Re-living the adventure in 60 minutes! Author: James M. Ballard Official Website: Bandai Visual With the latest feature film GREAT DECISIVE BATTLE! THE SUPER 8 ULTRA BROTHERS (Dai Kessen! Chou Urutora Hachi Kyoudai) due to hit cinemas across Japan in September, it is time to re-visit the latest generation of Ultra heroes. Therefore, from December 2007, Tsuburaya Productions and Bandai Visual began releasing re-edited, direct-to-DVD episodes of the Heisei Ultraman TV series under the banner of "Climax Stories" (see the original article.) Last month saw the release of CLIMAX STORIES: ULTRAMAN NEXUS (Kuraimakkusu Sutooriizu Urutoraman Nekusasu) from the show`s original screenwriter Keiichi Hasegawa and director Yuichi Abe. The basic setup of the Climax Stories is to provide a one hour collection of clips from each series, with the original stars from the show returning to provide voice-over narration. While easily disregarded as clip shows, this actually works very well for ULTRAMAN NEXUS, more-so than any of the other titles. The story arc format of the original show results in a logical and seamless transition between scenes, and as the original featured narration by the lead character Komon (played by Takuji Kawakubo, who returns for CLIMAX STORIES) this aspect also does not seem out of place. It actually works very well as a one hour episode of ULTRAMAN NEXUS. With the production quality aside, the real question is who should be purchasing it? For fans who are seriously interested in watching the series for the first time, starting with this disc would be a mistake. ULTRAMAN NEXUS is a show that invests much time in character and story development, so leaping through 37 episodes within the space of one hour defeats the purpose of the series, and will spoil some of the major twists should you ever wish to watch the show in its entirety. Fans who are genuinely interested in the series would be much advised to seek out the actual episodes. On the other hand, most who have already seen the series are unlikely to be interested in purchasing what is at heart a clip show. And for the casual fan who is looking for an hour of monster clips, an action-packed show like ULTRAMAN MAX is going to be a better investment. So while it is technically one of the best entries in the Climax Stories range, it is perhaps the hardest to recommend purchasing.
Technical Information
Disc Distributor: Bandai Visual Catalogue Code: BCBK-3189 UPC Code: 4 934569 631893 Retail Price: 2,800 JPY (approx. $30 USD) Discs: 1 Region Code: 2 (Japan, Europe) Color Format: Color / NTSC Disc Format: Single Sided Single Layered Video Ratio: 4:3/Letterboxed Runtime: 60 minutes Chapter Stops: 6 Audio Tracks: Japanese (2.0) Subtitles: None