Fast-forward to 2019, Ultraman finally got an anime adaptation, a story about superheros.
Animation:
CG animes are usually awful because the lack of resources to make it look nice, but Ultraman probably has one of the most fluid CG animations I have seen in anime, I don’t think I ever recovered from Ajin to be honest, ffs Polygon. The fluidity of the anime looks beautiful, the fight sequences are well choreographed, the slow-mos are timed aesthetically pleasingly. The stills and landscape scenes have beautiful colour palettes, in particular the rooftop sunset scene in Ep1, the car driving into the sunset with skyscrapers in Ep3 and the light explosion sparks. The down side of the CG is that some regular non-fight scenes don’t look too great, especially the large CG crowd scenes, which is understandable since those are more transition scenes and not the main focus like the fights. By the back end of the show, the CG became less prominent and I was less actively aware it was CG since I got use to it.
Characters:
Following contains minor spoilers, proceed with caution.
Shinjiro’s character development is a bit shit or if he had any /major/ development. Upon first meeting Shinjiro, he seems to be indecisive and whiny like a typical shonen hero, but then I saw this quote on Wikia describing him “A somewhat lonely boy with a good heart”, it’s quite accurate, he is just a small 17-year-old boy who didn’t even know his dad was Ultraman for 17 years so… If you allowed yourself some space to think, his impulsive hot-headed action is justified given his situation, his continuous self-doubt if he is fitted to be Ultraman actually made him a little less robotic and more like a teenage boy given a big responsibility. HOWEVER, I’m not sure if he was written like this in the manga or the anime fucked it up, I grew very little attachment to Shinjiro, even though he’s lead and has probably the most screen time, I felt like there was very little development for him and he’s a bit bland.
Moroboshi is a character I grew fond of and began to like, damn he was awfully annoying at the beginning, I guess someone had to play the logical thinking cold character. When he appeared as Ultraman with his katana fighting style, that was cool as heck and I began to be invested in him. The balcony scene in Ep11 had me dying of laughter, brilliantly showcases the dynamics between Moroboshi and Shinjiro’s relationship.
Hokuto Seiji kun again is another character I dislike when he first appeared, bit cocky and the whole onichan thing was like what the fuck (non-related, he vaguely resembled Akechi from Saiki K and that added to the annoying factor). The big changing points for him in my opinion was the little snippets of his interaction with Yapool ojisan, especially the very last interaction they had, ojisan lived his life lowkey in the form of an old man got out of his way for Hokuto, that got me in the chest. If ojisan turned out to be a bad guy I’m going to slap a bitch.
Conclusion:
I’m quite glad this was a Netflix release that released all the episode at once instead of a weekly release, it made watching it smoother and information don’t drop out of my brain by watching it over the course of 13 weeks. The lack of OP and the ED skipped made watching seamless, almost like a long movie. If only all new anime was released like this. Overall a fun watch, has its flaws and plot holes, how Rena is 17 but Ultraman was last active 30 years ago and her mother was killed when she was born?? I didn't talk about the plot today, you'll just going to have to trust me on this - it has an interesting enough plot, aliens and superheroes, you don't need to know any more than that.
I would definitely anticipate in a season 2, I want to know about Hokuto and Yuko, the secrets behind the aliens and who the hell is a dad, I mean, Agent Adad.
Oh shit, I just remembered I forgot to talk about Bemular, well, I guess they’ll have to make a s2 so I can talk about him. Until next time, plus ULTRA!
