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tonydasluger
Reviews
Urutoraman: Kûsô tokusatsu shirîzu (1966)
Japan's Answer to Star Trek With Giant Monsters
This is some sick stuff, man. Ultraman is classic tokusatsu, and its got all the hallmarks. Repurposing old kaiju movie costumes, silly 60s outfits, fun scifi adventures, everything is in this series. I wish the story telling got a little more serious sometime? There's a lot of really great standout episodes, a lot of which are iconic now in Japanese media.
If you wanna see a guy get big and rip an alien in half this is your show
if you wanna see a guy get big and save a kid's chalk drawing monster that came to life by sending it to space to it can be a constellation visible one day a year, this is your show
if you wanna see some awesome tv practical effects, this is a MUST.
Robotto kânibaru (1987)
An Underappreciated Compilation Gem
Robot Carnival is a unique compilation of short films. The film was masterminded by a lot of iconic anime creators such as Katsuhiro Otomo, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Koji Morimoto, and famous composer Joe Hisaishi whose work you would know from studio Ghibli movies. This film itself is somewhat of a mixed bag since all of the nine shorts are stylistically very different. The one thing that ties them all together, of course, is the presence of robots of some kind. I would say that there is almost certainly at least one short here for everyone though! Its just a lot of fun to watch, even just one time. All of the short films being separate also makes it easy to just pick up and put down and to view it at your own pace. I think my top 3 of the 9 shorts featured here are: "Franken's Gears", "Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: Westerner's Invasion", and "Star Light Angel". People in the United States and Canada can also watch this movie for free officially and legally on Youtube in its wonderful HD restoration on the channel RetroCrush.