Look back: Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna

The nice thing about reviewing a foreign film that's almost 10 years old is that I get the likes of Wikipedia at my disposal and an actual professionally sub-titled DVD to look at. So unlike the folks at StompTokyo and badmovieplanet, I come into this fairly well-versed in Ultraman lore. Unfrotunately like those guys 8 years ago, the main hero of Ultraman Dyna remains a frickin' idiot even today.

Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna takes place some time at the end of the Ultraman Dyna series (the sequel to the Ultraman Tiga series). Dyna plays back-up to our heroes in the "Super GUTS" team: the typical ineffectual group of hi-tech soldiers charged with protecting the world from all manner of monsters and alien threats. In this particular film, Dyna faces a crisis of faith when he's nearly beaten by a giant monster until an experimental battle-cruiser, the Prometheus, saves the day.

But no so fast - for it seems the aliens were behind the development of the Prometheus, all along plotting to hi-jack the super weapon once it was completed. Before we know it, Dyna faces off against Prometheus (which the aliens have reconfigured into the requisite giant humanoid robot) and loses in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics (and a variety visual effects). So Asuka spends the rest of the film wallowing in self-doubt and even tries to hook up with Ultraman Tiga, his predecessor who had been triumphant years before but hasn't been seen since. He does however manage to get some friendly advice from Captain Iruma, the former commander at GUTS during Tiga's run.

The overriding theme in this story is to face one's fears and to "believe in the light within." Unfortunately, the theme comes across rather heavy-handed. Asuka (and Ultraman Dyna by extension) winds up looking kind of like a wimp. But of course all this is essentially rationale to bring on the return of Ultraman Tiga - all of which is accomplished with the tried and true plot device (and very distinctly Japanese concept) of "believe in our heroes and they'll do right by us." So Tiga magically appears to bail out Dyna and proceeds to kick alien butt. Sadly, that's about all you get before he promptly disappears mere minutes after saving Dyna's worthless self. So it's not so much a team-up film as it is a Dyna film with a couple of guest-stars.

Image Entertainment did a fairly good job of the DVD (which was released along side the Ultraman Gaia "team-up" so they were able to recycle menu systems and everything). The bilingual DVD offers a choice of Dolby 5.1 or a downmix to stereo (in both Japanese and English). In fact the only thing I had to complain about is the use of "dub-titles" which seems to be based on the English dub dialogue (bad dialogue at that) rather than accurate Japanese to English translation. It's a heck of a curiosity having come out before the sad failure of the Tiga show on American broadcast. Sadly this little gem has long since gone out of print.