Rating:

7

AKA: Ultra Seven: The Complete Series

Year of release: 1967 (DVD release 2012)

Genre: action/sci-fi

Director: various

Stars: Koji Moritsugu, Satoshi Furuya, Shinsuke Achina, Yuriko Hishimi

Not rated; contains PG-rated violence

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Ultra Seven

Regarded by kaiju ("giant monster") aficionados as one of the peaks of the genre, 1967's Ultra Seven -- a follow-up to the mega-popular Ultraman -- is still well loved by fans from all over the world. With a recent release on DVD from Shout! Factory, a new audience has a chance to check out one of the most popular television series in Japanese history.

Running for forty-nine episodes, the series stars Koji Moritsugu as Dan Moroboshi, an alien who comes from the same planet as the original Ultraman. Dan becomes the seventh member of the Ultra Garrison, a crack team dedicated to protecting the Earth from nefarious assaults from other worlds. Like Ultraman, Dan has the ability to make himself grow to gargantuan size, as well as other super powers, which, of course, comes in handy as he and the rest of the Ultra Garrison battle each episode's alien nemesis.

Many western viewers take kanji as being cheesy, seeing them as vehicles that deliver ludicrous plots ending up with people dressed in rubber costumes fighting each other. A lot of this is probably due to the editing and dubbing many Japanese television shows and movies receive before being shown stateside, where they are usually marketed specifically towards small children. While no doubt that Ultra Seven is at its' heart a kid's show, seeing it in the original language as the series creators intended it to be shows that there are more serious themes at play. The late 1960s was a tumultuous time all around the world, and the series reflected the hopes and fears of a generation growing up under the shadow of the atomic bomb.

That is not to say that matters are totally serious here. Yes, the series does dwell at points on (sometimes not-so) thinly veiled social commentary, but the creators rightly saw that they had to deliver consistent science fiction tinged action in order to keep their audience. The special effects featured here aren't going to wow viewers who have been weaned on CGI fueled big budget orgies like Transformers. However, for "older" (relatively speaking) people, such as this reviewer, the stop motion and other practical effects employed in the series have a nostalgic effect, bringing back fond memories of watching similar fare on the sort of lazy Saturdays only found in the haze of youth.