You know, I love Ultraman, I've seen a solid amount of the 1966 seriess and Rising, I haven't seen the episosdes with people like Zetton or Zarab or Mefilas, though I am generally familiar with them. I loved Rising, I think it's a great movie and I hear a lot of good talk about Shin so I figured one day I will watch. Today was that day. I regret only one thing and that's not watching sooner. Spoilers ahead but please watch the film prior to this.
The 2nd film of Hideaki Anno's Shin trilogy, and the last film I needed to see after finishing Godzilla and Kamen Rider. I've never seen Evangelion and could only go off of the other Shin moviess for my opinion on the guy, and I respect the guy and his work now, this film is arguably the best one in the trilogy excluding Godzilla.
The soundtrack, the cast, the monsters, the aliens, I went in fully expecting a Kaiju film like Rising that was also a take on the original Ultraman from 1966, but no. I found something much better. Soemthing I cried over.
I loved the human cast in this film, Kaminaga, the glasses lady, Asami, they were all great characters in my opinion. Hideaki Anno did his magic and found some great actors for them and not only that, he even got Bin Furuya to return as Ultraman after 56 years for motion capture! Which I love.
While I think the SSSP got downgraded from the original series, becoming more of a Shin Godzilla Yaguchi-esque group, they make up for it with having interesting characters. The glasses lady, the geek, the Captain, Asami and the Chief were all unique characters who stood out in their own way, hell Kaminaga, who isn't even himself for most of the film is too unique as he's actually pretty good at the whole "Human guy but he's actually an alien in disguise" thing.
One more thing, Yutaka Takenouchi, aka Tachibana and Hideki Akasaka from Shin Kamen Rider and Godzilla respectively, returns as an unnamed Government Official. Despite his mild screentime I think he had a enjoyable presence throughout the film whenever he would show up.
Shiro Sagisu once again makes a insane soundtrack. While Shin Godzilla went for a classical music approach, Shiro Sagisu almost perfectly replicates the cheesy 60s fight music from the original Ultraman, and he does it beautifully. Each fight in the film had an amazing song to go with it, each song I could hear be used in the original series until it slowly builds up to a more modern song.
Original Sin and "Is Humanity to Die?" are easily the best songs in the soundtrack, especially the latter as it played during my favorite sequence in the film. Like how Who Will Know is about despair, Is Humanity to Die is a hopeful song, it plays during one of the most hopeful moments in the film where Ultraman is rushing to stop Zetton. And the beginning of the song, where Kaminaga transforms and does the classic transformation from the '66 series, it made me cry. I love Shiro Sagisu's compositions.
The Aliens are a mixed bag for me to be honest, I liked Zarab while Mefilas honestly fell flat for me. I really liked Zarab, his entrance and motives were cool plus I like tried to sabotage Ultraman's reputation by creating an illusion before ultimately having one of the coolest fights in the film and dying in honestly a cool way by getting split in half by the spacium beam. (plus I liked his hat)
Mefilas though...he was probably the weakest part of the film for me, he tried to do the things Zarab did but worse. Really all he does is turn Asami into a hypnotized giant (my least favorite part of the film btw), have some philisophical debate with Ultraman and have an admittedly good fight until Zoffy makes him leave peacefully. I didn't like his quirky thing where he'd say a common phrase and say "one of my favorite sayings" either, it was neat at first but old quickly. On the plus side though, I think Mefilas and Zarab's designs were really cool when they showed their true self.
From the design to his death, Hideaki Anno made one of the coolest versions of Ultraman like, ever. I really loved his modernized '66 design, though I am saddened at the loss of the color timer. His helmet was great though a bit flat, the colors looked great even the green which I wasn't a huge fan of on him, despite being my favorite color.
Getting the original Ultraman to play him in Shin was amazing like stated above. I love the usage of his abilities especially when in the first hour of the film where he doesn't abuse the spacium beam to wreck all the kaijus. I think his design when he landed on Earth was cool too with how he was all silver with outlines of where the red would go.
When he was sacrificing himself to destroy Zetton and he pulls out the flare and does the original Ultraman transformation, much like Rising, I was in love. Except, I shed tears during this one, I was completely full of sheer joy and excitement and couldn't believe my eyes. The entire sequence from the transformation to the final talk with Zoffy in the weird dimension to Kaminaga waking up after getting revived. I was speechless.
I love this film, easily my favorite of the Shin trilogy (though Shin Godzilla is objectively the better film), it left me speechless and I'd love to shake hands with Hideaki Anno in person. 12.5/10 film, would watch again.
