[Aoi Kurenai]

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.

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Originally Posted by Locke

Oh yeah damn, I was reading a post about Kouga's Dad in GARO and did a brain fart 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.

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.