The great thing about Ultraman is that the series still uses good old fashioned special effects: people wearing suits, miniature cities, and dudes throwing as much dirt as they possibly can.
The above GIF features a fight scene with Ultraman Victory. It was originally uploaded by the artist Kouji Tajima (if you like this and art in general, you should follow him on Twitter!).
Notice how the two suit actors are on a raised platform, so the director can shoot them from a low angle? And how the staff keeps throwing dirt, so the fight looks even more exciting? These are rudimentary production-tricks, but dammit, they work.
Top GIF via Kouji Tajima
Comments
7 responses to “Making Japanese Superhero Shows Looks Exhausting”
Would actually like to see a full sized article on something like this. I’m a Kamen Rider fan myself, and would enjoy seeing what happens behind the scenes, especially with some of the stunts and the sparks/explosions that happen in such shows.
Would also be cool to take a look at some of the older camera techniques they used.
Interestingly enough… NHK did a really cool Godzilla 60th Anniversary documentary about Tokusatsu back in 2014. It’s a really cool snippet of the start and evolution of Tokusatsu effects 😀
It’s mostly Godzilla and some Ultraman stuff near the end but some of the camera work and effects would also be applicable to Super Sentai/Kamen work 😀
Came for the video… left with a .gif
Boom, ya just got BASHCRAFTED son..
wonder how much dirt those guys accidentally end up eating in the process? 🙂
Tokusatsu 4 LYFF! 😀
Tokusatsu is the best!
Random note, does anyone remember what the name of that Tokusatsu manager/RPG game on Steam was called? It looked promising =)