Last night I watched Shin Ultraman at my local theatre, as part of a 2-night fathom events screening. It begins with the Japanese government establishing a team to study and combat emerging kaiju life forms. Known as the S-Class Species Suppression Protocol (SSSP), it consists of 5 members. The newly assigned analyst Hiroko Asami is partnered up with Shinji Kaminaga. During an attack by the monster Neronga, they notice a small boy in the area on their surveillance camera, so Kaminaga goes to the area to get the boy out. Ultraman suddenly arrives from the sky and fights Neronga, successfully defeating the kaiju. Kaminaga is accidentally killed during the battle, so Ultraman fuses with his body and takes his place. Upon his return, Asami begins to notice Kaminaga is acting very strangely, unaware that he’s really Ultraman, who is trying to adjust to life as a human. Soon after, more alien threats appear, leading Ultraman and the SSSP to confront them.
The 1st half of the film zips by very fast, introducing a bunch of kaiju and setting up the story and characters. Once Alien Zarab arrives, the films settles into a more steady pace, and focuses on the dialogue and character building. It pretty much regurgitates story lines from the original Ultraman series, but updated for a modern audience. I thought it did a fine job of toeing the line between parody and satire, finding humor in society’s obsession with social media. One scene in particular was hilarious, where Asami is furious at Alien Mefilas, as he is responsible for footage of her going viral. It was also funny and timely how Mefilas easily manipulates government officials into surrending control to him by exploiting their thirst for power and fear of being left behind.
I enjoyed the dialogue between the SSSP members, the characters were all well written, the updated kaiju and seijin (alien) designs, the satirical elements, and the kaiju fights. The final battle was not what I was expecting; instead of an all out monster brawl, in leans more towards a scientific and philosophical conclusion, something that I appreciated. It does go heavy on the CGI, but it wasn’t too awful, so I didn’t mind. If you were hoping for a more original story, be aware that you’ll recognize the plot points from the Neronga, Gabora, Zarab and Mefilas episodes, so that may be an issue for some fans.
Shin Ultraman was an enjoyable film than takes storylines and themes that will be familiar to any fan of the original series and updates them through a modern, satirical and clever lens. It’s currently playing for 2 nights through Fathom Events, the first night being a subtitled screening, and the second night a dubbed version. Since it’s already night #2, you’ll most likely have to wait til it’s out on streaming, dvd or Blu-ray to see it. Since it is dialogue heavy and fast paced in the first half, you may have issues keeping pace by reading subtitles, so you may want to watch the dubbed version. I prefer modern tokukatsu in its original language with subs, so it was just fine with me.
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