[Kiwami]

I really liked the first episode of Taiga. The characters and setting are great and thankfully they've finally gone back to original Ultraman characters. Even though they are based on past Ultraman, they aren’t fusions or transform because of other Ultraman powers, they just use these bracelets to power up their finishing moves which is so much better.

Having a private security company as the core setting for the characters fits Ultraman very well, and the alien auction house is so clever. I wonder if it is original because the idea is too good to not have surfaced decades ago.

I quite like Taiga's personality too, he reminds me of Ultraman Zero. Tregear is great as well, they didn’t just make him another Belial, he feels sinister but in quite a different vein than Belial. Also, immediately integrating the bad guy into the main story helps a lot, quite a few Ultraman shows suffer from the main villain only appearing in the last two-ish episodes, with smaller threats taking the stage until then.

The effect work was great, the usual high standard for Tsuburaya productions, but did anyone else notice the CG? Like, in a positive way for once? It's obviously a thing which will fade further down the road as usual with Toku shows, but I think the few times the Ultraman were completely done via CG in this episodes looked quite alright. You notice its CG because of the fast and sharp motions, but the models themselves didn't look crappy like they usually do in Rider or Sentai shows.

They also didn’t go overboard with it which helped a lot as well.

So yeah, thumbs up for the first episode. If this keeps up they’re back in the saddle after the slight slip-up with R/B.