I didn’t know what to expect out of Ultraman: Rising. I have been exposed to Ultraman at some level but I actually haven’t watched any of the shows or movies that assets to the character. I have always thought that one day I will be watching it as I like kaiju and giant robots (Also my mother loved Ultraman when she was young, props to her); but that never happened until today.
So, as there is yet another re-iteration of the storyline called Ultraman: Rising–the second for Netflix which is kinda strange since other media does so well. Can it be described as an introduction for people who have never watched the series, and a decent film on its own? Fortunately, I am content with the response of both of those questions.
Ultraman: Rising the Movie Review
It’s time to dive in as ultra American baseball hero Ken Sato plays for the Yomuri Giants after departing from LA Dodgers where he could have easily won the world series. But this is not the real reason he has returned to Japan; he has come to replace his father as Ultraman, who can no longer serve as a hero following an injury.
It looks easy to challenge and assume the roles of playing for a new team and performing tasks as a superhero all at the same time, but for Ken it truly is a challenge when he discovers a baby kaiju that hatches in his headquarters base and he is now responsible for tending to her upbringing. And Ken has to figure out how to fill in the gaps of being a hero, mom and teammate all at once to manage to save Japan, become victorious in the sports championship and protect the baby kaiju from the evil forces that are after her.
Ultraman: Rising Critique The film Ultraman: Rising, in its essence, can be defined as a mix of a typical superhero film and that parenthood genre drama. The film does pretty well in both aspects actually. The fights between Ultraman and all the creatures come off quite well in terms of action spectacle with good designs, good power use, and decent environmental appreciation. Although there are a lot of monster vs city battles set to occur, the filmmakers managed to incorporate a lot of location variety just within that space and figured out plenty of unique ways that giant creeps, especially those which wish to cause the least collateral damage, would traverse a city. And as a parenthood comedy, I think it’s fair to say it’s one of the most comical movies I have seen this year. Though it largely makes use of the usual clichés of the genre, consisting of cleaning after terrible messes and indulging in uncontrollable and excruciating screams, the idea of a baby being a kaiju does bring quite a bit of newness to these concepts. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the baby herself is one of the most adorable babies I have seen and I want a plush doll of her right now.
Even if certain story elements may have felt somewhat rushed, I want to emphasize that most of the emotional journeys and unexpected thematic depth presented in the film were enjoyable. While the developing attachments between Ken and the baby kaiju, even the father-son relationship that Ken seeks to restore, had positive influences on the motivation of the villain who, despite being completely flawed, had a clear and relatable cause for his actions. In addition, I enjoyed how the film depicts the kaiju themselves.
Most tokusatsu plots, which encompasses the genre that the Ultraman series fit in well and may even have been created by, depict these giant monsters as an invincible enemy that must be quelled in order to make it to the end of the story. But Ultraman: Rising paints these kaiju in a much more realistic perspective: that they are indeed ferocious creatures but at the end of the day they are animals with feelings, families and lives out of the battle scene, and thought. Yes, they may be dangerous and yes, they are beautiful and should have a reason to live despite the dangers they bring. I never imagined the makers of this movie would even bother incorporating a theme such as this and was blown away with how well they delivered it.
As far as animation goes, the film chooses a more stylised, semi-good looking cartoonish style. With cartoonishly exaggerated but not too unrealistic proportions and large exaggerated looking anime faces; along with the tokusatsu influence for Ultraman and the kaiju of course. Movement is great, the backgrounds are fine and I said earlier that the fight scenes are fantastic. So, as per what is clearly visible, it’s the art style that has been enabled largely for the creatures and not the average look of the humans.
The human characters do not look that bad as such and it never completely took me out of the film but with every single shot, I was left with the impression that something was off about them and then quite simply it came to me: it is the hair. Hair of all the human characters is styled in a fashion common in action figure type hair and this is probably done to suit the toy line that however accompanies the movie.
But said hair still moves with some realism concerning hair physicality, even with a lack of realistic hair textures. Be again, it is not the worst thing and it is probably not something that you would have even did without a nerd like me pointing it out; but quite frankly, when your main character has such prominent bangs which do not look like they would move, when they start flopping around, you just feel like something is off.
How Ultraman: Rising is going to work on the fans of this franchise and whether there is any single intellectual capacity for the audience with such fans, is quite boldly. People talk about one show and then slide straight to the future of sequels, if there are any. But as a singular film, it was quite compelling. Is this movie perfect? No, absolutely not, but the action is entertaining, there is an emotional depth, the characters are appealing and the comedy works more times than not.
It’s a great movie that the whole family can watch, and it does make for a good family watch. If you are a parent and have children and are looking for something to watch together, this is one of those films that disappoints. So be prepared for the children to love Ultraman more than anything in the world.
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