Netflix’s ‘Ultraman’ Anime Debuts First Trailer, Release Date

Ultraman will soon be getting an anime makeover from Production I.G., and after it was confirmed earlier this year that the series will be making its worldwide debut on Netflix’s streaming service, now fans have a concrete release date.

Along with a brand new trailer for the series that shows off its CG look, Netflix has confirmed that the series will premiere worldwide on its service on April 1, 2019.

Netflix officially describes Ultraman as such, “Several years have passed since the events of Ultraman, with the legendary “Giant of Light” now a memory, as it is believed he returned home after fighting the many giant aliens that invaded the Earth. Shin Hayata’s son Shinjiro seems to possess a strange ability, and it is this ability, along with his father’s revelation that he was Ultraman, that leads Shinjiro to battle the new aliens invading the Earth as the new Ultraman.”

Though fans may find the CG look of the series a bit worrying, another Tokusatsu-inspired anime series, SSSS.Gridman, proved that CG can properly convey live-action components in a cool new way as long as the series is in the right hands. That shouldn’t be too much of a worry as Ultraman will be directed by Kenji Kamiyama of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Shinji Aramaki of Appleseed Alpha for Production I.G and SOLA Digital Arts.

Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi will compose the music for the series, and the initial voice cast for the series includes Ryohei Kimura, Takuya Eguchi, Megumi Han, and Hideyuki Tanaka.

The new series is based off of Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shiguchi’s ULTRAMAN manga, which is a sequel to the 1966 Ultraman television series and began running in Shogakukan’s Monthly Hero magazine November 2011, and has been collected into ten volumes as of 2017. The manga has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release in 2015 and is rated fifth in the “Best New Manga for Kids/Teens.”

For those unfamiliar with Ultraman, it is a tokusatsu series created by Eiji Tsuburaya for the Tsuburaya Productions studio. Running for a total of 39 episodes the series aired from July 1966 to April 1967. The second series of the Ultra Q franchise, it has since led to many sequels and spin-offs. Eiji Tsubuyara is also credited with being one of the co-creators of one of the most popular tokusatsu series of all time, Godzilla.