[GoldenXtreme]

I finished Ultraman Taiga. It was a show that was quite interesting, even if undeniably sloppy!

I went in expecting another light, humorous show since it features Taro's son, but I was quite surprised to find it was actually quite dramatic and full of moments of intensity and sadness. The setting is similarly intense, featuring the Human-Alien relations on Earth, almost like a more serious version of Dekaranger. At the same time, it also just throws random psychics and magic in because why not. Again, messy, but certainly interesting! It has a unique situation for the human host too, where he hosts three different Ultras (including one from Joneus's homeworld!). While I liked them, we didn't learn very much about any of them honestly. The E.G.I.S. team, being a security company headed up by a kind yet tough ex-cop who decided to work outside the government after becoming disillusioned with her inability to help aliens from within the system? Great. Hiroyuki himself makes a good protagonist, a nice guy... who has a rough time. Homare as a prickly yet protective human-passing alien was also quite fascinating. Pirika... is more like a plot device than a fully realized character though. Tregear is bizarre and terrifying, but again, the viewer isn't actually given much detail on what caused him to end up *like that*.

This all illustrates the greatest strength and weakness of the show. It does SO much... Episode by episode I found it very enjoyable, but before I knew it the show was almost over and it became obvious that it wouldn't be able to develop everything fully. I think a lot of the earlier New Gen shows just don't use their allotted time very wisely to develop their casts and world. Or in R/B's case the show just focuses on a very narrow scope. But Taiga is absolutely packed and STILL can't fully flesh everything out because it tries to do so many things. I really enjoyed what it did explore, so I can't say I felt disappointed, but I definitely felt the pain of only 25 episodes quite keenly here.

I'm pretty pleased with this one in spite of some shortcomings, so I'll give it a B! TBoth this and R/B were good, that's a trend I like to see! ...Speaking of R/B, I still can't decide if I actually loved it that much or if I just got a little overexcited by seeing an Ultra show I had strong positive feelings about after a long streak of "meh".