers and Spectre Brothers!

- Belial, Tregear, and Tartarus start making their moves.

- Andro Melos is name dropped.

- Zero and his Mantle!

So is Zero's mantle just what his Ultimate Armour looks like now??? Like, he touched the bracelet and everything, right after Father or Ultra told him to travel to different dimensions... so... ????

Either way, it fucking ROCKS seeing an Ultra Brothers fight!! Whenever you get a classic showa group like that going wild with their retro attacks to their old theme song you know you're in for a good time.

Got caught up on Absolute Conspiracy and, to be honest, I didn't like the last few episodes as much as the earlier ones. The action has been good and the story is still interesting, but I'm still feeling a bit cold on them. One of the big appeals of this series was getting to see all the obscure, lesser-used Ultras but these last few episodes have just been more Taro, more Zero, more Ultra Brothers, and more freaking Belial (the Zachary Quinto of Ultraman). Hopefully this next story we're moving into will get back to dredging up the more obscure heroes again.

Honestly what I appreciated most about this episode was seeing Taro and Ace tagteam fight for a while before Seven jumped in. Given well, you know their relation, it's really cool to see.

But yeah it's clear that the second chapter was a"Set Up" phase for the Absolute Conspiracy so it was really lacking in regards to punch compared to the previous chapter.

It’s due to focus on Taiga, Zero, Grigio, Mebius and Z, so it’s not likely.

Well, that’s unfortunate.

I'm not totally convinced. Joneus and Andro haven't been shown in battle yet. Remember, there were a couple of obscure characters in the team Ribut joined including Melos. The trailer has shown blink-and-you-miss-it scenes which definitely include Joneus and Andro amongst several others including Taiga. We aren't through just yet!

https://ultramangalaxy.com/new-trail...te-conspiracy/

Not to mention there's no clue if they'll pull out sudden out of nowhere appearances like they did with Xenon and Legend, since those two weren't in trailers from what I recall.

Also I don't mind heroes like Grigio getting focus, since I'm like all for that, especially since she's not being paired up with her brothers like last time. Should make for some cool stuff.

Not to mention more Original Flavor Z is always welcome.

Okay 2 questions about episode "The Prince of Monsters: Part 1":

1- How do the kids know about the transformation / swapping pose if no one ever saw Hayata use the Beta Capsule?

2- How does Ultraman drop the Beta Capsule when it's supposed to be with Hayata and not held by Ultraman?
https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/44/e5/md5XZO0U_t.jpg
https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/e4/fc/yEtOzt37_t.jpg

I have no legitimate answers for any of those questions.

What I will say is Gomora did nothing wrong.

They woke him up from his nap and forcefully took him from his cave to be an exhibit. It's not hard to see why he's pissed off.

Watched all of original Ultraman. I don't want to be too harsh on it since it's the first of its kind so naturally it had a rough start and took a while till it found its footing, but I still have some issues with it:

One of the issues I had with and I already talked about it is about Ultraman himself. Until way later in the series he was more like a plot device that wasn't needed until the plot demands it. Wish there was more between him and Hayata to remind us he's a character. Though from what happens in the final episode, I want to say Hayata was Ultraman all along. It wasn't 2 personas in 1 body, Hayata was already dead and Ultraman took his body and memories and assumed Hayata's role, though it creates a plothole for the times when they separate.

Also, if Ultraman could just have a conversation between him and Mefilas, why didn't he try this with all the aliens he went against? Instead, he just fought them and escalated the fight before any negotiations were set.

The morality of the SSSP falls into question in some episodes, as they act aggressively against monsters who aren't hurting anybody and they attack them first before the monsters do anything. The Woo, Seabozu and the Gomora episodes are good examples of this.

===

Now for favorite/best episode, The Mefilas episode "The Forbidden Words" had to be it. Everything about it was great. The characters, the villain and the action (save for that moment when they leave Hayata who was standing right in front of them).

Second best episode I'd give to "A Little Hero". Got some great character development and another excellent fight and answers the question of why the SSSP bothers to fight when Ultraman could do job for them. Also Pygmon is the MVP.

Episodes "The Monster Highness" 1 & 2, "The Monster Graveyard" and "Farewell, Ultraman" I'm going to put them as the "disappointing" episodes. They had great premise, but the execution did not live up to the hype surrounding them.

Worst episode? Easy one: "A Gift From The Sky". "The Pearl Defense Directive" comes close second.

The idea of Belial Early Style being used for Geed's ""base"" form - the one you see briefly after he Fusion Rises and before two Ultras merge into him - is an idea I'm generally kind of okay with given the circumstances of his existence, but one thing has always bothered me about it: the eyes. Geed's eyes (and almost entire face) are not just a consistent throughout all his forms implying it's something he would have on a 'base' level like what was eventually revealed for Orb's face through Origin, but on a thematic level it's just something extremely important to his character. It's in the OP, it's used stylistically for so many shots, multiple characters comment on it being the thing that makes him look like Belial, it's a direct inversion of Belial's eyes. So him just having very standard Ultraman eyes inherited from Belial Early Style is... it bothers me? A lot? You just don't do a Geed form without those eyes!

So that's why I went onto paint.net and made this in like four minutes. I actually think it looks kinda decent all things considered!

https://i.imgur.com/aqHOmAN.png

Your dedication to the utter perfection that is Geed's design is appreciated! Like, I cannot even begin to tell you how much those eyes matter to me.

No new episode of The Absolute Conspiracy this week!? Didn't see one.

Everyone's taking a break. There's no Super Hero Time this week. Best to go catch-up on some other stuff in your backlog if you have any.

They add things faster than I can keep up!

When I saw no new Absolute Conspiracy episode, I went to HBO Max cause they just recently uploaded Batman: TAS and Batman Beyond.

Many of us wanted this when we were younger and now we're flat out overwhelmed! :lol

I've just been thinking about Tiga a bunch, thanks to both the chronicle series coming up and also the fact that I rewatched it a little while ago, and I just feel like typing out some thoughts about a specific part of it. I love it a ton and also appreciate it for being a different but still classic take on the Ultraman themes.

Instead of an alien from another world who protects Earth as a otherworldly friend, Tiga is viewed like a divine guardian created to protect humanity. Though of course Tiga himself, or rather Madoka Daigo, isn't just some machine to fight threats, but is someone who believes in the worth of humanity in it's own right.

There's a lot of episodes that lean into that, but the one my mind always flashbacks to, and the thing I felt like I have to type about or I might explode, is episode 28. I don't know if I'd go as far to say it's my favourite, but it might just be the one that sticks in my mind the most! There's a few different threads of characters wondering if they're doing the right thing, or if they're on the right path, like Daigo and Rena being opposed to the government's plan to wipe out an entire native Earth species because of it's threat to humans (and to be fair, the critters and Gazort are no joke!), and Yazumi being challenged on whether its brave or foolish to be willing to die.

Those are all nice questions to raise and all, but for me it's really all in the big climax, when a big bug monster attacks a camp full of injured soldiers, and the show's (instrumental) theme song has already kicked in! Rather than jump straight into the fight like he has the past 27 episodes, Daigo talks to his Spark Lens and asks Tiga just what all this fighting even is for, and if it really has any meaning. This is immediately memorable because this is the only time in the whole show where he does the classic Ultra trope of shouting Tiga's name as he transforms, and the context of him actually pleading to Tiga for answers just makes it feel particularly awesome to me?

The fight itself is standard but good stuff, and naturally it's the end of the fight that has what made the episode stick with me all this time. Bug monster's got Tiga on the ropes, and just as Take Me Higher goes into that beautiful bridge as in zooms in on Tiga's face. Daigo apparently gets his answer from Tiga at this point, the answer of why the both of them fight. It quickly flashes images of his fellow GUTS members as Daigo concludes that he (him and Tiga) fight to protect people because he loves them!

His love is so powerful and overwhelming that it makes the monster explode into pieces, and it's capped off by a wonderful shot of Tiga standing at dawn. This is what he does, and he'll keep doing it for as long as he needs to.

Some other stuff happens afterwards with the critters that's also neat and thought-provoking, but the climax to the monster fight...! It really does encapsulate the messages of, maybe not the series as a whole, but definitely the theme song! 愛を抱きしめて いま !!!

I watched this one recently and I loved it! It was very Z. Or, uh, Z was very Tiga?

It's really funny nobody from STORAGE ever noticed Captain Hebikura's nasty ass scar... lol

"It's eczema"

Humans can have scars too! Maybe they thought it'd be rude to ask where it came from (not that he wouldn't give some cryptic answer anyway).