(U.S.) Ultraman Powered: The Ultimate Hero - Talkback

[ForeverRed]

Geez, Forever Knight... you've pulled your own stunt. Where did you get Ultraman Powered? I've always want to watch this because of Kane Kosugi. Well, of course, I'm a fan of Ultraman aswell.

Oh, and DOA was pretty good movie. It was fun to watch tho. Kane Kosugi = :buttrock:

 

[Forever Knight]

Towards The Future utilized a spandex suit so I can't imagine they would have had the same issues. The action wasn't as bad anyway. Despite some bad acting, which Ultimate Hero also had, I personally found Towards the Future to be the better of the two non-Japanese produced shows.

It's just too bad Hero never aired in the US. Given the chance I'm sure it would have gotten better in a second season.

I read about the spandex suit which from pics I've seen looks pretty cool.

I'm sure a 2nd season would have been alot better, even now I'm at ep 8 and the show is improving, including the fight scenes.

Geez, Forever Knight... you've pulled your own stunt. Where did you get Ultraman Powered? I've always want to watch this because of Kane Kosugi. Well, of course, I'm a fan of Ultraman aswell.

Oh, and DOA was pretty good movie. It was fun to watch tho. Kane Kosugi =

I had to sleep with alot of bitches to get my hands on these 2 non-Japanese Ultra series. Agreed, Kane is a badass mofo. I loved him in the 3 roles I've only seen him in: Powered, Kakuranger, DoA.

His Dad, Sho, did the VA for Ultraman Powered. So awesome.

 

[Kingdom]

I enjoy this show when it was aired on tv back then during my high school years, it was like a glass of refreshing ice cool water after a long draught of no ultra series on tv...

Love the suit but yeah it definitely looks fragile, I mean ya can see em cracks on some part of the body. And yeah, the Psycho Baltans that appear during the first episode are totally awesome. :buttrock:

 

[GekiBlack]

i actually lol when i read up on Ultraman Powered on wiki. Using cardboard boxes to potray as buildings ?!? :laugh:

i remember watching Ultraman Powered when i was young and i have to say the fight scenes of the first episode were so slow. But overall i love the series and i wished i could watch it again ... Damn FK !!!

 

[ryuuseipro]

Towards The Future utilized a spandex suit so I can't imagine they would have had the same issues. The action wasn't as bad anyway. Despite some bad acting, which Ultimate Hero also had, I personally found Towards the Future to be the better of the two non-Japanese produced shows.

Ultraman: Towards the Future is certainly the best of the two non-Japanese Ultraman shows, and one of my favorite Ultra Series. This is what I was hoping Power Rangers would be like (ie. a show done exclusively for the International market). Tsuburaya did this show as an effort to break into the US market (and it almost worked; It was a very minor success in the US).

I remember when the show came on the first weekend of 1992 (January 4, 7AM), and when seeing the preview for it on Fox Kids on New Year's Day (Wednesday), I was totally psyched! The show was even better than I expected when I watched it.

I've seen the first two episodes of Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero. It's just okay, IMHO. The costumes look great, the music is a pretty good nod to Barry Gray's work, and the spirit of the original series is there (they even used the original sound FX!), but it lacked what Ultraman: Towards the Future had in spades: Power.

Love the suit but yeah it definitely looks fragile, I mean ya can see em cracks on some part of the body.

Man, you don't know the half of it! That's the reason why Ultraman and the monsters were fighting each other very gently! The Ultraman suit, IIRC, was made of foam rubber. It got damaged each time the action got too rough, and it took hours to repair. Same deal with the monsters. As someone summed it up best, the suits basically had a "You break 'em, you buy 'em!" sign on them!

i actually lol when i read up on Ultraman Powered on wiki. Using cardboard boxes to potray as buildings ?!? :laugh:

That ALMOST happened! :laugh:

The makers of this series was going to just use refrigerator boxes, cut squares in them, and voila, instant buildings! Tsuburaya totally wigged out when they found out about this, and sent a crew to the US to make real miniature buildings for them!

Interestingly, Steve Wang was approached by Tsuburaya to make this series, but he declined, because Tsuburaya turned down the radical changes he wanted to make to the character. (He had this difficulty when doing Guyver: Dark Hero, where he fought with Yoshiki Takaya during production.)

 

[Forever Knight]

ryuseipro just punk'd the thread. :buttrock:

I'm almost done the series, 13 episodes is like clipping my toenails for me. I'll be checking out this weekend. I was really hoping Great's fight scenes were more classic style/violent.

I think Kane Kosugi should be "revived" in some current Tokusatsu we got going on in Japan. I would have loved to have him as GekiChopper or something.

 

[Tao Zanto]

Great history lesson, Ryuuseipro! I too remember seeing Great/Towards The Future on tv, with the Aussie V.O. warning that because of Earth's pollution Ultraman could only remain a giant for three minutes and time's running out!

There exists a Japanese talk show from years ago where the hosts traveled to Hollywood [or rather, Burbank] to see the production of Powered; they interviewed King Wilder the director of the episodes who wanted his show to be just like the 60s Ultraman he watched as a kid, Harrison Page who went on about how great the sets looked, the man who was in the Ultra suit showing off the helmet to the two actresses, etc. They showed the shop where the suits were made; yes they were rubber suits which after casting had to be heat-cured in a giant stand-up oven -- one scene had two or three suits in the curing oven.

Don't know about most of the other Ultra series, but there was at least one occasion in Powered where the giant mountain the battle was taking place at would shake like jello whenever either combatant bumped into it...

 

[Kingdom]

I actually though the "shaking like a jello part" was pretty reaslitic, I mean two gigantic combatant weighting a few thousand tonnes battling each other - the whole mountain side 'is' probably as 'soft' as a big sand dune to them...

 

[Forever Knight]

Problem #1: The last 3 minutes of the final ep is all fucked up on my disc, I tried it on seveal DVD players and was about to smash everything in my room due to uncontrolled anger.

So what happens right after WINR amplifys The Light to blast the Balton ship and what happens with Ultraman, Kai, and Psycho-Balton?.

Overall, enjoyable series. Everything was fun except the fight scenes which actually began to improve in the final 2 episodes and it would have been great to see this continue.

 

[Kingdom]

My memory of the episodes is kinda blur (it's almost ten years now) but what I could remember is that, another ball of red light came down from the sky and joined WINR's blast'em up party and yes, they managed to vapourize the ship with their combined fire power.

Afterwards, the ball light flew towards Powered (he was down, right?) and turned Powered into another ball of red light. And the ball of light which is Powered flew towards WINR's mothership with large face 'popping' out from the red light and he looked quietly at the crew which was his way of saying goodbye. His head disappeared and he joined the other light and flew away...

I think that's it though... Anyone wanna add...? Or edit?