This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Engine Inspection presents Going Ultra!
I will be discussing Ultraman Zet.
And when I say Ultraman Zet, I do mean the dub of Ultraman Z that
SuperRy Productions has so kindly decided to provide for us Western English-speaking fans.
So, you know, I'm gonna call it Western fans. I know people get so hypersensitive and say,
you shouldn't... never mind. I was gonna be a jerk. I don't want to be a jerk.
I don't want to be a jerk, but I do get irritated with people sometimes.
But, you know, I'll be the better man. I'll try to be the Ultraman.
Anyway, I really liked Ultraman Z when I watched it originally
with the official English subtitles provided by SuperRy Productions on their YouTube channel,
which ran in, I want to say 2020, but I'm not 100% sure. It could have been 2021. I really don't know.
But in the year 2023, April, they decided to release Ultraman Zet,
which is their dub of Ultraman Z, which is pretty fabulous.
I saw some comments made and it made me curious as to whether or not the dub of Ultraman Z happened,
because the numbers were good for the screenings of Shin Ultraman, the dub that is,
because there were subtitled and dubbed productions or releases of Shin Ultraman in American theaters.
And I bought a ticket. I didn't actually go because I couldn't make it, but I bought a ticket at least.
So I supported that release because I want to see more dubs and I think it would be good.
So I'm definitely, you know, who knows? That's definitely speculation as to whether or not that had an effect on them
deciding to go forward with this dub. I would assume with the length of time that it takes to dub,
and this is 26 episodes, that it wouldn't have been based on that, continued upon that.
I think it would have had to have been in the works for longer than the results from the movie,
because I think the movie came out in December, although I guess 26 weeks.
Now, I mean, I'm not assuming, well, I don't know.
Do they have the whole dub in the can already or are they working on it with like a month lead time or something like that?
I don't really know how animation works, but I will talk a lot about how this is a dub for a couple more minutes,
and then I will talk about the content of the episode itself, because while I do care about the fact that it's dubbed,
I also am here primarily for the story, and I want to assess the story and some new perspectives,
new ideas that came to my mind while watching Zet this time.
So first of all, I'm going to say one thing I really like about the dub is I like that it feels very much like an anime.
I was watching it with my wife and kid, and my wife pointed out that you can totally tell that the voices, the lips don't sync.
And I think, honestly, I feel like the men's voices sync better than the women's voices, at least Yuka.
Hers is a little off, but I like the voices that they're using.
They feel, it feels like a live action anime, and I told her, look, if you just think of it as an anime instead,
and you enjoy it for that aspect of it, then it's fine.
She said those voices don't look like they're coming out of those people, and I don't know if it was, we didn't discuss it in detail.
I don't know if it was more the lip sync issue or, you know, lip out of sync issue,
or if they just didn't seem to match to her, but I did think about that a little bit too.
Well, one thing I gotta say I appreciate about Zet and Z is that the character designs are very subdued.
They're very normal. These are, it's like, if you look at Ultraman, sorry, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai,
the designs are so over the top that they border on the ridiculous, honestly.
And it's sometimes, you know, as an adult man with children watching these shows, sometimes it's kind of like, you know what, guys?
I'm sorry, I don't know why they dress me like that. I don't like that. I wouldn't dress like that.
But I accept it because it's the character, and if you think about it as like an anime, that'd be fine.
That'd be a fine design in an anime. But yeah, you don't need that.
And I think Ultraman proves that you can have these, you know, very realistic, you know, simple human designs,
which people could complain and call, I don't know, unexciting or uninteresting, but I think that's totally wrong.
But anyway, I don't exactly know what the contention was, but I really like the dub voices.
Yeah, I don't care that there's some lack of syncing. I think the feel and the vibe that everybody has is really good.
And ultimately, again, because I'm interested in the story, I like the fact that I don't have to read the subtitles
and be distracted in that aspect from watching the show and enjoying the story.
I can just kind of let it, I can let it be presented to me in the, you know, in my native tongue, and it kind of makes it more exciting.
I noticed some really interesting things, interesting things, obviously they stripped out all the dialogue.
And by the way, I'm now 100% confident that that was Mock Dent voicing the Savenger, or Seven, Savenger? Savenger?
Whatever, how are you going to pronounce that? The Savenger warning, you know, Savenger is about to land. Please clear the area.
I'm 100% sure that's him, but we'll find out if it's not.
Anyway, so yeah, I really like the dub cast. I feel like they capture the feeling of each character.
You know, Yuka is over the top excited. Yoko, which I believe is Yuka and Yoko, which I can't believe they named the characters like that.
But anyway, she's like serious and determined and kind of no-nonsense and like a tough gal, almost like a tomboy,
but she's got her femininity still and it definitely works very well.
Haruki sounds, it's Haruki right? Not Haruka. I'm pretty sure it's Haruki.
He sounds about how I would imagine he sounds, and Zed himself sounds so cool. I love his voice actor.
He reminds me of the guy who played Akihiko in Persona 3 and the spinoffs with him in it.
And Dan Moriboshi in the Netflix Ultraman anime adaptation.
I don't think it's him. I think it's somebody else, but I really love one, the way his voice performance, and two, the way he speaks.
And I love that they retained his high formal speech. And the line, Earthese is ultra difficult, just tickles me to no end.
I loved it back then, originally when I watched it, because I think it's the same exact line. And I love it in the dub.
And it's great. Earthese is ultra difficult. And yeah, anyway, I really like that.
So I went on for way longer talking about the dub and some other extraneous things that I planned to.
I want to keep these episodes short, but I want to talk about the story and some things that I noticed.
And then I'll do it for just a couple of minutes and then I'll let you go, get out of here,
and you can go live your ultra life somewhere else.
Anyway, one of the things I want to mention is that Zet is telling Zero that he wants to be a hero,
and Zero is saying, hey, you're a one third hero. Zet says, don't treat me like a half hero, and Zero says half.
You're more like a one third hero. And he's like, whoa, no, you can't say that. That's ultra harsh. Gosh, that's funny.
Anyway, that's very cute, very funny. But the accessibility of the dub is what makes it great,
because even a young child who can't read yet can hear the English voices and hear in their native tongue
and get more of the story than if they were watching a subtitle and had their parents reading them to them the subtitles.
Anyway, so now that I've entirely closed out the dub versus sub issue, which is that we need more dubs, not less dubs,
you can keep your subs, but I just want dubs too, man. That's all. Anyway, so moving on to the story,
the one third hero comment that Zero makes about Zet is very similar to the scenario and the feeling,
the unspoken feeling or sentiment that I detect is felt about Haruki.
Yoko is obviously the better Savenger pilot. She's obviously the better operator than him.
And her skill at those things, I don't think it makes him feel less than. It's just like a fact.
It's a clear fact that she's better than him at combat and in these rescue situations.
She's either his senpai or senior or she's just more skilled and the guy's got to work hard.
So I like this parallel between Zet and Haruki that they are both behind the eight ball.
They are both having to struggle. They are both looking to grow and become better than who they are today.
But, or at the same time, so I like the dynamic and I like it the same time that that is rooted only in a desire for goodness.
It's not self aggrandizement. It's not selfishness. It's heroism.
And what really solidifies that for me, because I think it's pretty clear with Zet from the start,
that he's in over his head and he's fighting the space shark during again or whatever it's called.
He's outclassed obviously, but he's doing it for his master Zero.
And he's doing it because it's the right thing to do even if he's got no shot to actually come out ahead of this guy in his current state.
And I think that's really great. So he's an Ultraman and he's facing an ultra difficult threat for himself and he's doing it heroically.
But even more impressive than that is Haruki doesn't question what he's dead.
I don't feel at all that Haruki took the chance to become Ultraman to, what did he say, merge?
To merge with Zet so that he could be brought back to life.
I think he only took the shot to be merged with Zet to protect the people who were in danger there.
They were still by that school and he wants to protect those children and all the people evacuating there.
And he again accepted the idea of the two of them merging without a second thought.
And that impressed me watching it this time because it's just immediately he says like if we merge we can save those people.
Yes. Okay, let's do it. And then immediately they begin to merge.
And there's almost a little bit of a moment that I feel like I detected where it seemed like Zet kind of hung his head.
Like I don't want to do this or I wish there was another way.
There's something like remorseful about this merger and I don't exactly know why.
I don't know if that's intended or if that's just something I got this time watching it.
But that's what it seemed to communicate to me.
And I like that because I like this idea that he didn't kill him.
He didn't kill him. They died fighting the space shark dude.
So there's not that same type of regret or pathos potential from the original Ultraman.
Speaking of which, I love the fact that they use the...
I'm pausing talking about the deep story stuff.
Talking about cool effects and nods to the classic.
That sphere that they're in with the red, blue, and yellow lights waving around, that's lifted from and a reproduction...
I don't know how, but it's somehow a reproduction of the effect of Shin Hayata and Ultraman talking all the way back from 1962 before...
He dropped the Beta Capsule on Shin's chest and then they merged somehow with that.
Anyway, so that was a really cool thing that they did.
But yeah, he has no way of knowing that he's not just going to become...
And this is a hierarchy I'm talking about.
A hierarchy has no way of knowing that he's not just going to become like a zombie or like an animated corpse that Zet is tooling around in.
And he might be giving his body to Zet and Zet is completely inhabiting him.
Like it could be this scenario.
Zet's mind goes into Haruki's body.
Haruki is dead and Zet gets to live through him and help these people and that's it.
That could be the case.
He doesn't even think about that.
He just says, I want to save the people no matter what.
And I've been talking about that for like three minutes but I just really wanted to stress the point of how impressive I find that and how cool it is.
And that's about it.
That was the thing that struck me the most is like how they are these underdogs, the two of them, and they parallel each other in that way.
And how they're both noble and heroic and we get to see that.
And I would say because I've seen the show already, you know the subversion, that this makes them a two-thirds hero.
And I like that because maybe sometimes a two-thirds hero is all you need.
So yeah, again, I really enjoyed this episode.
I thought it was a great start.
I love the comedy that was laced throughout as this dramatic stuff is going on.
I love the drama. I love the fights.
It's just, it's very cool.
The Sivinger Mecha effect is extremely interesting.
I really, it perplexes me that Sivinger and Ultraman Zet are like, they're both around 50 meters tall.
And that Gomez monster I believe from the beginning was only 20 meters tall.
And it looked to me like Sivinger was about 40 meters tall because he looked to be about double the height.
And I don't know how they got somebody small enough to get in that suit.
I don't know if they were using, I don't know what that effect was, but it's really cool looking back at it that they were able to make such an interesting effect work.
Oh, and then like when the space shark guy like drives him through a building, like through an entire building.
And you get to see them enter, you get to see them as they're traversing the building.
And then you get to see them actually pop through the other side.
And you know, there's all this destruction, which is terrible.
Maybe it was a really cool effect.
So yeah, I'm very funny about Ultraman because like I don't like all the crazy property damage and you know, super sentai to some extent as well.
And I enjoy that Combinator is much less, the scope of the destruction of property is much smaller.
And like, you know, they're not all going to be abandoned buildings.
So people are, you know, likely dying, except, you know, they do have the conceit of the evacuation happening here because that's like the procedure.
Because these people, you know, from storage know that they're going to be dealing with kaiju and they have, you know, protocols to deal with that.
So, you know, that's all very well and good, but you know, it's a little disturbing and it's a little like odd that it's so enjoyable to watch them fighting like this when, you know, bad stuff is happening.
And like, you know, people's lives are going to be ruined and it's, you know, you lose your place of employment and all sorts of secondary consequences like that from, you know, the reality of the kaiju battles or whatever.
But like, you know, it's a fun show.
So I guess we, we excuse it and we let it slide.
But anyway, that's all stuff that comes from thinking about this all for a while.
And I just mean like the whole kaiju thing in general, it's been on my mind for some time since I initially got into Ultraman all that time ago, especially because I started with, not Denazinon, with the Gridman anime.
And that definitely addresses the issue of property damage because, well, it just does it in a very clever way and they don't quite do that here.
So anyway, just again, this was a really fun episode.
I enjoyed the debut a ton and I'm going to keep going covering these as they come out.
So look forward to coming back next time.
I hope you enjoyed that.
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