I first heard about the original Ultraman when Kristen and I were listening to Ready Player One, at least that I remember. There’s a cool moment with Ultraman and how he works that is talked about in that book. I was surprised when I saw that Netflix had released a new Ultraman show.

Ultraman, the Netflix show, is based off of the same character as the 1966-1967 show from Japan. The original show revolves around aliens attacking earth and until Ultraman shows up, the Science Patrol (yes, it’s called the Science Patrol), are unable to drive back the aliens. Now, it’s the next generation of Ultraman. The Science patrol is still around, but the alien threat is now from aliens who are living on earth. When an alien shows up that was last seen 12 years ago when a plane crashed killing everyone on board, the Science Patrol kicks it up a notch.

The show isn’t all that complex a show plot wise, it’s aliens do something, and the human who is Ultraman shows up and has a moral quandary about he’s doing. And it kind of repeats that trope throughout the show, but it does have some through lines in the show. Especially at the end of the season you get a through line in a few episodes. This isn’t a show that has a ton of major through lines though. You tend to just get two or three episodes that are somewhat tied together. But I think some of that simplicity is what makes the show work. They don’t try and confuse it too much with misdirection upon misdirection.

I think it also works because the style of animation on the show is an interesting 3D anime style animation. It wasn’t something that I thought I’d like, but they do a solid job with it. I do think that there are a few spots where it is rough around the edges, but in some ways, that’s some of the charm of the animation style. You get that billow of smoke that looks solid, but not as good as you thought it was going to be. And since it is based off of something in the 1960’s, not sure how faithfully, having that little bit of feel where it’s trying to do something on the cutting edge is fun. It kind of works with the premise of Ultraman, and you also end up with some 3D animations that are just amazing.

Anime shows often come down to how the voice acting is done, especially in watching a dub. Netflix didn’t really hold back on getting talent for this, which was great. You have Josh Hutcherson voicing the main character and Critical Role cast members Matt Mercer and Liam O’Brien voicing character as well. So you have solid voice acting, and there’s something fun about recognizing voices in an anime, especially when it isn’t just the main few voice actors that you get on many a Funimation dubbed show.

Overall, this is a very fun show. It doesn’t try to be too much and do too much. As Kristen said about it, there’s just something fun about it, and I think that is the best away to describe it. It’s definitely a show for teenagers and adults, but it doesn’t mean that it’s too heavy. And it doesn’t have sex in it really, there’s just alien blood and once in a while human blood and various gore that you see. Even that isn’t too bad compared to what it could have been. And it’s just nice to have that action show where the character is growing that doesn’t end up relying on violence of fan service. So don’t go into it expecting anything that profound or deep, but do expect a good time.

Have you watched Ultraman on Netflix? Did you like the show?

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