Eiji Tsuburaya's long-running tokusatsu franchise, the Ultra Series, is no stranger to tragic and bleak moments aimed for older audiences long before Kamen Rider and Super Sentai came along.
TV series
- Ultraseven is one of the earliest examples. Unlike its family-friendly predecessor Ultraman, the usual threats to Earth this time was not rampaging kaiju, but intelligent, cunning aliens. In addition, The Hero Dan Moroboshi/Ultraseven frequently faced moral dilemmas. Humans Are the Real Monsters was a theme that frequently popped up throughout the show.
- Return of Ultraman takes a step further from Ultraseven, made even worse when The Hero's love interest, Aki being killed off by an Alien Nackle after getting her brother killed in a road accident. The real kicker is that the episodes featured the Sakata siblings' deaths aired during Christmas Eve!
- Ultraman Leo began with one of the most brutal Downer Beginnings in the history of the franchise—a returning Ultraseven being manhandled by Alien Magma and the Giras Brothers and Tokyo in the brink of sinking into the ocean and spending 40 episodes unable to transform and had to put the titular Ultra into a gruesome Training from Hell. The series also deals with slavery and had an "Everybody Dies" Ending before Yoshiyuki Tomino even had his own series. People get dismembered on screen, burned to death, crowds are crushed or drowned, infighting among the Ultras, and to top it all off, having the series' counter-kaiju team killed off in the most horrific fashion.
- Ultraman Tiga had a number of serious, horrifying to tragic moments from a witch abducting children on Halloween to devour their dreams and Daigo being plagued by nightmares in the last few episodes leading to the appearance of Gatanothor. Doesn't help when Chiaki Konaka is involved with the screenwriting, and the show takes a cue from the Cthulhu Mythos, making the series darker that can leave soul-rending effects towards children compare to its successor, Ultraman Dyna, which was more light-hearted.
- Ultraman Gaia was much serious in tone compared to the generally humorous and light-hearted Ultraman Dyna. Gaia also featured the first Anti-Hero Ultra and kaiju threats on a planetary scale. The Big Bad of the show is revealed to be a hypocrite Omnicidal Maniac who intends to eliminated all life on Earth for its Humans Are the Real Monsters ideology and the show also explored the negative morality of mankind.
- Ultra Q Dark Fantasy deconstructs the concepts of the original family-friendly Ultra Q, and turn into a true Sci-Fi Horror with realistic bizzare consequences.
- Ultraman Nexus was supposed to be a Deconstruction reboot of the franchise aimed at a shonen/seinen audience with things taken from Ultraman Leo, like horrifying kaiju killing and eating people, deaths of major characters, thought-provoking themes, and so on and so forth... but it got Screwed by the Network and placed in a Saturday morning kids' timeslot.
- Ultraseven X takes what Nexus did, combines it with Ultraseven and takes it even further to the Cyberpunk levels.
- Ultraman Geed takes Leo's Downer Beginning up to eleven with the entire Universe being destroyed, only being restored by the efforts of Ultraman King, and the titular Ultraman is the son of Ultraman Belial, having to face an uphill battle with only the help of a seriously wounded Ultraman Zero.
- In contrast to the Lighter and Softer Ultraman R/B, the prequel novel of said series revealed just how screwed up the growth environment of Saki Mitsurugi and her brothers, the first Ultraman Rosso and Blu. The three siblings were raised in a Crapsack World where their planet, Sanja, has an ongoing war between light and darkness, and they were forced to work as bounty hunters to fund the orphanage they lived in that was managed by a creepy nanny alien who uses said orphans as disposable source of income. During the siblings' adventure across the universe, they encountered a village who sacrificed pretty virgin women per each decade to a monster, a backwater planet full of impoverished farmers, an alien planet run entirely by mercenaries and an intergalactic peacekeeping organizations being revealed as a bunch of Dirty Cops.
- Even the Ultra Galaxy Fight spin-offs New Generation Heroes and The Absolute Conspiracy is no slouch to dark and edgy storytelling even for a Crisis Crossover web-series that served as a prequel to Ultraman Taiga and Ultraman Z, respectively. To wit, both shows kicked off in a rather bleak start—NGH has X and Geed being manhandled by their Darkness copies created by Ultra Dark Killer, who then proceeds to abduct Ultraman Zero and Ultrawoman Grigio. While TAC begins with Ultraman Max and Ultraman Ribut (the Canon Immigrant character that debuted in NGH) ambushed by Alien Sran and Hellberus inside Maga-Orochi's nest and things went downhill when Max is outnumbered and injected with Gudis' cells by Sran.
- Each of the New Generation Heroes find themselves in a Hopeless Boss Fight with their evil doppelgangers (with the exception of Ginga and Victory, where they instead face Dark Lugiel and Etelgar while Rosso and Blu battle Dark Killer himself). The real kicker? The whole events of the story were set up by Ultraman Tregear!
- The Absolute Conspiracy, on the other hand, takes an extra mile a bit further; aside from the aforementioned Downer Beginning that befell Max and Ribut in the first chapter, we backtrack to Belial and Tregear's backstories and how they become the evil Ultramen we know of today. Instead of obtaining their dark forms after forming a pact with an Eldritch Abomination, they instead join with the nigh-omnipotent Absolute Tartarus, in the process creating parallel isotopes of their original incarnations while in their Early Style forms while nonetheless remaining on the side of evil. Not to mention, the miniseries has multiple deaths of several background Ultras, first seen when Empera slain them with No Body Left Behind and again when Zett targeted Yullian's ship, where she and 80 survived, but not the other four crew members, and finally Tartarus succeeds in kidnapping Yullian as a bargaining chip into forcing the Land of Light to surrender to The Kingdom. Making this miniseries having the first distinction in the franchise to end in a downer note.
- Ultraman Decker: From the very start of the series, the setting is much bleaker and while it does balance lighthearted moments at times. The show kickstarted with the Spheres isolated the Earth with a barrier, while the titular Ultra himself is unable to stop them and the Mars Colony beforehand is ravaged, furthermore we see soldiers dying onscreen to the Spheres via getting absorbed while Trigger had no such casualties onscreen. Things get even more complicated when Professor Yuichiro Asakage, one of the TPU's researchers and initially a major supporting character, turns out to be Agams the Bazdor an alien from an alternate future who came to help the Spheres devour Earth, with his betrayal impacting our protagonist greatly, and Agams' tragic backstory didn't help matters either.
Anime & Manga
- The☆Ultraman: The introduction of the Heller Empire and it's namesake leader, Heller removes all of the anime's lighthearted moments starting in episode 37 onward where the heroes end up facing an invasion on both U40 and Earth by the Heller Empire. The show's title sequence from episode 29 foreshadows how hell is going to break loose at that point. The real kicker? The Heller Empire's invasion arc is even based on a scrapped plot intended for Ultraman Leo about a "war between two worlds", not to mention Leo being already one of the darkest entries in the franchise.
- ULTRAMAN, being a reimagining of the original TV series where it's more focused on Powered Armor than utilizing Transformation Trinkets, and leans into Cyberpunk aesthetics as opposed to the Space Opera, Kaiju-themed premise that is associated with the Ultra Series, those ideas take a backseat to more street-level adventures that Shinjiro partakes in as Ultraman. The series also explores the consequences of the existence of extraterrestrials appearing on Earth.
Comic Books
- The Nemesis comics follow-up to Ultraman: Towards the Future is this compared to the show. Ultraman Great gets captured by a space-demon right in the first issue before bonding with a new host, Ace Kimura, and upon returning finds out in his abscence, humanity suffers a Robot War that nearly drives mankind to extinction. The return of an even stronger Gudis and a sadistic human criminal named Raptor who sold his soul to Gudis into becoming an Evil Doppelgänger of Ultraman Great before going on a destructive rampage, and the two villains beating Great down to an inch of his life twice makes things even worse.
Live-Action Films
- The second Ultraman Zearth film, while still a comedy like the original, is slightly darker than the first. Zearth's Heroic BSoD is treated completely seriously and a portion of the movie is dedicated to overcoming his fear of Shadow Ultraman by going through Training from Hell, while the enemy is shown attacking a city on-screen with visible damage and succeeds in brainwashing thousands of humans, including Zearth's closest human friend Tooru.
- Basically the entire Ultraman Cosmos movie trilogy:
- Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact is a kid-friendly prequel set in the protagonist Musashi's childhood, with plenty of childish hi-jinks throughout, the kid characters befriending Baby Baltanians, the sole kaiju Don Dragon a Gentle Giant and it's Big Bad, Basical Baltan, a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only wants to save it's own kind and hardly a malevolent threat. It's followed by...
- Ultraman Cosmos 2: The Blue Planet, which sees the characters dealing with the Sandross threat of apocalyptic proportions, the peaceful Planet Juran Musashi visited in the series prior wiped to extinction, and an intense finale with the Scorpiss horde overwhelming earth's defenses and nearly destroying mankind, if not for Cosmos' partner Ultraman Justice finally arriving. Even then, it's followed with...
- Ultraman Cosmos vs. Ultraman Justice: The Final Battle, a movie where the returning hero, Ultraman Justice, is no longer an ally to the humans, and Ultraman Cosmos seemingly killed in the prologue.
- Ultraman: The Next follows the tone of Ultraman Nexus, with it's villain Beast the One even scarier than enemies of previous movies. It's probably the most "adult" Ultraman movie at it's point of release.
