RMWC Reviews: Shin Super Robot Sunday: Ultra Seven

Eiji Tsuburaya has come up a few times already for his work with Toho Studios as a special effects director with a long and storied career that began in the 1920s. Arguably most famous for his work on the original Godzilla films and his pioneering work in “Suitmation” (the technique of putting an actor in a monster costume and destroying a miniature set), he was a mainstay at Toho during the company's rise in the 50s and 60s. In 1963, he founded his own visual effects studio, Tsuburaya Productions. While still continuing his work with Toho, the new studio would release Ultra Q, a black-and-white 28 episode long horror series in the vein of The Twilight Zone (with a significant presence of monster costumes), which led directly to Ultraman, released that same year.

Ultraman ran for 39 episodes (40 when factoring in a pilot episode) and was in color. Wildly successful, the show featured an extraterrestrial giant merging with a human to save his life, who could then transform into the giant superhero Ultraman to defend Earth from giant monster threats.

In October of 1967, the sequel series to Ultraman would air: Ultra Seven. Originally intended as a standalone show, it was folded into the Ultra series in pre-production and featured suit and monster designs by Tohl/Tohru Narita, who worked with Tsuburaya during the late 60s.

The plot is similar, but different from the original Ultraman. Instead of merging with a human host, this show's Ultraman came to Earth from the Land of Light in Nebula M78 (an actual nebula and part of the Orion constellation) and rescued a guy, then took his form and calling himself “Dan Moroboshi” joined the Ultra Garrison, an organization dedicated to defending the planet from alien invaders as its sixth major member. Using an eyepiece called the Ultra Eye, he can transform into his true form, a 40 meter (131 ft) tall red and silver giant superhero dubbed Ultraseven because he was the unofficial “seventh member” of the Ultra Garrison. Equipped with a staggering array of special attacks and abilities typical for a tokusatsu superhero, the show was an even bigger success than Ultraman. It ran for 49 episodes and featured even better ratings than the previous series. Ultraseven is one of the most popular characters of the entire Ultraman metaseries, and holds a high rank as one of the Ultra Brothers. Dan Moroboshi's actor, Kohji Moritsugu is still active and frequently reprised the role in more recent Ultra shows.

Cool guy status notwithstanding, Ultraseven is like all the other Ultras: a giant dude, not a robot. Unlike the original Ultraman, Ultra Seven introduced giant robots into the mix.

Nurse, or Narse, is a giant robotic space dragon that serves Alien Wild, a collector of human souls. The dragon can transform in a flying saucer form, but was ultimately ripped to pieces by Seven.

Crazygon is an asymmetrical scavenger robot built by the Alien Banda race to collect machinery. In practical terms, the robot rampages around a city and puts cars into its torso with a giant claw arm.

A race of near-humans called the Alien Salome built an imitation robot Ultraseven in their scheme to conquer Earth. Eventually the real Seven would escape captivity and defeat the robot with the help of Agira, a capsule monster ally.

What's a capsule monster? In the show, its a series of three artificial monsters that Seven can summon from a capsule to help him fight. Two of them, Agira and Miclas, are more bestial in form, while Windom is a more obviously robotic creation. Windom was reprogrammed by the Alien Kanan race into fighting Seven before being rescued, and then later fell in another battle. The entire concept of monsters that could be miniaturized in a portable storage device and then deployed to fight on behalf of the owner would be one of the major influences on Pokemon years later.

Lastly, and probably the most iconic of Ultra Seven's giant robots is King Joe. Deployed by the warlike Alien Pedan race in an attempt to conquer Earth, King Joe was deployed as four piloted ships that could combine into a 55 meter (180 ft) tall mecha that trounced Seven in their first fight until it was knocked over and unable to get back up, like a turtle, and transformed into flight mode to get away, like a different turtle, until eventually being defeated by Seven in a harbor. The robot's odd name was in reference to the lead writer of Ultraman and Ultra Seven, Tetsuo Kinjo.

Originally planned as the final Ultra series, Seven's success guaranteed that another show would get made, but it would be several years before another Ultraman series would air.