Made as a passing of the torch from Ultraman Ginga to Ultraman Victory, Ultraman Ginga S THE MOVIE: Decisive Battle! Ultra 10 Brave Warriors begins with Ultraman Cosmos’s struggle in a battle against the mysterious and powerful Etaruga, who makes use of an alien named Alena to seal all existing Ultramen.
However, Ultraman Cosmos did not stand a chance against the new threat and is sealed within a mirror by the mirror manipulating alien, ejecting his human host in the process.
Haruno Musashi (who is the human host of Ultraman Cosmos) then seeks help from the newest Ultramen, Raidou Hikaru and Shou, as well as UPG to help break his fellow Heisei Ultramen free from the mirror’s seal, along with the aid of Ultraman Zero.
FIRST THOUGHTS
I was actually excited when they announced a movie for Ginga S that solely focused on the Heisei Ultramen as from my knowledge, there has been a ton of movies that only focused on the Ultra Brothers with the new guy as the face of the movie in the past few years, so it’s a nice change to have a movie that didn’t involve any of the Ultra Brothers for once. It was also a treat to see Nexus (my favourite Ultraman!) involved despite coming from a different universe.
THE POSITIVES
I’ve only recently become a full fledged Ultraman fan, so I have no knowledge whatsoever of Ultraman Zero prior to this movie and I was very surprised to find out that he has quite a personality compared to his predecessors and successors. From the laid back gestures to the cocky attitude, it’s sad to say that he acted more like he was the star of the movie, rather than the Ginga S cast members. I’ll mention more about this below.
WHAT WENT WRONG
What went wrong was basically everything about the movie. The writing was really weak, as the movie didn’t have a proper introduction, proper background explanation of the new character (besides a very vague flashback scene) and an abrupt “That’s it?” ending.
Plot wise was very Super Sentai/Kamen Rider clichéd. Despite being heavily promoted alongside the new Ultraman Ginga Victory, the Heisei Ultramen (sans Zero) served no purpose to the content other than being shown captured and overwhelming their respective series arch nemesis upon breaking free.
Musashi, as well as the Ginga S cast members, didn’t do much at all. Ginga Victory wasn’t even much of an impact as it was basically Hikaru receiving a slightly modified version of his old brace from Ultraman Tarou. In the end, it seemed as if Zero was the main focus of the movie and there wouldn’t be much of a difference if the movie was named after him instead.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Sadly, even if you have enjoyed the Ginga S series, you wouldn’t find the same great things they’ve done anywhere in this movie. I guess you can’t do much when you’re only given an hour to fit in quite a number of Ultramen. I would say it’s pretty much skippable and you wouldn’t miss out a lot of important plot points, besides Shou being recruited into the UPG team at the end, which serves as an opening into the Ultra Fight Victory series.
Verdict: 2 out of 5 Spark Dolls!
Ultraman UM Cosmos UM Dyna UM Gaia UM Ginga UM Max UM Mebius UM Nexus UM Tiga UM Zero