A question for "Ultraman fans".

I have been roaming around, reading, and even posting in some instances, in various threads that all seem to revolve around one thing: being a fan of Ultraman. I understand that it has become sort of the 'in' thing to be a die-hard fan of Ultraman and to sort of spread the gospel, but the actions by some members here have caused me to question the motives of these fans and I just want to bring the question out there, since I dont really like beating around the bush.

We are all tokusatsu fans here. Some like KR, some like SS, some like Ultra, some like Godzilla, etc. And rarely do I see fans who like 'only' like SS, or 'only' like Ultra. Almost everyone here like at least 2, quite often more, types of series. Of course people tend to favor one over the other, which is only natural. But, what I have noticed is that among these fans, the ones who favor Ultraman over the others seem to have a tendency to look down upon not only other series, but people for their lack of 'open-mindedness'. Case in point is the recent thread titled "Who else thinks that the majority SS is crap?". This was made by a fan who really enjoys watching Ultraman. But, why was there a need to go out and all of a sudden bash SS? After reading the thread, I saw that the poster basically wanted to support his opinion that Ultraman was more original year by year than any other season.

Now, Im not saying that all Ultraman fans are out to take over the world, so to speak, and have everyone watch and love Ultraman, cuz thats clearly not the case. I am also not saying that Ultraman fans only like Ultraman, cuz I know plenty of fans who like more than one show. What I am doing, however, is asking why fans of Ultraman seem to be the most aggressive when it comes to comparing or supporting their show of choice?

I know I will get a lot of flack for this and I expect it. I know that calling out a certain group of people isnt a good idea. I just want to open the floor to conversation and discussion cuz I feel that other people, not only myself, want to know why this happens.

I've got the boss man upset with me, so I'll be staying out of this one. That said, you ask a very good question. Its one that I have also wondered, pretty frequently, but I was certain if I did the thread would spiral downward very, VERY quickly.

I'll be watching this thread, but doing my best to avoid responding from here on.

A certain few Ultraman fans seem to feel persecuted or something because, well, it really and truly isn't as well followed on major English-speaking forums. Do I feel that way? Nope. I DO try and "spread the gospel" as you put it but I try not to be a prick about it. Do I hate most of what Toei puts out these days? Well, truthfully, yes and I will tell you why a thousand times if you give me the chance but I'm not going to tell you guys who like it that you're somehow worse as Tokusatsu fans for doing so.

But it is true that oftentimes as an Ultra fan it feels like we're being relegated to the back of the line. When I first signed up here at HJU it was for the Ultraman downloads but I had to comb through the dusty archives to find them because they were so often uploaded and forgotten amongst the slew of Sentai, Rider, and Metal Hero uploads. It's definitely gotten a lot better around here sincve then, though, and I'm very happy about that. It still seems harder to keep an Ultraman thread afloat than a Toei-related one but that's okay, whatever. But then go over to Monster Zero (a Godzilla forum) and you have a similar thing going on, only this time substitute Godzilla and Gamera for Toei series as the main topic of discussion and leave Ultraman off to the side as the somewhat rejected younger brother.

As I see it, the general attitude can be summed up as not being "OH YEAH, ULTRAMAN!" and more of a half-hearted, "Oh and yeah... uh, Ultraman." If that makes sense. I kind of think it's because on the one hand you have kaiju fans who aren't interested because they think hero shows are daft and on the other you have fans of hero shows who dislike giant battles (such as the sentai fan who tunes out the mecha sequences). Ultraman is a hybrid of both and so he kind of winds up stuck in the middle and shunned by these two major groups. This is, however, a gross generalization because most of the community is far more diverse than that if you really take the magnifying glass out and pay attention.

All that aside, I really try not to take it too personally. People will like what they want to like. I just like more awesome things than the rest of you do.*

*Joking, of course.

From my post in the SS thread:

It's all personal preference. People will overlook similarities in franchises they enjoy. But in the end, they're all franchises and as such have common themes and motifs that stretch from one series to another.

You may not find Ultra Series the same, but that's because you're attuned to Ultra Series. Same with a hardcore Sentai watcher. This attunement even extends into certain franchises themselves, like Showa vs Heisei Kamen Riders, or UC vs. AU Gundams.

It's a form of cognitive dissonance. People will unknowingly begin justifying even the smallest decisions after the fact. Examples:

In Festinger and Carlsmith's classic 1959 experiment, students were asked to spend an hour on boring and tedious tasks (e.g. turning pegs a quarter turn, over and over again). The tasks were designed to generate a strong, negative attitude. Once the subjects had done this, the experimenters asked some of them to do a simple favour.

They were asked to talk to another subject (actually an actor) and persuade them that the tasks were interesting and engaging. Some participants were paid $20 (inflation adjusted to 2009, this equates to $148.40) for this favor, another group was paid $1 (or $7.42 in '2009 dollars'), and a control group was not asked to perform the favour.
When asked to rate the boring tasks at the conclusion of the study (not in the presence of the other "subject"), those in the $1 group rated them more positively than those in the $20 and control groups. This was explained by Festinger and Carlsmith as evidence for cognitive dissonance. The researchers theorized that people experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions, "I told someone that the task was interesting", and "I actually found it boring." When paid only $1, students were forced to internalize the attitude they were induced to express, because they had no other justification. Those in the $20 condition, however, had an obvious external justification for their behaviour, and thus experienced less dissonance.

In subsequent experiments, an alternative method of "inducing dissonance" has become common. In this research, experimenters use counter-attitudinal essay-writing, in which people are paid varying amounts of money (e.g. one or ten dollars) for writing essays expressing opinions contrary to their own. People paid only a small amount of money have less justification for their inconsistency and tend to experience more dissonance.

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In a different type of experiment conducted by Jack Brehm, 225 female students rated a series of common appliances and were then allowed to choose one of two appliances to take home as a gift. A second round of ratings showed that the participants increased their ratings of the item they chose, and lowered their ratings of the rejected item. This can be explained in terms of cognitive dissonance. When making a difficult decision, there are always aspects of the rejected choice that one finds appealing and these features are dissonant with choosing something else. In other words, the cognition, "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition, "There are some things I like about Y." More recent research has found similar results in four-year-old children and capuchin monkeys.

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You get the idea.

This has nothing to do with the merits or each show, but it's probably why you get Sentai folks and Ultraman folks and whatnot.

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The interesting thing is cognitive dissonance actually gets stronger the more outside forces react negatively to a choice or decision. People begin to provide stronger and stronger justifications as to why they've made the decisions they did. You can see this rather strongly in politics currently. It's called the 'backfire effect'. An example:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

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(Note: This is a not a conservative/liberal thing, it's a human thing...so let's not start that here.)

The theory I'm putting forth here is that the Ultraman fans are a smaller demographic here, and as such, feel the need to defend their chosen show. You can probably increase that effect the smaller a franchises demographic is on the board.

Of course, the show could just be better. Who knows.

I think it does have something to do with the Ultra Community being a rather small sub-set within a already small Fan Genre. So they may feel more inclined to defend their franchise of choice against other, more popular one's.

Like Star Trek Vs. Babylon 5. B5 has a vastly smaller fanbase than Star Trek does, so someone who is a diehard B5 fan might feel the need to attack Star Trek to justify their "Investment" (in the form of Viewership, buying series merchandise and so forth) in the franchise since it must be the better of the two since THEY like it.

Inui Takumi said:

Case in point is the recent thread titled "Who else thinks that the majority SS is crap?". This was made by a fan who really enjoys watching Ultraman. But, why was there a need to go out and all of a sudden bash SS? After reading the thread, I saw that the poster basically wanted to support his opinion that Ultraman was more original year by year than any other season.

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Well maybe you shoulda just asked me yourself via PM or in the thread by that crazy-ass poster. Oh wait, it was me! :O_O: I wanna know why SS fans feel they need to start another thread feeling so coy and clever, instead of just asking me in the thread in question? That's a doozie. Ironically this thread has almost no one looking at it, as opposed to the other thread in question.

And for the record, the reason Ultraman fans act like evangelistic converters is because SS fans have shown a tendency to be very defensive. But, I don't know where they would get that idea from :rolleyes2:

Japanfan4ever said:

And for the record, the reason I act like an evangelistic converter is because some fans have shown a tendency to be very defensive. But, I don't know where they would get that idea from :rolleyes2:

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Fixed. Don't speak for other people, it's really annoying. :/

I have tried Ultraman, but the action just feels to slow and hammy, the same reason why I ignore most Mecha fights. Giant people fighting other giant people have never really interested me.

Ultraman always fucking gets the end of the stick in this fandom. Fansubbers have basically ignored most ultra series and those that have done ultra series besides fegushi have died[tokuplex] or have stopped doing the series in general[mebius tv-nihon]. it hasn't been until recently that interest has gone up with Ultraman again thanks to MMBUGLTM. YET BOTH ULTRA GALAXY SERIES WERE IGNORED. HNT just started Neos, Sgt Kira Productions is currently on their way to doing Dyna and I've heard hints of HON doing Gaia. Aside from little leaks of Subs and Dubs from DVD. Everything else gets ignored.

Given how limited the resources for subbing are in the tokusatsu community, I'm surprised there's been as much Ultra completed to date as there has been.