You know what’s weird? Time.
It feels like it’s been so long now, but it was barely just a decade ago that the future of the Ultraman franchise, quite possibly the most valuable Japanese property ever, was anything BUT certain; a combination of costly legal battles, raising productions costs and years of mismanagement had left the once great franchise in a sorry state.
This story of course has a happy ending: a combination of key legal victories, severe restructuring on part of Tsuburaya and the sheer power of the song “Legend of Galaxy” brought forth a whole new age for the Ultra series. Just a few years back it would seem like a wild dream, but now there’s so many new Ultra heroes that I don’t even know what to do with them.
Alas, the future of the franchise has never looked brighter, probably because now it’s broadcasted in HD, and that brings us to today’s topic: Ultraman Taiga, the most recent New Generation Ultra series at the time of this writing, and arguably the weirdest show in this era of the franchise, if only because of its rather peculiar premise: Ultraman Taro got laid.
That’s right, the titular Ultraman Taiga is the son of the universe’s biggest dork, a fact that I haven’t been able to reconcile with and it’s been 12 months already. Like seriously, how does that happen!?
Regardless, in order to regain my sanity and perhaps find some peace, how about we take a look at Ultraman Taiga as a show, and all the peculiarities that make it one of the most unique experiences I’ve had watching Ultraman, and when you have a 50+ years old franchise, that really says something.
…
But seriously, how!?
A Brand New (Ultra) World.
One of the things I love about the New Gen Ultra shows is how each of them aims for a completely different theme and style, so you never really get the same experience twice even if, fundamentally, all these shows are about the same thing.
Ultraman Taiga certainly follows in this trend, taking the basics of the franchise and giving them its own spin, though more than trying to reinvent the formula once again, I think it is more accurate to say that Taiga is a culmination of the New Gen series, particularly when it comes to the way it portrays Kaiju’s and Aliens alike.
Kaiju’s and Aliens have always been a part of the Ultra franchise, in fact, depending on how you see it they are the entire point of it, but the way the shows have handled them has changed as the decades go by; the original series approached Kaiju using the Toho playbook, conceptualizing them as creatures that cannot co-exist with humans because of their very nature, their tragedy being that they were simply born too big and too strong.
This approach softened rather quickly, most likely thanks to Eiji Tsuburaya himself, and even in the original Ultraman (1966) you can see how some Kaiju’s are portrayed as potential allies of humanity instead of absolute evils that must be destroyed. As time passed and new entries were added to the franchise this idea was further developed, with series such as Ultraman Cosmos showing that Kaiju’s and humans can coexist peacefully, and even projects like Kaiju Girls, arguably the stupidest idea I have ever heard.
Aliens though, were treated a little differently; most of them were invaders, but given how the Ultras are aliens themselves, there was always this clear divide between good aliens and bad aliens. Regardless, they always existed as this external element, literally aliens who did not belong in our world; they could live among us, but never be part of us.
Until the New Gen series that is.
The franchise had definitely dabbled with this idea before, but it wasn’t until Ultraman Ginga S and later Ultraman X that the idea of aliens and humans co-existing together on Earth really became a prominent theme; be it a lighthearted episode of Aliens enjoying human sports, or a long running subplot about an Alien Criminal Underworld, the new gen series really put an emphasis on Aliens being part of our society as something more than invaders.
The world of Ultraman Taiga is one where Aliens have integrated into human society, albeit in secrecy, and the entire point of this story is how humanity and aliens can learn coexist peacefully in spite of their differences.
I can argue that this aspect of the show is the best thing about Taiga, rather than taking it for granted the show makes a point of how this process can be difficult for both parties, sometimes even escalating into violence, but it is a goal worth chasing if we want to live in a better world.
It is fair to say that Ultraman as a franchise has always been about Humans and Aliens coming together for a brighter future, but Taiga is the first time this idea has truly expanded beyond the relationship between humans and Ultras, to the point that the show doesn’t even revolve around the titular character, focusing instead on how people of different races can come together to create a better society.
A Tregear wrapped in an Enigma.
If you ask 10 people on the street what is the most defining aspect of Taiga, nine of them would tell you to get away you freak, but the last one would most likely tell you all about Ultraman Tregear and his pointy, pointy feet.
After Ultraman Geed basically retired the character of Ultraman Belial, who had been the recurring villain of the Ultra series since 2007, the franchise found itself in a dire need for a new primary antagonist, because apparently humanity simply wasn’t ready for Ultraman Orb Dark Noir Black Schwartz.
Cue Ultraman Tregear, an Ultra who fell into darkness much like Belial before him, because apparently mental health is not much of a priority in the Land of Light. That’s where the similarities end though; rather than simply being hell bent on destroying anyone who looks at him funny, Tregear took a simpler, Faustian approach to villainy: instead of merely causing wanton mayhem, he would travel around the multiverse granting wishes to people, wishes that often had strings attached, like some kind of cross between a dominatrix and a monkey’s paw.
This alone should make of Tregear a fantastic villain, his debut in the Ultraman R/B movie certainly left fans wanting for more of this enigmatic character, but once we got into the actual Ultraman Taiga series, where he would be the main villain for the season, it turned out that there was no actual character behind the enigma.
Don’t take me wrong, the idea of an ‘Ultra Devil‘ who aims to test the moral fabric of people by granting them their inner most desires is super compelling, and to be fair the show does plays this angle rather effectively in the first few episodes, but it isn’t long before it becomes obvious that all his preaching about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ being obsolete is a farce. He simply enjoys being evil and messing with people.
That is still an idea that could work if you intend to write a compelling villain, he could have easily become the next Yapool, but the main problem with Tregear is that he lacks two fundamental things as a character: a proper backstory and a real motivation.
The show does tell us that he was an Ultra who fell into darkness and that he was friends with Ultraman Taro, but that is never expanded upon during the series. We never really learn anything about him as a character, we know what he is but we don’t know why he is, so even if we know his goal, not knowing the purpose behind that goal makes his actions feel pointless, even when they aren’t.
I know this is a harsh criticism, especially with how entranced the fandom seems to be with this clown, but if you want to understand why Ultraman Tregear doesn’t work as a villain, you need to look no further than… well, Ultraman Tregear.
During the mid-season climax of the show, Tregear attempts to drive Taiga into Darkness by way of a running subplot everyone should have seen coming, but his master plan is foiled by none other than Kudo Hiroyuki, Taiga’s human host, who rescues Taiga from the grasps of despair using their bonds of friendship.
Keep in mind that before this point, Tregear couldn’t care less about a mere human like Hiroyuki, he was nothing more than another pawn in his plans. But once he effectively demonstrates that Tregear is wrong and that the bonds we share can in fact overcome darkness, Tregear becomes obsessed with destroying Hiroyuki.
At that point, he became a truly compelling villain.
Character motivations don’t need to be complex, but they need to be understandable, just knowing what drives a character gives much more weight to their actions, and this is exactly what makes Tregear such a compelling villain during the second half of the show; knowing that he intends to destroy our protagonist by hurting those closest to him as a form of revenge, makes every action Tregear takes genuinely terrifying.
I really cannot overstate how dramatic this change was; as interesting as Tregear is in concept, his portrayal during the first half of the show quickly became boring. It turns out an enigma is only as interesting as the process of figuring it out, and in Tregear’s case it was only when he gained a more personal stake in this conflict that he became the force to be reckoned with he was always meant to be.
One protagonist for the price of three.
There is a long list of things that I can laud the New Generation series for, from the more focused story and use of arcs to the way they pay tribute to the older series without making me want to claw my eyes out.
Throwing shade aside, one of the things that these series have been remarkably good at, is the protagonists; casting the lead character is one of those things that can make or break a show, and Tsuburaya has been doing a consistently great job at this.
Of course, there is more to a protagonist than the guy who plays him, but it is a good place to start, and while I do think that Kudo Inoue’s casting as Kudo Hiroyuki was an excellent choice, there are a lot of little problems with the way his character is developed that make him, perhaps, the worst protagonist in the New Generation Series.
Before all the Hiroyuki stans come at me let me just state that A)I have nunchakus and I know how to use them and B)I don’t think he’s a badly written character, but he’s certainly not a very interesting one; the little backstory he has is done away in the first couple of episodes and his only reason for being a hero is that naming protagonist in Toku is a goddamn art.
Notice that when I say that Hiroyuki is the worst protagonist, I am not saying he is a BAD protagonist, but he’s easily outclassed by all of his new gen predecessors. Hell, he’s easily outclassed by most of the cast in his own show; give any of them the ability to transform and they’d make more interesting protagonists than Hiroyuki himself.
As a character he never gets more development than what it’s absolutely necessary, enough to be likeable but not enough to give him any depth, and contrary to popular belief this has little to do with him having to play host to three separate Ultras.
In case you aren’t aware, what with me only bringing it up when we’re already halfway through this article, the main gimmick of Ultraman Taiga is that Hiroyuki can transform into three separate Ultras, each with different abilities and personalities. While this was a clever way of sidestepping the issue of doing multiple forms for the fourth year in a row, I can see how this could become an issue writing wise since it means having to write four different characters instead of one.
Or at least it would be an issue if this show was even interested in telling a story about any of its Ultras to begin with.
Ultraman Taiga might have all the makings of an Ultraman show, such as giant monster battles, a defense team that protects Earth and Mamoru Miyano, but while the story features four separate Ultras, the show isn’t really about any of them, with even Taiga himself playing more of a supporting role most of the time.
The show does make a big deal out of the Tri-Squad at first, but beyond being the central gimmick this was not really something the show was built around, making the prologue of the show incredibly deceiving in retrospective.
This is the core issue with Hiroyuki as a protagonist: being the host to the Tri-Squad, he is the Hero by default, but this ends up backfiring because Ultraman Taiga, as a story, is not really about heroes, or at least not in the same way the previous New Gen series have been.
I can argue that the show does make up for it, and Taiga and Hiroyuki certainly got their moments to shine, but in the end, I cannot say that either of them defined their own show. Hiroyuki certainly becomes more interesting once the show creates a proper rivalry between him and Tregear, but while that aspect makes the second half of the show the better half, it is still not nearly enough to put him on the same level of previous Ultra protagonists.
But hey, at the very least it prevents him from being completely forgettable.
To Main a Character.
At this point in this… whatever the hell this is, it should be obvious what my feelings on Ultraman Taiga are.
That’s right, I love it.
Hey, just because I find Taiga to be a flawed show it doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a fulfilling experience. It is certainly not my favorite Ultra show, but out of the new Gen series it is probably the most successful at conveying its central themes to the audience, and it’s all thanks to the show’s main character: the founder and President of EGIS, Kana Sasaki.
Hold up, aren’t Hiroyuki and Taiga the main characters?
Well, no, they are the protagonists. Though I can see why this is confusing.
When it comes to writing stories, the protagonist and the main character are actually two separate entities, though most people do think of them as the same thing since, in most cases, both roles fall onto the same character.
This is a completely valid way to tell a story, but when you’re breaking down the elements of a narrative like yours truly compulsively does, it is an important distinction to make since the protagonist and the main character both serve different functions.
People smarter than me have explained this in better detail, but basically the protagonist is our point of view character, he is the medium through which the audience learns about the plot, characters and other elements in a story.
The main character on the other hand, is the one the story is actually about; important plot elements and themes are tied directly to it and you cannot remove him/her from the narrative without fundamentally changing the direction of the story.
You can probably see why these two often overlap, but once you know what to look for it is super easy to tell them apart; in Taiga’s case, Hiroyuki is the character through which we learn about the world of the series and the other characters, but as I painstakingly explained, the story is not about him.
As for Kana, we rarely get to see the story from her perspective, but the more we learn about the plot the more we realize that her character arc and the main story of the show are one and the same; as I mentioned before, Ultraman Taiga is, ultimately, a story about people from different worlds and backgrounds coming together to make a better world, and this goal is quite literally Kana Sasaki’s entire motivation as a character.
This separation between protagonist and main character might seem like an odd choice to some people, maybe even unnecessary, but it is actually far more common than you’d think, with Ultraman Orb and Ultraman Nexus being fantastic examples on how to do it right.
Still, there is something to be said about how just because the protagonist is not the main character, it doesn’t mean the he can’t be well written, which is Taiga’s main fault in my eyes, but we still got some amazing character writing out of it; the victims of the week are pretty much the stars during the first half of the show, and Kana, her subordinate Homare and Ultraman Titas’ muscles got some great development throughout the series.
If there’s a lesson you should take out of this is that Ultraman Taiga does have some fantastic character writing, it’s just that said writing is not where you would usually expect it to be. There was room for improvement of course, but I really do dig what the show did with its premise and characters, even if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
And as it turns out, there’s a good reason for that.
Not an Ultra series.
You know, writing things on the internet as a way to avoid my real life responsibilities is not always easy, more than once I’ve found myself stumped in front of my monitor trying to find something, anything, to say. In those situations, I find that a good way to start is simply going by my gut reaction, emotions don’t lie after all, and in Ultraman Taiga’s case I really only had one thought in my head after finishing it.
Man, this show is weird.
I realize that is not incredibly insightful, and it did took me a while to figure out why, but things became much clearer once I started thinking about Ultraman Geed.
While Geed is not exactly my favorite Ultra series, my love for Ultraman Orb is well documented after all, I do think this show embodies everything that makes the New Gen series great: you have fantastic action, obscenely detailed miniatures, a great cast of characters, a set up drenched in Ultra lore and a simple but very effective tale of Good vs. Evil.
In other words, Geed is the prime example of what a modern Ultraman series should be, and therein lies the answer to the Taiga conundrum; I’ve already hinted at this a couple of times already only to casually gloss over it like a champ, but to put it bluntly, Ultraman Taiga is NOT an Ultraman show.
I know that is a bizarre assertion to make, and to be fair those are my specialty, but when you try and break down this show, which incidentally is what I’ve been doing this whole time, it becomes obvious that this isn’t a super hero story like modern Ultra usually is, heck, it’s not even a story of good vs. evil.
Ultraman Taiga is a story about people.
Not about Ultraman coming to save us from ourselves or defeating an absolute evil, but people, humans and aliens alike, coming together to save the world.
Scratch that, coming together to save THEIR world.
Of course, Ultraman Taiga and his friends do play a part in this story, an important one, but in the end this is not a story about them, but a story with them in it, and as weird as it sounds that ends up being one of the show’s greatest strengths; it would have been so easy to make of Taiga yet another Ultraman show, but instead they went in a very different direction that, while flawed, resulted in one of the most interesting Toku experiences I’ve had in the last few years.
Taiga certainly has its share of callbacks to previous Ultra shows, particularly Return of Ultraman for some reason, but the vision this show had for what it wanted to be is so unique it could have almost worked even without the Ultraman stuff… and yet, it is because it’s part of the Ultra franchise that many of these ideas works so well.
Taiga might not be an Ultraman show in the traditional sense of the word, all the familiar elements are there but used in a different way, and it is exactly because it doesn’t try to be one that it lends a whole new perspective to many of the core ideas I had taken for granted for so long.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it is because Ultraman Taiga is not an Ultra show that it makes you truly understand what an Ultra show is.
Final Thoughts.
I am not going to lie.
I mean, I could lie and you’d never know, but I won’t. Promise.
As much as I love the New Generation Ultra series, Taiga has to be the one case where I truly struggled to get into the show. It usually takes me 4 or 5 episodes to get into a series like this one, but in Taiga’s case it took over half the show for me to even make something out of it.
It was only until I finished watching the show that I really understood what it was trying to do, and much to my surprise it ended up being one of the most thought-provoking experiences I’ve had with Ultraman in recent memory. Still, it is far from perfect, and if you’re looking for a more traditional Ultra experience like X, Geed or R/B, then I don’t think Taiga will appeal to you.
The show certainly has its audience, it definitely gave me some classic Eiji Tsuburaya vibes, but it is not what most fans of modern Toku would expect and if you dropped the show during its first half, I cannot say I blame you.
It really is hard to rate it since there is no other Ultra show quite like it, but I do think that’s actually a good thing, and overall, I am glad that Taiga is the kind of show it is.
Fanboyism Extraordinaire 
Hey glad to see your review here. I traded your review on Orb and Ghost, on another website, loved and waited for more update but didn’t see it. Until come across u on Twitter 😆. I mean…it is u who do the funny review for Orb and Ghost right? Hope it not the case of I mistaking somebody because they have the same username and writing style 😆
As for review itself, your point always intrigue me, granted some of the point u make I didn’t think of but I see where u coming from, disagreement is the fact Taro is totally gem for the lady 😉 and the witchcraft two parters are great! I at first didn’t like Taiga, I thought Hiroyuki was bland compare to other and the show didn’t have this energy I think, but after rewatching it I start to really like it. Can’t put it well like u do but it is something about the individual story it tell and honestly I appreciate Hiroyuki more now, something about his hardworking nature make me warm up to him. So yeah just some thought to compare note, glad to find your reviews again and can’t wait to see more.
PS: sorry for the long text, can’t help it when it come to Toku
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Yes, that was me on the Ghost review.
I ended up emigrating from Livejournal like everyone else.
Glad you enjoy my work.
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