Friday, August 5, 2005
Ultraman Nexus
I finally finished the whole run of Ultraman Nexus. 37 episodes of pain, laughter and joy. Well, Nexus is a tad different from the rest of the Ultra(s) dramas. It's not your normal "the hero comes in to save the day" drama and for the first time, it's targeted to the wider audience. I will explain what I mean.
The story is sort of a follow-up from the new Ultraman movie which was shown in Japan last year's December. As usual, our blue planet is plagued with Beasts that feed on human beings and we have this secret Earth Defence organisation called TLT. And in this organisation, there're groups of people called Night Raiders that destroy Beasts and save people. The story focuses on Group A of the task force. They have a new member named Komon Kazuki. He has a girlfriend named Riko Saida. Komon was from a civil defence unit and for some reasons, he was handpicked to join the Night Raiders.
Normally, the deunamist(Ultraman) is one of the task force but he's an outsider here. Jun Himenya was a photographer for the newspaper. He was the 2nd deunamist while the 1st(The Next) was a retired fighter pilot. For more inf about the 1st deunamist, please watch the new movie. Jun had a tragic past and doesn't know the reason why he was chosen to be Ultraman. He continued to fight even though he was badly injured by the Beasts. I will say he is most pitiful Ultraman so far. No details were given about the Beasts' existence till later episodes.
Along the way, there're Dark Ultraman(s). Mizorogi Shinya is Dark Mephisto who was also an ex-Deputy Captain for Night Raiders. He was amibitious and eventually fell into dark hands. He trained Nagi(one of the Night Raiders) and both were portrayed as lovers. There's also Dark Faust who appeared at the beginning. His existence was pretty much linked to Komon's.
Around the later parts of the drama, there's a 3rd deunamist named Ren Senju. Ren's appearance brought life into the drama. He's a teenager who works in a cafe near an amusement park. He loves to smile and makes jokes of his colleagues. He has a mysterious past and fell in love with Mizuo. Mizuo is a Memory Police under TLT whose job is to erase memories related to Ultraman and Beasts.
The story is pretty much dark and there's always this mystery behind every single character. But Nexus was forced to end early due to low viewership. The younger viewers didn't understand or accept the different approach which Nexus is going at. Luckily, all doubts were answered in the last 2 episodes. I can only say it's sudden but it could be better.
Maybe to some Ultra fans, they still like the older Ultras. But to me, Nexus is the best among all I had seen. Now there's this new series called Ultraman Max which features past monsters in older Ultra series to gain back their younger viewers. But I won't miss this too as Ultraman is one of my favourite heroes around.
The song playing is called Blue Seed which is performed by a new J-Rock group called doa. So far, they only release 2 singles...Blue Seed and Hero. Both of them were featured as opening themes in Nexus. Enjoy!
Labels: Recommendations
Posted by Kairyu at 7:32 AM
