Ultraman Blazar. The codename for this unidentified giant alien.
Ultraman Blazar is a Toku series by Tsuburaya Productions and the 35th entry of the long-running Ultra Series; it's the first stand-alone Ultraman show in ten years, with no direct ties to the New Generation Heroes series that was started by 2013's Ultraman Ginga.
In a world plagued by monster attacks, the elite attack team SKaRD protects Earth from various threats. Things change when the captain, Gento Hiruma, ends up merged with Ultraman Blazar, an alien from the M421 Nebula who arrives on Earth to help combat the threats to mankind. With the aid of SKaRD's forces, which include the powerful mech, Earth Garon, Blazar and Hiruma engage in a fight for the safety of humanity.
The series was released on July 8th, 2023. For the first time in Ultra Series history, the series is airing with an English simuldub, utilizing YouTube's new audio track feature. It stars Johnny Yong Bosch as Gento.
It is simultaneously broadcastnote in seven major Asian regions (mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India) and dubbed in the local languages.
Recurring Ultra Series tropes:
- Big Bad: An odd case - technically the V99 aliens are this, as they are the ones who sent the invading kaiju waves with the intent of destroying Earth or terraforming it for their kaiju's needs; but are only doing so in retaliation over a past transgression by GGFJ director Yu Dobashi. They eventually stand down once Emi makes peace with them, leaving their final weapon, Varallon, to take the spot all for itself when it doesn't stand down with its supposed masters.
- Creature-Hunter Organization: Special Kaiju Reaction Detachment (SKaRD) was created to serve as a first response to any emerging kaiju threat, either by gathering data on them and assisting in their elimination.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Any Kaiju felled by Blazar will go out in a great explosion. Considering most of them die by getting skewered by his energy lance, the Spatial Burrade, it makes sense.
- Henshin Hero: A staple of the franchise, Hiruma can transform into Ultraman Blazar.
- Kaiju: Blazar will be the first Ultra series in a while to have a plethora of brand-new monsters.
- Toku: This series plans to evoke a more realistic take on the series' tropes, not unlike Ultraman Nexus but with some of the goofiness of recent installments.
Ultraman Blazar provides examples of the following tropes:
- Back to Base Form: In order to persuade the approaching V99 armada that Earth isn't a threat, Earth Garon and Blazar discard all of their upgrades, forcing them to wrap up the fight against Varallon with their original abilities.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- This is the first mainline series with a human protagonist that is both the team's captain and a family man. While Ultraman Nice depicted the latter case with its main protagonist, and Reito Igaguri of Ultraman Geed was a father as well; the former series isn't a mainline installment and Reito was a secondary protagonist to Riku.
- Gento's transformation is streamlined, as he doesn't shout Blazar's name or do any sort of other Invocation that most other New Generation Ultras did.note Similarly, scenes showing Gento "inside" Blazar are kept to a minimum, only using them to show him using Blazar Stones; and even then they're first-person POV shots of his arms that keep as much offscreen as possible.
- Blazar is also the first Ultraman in years to not have any form changes. Instead, he occasionally gets a Blazar Stone that provides new weaponry.
- As a direct result of no form changes freeing up the show's budget, Blazar is the first series in some time to feature more new kaiju than old ones. The last few series introduced around three new kaiju each; while Blazar had thirteen.
- As opposed to having a mecha based on a past kaiju or mecha of the franchise or reusing a prior mecha outright, SKaRD's Humongous Mecha, Earthgaron, is primarily based on MechaGodzilla.
- The show's theme song doesn't play at any point in the first episode, instead merely showing the title of the series after the first few minutes without any music. And rather than showing the episode's name and title card after the opening, they are shown after the episode has ended while having nothing but an ominous cue as background music.
- Rather than willingly or instinctively transform into Blazar, it's more or less shown that Blazar forces his host to transform for the first time against his will, up to taking control of his body to ensure it.
- For the first time in the franchise's history, the show doesn't end with the Ultra revealing their human identity to their teammates, separating from their host or leaving Earth. Instead, Gento keeps his identity secret and remains fused with Blazar on Earth.
- Breather Episode: Episode 13, SKaRD Nocturne, combines this with Clip Show, intertwining footage from previous episodes with the SKaRD crew talking about a myriad of subjects, from their personal lives to pondering Blazar's relations with humanity. That being said, the episode also teases a bigger mystery in a possible correlation between space kaiju such as Bazanga and Gebalga and an asteroid blown up by the GGF in 1999.
- Brick Joke: Teruaki's tomato bag in Episode 6 comes back in the latter half when it bounces around the SKaRD van while being held and shaken by Earth Garon.
- The Cameo: The monster Gankiryu from the 2023 indie kaiju short movie appears in an in-universe insurance commercial.
- Catchphrase: Gento says "I'll go" whenever he's about to jump into action, and it's used as a series Tag Line. The English dub modifies it to sound more natural for a native speaker, as "I've got this."
- Connected All Along: Episode 13 has Yasunobu talk about the conspiracy theory that Bazanga, Gebalga, and the meteorite from 1999 all come from the same planet due to following the exact same path to Earth. This is further compounded by the fact that Garamon's entry went through a completely different path.
- Creator Cameo: Series Director Kiyotaka Taguchi briefly appears in Episode 6 as a laundromat attendant who promptly leaves after seeing Yasunobu standing shirtless.
- Deconstruction: This show deconstructs the usual formula of the defense team failing to defeat the Monster of the Week and Ultraman appearing to save the day since this series puts into question if the defense team is actually needed if an unaffiliated alien does their job for them. This is especially not helped by the fact that SKaRD does not have a single kaiju kill on their own with director Retsu even stating that they could potentially disbanded if they don't give the results the higher-ups want.
- Eat the Bomb: In the final episode, several returning kaiju help defuse Varallon's bombs by eating them like fruit. Since these weapons were generated from Varallon's body, it's likely that they were biological in nature and thus edible, with none of the monsters injured at all during the process.
- Evil Hand: Inverted in Episode 10. As Gento as Blazar prepares to land a finishing blow on Demaaga, Blazar takes control of his left hand and fights back to protect the kaiju.
- Evolving Credits: As Blazar receives new power-ups and weapons, the show's opening credits evolve to include footage of those new abilities in action.
- Fun with Acronyms: The name of this series' defense team, SKaRD, is short for Special Kaiju Reaction Detachment.
- Giant Robot Hands Save Lives: Yasunobu is saved from a fall by Earth Garon in episode 6. It does have padded material between its metal plates, so he could have lucked out and fell on those.
- Government Conspiracy: Starting in Episode 13, the show reveals that the GGF swept the arrival of V99, a meteor carrying amorphous kaiju cells, under the rug. Said incident has been tied to numerous major events throughout the series up to that point, including Blazar's arrival on Earth, the creation of Leviera by a former GGF chemist and the waves of space kaiju denoted by Bazanga's and Gebalga's nigh-identical arrivals.
- Idiosyncratic Mecha Storage: Inverted; Earth Garon doesn't have a "fold-up" mode, but its hangar accommodates that by having the cockpit entrance on its first floor.
- Lower-Deck Episode: Episode 22 only features the SKaRD team in two scenes outside of the monster battle, with most of the plot focused on a struggling middle-aged insurance salesman befriending an elderly widow and trying to save her from dying.
- Mildly Military: SKaRD is explicitly an independent unit with the authority to act on its own, plus Gento takes a casual First-Name Basis approach. The looser standards are often lampshaded by Anri, who is finding it hard to break old habits she had with her previous unit.
- Mystical 108: Zangill needs to help 108 rogue souls pass to the afterlife as The Atoner. This is a reference to the number itself being significant in Dharmic religions such as Buddhism, where one must overcome the 108 temptations to achieve nirvana.
- Mythology Gag:
- Mankind encounters Ultraman for the first time in this universe, and even creates his codename as a designation for the unidentified giant of light, akin to how Ultraman Nexus was treated both during his series and in the prequel film Ultraman: The Next.
- SKaRD members can pilot a reptilian mecha known as Earth Garon, its name being derivative of Earthtron with both being based on Godzilla/MechaGodzilla.
- After awakening Garamon, the Cicada Men control the robot by playing an orchestral rendition of the opening theme from Ultra Q, the show in which both Garamon and the Cicada people first appeared.
- Episode 15 is full of references to characters, plot points and even visual shots from Episode 15 of Ultraman, with both episodes featuring children's drawings giving birth the peaceful kaiju Gavadon.
- After Mogusion hits them with its fear-inducing hand lights, a group of power plant operators each describe the monster differently, with comparisons to, and cameos from, Basser, M1, Barabas and Takkong.
- Episode 22 features Guigass and Red King, as a homage to Ultraman Episode 25.
- Planet of Hats: Discussed in episode 13 with Yasunobu finding it strange if Bazanga and Gebalga truly did come from the same planet due to how different their ecologies are, only for Emi to point out that it's no different from how animals from Earth work through using lions and dolphins as examples.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Episode 15 is essentially a Shot-for-Shot Remake of Gavadon’s original appearance in Ultraman, but with the building that gets graffitied in the original episode changed to a tent, because Tsuburaya couldn’t secure permission to temporarily vandalise a building.
- Revisiting the Roots: Blazar deliberately abandons several of the traditions of the New Generation-era Ultraman shows (many of which are described in Breaking Old Trends above) and hews closer to the older entries.
- Unlike other New-Gen shows, Blazar doesn't feature any appearances from previous Ultramen or even other Ultras, being the first show to do this since Ultraman Max and Ultraman Nexus respectively.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Blazar shows miscommunications and getting in each others' way as being just an annoying fact of military life. In the second episode alone, Emi complains that her instructions for special ammo of "fire one round up the nose" somehow got garbled into "two simultaneous rounds between the armor plates"; and when she and Gento went to get everyone transferred into SKaRD, Yasunobu's info was outdated and he had already joined SKaRD a few weeks ago.
- Shout-Out: Demaaga's fight against Earth Garon in order to protect its newborn offspring draws direct parallels between the final battle of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II.
- Soldier vs. Warrior: This is the contrast between Gento and Ultraman Blazar. Gento is a soldier working for a government organization to kill kaiju for the sake of peace, while Blazar represents the warrior since he is a hunter who fights against kaiju for sport and survival. This contrast is especially shown when the two disagree on how to handle a situation with Gento wanting to continue the fight against Gebalga to end the threat it poses to humans, while Blazar wants to run away since he knows Gebalga is too strong for them to beat, which causes the latter to forcefully take control and flee the futile battle.
- Take That!: At the end of the series's first special episode, which follows a TV crew analyzing Blazar's first four fights, the team receives a phone call from their higher-ups to inform them
their show has been replaced with an anime. This can be seen as a nod to Ultraman Nexus having been cancelled by TBS due to poor ratings as a combination of a terrible time slot and competition against Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. - Taking You with Me: At the end of episode 24, a weakened Blazar attempts a point-blank Spiral Burrade against Varallon in order to defeat the kaiju.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Episode 16, "Terror From The Underground", features SKaRD's members experiencing and, in the case of Gento and Emi, overcoming their fears courtesy of Mogusion's psychic abilities. These range from gags, such as Teruaki's fear of bean cakes, to more serious cases, such as Gento having a vision of a burning Earth Garon and Emi having to overcome an illusion of a giant version of herself going on a rampage in order to help Blazar save the day.
- The Worf Effect: Earth Garon could qualify to have this trope renamed after it. The robot fails to win in practically every fight it engages in, with Blazar always coming in to finish the Kaiju off (compare with King Joe, Nursedessei and Terraphaser, all of which managed to secure a single victory against a foe their respective Ultras struggled with).
