Ultraseven Ep. 3: Secret of the Lake

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Samaji Nonagase. Written by Tetsuo Kinjo. Airdate Oct. 15, 1967.

This was the first Ultraseven episode produced, and it’s fascinating to see how much the crew already had a feel for the show’s possibilities and what made it different from Ultraman. It’s a better start than the first two episodes aired: “The Invisible Challenger” put the pieces in place, “The Green Terror” emphasized the serious mood, but “Secret of the Lake” demonstrates what Ultraseven can do when it swings into action with full confidence in its premise.

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Ultraman Ep. 6: The Coast Guard Command

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Samaji Nonagase. Written by Masahiro Yamada. Airdate August 21, 1966.

The first episode to focus on young Hoshino, the boy who wants to one day join the Science Special Search Party. Hoshino and his friends Chiro and Nobuku get swept up in a Hardy Boys-style story investigating smugglers along the wharf. Notorious smuggler “Diamond-Kick” (great name) has hidden his newest diamond shipment among bags of cacao beans, and the young detectives end up kidnapped when they start poking around the warehouses. It sounds like the kind of adventure tale a child might come up with. A child might also add a giant monster that comes up onto the wharf to throw everything into chaos. A monster who loves chocolate.

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October Is Here! About the Posting Schedule

~ Ryan Harvey

Welcome to the most wonderful month of the year. The month of imagination.

October is one of my busiest months, where I try to cram in as much seasonal viewing and reading as possible. Fortunately, I’ve got The Ultra Project onto a regular schedule, with two posts going up each week on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I may have a few bonus posts pop up, but this is what you can expect for at least the next month. I already have all the regular October posts written and scheduled, with a special episode review falling on October 30th. I didn’t even have to go out of episode order to get this review to land on Devil’s Night. The timing just worked out, thanks to the Star of Ultra or something.

Thank you to all who have visited the site during its first month of existence. I’m hoping to draw more readers through October and keep the site moving until I fully break free of the Google sandbox. If you like my posts, please share them on social media. (That was my requisite bit of begging. Had to do it once.)

Ultraseven Ep. 2: The Green Terror

~ Ryan Harvey
Anne Yuri in Ultraseven wields a laser gun.

Directed by Samaji Nonagase. Written by Tetsuo Kinjo. Airdate Oct. 8, 1967.

Eiji Tsuburaya must have had a dictum about his shows: within the first batch of episodes, there must be a plant monster. Ultra Q has the giant flower Juran, Ultraman has a green lettuce sack called Greenmons, and now Ultraseven’s second episode brings us Alien Waiell, a walking stack of spiky mixed greens. It doesn’t look great, but it’s better than Greenmons. I’ll say it again: I don’t have much interest in vegetation monsters. 

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Ultraman Ep. 5: The Secret of the Miroganda

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Toshihiro Iijima. Written by Keisuke Fujikawa. Airdate August 14, 1966.

Rewatching “The Secret of the Miroganda” made me acutely aware of the budget fight Tsuburaya Productions was locked into during the early production of Ultraman. TBS may have given an enthusiastic greenlight to the show, but they were hesitant about the hefty price tag per episode, which was often more than double the cost of an episode of Ultra Q. The network forced the creative team at Tsuburaya Pro to cut costs at every opportunity. The situation improved once episodes started to air and the show became a popular sensation, but the early sacrifices the creative team had to make often poke through. “Miroganda,” only the second episode shot, has some of the most obvious. 

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Monster Theater: The Abominable Snowman (1957)

~ Ryan Harvey

Directed by Val Guest. Written by Nigel Neale. Starring Peter Cushing, Forrest Tucker.

I’m inaugurating an occasional feature of reviews of monster movies outside the world of Japanese tokusatsu. Monsters are glorious, they live in cinemas all over the world, and I’ll take any excuse to talk about them. And my love for Hammer Films is as strong as my love for tokusatsu. In a different mood, I might have created a whole blog just about Hammer movies.

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Ultra Q Ep. 5: Peguila Is Here!

~ Ryan Harvey
Peguila emerges over a ridge

Directed by Samaji Nonagase. Written by Masahiro Yamada. Airdate Jan. 30, 1966.

Here’s a change of scenery, shifting from urban Tokyo to the desolate wastes of Antarctica. There’s another change, which is that Jun is the only member of the regular or semi-regular cast to appear. Without Yuriko and Ippei around to lighten the mood, this is the first episode to completely bypass humor — appropriate for a bleak, tense story set in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

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We Are Live! Livewired Like Eleking!

~ Ryan Harvey

The Ultra Project is now live and out to the public!

I’ve worked on this site for about two months after several years of pondering it. I gave the site a beta-launch two weeks ago when I made the posts public, but I made no official announcement about it to anyone except for a friend who could provide feedback. But as of this morning, I’ve sent out the blast to social media — “Hey, look at this!”

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