[Kiwami]

Positive things first: The animation essentially creates the feel of humans in suits. It might be accidental, but seeing Bemular especially made me think that it is a human actor inside a real suit which is great. I also like the sound design, reusing classic Ultraman sounds works surprisingly well. I have actually never imagined what these suits would sound like, this fits nicely.

…

That’s about it sadly. The animation is overall garbage, as it is becoming a trend with anime recently. Gridman saved itself because the world and characters were drawn traditionally (and beautifully I might add) and sometimes even Gridman was 2D, the shift happened mostly in action scenes.

Here – everything looks like a rather dated videogame cutscene and it sucks. The suits work, but the rest is just not good. The characters and their facial expressions look awful, the world is boring and dull, and nothing is really pleasant to look at that. They did a terrible job adapting the great artwork from the manga. It’s not on the Berserk-level of awfulness but it’s not all too far above it either.

Also, the part that might essentially break this show for me: They are altering the story. It had to be expected, they will probably make this a self-contained story within 12-15 episodes, but I only now realized how much I dislike that. Why do I think they’re changing things? Shinjiro has a “Henshin”-sequence now, the Ultraman suit doesn’t work like that in the source material.

Granted, they later introduce the Ace-suit which can be summoned at will, but Ultraman (the protagonist) can’t. I really don’t like that they force a stock-footage Henshin-sequence in here just to make the suit easier. It also completely breaks the limitations of the suit not always being there. And if they are willing to change that, they will change more, and that’s what makes me feel uneasy about it.

So all in all: It looks crappy and the short video already made changes to the source material I don’t like. What a shame. One can only hope that Trigger gets the chance to make an actual Ultraman anime on their own because they did a fantastic job with Gridman so far.