Anime Review: Ultraman Season 1 (2019)

Directors: Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki
Distributor: Netflix
Runtime: 325 minutes
Released: April 1^st, 2019
Availability: Streaming on Netflix worldwide

Shinjiro Hayata discovers that his father Shin Hayata is the legendary hero Ultraman, a famous superhero who saved Japan from aliens. Shinjiro must become Ultraman and succeed his father as a hero.

He feels he’s not up to being Ultraman even as he tries to protect the citizens. Will he truly become Ultraman?

I don’t have any experience with this Franchise

I haven’t ever watched anything associated with Ultraman. I did enjoy this anime despite having no previous experience with this franchise. I have always loved superhero shows and movies so this variation of the superhero story in an anime is a nice change for me.

It’s a fun superhero origin story that doesn’t do anything new but keeps me entertained with the story and the characters. While the story isn’t amazing or anything, it’s still a very entertaining story to watch.

The 3D animation looks good, not like the most amazing 3D ever but the fight scene animation is very well done, although the fight scenes look decent, although the choreography can sometimes look silly, it’s still animation that looks pretty good most of the time.

I do find the 3D character designs to look a little funny because they’re trying to emulate 2D in 3D animation and it just looks weird. I think it looks a little weird and jarring, but that’s just me.

Overall, the animation does look nice if you can get used to the 3D animation. I do think it’s worth watching for the animation, but that shouldn’t be the only reason you watch the anime.

Josh Hutcherson did a good job as Shinjiro Hayata. He did sound good in this role but he does sound a little stilted a little bit, but it’s not a bad performance.

Brian Palermo did a good job as Mitsuhiro Ide. I liked his performance and he did a good job. His character was also the old mentor and he brought that character to life and made him a very believable character.

Fred Tatasciore did a good job as Shin Hayata. I liked his character and he did a good job and I liked his voice work.

Gunnar Sizemore did a really good job as Seiji Hokuto. I really liked his performance and he stood out to me in this English dub. I liked his character and the voice work he provided.

Liam O'Brien was great as Dan Moroboshi. I’ve always liked him as a voice actor and I enjoyed his role in this anime. He was a standout among the vocal performances in this anime.

Tara Sands did a great job as Rena Sayama. She was one of the standouts of the English dub and I really enjoyed her voice work in the anime. She’s also playing an interesting character too and she definitely did a great job voice acting.

There are also many other voice actors in this anime, like Steve Blum. The dub is definitely good, but not one of Netflix’s best English dubs when it comes to anime. It’s still a good dub, just not amazing.

I’m sure the Japanese is fine so there’ always that option too.

Kazuma Jinnouchi and Nobuko Toda did a good job on the soundtrack. The music isn’t amazing or anything but it is good. It fits the tone of the anime and it sounded good, it just wasn’t too memorable to me.

The opening song is "Sight Over The Battle" by OLDCODEX. It wasn’t very memorable to me.

Overall, the music is good, but not too memorable. It was a decent soundtrack that did its job.

The story of the first season is split up into three arcs; I feel that some of these arcs are very uneven because of the pacing of the anime. The arc has une3ven pacing and it just feels weird because some arcs seem really fast while other arcs feel really slow.

Overall, Ultraman (2019) isn’t the best anime I’ve ever seen but it is a fun way for me to be introduced to a franchise that I’ve not really know anything about besides that it’s a popular franchise. I have no idea what diehard fans of Ultraman think about the new series but as a newcomer I did enjoy it, although I probably didn’t catch references to previous entries in the franchise.

It’s basically a reboot of the Ultraman franchise so you don’t need to know anything about the other entries, but you might get more out of it if you are already a fan of this franchise.

I cant’ say whether or not it was true to the Ultraman franchise but I will say that I enjoyed it. I might not hop into the Ultraman franchise as a diehard fan but I’m looking forward to another season if Netflix thinks it did well enough for a second season. I certainly enjoyed watching this anime series.

While I can’t really speak for diehard fans of Ultraman, I will say that I enjoyed this new anime series despite having no knowledge of previous entries. I can’t vouch for it being newbie friendly, but I was able to understand the characters and the story pretty well.

The animation is pretty good, especially for 3D, it wasn’t the best 3D animation but the fight scenes were the highlight. The fight scenes are nicely done for the most part and the animation is good.

The English dub is good with some outstanding voice actors. It was a good English dub, not amazing, but defiantly good.

The music was good but a little forgettable.

I enjoyed this series a lot, but not quite enough for me to buy it for my personal anime collection, but if you have a Netflix account I can definitely recommend it for streaming, especially if you’re looking for something interesting to watch on Netflix.

It is worth your time to watch, but not quite enough to buy unless you really love the anime. It’s definitely one of the better Netflix exclusive anime series that they have. Netflix exclusives tend to be hit-or-miss when it comes to how good the stories and English dubs are for Netflix exclusives but Ultraman (2019) is one that I will happily recommend streaming on Netflix.

It’s one that is a must-watch on Netflix and I’m very happy to say I’ve seen a good anime that kept me entertained. Ultraman has been renewed for a second season in 2022, so I'm looking forward to it.