Ultra Q and Ultra Seven available for streaming!

[Toku Prime]

Yes, you read that correctly. Shout Factory has announced that they will now be streaming all of Ultra Q and Ultra Seven for free (albeit region locked to the US) on their website. Both shows are in Japanese with English subtitles. These are the same version as the DVDs that Shout Factory had previously released. If you are curious about either show, head on over and check them out.

 

[Burkion]

Holy **** this is great!

 

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

So wait, I didn't have to give Chaiyo my money?

****.

 

[Toku Prime]

So wait, I didn't have to give Chaiyo my money?

****.

There's no info in either the announcement or on the series page to indicate who they get the streaming rights from, so I can only assume the licensee is still Chaiyo. The streams are ad supported so I'm sure they're still earning a percentage or royalty from the two series, albeit not your money.

 

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

There's no info in either the announcement or on the series page to indicate who they get the streaming rights from, so I can only assume the licensee is still Chaiyo. The streams are ad supported so I'm sure they're still earning a percentage or royalty from the two series, albeit not your money.

Oh, I know it's still Chaiyo responsible for the streams. But instead of folding and paying for both DVD sets, I could have just watched these online (with Adblock Plus on). I mean, that's what I get for giving in to weakness for more Ultra shows and giving my money directly to the devil, I suppose.

 

[Battra]

Say what you will about chaiyo but at least they put stuff out unlike Tsubraya which only recently started putting stuff out for international fans.

 

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

Say what you will about chaiyo but at least they put stuff out unlike Tsuburaya which only recently started putting stuff out for international fans.

Well yeah, that's because Chaiyo blocks Tsuburaya from releasing a lot of their stuff overseas. The most marketable Ultraman shows in the U.S. are the original series due to its popular run on American television in the 1960s, and Ultra Seven. However, because of Chaiyo's thievery, Tsuburaya can never release them where they want to. Tsuburaya is left selling less enticing shows to U.S. distributors. Still, that hasn't stopped Tsuburaya from trying, literally for decades, to release new Ultraman content over here and around the world.

-Ultraman: Towards the Future, despite being produced for Australia, aired in syndication on US television for a couple of years.
-Tsuburaya produced two projects exclusively for the United States: Ultraman: The Adventure Begins and Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero. Neither project was picked up for series, and the former only aired on cable television once in a terrible time slot.
-Ultraman Tiga aired on U.S. television in 2000 and had a magnificent time slot on 4Kids' incredibly successful Saturday morning block. It only got removed due to poor ratings and an embarrassingly bad Americanization.
-A few '90s Ultraman movies were released in the United States on DVD in the early 2000s by Image Entertainment.

The reasons Tsuburaya had stopped trying for a while were A) their products weren't doing too well in the States and B) they didn't have the money and resources to really push their shows to international sellers due to financial difficulties brought about by their long court case with Chaiyo over the international rights.

TL;DR: It is the fault of Chaiyo and mishandling by American distributors that Tsuburaya has not put out more product in the United States, not Tsuburaya's.

 

[Toku Prime]

Eh Tsuburaya's disappointing results from rights sales goes right back to the start of the franchise. They sold the rights to Ultra Q and Ultraman as a package deal to CBS. Who then got cold feet and backed out. The rights then got sold to United Artists, who only focused on Ultraman because at the time everyone was getting color TVs and Ultra Q was filmed in black and white. It was only more recently discovered that the English dub for Ultra Q had been made - even Tsuburaya didn't know that more than one episode had been dubbed.

And more recently, well companies don't want to license properties involved with rights disbutes. At one point Chaiyo was also claiming character rights for the first few series. Ultraman and Ultra Seven appear in a lot of subsequent shows, and if the rights to that are unclear suddenly you have at least one episode that's tainted.