CREATED BY: Tsuburaya Productions
STARRING: Raiga Terasaka, Runa Toyoda, Shunya Kaneko, Kei Hosogai, Sumire Uesaka, Shunichi Maki, Ryosuke Takahashi, Mao Ichimichi, Shin Takuma, Katsuya Takagi, Tadashi Mizuno, Meiku Harukawa
DIRECTED BY: Koichi Sakamoto; also by Kiyotaka Taguchi, Masayoshi Takesue, Takanori Tsujimoto, Tomonobu Koshi, Naoyuki Uchida
SCREENPLAY BY: Naoki Hayashi, Junichiro Ashiki; also by Toshizo Nemoto, Keigo Koyanagi, Sotaro Hayashi, Sumio Uetake, Jun Tsuigita
COMPOSED BY: Go Sakabe
BASED ON: Ultraman Tiga and the Ultra series by Eiji Tsuburaya
EPISODES: 25
AIRED: July 10, 2021 - January 22, 2022
So my first pubic review. Honestly feels surreal to do this. I may forget or lose interest in this in a couple months but eh, we can see how this will go. And boy oh boy, my first one is a treat...
When I was a kid on Saturday mornings, I would wake up early, turn on Fox 25, and watch some brilliant children's cartoons and anime. One of those shows that caught my eye back in the day was Ultraman Tiga. The show was everything epic and cheesy about monster films, had a catchy tune, and sick as hell effects. It was my introduction to the Ultra series, and was sadly my only entry until Tsuburaya put their legal headaches behind them to get Ultraman global. Good on them to stick it to the cheap knockoffs.
Flash twenty years later and now Tiga is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with quite a bit of flare, albiet with little Daigo. Ultraman Trigger is the third entry into the franchise's Reiwa era, ninth in the New Generation Series, and 33rd overall. The show is meant to, as the title suggests, serve as a tribute to Tiga and the Heisei era as a whole in catering to the next generation, reviving one of the best Ultra series and tokusatsu overall in the Reiwa era. A tall task to be sure, but Koichi Sakamoto was willing to take this large task. Too bad for him that, in addition to making a show worthy of carrying the legacy of Tiga, it was coming right after a fan-beloved series in Ultraman Z.
Not helping matters is that they filmed this in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and in a time the world was not getting stabbed to death. However, they finished everything as things were settling down (at the time) so there should be no excuses, especially with the high level of quality Sakamoto boasts when he signs on to a project. With all this in mind, we have to ask this question: does Trigger live up to the fine line of his Ultra-daddy, or does he flop faster than Neymar after being poked on the forehead?
