Ultraman Towards the Future (1990) - The Hero from Down Under | Ultra Retrospective
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- Опубліковано 25 січ 2023
- It's Ultraman! Holding out his hand! Giving us an early 90's television series produced in Australia! This episode of Ultra Retrospective covers the often forgotten, yet underrated Ultraman Great/Towards the Future.
/ zagorudan
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ultraman Towards the future is my favorite ultraman all time plus is the best show all time
I'm glad that they got Jack Shindo's actor back for his reappearance in Ultra Galaxy Fight
Wait WHAT?!
Really?, I look up in imdb and it doesn't seem to mentioned he returned to dub Ultraman Great but I did remember Ultraman Powered human actor returned to voice Ultraman Powered in Ultra Galaxy fight
Ultraman: Towards the Future was my first introduction to Ultraman and still remains a huge favorite to this very day. I'm honestly happy to hear positive things on it from you as it's a pretty hated show elsewhere in the kaiju fandom, unfairly so in-my-opinion.
My introduction was the Ultraman the adventure begins released on vhs by FHE. I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch this on fox kids.
Towards the Future feels like it had a lot of heart and enthusiasim behind it. You can tell that those making the show were having a ton of fun, and that for me helps overcome some of its obvious technical deficiencies. It's just a nice, feel good show to watch.
Glad that more people are becoming aware of this, most of the events weren’t well known outside of Australia until this documentary was made.
Thanks for bringing awareness to this important issue, I would say more but Alien Baltan is currently attacking my city so I gotta get out of here.
This whole show has a really solid attention to little details and it's so endearing. I always think of how in alien wife dispute episode, theres a little moment where one of the characters points an "alien detector" right at Jack and it goes off because he's Ultraman, before he diverts her attention with something else entirely. This show is just so damn charming I can't say anything bad about it.
It is kinda a shame we didn’t get more from Ultraman Great in his own show but what we did get I loved. Also it being *very* Australian helped with some of the humour.
I just found out some of this:
"Ultraman Great" was a big moneymaker for Tsuburaya. It was a slow burn because it was made in 1990 and didn't do anything, but then in 1992, Fox bought the rights for it and it took off in America. After that, countries all over the world started buying distribution rights to it and even in Japan, it was moderately successful. It was Tsuburaya's biggest success since "Ultraman Zoffy" in 1984. So, of course, Tsuburaya wanted to continue the adventures of Great. They considered another season and a movie. But both projects were squashed by... guess what...
..."Ultraman Powered." The reception to it was so bad that it killed Great's chances of continuation.
I loved the monster that looked like the Tasmanian Devil (even moved by spinning in a circle to create a tornado). And Ralph Cotterill's "Once more into the breach, Ultraman" meme will live forever.
This show reinvigorated my adoration for all ultraman. Always a fan since the first series. When this came out it was the only ultraman on TV 📺 😐
This Ultra show will always have a special place in my heart.
It introduced me to Ultraman and my mom recorded almost every episode back in the 90’s.
I still have my toys intact with my Ultraman toy coming with Jack Shindo.
It’s really well acted and the music is so iconic to me. It’s my definitive Ultraman theme.
I love almost all the Kaiju in the show, especially Bogun , Gergadon and Kilizees.
Thank you for reviewing this!
This still remains a Great show to me.
I first discovered this show back in early '92. A local UHF station here in Philly aired in at 6am on Sundays. I used to program my VCR to tape it. I used to watch the original Ultraman back in '79. When I came home from kindergarten, channel 17 or 48 would air nothing but Japanese shows all afternoon. Space Giants, Marine Boy, Battle Of The Planets, Speed Racer & Ultraman '66. Towards The Future got me interested in Ultraman again. I notice Ultra fans never seem to talk about TTF ever. It's one of my favorites out of all the Ultraman series. For the era & budget, it was done extremely well. The actor's were excellent too. They weren't one dimensional. They each had their own personality. I really enjoyed your video. Thanks for covering this series.
It's funny you praised both Ralph Cotterill and the narrator, because they are actually one and the same! Yes, Ralph is so good he was both Arthur and the show narrator (I like to think the narrator is Great's version of Zoffy, watching over Great and the planet of Earth).
Sometimes, the narrator does indeed sound like Cotterill, but the narrator of the show is John Bonney, not Ralph.
@ConstantineFurman oh man I didn't know that so thanks for correcting me, that's somehow new information to me.
Jack/Ultramans fighting style is based fairly tightly off of Judo and Aikido to a lesser extent... His arm motions are a guard/ ready stance that shifts as you move , to keep access to leveraged throws and holds ....
The bullshit" line was not cut. I distinctly remember my 8 year old self being dtunned by it.
In canada in the early 90's you could pretty commonly find this show edited down into a movie form in what seemed to be every movie store. It ran most of the show up until Gudis explodes so it felt like a pretty tight gautlet of monster fights. I rented it a ton when I was really little (alongside that SNES game) and i just sort of assumed that was all Ultraman was until the late 90's and we got the internet and i realized that not only was Ultraman this massive franchise, but the movie wasn't even the entire story for that iteration.
There was another one that was the second half of the show. The first one, you mentioned is "Ultraman: The Alien Invasion." The second one was "Ultraman: The Battle for Earth." These were created by Tsuburaya themselves (they were released in Japan as "Ultraman Great: Gudis' Counterattack" and "Ultraman Great: Monster Extermination Strategy").
On the wiki it talks about the proposed second season and I am so mad that we didn't get it. It was gonna have alien Baltan and appearances by the Ultra Brothers. If that actually happened, we would likely get more English releases of the showa shows. I mean honestly if Power Rangers hadn't come along Ultraman might be one of today's pop culture icons worldwide!
They miss that chance again on Ready Player One due to a legal battle at the time
@@nexusprime2487 Damn Chaiyo.
@@ConstantineFurman Fuck Chaiyo, all my homies hate Chaiyo
the ONLY Ultraman i swear my life to.. period!! ❤❤❤❤
This is the first Ultraman ANYTHING I've ever laid my eyes upon. I found a VHS copy in 1993 or 1994 at a local comic book shop in Evansville, Indiana. It was The Biospherians episode.
I think that this is the second best English Tokusatsu for one reason, instead of piecing a story through footage of a Japanese Ultraman show it's completely original. I personally think that it's the way the adaptations of other shows should've gone instead, even if I really like some of them
Great review! I haven't seen this one before but I absolutely loved the action figures they released here in the states when I was a kid. I had the weird green 2 headed guy with the huge swinging horn on his head and the purple 4 legged guy with the flat Gyaos like head. I agree, despite the budget I'm glad that they actually tried and put effort into the story/fights
Ultraman Dyna seems to be the forgotten one in the TDG trilogy. Would love a video on that series.
My childhood! Had a whole collection of VHS tapes of these. My sister and I loved quoting the "because of earth's polluted atmosphere..." line 🤣
Could we see a review of Neos next? In my opinion that's one of the most underrated installments in the entire franchise. Neos himself is one badass Ultra.
i have quite the love for this show. i watched it so many times back when it was still up on netflix and hulu and i was so devastated when they took it down. i rewatched it late last year and i forgot how much i loved it! i especially loved the practical effects for the kaiju, cant think of a single one whos design i disliked (degunja is actually one of my favorites from the show haha). they did such an amazing job making them all look organic and whenever they used puppets/animatronics and made them feel even more alive because they were able to get so much more movement than you could with a suit!
This is the definitive English-language Ultraman series. Absolutely love it. This is the very second Ultraman series I ever watched; one episode at a time on Dailymotion lol. I really hope Mill Creek gets the rights to release this one. I couldn't care less if Ultraman Powered doesn't though lol
I remember watching this on Australian TV it was my first introduction to Ultraman it was so different from anything I'd seen. When I saw this it was airing on late night TV also Australia is a little less touchy about swearing so 'Bullshit' is pretty tame
GREAT video! This was my gateway into Ultraman. I would catch it in my area on Sunday mornings. It’s still near and dear to my heart and it fills me with so much nostalgia. The music has was always been something that has stood out for me.
Hell yeah Ultraman Great! Or Ultraman Towards the Future.
This is definitely one of your better reviews. I planned to review it myself eventually, but you literally took the words right out of my mouth. You talked about everything I wished others would have when discussing Towards the Future, even down to the absolute GOATed soundtrack. You really are a big-brain film man… I eagerly await for you to smash Ultimate Hero a new asshole. Please, for the love of God, do not hold your punches. And if you don’t mention what happened to that poor red king suit, I’ll jump off a cliff. Seriously, though- this was some good stuff.
It's weird this came out right before power rangers because of the level of respect the show has for the source material. Considering power rangers started off being the most cheesy thing imaginable which clouded people's minds of tokusatsu in the English-speaking world.
It's a shame we never got a season 2 (fuck you Ultraman powered.) But this was a great
Actually Jack Shindo was a UMA member from the start,in episode 1 he was presumed dead after Gudis destroyed his ship on Mars
That ballerina werewolf from The Howling III is such a baddie.
I actually like this show and Powered quite a lot. Neither is really that good but in a sense they’re kind of… comfy, I guess? Like I wouldn’t put them on to be compelled or anything but the more light hearted nature and quippy lines make it a fun watch, and that early 90’s charm makes me feel at home. Now that a certain, decades-long legal battle is finally over, maybe they can give a foreign Ultraman show another shot?
I don’t know, maybe they will. Either way, I like this show quite a bit as a fun short watch. Again I kind of like Powered as well, but I can’t deny that seeing how they butchered some of the classic Ultraman stories (Jamila) can certainly get under my skin. Great video, certainly made me remember why Great charmed me as much as it did!
The late 80s and early 90s was a very experimental time for the ultra series as while tsuburaya themselves didn’t make any ultraman shows in Japan until the mid 90s with ultraman tiga they did try to make international ultraman stuff like ultraman USA, towards the future and unfortunately powered I’m guessing this mainly done because tsuburaya wanted to appeal the ultra franchise to a more international market and out of all of them I would say towards the future was one of the best I did like that all of the monsters in this were original and weren’t rehashed from previous ultra shows, the practical effects were actually pretty good and it did have some decent characters it was a shame that it only lasted for a few episodes because it honestly wasn’t half bad
This show made me wish there were more attack teams set around the world. Because, to me at least, having just few references to non Japanese locations makes the monster threats seem…Localized I guess? Like why worry when monsters just seem to target japan
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the jpn theme Bokura No Great which is a bop
2:29, they could always use more members. Where do I sign up?
2:36, smash his face in. Hehehe.
3:50, the guy himself feels like a professional. You almost forget that this is an Ultraman show and not a mini-movie. You really feel like you're in another world that happens to be filled with giant monsters.
4:55, this dragon dude - Killazee. Yeah, he's based off of Bagan from the Godzilla series a.k.a the guy who never got his movie made...bajillion times but he did end up in a bunch of videogames, particularly Super Godzilla, Godzilla Studio Tour and even appeared for the first time in Godziban. Oh and Bagan's power level is pretty high so that makes Kilazee a lot more impressive.
5:40, the narrator sound like he came from a high budget movie. I like it.
6:30, not to mention there are some episodes that may scream 'HEY! I kinda feel like this belongs somewhere in the Heisei or even the New Gen Ultras'. Sho Aikawa did a pretty good job with the episodes.
7:35, an Ultra feeling like a cowboy doesn't sound like a bad idea.
10:27, this monster isn't scary. He's just irate. XD
Tho I do wish this gained a second season as intended. :(
Now,make an Ultra Retrospective about Ultraman Ribut
Love the Towards The Future opening theme makes me think of Star Trek TNG.
I love this show and it's characters, more than I can possibly convey.... My life is better for this even existing!!!
I got to watch this for the first time last year. It was a fun series
Pretty sure this was the show that was shown in the US in the 90's as well, trying to get in on that Power Rangers craze. I don't know much about Ultraman, but when I think of it, Bogun, Gudis, Gerukadon, and Kilazee are always the monsters I think of first.
7:52 the shot of that "Gigasaurus" has been recently circulating the interwebs under the context that it's test footage for the scrapped Shimo that was allegedly going to be in a Heisei Godzilla movie?? But it apparently comes from this Ultra series instead?
that's fucking hilarious
This was my first Ultraseries I ever watched and it holds a special place in my heart. Gudis is my favorite villain of Ultraman, and I love the support team. A lot of different personalities and diversities, and it doesn't feel forced. Everyone brought something to the table. They weren't identified by their race or their gender. They were just people coming together to protect the world and humanity from threats that Earth was not ready to fight against.
Not to mention, the monster rooster is a pretty solid one. Yeah they were cheaper suits, but they all stood out from one another :) And the comic books that came out at the time of the series were great. It was neat to see an evil Blue Ultraman :)
The reason Ultraman's fight scenes in this series seem stiff is due to the heat of the Australian deserts.
Ultraman Great is the only Ultraman that fights alone in these series...the rest of the versions of Ultraman always fights along side their fellow Ultramans...
You're one of the first few people I've heard who had that opinion about Ultraman powered the only thing I feel you were correct about was the fight scenes because they are very slow but the special effects were always good in a show except for a few times and the costumes were amazing it's your opinion so it's fine matter-of-fact I agree with a lot of your points, but there's a reason to why your opinion about ultraman powered is the minority especially nowadays, he's not as cool as someone like Ultraman mebius or Max or even the original Ultraman but Powered definitely stands amongst the best
6:08 Correction: 1979 The☆Ultraman (Joneus) did this first and did it hard compared to the previous entries that blurred the line after the first meeting between the dead host and his Ultra.
Ah, my bad. Haven't seen that one, waiting on good fan subs.
@@ZaGorudan I feel you. The quality of Mill Creek's releases was awful
Arthur Grant reminds me of Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge
Personalmente amo esta serie
Based
11:52
“In fact it might be the only proof.”
Not anymore 👀
Ah yes ultraman great he’s the ultra from down under like how ultraman powered is ultraman usa just like the ultra usa hero trio in ultraman usa
Cool review !! I've seen your "Ultra Retrospective" Ultraman Max one. It's a awesome review though ! Can you please review Ultraman R/B? It's one of my fav series ^^~
👍 👍
It’s really ironic that between the two western produced series, the show everyone loves is the one that the crew and actors hate the most.
Tsuburaya left this Australian company swimming in debt and tried to screw them over multiple times.
But hey Powered sucks amirite?
Powered isn't without its issues when it comes to production (fund mismanagement and lack of coordination and oversight from the parent company). Although based on the unaired interview, it seems like the cast members genuinely enjoy it
8:35
Bocchi the Kaijuu
Did you ever read the the comic book spin-off for this series?
I have heard of it, at the very least.
Did he ever fire his beams in a Ultraman like way with his arms crossed & so forth.. I can't remember 🤔
Nope. He is probably the only Ultra I know that doesn't do the cross arm beam thing
Galaxy Quest stole that one Kaiju
I watched this on streaming or perhaps DVD. I remember very little about it. I thought I had watched all the episodes, but very little of it seems familiar. I thought most of the Aussie actors were horrible and not taking the show seriously.
The acting is pretty typical of Australian TV at the time, it's really the best you could hope for given the budget they had to work with.
Having grown up in the 2000's, my first exposures to Ultraman were the 4Kids dub of Tiga and that godawful Towards the Future SNES game.
A real problem with Ultraman Powered was that the suits were so flimsy and easily damaged, they couldn't actually stage fights in them. So EVERY fight in that show is garbage.
Do Powered next! It's equally crappy!
I used to think this show was so lame, blandly directed, no action choreography whatsoever, horrible music but very nice kaiju designs. That is, until Ultraman Powered occurred and the bar became even lower, way lower.