Ultraman Great

I recently watched the compilation Ultraman Great movie and quite enjoyed it.  It's called Ultraman: The Alien Invasion and it's taken from the first six episodes of the Ultraman: Towards the Future series  It does a decent job of condensing the story into a coherent whole and still giving us plenty of monster and hero action throughout it's 95 minute or so run time.  They did wisely leave out the Tasmanian Devil episode altogether.  It's a decent episode, but there's really no way you can see it and not think that monster is related to Bugs Bunny's rather dimwitted foil.

The show was kind of maligned when it first aired back in 1990 (how is that 25 years ago already) for the slower monster fights and some of the video generated effects.  Of course, when the next English Ultraman series showed up it looked a lot better.

I like both Gudis forms, it's a menacing design and it's done pretty well, and doesn't look like the standard reptilian/alien Ultra Monster (not that I don't love most of those!).  In fact, several of the monsters break that mold rather effectively, and yet still remain definite Ultra Monsters.  Great himself looks pretty good, though the spandex outfit takes a bit of getting used to, though again, he's easily recognized as an Ultraman.  No needless armor on him!

It would be cool if someone could put out the two English series in a DVD set.  I'd pay $15 for that!