Following on the heels of the successful show, the follow-up film “Ultraman Taiga The Movie: New Generation Climax” was put forth by Tsuburaya Productions to continue the exploits of Hiroyuki Kudo and the new Ultra Ultraman Taiga. Featuring a series of returning heroes and new favorites in a solid adventure, fans are now able to enjoy the series and this accompanying movie in a special Blu-Ray box set from Mill Creek.
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Working at the private security organization EGIS, Hiroyuki Kudo (Yuki Inoue) has the power to transform into three Ultra Heroes: Taiga, Titas, and Fuma. Battling and defeating many enemies together, the bond between Hiroyuki and Taiga has deepened. However, someone has been targeting Hiroyuki. Noticing this, the New Generation Heroes come together to save him. These members, Ultraman Ginga Hikaru Raido (Takuya Negishi), Ultraman Victory Sho (Kiyotaka Uji), Ultraman X Daichi Oozora (Kensuke Takahashi), Ultraman Orb Gai Kurenai (Hideo Ishiguro), Ultraman Geed Riku Asakura (Tatsuomi Hamada), Ultraman Rosso Katsumi Minato (Yuya Hirata), Ultraman Blu Isami Minato (Ryosuke Koike), and even Taiga’s father Ultraman Taro have all come down to Earth. However, Ultraman Taro violently attacks his son Taiga. What happened to Taro? Will Taiga be able to fight against his father!? The New Generation Heroes now stand together to confront a bigger, darker power!
“Ultraman Taiga The Movie” is a fairly enjoyable continuation of the show. The central story by writers Sotaro Hayashi and Takano Nakano is a rather fun continuation of the main series, furthering the story of Hiroyuki’s connection with Ultraman Taiga and the other various he’s able to transform into while placating his duties with EGIS. With the reveal that the evil demon Grimdo and his host companion starting a war on Earth to seek revenge for his earlier treatment using the body of Ultraman Taro as a host, the main storyline here is quite likable. Featuring several impressive twists involving how the plan is going to come about, the call-backs to previous series’s lore with the human forms of Ultraman R/B, Ginga, Geed, Orb, and Victory among others appearing to help fill in the pieces, and realizing how the power of friendship serves a greater purpose, there’s a strong setup here that carries this one along quite well.
In keeping with the tradition of recent episodes of the show, “Ultraman Taiga The Movie” has a mixed bag of effects to tell its action. In principle, the high-energy storyline is quite fun, providing nonstop martial arts battles not just with the human forms of the characters but also when transformed into costumed superheroes. These are fun, fast-paced, and generally enjoyable, with some solid if not groundbreaking choreography that would be expected in more traditional martial arts fare. The few monster costumes, namely resourced for the true form of Grimdo and the other beasts appearing in the final battle allow for some solid bits of city destruction in the miniature city sets, as the heroes and monsters battle, resulting in impressive explosions and crumbling infrastructure.
However, “New Generation Climax” suffers from the same prominent issue just about every modern “Ultraman” has been guilty of, where it resorts to Beam-Weapon-Overload to deal with any solution. Far too often, the resulting solution to any crisis in battle is to charge up and fire a more intense beam weapon at the source. Simply combining powers and using that as a pretense to throw a more destructive CGI-emblazoned wall of energy weapons filling the screen in a multitude of colors makes the fights very formulaic and unengaging. Watching the two sides standing around speechifying how much energy they’re going to use to fight the other, drains some of the energy from the sequence dramatically. This emerges as the main reason holding the film back, but as it’s a part of the franchise it might not be that detrimental to most out there.
As a means of getting a nice bit of extra closure on the character, “Ultraman Taiga the Movie: New Generations Climax” is a rather fun movie that works decently enough as a standalone film but fills in the momentum of the show. That will be the main selling point as it fits in those parts rather nicely.
