Ultraman – 1966-67 – Kaiju series

I have acquainted myself with this series for a couple of days. There are 39 episodes in total and I have seen a few so far. I really don’t know what to say about it and this won’t be a regular review of the series. It’s a Japanese giant monster genre calles kaiju. This means something like “strange beast”. That is perfectly described! There is indeed strange beasts in this series! Strange beasts that the super hero Ultraman has to fight.

The series starts out with some people witnessing two spheres falling down to earth and into a lake. to make a long story short one of the contains the extra terrestrial Ultraman and the other a monster. Ultraman crashes with a plane and to make amends he offers the pilot of the plane a stick. This stick transforms the pilot to Ultraman if he ever needs to.

Of course he’ll need to in every episode! And in every episode there is a new monster to fight. The special effects are  a big part of the series. The full english name of the series is even Ultraman: A Special Effects Fantasy Series. That figures! There are a lot of montages and miniature sets in this series. Most of them are really obvious and might be considered badly made. But I think these scenes contributes to the true entertainment value. It’s great fun when there are obvious trick shots. I just wonder how a series with these conditions would have looked like if Ray Harryhausen was part of the special effects team?