[Kiwami]

Continuing my Ultraman 80- journey, I now have seen an equal share of the school setting and the full UGM-switch that happens after episode 12.

To be honest, it’s a real shame they dropped the school setting. It was very unique and fun for an Ultraman series. It really made Yamato / Ultraman 80 feel like the protagonist in his own series, as opposed to a member of a defense team. The setup of monsters being born from “Minus Energy”, negative feelings of humans, and Yamato wanting to nip that evil in the bud by changing society from within as a teacher was awesome.

And I was a sucker for the lighthearted, almost sitcom-like tone; it reminded me very much of Gridman.

But alas, no use crying over spilled milk, especially not since the UGM-episodes are pretty great too. So far I’ve seen some top-tier Ultraman episodes like "The Demon Doctor's Laboratory", "Order to Destroy the Rogue Star" and “Invasion!! The Bloodsucking Ball Army”.

Demon Doctor is about a cute little alien being brought along from a space trip, but a mad scientist experiments on it, turning it giant and hostile. The morale is strong in this one, humanity is not to temper with life and act as masters over all, but I very much enjoyed how 80 was able to reverse the alien back to its original state and return it to space. It is acts like these that make the Ultra almost appear as divine beings.

Rogue Star features a titular asteroid racing towards Earth; the world hatches a plan to blow it up with missiles, but the explosion will sacrifice four other planets. Yamato knows one of them is inhabited, but can’t share that information without revealing his secret identity, so although not selected for the mission, he forcefully takes another crewmember out to come aboard. He can’t stop the inevitable, the asteroid is blown up, and Earth is saved. A survivor of the inhibited planet, now turned into a monster, attacks Earth out of revenge. While Ultraman 80 tries to fight it, he eventually realizes it’s just a sad, lonely survivor. Teleporting it to a planet similar to its original one, the narrator pleads the monster to forgive humanity and live in peace.

“The Bloodsucking Ball Army”, oh boy. Yes it is as ridiculous as it sounds, bloodsucking balls from space attack Earth. But it is also super creepy, as the balls attack and drain humans dry, the special effects for that are quite gruesome. A fun mix of Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, the Tribbles from Star Trek and Count Dracula. Also, this episode features super fun action scenes and 80 in general is really great when it comes to that. Early Ultra was rough, understandably so, but this is the first time I see an early Ultra do flips and lethal looking jump kicks, almost Kamen Rider-like. And 80 has an arsenal of cool powers and tricks to boot.

So yeah I’m hooked still, I’ll continue this show. And availability of it all be damned, I now own merch as well.