“Ultraman” Coming to Netflix

We here at TG²Studios just learned that one of the new properties coming to Netflix next year will be an updated version of a favorite property out of Japan, that being the giant hero Ultraman.

The TV series of Ultraman originally began in the 60s and helped to spawn the Kyodai Hīrō movement, a subgenre of tokusatsu. It told the story of a man named Hayata who is a member of the Science Patrol, formed to fight off monsters bent on Earth’s destruction. He gets caught up in a chase between one such monster and Ultraman that causes him to be killed. Out of a sense of guilt Ultraman merged his body with that of Hayata’s and gave him a device called the Beta Capsule. This would then allow Hayata to transform into Ultraman. The only catch is Ultraman had a limited amount of time to defeat his foe. He has a light on his chest that would start to blink a countdown (supposed to be 3 minutes) to when his energy would be gone. The series ended with Ultraman being separated from Hayata, who had his life restored (in the Japanese version of the series) and with no memory of his joint life with Ultraman, while the giant hero was escorted by his superior back to his home in Nebula M78. The English dubbed version stated that Ultraman would eventually return to merge with Hayata and continue the good fight.

There have been a myriad of “Ultra” series that came after Ultraman that helped to build this universe where we would eventually meet the entire Ultra family, including Ultraman Ace, Ultraman Leo, and Ultraman Zoffy (he was the one who rescued the original Ultraman and escorted him back to M78 at the end of the original Ultraman series). This would eventually introduce us to the 6 Ultra Brothers, as well as their parents, who were sort of Ultra King and Ultra Queen.

This now brings us to the Netflix series, but instead of going with the tokusatsu approach they are going with computer generated anime, which will basically free the production house up of any filming limitations and go for some pretty stylized fighting and action sequences.

This is a sequel of the original 60’s series where the original Hayata is now an elderly man and his son, Shinjiro, replaces him as Ultraman in order to fight some evil entity now on Earth masquerading as the 131 foot tall hero.

This new anime series storyline is reportedly to be loosely based off the Ultraman manga created by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi and published back in 2015, according for Forbes. It will premiere on Netflix on April 1, 2019. Special thanks to Ben’s sister, Noelle Hughes, for bringing this news item to our attention!

Let us know what you think about our content in our webcast as well as our website. Please use the comment form below. Please be sure to read the Privacy / Terms and Conditions Of Use.