Ultraman Ace

[Kailem]

It took a little longer than I'd initially expected, but I've finally made a start on Ultraman Ace!

I just made a start on the second disc and like all the previous Ultraman shows, I'm digging it so far! I like they they've actually done a good job of making these "Terrible Monsters/choju" seem like a bigger deal than the "regular" ones we've had before. Not only do they seem bigger and more "grand" in their designs, but they've got all these crazy missile and flame attacks and stuff too (they are REALLY going to town with the pyro in this show compared to some of the others, that's for sure!). So it does make it feel as though they're a step up from what we've seen these Ultra teams face before.

The double hosts is an interesting concept too, again another neat little twist on how that's worked before. Granted they've still got the "Ultra Rings", but now instead of the potential for the transformation device being lost it's been tweaked to "what if Hokuto and Minami can't reach each other in time?"

Visually it continues to look very 70's! Those TAC helmets kinda remind me of the Black Hole Aliens from Terror of Mechagodzilla with their sci-fi pointy ears or whatever they are. And speaking of TAC, hoo boy do they seem like the most dysfunctional monster-fighting squad in the series so far! Sure we had instances of teammates not believing or trusting each other before when someone said they'd seen a monster or that so-and-so was actually an alien in disguise, but I think I can count on one hand the number of times any of them have *actually* believed someone when they've made a claim like that so far! How do they even function with such a low level of trust?! Not to mention dude in that Alien Metron two-parter should have been fired like three or four times over, but in the end they just laugh it off like his incompetence didn't almost get the entire world destroyed!

Oh well, TAC will be TAC I guess. Well, unless they get suspended again. At least going by the first few episodes, "you're suspended" seems to be the new "MAT will be disbanded".

I guess judging by the info booklet and the few eps I've seen so far, they're finally doing the thing I was *hoping* they would do in Return, where they're actually having returning Ultramen show up for proper guest appearances, rather than just brief cameos. I just watched the episode where Go returned and that was super cool to see him show up, theme music and all. Obviously "things happened", but it was still a super cool moment that I hope to see more of as the show progresses.

Another thing I've got to mention though is just how incredibly violent it gets at times! It definitely seems to be taking a page out of the original Ultraman and Ultraseven's playbooks when it comes to that. The way Muruchi was dealt with would, no joke, have been entirely fitting as a Mortal Kombat Fatality! Even by the standards of everything that's come before in these shows, that was incredibly brutal! And this is a kids' show?! Damn, man. They're not joking around.

But yeah, I'm still early in the show, but I'm digging it so far and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more!

[Benjamin Haines]

I was hoping you would make this thread! I'm a big fan of Ultraman Ace. It's such a unique concoction of '70s tokusatsu tropes and strangeness.

I get the impression that Return of Ultraman actually commenced production while operating under the original concept that it was the same Ultraman from the original series returning to Earth, and that they were still operating under that concept as late as episode 18 when he meets Seven. I think the two-parter in episodes 37 & 38 was when they first came up with the idea that the first Ultraman was a different character from the one headlining Return. Even then, the narrator in episode 38 refers to the first Ultraman and Seven as the new Ultraman's friends, not his brothers. It wasn't until the finale that the concept of the Ultra Brothers was mentioned, and TPC would have already been developing Ultraman Ace at that point to begin airing the next week. This really is the first series to have the concept of the Ultra Brothers incorporated from the outset and that makes for a lot more guest appearances and cameos from the other Ultras, which are usually revealed by the episode titles.

[Kailem]

Yeah that's definitely a concept I'm very excited about with this series, especially after seeing this recent Go episode. As I said, this was kinda what I was expecting from Return when I heard that Hayata and Dan made appearances, but they really did just end up being cameos rather than team-ups and/or major roles like they've been here. So I'm definitely hyped to see more of those episodes!

I could totally see Return actually being filmed under that original idea too, yeah. To start out with none of the characters make the distinction that this is a new or different Ultraman that's appeared, they're just like "hey, Ultraman!" I knew that this was the period where TP were releasing a new Ultraman show ever year, but I was kinda blown away when I read in that booklet that Ace began only a week after Return's finale! Japanese audiences literally had less of a wait between shows back in the day than I did!

I watched another pretty crazy episode, "Terrible Monster is Ten Women?", and utterly zany concept aside, I was surprised at how much the monster looked almost like a proto-Destoroyah; even down to the horn! I was actually really digging the design until I noticed that on particular element that just ruined it for me....

Come on guys, I know this monster is supposed to be made up of ten women, but this is still meant to be a show suitable for children! How the hell did they get away with giving it multi-boobs?!

Oh, and another thing I noticed when I started watching it that I forgot to mention; just like the OG show, the beginning of the theme music is part of the Sci-Fi Japan TV theme (alas, I still wish Jim was doing more of those)! So now I realise that at least two parts of that theme were from original Showa Ultraman shows. Is the final part going to turn out to be from Ultraman Taro's tune too?

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Well, I can't unsee that now. Thanks for that.

I thought the SciFi Japan TV theme song was just a remix of the Ultraman Ace opening theme. I just listened to it again and I don't hear elements of the original Ultraman opening theme in there.

[Kailem]

Ha, sorry about that! Though to be fair, it's so blatant I'm not sure how anyone could miss it (though I envy those who did )!

As for the Sci-Fi Japan TV theme, the very beginning of the original Ultraman theme with the little "trumpet fanfare" is the same as the Sci-Fi Japan TV opening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEeClD9gFPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zAA9Py2Ny8&list=PLB1D99945D6A05E78

I've found it really cool watching some of these classic shows and realising "oh, so *that's* where that's from!"

I've been going at a bit of a slower pace making my way through Ace than previous shows, but that's purely because other things have been taking up my time these past couple of weeks rather than anything to do with the show itself. I recently finished the "Summer Horror Series" episodes and a couple of others, and as someone who absolutely loved the creepiness of a lot of Ultra Q episodes (Baron Spider is probably my absolute fave), I really liked how each of these had at least one nicely atmospheric sequence.

Curse of the Black Crab was only really creepy at the beginning before moving on to being a pretty normal kind of episode, but Scary Story of the Cattle God-Man upped things a bit by having a very horror-esque first act. And then Scary Story of the Demon Woman of Hotarugahara went full-on horror with its creepy ghost woman and nighttime haunted house aesthetic. So it felt like they just got better with each ep as far as the spookiness went! Plus Hotarunga was a cool bug-inspired monster too, and its battle with Ace was cool.

I also watched the "it might as well have been part of the Summer Horror Series" episode Mystery of the Haunted Kappa Mansion last night as well, and man if that didn't sum up how zany this show can be! A literal giant monster swimming pool owned by a robot couple who plan to trap Hokuto in the pool so that the monster can run amok without Ace's interference! And when King Kappa rises, he still has the poll on top of his head, complete with the need to have it constantly filled with water or else he becomes vulnerable! Talk about putting the pool in Yapool! I loved it!

It's crazy how creative, inventive and downright wacky some of the stories the Ace writers came up with are; and I'm not even halfway through!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I was going to say that you're watching one of the show's craziest stretches of episodes but the truth is that it doesn't get any less wacky going forward!

What did you think of that two-parter with Varava, Ace-Killer and the Ultra Brothers?

[Kailem]

Oh yeah, that was great too! I didn't realise it was a two-parter at first and was thinking there was no way they were going to be able to wrap everything up with what little time they had left when it started to get close to the end of the first episode! And it was great to see all the Ultra Brothers together again in one episode (even if they didn't do a whole lot). This has got to be the longest conversation any Ultraman characters have had with each other since Zoffy and Ultraman at the end of the original show, right?

It was also fun seeing the Ace-Killer taking all of their powers to use on Ace, just because it was fun to see all those classic moves again, along with Zoffy's for the first time, at least that I can recall. And yet again, we get a new power with the Space Q! One thing I've really loved about classic Ultraman is just they just introduce loads of random new powers all the time, so this was great to see again here. And Varava was a fun monster too. It was kind of inevitable that he'd end up going out to that sword on his head the moment I saw him, but it still didn't make it any less fun when it finally happened. Oh, and the Captain still even having a job after decking the commander at the end?! Definitely one of the most "yeah we're just not going to mention that again"-type moments of the show so far!

So yeah, those episodes were definitely good stuff!

[Kailem]

I'm a little over halfway through now, and I must admit I didn't expect things to go this way!

Like a lot of things the spoiler tags no longer work, sadly, so I guess I'll just have to say *SPOILERS* for anyone who might be reading this without having seen the show before and think they might at some point.

I
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Given that Ace switched things up a bit by introducing the Yapool as an ongoing bad guy who were pretty much behind every scheme and giant monster TAC encountered, I was surprised that they did away with them before the show was even half over! Also, not so much "them" as "it"; the Yapool was actually a single giant monster, not a race of aliens as it had seemed?! Well that was one way to have an "Ace vs Yapool" climactic fight scene, I guess!

I'm assuming they're just going to return to the standard format of the previous Ultra shows of just having monster/alien of the week enemies now, rather than having a new recurring bad guy that's behind them anymore. I expected the Yapool would be defeated eventually, but I figured that wouldn't be until the finale! So wrapping up that aspect of the show so early on was very unexpected.

And of course the other big change now is the departure of Yuko. Having read about the background/development of the show in the booklet that came with this set ahead of time, I already knew she was going to be leaving around the midpoint of the show (though having just gone back and had another look at it now, I guess I must have forgotten the mention of her being from the moon, which is good), so the event itself wasn't nearly as shocking as the last time majorcast members left in Return of Ultraman. I couldn't help noticing the Poochie vibes as I was watching it though.

"I have to go now; my moon needs me!"

*Yuko flies off*

"Wow! Yuko came from the moon?"
"I.....guess?"

So yeah, just going back and checking out that part of the booklet again, the implication is that the concept of having a man and woman join together to become Ace was too radical/controversial for the times, and the showrunners ended up having to ditch the concept halfway through? Because it does certainly seem like they just had to come up with a way to write Yuko out on short notice, and not that this was anything that had any sort of build-up whatsoever. Is it known what the full reasoning is behind that? It seems like in most of these shows there have been points where fairly major characters have been written out, and it's always interesting to read about why. But this is certainly the most prominent example of that so far, given that she was co-lead of the whole show.

Either way, I guess it's just going to be Hokuto by himself as the host of Ace from now on!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Oh yeah, 100% Yuko's departure was a Poochie moment, not something that had been planned or built up at all.

This is what the Ultraman Wiki's page on Ace says about Yuko's departure: "Unfortunately, gender prejudice of the time caused backlash against Yuko, combined with the staff struggling to write plots incorporating both her and Hokuto with equal focus, forcing the producers to have her written out of the show."

Kaiju and tokusatsu heroes were probably marketed much more toward boys than girls in the '60s and '70s, so there probably were a lot of boys in 1972 Japan who griped and moaned about having a female co-lead in the latest Ultraman series. I think (and this is purely conjecture on my part) that a big measure of Ultraman's popularity in those pre-internet days was in Japanese schoolyards, where kids at recess would pretend they were Ultraman or Kamen Rider having play battles with monsters. Those kids were probably mostly boys and they probably had fun imitating the iconic "Henshin!" transformation scenes but Ace would have been a conundrum to imitate. Two boys together would fight over which of them got to be Hokuto and who had to be Yuko. Even if a boy convinced a girl to play as Yuko, after they imitated the transformation scene, then either they would both pretend to be Ace at the same time or one of them would sit out while the other played as Ace. The boys would never want to sit out and the girls would quickly get tired of playing as Yuko only to get left out. Add it all up and Ace was probably a lot less visibly popular in Japanese schoolyards compared to prior Ultras and other tokusatsu TV heroes of that time.

The terrible-monster Lunaticks in that episode is based on the ancient folklore of the moon rabbit, in particular the Japanese folktale Tsuki no Usagi which would have been commonly known among Japanese children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit
https://www.bokksu.com/blogs/news/japanese-folktale-rabbit-on-the-moon
https://mingeiarts.com/blogs/celebration-of-mingei-journey-through-japan/tsukino-usagi-the-moon-rabbit-beautiful-center-of-water-rabbits-selfless-and-making-mochi-on-the-moon

[Kailem]

Yeah I could certainly see that about Yuko. I'm actually kinda surprised they went with a pretty progressive idea like that so early on in the Ultraman series' lifespan, but I guess "hey; what if we had TWO hosts for the new show?!" was a bold new idea that would help differentiate Ace from the ones that had come before. Though yeah, even if the hosts had both been male, it still would have been inherently harder for the writers to come up with stories that balanced them both equally. And I could certainly see that Hokuto seemed to be the favoured host as far as just overall coverage went in that first half of the season.

Oh yeah, another thing I forgot to mention was the first appearance of the Father of Ultra! When he showed up I was like "man this guy's kicking ass! Father of Ultra don't take no aaaaaaaaaand he's dead."

I'm guessing he's got to show up again at some point in the future, whether in Ace or just some later Ultraman show somewhere down the line. But I guess now I know where Taro is gonna get his horns from!

So Dan is clearly being introduced as the new "co-lead" of the show now that Yuko's gone. I didn't realise that was going to be the case at first, until he appeared in the next episode. And the *next* episode. So clearly they figured they needed to fill the space left by her absence and were probably like "so, kid sidekick again?"

Speaking of those latest couple of episodes ("You Can See the Star of Ultra" and "From Ultraseven to Ultraman Ace"), I also noticed some much more dynamic camera work in them compared to the prior episodes. It's not got the crazy close-ups and dark lighting of Jissoji's stuff, so I know he's no back, but the direction of these most recent ones I've watched certainly seemed like a step up from the norm, which is cool. Some very cinematic angles and good use of moving camera in certain scenes there. It was also weird hearing Hedorah's roar coming from Red Jack if only because that particular one is so specific, not because Ultraman and Godzilla sharing monster roars is a new thing.

That's cool about Lunaticks being based on Japanese folklore. I've gone back to playing some Monster Hunter Rise again recently and a lot of the monsters in that were directly inspired by yokai and other things from Japanese folklore (which was why it was cool seeing King Kappa in that earlier ep, and likewise with "Scary Story of the Demon Woman of Hotarugahara"), so I always like it when the monsters have their origins in stuff like that.

[lhb412]

As much as I dislike how Yuko was treated, I do actually like the episode where she's written out.

There's so much potential for the duel hosts gimmick that Ace barely scratches. It's something they should flesh out in a new series!

[Benjamin Haines]

Yeah, with the departure of Yuko and the introduction of Dan, this show's premise suddenly becomes a lot more like Return of Ultraman, with a lone transforming hero acting as a surrogate big brother to a young boy. I've always found it odd how the inclusion of child characters in films and shows is meant to appeal to child viewers, because that never made a difference to me when I was a kid.

Both "You Can See the Star of Ultra" and "From UltraSeven to Ultraman Ace" were directed by a newcomer to the Ultra franchise, Sei Okamura. He went on to direct two episodes each of Taro and Leo as well as five episodes of Tsuburaya Productions' 1973 series Jumborg Ace, which I haven't seen yet.

Hedorah's second-form roar didn't originate with Hedorah! The monster Kemular was the first to have that roar in episode 21 of Ultraman, "Breach the Wall of Smoke." Kemular predates both Hedorah and Red Jack!

Kailem, if you like monsters based on yokai then you would dig Toei's 1994-1995 series Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. All of the enemy monsters are based on yokai, and the show's bonkers end credit sequence has glimpses of several of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z9XHiAQBnE

[Kailem]

Yeah likewise, when I was young I never felt any sort of "extra identification" with child characters in movies or shows either. If anything it was usually the opposite (Godzilla's Revenge for example was always my least favourite Godzilla movie growing up).

I'd say I'll have to keep an eye out for those Taro and Leo eps when I get to them, but if they're as noticeably a cut above the rest visually as these two were, they shouldn't be hard to spot!

I must have recognised Hedorah's roar back when I watched Ultraman, but at this point there have just been so many times when Ultraman monsters have had Godzilla monster roars, either before or after those Godzilla movies were made, that I've just lost track. It's definitely been a weird experience watching all these Tsuburaya shows and hearing so many of those iconic roars that I've only ever associated with a single monster being used so liberally in some cases. The funniest so far though had to be the "Gihdorah phone" at SSSP HQ in the original Ultraman! But I love all these classic old Showa sound effects, both monster roars and just effects in general, so it only helps to cement the classic feel of these shows.

That Ninja Sentai Kakuranger intro looks crazy! A taxi monster?! A wall?! But then I guess that's not too far removed from things like King Kappa and Bad Baron in Ultraman Ace already!

I'm on to the fifth disc now, and I'm loving how many "Scary Stories" Ace has! I'm about to hit the big block of winter horror, so I'm definitely looking forward to those. I'm also a little annoyed at myself that I've been going through Ace a little slower than previous shows, because if I'd be sticking to my usual schedule I would have gotten to the Christmas episode at the perfect time instead of a few weeks late! But still, close enough! And I knew Father of Ultra couldn't stay dead for long; though I *was* thinking we might get even the slightest hint as to how he came back. I guess just "The Ultraman Brothers resurrected him; and he knows about Christmas!" is all we can infer.

And hey, Yuko's back! Can she stay and go back to being Ultram-wait, nope, there she goes. Oh well, it was nice to have a cameo at least, especially given that I never expected to see her again after she left.

[Kailem]

And that's a wrap on another Ultraman series!

Overall I really enjoyed Ace. I do think it's the weakest of the ones I've watched so far, at least in so much as it never reached the highs the previous shows did. But it was still a lot of fun, and I liked how they mixed things up a bit with the choju, Yapool and double hosts etc. (at least for the first half). And man did it get crazy often! The penultimate episode featured a fight against a giant violin monster and I barely even batted an eye I'd gotten so used to that sort of thing!

I did think Hokuto's exit was pretty arbitrary though. I was like "....really?!" I've found it a little strange how both this show and Return of Ultraman kinda defaulted to their human hosts not really being their own separate people in their final episodes and just being like "well I'm Ultraman and I've got to go back to space now!" It's like "hang on, they've got lives here! Why are they acting like this is basically the end of the human host and only Ultraman is going to remain from now on?" Certainly this instance felt the most like that, even more than Return. It felt mostly like a quick and easy way to say "Ace is done now" rather than anything that made too much sense. So I still think OG Ultraman and Ultraseven's endings were the best I've seen so far in that regard.

I found it funny how only near the end did they actually start believing anyone when someone said "hey, there's a giant monster!" Which was funny since there were one or two times when they actually shouldn't have. For most of the show TAC seemed to have huge amounts of trust issues. Not to mention I think they ended up crashing more of their jets and air vehicles than the entire rest of the Ultra shows put together! I'd gotten used to Go crashing his, turning into Ultraman and then running towards everyone shouting "hey!" at the end of each episode in that show, but I think Ace has to take the cake for the sheer amount of plane crashes in one show. Their insurance must be a real nightmare!

I also found it funny how Ace often appeared *directly* where Hokuto was and nobody ever thought to put two and two together. Good thing given that "rule" they introduced! But yeah, it took me a bit longer to get through Ace than prior shows because I kept getting distracted by other stuff, but it was a fun ride. And now that I've come this far, I've *got* to move on to Ultraman Taro next! I will eventually get round to watching Ultraman Nexus, which I got along with my earlier Ultra Blu-rays, but man, these earlier series have reall been keeping me on such a great Showa kick that I'm finding it hard to stop!

[lhb412]

Return and Ace gave me the impression that the longer the human and Ultra are fused the more they become one integrated personality. Especially the case with Return: Hideki Go's personality and Ultraman's are totally separate in the beginning, but by the last episode he seems to have both his human and Ultra memories.

[Kailem]

Yeah it definitely reminded me of the end of Return when Go was like "I've gotta go home to space!" and I was thinking "pretty sure your home is here dude!"

Maybe you could headcanon it as being something to do with the fact that both Go and Hokuto died and were resurrected by their respective Ultras as well, like they're still "them", but they're also essentially Ultras now more so than hosts. Like they've been brought back to life but *as* part of those Ultras now, rather than just having their lives go back to normal afterwards (with the except of being hosts to big ol' aliens now, of course).

I don't know if that's the way it might continue with Taro, but at least at this point in going through these shows in order they do seem to be giving that impression.

In fact, now that I think about it, Dan Moroboshi has been the only "host" who didn't either straight-up die or get mortally wounded before becoming Ultraman, and that was probably only because Dan is just Seven's human form and not a host at all. At least from watching Blazar recently I know that's not going to be a hard and fast rule for these characters throughout the entirety of of the Ultraman franchise as a whole, but I'm kinda curious to see who the first character is going to be who breaks this apparent tradition.

[Benjamin Haines]

The specifics of Ultra lore were seemingly always a work in progress from one series to the next. The final episode of Ace introduces the rule that Hokuto will never be able to change back from Ace to his human form if he lets anyone know that he's Ace, a rule that was never mentioned prior to that finale. He and Yuko Minami certainly never made any effort to avoid being seen any of the times when they transformed together in midair right in the thick of all the action, not that they needed to because no one ever noticed anyway. The Christmas episode even has a scene in which all of the kids sing the Ultraman Ace theme song aloud together, including the line where they mention Hokuto and Minami by name!

As arbitrary as that rule is at the very end of the series, it does make for a poignant finale. Hokuto chooses to leave his human life behind so that he doesn't destroy any children's faith in kindness. It's a tricky moral to communicate effectively to little kids but Ultraman Ace nails it. "Don't lose your kindness. Take care of the weak and help each other, and don't stop trying to be friendly with people from other countries, no matter how many times you're disappointed. Those are my last wishes."

Unlike the other Showa Ultra series, Ace doesn't seem to have had a single head writer throughout its run. Tetsuo Kinjo was the head writer on Ultra Q, Ultraman and UltraSeven, while Shozo Uehara was the head writer on Return of Ultraman. The first 15 episodes of Ace were written exclusively by Uehara, Shinichi Ichikawa and Shigemitsu Taguchi. Ichikawa had previously written seven episodes of UltraSeven (two co-written with Uehara) and six episodes of Return, while Taguchi also had previously written six episodes of Return. Ichikawa wrote the first and last episodes of Ace and he wrote seven episodes in total but five of those were among that initial batch of 15 episodes. The only episodes that Ichikawa wrote after that were "Revenge of Verokron" and the finale. Uehara also wrote seven episodes of Ace but he stopped writing for the show after episode 22. Taguchi wrote 14 episodes of Ace in total and he kept writing for the show up to episode 42. After the initial 15 episodes, Toshiro Ishido became the show’s fourth writer with episode 16 and he ended up writing for 13 episodes in total.

Ishido had previously written for nine episodes of Return and he went on to write 11 episodes throughout Ultraman Taro’s run, plus two episodes in the second half of Ultraman Leo and eight episodes in the second half of Ultraman 80. Taguchi went on to be the head writer for both Taro and Leo and he also wrote one episode of 80. Ichikawa left Tsuburaya Productions after Ace and started writing for variety shows. Uehara wrote an early two-parter for Taro but otherwise he moved on from the Ultra franchise and became a prolific head writer of tokusatsu television, from Super Robot Red Baron and its follow-up to the first five shows in Toei's Super Sentai franchise, the first five shows in Toei's Metal Hero franchise and Kamen Rider Black. In that regard, Ultraman Ace marks a major shuffling of the writing talent behind the scenes of tokusatsu TV, a transition into the new status quo that would carry through the '70s and '80s. Uehara did eventually return to the Ultra franchise in later decades to write select episodes of Ultraman Tiga, Ultraman Dyna, Ultra Q Dark Fantasy and Ultraman Max.

[Kailem]

Yeah it was pretty obvious that the rule that Hokuto could never return to his human form again if anyone ever found out he was Ace was only introduced in the last episode as a means of explaining why, for the finale's sake, he had to leave. Just like Minami suddenly being an alien in the episode where she was written out too. But as much as it did feel arbitrary when I was watching it, to an extent that's always been the case with the Ultraman shows I've been watching up until this point; mostly in terms of what random powers the Ultras suddenly have from one episode to the next. So as a result, it was something that was still pretty easy to roll with.

I must admit though I did find the "don't stop trying to be friendly with people from other countries, no matter how many times you're disappointed" bit unintentionally funny. It kinda came off like "yeah, look, most foreigners suck, but try to be nice regardless."

That's not too surprising to hear there was a bit of a changing of the guard behind the scenes. As I said, I still very much enjoyed Ace, but it never quite reached the heights the previous shows did at their peaks. That's interesting to hear it doesn't seem like there was really a lead writer for it though, given that the Yapool angle gives Ace arguably the most overarching storyline of any of the Ultra shows up until this point. And that was certainly one of the things that helped it stand out a bit from what had come before, to the point where I was actually surprised they (until the end) almost completely did away with it about halfway through. But then previous shows like Return have also had big, series-changing events happen at the midway point, so it's also not like it was without precedent.

By the way, just with the mention of Ultra Q Dark Fantasy; is that show meant to be any good? I absolutely loved Ultra Q, so even though I know that's a much more modern take on it, I'd be down for more of that type of show if it's anywhere near as good as the original.

[lhb412]

I haven't seen Dark Fantasy (currently unlicensed in the US) but Neo Ultra Q (the latest Ultra Q reboot) is fantastic and it's on a region free blu-ray from Mill Creek. Also unavailable is the '89 Ultra Q movie that Akio Jissoji directed... but someone has uploaded it on YouTube with English subs!

[Benjamin Haines]

I have all 26 episodes of Ultra Q Dark Fantasy (2004) subtitled but I haven't watched it yet. I have watched all 12 episodes of Neo Ultra Q (2013) and it is indeed fantastic. It's a completely standalone show that you can watch at any point, and with only two discs it's one of Mill Creek's lowest-priced sets.

[Kailem]

I think in my head I was mixing up Dark Fantasy with Neo Ultra Q. I remember seeing the listing for Neo last year when I was first starting to import these Mill Creek releases and thinking "oh cool, they made a newer Ultra Q series more recently too!" and then kinda forgot about it until now. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I even knew Dark Fantasy *existed* and was the second Ultra Q series with Neo being the third until now.

Either way it sounds like Neo Ultra Q is awesome, and I absolutely loved Ultra Q (I still think it might actually be my favourite Ultra series overall), so I put in an order for that along with Ultraman Taro.

I guess doing a quick Google search, the reason Dark Fantasy isn't available as part of Mill Creek's deal with Tsuburaya (yet, anyway) is because it was a co-production, so Tsuburaya doesn't own the full rights to it? Kinda like Ultraman Towards the Future. I really hope they extend their licensing deal in the future to include stuff like that, because Towards the Future was the only Ultraman show I'd actually seen anything of growing up, so there's a lot of nostalgic value there and I'd love to actually *own* it rather than have to rely on Youtube to get my fix. And obviously more Ultra Q as well would only be a good thing!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Indeed, Ultra Q Dark Fantasy was a co-production and TPC wasn't offering it for international licensing when Mill Creek made their big Ultra deal back in 2019. Unfortunately that is unlikely to ever change.

According to a user on blu-ray.com, Towards the Future's licensing status is a comparatively minor non-issue for TPC despite being a co-production, and the reason why they didn't license it to Mill Creek is because they don't actually possess any surviving master elements for the episodes, with their highest-quality materials having burned-in Japanese subtitles. I don't know if that means that TPC isn't offering the series to international licensees for that reason or that they are offering it and Mill Creek declined to license it for that reason, but either way that's why it's not currently available. That would also explain why TPC's Japanese blu-ray disc release of Towards the Future is in standard definition with burned-in Japanese subtitles.

Ultraman Taro and Neo Ultra Q are both awesome in different ways!

[Kailem]

Yeah I remember hearing a while back about TPC having lost the masters for Towards the Future and that the best materials they had were VHS copies. Though I did always wonder whether or not the stuff they owned had those subs burned-in to begin with or whether that was just a way to discourage importers from buying those versions. But I guess it's more likely the former, since they've never ended up releasing it anywhere else to justify shooing people away from the Japanese one.

Part of me does wonder how hard they've really looked though. I've got the Towards the Future "movie" on VHS that comprised most of the Gudis arc episodes edited together into a single story, and since that was a UK VHS release that doesn't have any subtitles on it. It's right there! Likewise it aired on Nickelodeon over here back in the 90's, so there have surely got to be some copies of it banging around somewhere.

But given that I've never gotten the impression it was a particularly big or super-popular show in the Ultraman franchise I can understand if they've never launched an extensive search of overseas film vaults to try and track down any copies that *might not* have the Japanese subs burned-in; even though it's still a bit disappointing.

Anyway, Neo Ultra Q and Ultraman Taro both arrived the other day, so I'm looking forward to jumping in to those soon! I'm definitely going to start with Neo Ultra Q since there's a lot less to get through than Taro, plus I'm just looking forward to seeing how it compares to the original show given that it was made so man years later.