Author: Ryan Harvey

I'm an award-winning science-fiction and fantasy author (daylighting as a marketing writer) living in Southern California.

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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