Here in the aftermath of Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla: Singular Point we’ve reached the first time in a while where we don’t really know what the next Godzilla film will be. Godzilla: King of the Monsters was announced the weekend after Godzilla 2014 came out, while Shin Godzilla, the anime trilogy, and Godzilla vs. Kong were all announced before that film even came out. The next MonsterVerse film is rumored to be a Kong movie, leaving Godzilla’s future in it uncertain as Legendary goes back to the negotiation table with Toho (only having the rights for the character’s use in three films). Toho themselves are rumored to be in development of their own cinematic universe centering on the Godzilla franchise, but details of what their plans might be are scant and we haven’t really heard anything in a good long while. A sequel to Shin Godzilla has long since been voided, and as for any sequels to the anime trilogy…nobody wants any.
So for now my list is complete and my word is final. Let’s take a break from the big guy. It’s time to say “Goodbye Now Godzilla.”
Let’s rebrand, shall we? Let’s make this a thread for my general musings about Tokusatsu nobody gives a shit about.
So that leaves us with where to go from here. I did promise a Gamera ranking. I’ll get there. I put that off initially because I was going to rewatch the movies on Arrow’s new blu-rays. When I finally got them, I was low energy because of personal issues. More Gamera films have been announced for the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, so I might spark up some Gamera talk sooner rather than later. I would also like to do a tour through Ishiro Honda’s non-Godzilla Toku filmography. There are some gems there that I think those who enjoy Godzilla will really dig, and I owe a bunch of them a rewatch anyway.
But I’m going to stray away from all of those and jump to the Toku franchise that is arguably more popular in Japan than Godzilla is, Ultraman. The US has no real basis for comparison between the two franchises. We’ve received dubs for the original Ultraman series, Ultraseven, and the 90’s series Ultraman Tiga, and were relatively popular but mostly forgotten by those who didn’t watch them while they were on the air, as opposed to Godzilla, who most know by name even if they’ve never seen a Godzilla movie. But in Asia, that’s a different story. Ultraman is a huge merchandising phenomenon in the East, as big as Batman is over here. The series didn’t have much of a chance to franchise over here though, as for decades the overseas distribution rights were in dispute between the franchise owners at Tsuburaya Productions and and a Thai studio called Chaiyo, who claimed the non-domestic rights to the series was sold to them after they gave Tsuburaya a loan while they were in financial trouble. Recently the lawsuit was found in favor of Tsuburaya, and as a victory lap they’ve cut a deal with Mill Creek Entertainment to release a large portion of the catalog in the United States on blu-ray and streaming (does not include co-productions). This is the biggest push the Ultraman franchise has had in the US likely ever.
Until Michael Bay decides to make a movie about it full of piss and fart jokes, just like his franchise revolutionary Transformers films. One can only dream!
I’ve been collecting the sets on blu-ray as they’ve been released. While I’ve been slowly getting around to them, and catching various episodes on TokuSHOUTsu’s PlutoTV channel, I haven’t missed a set yet. Hopefully with things on my personal list feeling a bit less stressful today than it was last year, I’m hoping to make a dent in it. Until now the only series in the franchise I’ve seen was the first Ultraman, which I watched when Mill Creek released it’s Chaiyo licensed and low quality DVD set over a decade ago. I enjoyed it enough to consider buying Shout Factory’s Chaiyo licensed Ultra Q and Ultraseven releases, but they were a bit pricier and never got around to it. Surprisingly Mill Creek’s blu-rays wound up being much cheaper, making them more of a no-brainer purchase. Now after all this time I’ve finally finished the series that started it all…
Ultra Q
Airdates: January 2, 1966 - July 3, 1966; December 17, 1967
Episode Count: 28
Premise: Strange phenomena sprouts up in Japan. Often eyewitnessing these strange stories is reporter Yuriko Edogawa, who finds herself often chasing stories that lead to monsters and supernatural occurrences. Aiding her is heroic pilot Jun Manjome, his co-pilot Ippei Togawa, and occasionally Professor Ichinotani as they bear witness to some of the most bizarre creatures that have surfaced.
Tokusatsu was a victim of its own success. In many ways it was its rising popularity on television that led to lesser box office totals, leading to Toho abandoning most of the genre except Godzilla, and even that franchise was seeing dwindling budgets, while Gamera was limping along based on a US distribution deal with American International Television, which guaranteed a return. It’s the old adage of “Why pay for it when you get it at home for free?” While television Tokusatsu had existed before Ultra Q, there wasn’t a huge hit in the special interest genre. Then one day, a franchise bloomed.
Ultra Q’s origins lie with Toho, Godzilla, and other Toku films being produced by Toho’s studio. The Tokyo Broadcasting System network in Japan (yes, Japan has their own TBS) saw the popularity of the films Toho was producing and struck a deal with Godzilla costume creator and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya to somehow create a weekly television series targeting the same audience.
The resulting series was initially titled Unbalance, but was retitled Ultra Q as a pun on the athletic lingo of “Ultra C,” which roughly equated into English means “Giving it one hundred ten percent.” The meaning of “Ultra C” is a bit of a cultural thing, as it has basis in rating gymnastic events from A to C in Japan, with A being easy and C being hard. The use of the letter “Q” in the title as opposed to any other letter like D or Z was meant as an abbreviation for the word “question.”
The premise is a simple one, which is just basically “Monsters happen. Weird, right?” It takes a sort of Twilight Zone approach to the kaiju genre, as each week there was some sort of weird tale surrounding some sort of new creature, complete with a spooky narration to explain the strange shenanigans to the audience in case they don’t get it. Keeping the series from being completely anthological is that there are a set of main characters who keep bumping into these creatures. Toho Tokusatsu feature regular (dating back to a supporting role in the original Godzilla and appearing as recently as a deleted cameo in Godzilla 2014) Kenji Sahara plays the heroic pilot Jun Manjome, our handsome leading man. While I love Kenji Sahara, the desire for a male lead does detract a bit from the fact that one would think the reporter character Yuriko Edogawa would be more important to the show than she is, who is usually treated as a means to an end to chase the story and get the characters from one place to another, and to just look cute in the meantime. Yuriko is played by Hiroko Sakurai, who had a brief career in acting, mostly known for her roles in Ultra Q and Ultraman. Sakurai seems like she should be the lead, but always falls back on a fair few damsel tropes, including the maybe/maybe not girlfriend of Sahara’s character, which always seems on the tip of the show’s tongue, but seemingly unwilling to fully lose the show’s young boy demographic with too much romance. Rounding out the cast is Son of Godzilla’s Yasuhiko Saijou as comic relief co-pilot Ippei Togawa, Ureo Egawa in the final performance of his career as exposition giving Professor Ichinotani, and Godzilla film regular Yoshifumi Tajima as Yuriko’s news editor Seki.
The big issue with having regular characters in Ultra Q is that the series rarely figures out how to incorporate them into each episode’s premise. In a lot of episodes Yuriko, Jun, and Ippei are glorified gawkers, who exist to explain what the story is and watch from afar as it plays out. Occasionally they’ll get in the middle of a premise, usually Jun (who has a personal story with the arctic monster Penguila), though the issue is that these normal people rarely have means at their disposal to actually do anything about these creatures, making them all feel pretty useless more often than not.
But, Ultra Q is a fun show, and those who have an affection for Toho creature features of the 1960’s will find stuff to enjoy here. Those who love the hand crafted work of Eiji Tsubaraya will find much pleasure here, as there are even more creatures to see from the Master of Monsters. Expectations might have to be kept in check, because even though Ultra Q had a high budget for 60’s Japanese TV, it’s still below the budget of Tusburaya’s work for Toho, and with more time constrictions. Ultra Q doesn’t have the detail of some of Ishiro Honda’s biggest blowouts on the big screen, but a TV show equivalent could look much worse and Ultra Q’s creativity always thinks on its feet and is highly rewarding.
That being said, time constraints do hold the show back at some points. Tsubaraya does at times find himself dusting off old costumes from storage and altering them rather than creating new ones. The first two episodes are obviously made with the intent of giving Tsuburaya time to create new monsters for later episodes, as he alters the Godzilla costume from Godzilla vs. Mothra, the King Kong costume from King Kong vs. Godzilla, and an old Rodan puppet in an effort to buy him some time. New monsters don’t really start appearing until episode three. The new monsters are a bit more rewarding than the reworked ones, because they feel less cobbled together. Those of us familiar with Tsuburaya’s work can’t help but not see his old creations, just with new shit pasted on. While the original monsters tend to look a little more plastic, the new designs feel united in a single theme, as opposed to creating a new theme around an old one.
Out of all the Ultra series, Ultra Q is the one most likely to appeal to those who are Showa Toho fans, who don’t wish to go deeper into the stiffer or flashier films of the Heisei or Millennium eras while also cautious of Ultraman for being too close to Power Rangers-like entertainment. Ultra Q is a show that just throws you into a quirky Showa era monster concept for twenty minutes and lets you flow through it. However, the show does fly down into a rabbit hole at times that might be a bit too strange for some viewers. The show thinks outside of the box at various points, creating a bizarre fantasy scenario that is far different than the average episode of the series. The first one that pops up is an episode called Grow Up! Little Turtle, which features a little boy who has a fantasy of his pet turtle growing large and flying him to a fantasy land. This episode being thrown at you after the sci-fi tales that the series tells up to this point is disorienting. But it’s also a statement that the vision of the series isn’t one singular idea. Ultra Q takes a left turn and shows that it’s a series about crazy premises centered on effects design that can be literally anything. There are loads of episodes spread throughout, some of them can be pretty good like the haunted house thriller with giant tarantulas Baron Spider or even the Ultra Q version of the Matt Damon movie Downsizing. The 1/8 Project, where Yuriko is shrunk to doll size to live in a tiny civilization. Then there are just some batshit ones like The Underground Super Express Goes West, which is a comedy about an alien on board a train, or Kanegon’s Cocoon, which features a young boy turns into a monster that eats money. The show’s unpredictable tendencies can be a double edged sword.
Ultra Q performed pretty well in the ratings, enough for the network to ask Eiji Tsuburaya to immediately develop a followup while it was still airing. As far as I’m aware, another season of Ultra Q was never considered, but a similar Toku series that was reworked based on what viewers responded to from this series. Ultra Q always performed best when there was a giant monster at the center of the premise, so TBS requested the series to be reworked into a new series revolving around giant monsters. They also wanted the series to be shot in color and to feature a heroic being to fight the giant monsters. Tsubaraya obliged and a hype machine was set into motion, and the anticipation for the new show was so high that the final episode of Ultra Q, Open Up!, was pulled from the schedule so TBS could air a preview special introducing the world to Tsuburaya’s brand new superhero creation: Ultraman. Open Up! eventually aired a year and a half later, after Ultraman had already concluded and a third series, Ultraseven, was already airing.
Ultra Q gets a bit lost in the whirlwind that is the Ultraman franchise. It’s a shame that they didn’t create a simultaneous superhero show to air while they nurtured this strange mystery horror/sci-fi show they created, because while elements of Ultra Q feel incomplete, there were likely ways they could have improved it and franchised it out without changing it as drastically as they did. It eventually did franchise out, though not to the extent that Ultraman did. The show was still popular enough twenty-five years later that a film adaptation, Ultra Q: The Movie - Legend of the Stars, was released featuring a new cast playing the characters from the series. In 2004, a reboot of the series titled Ultra Q: Dark Fantasy was released and ran 26 episodes. Finally in 2013, a third series called Neo Ultra Q hit the airwaves with a brief 12 episode run. Ultra Q has been around, though it’s unfortunate it didn’t become bigger than it is. But maybe that’s on brand. That way it’s just this weird thing that pops up every now and again, like the strange things that occur in the series itself.
Five Episodes to WatchIf you just want a sampling of the show to figure out if it’s your bag or not, here are my five recommendations.
Defeat Gomess!A tunnel digging crew comes across a giant egg and a strange beast that terrorizes the workers. Yuriko, Jun, and Ippei investigate only for Yuriko and Jun become trapped in the cave the giant beast. Ippei befriends a young boy who knows of the tale of the tunneling creature Gomess and his mortal enemy, the phoenix-like Litra. Together they hope to hatch the egg into Litra and fight Gomess into submission to save Yuriko and Jun.
The debut episode of Ultra Q is light on plot, but still one of the more enjoyable episodes of the series. The episode gets across the show’s creature feature format while introducing us to our heroes rather simply and provides us with a tasty sample of things to come. It can take a bit of wind out of its sails when it reduces itself to a “Kenny” character (a young child who befriends a giant monster) yelling commands at Litra, though it’s fairly fast paced and fun otherwise.
The Gift from SpaceAn exploration probe sent to Mars returns to Earth with a pair of small golden orbs. Thought to be a gift by Martians to greet the human race, the orbs soon go missing. One was taken by Ippei by accident, which he turns into a pendant as a gift for Yuriko, and another stolen by a thief late in the night. They soon find that when the orbs are heated they hatch into giant slug monsters.
Embracing its Twilight Zone side, this episode aims for a high concept twist, giving mankind a sort of Trojan Horse to try and puzzle out, while also offering old timey sci-fi speculative rational that maybe if intelligent life were to contact us, they might be afraid of us and launch a warning attack. Its a bit simplistic, but I enjoy its quirky introspective. And the space slug is the first monster with a newly commissioned costume of the series, so that’s worth something!
I also love the ending to this episode, in which the first giant slug is destroyed only for Yuriko’s pendant to hatch into a new one, leaving us with a small bit of dour “Oh no” cliffhanger only to have the narrator to pop in and say “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks and everyone is okay.” I also think it’s hilarious that Ippei pleads for Yuriko to forgive him during this sequence only for her to keep screaming “NO!” at him while cowering in horror at the space slug that hatched from the thing around her neck.
Baron SpiderOut partying with friends, Yuriko, Jun, Ippei, and their companions get lost on their way home in a thick fog and stumble across a spooky mansion out in the middle of nowhere. Seeking refuge from the weather, the group take shelter inside. Jun recalls the campfire story of a Baron in a mansion who turned into a giant spider, but the others brush it off as just a story. They soon change their tune once they find a giant spider inhabiting the mansion.
It’s kind of a dumb premise to have these characters who chase monsters seemingly for a living to accidentally stumble into one, but truth be told Baron Spider is probably my favorite episode of the series. I love the atmosphere of the cinematography and the sort of mystery spookhouse setting. I even love the fake-looking spider puppet. I think this episode is seriously fun.
I do have an issue with the expanded cast, who are throw at us with little introduction and given about equal screentime as our regulars. It’s hard to feel any empathy for them, especially when they just seem like carbon copies of Yuriko, Jun, and Ippei again. The episode does gain some clout with them considering one of them is played by the gorgeous Akiko Wakabayashi, who starred in King Kong vs. Godzilla and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster while James Bond fans will recall for her role of Aki from You Only Live Twice. This isn’t her only Ultra appearance, as she also was in an episode of Ultraman. That episode isn’t half as good as this one though.
Challenge from the Year 2020People begin to disappear after coming in contact with a seemingly sentient liquid, people begin to vanish, including Jun. Ippei begins to link the events to a science fiction novel called Challenge from the Year 2020, which tells of aliens from the future kidnapping people to harvest their organs. Thinking the link to the novel being nonsense, Yuriko continues to investigate only to discover that the link might be stronger than one might expect.
Let’s face it, the real 2020 was challenging enough. We didn’t really need this fictional one to compound it.
With an out there concept and an infectious tone that drifts between suspense thriller and comical goofiness, Challenge from the Year 2020 is a really neat ride throughout its twenty-five minutes of screentime. It even comes off as Ultra Q’s own quirky take on The Blob at times, complete with a sequence in which Yuriko confronts the alien goo in a phone booth, which almost seems like it was almost ripped off for a similar sequence in the 1988 Blob remake (though it likely might have been a nod to The Birds in the first place). Add in a fun alien humanoid design with a goofy laugh and a some fun “running faster than a car” effects, and this episode is a serious hoot.
The Primordial Amphibian RagonYuriko, Jun, and Ippei are sent to an island village to cover the eruption of a nearby underwater volcano. Fisherman on the island soon bring ashore a large egg from the sea, and a underwater humanoid amphibious monster surfaces to reclaim it, attacking all in its way. The civilians must find a way past Ragon and evacuate the island soon because the volcanic eruption threatens to sink it into the ocean.
It’s Creature from the Black Lagoon meets Gorgo in this episode of Ultra Q, which is pretty good at finding a nice ground level story for our heroes to get intertwined into. The group is more proactive here than they are in most episodes, likely to thank for the use of a monster that’s not much bigger than them. It’s a fun tale of the fearing the unfamiliar and solving the mystery by discovering the beast’s need (of course this happens after they toss a member of the species off a cliff). There are also some fun sequences like the Ragon being fascinated by a radio which Jun tries to use to his advantage to lure Ragon away from the others.
The plot of the episode can be a little disjointed, but the strong elements in the moment make the episode a fun watch. And Ragon is a fun monster with a neat design (see below), making it a series highlight, in my opinion.
Favorite Monster of the Series
Ragon (The Primordial Amphibian Ragon)
A beast similar to the Gill Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ragon is a sea creature who surfaces to look for its egg. Like the Gill Man, the intention of Ragon seems to be that of a “missing link” type of being, possibly the type of creature mankind evolved from when sea creatures first walked on land.
The look of Ragon is very Gill Man inspired. It’s humanoid with fish-like fins and scales. It has a much larger head than the Gill Man though, likely owing to being unable to do a more elaborate suit that Universal was able to do for its larger budget feature. Ragon’s head is large like a helmet with glowing eyes, and if one looks in the mouth they can easily see the air holes that allow the suit performer to both see and breathe. The black and white cinematography does help mask these, though a Ragon also appears early in Ultraman in color cinematography, allowing them to stick out much more.
Three Ragons are seen in the episode total, the primary one presumably the male mate of a female seen at the end of the episode. I presume that one’s the male because if you look closely at the one at the end, that one has some female form going on (namely very smooth boobs). The third Ragon featured is the child that hatches from the egg, which is just a tiny doll that characters carry around. It’s not the best special effect, but it’s charmingly funny.
