When Godzilla designer Eiji Tsuburaya made the legendary decision to transition his giant monster effects from the big screen to the small screen and start Tsuburaya Productions, the impact on television history was widespread. I can't tell the story better than one of the top experts himself. For more information on the history and legacy of Tsuburaya, I would recommend picking up the book Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters by August Ragone. August is the authority I could have been if I had more confidence and less distraction from focus, but c'est la vie. The best I can do is show my own little style of appreciation for something that had a lasting effect on my life from early childhood.
Tsuburaya would begin his television career with the successful Ultra Q, a series very similar in tone to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits but with the signature style of giant monsters from myths and outer space. The following year, history would take a sharp turn when simple human confrontation with giant monsters wasn't enough, and the world needed a hero. The call was answered from M-78, and Ultraman was born.
I have to admit that Ultraman was totally unfamiliar to me for most of my young life. As my blog readers and riffing acquaintances know, my first exposure to Japanese superheroes was Spectreman, which was on the last leg of its 5-year English syndication run when I was in Kindergarten in 1983. I had seen my first few Godzilla movies shortly before discovering Spectreman on what would become the local CW affiliate, Houston's Channel 39, and I was heartbroken to come home one day from school to find out that the show had gone off the air for good before I had the chance to see more than a handful of episodes. Ultraman was nowhere to be found in reruns during my childhood, and I had no inkling of the Ultra franchise at all until 1996, when I saw the third entry, Ultra Seven, on TNT late one night after Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs. I was just out of high school and starting to earn a little of my own money for the first time, and Ultra Seven came into my life at the same opportune moment I was getting to see a lot more Japanese monster movies for the first time courtesy of mail-order fan-subtitled VHS, but I still had no real exposure to the first Ultraman, often referred to as Ultraman Hayata.
Hayata needed some distinctive identification eventually because the Ultraman family exploded. Since 1965, there have been almost 30 Ultra series and a large number of theatrical and made-for-television movies expanding upon the heroic beings of M-78, and the franchise is still going strong. In 1990, a unique English-language incarnation came out of Australia in the form of Ultraman: Towards The Future (known in Japan as Ultraman Great), which aired in the United States in 1992 shortly before the popularity explosion of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. This version of Ultraman would go on to be one of the first video games ever released in the US for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System upon its launch. In 1993, Hollywood tried to get into the act with Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero (Ultraman Powered in Japan), but the American-produced series, with famed actor Sho Kosugi as the voice of Ultraman, never broadcast in the US.
For the first Ultraman's 30th anniversary in 1996, Tsuburaya Productions introduced the "runt of the Ultraman family" in the short film Ultraman Zearth, a comedic take on the franchise with Zearth as a cowardly germophobe and the Iron Chef chairman himself, Takeshi Kaga, as the villain alien Benzen.
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| "Allez cuisine!" |
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| Also notice how his costume colors are simply a reverse of the original Ultraman's. |
Tsuburaya rebooted the Ultraman universe from scratch in 1996 with Ultraman Tiga, the first of a trilogy of Ultra series set outside the original continuity of the other Ultra franchises (though those eventually would interact with the M-78 Ultramen by crossing their parallel universes). Ultraman Tiga, similar to Spectreman and the USA Network's early 80s episodes of Dynaman, was shown in a tongue-in-cheek English dub on FOX's Saturday morning children's television block The FOX Box in 2002. The English version, however, was short-lived and unsuccessful compared to the Power Rangers franchise, and the dubbed version never received a home video or DVD release. Tiga did, however, have the unique (at the time) opportunity to be released in its entirety on DVD in the US with English subtitles. In 2000, the finale movie Ultraman Tiga: The Final Odyssey had a Hollywood premiere at the Egyptian Theater as part of a film festival for G-Fest 2000 (along with the first US screening of Gojira 1954 uncut and Keita Amemiya's Moon of Tao). I saved up for six months, took a Greyhound bus 1700 miles, slept at a youth hostel with no air conditioning, and walked until I had blisters on my feet the size of silver dollars, and it was one of the greatest moments of my life. Recently, the son of Ultra Seven, Ultraman Zero, became the focus of the first Ultra movie to feature an evil Ultraman, Belial.
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| That's a lotta Ultramen. Tiga is pictured at the far bottom right and Ultra Seven at the far bottom left. |
For this little live tweet, I have put together some odds and ends to cover just a few little corners of the Ultra franchise. You'll see the very first episode of Ultraman as well as a few trailers for series and movies such as the funny Ultraman Zearth and Ultraman Zearth 2, all leading up to our feature presentation, the 2004 film Ultraman The Next.
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| Behold my updated looks for the modern age! |
Ultraman The Next (simply titled Ultraman in Japan) was an attempt to reboot the original Ultraman with a dramatic story for a more mature audience. The Ultra series, of course, was aimed successfully at the children's television market, and this re-imagining of a mature-oriented Ultra series (the Ultra N Project, which consisted of the project mascot Ultraman Noa, the film Ultraman The Next and its sequel television series Ultraman Nexus) also took place within a parallel universe separate from the Ultramen of M-78. Despite having an adult target audience, Ultraman Nexus replaced the departing live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon in its 7:30AM Saturday morning time slot, and the results were pretty much what you would expect from putting a Japanese superhero series for adults in the middle of children's block programming. The low ratings of Ultraman Nexus led to the proposed second Ultraman The Next film being canceled, and Tsuburaya Productions returned their primary focus to the youth-oriented Ultra franchise.
For this live tweet, we'll take a look at what could be compared somewhat to today's constant Hollywood revamps and reboots, and we get to do so thanks to an obscure English dub. When an English-speaking person that grew up in the 60s, 70s, or 80s thinks of an Asian movie, bad dubbing usually is the first thing to come to mind. This is no different even for the English dub of this 2004 Ultraman movie. Ultraman The Next did not have a proper English-language commercial release outside of a Hollywood theatrical premiere in 2005, but an English dub was produced in Malaysia. It's not a good dub, but let's face it: we're getting together to riff a movie, and a bad dub opens extra doors for humor. Additionally, the complete Ultraman Nexus is on YouTube with English subtitles. Something to consider for future GHWP live tweets.
Tuesday night, October 13, 2015, join #TrashTue at 8PM EST for Blood Diner, and then stick around for #GHWP at 9:45PM EST for this special little Ultraman tribute show.
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