Month: August 2024

Ultra Q Ep. 2: Goro and Goro

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Hajime Tsuburaya. Written by Tetsuo Kinjo. Airdate Jan. 7, 1966.

If you have Godzilla in disguise in the first episode of your monster TV show, why not have King Kong in disguise in the second? It must have made sense for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, who picked “Goro and Goro” for Ultra Q’s second aired episode. The monster star, one of the two Goros of the title, is a slightly modified King Kong costume built for the movie King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). 

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Ultraman Ep. 1: Ultra Operation No. 1

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Hajime Tsuburaya. Written by Testuo Kinjo and Shinichi Sekizawa. Airdate July 17, 1966.

Unlike Ultra Q, which has no introductory episode and drops viewers into the middle of its premise, Ultraman begins with an episode that establishes its formula and explains its alien hero, the Science Special Search Party, and their various tools of the trade. It fits this all in the space of a half-hour span while still finding enough time for action and a fight with a big monster. That’s a lot to do, and while “Ultra Operation No. 1” isn’t the strongest episode of the series, it checks off all the boxes it needs to and leaves viewers ready to see more. 

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Ultraman Ep. 0: The Birth of Ultraman

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Akio Jissoji. Written by Tetsuo Kinjo. Airdate July 10, 1966.

We have to start here — I write with some embarrassment for the poor Tsuburaya Productions team. This “pilot” episode for Ultraman is just a live stage show taped in black-and-white to promote the actual show debuting the next week. “The Birth of Ultraman” exists because Tsuburaya Pro desperately needed more time to finish episodes before the premiere date of Ultraman, and this was the quickest way for the Tokyo Broadcasting System to get something on the air to create a buffer. TBS could have gone ahead and broadcast the last remaining episode of Ultra Q, but because it wasn’t a monster-centered episode, they delayed it for over a year and a half to leap right into … this.

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Ultraman: An Introduction

~ Ryan Harvey

Ultra Q created the basic style of the Ultra series with its mixture of giant monsters and investigators of the strange and unusual, its medley of different story types that could swing from weird science and espionage to fairy tales and outright comedy. But the Ultra series wouldn’t have marched on as it did if the next show, Ultraman, didn’t add something essential for its future survival: a repeatable and appealing all-ages formula that brought in a central icon — a superhero. 

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Ultra Q Ep. 1: Defeat Gomess!

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Hajime Tsuburaya. Written by Toshihiro Ijima (writing as Kitao Senzoku). Airdate Jan. 2, 1966.

It’s the first Sunday night of a new year. You switch on the TV at 7 p.m. to the Tokyo Broadcasting System to check out the premiere of a new program from that special effects guy who does those monster flicks. You hear the sounds of eerie groaning and metallic squealing as mysterious swirls coalesce into the title “Ultra Q.” Then comes the deep, Serling-esque voice of Koji Ishizaka…

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Ultra Q: An Introduction

~ Ryan Harvey

My plan for these show introductions is to keep them short(ish). This is one of the exceptions. As the launch site for a mammoth franchise, Ultra Q demands a deeper look into its background and an introduction to several of the key figures in the history of the franchise. And I’m still going to have to skim over a lot. 

My succinct description of Ultra Q for newcomers is “The Twilight Zone meets Godzilla meets The X-Files.” That still isn’t quite right — once you see an episode like “Kanegon’s Cocoon,” the wheels of categorization fly right off — but it positions Ultra Q in a succession of genre archetypes that makes sense.

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Welcome to The Ultra Project

~ Ryan Harvey

Greetings, residents of Earth! My name is Ryan, and if you want to know more about me and my writing, please visit my other site and maybe buy my book while you’re there. If you’re on this site, you’ve found the space where I take a journey through the long-running Ultra Series (a.k.a. the Ultraman series), a Japanese science-fiction and fantasy franchise that started in 1966 and is still zooming along today. 

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