The following may contain spoilers for ULTRAMAN Final.
Director / Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki
Original Work / Eiichi Shimizu, Tomohiro Shimoguchi
Production / Tsuburaya Production, Production I.G., Sola Digital Arts
Release Date / May 2023
As good as the first season of ULTRAMAN was, the sophomore season was quite underwhelming and really felt like a season meant to introduce Taro, and then some. I was a little trepidatious with how they’re going with the third season, but that changed when they announced that it will also be the final one. And given how season 2 already deviated from the manga storyline, it’s safe to assume that we’ll get an anime-original ending for season 3. Much ahead of the season premiere, they’ve revealed that we’ll get the debut of the Marie Suit, obviously used by Rena Sayama. Other than this, I’m not familiar with how her introduction into our Ultraman Suit-wearing group went in the manga so I’ll go into season 3 without any preconceptions as far as this plotline goes. Then all the promotional materials just show us Shinjiro in his badly damaged suit just lying on the ground, seemingly lifeless. All that said, the question then is, would the ULTRAMAN Final stick the landing to provide a satisfying conclusion?
The series kicks off around a year following the events of season 2, where Shinjiro continues to do his whole Ultraman thing and becomes closer with Rena, while Taro has been in the New York branch of S.S.S.P. along with Jack. Taro is then sent back to Japan to assist while at the same time, Shinjiro is having visions of Zetton, the final villain his father fought as Ultraman, and starts losing control of his powers. Unfortunately, this leads to unnecessary collateral damage leading to increased negative sentiments from people. It doesn’t help that a new villain, Mephisto, enters the scene and declares the necessary elimination of the Ultramen, citing how he also shares the same negative feelings people have towards them. He aims to accomplish this by eliminating four specific Ultramen, which our heroes start to question as to whom. All of these leads to Shinjiro taking a more fugitive stance while being chased by both Mephisto and S.S.S.P. At the same time, Rena is discovering how she has more connections to the Ultramen beyond Shinjiro and within herself.
Compared to the relatively simple and focused story of the previous season, season 3 establishes a plot much rooted to the lore of the original series and expands on a concept that has been a staple with most Ultraman series – the faith and trust of people. Ultraman is always seen as a hero loved by everyone so seeing Shinjiro having the struggle to pretty much do things all alone and with minimal support is an interesting angle. That said, the plot was mainly focused on him, and Rena to an extent (more on her later) and the rest of our characters are basically foils to move the plot and put our main focused characters to where they’re supposed to be. Fortunately, it helps that their motivations were lifted straight from season 1 so their actions don’t feel out of character.
In this season, Taro was initially playing an antagonistic role against Shinjiro with the former’s strong sense of justice clashing against the latter’s seemingly unjust series of actions. Moroboshi is still doing his Moroboshi things with the whole investigation side of things while Hokuto is pretty much there to involve Rena into the whole Ultraman situation. Again, it helps that we already got back stories to these characters during season 1. The two characters that got the short end of the stick, both in this season and throughout the series, are Jack and Bemular. I guess Jack is just too cool to have a complicated story and his appearance to just wreck stuff is enough as it is. However, the same can’t be said for Bemular who’s probably one of the most interesting characters in the series. It is implied that he’s the original Ultraman just in a new body but we don’t get much information on him and why he’s doing this. These include why he’s on Earth in the first place after leaving Shin Hayata, as well as taking care of Hokuto following the end of season 1. Then, he just dies in season 3 and that’s it for him. I bet the manga expands on him several fold, but anime-only watchers will likely be disappointed.
The other character who got the spotlight in this season is Rena Sayama, and this is a long time coming. Her story once again connects to season 1 where she initially hated Ultraman because of how it got her mother killed. Ever since then, she has been a supporter for Ultraman, especially with her relationship to Shinjiro, and how she’s involved in the story for season 3 puts everything into a full circle. Again, I don’t know how she comes to use the Marie Suit in the manga, but the way it was done in the anime isn’t forced and puts a totally different light to how she initially saw the incident that killed her mother. She might not be the strongest, far from it in fact, but her role in the Ultra team is definitely unique and suits her very well.
Production-wise, they didn’t skimp on this one. One thing I noticed during the first two seasons is how they seem to be using the same set of locations for the fight scenes. Either in the alley or in the river bank or in the shipping port. For season 3, I immediately noticed a lot of mid-air fight sequences, with our characters flying all over the place and the backgrounds moving everywhere. I definitely appreciate what they did here as it shows how the power scale in these battles are beyond more realistic combat and inches a bit closer to what we’re used to seeing in the mainline tokusatsu series.
And as I alluded earlier, the other thing we often see in the mainline Ultraman series coming into this anime is that shot of people cheering Ultraman on. This is often a staple in every Ultraman show, but how it plays in the final season is much more significant thanks to how the season opens with people having negative feelings towards our heroes. The fact that they were able to go beyond their prejudices, especially after Mephisto and that one television personality added fuel to the fire, is really satisfying to watch. This is especially true in the final battle where we see the crowd around a seemingly defeated Ultraman cheers on, causing Ultraman to achieve the power up he needs to defeat the final boss. Speaking of the final boss, I’m not sure if this is the story the manga is leading to, but I did find Edo’s sudden heel turn to be the final antagonist to be a little forced. I mean he was instrumental in establishing all these new Ultramen with the end goal of ultimately destroying them? I don’t really buy it but for the sake of concluding the story, it sorts of works, and provides a great final showdown during the series climax.
Ultimately, while deviating from its source material, ULTRAMAN Final managed to hit the landing in a great way, not perfect but definitely great. And if I have the time, I would definitely go and continue reading the manga to see how the original story is supposed to go and the characters we didn’t get in the anime. If you’ve stuck with the whole three seasons, then the use of CG should definitely not be an issue and it does add to the kinds of battles we see here. And lastly, those Ultraman Suit designs are really great, so much so that we got several new ones for the final season and I’m still waiting for Bandai Spirits to announce kits for those. So, whether you’re an Ultraman fan, or an action anime fan, or someone who just likes Iron Man-like suits, then ULTRMAN is definitely a good recommendation. It’s not perfect, especially season 2, but each season is short enough that you wouldn’t need to worry too much when going through that six-episode season. All three ULTRAMAN seasons are currently available for international streaming on Netflix.
