Ultraman Taro!

For the discussion of any Ultraman related shows, movies, comics, video games, etc.
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Angilasman
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

Post by Angilasman »

^ When the first Birdon episode ended on a cliffhanger I thought "Ah, it's an iconic monster, so it makes sense it was introduced in a two-parter." Finished the second episode before work this morning and Birdon still reins undefeated!

Also, this story is a transparent riff on the movie Rodan, which is fun.

Did you realize the Knacle/Black King two-parter is a blatant rip-off of the superior Alien Guts two-parter from Ultraseven?

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Angilasman
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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They weren't so great in the '70s at recreating kaiju from previous shows. They tend to look really "off." I have to congratulate Eleking on actually looking like Eleking!

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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Angilasman wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:37 am They weren't so great in the '70s at recreating kaiju from previous shows. They tend to look really "off." I have to congratulate Eleking on actually looking like Eleking!
Although his horns didn't spin...
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Angilasman
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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^ I didn't say it was perfect, just that it managed to resemble the thing it was supposed to be!

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o.supreme
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Angilasman wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:37 am They weren't so great in the '70s at recreating kaiju from previous shows. They tend to look really "off." I have to congratulate Eleking on actually looking like Eleking!
Yeah Zetton II from RoU was pretty rough, as were any reappearances of previous kaiju in Ace & Taro. Then there were the Jr.s (specifically Baltan and Metron). While the new Red King and Baltans in 80 had their own flare, they definitely looked better. It's nice to see in the modern age (well pretty much since Max) faithful recreations of classic kaiju.
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Angilasman
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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^ The recreations in 80 are neat. They look close to the originals but have a bit of their own (as you said) stylistic flare.

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Angilasman
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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30 episodes in and I have this to say: Ultraman Ace has more great episodes, but Taro is a better show because the quality and tone is consistent and generally good.

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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Angilasman wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 8:48 pm 30 episodes in and I have this to say: Ultraman Ace has more great episodes, but Taro is a better show because the quality and tone is consistent and generally good.
Yeah, ultimately I think Taro is the better show by most objective/critical standards - more consistent, with a better fleshed-out protagonist and supporting cast - but the vibe of Ace works far, far better for me personally, and when all the pieces do fall into place it absolutely sings.
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Probably the greatest compliment I can give BOTH to Ace and Taro is this... After years of just looking at images of the kaiju in photobooks, and online, and thinking to myself "wow, those suites look awful", or "man that monster looks dumb..." I can say, after watching both shows, they were fun, and I'm glad I own the BRD. I mean the original Ultraman will always be my favorite, and RoU a worthy successor, but Ace and Taro definitely made my 5 year old self smile again. I cannot say the same for some of the modern-era Ultra's. They are not ALL bad, but R/B (for example) was probably one I'll definitely not watch again anytime soon.
Last edited by o.supreme on Tue Apr 06, 2021 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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o.supreme wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 1:20 pm Probably the greatest compliment I can give BOTH to Ace and Taro is this... After years of just looking at images of the kaiju in photobooks, and online, and thinking to myself "wow, those suites look awful", or "man that monster looks dumb..." I can say, after watching both shows, they were fun, and I'm glad I own the BRD. I mean the original Ultraman will always be my favorite, and RoU a worthy successor, but Ace and Taro definitely made my 5 year old self smile again. I cannot say the same for some of the modern-era Ultra's. They are not ALL bad, but R/B (for example) was probably one I'll definitely not watch again anytime soon.
Even though the monster suits in the '70s got shoddier and shabby looking the overall quality of the effects is still pretty great. Just finished Taro, and there was some great miniature work at the end. They also really used the more cost effective method of having the suit performers fight on what was likely a big empty floor if the soundstage and just make some (likely larger scale) foreground miniatures like a construction site or neighborhood and shoot the entirety of the fight with the camera at ground level essential shooting through those miniatures for scale. It looks good!

Anyway, the last three episodes of Taro were pretty great! A wedding episode with plentiful tokusatsu miniature effects, a Return of Ultraman crossover, and an ending with a nice character-arc completing focus on the protagonist!

Hate that the luitenent was replaced so close to the end (must've got cast in another show), but he at least got name namechecked in the finale and the replacement guy was good and maybe deserved a few more episodes to get fleshed out himself!

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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Wow, I'm really enjoying Taro. The group's camaraderie is a lot of fun so far. Overall the first 13 episodes feel much less cheap than Ace, and there's been a lot of fun stuff with the kaiju. Most importantly it feels more fresh than Ace, which felt like Return 1.5.
Also, the HQ in the middle of town is super cool! I thought ZAT's goofy looking uniforms and vehicles were gonna bother me but they've grown on me a lot! It does make me even more irritated to see the uniforms of MAT, TAC and ZAT in 7 Ultra Brothers vs Hanuman knowing Sompote probably kept them all.
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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I was going to post this in the general Ultra thread but now it is closed.

I got to say it sure seems like someone REALLY loved Seagorath and wanted to keep bringing him back in some way.
Return of Ultraman: Debut with his mate Seamon. Returned a la stock footage Alien Nackle first part.
Ultraman Ace: Meant to return but Maruchi returned and got torn apart instead. Also appears in the intro I believe.
Ultraman Taro: Makes the head of Tyrant.
Any cameos in Leo or 80? I don't think so.

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Re: Ultraman Taro!

Post by Major sssspielberg! »

I'm curious if Taro inspired a particular sequence in Gamera 3 with the Christmas episode with Terrorist-Seijin.
Spoiler:
The flashback to Hitomi losing her family during a prior kaiju attack, which happens to feature turtle kaiju seems similar enough that I wouldn't be surprised.
However, it could just be coincidence. I don't know if Kaneko/Ito/Higuchi were still watching Ultraman into the 70s or not.
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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There's something about the series Ultraman Taro that's hard to put into words. It adheres to the franchise's core elements and formulaic tropes, with a style like a live-action cartoon, and the production values were clearly far removed from the shows of the '60s, and yet the show brings such a unique determination to everything that it all just works. It's almost magical.

The original Ultraman had just a single 2-part story during its run. UltraSeven bumped that up to three 2-parters, then Return of Ultraman had four of them, and then Ace had just three again. Taro takes it to the next level with five 2-parters and even a 3-parter! For the previous shows, TPC often seemed to intentionally end a 13-episode production cours on a cliffhanger with the first episode of a would-be 2-parter, presumably to nudge the TBS network toward renewing the show for another cours so they could deliver the cliffhanger’s conclusion to their viewers. Ultraman’s second cours ended with The Monster Highness (Part 1). The third cours of UltraSeven ended with The Seven Assassination Plan (Part 1). The first cours of Return ended with the first part of the Seamons/Seagorath 2-parter. Ace ended its first cours with the first part of the Varava 2-parter with the Ultra brothers, and then it ended its second cours with the first part of the Alien Hipporit 2-parter with the Ultra brothers. It’s an interesting ploy, a fail-safe to try to prevent the network from canceling the shows prematurely despite their huge viewership. Taro is the first Ultraman series in which TPC didn’t feel the need to end any cours on a cliffhanger. They had five 2-parters and a 3-parter and they concluded each of them during their respective cours.

Episodes 33 & 34, Five Seconds Before the Big Explosion of the Land of Ultra! and The Last Day of the 6 Ultra Brothers! feature the return of the lead actors from every prior Ultra hero series, all reprising their roles and interacting together onscreen. These episodes also mark the return of writer Mamoru Sasaki, who wrote the teleplays for all six of the Ultraman episodes that Akio Jissoji directed along with two episodes of UltraSeven, including the Jissoji-directed episode 12 which has long since been pulled from circulation. Sasaki went on to create the 1972-1973 Senkosha-produced series Iron King, for which he wrote all 26 episodes, before returning to write these 2-part episodes of Ultraman Taro. They’re unique from other 2-parters because the first episode actually ends with Taro victorious, the cliffhanger provided only by the dialogue from the toy monkey and the narrator. Rather than one long conflict spanning two episodes, it’s more like a standalone episode followed immediately by an episode in which most of the same things happen again in slightly different ways. It’s a lot of fun, especially with all of these returning actors performing together, although it plays very loose with what the prior shows had established about these characters and their alter egos. UltraSeven was previously the only Ultra hero who simply transformed himself into a human disguise, having created his identity of Dan Moroboshi after he arrived on Earth. The first Ultraman, the new Ultraman and Ace had all been depicted as merging themselves with existing humans. In these episodes, though, they’re all depicted in the same way as Seven/Dan, as if the first Ultraman simply transforms himself and goes by the name Hayata on Earth. It kind of makes sense for the new Ultraman and Ace, as each of their shows ended respectively with Hideki Go and Seiji Hokuto seemingly accepting their Ultra hero mergers as permanent. Return of Ultraman ended with Go transforming into Ultraman and departing into space, rather than Ultraman separating from Go and leaving him behind to live on Earth as had happened to Hayata at the end of the original Ultraman. Hokuto transformed into Ace in his last episode knowing that he would never be able to change back again, and they likewise were still merged when Ace departed Earth. Never mind how this Taro 2-parter contradicts the ending of Ace by having him transform back into Hokuto without addressing his alleged inability to ever do so again; it nonetheless makes sense that Go/Ultraman and Hokuto/Ace would seem to coexist with their alter egos more like Dan/Seven at this point. Hayata’s presence, though, is still as much of an unexplained retcon as his presence in outer space in Return of Ultraman episode 38, beyond the obvious reason that it’s just great to see Susumu Kurobe reprise the role. Where these episodes really get crazy is with the Ultras’ apparently limitless ability to keep merging with additional humans! To provide unseen support to Taro, his five older brothers decide to merge themselves with four of the men of ZAT and a visiting scientist. Neither the first Ultraman, nor the new Ultraman, nor Ace separate themselves from their existing human alter egos before they begin this process. Hayata, Go, and Hokuto instead transform themselves into their respective Ultra heroes, each of whom then merges himself with one of the ZAT members in a sequence that is deliberately reminiscent of Ultraman’s initial merger with Go in the first episode of Return. Then toward the end of the second part, after these already-merged Ultras have merged with the ZAT members, they spot a random volleyball team that’s been rendered unconscious by the Alien Temperor and they just decide to merge themselves with the players on the spot, by faceplanting themselves into the players’ unconscious bodies while still in their ZAT bodies. What the hell?! Could the Ultras absorb all of humanity like that? Just by going around and merging themselves with every unconscious person they encounter, no matter how many people they’ve merged with already?

Shigemitsu Taguchi was the head writer for Taro. He wrote 21 of the show’s 53 episodes himself, or about 40% of the whole series, including the first episode, three of the five 2-parters, the Birdon 3-parter, the clip show with Tyrant, the Christmas and Setsubun specials, and the finale. After previously writing six episodes of Return of Ultraman, Taguchi was one of three writers, along with Shozo Uehara and Shinichi Ichikawa, who wrote for the first cours of Ultraman Ace, and he was the only writer who contributed to every cours throughout Ace’s run. After Taro, he went on to be the head writer of Ultraman Leo and he also wrote one episode of Ultraman 80.

Toshiro Ishido wrote 11 episodes of Taro, having previously written for nine episodes of Return and 13 episodes of Ace. While he joined each of those prior shows during their respective second cours, he wrote for Taro from its first cours. He went on to write two episodes of Leo, and he wrote eight episodes of Ultraman 80 starting with episode 34.

Taro also marks the introduction of writer Bumpei Ai to the Ultra franchise. He started writing for this show with episode 26 and his workload only grew as the series progressed. He wrote 10 episodes in total, including half of the show’s 14-episode final cours. Ai would go on to be a mainstay writer throughout Leo’s run and he seems to have been the most prolific writer from the beginning of Ultraman 80 although he stopped writing for that show after episode 33.

Like Seven, Return and Ace before it, some of the best and most interesting episodes of Taro came along in its fourth and final cours, including a quartet of episodes based on Japanese nursery rhymes (45-48). Monster Doll Festival, Sing! Monster Big Match, The Monster Sign is V, Steal the Life of Ultra! and the finale, Farewell, Taro and Mother of Ultra! are some of my favorite episodes of this series. The finale is particularly memorable, with
Spoiler:
Higashi choosing to part with Ultraman Taro and then proceeding to defeat the giant Alien Valky on his own.
It's a bold way to end the series.
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Re: Ultraman Taro!

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Finally felt like getting back to this show. The Birdon three parter was very enjoyable but apparently poor Zoffy was seen as a loser. I really enjoy the sombre tone and slightly horror-esque visuals for the episode with the fallen baby monster, only dislike was the sound used for the monster's cries. Cicada episode I'm also enjoying a lot. "We're not bug collecting if we just buy the cicadas!"

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Re: Ultraman Taro!

Post by daveblackeye15 »

Alien Temperor two parter was okay. Sheesh I get what they were going for with the Ultra Bros. not helping Taro but they seem like dicks. Honestly confused if there were two aliens or if it was like a Doombot or what. Well Tyrant kicks their butts while Kotaro teaches a kid to ride a bike right so I call that payback. Still I REALLY appreciate this was different from the other times the Ultra Bros showed up. New bad guy steamrolls all previous heroes new hero is able to beat them with main character power. It was kinda good when they ganged up on Temperor it was a VERY quick kill.

Chrismas episode was good blend of humor and sadness.
Also REALLY like the horror vibes of the ice monster episode.

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