[GoldenXtreme]

I watched Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle, Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle: Never Ending Odyssey, plus Mega Monster Battle Ultra Galaxy: The Movie! I got tongue tied just typing all that. In addition, I also think now would be a good time to talk about how my journey with the Ultra series has been so far, since I am rapidly approaching the New Generation stuff. Sooo, I guess I'll get started!

First off, MMB. Tsuburaya was obviously not in a good financial place at this time and it does show. Lots of standing around on green screened sets and nondescript rocky areas. In a way though, this gave the show the freedom to really commit to their setting of a distant planet that is overrun by monsters, with the human outposts there in ruins. Indeed, the show is unique in other ways too, from the monster vs monster battles to Rei just being an unusual protagonist for an Ultra show, not able to become an Ultraman at all! So I think the show made good use of what it had to make something very unique. However, between this show and its sequel I just did not have enough episodes to get fully invested in the characters or the plot and the breakneck pacing definitely resulted in the plot glossing over details. Why does Kate know about Reionics but Rei doesn't? Why the heck was Rei a meteor baby? So much stuff like this. Still, it was a cool show and I appreciated that it tried to do something new even as Tsuburaya was really struggling.

NEO I enjoyed a lot less unfortunately. The 13 episode shounen battle royale situation and Rei's struggles with his Reiblood genes were just painfully predictable and not very interesting. It lost a lot of that sense of mystery and exploration that made the first season work. Since one season of the show doesn't really work without the others I would probably give the two of them a D overall (though I might give the first season a C on its own). I wish I liked them more because I really like the monster tamer idea!

Now for the movie! Honestly, a lot of fun as far as big ol' crossover films go. Lots of wild Sakamoto action and character cameos that are sure to make any Ultra fan happy. This movie also made me realize that whenever Taro shows up in post-Taro stuff I almost always go "he's become such a respectable adult" like some kind of proud parent, lol. This was also Zero's debut. He seems like a popular character so I'm looking forward to seeing more of him! Very enjoyable!

Alright, finally my thoughts on the Ultra series so far. I've been watching vaguely chronologically and have been struck by how many of the shows are just *good* in this series compared to Sentai and Rider. Rider, in my mind at least, is often amazing or terrible, with middling series being fairly uncommon. Sentai is usually fun for me, though rarely super bad or good. But I've honestly given most Ultra shows a B grade! So needless to say, I've had a lot of fun with the series, even if shows often have enough issues to stop me from completely losing my mind over them. I think the biggest real issue I have noticed with Ultraman vs the other 2 big tokusatsu series is that its format is inherently more restricted. Rider shows can really be about... anything and Sentai is similar with perhaps an additional requirement for a team of heroes and mech fights. But Ultra shows are almost always about alien heroes (whether transformed into humans or using one as a host) who are members of some kind of militaristic organization that fights monsters to protect Earth. A lot of variety can still be had with that framework, and there are some shows that fall outside of this (such as Mega Monster Battle), but overall I can't help but feel this blur together sometimes... The New Generation shows excite me because a lot of people really like them, heck some people ONLY like them in the Ultra series! At the same time, the inherent restrictions I mentioned, combined with the increased reliance on legacy elements and 2 cour episode counts make me very nervous! The low episode counts in particular worry me, that was a huge issue with MMB for me and even with a lot of Ultra shows I ended up really liking, I was slow to warm up to them. Part of the reason I became a tokusatsu fan is because 50 episode shows tend to work perfectly for me in terms of getting invested (though things in the 3 cour range tend to work well too). Hopefully it all works out though, at the very least I am sure I will find a few new favorites among them!