Ultraman Tiga Side Story: Revival of the Ancient Giant is a direct-to-video spin-off of the Ultraman Tiga series. At forty-four minutes, it’s a lot shorter than some of the other Ultraman movies I’ve watched this week (and those were short to begin with). If you’re like me and you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days, you take the shorties when you can get them.
In the future (2038), Tsubasa Madoka (Shogo Yamaguchi), a member of the Super GUTS team (and the son of Ultraman Tiga) gets sucked into a wormhole along with a dinosaur and winds up 5000 years in the past. The monster threatens a village of peaceful mountainfolk, and the bad guy wants to use it to vanquish “The Warrior of Light” that the people worship once and for all. It’s then up to Ultraman Tiga to save the day.
Revival of the Ancient Giant is a “Side Story”, and as a self-contained spin-off it’s a lot of fun. I guess they thought whisking the son of Ultraman 5000 years into the past wouldn’t screw up the continuity too bad. Even if you just somehow stumbled upon this without much knowledge of Ultraman in general, you’d probably dig it.
The effects are kind of inconsistent. Some of the monsters and costumes are very good, while others look like an episode of The Land of the Lost. That’s part of the charm though. There was also a really weird effect where the bad guy is standing in front of the monster, and it just looks like he’s standing in front of a big screen TV that’s playing scenes from the movie behind him. And you know what? It’s just odd and goofy enough to work.
The villain himself is really cool too. He looks like a cross between Darth Vader and the Joker, if such a thing is imaginable. I mean, if you’re going to steal, steal from two of the best, right?
I’m not saying all of it works. The stuff with the prehistoric GUTS team flying around on wooden airplanes is cheesy, and the fights where they shoot Street Fighter 2-inspired orbs of light at their enemies isn’t nearly as fun as the giant monster battles. However, those are relatively minor quibbles all in all. The final fight kicks ass too, so that’s all you can ask for from something like this.
AKA: Ultraman Tiga Gaiden: Revival of the Ancient Giant. AKA: Ultraman Tiga: The Outside Story.
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