Ultraman (1966) - Talkback

[Japanfan4ever]

I was almost disappointed yesterday, that I already own the whole Ultraman series. Last night at Target I found a newly repackaged 2-disc copy of vol. 1 Ultraman for. . .

5 DOLLARS! :O_O:

 

[Daikamonohashi]

Which is just an even shoddier rerelease of the crummy BCI set. The package even still attributes the copyrights to "Tsuburaya Chaiyo." Ugh.

 

[Japanfan4ever]

Oh well. For 5 bucks someone can get over 400 minutes of Ultraman, subtitled, and remastered! Sounds good to me! I was thrilled to see it there.

 

[IXAPaladin77]

The first Ultraman series is the one that I have seen the most of. I watched quite a few episodes back in the late 90s to early 00s. Back when Toho was still churning out Gojira. My buddy had ran out of new Gojira stuff to show me, so we watched Ultraman. I have to admit that I thought it was pretty cool.

 

[Algo Fonix]

Oh well. For 5 bucks someone can get over 400 minutes of Ultraman, subtitled, and remastered! Sounds good to me! I was thrilled to see it there.

Except for the remastered part. The quality isn't very good, like, at all.

 

[Japanfan4ever]

Sorry to tell you, but the quality is actually so well done that it's on par with TPC's release official release of the series on Region 2 DVD. Many have reviewed it to even have better audio than the Japanese release.

 

[Algo Fonix]

The Japanese DVDs are blurry as **** too?

 

[Japanfan4ever]

You felt they were blurry? I thought these copies were fine. Maybe your TV just didn't optimize their relative quality. Besides, these episodes are from the mid-60s! They're not gonna be perfect. I thought they were as good as can be.

Our friends over at JapanHero agreed as well, in their review from a couple years back. They even used region 2 DVDs as comparison:

http://www.japanhero.com/ultraman reviews/ultraman.htm

Given that the series originally aired in 1966, the picture quality of the TV episodes here is quite good. While there are some instances where the age of the film print shows some wear, colors are generally very sharp and bright. Images are clear for the most part and special effect animation shots are very clean. For this DVD release, the episodes are presented in a 1.33:1 full-frame aspect ratio, just as they were originally broadcast on television. This is probably the best print one could hope for with this US release. While I’m not sure how BCI’s version compares with Tsuburaya’s official Japanese Region 2 DVD release, the picture quality seems on par with the Ultra Seven Region 2 DVD set (which I used as a comparison).

 

[m121akuma]

You felt they were blurry? I thought these copies were fine. Maybe your TV just didn't optimize their relative quality. Besides, these episodes are from the mid-60s! They're not gonna be perfect. I thought they were as good as can be.

Our friends over at JapanHero agreed as well, in their review from a couple years back. They even used region 2 DVDs as comparison:

http://www.japanhero.com/ultraman reviews/ultraman.htm

Region 2 DVDs from a completely different series. Hardly a fair comparison.

 

[Japanfan4ever]

Oh would you stop. Otherwise you don't know when Ultraseven was, or you're just being stubborn. I hope it's the first. Ultraseven was the next year after Ultaman and featured the same quality and same techniques, so they're perfectly comparible. Those reviewers at Japan Hero aren't novices, they know what they're doing.