Ultraman Powered (The Ultimate Hero)

Replies

- Jeff of Earth-J > The Baron January 13, 2026 at 5:28pm
  
  Oh, yes, I see. It's like a "language" option on a sub-menu, but the main menu already specifies "English."
  
  Once again, Tracy cut to the heart of the matter. When I asked, "Should we watch it in English or Japanese?" (this was before I realized there weren't subtitles), she replied, "It takes place in America, we're watching it in English."
The Baron January 15, 2026 at 2:07am
Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen (1974) Reactions (SPOILERS):
1. This is a Thai/Japanese co-production that I stumbled across on-line.
2. We begin with a voiceover telling us what days of the week the planets were created, which I'm not sure how they knew that.
3. We are shown M78, homeworld of the Ultras, which is kind of trippy. Ultraman Taro and Ultraman Zoffy are named, and I think that I see the original Ultraman in there. Maybe Jeff can name the rest of them. There are only six Ultramen in this picture, unless Mother of Ultra counts.
4. We are told that Hanuman was borh in India a thousand years ago. I know next to nothing about Indian mythology, but I believe that Hanuman is some kind of a monkey god.
5. Hanuman gets a them song over the opening credits that tells the plot of the movie.
6. We learn that the Sun is moving closer to the Earth, which is heating it up. The Sun's gravity should also be tearing the Earth apart, but that's another story.
7. We meet two unfunny comiic relief types, who are dressed lilke Dollar Store Evel Knievels, and get a whiteface gag when their jeep explodes. The narration tells us: "They dance like Hanuman, expecting better doubt." I know nothing about Thai culture, so these guys may be a "laff riot" inThailand, but I has me doubts.
8. Meanwhille, some kids are doing a rain dance outside a temple.We meet our protagonist, a boy named Koh. The dancing goes on for quite some time.
9. The stooges strioo down to their underwear and jump into a lake. They mention a Doctor Wisul, who has worked out a day to make it rain They suddenly realize that they are swimmoing in a drinking water supply and hurriedly exit the water. We are informed that these two are, in fact, Sipuak and Sisuliya, who are, and I quote, "in fact excellent and famous pilots". I call BS on that, I wouldn't trust these two chuickleheads to drive a Big Wheel.
10. We are shown the rocket base, Donna 7. It sure does have a lot of rockets, which are to be used to make rain. Doctor Wisul explains his plans to some guys who might be reporters or plumbers, or who just happened to wander into the place. His female assistant Malissa suggests praying to the angels for rain. He treats this idea with scorn. I tend to agree, but he's still kind off a jerk about it.
11. Back at the temple, the kids are still dancing. Some crooks who are enjoying themselves way too much show up to rob the place. Koh spots them and tries to stop them. One punches him and kicks him in the face. Koh's friends spot them and follow after them. (Maybe the crooks should have waited until there weren't a zillions kids around to do their robbery.) Koh pursues them and does surprisingly well, catching their Jeep (!), but one of the crooks shoots him dead. Crap, this is violent for a kids' movie! Koh's friends take his body back to the temple. A little girl gives him hos Hanuman mask back.
12. On M78, the Mother of Ultra summons her six sons. She has taken note of Koh's death, saying that he was good, smart and took care of the temple. She transports his body to M78, where they merge it wwith Koh's body so he can return to Earth as an avenger. (Not those Avengers.)
13. Malissa gets a call about Hanuman, but Wisul scoff at her again. Her kid brother Anna goes chasing after Hanuman. He passes out and dreams of a myth where Hanuman sought the Sun's help to find a flower to help a prince.
14. Koh confronts the crooks who killed him, who shoots at him to no effect. He turns into Hanuman and steps on one, drops a tree on another one and crushes the third one in his hands. (So violent!) He then spends a lot of time capering grotesquely, and then rescues Annan.
15. Hanuman flies to the Sun and asks it to back off. The Sun is like, "Sorry, my bad!", and withdraws. Well, that was easy! He then returns to Earth and revives Annan.
16. Wisul fires one of his rockets and it creates rain as predicted. he goes to launch the rest of his rockets and refuses to stop even when he's repeatedly told that there's a fault and is directly ordered to stop. The rockets all blow up and five monsters climb up out of the ground. Seconds of internet research tell me that four of these are old Ultraman monsters (maybe Jeff can identify them) and one if from a show called Mirrorman. The two stooges rightly tell Wisul that it's all his fault. Malissa insists on leaving to find Annan.
17. The military attacks the monsters to no avail. This goes on for a while.
18. Malissa finds Anna, and they go looking for Koh. They find him and he turns into Hanuman and goes to fight the monsters. Hedoes well at first untoil the monsters get their acts together and start kicking the crap out of him. One of the monsters chases Malissa and Annan for some reason. The six Ultramen fly to Earth even as the monsters trap Hanuman, whom they promptly free.
19. The twwo stooges run out on Wisul, who remains behind in his HQ, where he goes mental. Not sure whether he dies in there when stuff starts blowing up.
20. As the heroes battle four of the monsters, the two stooges fall off a cliff and land in a tree with a comedy "BOING!": sound. They subsequently get blown back up onto the clifftop .Why aren't they dead?
21. Hanuman decapitates two of the monsters for laughs, and skeletonizes a third one. Not sure how the fourth one died. In general, the monster fights in this picture lack the subtle dignity and believability of the monster fights in Godzilla vs. Megalon.
22. The fifth monster is tougher, and summons all sorts of natural disasters. Eventually, the six Ultras and Hanuman kick the crap out of him, and Hanuman slices him in half.
23. Hanuman dances for the Ultramen, and then hugs them one by one. Then they go home, while Hanuman capers grotesquely some more.
24. We end with Anna and Malissa watching as Hanuman flies away, and the director thanks us for watching.
Overall: A so-so picture. There were a few interesting moments, but I feel like it could have easily been trimmed down to an hour withut losing anything vital. The two things that bugged me the most were the violence against Koh - I'm not used to seeing that kind of villence in a child in a kids'; super-hero movie, and the obnoxiouisly unfunny antics of Sippikup and Sussudio, or whatever their names were.
- Jeff of Earth-J > The Baron January 15, 2026 at 7:23am
  
  This is a Thai/Japanese co-production that I stumbled across on-line.
  
  That answers one of my questions. Before going any further, I can honestly say that this is the best Thai/Japanese co-production I have ever seen!
  
  We begin with a voiceover telling us what days of the week the planets were created, which I'm not sure how they knew that.
  
  Science!
  
  Maybe Jeff can name the rest of them.
  
  They are the first six listed in the initial post above.
  
  There are only six Ultramen in this picture, unless Mother of Ultra counts.
  
  I was wondering about that myself.
  
  We are shown M78, homeworld of the Ultras, which is kind of trippy.
  
  I can tell you that the homeworld of the Ultras is U40, which is located in the region of Nebula M78.
  
  Hanuman gets a them song over the opening credits that tells the plot of the movie.
  
  I noticed that about halfway through the song they just stopped providing translated subtitles.
  
  We learn that the Sun is moving closer to the Earth, which is heating it up.
  
  Yeah, I'm not sure how that would work. (Maybe the Earth is moving closer to the Sun.) In any case, it's like glabal warming, 50 years early.
  
  We meet two unfunny comic relief types, who are dressed lilke Dollar Store Evel Knievels...
  
  I can't believe those two are supposed tobe pilots! They disappear throughout the entire middle third (or so) of the movie, then suddenly re-appear at the end. They are dressed differently than any other personnel in the organization, but none of the other "uniforms" are consistant, either. Perhaps they all bought their costumes individually (or in paris) at the Dollar Store.
  
  The dancing goes on for quite some time.
  
  QUITE some time.
  
  I wouldn't trust these two chuckleheads to drive a Big Wheel.
  
  As I have already indicated. This is the last we see of them for quite some time, which caused me to wonder aloud why they were in the first part of the film at all. there were scenes involving the two of them which could have come right out of the Three Stooges.
  
  Some crooks who are enjoying themselves way too much show up to rob the place.
  
  Specifically, they take the head of a Buddha statue from a field of other statues, all headless.
  
  ...but one of the crooks shoots him dead.
  
  Specifically, he is shot in the head. His head and face are covered in "red viscous fluid #3," but the bullet must have missed his brain because he spends the next several seconds screaming into the camera. (Perhaps it was the fall from the jeep which killed him.) Copious amounts of bright red fake blood are used throughout this movie.
  
  Crap, this is violent for a kids' movie!
  
  Oh, is this a kids' movie?
  
  Koh's friends take his body back to the temple.
  
  It made me wonder where all of the adults are. The kids held an entire funeral with no adults present. The only adults we see are working at the rocket base. Actually, Malissa is Koh's sister, and their little brother Annan holds the funeral without even telling her (not to mention any parents they may or may not have).
  
  On M78, the Mother of Ultra summons her six sons.
  
  By this time, we're well into the movie, perhaps half way, and this is the first we've seen of the Ultras. They disappear again until near the end, making this much more of a "Hanuman" movie than a "Seven Ultramen" one.
  
  She transports his body to M78...
  
  I'll say! She reaches her hand into some sort of dimensional warp, which emerges in the Milky Way galaxy (some 300 million miles away, I think they said) as a giant hand appearing through a hole in the sky!
  
  four of these are old Ultraman monsters (maybe Jeff can identify them)
  
  The only one I know by name without looking them up is the one with the glowing horns, Gomora. One or two of the others looked familiar, but I was wondering if the others were from one series or another or if they were original designs.
  
  The military attacks the monsters to no avail. This goes on for a while.
  
  QUITE a while.
  
  One of the monsters chases Malissa and Annan for some reason.
  
  At one point Annan hides in a tree for safety, bnecause "mosters can't climb trees." First of all, I can't imagine where he picked up that little factoid, but mosters don't need to climb trees that don't even come up to the ankles, plus we've already seen that they have no compunction against squishing people flat.
  
  Overall: Usually Tracy is not shy about vocalizing her displeasure with sub-standard movies she doesn't like, but this experience was so far beyond that she didn't say a thing. I've never observed that before. Me, I liked it. But I will never, ever watch hit again.
- The Baron > Jeff of Earth-J January 15, 2026 at 8:23am
  
  Oh, is this a kids' movie?
  
  Well, I assumed that it was, since it seemed to focus on kids so much.
- Jeff of Earth-J > The Baron January 17, 2026 at 7:44pm
  
  "Oh, is this a kids' movie?"
  
  "Well, I assumed that it was, since it seemed to focus on kids so much."
  
  (I was speaking tongue-very-much-in-cheek when I said that.)
- The Baron > Jeff of Earth-J January 17, 2026 at 12:05am
  
  there were scenes involving the two of them which could have come right out of the Three Stooges.
  
  The Three Stooges were more subtle and nuanced than those two.
The Baron January 15, 2026 at 11:17pm
Next up is Ultraman: Towards the Future, a.k.a. Ultraman Great), which was made in Australia.

Episode 1: "Signs of Life"
1. Astronauts Jack Shindo and Stanley Haggard are surveying Mars when they enounter the monster Gudis (which the closed captions render as both "Buddhists" and "Goodies"). It looks a bit like Larval Battra crossed with a brain monster. Ultraman Great arrives to battle the monster. Stanley is killed and their spaceship is destroyed. Gudis flees to Earth, intending to infect it. Jack is left on Mars with Ultraman.
2. On Earth, we meet the members of the Universal Multipurpose Agency (or "U.M.A."), whose name is sufficiently vague. The members are:
  
  Captain Arthur Grant, the stern no-nonsense Boss.
  
  Jean Echo, an engineer who looks to be set up to be a love interest for Jack.
  
  Charlie Morgan, a White guy who to be being set up as the comedy relief character.
  
  Lloyd Wilder, a Black guy who seems to be ex-military.
  
  Kim Shaomin, an Asian woman who is technically proficient.
3. A monster that looks like a dinosaur/insect/dragon thing attacks a city. Charlie, Jean and Lloyd fly to the scene in planes called "Hummers" (or "Hummus", per the closed captioning). Kim gets stuck with a ground vehicle. Jean gets shot down, but is rescued by Jack, who is back on Earth as the host for Ultraman Great. He tries to talk her into leaving the monster alone, but she insists that it must be fought because people are dying. He turns into Ultraman and beats the monster.
Overall:It's an interesting "set-up" episode. I'm curious to see where they go from here.
Jeff of Earth-J January 16, 2026 at 8:17am

Ultraman Great (Towards the Future) is something of a Holy Grail for me. Back in 1993 I was aware of this show (probably from the comic book adaptation of it), but had no means to watch it. At that time, I thought Ultraman Great was the first and only sequel to the 1960s TV show I had watched and loved as a kid. Sometime later, a guy who advertised in CBG was selling VHS copies of the show, but he was also selling copies of original series episodes, so I decided to buy some of those instead. I don't k now why I didn't proceed on to buying tapes of Ultraman Great, probably because I was also buying copies of the original Land of the Lost, another show I had enjoyed greatly as a kid.

As I indicated, Ultraman Great prbably first came to my attention when I saw the first of a three-issue Ultraman comic book series on the shelves. It was published by "UltraComics" (an imprint of Harvey). The comic had some impressive names attached to it: Dwayne McDuffie (writer), Ernie Colon (penciler), Alfredo Alcala (inker) and Ken Steacy (cover artist). Each issue had a "virgin" alternate cover, which were the ones I bought (or tried to). Here's the cover of issue #1...

Flipping through it now, it seems to be an adaptation of the first episode, but with many more details surrounding Jack Shindo's transformation into Ultraman. These details may be revealed in later episodes, I don't know. (One of the text features refers to him as "Ultraman Jack," but I think of him as "Ultraman Harvey.") There is also a form to join the "Ultraman Sci-fi QUEST! Adventure Club, an article about the original series, a features showing Steacy's five different cover roughs, a double-page pin-up of Ultrman fighting Gudis by a Japanese artist, and an advertisement for the first two episodes (by the third issue it was four) on VHS for 15 bucks apiece. Again, I have no memory of why I didn't order them then. The "virgin cover" also came in a bag with a kaiju trading card enclosed. I have re-read this series from time-to-time over the years, most recently (I think) when I first learned (earlier in the 2Ks, right around the time I started this thread) that there were DVD sets of other Ultra-series available in the U.S.

At that time I fully expected Ultraman Great to be one of them, but I can see now why it was not. Back in 1993 I would have been thrilled to see Ultraman return to the small screen, with what were at the time state-of-the-art special effects. Now it's just kind of an oddity, albeit one I'm still extrememly happy to have the opportunity to watch at last. Just as Ultraman USA reminded me of the Planet of the Apes cartoon, Ultraman Great reminds me of the 1991 television remake of Land of the Lost. The CBG advertiser who was selling Ultraman/Ultraman Great VHS tapes was also selling tapes of both LotL series. I bought many (if not most) of the originals, and even one of the remake, which was enough for me. Had I known then that both Ultraman and Land of the Lost would one day be available on DVD but that Ultramam Great would not, I would have certainly bought more of those.

Looking forward to watching the rest of this series, at last.
The Baron January 17, 2026 at 1:02am
Episode 2: "The Hibernator"
1. The openoi ng narration makes it sound as though Gudis is being used as a metaphor for climate change, which is fine.
2. The UMA team is investigating a frozen dinosaur - a "Gigasaurus" - which seems to be evolving. (Cue Pokémon evolution music.) It begins thawing out.
3. They meet up with Jack, who claims not to know how he got back to Earth. They're suspicious of him, which I don't blame them for. What, are they supposed to think that he walked back to Earth? They discuss Gudis' plan to conquer the Earth by infecting the animals.
4. Jean has figured out that Jack is Ultraman. Well, that's not too much of a stretch.
5. The guys on the team encourage Jean to get close to Jack as a means of bringing him onto the team. They also seem to be implying that she hasn't been getting any lately. This is all kind of creepy.
6. Gigasaurus breaks free and attacks the city (whichever city that is). It doesn't like the heat (kind of sucks that it's in Australia, then) and has freeze breath like Barugon. It isnt evil, just in pain from the Gudis infection.
7. Charlie's gimmick seems to be that he's food-obsessed. At one point, when Charlie says "I smell Gudis!", the closed captioning renders this as "I smelll Goudas!", which would be in character for him.
8. The team goes after Gigasaurus, but their Hummers get hit by Gigasaurus' freeze breath, and they withdraw. Gigasuarus goes to sleep at night.
9. Jack is against fighting Gigasaurus. (It seems to be his thing, not wanting to fight the mosters, and then fighting them.) Ultraman gives hin an uninspiring pep talk.
10. Gudis has a human agent who sabotages an oil refinery, which causes a fire which provokes Gigasaurus. Jkakc steals a Hummer and goes after Gigasuarus, who shoots him down. He transforms into Ultraman and fights Gigasaurus, ultimately causing ti to disappear. Is it dead? Sent off to the same planet where the Ultraman USA team sent Potamusaurus? Who knows?
11. We end with Jack being on the team. When he feels like it. I guess. Maybe. Who the Hell knows? Under western skies? West of the Pecos? Tumbleweeds at ten paces? Ten thousand head of cattle? Cut 'em off at the pass? Prairies? Lariats? Anyone for tennis?
Overall: This one is OK. They seem to be developing an ecological theme, which is just a relevant now as it was then, if not more so. I suspect that if there were some one out there who had seen all or most of the Ultra series, this one might not end up being their favorite, but what do I know? Anyway, it's still an interesting watch as a cututral artifact of the time and place that it was made.
Jeff of Earth-J January 17, 2026 at 7:03am

Since I posted yesterday I read the first issue of "Utraman Harvey." My plan had been to read all three issues, but I quickly discovered that the first half of the issue was a recap of the Ultraman/Shindo relationship/origin, and the second half was a sequel to the TV series itself, taking place three years later, so I will save #2-3 for later. Anyway, here is the "virgin cover" of #2.

The version of the show we are watching is in English with Japanese subtitles.

of 143