Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Actually, of the four issues I own, one of them has the first installment of that article! Absolutely awesome you wrote it, GPO, I pull it out every now and then just to flip through that article!

And here is the Japanese plot synopsis site in case anyone here wants to translate it...



And as I said before, I very well intend to review these episodes (mainly cause no one else is...)

There are actually some good overviews and reviews of the series that have been online for ages -- an excellent was done by Kevin Grays and Jim Cironella for Kaiju Fan magazine (which has been up on their website for eons). Check it out at:
http://www.dalekempire.com/QFiles.html

Another really good one is over at Monster Shindig by Frank Kurtz, but only Part One is available. Check it out at: http://www.monstershindig.com/tv/ultraq01.html

Of course, there's my unpublished ULTRA Q article that was intended for Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, back in the early 1980s... But, I lost all of the materials in a move -- this was WAY before personal computers... Oh well. So, that's moot.

As for DARK FANTASY, the best episodes I have seen of the first eight or so is the one by Shusuke Kaneko. Unfortunately, this series cannot hold a candle to the original... There are some monsters in upcoming episodes (GARAGON STRIKES BACK, features Garagon and Cicaidanoid) and some originals... But, this series is just not up to snuff in my humble opinion...

It's to bad your article never got published August, because that would have been an awesome read considering how knowledgable you are.

Funny thing is I was thinking of using that title of the "Q FILES" before I named my article "THE ULTRA BIZARRE WORLD OF ULTRA Q". Thank God I didn't. I didn't discover the Q-Files until after I wrote my article when John posted it on his site in the Fall. That's a fantastic article.

Meanwhile in terms of Dark Fantasy, did PEGILA appear in any of the episodes that you know of?

As far as I know, no Peguila yet...

Well I finally got the DVDs today! ^_^ Whee!

So I suppose I may as well go ahead and review what I've seen so far (that being episodes 1 and 2)...

***WARNING!!! POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!***

Episode I: (Didn't catch the title...)
Kaiju Appearances: Gara Q and Garagon (called "Kara Q" and "Kara Kang" in the subs, respectively)

Gara Q is a new robotic pet/toy and is all the rage in Japan. Everyone seems to be wanting to buy one of these nutty little things! Amidst the nation-wide Gara Q craze, A massive asteroid crashes down in Tokyo (right next to Tokyo Tower, even!). It breaks apart, revealing the Giant Monster Garagon (Good God! )! It is found that Garagon controls all of the millions of Gara Qs spread about the country and they are all part of a massive invasion force. Measures are taken to round up all the Gara Qs and lock them all in a large warehouse to sheild them from Garagon's signals. But those signals prove to be too strong and a massive army of Gara Qs marches on Tokyo, sending everyone into a state of panic. Finally, an electromagnetic-sheilding powder substance is employed to kill Garagon and shut down all the Gara Qs, saving the world for another day.

Well... Well, well, well... I dunno about you people, but I actually liked this. The Gara Qs were, yes, quite cute (kawaiiii!!! ). My only real problem with it was that the invasion wasn't played as well as it could have been... Garagon, while looking quite... wierd... did look like he could some massive urban renewal. But he didn't. He just stood, waved his arms a bit, fell over once or twice, and then just died. The Gara Q army could've menaced a bit more, but it was okay I suppose. All in all I did like this quite a bit, maybe only for the sheer quirkiness (I'm a sucker for quirkiness), but I liked it nonetheless!

The DVD was nice (decent) too. Instead of four seperate episdoes, it was one long video with a chapter stop between each episode. Took a tiny bit of getting used to, but it's not that bad.

My only major complaint with the DVD itself was that the subs were terrible >_<. But I really didn't expect anything better. Oh well. At least it's not Babelfish!

I'll review Episode II later, but I need to go soon and there're a few other threads I want to check.

Ciao!

Whoa... something seriously wierd is going on here... I honestly did not mean to post that last thing some twenty times... Everytime I tried to post it, it said something along the lines that it couldn't, so I kept trying... Now I find out that it posted every time, and I can't delete them!

And the Final Wars section, though intact, reads "No Posts"...

What the crap is going on here?!?

^ as you've pointed out yourself, the subs are nothing to go on The monster names are almost always in katakana, so if the title shows something like this:
http://www.avexnet.or.jp/ultraq-df/img/ ... tory01.gif
Then the title is spelling out "ga ra go n" any actual appearence of the letter "Q" will be romanized so that would definately stand out.

Ok, so we know the subs are fairly standard sinogrish, but how's the picture and sound quality?

Thanks for the review and look forward to seeing more of them!