A SPECIAL EFFECTS FANTASY: The ULTRAMAN Master Post

ULTRAMAN premiered fifty years ago on this day. I decided to spend three months watching all 39 episodes of it, and then spent another three months writing about those episodes and posting them on this site. Just to make navigation a little easier, here are links to all the posts in the proper episode order. If you want to read them in the order they were posted (because I watched and wrote about them in a non-linear fashion, as I am wont to do), just use the tag. I’m also watching and writing about ULTRAMAN‘s predecessor, ULTRA Q (which celebrated its own fiftieth anniversary in January).

You can watch all these shows on Shout Factory’s streaming site. And, hey, you can now watch the current entry in the series, ULTRAMAN ORB, on Crunchyroll.

HERE HE COMES, OUR ULTRAMAN: AN INTRODUCTION (3/7/16)
Episode 1: Ultra Operation No. 1 (4/6/16)
Episode 2: Defeat The Invaders!  (3/14/16)
Episode 3: Sally Forth, Science Patrol! (4/8/16)
Episode 4: 5 Seconds Before The Big Explosion! (5/13/16)
Episode 5: Treasure Of The Miloganda (5/20/16)
Episode 6: The Coast Guard Command (5/2/16)
Episode 7: The Blue Stone Of Baradhi (3/23/16)
Episode 8: The Lawless Monster Zone (3/11/16)
Episode 9: Operation: Lightning Speed (4/22/16)
Episode 10: The Mysterious Dinosaur Base (4/4/16)
Episode 11: The Ruffian From Outer Space (3/30/16)
Episode 12: The Cries Of The Mummy (5/9/16)
Episode 13: Oil S.O.S. (3/25/16)
Episode 14: The Pearl Oyster Protection Directive (3/25/16)
Episode 15: The Terrifying Cosmic Rays (4/25/16)
Episode 16: The Science Patrol To Outer Space (3/28/16)
Episode 17: Passport To Infinity (3/16/16)
Episode 18: The Brother From Another Planet (4/18/16)
Episode 19: The Demons Once More (5/18/16)
Episode 20: Terror On Route 87 (5/25/16)
Episode 21: Break Through The Smoke (4/20/16)
Episode 22: The Underground Destruction Work (5/23/16)
Episode 23: My Home Is Earth (3/9/16)
Episode 24: The Undersea Science Base (5/6/16)
Episode 25: Mystery Comet Tsuifon (4/1/16)
Episodes 26-27: Monster Majesty Parts 1 & 2 (5/11/16)
Episode 28: Human Specimens 5 & 6 (3/28/16)
Episode 29: A Challenge To The Underground (4/15/16)
Episode 30: The Snowy Mountain Of Illusions (5/4/16)
Episode 31: Who Has Come? (4/29/16)
Episode 32: The Endless Counterattack (5/16/16)
Episode 33: The Forbidden Words (3/18/16)
Episode 34: Gift From The Sky (4/27/16)
Episode 35: The Monster Graveyard (4/11/16)
Episode 36: Don’t Shoot, Arashi! (5/27/16)
Episode 37: The Little Hero (3/21/16)
Episode 38: The Spaceship Rescue Command (5/30/16)
Episode 39: Farewell, Ultraman! (4/13/16)

ULTRAMAN episode 38, “The Spaceship Rescue Command”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Photothermal Monster Kiyla

As the last episode of the show I watched (but not the actual final episode of the show), I guess it’s fitting that it ended up going where no other episode really has – outer space, the final frontier as some other show I don’t remember put it. It’s a full-on space adventure too, kind of an otherworldly analogue to “The Lawless Monster Zone“, complete with a fight between two strange beasts – when they’re on the rocky planet (how I love those), they even mute the colour scheme in a way that brings to mind older sci-fi B-movies like Angry Red Planet. For a show like this, it’s hard to say if the monsters are appropriately “alien”, considering the strangeness that has come before – but I guess a giant cockroach that plays dead and shoots a blinding light from its eyes (the second episode about a monster with a blinding light I watched in the same night) is a little different from the norm, while the second is more of a poor, flat-footed jobber who is killed unceremoniously (the Science Patrol’s weaponry never uses the same monster-killing special effects twice!) By all means, this episode is fairly standard – still, the series has had many homages or genre tints over the course of the previous 37 episodes – comedy, fable, jungle adventure, child’s fantasy, siege thriller, ghost story, and others – this one still feels like it’s crossing off one last necessary accomplishment before wrapping up, and in that way fills its niche handily.

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And that’s that. Thanks to all of you who have been following along these past few months, and if you haven’t – click that tag and start reading! While this series is done, there’s still plenty of Ultra Q left to watch, so look for more of those in the future, alongside my Pokémon articles, and who knows what else might start popping up in the future.

Until next time, SHUWATCH!

ULTRAMAN episode 36, “Don’t Shoot, Arashi!”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: the Transformation Monster Zaragas

Here’s another character piece, this time for Arashi, who hasn’t had that many episodes all to himself. Although he isn’t portrayed as being hair-trigger or anything, being the expert marksman means Arashi’s deal is shooting things – and so the episode’s all about a situation where he is forbidden to shoot a thing, and the physical and ethical challenges that come with that. The militaristic nature of the Science Patrol kind of weaves in and out in the series, but here it’s played up to the hilt – is Arashi willing to commit multiple acts of insubordination to solve this week’s monster problem, even if it costs him his badge? The extra difficulty in the story is that the orders imposed on them are logically sound due to the nature of the monster (one of the more inexplicable things to appear on the show – I mean, it just shows up and has a grudge against the sci-fi children’s playhouse for no reason), even if it means letting a monster rampage – of course, Ultraman can never really have an impossible situation as long as the titular character exists, but for Arashi it is a no-win situation for most of the story. It’s a very unique kind of tension here, more of human one, and one that allows Arashi to show his priorities under pressure.

ULTRAMAN episode 20, “Terror on Route 87”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Plateau Dragon Hydra

Plenty of other episodes have been about the expanding modern world leading to that week’s monster problems, and this one falls into that category in a different way. Rather than having a clash between nature and urban expansion, we have more of a supernatural angle (with some nature connections in the setting, probably just to provide the contrast) connected to very specific human problems – in this case, the human cost of an increasingly motorist-dominated society – and it’s always more interesting when the topic is more specific. More of a straight ahead morality tale, most of the episode is spent setting up and dealing with the giant monster attack, but they manage to keep the theme in mind, both by listing general stats (the number of drivers in Tokyo), and even throwing in a scene of someone who seemingly values their car more than their safety. These ideas are really more strewn throughout in pieces, a concession to the show’s primary purpose as a monster fight delivery system, but they’re still there. The monsters rarely have “motivations”, so to speak, but seeing one with a grudge against vehicles was interesting, with several scenes of the thing smashing up highways (some new kinds of miniature landscapes to be demolished) – it’s a fun change of pace to have the thing target its rage at something in particular.

ULTRAMAN episode 22, “The Underground Destruction Work”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Underground Monster Telesdon

This one is short on explanation, but bombards you with so many events and weird images (and the presence of impersonation and mind control, checking off all those boxes) it can’t help but feel like the most paranoid episode in the series. It’s not that it’s particularly hard to figure out what’s going on, but the stream of things going wrong and not making sense (emphasized with some freeze frames, another one-off editing trick) at the very least gives the impression of disorientation, and they even manage to keep it going when anything approaching subtlety is shattered by the appearance of the monster. I was definitely not expecting the old “barely-lit-dark-room-where-a-character-strapped-to-a-table-is-interrogated-by-sinister-enemies” to be trotted out in this show, and the muted colours and sounds and camera angles they use play the scene effectively – pretty ably assisted by the creepy reveal of the underground people’s lack of eyes. It’s not Gilliam, but it’s still pretty cool for an old kids’ show.

I also found the underground people’s plan to use Hayata/Ultraman to their advantage endearing, in that it seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of how Ultraman operates that actually seems believable. Sure, they know that Hayata turns into Ultraman, but how would they also know that Ultraman is technically a separate being, so their mind control methods were never going to work? It’s a mistake they could easily make, so in this case the bad guys knowing Hayata’s secret is a little more interesting an idea than when it’s been used in other episodes.

ULTRAMAN episode 5, “Treasure of the Miloganda”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Bizarre Plant Greenmons

Even very early on, the series brings in some creative, one-off visual tricks: in this episode, we have unique transitions, and even a scene filmed in black-and-white, with a single colour object. The simplicity of the show and its format gave them a lot of leeway when it comes to things like that, and you can see that they wanted to give the audience some new, unexpected things even while the plots remained mostly similar.

The monster in this episode is very reminiscent of some of the cheapest of the 1950s creature features – a generally featureless blob, more or else a Vaseline-slathered gym mat; and that’s surprising, given how creative and detailed pretty much every other creature on the show was before and after this particular episode. Was this a bottle episode, or was it just a “yeah, that’s fine, whatever” situation? The monster did have two cool touches to it: I always like weird lifecycle ideas for organisms, so it has that going for it – and its death, transformed into a mountain of ashes and slowly blown away by the wind was a different, interesting visual.

This episode also featured a lot of interaction between Arashi and Ide – I’ve mentioned before that Ide is given the most complex characterization on the show, and his relationship with Arashi is a part of that, too. Arashi is not treated super-seriously either, despite being the marksman, but he is played as the slightly more serious older brother figure to Ide, and the one who gets involved with his antics more often than not – this one in particular has a couple of running jokes about that. So, while Arashi doesn’t get all the interesting moments that Ide does, playing those two off each other does give them both more dimensions.

ULTRAMAN episode 19, “The Demons Once More”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Blue Foam Monster Aboras & The Red Flame Monster Banila

Ancient societies are pretty good at containing powerful entities, something the people in their future seem incapable of (despite years of advances, like wrenches and tarps) – but never seem to be able to just get rid of them for good, something the people in their future ARE capable of more often than not. Funny how that works out.

As in many episodes, this episode’s explanations jumps headfirst into ludicrous, non-verifiable theories out there (of course, an advanced civilization could exist 300 million years ago and we just don’t know about it, makes perfect sense), to the degree where Mu is name dropped as if its existence is just common knowledge. But just like the episode where they mention the Loch Ness Monster, I’m willing to buy that in this series’ universe, it’s perfectly believable that Mu is not just assumed to be real, but probably was. That certainly aren’t any more ridiculous than two monsters being turned into goo, kept in capsules for millions of years, and then coming back to wreck a stadium.

This episode is also very allusion-heavy – the plot where two prehistoric monsters are unleashed and are destined to battle to the death is very reminiscent of Godzilla Raids Again; and the colours of the two monsters put them into the old red oni/blue oni mould, bringing in imagery from Japanese folklore as well.

ULTRAMAN episode 32, “The Endless Counterattack”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Scorching Monster Zambolar

There is some pretty impressive miniatures effects in this episode – the early scene of the wildfire spreading rapidly on the hillside is pretty awesome, presenting a very powerful sense of the environment suddenly engulfed. The monster has a pretty simple but effective gimmick – there’s something very natural-feeling about a creature that just emits massive amounts of heat (don’t ask me why), and its glowing horns are a cool visual. All in all, this might be the most explosion-heavy episode I’ve seen in this series.

Oh look, it’s the encroaching modernism theme again – in this case, more specifically using land development as the cause of the monster’s rampage (likely a topic that was very relevant in Japan at the time), and even begins in a construction site/quarry just to make sure the point gets across. As the Science Patrol/Ultraman often seems to be played as pest control, it is interesting when they bring up the fact that we’re, more often than not, invading these monsters’ living spaces with our need for expansion, and so matter how fun the action seems to be, the show at least recognizes the monsters as victims, too.

Lastly, it’s always fun to see more foreign Science Patrol members in the show – once again, fleetingly establishing a wider world we will never get to see.

ULTRAMAN episode 4, “5 Seconds Before The Big Explosion!”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Undersea Hominid Ragon

The first of the episodes (in airing order, I mean) in the series to deal with a nuclear accident (one directly caused by an offhandedly mentioned mission to Jupiter, and I always love it when the ambitious science fiction stuff existing solely in the margins) and they certainly do not downplay the horrendous possibilities if the bomb actually did go off – the Science Patrol evacuates everyone within a pretty large radius, which is about as accurate a disaster precaution as this series gets. Some of the ideas in here are not terribly different from the ones in other episodes (the team needing to avoid direct confrontation with the monster as to avoid detonating the bomb stuck to it would be repeated in episode 25), but at leas there’s a consistent through-line in how the show presents the dangers inherent in nuclear and atomic power, so it feels less like just repeats and more a recurring theme.

It’s worth mentioning that the monster in this episode is reused from an episode of Ultra Q (I haven’t seen that one yet) – and so the fact that people already know that there is an off-brand Gillman living in the seas of Japan is understandable this time. Although it’s still primarily a piece of cost-cutting, the idea that this creature, which had been smaller and presumably less aggressive in its previous appearance, is now a giant, laser-shooting menace due to radioactivity fits quite well into the cautionary message of the episode – there are already monsters in this vision of the world, and we can make them WORSE if we aren’t careful. That shows up again and again in the show, the classic example of creature feature morality that tempers the show’s enthusiasm for super science and trips to Jupiter.

ULTRAMAN episode 26-27, “Monster Majesty Parts 1 & 2”

MONSTER OF THE WEEK: The Ancient Monster Gomora

Quite a few things happen in the series’ sole two-part story – let’s go over them one-by-one, why not.

*Here we have the “child-as-super-fan-surrogate” trope in full force – a kid obsessed with monsters, just like you, child in the audience! They’ve flirted with this idea before (and featured children as major characters throughout the series), but here the superfan is an integral part of the plot, and also gives the show plenty of opportunities to show a child’s room full of Ultra Q and Ultraman merchandise. Although goofy, it’s still pretty sincere in its message to those kids: you can be obsessed with monsters and still save the day. Although, when you think about it, knowing a lot about monsters in the world of the show would probably be pretty useful.

*There was a homage to the first section of King Kong in a previous episode (and the killer plants from that episode even make a short cameo in Part 1), and this one covers the second half – bringing a monster to the city for display, only for it to escape and cause havoc, all because of our hubris etc. The method of transportation for the monster here is even a slightly less silly version of Kong’s arrival in King Kong vs. Godzilla. King Kong‘s long shadow over the kaiju genre is omnipresent, and it was important to Eiji Tsuburaya in particular, so it’s neat to see it pretty explicitly referenced in the show. The whole story really feels like a monster fan’s tribute to both his predecessors, and his possible successors in the audience.

*The beginning of the first episode raises a lot of questions about the universe of the show. How is it possible that these kids don’t know that monsters are real? Did they not pay attention to the previous 25 episodes worth of events? Is this some sort of sly commentary on the oblivious suburban population of Osaka in the 1960s that goes completely over the heads of people outside Japan fifty years later? Other evidence: the recurring joke of the Monster Prince’s father’s complete nonchalance during the monster attacks.

*Speaking of which, I thought it was interesting that they decided to play up the location in this episode – including putting the protection of one of its most treasured landmarks as a plot point, a contrast to the lack of commentary on previous scenes of wanton destruction. Of course, Osaka Castle still ends up obliterated, and the characters even sort of joke about it, leaving my theory that these episodes are also meant to be subtle-not-subtle jabs at Osaka intact.