Shin Ultraman

[Kailem]

*insert image of crossed fingers and no region locking here*

[lhb412]

My copy arrived. Probably won't watch it in full for a few days, but doing a spot check of the various things: subtitles seem good, picture quality good, the new commentary seems well researched and packed with info, spiffy packaging, and it is indeed region free!

Oh, and Cleopatra's transfer of the trailer (their sole extra) was weirdly low res? Yeah, it looks normal on Raven Banner's.

[Kailem]

So after spending the past few months watching more classic Ultraman and not being in a huge hurry to order this after the Cleopatra subs fiasco, I finally decided to *actually* get round to picking up the Raven release; only to find that they don't ship to the UK. Apparently they're cool with shipping to *Russia and Belarus* right now, but not here. At least according to the checkout page on their site, which has no mention of "United Kingdom" or "England" as selectable shipping addresses like most other sites do (and no option to view their prices in pounds either). And it doesn't look like their version of Shin Ultraman is available on either the UK or US Amazons either. Just one more way the idiots who voted for Brexit probably screwed us over, I'd imagine.

Regardless, I saw that Madman put out an Australian Blu-ray release too, and given that they're the same region as the UK, I decided to order that one instead. From what little I've been able to find out about it online it sounds like it's a good release and doesn't suffer from the same subtitling issues as the Cleopatra one, so fingers crossed (again) that's the case!

[Kailem]

My Madman copy of Shin Ultraman arrived the other day, and I'm thankful to say after all the Cleopatra drama that there were no issues present! It looks and sounds great, and there were no problems with the subtitles that I could spot (except for maybe one moment towards the end where Kaminaga says "you" when it looks like maybe he should be saying "I" in a response, but that might be intentional). So even though there are no extras besides the trailer (and a few other unrelated trailers), I'm happy with this release.

And yay, I've now finally seen Shin Ultraman; and I really liked it! You could tell everyone involved were huge fans of the original show (and of Ultra Q as well). I'd already seen the Ultra Q-inspired opening a couple of years ago when Tsuburaya officially posted it on Youtube for a couple of days, but that was before I'd actually seen any of those original shows for myself. Watching this after being familiar with them now added a whole new level of enjoyment that I definitely wouldn't have gotten otherwise. That opening was epic, and it really did feel like they just took the original Ultraman and said "ok, how can we make a movie out of this?" Not "how can we make an Ultraman movie" but literally "how can we turn what we see here in all these episodes into one singular story?"

As a result it's probably the most episodic movie I've ever seen, with it literally seeming to move from recreation of one episode to another for a while there. But eventually during the back half they start to tie things together, which I think was absolutely essential, because otherwise I think it would have been in danger of just feeling *too* disjointed. But I think they just about managed to avoid falling into that trap, though they did get close.

Still, as essentially one big recreation of the original show, I thought it was awesome! It was great recognising all the episodes that so many of the story beats came from, and even direct lines of dialogue in some places. And I loved how the recreation of the classic effects was just "let's literally do those same effects, just with modern technology", rather than trying to reimagine them. They had some great henshin moments while still keeping the classic pose and visuals (alas, no "shuwatch" though?!). And that one fourth wall-breaking line about certain monsters being linked was great, I loved that.

The pacing was definitely really fast as well, and didn't have the same issue I had with Shin Godzilla where it felt like things really slowed down at his big Tokyo attack at the mid point. I don't think this topped Shin Godzilla overall, but it was still really good.

I could maybe see some hardcore fans being upset with how they handled certain classic characters at the end, but I thought it was an interesting new take. And given how many different interpretations of certain monsters we've had in the Godzilla series over the years etc., it was just something I went with.

So yeah, I thought it was pretty darn great! Though what was with all the butt-slapping, Shinji?

[lhb412]

^ I feel all three Shin films slow down in their third acts, and it helps both Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider because it gives a chance to drill down into the cheacters and themes (and "tie things together" as you said!), but in Shin Godzilla it doesn't work nearly as well - probably because the other two are more focused on individual cheacters.

[Kailem]

Yeah with Shin Godzilla it was really my only real complaint, that the pacing just slowed down too much during that third act. But I didn't feel anything like that with Shin Ultraman. It kept going at a steady clip all the way through, and that was great!