Return of Ultraman Bluray Review

Return of Ultraman is the fourth entry in the Ultra series made four years after the end of Ultra Seven. Seven was intended to be the last of the franchise as Tsuburaya Productions set sights on other ventures, but Ultraman was simply too popular not to bring back. Merchandise wise, Ultraman was still a hot seller and there was a strong demand for more, so a new entry was decided upon.
Planning started around late 1969 early 1970. Originally, Eiji Tsuburaya intended the show to be the return of the original Ultraman, hence the title. Though he would pass on January 25, 1970, before getting far into development. The station was more interested in a new character anyway and with Tsuburaya's passing it perhaps felt more appropriate to not touch upon the original character's story out of respect, so it became more of a general return for the franchise than the character specifically. RoU also retroactively established Ultraman and Ultra Seven as being in continuity rather than stand-alone series, allowing for the two to appear and be mentioned.

Characters & Story.

The main protagonist this time around is Hideki Gou (Or Go as the subs use)
Go, like Hayata is the host for an Ultra simply referred to as Ultraman, though not the same as the original. (In 1984 he would be deemed, Ultraman Jack. For the sake of this review I will largely be referring to him as simply Ultraman.)

Go was chosen after giving his life to save a child and their dog, with the giant of light finding his willingness to sacrifice himself an admirable aspect. At first, it seems like a back to basics, but there's a lot of notable differences in both character and set up to help keep things fresh. For starters, Go is a racer that had a full life before becoming an Ultra. He has a job, friends, a lover, etc.
It's only after his resurrection he's offered a place on the primary organization for this series: Monster Attack Team. Which if I saw a guy spring back to life I'd offer them a job too.


Because of the Ultra, Go becomes a natural on the team, besting everyone at everything. Target practice, karate, kendo, and so forth. Similar to Seven, Go has access to a more limited range of powers even as a human which gives him this edge. Overall better dexterity, keen hearing, sight. But despite all that, he is a sharp contrast with the prior protagonists in that he's largely not as successful as the original or Seven. Go messes up both as a member of M.A.T. and as an Ultra in the first few episodes. He'll get overconfident in his abilities, he'll incur injury, and he's not much of a fighter, even less so than Seven. It's not uncommon for him to exhaust his energy fast and fade before a monster can be defeated. Part of that is inexperience and arrogance, but also being overwhelmed. Go has to contend with strong or multiple monsters quite frequently very early on in his career. Also unlike his predecessors, he lacks a key device to transform, instead, it's pure willpower which is important because his ego bites him hard and at times and Ultraman flat out refuses to come out and clean his messes up.

This makes for a very interesting take, but it's also an inconsistent one early on. Episodes will clearly have Go realizing his shortcomings and correct them...only to make another mistake an episode or two later. It doesn't come off so much as Go stumbling to be better as much as it is the episodes in question needing x to happen and the shortest route to that is just having Go do something haughty like not being properly prepared for a mission.

Over time this becomes less of an issue before it's completely written out and Go becomes more accustomed to being responsible, respected and a much better fighter. Though I wouldn't call this character development so much as a change of course.

Another difference with this Ultraman is they are the first to gain and use a weapon: the Ultra Bracelet. What does it do? Everything. Sword, lance, cross, energy cutter. This was clearly just a fun way for the writers to mix things up by giving this Ultraman a new weapon whenever they wanted, which works out great as far as I'm concerned. It keeps things fresh and further sets Go apart.

L to R: Oka, Minami, Capt. Kato, Ueno, Go and Kishida.

The primary team this series is M.A.T (Monster Attack Team) They're somewhere in-between the SSSP and UG in terms of operations. They're not science focused as the SSSP were, nor are they as heavily militarized as the UG were. They fall under the TDF returning from Ultra Seven and there is mention of other branches, most notably New York. Their method of operation isn't much different than the UG's were, though they are noticeably much smaller. I guess after three years of no Ultraseven there simply wasn't a need for a large scale force anymore.
That said, Return of Ultraman learned a lot it's predecessors and incorporates many of those aspects. In the case of MAT they have a science department not too unlike the Ultra Guard which will study the scene of an incident to determine what a creature is, if it's terrestrial or alien, the species, if seismic activity is from a monster or simply geological, etc.


I'm not really going to focus too much on the individual members because they are pretty bare. I think MAT may very well be as bare-bones as the original Ultraman's SSSP. The only exception to this is Kishida, who despite a lot of misgivings I had with initially, actually gets an excellent focused episode that stuck out to me. For everyone else... well a few do get to have the spotlight in some focused episodes, but most of the time it's not too uncommon for half the cast to not have even a single word spoken in an episode. I think the most disappointing is the sole female member: Oka. After Anne in Ultra Seven, you would hope that the female team member would get some degree of development or something other than just being in communications. Sure, Anne wasn't some super progressive character, but it did seem like maybe the series following might do much of the same if not more, but sadly no. Even with it being in the 70's right in the women's revolution, Oka's characterization is straight out of 1966.

Maybe '55

The only notable thing this go around for the team is the Captain gets a promotion and gets a replacement; Ibuki.

I will give credit to his character, he probably is one of the more standout Captains, primarily because he has a wife and daughter that pops up from time to time. His personality also gives me a sorta Tommy Lee Jones vibe and that's always good.



The team did grow on me over time. In the teens, they got a lot better than initial impressions and by the halfway point everyone generally had a good chemistry with one another, but like past series, you're not going to get a lot of depth.

Part of the reason the MAT members get shafted is that there is a secondary cast. As mentioned, Go had a life as a racer before joining MAT, he has people from that life and we actually get to see that, though it's limited to only three people of the Sakata family.

Ken: Go's close friend and mechanic. You may recognize the actor, Shin Kishida, from his later role as Daizaburou Arashiyama in Sun Vulcan or from Toho's The Evil of Dracula.

Jiro: Ken's little brother.  

Aki: the middle child and sister.


Despite the fact they're main characters that sometimes superseded the MAT members- they're really not much better development-wise. Early on it seems like they just didn't have a clue what to do with them and they're just dotted all over the place in appearances with little to do and spending most of the time at Ken's Garage. The late teens and into the 20s would mitigate this by having episodes featuring them more predominately and in more active roles outside the garage, such as Ken and Jiro on a camping trip only for a monster to show up and MAT intervening, hitting a good balance between the two.

Jiro and Aki probably have the most focus of the two. Jiro serves as the token child character and sometimes gets caught up in some sort of plot with various monsters and the like. Aki, on the other hand, is something of a love interest for Go and they even go out a few times. But their chemistry is basically nonexistent.

Ken probably got it the worst. The show clearly had plans for him that they never follow through on. From building a new race car for Go which is mentioned less and less. To Ken developing a new spoiler for dealing with wind pressure, which Go even comments on as being useful for dealing with a certain monster... only for it to never be mentioned again or put to use even within the episode itself.

There is one really interesting thing that happens with this cast, but it's a major spoiler, so I'll hold off on that for the time being.







I hate to start off the general story stuff with some heavy criticisms, but my initial impressions were not fantastic. Episodes 1 and 2 are pretty damn good, but after that, the episodes were surprisingly hard to sit through because of the MAT team dynamic. By episode five I fucking hated Kishida. He is the testiest and insufferable of the group by far. Of all the Ultra series I've watched, I don't think I've ever seen a series with such an unlikable character.


Go is constantly getting shit on by at least one teammate at any given point (usually Kishida) and with the exception of ep. 2 where he disobeys orders because of his ego, Go really doesn't deserve it up to that point. He is consistently right about everything largely due to his Ultra abilities. In episode 3 Go spots/hears a monster on a mountain but the others don't believe him nor want to waste time double-checking. Later, when the Capt. goes missing, Go suggests that maybe he went to look on the mountain himself and the team just assumes Go's overly obsessed with being correct. Low and behold the monster and Captain are there.

Ep. 5 and 6 has Go questioning if a large object discovered at a construction site really was just a rock or an egg since he can hear things within it. The object was hit with a shovel and shot, but he wanted a more scientific test ran which causes some friction with Kishida on trust.

Later a monster appears and Go refuses to shoot because a small girl was within range. This leads to him being reprimanded and put under house arrest. Then the damn rock turns out to actually be an egg, which grows in size bursting through the city streets. Go is called back for the emergency situation where the commander tells them to shoot a missile at the egg despite several civilians trapped in the area, so Go quits M.A.T and then gets shit from a teammate over that. The second part of this spends a lot of time with how Go should return and not just quit and that he's being childish...for not wanting to be part of an organization that orders bombing innocent people. It just snowballs.

You may have also noticed a bit of a strange pattern by this point during regular viewing, which is that every other episode has Ultraman being defeated and/or Go coming into conflict with his team and is sent off so he can interact with the other part of the cast. I know Toku can be formulaic, but this is ridiculous and the Ultra series is largely good about avoiding this aside from the basic concept of Ultraman showing up. Seriously, 5 episodes in and Go has been fake fired to teach a lesson, sent home and finally just quitting.

ep 2, 5 and 5 again near the end. Yes, twice in one ep.

Even when taking into account that this was meant to be viewed on a weekly bases it's still far too frequent of a repeating plot element.

On paper, there's a lot of interesting ideas with the concept of having a series where the main hero is often in conflict with his own team- that his powers give him insight and he struggles to make others believe him while not having a solid explanation beyond simple intuition.
I will even say there are a few tidbits in those episodes that I like. The Captain of MAT outright disobeys orders on that bombing run and instead chooses to rescue the civilians first- even though that lets enough time pass for the egg to hatch. It flips the tables where now the entire team is against following orders.

The TDF commander who issued the missile firing is nonchalant about the ordeal and even makes a passing remark that Ultraman can fix their problem if they mess up, indicating a sort of complacent nature with Ultraman- something the original series itself touched upon near the end.

Hell, the camera work in episodes 5 & 6 is fairly good with some low angle shots to fit the mood, and there are some good character moments for Go in how determined he is to save everyone.
Even a frustrating hard-ass like Kishida has a degree of intrigue in that MAT overall is pretty loose and overly forgiving as a unite, while Kishida is at the very least professional- yet even he is against risking civilians. There is an attempt at nuance with him and a few of the other characters early on. Giving characters major flaws or different personalities and conflict is a really great thing to bring in and I would much rather have something challenging than playing it safe- it did after all pay off for Ultra Seven. I applaud taking this risk. None the less, the show stumbles hard trying to handle this by flaunting the negative aspects of characters a bit too frequently and repetitively at a very early stage in the show's development, which leaves a nasty taste making it difficult to focus on the good that is present. I have never been this fucking frustrated while starting off an Ultra series.

The latter half of episode 6 does start to improve upon these issues and does a solid job of unifying the team. I just don't think the conflict that arose to execute the drama was handled well and was frankly a chore to get through.
Future episodes would continue to have conflicts arise but nowhere near as bad. Go doesn't keep unfairly catching flak when it isn't deserved. They also have him mess up somethings to actually cause a more legitimate issue where it's more often understandable from two different perspectives. It becomes less frequent until it's non-existent in the late 20s. Kishida also undergoes some changes and becomes far less of a jerkass and even gains a bit of humor.




I feel slightly bad on how harsh this must come across, as the primary writer was the legendary Shozo Uehara, who sadly passed this January. Though it is worth pointing out that from what I could find this was his first major stint as the main writer for a considerable length of time. He also had a role in writing select episodes of Ultra Seven, in fact, as mentioned in my review one of my favorite episodes of that series was co-written by him. But again, the difference here is being the main writer from the start, contributing to about 20 episodes across the entire series including the finale. After Ep.18 he would contribute more sporadically, sometimes going two to five episodes between writing credits, which I do think was for the best so he wouldn't burn out.

Keep in mind that for these bigger criticisms regarding the characters and the writing I'm primarily talking about the first six episodes, more specifically 3-6 and a few stragglers after the fact. While of course, those aren't the only episodes I have issues with, the others are more spread out among the good. In my experience, the foundation is very rocky. There are obvious growing pains in their attempts to stand out and be different, Uehara was new to this and Eiji Tsuburaya was gone. There was a deck stacked against the production, but once you start getting into the teens the show's writing improves drastically. This isn't a knock against Uehara, either. Most of those improvements are in his episodes which are fantastic.

The impression I get is he struggled with starting the series off, but once it got going he was able to truly bring in some fun stories and mitigate most of the issues I had up until then. The drama gets better, the characters start to have a lot better chemistry if not much in the way of well-defined relationships. It basically becomes pretty standard Ultraman fare at that point, settling into an entertaining if not remarkable series with some notable episodes here and there.
The show features a large variety of situations like prior shows and if nothing else, rarely became overly predictable once it got going.


The booklet included with the set mentions that the writing shifted away from the heavy morality tales that Ultra Seven introduced, and while that is true to a point, it's not entirely gone. Return of Ultraman might be more basic with its plots and have more in common with the original's largely standalone episodic nature, but it does have reoccurring themes of environmentalism, questioning authority, human ignorance and systemic systems that enable them. Aside from 5&6 Ep. 10 has a construction crew ignoring rules and regulations by blowing up a skeletal figure buried in the side of a hill that ends up being a monster. Ep. 13 & 14 has another construction company getting fed up with MAT not willing to provoke a docile monster that's taken up residence on a site so the JSDF is called in which starts an entire shit show of military dick-waving. Ep. 16 has a company president flexing their corporate muscles to get MAT to back off an investigation.

It's not even uncommon for an episode to feature the heavily decorated higher-ups firing off threats of shutting down MAT at the drop of hat, almost as if there's some unforeseen jealousy or behind the scenes political drama.

Perhaps the best politically charged and indeed the most famous episode is ep. 33 The Monster Tamer and The Boy.
Directed by Shohei Tojo  
Written by Shozo Uehara.

A young orphan boy named Ryo befriends an Alien Meits after being rescued by the extraterrestrial and the two develop a close father-son relationship. Rumors circulate in the local town that the boy is an alien and he is regularly harassed by bullies but is watched over by Meits who uses his mental abilities to protect the child.
Local townsfolk treat Ryo with disdain and various forms of oppression. They refuse to sell him food- if not out of hatred then from what other people would say.

The Meits itself never intended to stay on earth for long, he was simply studying Earth's weather for research, but after saving Ryo, he considered being here long term, but Earth's polluted atmosphere was too much for his physiology. Despite this, Meits could not leave, having lost his ship somewhere underground. Go decides to help after learning the situation, unfortunately, the local town breaks into a lynch mob and go right after Ryo. Meits reveals himself to save the child, where the police shoot him to death.

Suffice to say, there's a lot of disturbing bigoted issues addressed in this episode, as well as fittingly beautiful uneasy visuals.

 

Humanity's darker aspects have been brought up in Ultraman before, even in the original series in episodes like Cry of the Mummy. But never this specific topic quite in this way. I don't know of many children's shows that would feature a racist mob, much less one lead by the goddamn police who then actively kill an innocent being just for existing.

There's also a lot of nice little touches. When a monster shows up that Meits had been preventing from attacking the town, Go just stares for a moment while the town is being destroyed thinking about how they deserve it, maybe even don't deserve saving. When he does eventually transform the fight is a lot angrier than most battles. I think this is absolutely one of Shozo Uehara's best works and I cannot recommend this enough. This is Ultraman and Tokusatsu at its absolute best.


Since we're focusing on the better aspects of the show, let's go ahead and talk about the other notably good episodes.

Ep. 11 Poison Gas Monster Appears.
Directed by Noboru Kaiji.
Written by Tetsuo Kinjo.

This one was written by Ultra series veteran Tetsuo Kinjo as his one and only contribution to RoU. The episode gives Kishida some much needed depth and managed to captivate me despite my prior misgivings regarding the character. Primarily the story focuses on his family's history with the military and the sins of his father, so to speak. More specifically, after a group of people are found dead, an autopsy reveals they died from a gas attack of some sort and the results are similar to an Imperial Japanese nerve agent that was disposed of just before the war ended. Kishida's father had direct involvement with production, much to his shame and he can't help but take it personally.
There's a nice subtle scene where Kishida is given orders and is distracted, which is very telling about how much this is weighing on him and is showing a side of Kishida we've never seen before.

Up until now, he's been very by the books to a fault, now he's veered into the opposite corner for personal- if understandable, reasons.
There's, of course, a monster in this episode spewing said gas, which makes it feel sort of like a retake or inverse of the Godzilla scenario. It's essentially Japanese war crimes coming back to haunt the present.

Ep. 16 & 17 The mysterious big bird monster Terochilus & Monster bird Terochilus big air raid of Tokyo.
Directed by Eizo Yamagiwa.  
Written by Shozo Uehara.

These first part concerns a man named Saburo trying to assassinate his childhood love, Yukiko, who is set to get married soon. During the attempt, a massive winged kaiju flies over destroying the yacht upon which Yukiko was on and foiling the attempt on her life. Saburo is quickly arrested and the destruction is blamed on him and his explosives. However, Yukiko witnessed the kaiju but no one will believe her.
She uses her connection to her friend Aki to get to Go and have him investigate the situation and interrogate Saburo, all while Yukiko's fiance tries to hinder the investigation so they can move on.
Saburo eventually escapes prison and goes after Yukiko to kidnap her and perhaps finish the job.
As all this going on there's still enough time to focus on the monster and a fight with Ultraman just as it heads for the city.

17 continues on with the crime drama leading to a freaking hostage standoff inside a building overtaken by the giant titular Terochilus kaiju.

The second part has some of the best building destruction scenes in Ultra yet. There's even a point where we see the building come down with people inside, giving us a not too often seen view close to the destruction.



If there is a fault to these episodes it's that the second part pulls this weird thing with Saburo in attempting to make him sympathetic with Yurkiko, as if he is more legitimate than her cowardice shithead fiance, which is just creepy as hell. There's also a weird as hell subplot of her fiance trying to sabotage Go's investigation including getting Aki thinking there's something up with Go helping and spending so much time with Yukiko. This basically goes nowhere and the only thing to come from it is Aki acting rude as hell and disregarding her safety when Go is trying to evacuate her and other civilians...only for Go to slap the shit out of her.

So...yeah, while there is a lot I enjoy in these episodes, it's with a fairly notable caveat of WTF.

Ep. 31 Between a Devil and an Angel
Directed by Tadashi Mafune.
Written by Shin'ichi Ichikawa.

The plot centers on Captain Ibuki's daughter bringing her deaf friend Teruo to tour MAT, but Teruo isn't actually human, he's a disguised Alien Zeran who wanted to meet Go, or rather Ultraman, to threaten him in person.
This is an episode with pretty damn good suspense that causes a lot of friction between Go and the team in a way that works. Go tries to outright kill the alien twice but it just looks like he's gone berserk assaulting a child. Go even explains the situation but it's fairly hard to believe, regardless.
It reminds me a lot of an Ultra Seven episode in plot and how well written it is.
This also has one of the more unique methods an Alien has used to attempt defeating an Ultra that I won't spoil.

I will, however, warn that there is a fairly graphic death scene near the end. There's plenty of episodes of kaiju being blown up or limbs being hacked. But this one has the Alien getting shot in the throat and he doesn't immediately lose the little boy disguise, so we see a kid probably around 6 grasping their throat as blood pours out until he keels over, which takes quite a bit. Good thing it was a disguise and not like possession or mind control.

Ep. 34. An unforgiven life.
Directed by: Eizo Yamagiwa.
Written by: Toshiro Ishido & Shinichiro Kobayashi.

This episode focuses on an old classmate of Go's, a scientist named Mizuno who is secretly working on creating a hybrid lifeform between and an animal and a plant, and if that sounds oddly similar to Biollante, you'd be right. Shinichiro Kobayashi, who was 16 at the time, later went on to write the plot outline for Godzilla vs. Biollante, and it's pretty clear a lot of that was pulled from here. Mizuno even has a child that died partly spurring his motivation- although the details of that aren't touched upon and are very vague.
One can surmise after the loss of his son he wanted to create a new life to make up for the one he lost. He comes off as sad and pathetic, but also extremely unstable and a truly disturbing threat.

The atmosphere the episode builds with Mizuno's strange home and all the plants and animals gives off a vibe of some messed up stuff going on. The details of him knowing Go are superfluous and don't really add anything to the overall story, but this a fairly solid episode just because of how twisted it is.

Ep. 37. Ultraman dies at sunset.
Directed by Yoshiharu Tomita.  
Written by Shozo Uehara.

There are some big character spoilers here, so word of warning.

MAT develops a new explosive liquid for use in the arsenal called Saturn Z, this catches the attention of Aliens from the planet Nackle who seek to hijack the substance for their selves. However, that is only part of their plan, as their primary focus is discovering Ultraman's weakness. The aliens revive previously defeated monsters Seagorath and Bemstar to get more detailed information on Ultraman's abilities. The episode uses stock-footage for these scenes which goes on a bit too long and doesn't quite match, but regardless, Ultraman easily dispatches the monsters same as before. Shortly afterward during transport of the Saturn Z, MAT is ambushed and the Nackles make off with the dangerous liquid. Concerned that their Kaiju Black King might not be enough to defeat Ultraman, they look for another way to weaken him: Targeting Aki.

This next part result in a semi-graphic sequence where the Nackles kidnap Aki on her way to Ken's garage. Ken tries to stop them but is viciously ran over and killed instantly. Aki is hung out of the car and dragged against the asphalt before being left a short distance from her brother.

She is in critical condition at the hospital where she manages to tell Go about the aliens before passing.
At that moment, the Nackle send in Black King. Go isn't in any mental condition to fight and it weighs on the Ultraman side during battle, and if that wasn't enough the head Nackle grows and joins in on brutally beating the already struggling Ultraman.

This is a fairly shocking episode in what is portrayed. I don't really think it hit as well as it could or should because Aki never had a ton of chemistry with Go. But the jist is there and it's a stunt that does work to an extent. The Ultra series has never killed off a member of the cast like this, much less two. The final battle at the end of the episode is also shot beautifully.

Ep. 51 The 5 Ultra Oaths.
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Written by Shozo Uehara

 The final episode of the show and a wonderfully fitting one at that.


Go has been having reoccurring nightmares about the original Ultraman being defeated by Zetton, giving a glimpse of the coming horror...
Meanwhile Jiro and his current caretaker Rumiko are kidnapped by the invading Alien Bat, who challenges Ultraman with a new Zetton. Go finds himself unable to transform out of fear and is warned by the original Ultraman not to go in without a plan, lest he be defeated as he was.

Alien Bat is one of the smarter aliens of the series, not only exploiting the legitimate fear Zetton has instilled among Ultras, but also taking out MAT's munitions facilities and airstrip, effectively nullifying any effective measures they have. But MAT still gives it all they've got to keep fighting and gives Go the courage to fight on against the odds.

I do have some minor gripes. The Zetton suit is pretty sad looking and hilariously floppy. They also don't ever explain why MAT doesn't have a way to defeat Zetton despite the SSSP having a weapon that did so, it seems like a simple throwaway line could've explained that.
Still, there is far more good here and it's one of the absolute best episodes, sending the series off on a strong note.
It has quite possibly one of the most unique endings. Go allows his teammates at MAT to believe he died in a crash fighting Zetton, but he does visit Jiro and Rumiko one last time before transforming and heading off to the land of light where the Alien Bat race is currently invading.

Keep in mind Hayata got an extra life from Zoffy at Ultraman's request, since Hayata would die otherwise.  Go was like Hayata and mortally wounded and outright died. His bonding with an Ultra is what keeps him alive and without it he would die again, so Go is a very special case of a host being permanent and also being the first human to go to the M78 nebula.

Visuals/SFX

Despite being three years after Ultra Seven's end there's no drop in the effects what so ever. Right from the start, RoU looks as good as Ultra Seven did in regards to its effects- may be even better because some of the issues I had with Seven's backgrounds aren't as noticeable here. (Though there may be another reason why that is)

The sets themselves are probably the best they've ever been. Some are ridiculously detailed and once again- at times and ever surpass what was movie quality at the time. It's no wonder the Godzilla franchise was struggling at this point. (This was the same year as Godzilla vs. Hedorah)
Buildings, streets, giant statues. The way they use the sets has also undergone a grandiose treatment. Monsters and Ultraman will burst from within a building, or come from a street with asphalt cracking away.

What did take a hit was the more elaborate hangars and facilities that Ultra Seven featured. Again, MAT is scaled down considerably. But what is there is still remarkable looking.

Curiously enough MAT's base undergoes constant upgrades over the show. While the main set remains consistent, the door and the hallway leading to the man meeting room would go from being solid with a long corridor to a translucent smoke door and a tube like hall.

There's also a greater use of optical effects in this series. Seven featured some, but RoU takes it very far in some episodes. Tsuburaya Productions had a lot of practice by now doing optical work on their hit series Operation: Mystery, which featured far more of those than the usual miniatures they're known for. Some of them are a little dated or the artifacting is a bit too noticeable in certain areas. But at the time I bet some of this looked insane.

They even made some iconic shots with this technique, the first episode it self has one of the best.

Hell, some are insanely incredible looking even today.

Likewise, RoU's cinematography is occasionally downright stunning, taking a lot of inspiration from Seven with some truly gorgeous sunsets. Akio Jissoji doesn't contribute to any of the episodes bar one writing credit, but his directorial influences are clearly felt in a few of the episodes.

They pull some ambitious and fun POV shots as well; one on a motorcycle weaving in a busy street and an impressive dashboard view in a scale car. This series basically leaves no stone unturned when it comes to being creative.

The Kaiju department is still incredible. Creatures like Bemstar, Gudon, Twin Tail, Black King. Most shows are lucky enough to have even one really stand out design, RoU has several.

Also as an aside, I really like Alien Bat's Showa design. He looks like a Masters of the Universe character.







The fights are fairly rough near the beginning, probably on par with when Ultraman first started out. They experiment with speeding the footage up which does not work at all. It looks comedic like a Buster Keaton film. They would tone down on this and eventually get back into the groove of very satisfying Greco-Roman style wrestling in a semi-slow speed. Some of the stunts get crazy too, the Ultra suit even catches fire on one occasion.

Eiichi Kikuchi has balls.

Speaking of, they blow up and dismember a lot of monsters this series. This entry may have some of the most incredibly satisfying death scenes.

Holy Shit. The Ultra bracelet really helps in adding some much needed variations to these scenes. If there is something RoU absolutely does better than it's predecessors by a mile it's this right here.

Oh, and one last thing about the visuals. RoU is probably the most overt with it's catholic symbolism up to this point. There is a lot of crosses, holy imagery and Go even has a Christ-like pose when transforming, which is layered on top of already coming back from the dead.

MCA

Bluray/Packaging

I'm pretty sure you've got the rundown by now. This is the standard packaging, please do not get the steel books, they are poorly designed.

Side spine continues the image from the Ultra Seven set and surprisingly barely has any indication of the up coming Ultraman Ace.

Also not really important, but the blue on the actual Bluray logo in slightly different in shade from the other sets, for some reason.

The slip case features Jack in the iconic Ultraman pose on the front and a Black King battle on the back.

The main case has an absolutely gorgeous image of Jack in the sky, while the back features Gudon and Twin Tail. Seriously, these images need to be posters they're so damn good.

The discs once again feature Kaiju across the show. The selection is nowhere near as random as Seven's, although it is a tiny bit odd that Astron wasn't featured on any of the discs, but maybe he's on one of the more modern series' discs.

The booklet, of course, it just as useful as ever and features the same layout and format Ultra Seven started. The only off bit was that during the write up on Ep. 31 they seem to have accidentally left the Bold on when typing out the director's name.

On a similar note, there are a few oddities with the episodes listings just like with Seven. Ep 34 is listed as An Unforgiven life in the booklet, the Bluray menu and the show lists the title as such for the subs. But the streaming service lists it as Life Unforgiven.
17 is also like this, the streaming service lists the episode as "Monstrous Bird Terochilus The Great Tokyo Aerial Bombing" While once again the booklet, Bluray, and subtitles are "Monster bird Terochilus big air raid of Tokyo."

That's something that might and can be fixed. Hell, when I first got the set the streaming version didn't even have an episode count and time stamp on the thumbnails like Seven and Ultraman did. It was about two weeks before those were added. But as of this writing, April 16th, the differences remain.

Moviespree has some other weirdness as well, such as how inconsistent the Ultra series are listed on their respective pages. Ultraman was listed in 10 episode segments.

Seven had one huge segment you had to scroll through.

And Return of Ultraman goes back to Ultraman's style.

For the Bluray image I wanna say the overall quality is a slight dip from the way Ultraman and Ultra Seven looked. That's not to say the image looks bad by any means. There's no scratches or damage or the like as seen with say, the Showa Kamen Rider shows, and this even looks cleaner than some of the KR Blurays. But to me at least, it appears to have a tiny bit of a clarity drop compared to Ultraman and Seven, if not a huge one. I'm not sure if that was just because of the way they filmed, maybe a change in film stock, maybe even just me I can't say with 100% certainty it's not. But it is likely to do with the fact that RoU has never had a Bluray release before now. Japan only ever got a standard DVD release, while Ultraman and Ultra Seven do have Blurays in Japan. Because I don't know what the Japanese DVD version of RoU looks like I can't compare or find out if they're just using that transfer- though I would suspect so. I can't imagine they'd be allowed access to the original source. I don't think this aspect would bother most people and I certainly don't mind myself- again looks damn good still. But do keep in mind as minor of a difference it is, a standard definition show on DVD is still compressed to a slightly lower quality than the true format, whereas an SD Bluray is accurate when transferred properly from the original source.

Subtitles.

First and foremost I want to establish that these are new subs, they're not reusing the ones the wider Asian market had on their DVDs years ago, which were very quick and sloppy and really bad.

That said, sub quality is something I brought up as a worrying issue with Ultra Seven in that even to a layman like me the translations could at times be questionable. Here, like with Seven, there was one or two moments that made me scratch my head. But the first thing I noticed was a spelling error in the very first episode at exactly 3:48

Off to a great start.

I don't care what I paid for the Bluray, that should not make it into a official release, especially physical media.


Another notable shall we say iffiness is in episode 28 at the 10:44 mark.

Go tells Kishida to get a flare ready and Kishida responds confirming that it is. The problem is this probably isn't the best way to interpret it because that's not exactly what they're saying and I know it's not because half of it is in goddamn English. Go uses the words "Stand by" and Kishida says "Stand by" and "Okay"

Now this is where the tricky dicky part is because if they did it as Go saying "<Flare> on stand by" well that doesn't make a lot of sense even if accurate, but then again neither does "Flare Ready" at least not coming from Go who's giving an order and not responding. If Kishida said "Flare ready" then sure, that's a response and affirmation. They could actually just switch the placement for Go's subs to be "Ready Flare" and it would've made more sense at the cost of ignoring the blatant English coming from his mouth.
I know this seems like a weird thing to pick out, but I think this is a good example of how tricky it can be to get sub dialogue to sound right and this one has English randomly inserted, so it stands out more. Do you keep the English in the subs? Make it more legible for how it would sound to the Japanese?  In the end what was chosen doesn't exactly work for the scene either, it seems a bit unpolished. And I think that's the key word. Not exactly bad, but unpolished in some areas. (Kinda like this review)

A pretty good example of that is here. Why is it Gidora and not Ghidorah? It's not technically wrong, Gidora is how one would romanize ギドラ but it's weird, it would be like if suddenly ウルトラマン becomes Urutoraman instead of just using Ultraman. I thought maybe it was a way to skirt a trademark by Toho, but they also say Rodan in the same episode instead of Radon, so I think they just messed up.

Still, better than Toei's flat out wrong and robotic as hell subtitles on their YouTube channel, but that's for another time.

Final Thoughts.

I've been struggling quite a bit to convey my feelings towards Return of Ultraman. There weren't many episodes that were particularly bad and there are some truly fantastic ones. I will reiterate that ep. 33 is indeed one of the best episodes in the franchise. I respect RoU's willingness to attempt very daring new things when it could have been easier to be more complacent. RoU shows off a lot of what it's learned from Ultraman and Seven, taking many great aspects from both while still keeping a familiar formula.
But despite that, the show is largely just sort of average and there's nothing wrong with that. Keep in mind, this is the first show without Eiji Tsuburaya supervising- it's a goddamn miracle this show came out largely unscathed and even successful with the high points it reaches. It showed that they could continue on without Eiji Tsuburaya's guidance because the team was capable enough, he taught them well. Although there were clearly still some issues I cannot overlook.

I'm cannot say Return of Ultraman as a whole should be high on one's watch list when there simply are better shows out there. I certainly can't suggest it over Ultra Seven or even the original Ultraman. I didn't exactly know what to expect going into this, about the only thing I did was that it possibly matching the two priors series would be a tall and unfair order, and that's pretty much the case.

I can still recommend Return of Ultraman, it's got some fantastic moments and its influence on pop culture cannot be understated. Maybe you'll come out liking it better, I can certainly see how someone else would adore this show. But it's difficult for me not to feel just how bumpy this road was and that I had issues here that I've never had before with the franchise. In a way, I feel Return of Ultraman is a Jack of all trades master of none, and while that can be better than the master of one, I would still prefer others over it.

Ultraman vs. Shocker. 

So I've been reviewing a lot of Ultraman lately and while Ultraman Ace releases next month, I'm probably going to take a break from that for a while. Eventually get to it, and Q for that matter. But I really wanna set my sights elsewhere. For one thing, I have a game review I've been holding off on because I was expecting it to get patched...it did not. But after that I'd really like to do Winspector, it's a Metal Hero series that's very near and dear to me and will probably be a bit more simple of a review because it lacks an actual overarching plot and I've already seen the series, which always makes things easier.


Also, one last tidbit as a bullshit bonus, Dr. Death up there wasn't the only similarities with KR. Check out this exchange from episode 19 of Ultraman compared to episode 31 of Kamen Rider. There was only a two week difference between these episodes, with Return of Ultraman airing theirs first.

Funny to remember Tachibana was Cap Muramatsu in the original Ultraman. He also guest stars in an RoU ep.

Weird huh? You know, considering the whole transforming hero being part of a race club and the close friend/sorta mentor figure in both series, I kinda wonder if part of the reason Ken wasn't used much and later killed off was because it was seen as oddly close to Kamen Rider's dynamic.