Ultraman Gaia Thoughts

Just finished watching Ultraman Gaia.

For those who don't know or remember, quick rundown:

Earth is attacked by a mysterious entity called the Entity that Brings Radical Destruction (which is obviously a nickname humanity makes for it), both with space monsters being unleashed upon Earth and monsters that had been slumbering on Earth for thousands of years. The Earth itself gives two humans, Gamu and Fujiyima, the power to become its guardians, Ultraman Gaia and Ultraman Agul, to protect it from the Destruction Bringer. Unfortunately, they have quite different ideas on how to accomplish that.

As far as leads go, I like them both.

Gamu is unique because he's NOT really a combat sort. He's the team GENIUS. He's the guy who actually BUILT some of their tech, specifically the 'repulser lift' technology used in nearly every flying craft they have. A nice factor with him is he figures out a monsters weakness, tells the others about it and often how to exploit it, then transforms into Gaia to fight. This is kind of a nice twist on the normal 'guy shoots in their fighter until they get shot down, then transform into Ultra and fight' dynamic, as Gamu doesn't NEED to get shot down, just pass on his knowledge and let them do their thing while him as Gaia is ALSO doing it.

As for Gaia himself, it's a cool design...but unfortunately, I do have one issue: I don't particularly like his V1 design. I don't know, this might sound weird, but the collar ALSO being red just feels...weird. I don't like how it looks. That said, I find his V2 form MUCH better and even have the Ultra Act figure of him, and like his Supreme form as well.

Fujiyima is also an interesting character because while he is the 'brooding loner' type, he's it in an interesting way. He's a man who VERY MUCH wants to be the Unfettered who can just ignore innocents in danger and focus on saving the world, but ultimately he's HUMAN and can't just shut off his basic human decency.

You see, here's the basic conflict between him and Gamu: Gamu wants to protect Earth and everyone on it. Fujiyima wants to protect the Earth, but doesn't CARE about the people living on it. If humanity has to die to save the planet and its biosphere? Then he's fine with that...or rather he WANTS to be.

This conflict feels organic and actually raises a few good moral questions.

As for Agul, I think his V1 form looks MUCH better than Gaia's. The black just makes him work considerably better. As for his V2, I like it. It looks cool.

It is interesting to note that this is the first series were the Ultras AREN'T aliens: they're guardian entities created by the Earth itself, Gaia representing the Earth's land and Agul its seas. Which makes the two of them stand out pretty well.

As for the supporting group, XIG (or more broadly speaking, GUARD). They have pretty cool technology overall, I like all the different squads in their ranks, and they're pretty cool overall. That said, I think there's an issue that there's SO MANY of them that I can barely remember any of their personal names. They're not bland, they all had character to them and I liked them, just hard to keep track of THAT many characters names.

Now, what about the villains? The Destruction Bringer?

There's something I REALLY like here:

We never SEE it. Its presence is FELT throughout the series, it gets several Mouths of Sauron to speak through, but we don't see it. Which just makes it FRIGHTENING. In universe, this lack of a face DOES scare the characters in universe. They don't know WHAT this thing is or WHY it wants to kill humanity, and that makes it a frightening presence given what it is capable of.

In fact, we don't even know if its STATED motives are its ACTUAL motives. This is because both times one of its Mouths of Sauron speaks, its to Fujiyima in an attempt to sway him to its side. So of course the motives it tells HIM would be ones that he might be inclined to follow.

This over all made it a unique and interesting Ultra villain as unlike Yapool or Chaos Header, it never takes a shape of any sort, so it really leaves you unsettled and feeling like this THING is an Eldritch Abomination of some kind.

Do I have complaints?

Well, other than the difficulty keeping track of so many characters, I do have a couple:

I don't know what it was, but I just found Max more FUN than this series. Not sure why, but it might have been how serious everything was. Which makes sense and isn't say DC movie verse levels of dark. But I just had more fun with Ultraman Max than I did with this series.

In addition, there's the ending. Not to spoil anything, but it just kind of...ends. The final monster is defeated, the Destruction Bringer's assault ends, and we get a quick epilogue, but the series just kind of...ends at that point. Max had a much better sense of 'the story is over' and felt much more satisfying with the distant finale they gave us there. There wasn't as much of a sense of closure as I would have HOPED. Thankfully, it's not so abrupt that I feel there were plot threads hanging everywhere, just I felt like it needed a bit more time to flesh out just what's happening now. The final battle itself IS fantastic though, and the 'final boss' is probably one of the most epic in the franchise.

One thing here: no, I haven't seen Gaia Again, Crunchyroll doesn't have that one that I can find. So if that fixes the above issue, good, but I haven't seen it and am just judging based on where the series ended.

One more thing is Agul kinda starts getting Worfed a bit at the end, though in all fairness only ONE of those defeats felt like it was JUST him being hit with the Worf Effect while the other ones at least felt like there was a reason for it.

So, what are my thoughts?

Pretty good series, but I like Max better. Just enjoyed it more. Overall, I'm happy with this and glad I saw it.

Will be watching Ginga next.