AKA: Urutoraman: Kûsô tokusatsu shirîzu; Ultraman: A Special Effects Fantasy Series
Country and Year: Japan (1966-67)
Director: Hajime Tsubaraya, Toshihiro Iijima, Mimachi Nonagase, Kazuho Manda, Akio Jissoji, Yuuzo Higuchi
Starring: Susumu Kurobe, Akiji Kobayashi, Hiroko Sakurai

Review By: David Austin
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

Ultraman is the great-grandaddy of the kaiju-fighting costumed man – the origin of hundreds of Japanese heroes who put on zippy suits to take arms against fiendish rubber monsters. Every week, audiences could tune in to see Ultraman take on a new monster nemesis, and watch the Science Patrol fly around in their snappy vehicles and shoot off lasers. Sometimes the simple pleasures are the best.

Ultraman grew out of what was already an established kaiju genre. By the early 1960s, Godzilla was already an international phenomenon. While the original Godzilla was a deadly serious allegory for nuclear destruction, its successor films quickly evolved into more light-hearted affairs, with villainous monsters, dashing astronauts, and colorful space aliens. Films like Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Destroy All Monsters exemplified this new paradigm, and Godzilla became a larger than average superhero instead of a radioactive plague.

In 1966, the Tokyo Broadcasting System decided the small screen was ready to for kaiju antics too, and they naturally turned to Eiji Tsubaraya. Tsubaraya was a pioneer in special effects and miniatures and, along with director Ishiro Honda and composer Akira Ifukube (see obituary here), one of the triumvirate responsible for the high quality of the early Toho kaiju spectaculars. Initially, Tsubaraya produced a series called Ultra Q, a precursor of shows like The X-Files. Ultra Q featured paranormal investigators, and a decent amount of kaiju action, mostly featuring re-jiggered costumes from the big screen.

Ultraman, as originally conceived, was intended to carry on in this vein, and the plots of some episodes still follow the investigative formula. The show went through several permutations on paper (Woo, Bemular, Redman) before Tsubaraya’s creative staff settled on the Ultraman premise as we know it today – a giant alien superhero who saves the Earth from a new monster menace every week. While the special effects team couldn’t always work wonders (Jirass of ep. 9 for example, is merely a Godzilla costume altered with a frill and yellow paint), those with a kaiju jones could expect a brand new monster every week. Moreover, while Godzilla movies are notorious for their long monster-free stretches of filler, it’s rare for more than a few minutes of an Ultraman episode to go by without some rubber-costume action.

The show is usually formulaic to a T. The audience follows the adventures of the Science Patrol, a paramilitary organization with all kinds of nifty toys, as they battle the monster of the week. Ultimately, when their weapons prove futile, Ultraman saves the day. Ultraman is sort of a galactic superhero, who crashes on Earth and merges with Science Patrol member Hayata (Susumu Kurobe), his Clark Kent. It is never clear whether their personalities merge as Hayata does not really have any personality to begin with. In his Ultraman form, he is enormous, strong, capable of flight and possessed of deadly beam weapons. He is also clearly possessed of a papier-mache head, but we won’t hold that against him. Unfortunately, Ultraman can only exist in the Sun’s rays for a few minutes at a time as it drains his energy (he’s sort of the anti-Superman in that respect). Therefore he spends most of his time hiding inside Hayata, waiting for an emergency to call him forth. Of course, this means that Hayata is constantly running off in the middle of crises only to reappear immediately after Ultraman’s victory, making excuses about where he went. Fortunately, Hayata’s teammates on the Science Patrol are intensely stupid.

The Science Patrol are a pretty goofy bunch. There’s something about their uniforms that’s distinctly off but it took me a while to put my finger on it. It’s a combination of things – the belts fastened over their jackets, untucked shirts and ties, the pants that are dangerously close to being tights, and the fact that they wear their helmets in situations that do not really call for helmets. The team is led by Captain Muramatsu (Akiji Kobayashi), who is rarely seen without a pipe. He’s the Reed Richards of the team. Next there are the two buffoons; tall, skinny inventor Ide (Masanari Nihei) and pudgy marksman Arashi (Sandaiyu Dokumamushi). Fuji (Hiroko Sakurai) is the team’s token female member. In classic Japanese fashion, Captain Muramatsu is upset when she’s not around, because there’s nobody to bring his coffee. As Muramatsu himself puts it, “Even though Fuji is one of us, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact she’s a girl.” No comment. Fuji does have her day in the sun, though, when the team takes on a sea monster that likes to devour pearls, arousing Fuji’s feminine wrath.

The Patrol is also plagued by Fuji’s younger brother Hoshino, a classic, short-shorts wearing Kenny, an archetype of Japanese monster films. Hoshino is a pretty typical example, hanging around and getting in trouble. Finally, the team is rounded out by Dr. Iwamoto (Akihiko Hirata), who makes frequent guest appearances as the Patrol’s resident scientist. Hirata should be a familiar face, as he also played scientists and professors in literally dozens of other Japanese productions. The team also has a lot of Thunderbirds-style toys – including submarines and VTOL jet fighters.

As the series moves on, there is some progression. The first exceptional episode is 5, which features a mutated killer plant. While the kaiju costume is one of the least inspired of the series (essentially a giant green blob), the plot is actually somewhat elaborate, and a throwback to the original X-Files-esque concept of Ultra Q. The origin of the mysterious monster is eventually revealed in a flashback that cleverly plays with color and B&W. Much of the episode is clearly inspired by the earlier film Matango, Fungus of Terror, for which Eiji Tsubaraya was the director of special effects. Some later episodes not only maintain this level of plot sophistication (like episodes 9 and 11), but add in more interesting locales, like Central Asia (ep. 6), a wannabe Monster Island (ep. 7), and outer space (ep. 16). Ultraman even gets to fight his own evil doppelganger (ep. 18). The fights also become more elaborate and stylized, and Ultraman begins to vary his powers, though Hayata’s excuses for disappearing don’t get any less lame.

However, even at its most sophisticated, Ultraman is not brain surgery. If you’re expecting complex plot arcs, character development, and mature themes, you’ve come to the wrong place. 80% of Ultraman episodes follow a strict pattern – monster appears, Science Patrol tries to defeat it, Ultraman appears and kicks its butt. As a general rule though, any episode that starts with Hoshino and his friends is going to particularly childish. Even in these episodes though, there can be some comic gems, like when space rays bring a child’s drawing of a monster to life during the day, and Captain Muramatsu decides that erasing the picture at night wouldn’t be fair, and that the Science Patrol must therefore attack the peaceful monster head-on despite the attendant destruction and casualties.

Recommended? Yes. If you like good old-fashioned Japanese rubber suit antics and ‘60s pop entertainment, you’ll get a kick out of this. The episodes are also great for kids, though they occasionally get a little gory compared to their American counterparts.

If you like this, you might like: Super Inframan, The Calamari Wrestler, Godzilla v. Megalon, Beetle the Horn King, Hakaider, Kamen Rider

DVD DETAILS

DVD Production Company: BCI Eclipse (www.navarre.com)
Release Date: July 18, 2006
Run Time: 450 Mins
Extras: Booklet, Kaiju Encyclopedia, Dub Team Interview

BCI Eclipse has come a long way since the Brentwood cheap-o box set days. While Ultraman is far from perfectly restored, the picture is perfectly acceptable for a 40-year-old television show – the transfer is clean and the colors are bright. The box holds three DVDs in slimline cases and the packaging is kitschy and attractive. The set also includes a booklet with an essay on the origins of the Ultraman series by Denny Azumabashi and Montey Yamazaki, and a list of episodes with airdates, directors, writers, and monster guest appearances. BCI has also created a digital monster encyclopedia, with pictures and descriptions of all the monsters that appear in the series.

The best thing BCI did here was to include both the original Japanese track with subtitles, and the original English dub. Created by the team that dubbed Speed Racer, it’s everything a dub track nostalgist one could hope for. There are occasional dropouts where the track switches to Japanese that I presume are due to sections of the show not having been aired on American television, but they are not too distracting. The two tracks are substantially similar, but differ in their particulars – I found myself frequently listening the English dub and subtitles simultaneously to compare. As a special feature, BCI includes an interview with several members of the English dubbing team.

This set constitutes the first half of the first “Series.” BCI Eclipse plans to release the second half in fall 2006. Ultraman has been followed by a number of continuing series and specials, including the popular immediate successor, Ultra Seven, and more recent productions like Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Gaia.

© David Austin