Ultraman Tiga Review Ep. 1: The One Who Inherits the Light

[sentaison]

At last I'm finding time to sit down and seriously watch Tiga again. Hopefully I can keep up a fairly regular updating schedule for all 52 episodes.

Synopsis: In the near future (the year 2007) peace has been achieved and a unified world government, the Terrestrial Peace Consortium (TPC) has been established. To take care of emergency situations the Global Utility Tasks Squad (GUTS) is formed, comprised of specialists in multiple fields.

The story opens with a meteor falling to earth in Japan while GUTS members Rena and Daigo confront a giant monster in Mongolia. The meteorite is taken to GUTS headquarters where it is found to be artificial. When it is cut open a capsule is discovered inside. A panel opens up and a hologram of a woman calling herself Yuzare appears.

She informs the GUTS members that Earth is entering an age of monsters and that the only thing that can protect it is "the Titan Tiga" who had fought for earth 30,000,000 years ago! Tiga had returned to his home nebula after defeating a great darkness, but had left his stone form behind in a gold pyramid. The first two monsters who were to appear were Golza and Melba who would try to destroy Tiga before he could be revived. Just as she is about to tell GUTS how to revive the statue the hologram cuts out. Then reports come in of the monster from Mongolia (Golza) and a flying monster appearing on Easter Island (Melba) both heading for Japan!

GUTS computer expert Yazume is able to figure out the location of the pyramid and the field team races to there hoping to beat the monsters to it. At first they can't locate it, but as Daigo comes to a clearing it appears out of thin air. The team finds that they can walk through the glowing walls and inside are three giant stone statues. Before they can do much more than look around, Golza and Melba arrive!

Golza unleashes a beam from his head that melts away the pyramid and both monsters begin to destroy the statues. Daigo gets into the unarmed GUTS Wing 1 and tries to lure them away but is shot down by Melba. Before he crashes he is transformed into light which then animates the final statue. The great statue transforms into a silver, red, and purple being who proceeds to defeat Melba and chase off Golza. During the battle he changes first into a primarily red and silver form and then a purple and silver one. After the battle Daigo reappears and discovers a crystal and gold scepter like device in his suit...

For me now, the first episode is a mixed bag. (When I first watched it I was so hungry for anything Ultraman I would forgive a lot). The special effects range from "effective though not especially eye-popping" to "why the hell did they let this reach the tv screen?" The latter is from the first shot of the meteor entering earths atmosphere. It looks like nothing more than a balled-up piece of paper set on fire and then put in motion towards a picture of earth. And the CGI superimposing of both Melba and Tiga in flight looks very fake. OTOH when they showed Melba in flight with a model, it looked decent.

The story seems rushed, we see all the members of the Far East GUTS team but aren't really introduced to them. And the pyramid location is discovered ridiculously quickly. It almost seems like they had enough story for a two part episode and had to cut it down to one.

The costuming on the other hand is pretty good. The GUTS uniforms aren't outrageous, in fact they look downright sedate compared to some of the 70's series. And the Tiga suits are orignal enough to easily stand out without being over the top. Both monster suits look good as well. Golza looks tough, while Melba looks just plain mean.

On the mecha side both the GUTS Wings 01 and 02 are decent enough designs as VTOL craft, they both look flyable.

The fight sequence worked well enough, nothing really wows me about it but I can't find fault either. They did show the difference between the red and purple forms well. When red Tiga missed Melba you could see the difference from when he was in his purple form moments later. And the beam attacks looked decent enough.

I still find myself liking this episode, just not as much as when I first saw it. After a decade and a half of improving their craft, you can see how much better Tsuburaya had gotten by the time of Max and Mebius.

[Xenorama]

[Reaper G]

[August]

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[Timz]

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[Godzilla 2000]

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