Ultra Galaxy

Winter approaches! The last few days have been getting much colder, not to mention wetter. The wet streets provided me with my greatest ever Baka Gaijin moment this morning as I came flying off my bike.

Monday evening I went out with a group of friends from school to a Korean restaurant near Ueno. Between the octopus tentacles and things that looked like they came from some kind of jellyfish creature, I'm not really sure what I was eating, and most questions were just answered with "it's fish", "it's meat" or "it's vegetable". But it was a good meal and a great time.

This evening I went to Warner Brothers to see the new Ultraman movie MEGA MONSTER BATTLE: ULTRA GALAXY, which comes to theatres December 12th here in Japan.

I wasn't a fan of the ULTRA GALAXY TV series on which this movie is based, so when I first heard about the project early in the year I wasn't very enthusiastic. But the trailers and other promotional materials released in the last few months looked quite impressive, so I was feeling quite optimistic that I would enjoy this movie.

I think I can quite safely say that the scope and scale of this movie is far greater than anything seen before in this genre. My gut reaction was that this movie was GODZILLA: FINAL WARS done correctly. Both FINAL WARS and ULTRA GALAXY received much larger budgets, brought in foreign talent, attempted to put a modern spin on classic characters and threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Yet while FINAL WARS came away looking like a completely nonsensical and dishonest TV movie, ULTRA GALAXY actually fulfils its promises and delivers something that is fun, fresh, action-packed, and absolutely first class from start to finish. A wonderful movie which I'm really looking forward to seeing again in December!

(Picture: Ultra Galaxy press book)