[Switchblade]

Episode 1 - "Inheritance of Light"

In which the writers were hilariously optimistic about the state of the world in the 21st Century, kaiju do not appreciate art, and Tsubarya makes a casting decision that will eventually come back to bit them in the ass.

• First and foremost, let's all take a moment to admire the glorious piece of Trapper Keeper art that is Tiga's title screen:
  
• Tiga was the first Ultraman show since Ultraman 80, which coincidentally had aired in 1980. Tsubaraya probably didn't spend the intervening 16 years saving up money for this show, but they definitely came into it with a healthy budget. The monster costumes, models, sets, and special effects shots are all really good for the time period.
• Tiga is set in the near future of the 21st Century, a period where humanity has found peace with itself and begun working together to restore the environment. This is a science fiction show, if that hasn't been made clear.
• The episode begins with the arrival of Golza, a monster that can poorly be described as a dinosaur wearing a wimple. It briefly threatens a village in Mongolia and catches the attention of GUTS.
• Fun with acronyms time! GUTS stands for "Global Unlimited Task Squad." They are the investigative and defensive branch of the TPC - "Terrestrial Peaceable Consortium." As far as Ultraman defense squad acronyms go, I'd give it an 9/10: works well as a word, makes sense spelled out, doesn't feel like it's straining the thesaurus or the rules of English grammar in order to work.
• GUTS is based out of a massive facility that can both open up to launch fighters and close up to go underwater. Does it need to do all of this? Probably not. Is it objectively cool? Hell yes.
• We're introduced to the GUTS crew next. I don't think it's the largest defense team in Ultraman history, but it's definitely up there. They consist of our protagonist, Daigo, the pilot Rena, the chubby comic relief guy, the lady commander, and several other dudes who do not even slightly stand out from each other.
• Daigo is played by actor Hiroshi Nagano, who was affiliated with the Johnny & Associates agency. This would become an enormous headache a couple decades later when Johnny became extremely litigious about the use of any work made by their clients. This led to Daigo's removal from any clip shows featuring Tiga content and would also lead to the show's theme song being replaced on home media releases.
• In the wake of Golza's attack, GUTS has discovered an ancient meteor which, despite being 30 million years old, shows signs of being artificially made. It ends up being the crunchy rock shell around a surprisingly high tech hologram projector.
• The projector contains a message from Yuzare, a member of Earth's prehistoric defense force who's come to warn the future that the arrival of Golza and Melba will bring about destruction that can only be prevented by the return of Tiga.
• Yuzare is a minor character here, but her counterpart will have a much more significant role in Ultraman Trigger. I'm going to try to avoid doing a lot of comparisons between Tiga and Trigger because it's really not fair.
• To me.
• To have to remember Trigger.
• (I don't hate Trigger, actually, I just think it's a show that set way too high of a bar for itself and then failed to even come close to it)
• Yuzare's message is confirmed by the arrival of Melba on Easter Island. I'd like to take a moment to just say that I really love the kaiju from not just Tiga, but this whole era of Ultraman. Ever since Max we've had a lot of reliance on reusing old designs from the Showa era and even with new suits they very much look like things that were designed in the 60s and 70s. The TDG trilogy, as I remember it, focused more on making new monsters and this approach led to a lot of designs that looked more "realistic," if that makes any sense. There's a level of goofiness you get with the Showa designs that's absent here.
• The mysterious "land of Tiga" fortunately ends up being in Japan. Time for some location shooting!
• The GUTS away team finds a normally invisible pyramid that looks distractingly like a 1990s video game company logo. Inside are three massive stone statues.
• I cannot stress how much I love that Tiga is one of three statues. It raises so many questions about who these other two Ultramen were and what there deal is. One of them looks a little like Dyna, but I don't think they would have the next series planned out that far in advance. I think there's more on them in a later movie, but I haven't seen it so I don't know for sure.
• In any event, Golza and Melba absolutely trash those two statues, preventing the mystery Ultras from being revived.
• In a desperate move to stop them, Daigo engages the kaiju in battle but very quickly learns why the show is called "Ultraman Tiga" and not "GUTS Wing." Although his ship crashes, Daigo himself is transformed into a beam of light that flies into the statue of Tiga and brings it back to life.
• Before Tiga is properly revived there's a bit where the statue's fists are used to block an attack by one of the kaiju and it looks very silly.
• So the Tiga suit... I love it. Tiga's the first of the red and blue Ultras and it's a look that I've always really liked. The head is definitely in more of the original Man-nii-san spirit than a Seven or Ace style, but it has some of its own features and I like the way that chest/shoulder armor breaks up the design a little. Great suit.
• Since it's the first episode, we get a decent preview of all three of Tiga's modes: the blue and red Multi Type, the all-red Power Type, and the all-blue Sky Type. This kind of form changing was another first for the franchise and something that would be repeated with the next two shows. I like Multi Type the most, personally. Tiga's design just doesn't pop the same when it's monochromatic (for the record, I think Sky Type looks better than Power, even though Power is the more classic color scheme).
• There's a lot going on in this episode, so the big kaiju fight scene actually goes pretty quickly. There are some nice bits, though, and the choreography does a good job of selling what each form specializes in even without any dialogue or narration to clarify "this is the strong form" or "this is the fast form."
• I'm not entirely sure if Golza was killed, but Melba absolutely explodes into a bunch of shrapnel. We then see Tiga go full CGI as he flies off after the battle. It's actually not bad for mid-90s CGI, but I'm glad it wasn't relied on too heavily. There's probably a universe out there were the show went full CGI and it ended up looking like fucking Van-Pires.
• The episode ends with the last part of Yuzare's message decoding itself to an empty room. Probably for the best, since it was basically her identifying Daigo's new secret identity.
• We also get to briefly see the Sparklence transformation device, which is fine. Never one of my favorites, but it grows on me the more I look at it. Definitely somewhere in the middle between the mildly fancy sticks of the 70s and the elaborate roleplay toys of the '10s. Closer to the sticks, though, which leaves it feeling just kind of boring, overall.
• This is actually the third time I've seen this episode, following my original unfinished viewing and my "let's make sure this disc works" viewing when I first got the DVD set. I think it's a really good pilot. We absolutely do not get to know all of the characters, but we get enough of the world to have a clear sense of what's going on and there's a lot of solid foundation to build on. Adding in Yuzare and the other statues also implies a deeper level of backstory, even if some of that won't be explored until after the series is over.