[GoldenXtreme]

...I thought about holding off on Shin Ultraman and Blazar but got bored.

Soooo, Shin Ultraman has now been watched by yours truly. Like the other Hideaki Anno Shin films, I think it offers a fresh take on the source material, while also clearly having been crafted by a huge fan. It features a particularly *alien* depiction of the Ultramen, both in terms of motivations and design, and a plot that does a take on the whole "humans will become like the Ultras one day" idea you see in the series and approaches it from an angle where aliens are trying to use them as weapons. Good ideas to explore, although in the end I think this might be my least favorite of the three Shin films. I think this is because the movie has an uneven tone that flips between humorous and serious, which worked for Shin Kamen Rider because I think the Kamen Rider series itself is just better suited to that sort of tonal whiplash, but Ultraman not so much. The movie was also not my favorite visually, the CGI usage is particularly heavy and off looking in this one, while the film also has a lot of frantic camera cuts and strange angles that never really came together as stylish looking. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's probably not going to stick with me.