A negative for me was the relative lack of kookiness. Sure, Ultraseven retains the kaiju, slow motion martial arts, and vehicular coolness of the preceding series, but a lot of the sillier/more slapstick elements that made Ultraman so much fun are largely absent from Ultraseven.
This said, let's get into it, shall we?
This episode introduces the Ultra Guard, a subdivision within the Terrestrial Defense Force, a planetwide organization which defends the Earth from extraterrestrial threats.
As for the hero, Dan Moroboshi (Hayata and Akiko's son!), there's not a whole lot to say. He shows up halfway through this episode, turns into Ultraseven, and is later inducted into the Ultra Guard. His eyes glow a lot, he puts on a pair or ridiculous glasses before his transformation, and that's about it.
One big difference in this series is that our hero has capsule monsters that he can use to fight other kaiju. These capsule monsters were one of the inspirations for Pokemon much later on.
The theme song is super catchy. "Seven! Seven! Seven!"
Another vampire plant person? Didn't we do this in Ultraman already? The producers must have been very attached to the idea.
The vampire person's wife is hot though. Prone to fits of hysteria, yes, but hot nonetheless.
The Ultra Guard investigates a spacecraft in the mountains and finds a hot girl in a bikini. Sounds like a win, right? But no, the hot girl in the bikini is actually another extraterrestrial invader, this one controlling the mighty Eleking from the safety of her spaceship!
I'm 80% sure that the young girl is played by the same actress who played Amazoness in the Japanese Spider-man TV show over ten years later. I'm not completely sure, but there certainly is a resemblance.
A sub (?) gets transported into the depths of space and Dan somehow loses track of his Ultra Eye yet again. Dude, put it on a chain or something?
Not entirely sure how Ultraseven manages to bring those stranded sailors/astronauts back through the Earth's atmosphere but whatever.
"Build the wall!" Some scientist dude accuses Dan (gasp) of being an alien spy, but really HE'S the alien spy! Dan's all like "WTF?" until he manages to turn the tables on the alien invaders.
This is definitely the most boring episode in both the original series and Ultraseven so far. It crawls by like a lower grade version of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits until reaching an unexciting conclusion.
I'm a bit hazy on the details (I fell asleep halfway through), but Dan and Anne find this weird, shadowy alien in Anne's room, and they're all like: "Is this alien a friend or nah?" until they finally up their minds and end up repelling yet another alien invasion. I hope the Ultra Guard are eligible for overtime, because protecting the Earth is a more than full time job.
A bit early for a widespread understanding of relative motion, but if they'd only had the stars behind the space station moving it would have looked SO much better.
The most hilarious thing about this episode is that the Ultra Guard never bothers to check the foreign woman for vital signs. Having passed out after her encounter with the gas-guzzling alien she's just left there, unconscious, before the Ultra Guard leaves to investigate a gunshot nearby.
THIS, my friends, is why they instituted indoor smoking bans. Not only cigarettes unhealthy, but they can also turn you into rage monsters intent on homicide!
It takes the Ultra Guard quite a while to put two and two together though. After the gunman mentions smoking just before he loses the plot Dan gets a warning from the aliens to stay away from a particular town. But what does he do, instead of investigate? He goes back to headquarters, oblivious to the pack of cigarettes brought back there by his comrade!
"Space opium poppy seeds" sure do sound like a good time though. Perhaps they work better in a muffin?
One of the weirder ones, but satisfyingly so.
In this episode an evil (probably alien) toymaker plans on using "hypnosis waves" to hypnotize the world's children, and Dan Moroboshi and Co. are tasked with bringing him down.
Androids in the 60s, it must be said, were on average very fragile. Knock 'em over and that's it. Super strength or no, bye bye android!
My favorite part of this episode was the glimpse at a 60s-era Japanese department store. Such a glimpse is also present in one of the earlier Ultraman episodes where the Space Patrol meets a friendly monster. It's always fun to see what people were buying back then.
Like episode 9 this is another of the weirder ones. It feels a lot like something salvaged from the much earlier Ultra Q series.
Dan gets trapped in the fourth dimension by an adversary operating out of that extra dimensional space. But hey, you might be asking, isn't the fourth dimension time? No, my friends, not according to Ultraseven. Through this episode we glimpse a netherworld full of balloons and long green ropey things, where Dan's powers are rendered useless and time moves much slower.
Not to worry, however, it all works out in the end. This conclusion goes on to exhort us to keep an eye on our neighbors, because you never know where alien threats will manifest themselves.
Who the hell are these ridiculous Japanese cowboys living around Demon Mountain? Where did they pick up those outfits, and why do they inflict those outfits on the rest of humankind?
And oh yeah, plot twist: Dan gets KILLED in this one, not long after the snakey, dragoney thing rather conveniently crashes on Demon Mountain. Not to worry though, he comes back to life in the end.
12. Episode 12: From Another Planet with Love
This episode isn't available on YouTube.
13. The Man from V3
This one's a real snoozefest. I think they were going for Cold War paranoia but failed to pull it off.
The kaiju at the end is kind of fun though, something of a rehash of the starfish thing seen in the earlier Ultraman series.
14 and 15. Episode 14: The Ultra Guard Goes West Part 1 and Part 2
Shape shifting aliens cause a ruckus after killing and/or impersonating several TDF scientists. And to top it all off they have a robot capable of beating Ultraseven!
Given human history I can understand the Pedan's point. We have tendency to offer "friendship" as a way of acquiring resources. She's probably also right about that "exploratory rocket." The human scientists probably had ulterior motives for sending it to their planet.
...not that the Ultra Guard spends much time pondering this topic. They exhaust most of the second episode developing a super weapon to destroy the robot.
New title sequence! Looks better than the sand settling effect used in the earlier episodes.
In this one a boy befriends an alien distrustful of humanity's motivations. This alien, like the earlier Pedan (civilization), has a point. This episode is unusual in that Ultraseven actually reasons with the alien following their initial battle, the alien deciding to go home of its own accord after that point.
Gotta wonder, however, at the inconvenience of living in Ultraseven's future. They're regularly visited by aliens, but they're also using, for the most part, technology available to people during World War II. How irritating would be it be to occupy a galaxies-spanning civilization that still communicates via radio waves?
Probably one of the "key episodes" if you're into this kind of thing. In this one Ultraseven is tasked with rescuing his "doppleganger" from a mine cave-in, this doppleganger being the person he modeled his human form after once he'd arrived on Earth.
But didn't he state in the first episode that he was the son of Hayata and Akiko from the first series? And if so, wouldn't he have had a human form already?
Mysteries within mysteries, riddles inside enigmas. I doubt an explanation be forthcoming. I'll just have to accept it and move on?
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