Ultraman: Rising (2024 | US | 117 minutes | Shannon Tindle)
For those of us that haven’t had the benefit of decades of fandom for the Japanese superhero Ultraman, I’ll give you a little catch up. An alien from another universe, Ultraman, is a defender of space. One day he was chasing a baddie that came close to our planet and in the process accidentally killed an Earth man from the space patrol. To save him, Ultraman imbued his body with life-force and the two became one. This has been the basis for every iteration of the super hero since the 1960’s when the live action sci-fi show came to be. Think Star Trek, but set in Tokyo, Japan and fighting kaiju (monsters like Godzilla, Mothra, etc) instead of making love with aliens (snicker). With more than sixty years’ worth of storylines it would be difficult for anyone to keep up with the lore, but for Japanese children in the sixties, he was the supreme good guy, saving the world from dangers too big for humans to handle.
Leap forward to 2023 and Netflix has reinvigorated the hero in the form of an animated series called Ultraman. Drawn with the touch of classic Japanese anime styling mixed with CGI it takes you through a more complex storyline introducing father and son characters that will later inform a similar familial narrative in the film, but funny enough completely different people. Fly forward one year and Netflix is now releasing a feature-length animated film dubbed Ultraman: Rising offering a story filled with a range of emotions from arrogance, hate, and fear to love, concern, and forgiveness. This Ultraman, Kenji Sato, is a star athlete and not so excited to be walking in his father’s footsteps, but begrudgingly takes on the mantle of superhero. He is on the cusp of his new career in Tokyo (having just moved back home from a successful career in the US) with a chip on his shoulder and an over-inflated ego to boot, which does not go over well with his new coach or teammates.
Kenji goes out on his first mission as the Ultra hero and finds himself stuck with Emi, a pint-sized Kaiju. He’s convinced by his estranged father that he has to keep Emi safe and raise her as his own. As you can imagine, there are silly scenes of him becoming a new father and dealing with all the eccentricities that come with it (think Three Men and a Baby, but with just one guy and a baby monster instead of a human) that break his huge ego down into tiny pieces. Meanwhile the Kaiju Defense Force is on a mission to take the child for themselves to find Kaiju Island (a mysterious hidden land supposedly where all Kaiju live) in order to destroy them all. With Ultraman’s sense justice and keeping balance in the universe, he just can’t let that happen and so begins the adventure.
For a newbie to the Ultraman lore, looking back through the many many series and storylines was a bit daunting. Luckily for viewers, it’s not necessary to read up on any Ultraman history to enjoy the new film. It has several well-worn tropes like fish-out-of-water new parent, stressed-to-the-point-of-breaking father and son relationship, baddie with a broken heart trying to kill the (literal) monsters that destroyed his family, etc etc. Despite having “heard it all before”, there was a genuineness to the characters and script that kept it from feeling overdone and boring. They definitely harkened back to Ultraman’s roots despite introducing a entirely new cast of characters within the Ultraman universe through script and drawing styles. This is well-worth spending a couple hours in front of the television with your kids enjoying a good fight with an endearing twist.
Ultraman: Rising is available for streaming on Netflix 6/14