Anime Rebirth

Review - The Ultraman

Review by Roriconfan

Value: 7
Ultraman is another one of those old, children’s superhero series and amongst the first I watched on VHS back in the 80’s. It was cool to watch as it had many unique features that made it different from the rest of the bunch.

Historically speaking, Ultraman was the first anime space super hero. His stature and poses were copied later in all other Super Sentai series, such as Gatchaman and Power Rangers. It gets some value from this as well.

Animation & Sound: 4
As it goes with all old series, Ultraman has terrible graphics and sound by today’s standards. To get a picture, they are just a bit better than Getta 3 or Mazinger. So, you don’t watch this for optical or acoustic reasons. Character figures and spaceships are also nothing special if you have seen even a single Gundam series.

I have no comment on voice acting as I had only watched it in Greek (because I’m from Greece/Hellas), which was very lame by the way. What nationality were those voice actors? Albanians? They sure didn’t sound Greek to me (no pun intended).

Story & Characters: 5
Ok, this department sucks. It’s just another alien-superhero-that-comes-to-help-humanity-against-monsters story. A nice twist is the fact that Ultraman is initially a little blue star that the human protagonist needs to keep secret from others all the time. This gives a “Clark Kent”-like story, as he can’t transform in public and go into battle any time he likes. Beyond that, all episodes are stand-alones and characters are uninteresting.

Enjoyment: 7
What is actually interesting here is the way the hero fights. I don’t know about you but I personally don’t know of any other show where the hero fights huge monsters with martial arts. Instead of using some huge mecka, the protagonist IS the mecka. Well, he enlarges himself to the point of counting as one, that is. And he doesn’t have unlimited time to beat them, either. If he doesn’t win in a few minutes, his life force depletes and he will die! I was practically standing on my toes when his star was getting red (a sign of him dying).

As for the bad guys, they were amongst the most original ones I had ever seen. From typical fire-breathing dinosaurs to original living clouds!

And the special moves… Wow! Not only there were many of them but also the bad guys were not defeated in the same way all the time (like, let’s say, Voltes 5’s Excalibur V slash finishing move). Most monsters required some strategy to be beaten, usually not an Ultraman attack but a terrain feature. And not to fail to mention that they were not all blowing up when they were defeated! Every special attack had a different effect, from burning them, to cutting them, to freezing them; oh, it was an orgasm to try to guess what would happen.

I suggest this to all retro-lovers. Newbies may keep on watching Naruto.