Nah they do the second bit of material all the time in Rider shows, never been a problem there. I still think with Max's body type, he could have used a smaller helmet, his head looked hilariously huge.

And I dunno how else to describe it? With whatever the material of the suit is, if they want to move their body forward, or their legs up or whatever else the suit folds in exactly the same way fat rolls do.

Fair enough. It's probably not that hard to do, but the fin and zip has become ingrained into the series as Aoi Kurenai said. To put it into perspective, there's actually a book out that is mostly pictures of the backsides of various Ultras and monsters.

I'm not too familiar with how Kamen Rider suits are worn, but I always kind of assumed they were put on in layers. Ultraman suits usually look like some kind of weird chrysalis.

And...yeah, that happens a lot. I think it's supposed to simulate the consistency of skin and all that entails. I guess I now know why most recent Ultramen have sculpted abs.

This looks like a cool wee "spin-off" kind of thing, not 100% sure what it is, but, i think it is a manga and a figure to go with it.

Looks like Ultra"Iron"man to me.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bh38g9ACUAAR5gL.jpg:large

http://i.na.cx/5CR2e.jpg

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...pse0fd0ce3.jpg

What you're saying though is my entire point. CONCEPTUALLY it's supposed to represent living tissue, cocooning around the user. It isn't supposed to look like armour...and that is an awesome concept.

But in the engineering and execution it actually looks even more unnatural than any sentai or rider armour which IS supposed to look like a suit.

I think it does alright without going into grotesque detail. They still have to make it marketable to children. They added stuff like sinewy muscle in ULTRAMAN THE NEXT since that was for older folks. IMO, it just made the suit look bulky.

Anyway, you make it sound like they have no idea what they're doing just because the basic aesthetics on nearly every suit aren't to your liking.

Japan know what they're doing, but I do find that often toku plays it safer than I'd like. Look at sentai robos...

Ultraman designs do tend to be rather homogeneous, unfortunately. More variation is welcome but they still should keep it recognizably Ultra. Otherwise there isn't much point in calling it Ultraman.

As for sentai, it would probably be more daring to have less pieces that don't match the team colors.

I dunno man maybe it's because I've seen like ten episodes of Ultraman in my entire life, across like five different shows but it just really struck me how samey everyone looks. Hell even the plot in all those shows was practically exactly the same.

I watch Ultraman for more or less the same reason I watch classic Doctor Who. Less focus on overarching plots and more on individual stories, many of which are bizarre and near hallucinogenic.

Don't get me wrong, plots aren't the devil. They just aren't the main appeal. At least not fot me.

I wish I could be more like you man!

Max 02.

This episode was...impressively boring. For an episode focusing on some kind lightning dinosaur...thing that is having babies in a woman's apartment (?) it was pretty much all build up, no pay off.

Even when Max and Eleking FINALLY clashed, it was bittersweet. Both because Max showed a hilarious disregard for human life but also because it appeared in like the last four minutes of the episode, and there were still two minutes to spare afterwards. Sure is a convenient plot beat to have an excuse to not have your ULTRAMAN in your ULTRAMAN show for more than three minutes.

Was kinda sad/disturbing that just as the baby Eleking hatched...it disintegrated. Max don't give no fucks about human life or the innocence of birth.

I'm just waiting for the episode where everyone is transported to Victorian London and they're all wearing deerstalkers. Even Ultraman. :thumb:

Yeahhh, that episode is pretty "meh." Eleking's original appearance in Ultraseven is a lot more exciting.

Sadly, there's a lot of times where it's necessary to kill the alien/monster of the week. Not because they're entirely evil, but because it's impossible for them to coexist for one reason or another. It's a recurring theme if you will. Still, Max has nothing on the original Ultraman as far as giving no fucks. Just watch ending of the the second episode "Shoot the Invader."

Can't wait to see Ultraman smash a dinosaur into Big Ben while making those weird echogrunts and firing rainbow beams through the smog.

At least I know episode two isn't a mark of the quality of the whole season, can't wait to watch episode three and see if it's better.

Max 03.

About the only disappointment with this episode is Legila had to die. Perfection. If we get more episodes like this, I may fall in love!

Max 04.

If it wasn't bad enough that the Earth has literally created giant monsters to MURDER EVERYONE they've got aliens invading the planet at the same time? Jesus, I feel sorry for DASH.

While we're on the topic of Dash... I get that the opening shouldn't be taken too seriously, but when that voice over is placed over the top it raises all sorts of questions.

If DASH is to defend the world, why has it got six members? Trying to protect the world using six clearly very sleep deprived youngsters seems pretty counter productive. Even SPD had the B-Squad concept. Also why would they use such unreliable cars like Alpha Romeos?

Not to mention the fact that they seem to lack even generic combat training, which is utterly baffling. I absolutely HATED the defence people in Nexus, but at least they spent like a quarter of the show fighting with their own two hands before getting machines. Kaito had his first chance to prove himself this episode, and he immediately ran away.

Perhaps the worst part of the episode though is how utterly tacked on the Ultraman part of the Ultraman show was. The alien who had been regular sized the whole episode, just suddenly turns into a giant and the show acts like it hasn't noticed. And conveniently the only person with Kaito gets knocked out. He looks at his watch 'oh we're at the nineteen minute mark!' and he transforms and we get our 80 seconds of Ultraman action.

The only good part of the fight, is firstly his theme is HILARIOUS. It honestly sounds like a parody that the only bit they play over the fight is the bit where they just sing Max over and over again. Then there is the fact that it sounds like Ultraman is just cursing over and over again, shit....SHIIIIT, SHIIIIIT!

Ultimately you could cut out the Ultraman portion of this Ultraman show and not notice and that is really bad.

There are other branches of DASH. This is just the Japanese division.

And something to keep in mind as you watch this show: in many ways it was created in response to the backlash over Nexus being too dark and adult for Ultraman.

Even with that in mind, why is the Japanese division so small?

I attempted watching Max 1, I only got to the fight scenes.

I don't know why but I fell like Ultraman just isn't doing it to me, I want to get into it it's just none of the shows I've check out thus far being Ginga,Mebuis, and Max I just don't know.

I dunno, Max has been better so far than Nexus or Taiga, but that isn't saying much. Ultraman makes sentai look refreshing and varied, and Ultraman makes Kamen Rider Faiz look action packed.

It does, and it seems that only Kamen Rider is the only Toku (next to Garo from what I've heard) that I can watch and alright being the minimal enjoyment.

It's a high risk job with few applicants and even fewer entrants that pass the exams.

Although, I kinda wondered if they all cheated given that it's practically an episode requirement for the DASH Bird 1 to crash in some manner.

Er, I assume you meant Tiga.

Anyways. I dunno if the whole franchise is devoid of innovation or at least something that sets a series apart. Nexus is actually pretty nonstandard, given that the titular Ultra is actually passed around a couple of times and it's more "monster of the month." There's plenty of other differences from series to series that would take me far too long to list out entirely.

And Ultraman is far more action-packed than Faiz could ever hope to be. Especially 70's Ultraman.

It still seems counter productive to have a single squad and a couple of planes. Not only do they run away from ground fights, and crash every episode, but I'm also not surprised given they have zero support so they're overworked, and have barely a moment to sleep, eat or look after themselves. This entire organisation would be destroyed by the first battle if this show was more serious.

Oh yeah damn, I was reading a post about Kouga's Dad in GARO and did a brain fart :lol Either way, all of the Ultraman show's I've seen have been EXTREMELY similar, like almost beat for beat in Nexus and Max's case. The changes between shows are even more novel and arbitrary than sentai and that says something.

And sure Ultraman is action packed, but that action often lacks on Ultraman. 99% of Max's episodes involve DASH crashing their planes and cardboard buildings exploding and then in the last three minutes of the episode we get maybe one minute of Ultraman action. Like, dafuq?

"But Ultraman can only be on Earth for three minutes!"
"Yeah, but why put that rule in the show at all?"
"Oh erm..."
"Because they have no money to put Ultraman in the show?"
"Well erm..."
"Then don't make the show!"

I think the limit exists not necessarily because of the expense of building miniatures, but to keep him from being completely overpowered. All those monster defense groups would be out of a job if Ultraman didn't have his limits.

But, I gotta say, I think three minutes is a rough estimate rather than "Three minutes and *BAM* ded Ultra." They'll frequently cheat the time limit and fight for much longer. And this is just for those who have that limitation. Some others don't.

What so Max gets some longer Ultra fights later on?

That was just in general, but yeah, Max does get longer fights.

Just don't go expecting big ten minute fights. It's a 25-minute show, after all.

Oh no I wont, but I just found it lame Max fought for about eighty seconds in the wrap up of every episode so far.

In the original series the three minute warning was tossed in as some ecological message about how earth's atmosphere was polluted - at the time there was a huge ecological movement in Japan. In reality, it's something I think Eiji Tsuburaya picked up from his days working on the first Godzilla film. The suit is so hot and cumbersome that the suit actor cannot safely wear it for more than a couple of minutes. (the original suit actor for Godzilla was said to have passed out in suit a couple of times) It also makes sense with the theme of the original shows. Strictly speaking, Ultraman's first couple of shows weren't so much about a transforming hero but about bizarre sci-fi elements that the team of humans encountered episode to episode.

What was it about Nexus that you found to have in common with Max? They're incredibly different shows. Yeah, they both have a defense team, but that's a staple of the franchise just as much as giant robots are a staple of Super Sentai. Beyond a few aesthetic similarities, Nexus is different from just about any Ultraman series out there. Of course at the time Nexus was supposed to be this huge reinvention of the franchise and it bombed, and I think that's what has prompted Tsuburaya to play it so safe with the franchise ever since. Granted, beyond a few shows like Gaia, Cosmos, and Nexus, the franchise isn't the most varied, but that's because the formula worked so well for Tsuburaya. Up until the early 2000s, Ultraman was the iconic superhero series in Japan, something I think Kamen Rider became quite some time ago as failure at reinvention and Tsuburaya's financial hardships just cause Ultraman to become this mess of a franchise.

For the longest time, Ultraman's strengths were in its production quality. It might seem weird if you look at it from a Western-centric viewpoint, but this works for Japan and the miniatures scenes are high quality. You might just see "cardboard buildings" but a lot of work goes into the placement of the buildings as well as various details to make the sets look more like an organic city. There's also the filming of the giant scenes which, most of the time, do a great job of rendering scale in an impressive manner.

I'm feeling more and more that Ultraman just isn't for me, I've tried, multiple times but everything you're saying just falls flat to me. If Nexus is a reinvention of the franchise, I find that hilarious as about the only difference between the shows is the tone. And if those cities in Ultraman are supposed to feel organic...that is hilarious as well.

Ultraman is low budget, even by toku standards, and is formulaic, even by toku standards or at least that is how it comes to an outsider like myself. And if what you're telling me is true, I guess it shows I won't ever match up to the general consensus.

It's definitely formulaic. I think that's why people have such a hard time getting into it. If they find one show that does a version of the formula they like, that's great, but after a while it does get old if there's no twist that makes other shows interesting. For my money, the first three shows (Ultra Q, Ultraman, and Ultra Seven) all do the sci-fi angle in this really awesome old school way and serve as time capsules of advancements in Japanese TV. Believe it or not, Ultraman was actually the most expensive TV show produced in Japan at the time. The only Ultraman shows I really latched onto aside from the aforementioned three, Gaia, Nexus, and Max. Gaia and Nexus because they attempt a much more story heavy and serialized approach to the formula and Max just because I had a lot of fun watching it throughout.

I'm not sure what's wrong with the cities in the shows though. They're not done as well as something like Go-Busters or Ultraman The Next (which I think has some of the best miniature scenes ever) but they work for the fast paced TV production of the shows. There's real care and craft that goes into them. I can understand if maybe you just don't like miniature scenes and would prefer superimposed giants, but I've always felt the city scapes were some of the strongest visual aspects of the shows. That's just regarding the city scapes though. There are things I really hate, like the aircraft presentation in Nexus, now that is some pitifully done stuff. It works for the older shows because they're going for more realistic designs and the flight patterns are just a whole lot more subdued, but the the newer ones, with more fanciful jet designs and whatnot, just seem like toys flying across the screen. I still cringe whenever I see the jets and tanks in the Nexus openings.

I guess it's just because the things wrong with the miniatures are just so...obvious. That goes for Ultraman, Sentai etc.

They super impose the giants into the cities first, and a real city is noisy, it's dirty, it's cramped...it's full of life. So to suddenly cut to a silent, empty soundstage is like a slap to the face. All that vibrancy just....vanishes, all the sense of scale is completely off.

And that is speaking generically, the amount of time they're fighting at say...a defined location like a dam only for the miniature scene to take place in an entirely different location and then the show cuts backwards and forwards and tries to act like that shit is even happening in the same place.

Why not play over the miniature , sounds of traffic and people? To have absolutely no sound playing but the soundtrack is probably my biggest distraction in these scenes. If two skyscraper sized people are fighting right there in the streets there'd be screaming, crying, explosions, car horns, speeding vehicles, the noise alone would be deafening.

Why not avoid shots of the empty the streets lined with toy cars? You just showed hundreds of people and vehicles scattering in all directions between looming towers of concrete and steel, it's amazing how quickly apparently the entire city vanished in some kind of instant mass exodus and the buildings also conveniently grew much smaller so the monsters and Ultramen could fit between them.

That is to just name a few - I'm very tired right now sorry - tweaks that I think are just SO OBVIOUS and would put so much back into the miniature sections to give them a sense of realism.

Toku is goofy, but for the most part the sense of detail on a rubber suit is so profound you can one hundred percent buy into the fact that it is a real thing. Or the battles are so strictly ground in a sense of internal logic that we can one hundred percent swallow as people fly through the air and shoot laser beams.

But with all these WONDERFUL productions, they seem to never ever ever ever make any attempt whatsoever at making the soundstages look and feel like anything other than soundstages. I remember once someone said 'Gobus shot their giant stuff outside', like that is some incredible breakthrough in a section of toku that honestly has barely changed in about three decades while the rest of the show around it has packed up shop and moved to a different planet all together.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you want. Tiga, Dyna, and Gaia all take place in alternate universes with Earth-based Ultramen. Gaia in particular has a protagonist whose job within XIG is not combat-oriented, and XIG has several different flight teams.

Within the Showa continuity: Ace was the Two-In-One Ultra. Leo is from L77 and one of the last survivors of his planet. 80 is a schoolteacher that moonlights as a UGM officer. Zero's first two movies don't take place on Earth. Ginga has no defense team and instead focuses on high school students (too bad about it not being very good.)

Then there's stuff like Ultra Q and Ultra Galaxy, which aren't about Ultraman.

And I'm not so certain what there is that makes it anymore low budget than other TV shows. You've already made apparent your distaste for Tiga, but there's no doubt in my mind that it looked TONS better than Carranger which was airing around the same time.

To be honest with you, it seems as though it really ISN'T your thing. Quite a few of your complaints are about mainstays that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Fair enough on some of the miniatures. Though, I personally think most of them are quite good for TV productions. Movies and direct-to-video stuff usually looks much better.

It doesn't really bother me too much because complete realism is the last thing I expect when they're making the sets week by week. Otherwise I'd be tearing my hair out over some minute thing, like ENORMOUS flowers on a natural landscape because they couldn't quite work out the perspective. There's some instances for cities where it's nearly unacceptable (an episode of Ultraseven where somebody forgot to put in sidewalks comes to mind.) But most of the time it's alright.

Anyway, I think that most people would rather not think about all the people Ultraman must be killing when the monster smacks him into a building.

I've been watching Ultraman Cosmos. I find it to be really cool. I like the original monsters in the first ten episodes. You can sense the attraction between Musashi & Ayano. Especially after what I read online. But I want to see the movie where Cosmos debuted.


I'll be watching several episodes of Ultraman Max today & tomorrow. I'm on Episode 4. I've watched ten episodes of Ultraman Gaia & eleven episodes of Ultraman Mebius. Only seen seven episodes of Ginga. And several episodes of Powered & Great.


Still haven't found episodes of Ultraman Dyna. A friend who reignited my Ultra fandom gave me a link to the first episode. But I can't find the others.

If you ever find the movie let me know, can't find it anywhere.

I just exposed myself to my first Ultraman production -- 2004's Ultraman: The Next.

The movie was pretty lackluster. I liked a lot of the giant-sized fights, but... The story was about as slight and inconsequential as they come. And it did the "dark, gritty" reboot thing. I feel like a lot of the magic of the character must not have been preserved with this reboot -- cause it was pretty joyless and boring.

While I didn't love the movie, I can say I'm interested in exploring the Ultra franchise further. With that in mind, I could use some suggestions where to begin.

I know Ultraman Nexus takes place in the same universe, and I've heard it's good. But is it the best introduction to the show? I know it's usually cited as a Ultra series that breaks the standard formula.

Ultra fans, what say ye?

If you were not into The Next's particular tone, well... Nexus is more of the same, in some aspects even worse, about having that dark a tone. Try something else instead.

I really liked Nexus but I'm hardly the expert based on the limited number of Ultra Series that I've seen.

The Next and Nexus are incredibly atypical of the Ultra franchise. If you really want a movie to sample Ultraman by, try the Zero films, particularly Revenge of Belial. They're much more fun and exciting.

It wasn't so much the tone that bothered me about The Next, it was more the cookie cutter plot. If Nexus is awesome, I'm not concerned about the darker tone.

Right on, I'll give them a look. Thanks!

Same one I found...

Nexus can be hard to watch at some points, in the sense that the first half of the show is a huge struggle for the characters and everything comes at a cost, I love Nexus but I love the Zero movies way more, especially Revenge of Belial.

If you say so. You mentioned the "dark, gritty reboot" bit in what seemed like a negative light, which is what I was referencing. Ultraman series as a whole aren't all that cookie cutter and in fact are incredibly good about variations of plot and tone, but be warned they are typically episodic.

I could criticize a lot about Nexus despite it being one of my favorites, but being cookie-cutter isn't one of those things.

Whoa. I just watched a trailer for Revenge of Belial. Now THAT is what I'm talking about! That movie looks nuts!

There's a whole freaking planet of Ultramen?

(That's probably a dumb revelation, but I know next to nothing about this franchise.)

I would have been fine with dark/gritty if the movie hadn't had such a thin, recycled plot.

I've always intended to give Nexus a shot once I know more about the classic Ultraman formula. So I can appreciate how it deviates.