Switchblade watches Ultraman Tiga (Down with TDG, part 1)
 

What are we doing here?

We're doing a "Member of Tokunation watches a tokusatsu and comments on each episode" thread. If you somehow missed the existence of any of these - either by Kamen Rider Die or anyone else who was inspired by them - that is quite frankly on you.

Specifically, this one is dedicated to Ultraman Tiga and is part of an intended in good-faith effort to watch and discuss the entire Tiga/Dyna/Gaia trilogy from the late '90s. Hence the name for this project: "Down with TDG."

Why?

Combination of two reasons. The first is that I did my very first "Switchblade watches" thread this spring/summer over at TFW2005 where I watched Transformers Victory for the first time. It took me about 6 months to get through all 39 episodes (minus the clip shows), but it was a lot of fun and I decided it would be neat to find another show to do something similar with.

The other reason is that this year is the 60th anniversary of Ultraman and a few months ago Tsubaraya started putting some of the older shows on their Youtube channel. This included the first episode of Dyna. I saw that go up and thought to myself "Hey, I could watch an episode of Dyna a week, that sounds fun. Also, this episode has a ridiculous amount of direct references to Top Gun and I feel that needs to be commented on." Then the next week they posted episode 24 and I realized that we were not going to be getting the complete run. That started the wheels turning for this project and then, because I have a tendency to make things more complicated for myself, I decided to expand it to the whole trilogy.

Who are you?

I go by the username Switchblade in most places because I was in my 20s once and thought it sounded cool. I've been a member of Tokunation since it went public and I am primarily known for my Year in Review threads, my constantly ignored advice on when to stop watching Kamen Rider Hibiki, and the occasional minor critique of Kamen Rider Ghost. My tokusatsu pipeline was Power Rangers to Kamen Rider to Super Sentai to Actually, Let's Not Do Super Sentai After All to Ultraman.

My experience with the TDG trilogy is that I watched not quite half of Tiga like a decade ago, watched not quite half of Gaia marginally more recently than Tiga, and have seen maybe two episodes of Dyna. I love the era, though, with the commitment to more model work and practical effects, plus the reliance on original kaiju instead of constantly recycling old designs.

What can I expect from this thread?

For a start, don't expect daily updates. I'm shooting for three episodes a week and there will definitely be times when I don't hit that target (maybe also times when I do more, but I wouldn't put money on that). I've failed to finish two of these shows already, but I'm hoping that forcing myself to write about each episode motivates me to finish the project.

For the thread, I like the approach I used with TF Victory: snappy opening then a bullet point list of thoughts. Expect an uneven mix of rough plot summary, insights into things that stand out to me, and commentary that I personally find funny (YMMV).

When do we start?

Right now! Just let me open up the first episode of Tiga on Tubi!

"Content Unavailable"

...

Later this afternoon! Just let me find where I left the DVD drive for my MacBook!

I won't be following along, as I'm very slowly crawling through other parts of Ultra myself, but I hope you have fun!

Episode 1 - "Inheritance of Light"

In which the writers were hilariously optimistic about the state of the world in the 21st Century, kaiju do not appreciate art, and Tsubarya makes a casting decision that will eventually come back to bit them in the ass.

• First and foremost, let's all take a moment to admire the glorious piece of Trapper Keeper art that is Tiga's title screen:
  https://www.tokunation.com/forums/at...1&d=1758401384
• Tiga was the first Ultraman show since Ultraman 80, which coincidentally had aired in 1980. Tsubaraya probably didn't spend the intervening 16 years saving up money for this show, but they definitely came into it with a healthy budget. The monster costumes, models, sets, and special effects shots are all really good for the time period.
• Tiga is set in the near future of the 21st Century, a period where humanity has found peace with itself and begun working together to restore the environment. This is a science fiction show, if that hasn't been made clear.
• The episode begins with the arrival of Golza, a monster that can poorly be described as a dinosaur wearing a wimple. It briefly threatens a village in Mongolia and catches the attention of GUTS.
• Fun with acronyms time! GUTS stands for "Global Unlimited Task Squad." They are the investigative and defensive branch of the TPC - "Terrestrial Peaceable Consortium." As far as Ultraman defense squad acronyms go, I'd give it an 9/10: works well as a word, makes sense spelled out, doesn't feel like it's straining the thesaurus or the rules of English grammar in order to work.
• GUTS is based out of a massive facility that can both open up to launch fighters and close up to go underwater. Does it need to do all of this? Probably not. Is it objectively cool? Hell yes.
• We're introduced to the GUTS crew next. I don't think it's the largest defense team in Ultraman history, but it's definitely up there. They consist of our protagonist, Daigo, the pilot Rena, the chubby comic relief guy, the lady commander, and several other dudes who do not even slightly stand out from each other.
• Daigo is played by actor Hiroshi Nagano, who was affiliated with the Johnny & Associates agency. This would become an enormous headache a couple decades later when Johnny became extremely litigious about the use of any work made by their clients. This led to Daigo's removal from any clip shows featuring Tiga content and would also lead to the show's theme song being replaced on home media releases.
• In the wake of Golza's attack, GUTS has discovered an ancient meteor which, despite being 30 million years old, shows signs of being artificially made. It ends up being the crunchy rock shell around a surprisingly high tech hologram projector.
• The projector contains a message from Yuzare, a member of Earth's prehistoric defense force who's come to warn the future that the arrival of Golza and Melba will bring about destruction that can only be prevented by the return of Tiga.
• Yuzare is a minor character here, but her counterpart will have a much more significant role in Ultraman Trigger. I'm going to try to avoid doing a lot of comparisons between Tiga and Trigger because it's really not fair.
• To me.
• To have to remember Trigger.
• (I don't hate Trigger, actually, I just think it's a show that set way too high of a bar for itself and then failed to even come close to it)
• Yuzare's message is confirmed by the arrival of Melba on Easter Island. I'd like to take a moment to just say that I really love the kaiju from not just Tiga, but this whole era of Ultraman. Ever since Max we've had a lot of reliance on reusing old designs from the Showa era and even with new suits they very much look like things that were designed in the 60s and 70s. The TDG trilogy, as I remember it, focused more on making new monsters and this approach led to a lot of designs that looked more "realistic," if that makes any sense. There's a level of goofiness you get with the Showa designs that's absent here.
• The mysterious "land of Tiga" fortunately ends up being in Japan. Time for some location shooting!
• The GUTS away team finds a normally invisible pyramid that looks distractingly like a 1990s video game company logo. Inside are three massive stone statues.
• I cannot stress how much I love that Tiga is one of three statues. It raises so many questions about who these other two Ultramen were and what there deal is. One of them looks a little like Dyna, but I don't think they would have the next series planned out that far in advance. I think there's more on them in a later movie, but I haven't seen it so I don't know for sure.
• In any event, Golza and Melba absolutely trash those two statues, preventing the mystery Ultras from being revived.
• In a desperate move to stop them, Daigo engages the kaiju in battle but very quickly learns why the show is called "Ultraman Tiga" and not "GUTS Wing." Although his ship crashes, Daigo himself is transformed into a beam of light that flies into the statue of Tiga and brings it back to life.
• Before Tiga is properly revived there's a bit where the statue's fists are used to block an attack by one of the kaiju and it looks very silly.
• So the Tiga suit... I love it. Tiga's the first of the red and blue Ultras and it's a look that I've always really liked. The head is definitely in more of the original Man-nii-san spirit than a Seven or Ace style, but it has some of its own features and I like the way that chest/shoulder armor breaks up the design a little. Great suit.
• Since it's the first episode, we get a decent preview of all three of Tiga's modes: the blue and red Multi Type, the all-red Power Type, and the all-blue Sky Type. This kind of form changing was another first for the franchise and something that would be repeated with the next two shows. I like Multi Type the most, personally. Tiga's design just doesn't pop the same when it's monochromatic (for the record, I think Sky Type looks better than Power, even though Power is the more classic color scheme).
• There's a lot going on in this episode, so the big kaiju fight scene actually goes pretty quickly. There are some nice bits, though, and the choreography does a good job of selling what each form specializes in even without any dialogue or narration to clarify "this is the strong form" or "this is the fast form."
• I'm not entirely sure if Golza was killed, but Melba absolutely explodes into a bunch of shrapnel. We then see Tiga go full CGI as he flies off after the battle. It's actually not bad for mid-90s CGI, but I'm glad it wasn't relied on too heavily. There's probably a universe out there were the show went full CGI and it ended up looking like fucking Van-Pires.
• The episode ends with the last part of Yuzare's message decoding itself to an empty room. Probably for the best, since it was basically her identifying Daigo's new secret identity.
• We also get to briefly see the Sparklence transformation device, which is fine. Never one of my favorites, but it grows on me the more I look at it. Definitely somewhere in the middle between the mildly fancy sticks of the 70s and the elaborate roleplay toys of the '10s. Closer to the sticks, though, which leaves it feeling just kind of boring, overall.
• This is actually the third time I've seen this episode, following my original unfinished viewing and my "let's make sure this disc works" viewing when I first got the DVD set. I think it's a really good pilot. We absolutely do not get to know all of the characters, but we get enough of the world to have a clear sense of what's going on and there's a lot of solid foundation to build on. Adding in Yuzare and the other statues also implies a deeper level of backstory, even if some of that won't be explored until after the series is over.

So my first viewing of this was the 4Kids dubbed version. Yes, that was a thing. It did so poorly in America that the second half never aired outside of India (and people had no idea a dubbed second half existed until an interview with one of the producers for a podcast, followed by him sharing one of the episodes after it cleared legal). But this first episode had some notable moments.

Daigo’s narration points out the unlikelihood of a mysterious meteor crashing right outside TPC Headquarters.

The appearance of Golba is provided with a description cut of Horii happily noting that the Kaiju didn’t show up today.

Mukanata compares Melba to his mother in law.

The Doctor guy (I forget his name) notes that Yuzare looks pretty good for a 300 million years-old woman.

Captain Iruma claims that the Land of Tiga doesn’t exist… right before they find it on the map. She then weakly claims she was testing Daigo.

Instead of stumbling upon the correct statue by chance, Daigo is telepathically guided to it by Yuzare.

I very, very briefly considered seeing if I could find this dub and watch the show that way, just for the lulz.

*Plays Take Me Higher* :rock:

Episode 2 - "Legend of the Stone

In which we get stats, a defense team vehicle gets a rare win, and the show is not renamed "Mountain Gulliver."

• We open the episode with a group of miners running away from something in the tunnels that they call "Gakuma." It goes poorly, as they're hit by a blast of energy that turns them into vaguely human-shaped lumps of stone. The audience is treated to an ominous face in the darkness.
  
• In response to this incident, the TPC calls in... not GUTS, actually. We instead get a group of mostly ill-fated TPC officers with their own distinct uniforms, most of whom end up either petrified or yanked through a rock wall by a giant claw. I like that this wasn't our main crew; it implies that the TPC is a larger organization that GUTS is just a small part of. It also reminds me of Ultraman Arc because this is absolutely the kind of job that the SKIP crew would have handled (probably with fewer casualties, if for no other reason than their weren't as many of them).
  
• The remaining miners refuse to go back to work, even in the face of the mine owner insisting that there is no monster and those missing men presumably just petrified and/or ate themselves.
  
• The miners give conflicting descriptions of Gakuma. This will be important later.
  
• Back at GUTS HQ, the crew is working to upgrade their GUTS Wings to fight kaiju. Again, I really appreciate that they aren't ready to go right out of the gate. This was a world where kaiju weren't a thing before last week, so it makes sense that they wouldn't have anything already kitted out to fight one.
  
• While this is happening, Daigo and the guy who operates the HQ's computers give us a rundown of Tiga's different forms. It's directly spelling out things that were already fairly apparent, but this is a show that's aimed at least partially at kids so I can't fault it for wanting to clarify things.
  
• The hologram of Yuzare returns, revealing that it's actually an AI that only Daigo can fully understand. She explains to an initially reluctant Daigo that he is, in fact, Tiga and that he's a direct descendant of a heroic bloodline.
  
• One of the neat things she reveals is that Ultras normally don't interfere in the progress of humanity, but she implies that Daigo can at least modify his behavior. We're still very much in the classic "the Ultra is a separate entity with no voice or direct interactions with the host" mode that the New Generation era would eventually break away from.
  
• We do get confirmation that Golza escaped in the last episode.
  
• Gakuma fully surfaces and begins using its stone breath to turn toy construction vehciles into mid-90s Photoshop filters. Rena and one of the guys whose names I don't know yet take off to fight it in the GUTS Wing 1. This doesn't go well and they almost immediately crash.
  
• Fortunately, GUTS Wing 2 is also ready to launch and is able to use its large cannon to destroy Gakuma. Do not get used to this, it's an Ultraman show.
  
• So remember how the miners couldn't agree on what Gakuma looked like? Yeah, there was a reason for that. A second Gakuma emerges and scatters the GUTS crew who had already exited the Wings under the assumption that they had won.
  
• This gives Daigo the thing that every Ultraman host prizes above all else: the chance to slip off while nobody is watching. He proceeds to summon Tiga to fight Gakuma 2.
  
• I'm not going to try to describe fight scenes in detail. I will say that I do like how Ultras usually end up going for more of a wrestling style for fighting than Kamen Riders or Sentai teams with their martial arts and weapons. I feel like we've gotten a little bit away from that in the modern era, but it's very much still a thing in Tiga.
  
• Gakuma 2 almost completely undoes Tiga's transformation from statue to real live boy, but a shift to Power Type and a CGI orb attack effectively turn the tables. Due to the kind of narrative convienice some of the later shows avoid, Gakuma's corpse first petrifies and then explodes and dissolves so that nobody has to deal with disposing of an enormous kaiju corpse.
  
• Back at base, GUTS accepts their new role as humanity's first line of defense against the kaiju and, because this isn't Nexus, conclude that Tiga is here to help them. Daigo decides that it's time to give him an official name instead of just calling him "The Giant." One of the other members briefly floats the moniker "Mountain Gulliver" but everyone is more receptive to calling him "Ultraman Tiga."
  
• Fun episode. I want to say that the whole "monster in a mine" thing is a callback to the very first episode of Ultra Q but I never finished watching that, so I can't be certain. I know that "underground kaiju" is not a wildly unique Ultraman concept, but this one worked well. The twist of their being two Gakumas was nice and it allowed GUTS to score their own victory without Tiga's immediate intervention.

So I actually borrowed your suggestion and went to watch the dubbed version. Changes include.

Tiga’s Colour Timer is renamed “the Biotic Sensor”, and his forms are “Omni Mode, Power Mode and Speed Mode” (bizarrely, the onscreen English text is unchanged).

The Yuzare hologram instead talks about how the world died to the darkness, because not even the giant was enough to stop it consuming everything.

Daigo passes of the Torch of Tiga (the dub name for the Sparklence) as a TV remote, which Horii finds weird, because they don’t own a TV.

And instead of Mountain Gulliver, Munakata suggests the name “The Giant Red and Purple Pyjama Man of Destiny”. Horii points out that he’d be done defeating the monster by the time they’re done calling that out.

This reminds me of something I was going to mention: is Tiga's third color purple? I've always seen it as being more of a blue.

^Yes, it is indeed purple.

Yeah, I used to think it was a shade of blue too when I first saw Tiga many years ago, but it's purple like GuardianAngel shared. Power Type is a nod to Infrared and Sky Type is a nod to Ultraviolet, iirc.

Episode 3 - "The Devil's Prophecy"

In which a character who isn't Tiga's host gets the most focus, you should never trust a man with a paper fan, and we have fun with international music rights.

• I want to start this one by talking about music. Tiga's opening theme was "Take Me Higher," performed by the band V6. V6 was a Japanese boy band that formed in 1995 and apparently only broke up four years ago. One of their members was Hiroshi Nagano, the actor who played Daigo, making Take Me Higher one of a small but not insignificant number of tokusatsu theme songs performed by the show's main actor. Normally this is just a cool piece of trivia. In Tiga's case, it turned into a headache for the show's distribution rights.
• I've already mentioned how Johnny & Associates made it difficult to use Nagano's image, forcing Tsubaraya to edit around Daigo in clip shows. That extended to his song, too. Take Me Higher would also be edited out of clip shows and replaced with cover versions on music compilations. It also led to the song being replaced on the US DVD release...
• Except on this and one other episode. For reasons that I do not know, Take Me Higher appears as both the opening theme for this episode and during the fight against this week's monster.
• It's a pity that the song had right's issues, because while the replacement is fine, Take Me Higher is an all-time classic. Not only was it a #1 hit in Japan in 1996, but it was also covered in English by Dave Rodgers (aka Giancarlo Pasquini), V6's manager and one of the song's composers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36SJuWuMwHU
• As far as I know nothing has ever come of this, but if Rodgers or V6 wanted to sue the German Eurodance band Cascada they'd probably have a good case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84sHTvn6xf8
• In matters unrelated to the theme song, the episode opens with Captain Iruma giving an interview on a Japanese talk show. Iruma really takes center stage here in a way that would feel very confusing to someone who only knew Tiga from watching Trigger.
• The interview goes nicely up until the point where the host pulls her best Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters impression, announcing an imminent attack from the Kyriel.
• On cue, a building explodes outside the studio. This leads to Iruma being called up to a conference of TPC officials, one of whom takes major issue with Iruma speaking in support of Tiga. This is laced with enough misogny to make him clearly a bad dude, but just to drive the point home he also carries around a paper fan to cool himself with. No one who carries around a paper fan is ever not a villain.
• A round of aerial forensics from the GUTS Wing shows that the building wasn't destroyed by a conventional explosive.
• Iruma is visited in her office by a representative of the Kyriel, who demands that Iruma pay tribute to them. To drive the point home there's another building explosion, this time one that's not in the abandoned warehouse district.
• The Kyriel's representative disappears, but not before leaving behind his fingerprints. Iruma uses the police database to track the man down.
• In a move that feels more dystopian than it was probably intended, Iruma finds the man's house and uses her GUTS authority to demand updates on his whereabouts from the house's security computer. It's one of a few reminders we get that this episode aired in the 90s but was set in the 00s.
• Two quick side notes: One, the man has this really neat blue LED waterfall fixture in his apartment. I want one.
• Two, I love all of the footage of characters moving around 1990s Japan on this show. The era feels less modern than what we see in the current shows, but less historical than what we see in the Showa series. This may be less of a culture shock to Sentai fans who have a lot of series set in this period, but as someone who's mostly into Rider and Ultraman, 80s and 90s Japan doesn't get a lot of screen time.
• The security computer announces that the man has been dead for three years, which probably confuses it when he materializes in the room. Fortunately for Iruma, Daigo followed her and is able to chase the man off. Unfrotunately, the third bomb is set to go off exactly where they're currently standing.
• Despite an unhelpful visit from fan man, GUTS was able to figure out how the explosions work and sends out the GUTS Wings to prevent the next one. The area needs to be evacuated, though, and Daigo's barely able to get people out in time. He ultimately needs to call on Tiga to save Iruma.
• With Tiga on the scene, the Kyriel announces his goal and it is really fucking petty. Apparently the Kyriel have been living hidden among humans since even before Tiga's original arrival. They like to think of themselves as humanity's guide and are butthurt that Tiga is back and getting all of the attention. That's it. That's their whole deal.
• The Kyriel summons the Kyrieloid to fight Tiga.
• As someone who's been watching Zeztz, I'm highly amused by the positioning of the giant glowing thing on the Kyrieloid's chest.
• The show makes it clear that this is not what the Kyriel actually look like, it's just a form chosen to battle Tiga.
• We get our first showdown between Tiga and a humanoid monster, which allows the fight to feel a little faster and more focused on martial arts than wrestling.
• The fight doesn't go great. Multi Type is too slow and Sky Type is too weak. Unfortunately for the Kyrieloid, Tiga is able to draw on the most powerful weapon an Ultraman can access: the emotional pleas of people who believe in it.
• He can also access an Ultraman's second most powerful weapon: random new abilities that he pulls out of his ass. This time it's an ice bomb that freezes the Kyrieloid and sets it up for Tiga's first Zeperion Beam.
• The episode ends with the ominous warning that more Kyriels may be lurking out there. Will they ever return to menace GUTS again? Well, there's a monster called the Kyrieloid II so make of that what you will.

Bit late, but I’ve got around to the dub differences.

The Kyriel are renamed the “Kilaliens”.

The jackass with the fan is made into a sexist and the fan gets recontextualised as something he does because the air conditioning doesn’t work.

It’s specifically noted that it was a vacation on the day the Kilaliens attacked, so nobody was hurt (well it’s more justification for all the empty buildings than Power Rangers gives)

Episode 4 - "Goodbye, Planet Earth"

In which not every ball of light from space is your friend, it's Shinjoh's turn for the spotlight, and an interesting story has to take backseat to kaiju battles.

* We get our second and final appearance of Take Me Higher on the Mill Creek DVD sets. Like last time, this seems to be a side effect of the song showing up later in the episode.

* The GUTS Wings are out on patrol when an object from space rapidly descends through the atmosphere. It's a kaiju that never gets properly named on the show itself, but is apparently officially known as Ligatron.

* Ligatron very gracelessly crashes into the ocean outside of a facility that's been studying a new form of experimental energy for use as rocket fuel. What follows is a lot of really nice model work as the kaiju attempts to harvest steal the energy from the plant while the GUTS Wings and the base's own defense systems try to repel it.

* As a side note, I really do love old school model work. It's one of the things that really appeals to me about the Ultra franchise in particular, and I'm glad to see that the use of models still continues into the current era.

* Ligatron is able to fully absorb the energy when the facility's defense system abruptly shuts down, something that could only be done by the system's creator: an astronaut who disappeared as part of an ill-fated mission to Jupiter.

* At the same time, family members of the other Jupiter 3 astronauts are visited by apparitions of their lost relative.

* GUTS's computer guy, whose name I have absolutely not learned yet, theorizes that the scientist was smart enough to transmit a message if he was somehow connected to Ligatron. He's able to find a short video that looks like it was filmed with the scientist standing in the opening credits of the average Showa Ultraman series.

* The scientist reveals that Ligatron is, in fact, the Jupiter 3 spacecraft transformed by contact with a mysterious being of light from outer space. The creature was attracted by the Jupiter 3's fuel source and absorbed the ship and its crew before heading to Earth for more energy.

* GUTS is ordered to destroy Ligatron, which doesn't sit well with Officer Shinjoh, aka "Guy who isn't Daigo #2." He laments that humanity seems in danger of losing its empathy in the 21st Century, to which I can only reply "Oh honey, you have no idea."

* Ligatron reappears and GUTS heads off to fight it. Inevitably, the ship Daigo is in crashes and his copilot is knocked out long enough for Daigo to transform into Tiga.

* We get our first proper rise for Tiga in this episode. It's done in CGI and looks very much like CGI done in the mid-90s.

* A pretty long fight sequence follows which includes Tiga shifting into Power Type and still not really managing to make a dent in Ligatron.

* Shinjoh ultimately saves the day by having GUTS transmit images from the Jupiter 3 crew's personal files, causing the crew to awaken and separate themselves from Ligatron, leaving it stunned and vulnerable to Tiga's Zeperion Beam.

* Now free, the spirits of the Jupiter 3 crew head off into space to continue exploring.

* I want to like this one more than I do. The premise is really cool and is absolutely the kind of hard sci-fi story that separates Ultraman from the other big toku franchises. I just don't think the execution really worked; so much time was spent on the two big action set pieces that the real plot never got enough room to fully develop. There was a cool moral dilemma in here about trying to save the astronauts vs. destroy the monster, but it kinda just got skimmed over for time.

* I really like the music that plays during the trailer for the next episode. The horns sound like they're right out of one of the 1960s-era James Bond themes.