@meltorights / meltorights.tumblr.com
In Ambassador Magma, whenever the titular hero is interacting with the human cast, they just shoot at an angle that makes him look giant, or they have a giant leg & a giant hand prop. Of course the scale is totally fucked since he’s clearly way bigger when fighting monsters than when interacting with the humans but still it’s cool.
classic
A while ago you got that ask pointing out how kyodai heroes BEING kyodai means they can only interact with similarly giant things, thus limiting how they can be used in stories since it's harder for them to directly interact with the plot & characters. WELL, Ambassador Magma, which predates Ultraman by just a week, features a giant hero who has no human form or host, he's just permanently giant, & he very much DOES directly interact with the plot & characters!
huh. ive heard of the show but never watched it.
i assume the cost of having someone be giant all the time for special effects would be a motivating factor in not having a permanently kyodai character
It just occurred to me, I could totally polish & fix up Mirrorman's subs... IF ONLY they weren't hardsub only. Unless someone had the foresight to rip the captions from when it was on the official Ultraman YouTube for a brief moment?
Unfortunately I don't know of anyone who did! But you are correct
I love showa toku, kyodai heroes in particular, yet am paradoxically rather emotionally sensitive to seeing sexism & misogyny in media, so if I wanna watch Jumborg Ace, can I still enjoy it & not just be pissed all the time when Naoki keeps yelling about how big his penis is?
uhhhhhh it would be a rough time.
I will say that while I joke about Jumborg making Leo look feminist by comparison (because it is far more fully into the toxic masculinity) the main woman in the cast, Setsuko, is almost always flying a plane or fighting with the guys on the field. it's nothing Revolutionary, but it is noticeable compared to most other kyodai heroes of the era.
That said, the "be a man" part is pretty extreme. jumborg ace invents new and exciting forms of gender essentialisms even in the territory of showa ultra.
(Another thing that helps Leo is that Kohji Moritsugu and Ryu Manatsu bring a lot of depth to their roles which can help when the script is lacking in criticism of its ideals. and the guy who plays naoki does NOT have the acting chops that they do.)
I wonder how much of a hot take this is. Kyodai heroes BEING kyodai limits how they can be used in stories. I don't even think that's necessarily a bad thing, it just kinda is what it is, but I think it's an interesting observation. Like Ultraman mainly shows up just to fight giant monsters because when you think about it, what else CAN he really do? Since AS a giant he can only interact with similarly giant things. So there's more variety when some Ultras like Seven occasionally go human size.
It is a limit! It also limits the number of transforming heroes--ultraman only rarely has secondaries, and never the absurd number of transforming heroes common in rider. In some sense I think the limits of the kyodai hero genre are what keep it in my ballpark
Y'Know about the original Ultraman manga(s)? The ones that ran alongside with the original show? There were 2 & they’re both super fascinating for different reasons. One was by Daiji Kazumine & featured familiar monsters in new stories & for its last 4 chapters featured stories with original monsters! Well, original in as much as they’re based on unused scripts from the show. The other was by famed horror manga artist Kazuo Umezu, & while Kazumine’s manga was episodic, Umezu's was serialized, with his stories all being based on episodes from the show but greatly expanded upon to where they might as well be original, & though it isn’t a horror manga, Umezu nonetheless doesn’t compromise at all on wild & uncanny art direction. Both of these are translated, check ‘em out!
Oh I had no idea! I'll have to dig in
If you need more showa kyodai heroes to watch, more people need to watch Spectreman. Granted, it isn't subbed, but it does have an English dub from the 70's. & I can't stress enough, the fact that it's only available with an old-ass dub *ISN'T NEARLY THE DETRIMENT YOU'D THINK IT WOULD BE* (imo) Still I do wish the Japanese version was subbed. Its 63-episode length may be intimidating, but it's almost nothing but 2-parters so it's really more like 30 episodes with just 3 standalone episodes.
For some reason I forgot spectreman had an eng dub. It's on my to-watch at some point! I'd love to see the P-Productions/Senkosha hero shows--all too sadly mostly forgotten now
Never forget the first episode of Rainbowman where the protagonist says "we're not here to prance around like little girls, this is a battle to the DEATH between MEN™!!!!!!!!" & he's talking about high school wrestling.
yeah bur what ive seen of that show still lacks the kind of incessant toxic masculinity of jumborg ace
One thing about alot of showa media that once you learn you can never un-notice it, is that in Japan in the late 60's & early 70's, sports themed manga/shows were EXTREMELY popular, so anime & toku from the time would be informed by & incorporate elements from them. Hell in early drafts of Kamen Rider Hongo was a gym teacher. & I assume this is also what informed the toxic masculine elements of showa toku, since from what I understand a lot of them also had that "insecure toxic misogynist dudebro who takes sports WAY too seriously” energy.
yeah ive heard this too. apparently in the 70s especially the "tough coach" was a popular archetype and that inspired the tone of shows like leo and jumborg ace. jumborg ace takes it way farther and is less self-aware than leo is about it tho.
I haven't seen Ultraman Jomborg yet so this might be presumptuous of me, but just looking at your posts of it gives me the impression that for anyone who knows their way around Japanese, unfucking the subs couldn't be THAT hard, right? Unfortunately it'd also be very TIME-CONSUMING since it's a full year-long show. Also I've heard of people checking out of Jumborg because they can't handle how much Naoki sucks.
it wouldn't be that hard if they had a decent grasp + the technology. unfortunately I think you'd have to re-time everything, as it's not just the language but also the timing that is rough.
and yeah, naoki does kind of suck, and the show makes Ultraman Leo look like a sensitive and feminist exploration of masculinity, so there's that.
So given you're a certified Ultraman Jomborg watcher, how watchable is it given its notorious fuckass subs?
the subs are pretty horrendous but it really depends on the episode. some are good enough it's still fun despite the subs. but when it's another lackluster episode AND you have bad subs.... it's rough
