[Fish Sandwich]

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by macblo

I actually like the idea of Ultraman Retsuden. Not only is it a fun way for a young child to learn about the history of the Ultra series, its a cheap way to advertise a toyline and show why kids should care about the history of a 60 year old show.

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.