Air Dates: January 2nd until July 3rd, 1966 though episode #28 didn't air until December 14th
Sundays at 7:00 pm on TBS, 28 total episodes that were 25+ minutes in length. Created by Eiji Tsuburaya, directed by his oldest son Hajime.
Subs by Tgwoe, screenshot dimensions 1436 x 1076(4:3). This classic series also has a color version but I prefer older shows/films in Black and White as that seems to give off a more creepy vibe which the subber also thought.
Ratings: **** Didn't find the ratings until the ninth episode but did update the first eight shows. This series had such high ratings but back in 1966 there were only a few regular stations and no cable. This drama ran opposite another sci-fi show called "W3" which was very popular and before this series began had an average rating of 23%. However "Ultra Q" was much more popular and the other show slipped below 10%!!!! The average rating for these 28 episodes was 32.4%, the rating for this 28th and final episode was 19.9%, the reason it was so much lower than the other episodes will be explained below.
In the middle are the main three characters, who they are will be revealed below. The man on the left end is Eiji Tsuburaya and he is the #1 special effects man/director of all time in Japan. He did all of the special effects for the classic TOHO films such as creating the costumes, sets, etc. and of course most reading this have seen the "Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan" and other movies. This TV series was the first of it's kind in Japan and Tsuburaya had created this series where he didn't want the focus to be on monsters but the story which was the format for the old American series "Outer Limits". But TOHO wanted his unique monsters and there will be a different one in each show, will update this top section now and again with more trivial tidbits. Tsuburaya had access to all of his old costumes so would often mix them up such as the head from a 1965 film, the body from a 1961 movie and so on.
**** This is a new feature that was added for the eleventh episode and will update it every other recap. This mini section will have the monsters/creatures that we have seen to date and you can see more of them as a bit further down are the links to all of the episodes. Did have just two screenshots of the monsters but now that I'm caught up with them will have four of them for the remaining shows. The first four screenshots below were from the 23rd episode, no creature from outer space but an Octopus called Sudar which grew to the size of a giant! It was both a God and Enemy of the small Compass Island in the South Seas, after those are four from episode 24. This time the creature began off as an innocent looking statue but grew into this massive snail like looking monster which could shoot laser beams from its tentacles! Edit: Finished writing this up and just before I hit Publish recalled that this section hadn't been updated. No big deal though as creatures/monsters haven't been a key to the previous episodes though the stories have all been top notch.
Main Cast: Though it appears this had nothing to do with the "Ultraman" franchise in a way it does as this series is considered to be it's forerunner. The first "Ultraman" series began a little bit after this show ended in it's same time slot and there's not enough time to talk about that show and it's movies which I do recommend. Hiroko Sakurai who plays the reporter Yuriko in this show is quite known for her "Ultraman" work as she was in the first series plus a few more after that along with being in many of the movies. Will do some editing and adding as we go along though not as much as other dramas, the top three are by far the main characters. There will be many monsters in this series, perhaps one per episode! Won't give any details about them at the top but will talk about them during the recap.
**** Not sure how to explain this and perhaps it doesn't need it. But when the show opens a narrator tells us what we are about to watch will be something extraordinary, is what we view real or just a part of our imagination? A screenshot of that is above and that's how the American series "Outer Limits" also opened and at the end the viewers were asked to think again with about what we viewed, to date this show hasn't done that. Every episode has it's own title, this episode's is....
Open Up!
In an extreme oddity this section didn't need any updating after the fourth episode! We rarely learned anything new about the main characters plus there were no new ones after episode two.
Kenji Sahara as Jun Manjome.... Don't think any actor was in more of the classic TOHO monster films than Sahara was between 1954 to 1975 and also in four "Ultraman" series! Jun is a pilot for Hoshikawa Airlines, he can fly both planes and copters. Though a pilot Jun does dream of becoming a best selling sci-fi writer, he's also adept with guns and how that came to be is a mystery. Plus Jun is a master with cars and could have been a racer, one last thing is that Jun loves science which is how he and his mates are friends with Professor Ichinotani.
Yasuhiko Saijou as Ippei Togawa.... Jun's assistant at Hoshikawa Airlines but Ippei doesn't have any licenses yet but is close to getting one for flying helicopters. Bit of a goofball but seems to be much more intelligent than others think, Jun must see that too as he does trust Ippei fully. In episode fourteen did learn Hoshikawa Airlines was along the Tama River, that's 15 or so miles west of Tokyo.
Hiroko Sakurai as Yuriko Edogawa.... On the left below, will have a different pic in the future. 21 year old reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun(daily news) paper. Yuriko is the youngest at the newspaper but her editor Seki believes fully in her and sends Yuriko out on the harder stories such as the mysterious and unexplainable....
Ureo Egawa as Professor Ichinotani.... We finally met this older professor in the third episode. Know very little to date about him such as how did Jun and his mates come to be friends with this man who is ultra intelligent. Though him and the next character Seki are important to the drama each will only be in about half the episodes.
Yoshifumi Tajima as Seki.... Yuriko's editor at Mainichi Shimbun(daily news), older man who acts tough though is a softie and often gives Yuriko the stranger/mysterious cases. Not a huge role but an important one and in the second episode Seki was the Hero!
Previous recaps: There is no ongoing storyline but all of the shows have been entertaining so here are the links to all of the recaps done.
Five recaps ago was talking about how on occasion will watch an American drama though that is quite rare but don't plan on changing that though won't talk about that too often. When I do view something it will be an older show but 98% of the TV shows I have viewed the last decade are either from Japan or Korea. But in the previous recap did talk about how I spoiled myself and bought a huge DVD boxset for the 1964-68 series "The Man From Uncle". But didn't stop there and did grab one other massive boxset a week later as I'm old fashioned and would rather have physical copies of things. So this other splurge was for a Western that aired from 1957-63, had heard of the show but had never seen one episode nor did I really know much about it. Plus this is the first time I've ever viewed a Western series but have seen some older films. The series is called "Have Gun Will Travel" and I do luck out when picking dramas or movies to watch as 95% of them seem to be decent. Have viewed the first seventeen shows and like "Ultra Q" the stories for each episode are different and interesting, below is a video featuring the theme song and some pics of the star who was Richard Boone. Sometimes I feel as though I was born forty years too late but on the other hand wouldn't have had a chance to view these kinds of shows or movies on DVD or the internet.... or have this slowly dying blog!!!!
I tend not to give number grades to these older dramas and films, giving a grade is not why I view them. The reasons are because these older shows and films are heads and tails above 95% of any current ones or at least to me. Usually will watch four episodes and if a drama is good then will continue on and begin to recap it, very rarely do I cease watching a show. So will say what was very good or bad about a drama/film and whether I would recommend it but by the time we hit the end of a very long series such as this one you should know my feelings about it. I give this drama an extremely high recommendation, while not every episode was an award winner there wasn't one dud! The stories were all interesting and the special effects were darn good too considering when this show was filmed so if you do have the chance to ever view this you know what to do!!!! In February 1966 there was an episode that had to be preempted and when the series ended in July of that year this episode hadn't aired. It had to be held back until December, to me that made no sense and that's why this had the lowest rating of any episode but close to 20% was still respectable.
After Jun and Yuriko ditched their friend Ippei(!) Yuriko was musing out loud how it would be so wonderful to say sayonara to the hustle and bustle to a large city such as Tokyo. Her dream was of a place where there were no work deadlines, traffic, hordes of people, noise, etc. but Jun warned Yuriko that what she wished for may not be so terrific. A few seconds after saying that Jun had to slam on the brakes to his sportscar as lying unconscious in the road was a middle aged man, the one in the third screenshot and also many others. This man was put cold so the pair put him in the back of Jun's car and Yuriko presumed he was drunk but Jun thought otherwise. He decided to bring this man to the esteemed professor Ichinotani's lab for the man did wake and began saying some gibberish, why will be explained shortly. This middle aged man's name was Masayoshi Sawamura and wasn't drunk, he was lying in the middle of the road for he had leapt from a train! Which is in the second screenshot and that was no normal train but one that circled the Earth unnoticed and was in a different dimension(!), second show in a row with that theme.
Sawamura was like so many others his age and also had the same thoughts of Yuriko which were to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It was never explained well how it happened but Sawamura along with many others over the past few months had found themselves on that train circling the Earth but mainly Tokyo. That had happened earlier in the evening to Sawamura who didn't have a ticket(!) so the conductor brought him to the man responsible for this train, he's in three screenshots above and has the receding hairline. His name was Kenji Tomono who was a popular Sci-Fi writer and hadn't been seen for almost two years yet his novels were more popular than ever. Tomono was telling Sawamura along with two other newbies how they all were now in a new world, one that they had dreamed of which was of leaving the Rat Race 😈 behind! We learned later that Tomono had entered this world by stepping into a mysterious elevator, one that wouldn't go up but only down and the destination was this train in another dimension. Tomono has been on the train longer than anyone so was considered to be the leader to an extent and seemed to love living his life circling Tokyo unseen. All that talk really creeped out Sawamura who ran to the front of the train, there he saw a montage of his life which he realized he missed badly. Sawamura was able to open up a window and leap out, shortly after is when Jun and Yuriko saw Sawamura lying in the road.
Tomono even called Matsuhiro on occasion, how he could do that and also send her stories via the mail only made everything more difficult to believe! But one thing has become more believable which is of the story Sawamura and the other man had told the professor Ichinotani which was of Tomono living on a train in a different dimension. Jun called the professor with his discoveries and learned that Ichinotani had the police pick up Sawamura as he was finished with his evaluations. From there the wife of Sawamura Tomiko had gone at the station and brought her husband home via a cab, also with the wife was their daughter Keiko. On the ride home Sawamura realized why he wanted to leave his life behind as his wife berated this poor man to death, so didn't Keiko and Sawamura had enough of the pair for he hopped out of the cab. From there Sawamura headed to his office job but by now it was after 4:00 pm and most others were heading home. At the office Sawamura's boss also berated him endlessly, after a few minutes of that abuse Sawamura did the right thing by going up to his boss and quitting!!!! As I said earlier not sure how you get on that mysterious train but returning was the goal of Sawamura who prayed so hard to go back and he eventually did, have a feeling never to return to his old life!
Here's where we learned that Tomono had somehow appeared on this mini train after going on an elevator eighteen months ago but it's odd he was the only person it happened to. Tomono's dream for many years had been to escape the Rat Race despite being a popular writer and wealthy, being on the train was like being in Heaven. After living in this different dimension for a while there was no way Tomono could ever return to his old way of living and the story was of that adventure along with the tales of some people who were now also living on that train. It was a wild story which of course the public would think was just fiction but not Jun and Yuriko. The episode opened up with Yuriko wishing for such a life and Jun now asked her does she still dream of living that way which Yuriko didn't. The series ended with the narrator saying that sentence in the third screenshot below, this was a fine way to end the drama but it was another case where I wished the show was another five minutes longer. No need to tell you why I enjoyed this series immensely as I did in the intro and many of the prior recaps. Will take a mini break from drama recaps as there's many older movies that I want to view and review, the first of those should be in about a week to ten days.
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