Ultraman: Rising marks a new era for the franchise that’s over 20 years in the making

Ultraman: Rising is the eponymous hero’s biggest release outside Japan in his almost 60 years of existence, and almost a third of that was spent developing the movie.

Indeed, the anime movie on Netflix represents decades of development in more ways than one, as co-directors Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima revealed to us in an interview.

For them, Ultraman: Rising is a project that required a lot of dedication and luck to come to fruition, with Tindle having the original brainwave in the early 2000s.

Taking the opportunity to jump into directing after years spent in multiple other disciplines within animation, their Ultraman is colorful, vibrant, and confident, making him the perfect starting point for any viewers who’ve never gone Ultra before.

Going ultra!

Netflix

In the new movie, our Ultraman, known regularly as Ken Sato, becomes an adopted parent to an adorable baby kaiju. The relationship teaches him some hard lessons, and it turns out the child was fundamental to the superhero anime film’s growth, too.

“It was always a part of the story, this guy who doesn’t want to be a father being forced to be a father, this guy who doesn’t want to be a character like Ultraman, being Ultraman,” Tindle tells Dexerto. “And the sketches that I did back in 2001 are — I remember Craig McCracken had seen the idea back then, I think I was at Cartoon Network at the time, and the first time he saw the trailer, he’s like, ‘Oh my God. Like, it’s it. She looks the same as she did back then’.”

Going back to those early days of ideation, Rising wasn’t an Ultraman film to start with. A long-established franchise, making something within that property would’ve been a longer shot than making a movie that paid homage to the character. Starting from there allowed strong thematic roots to take hold.

“What I wanted to tell was a compelling story that I think everybody could relate to,” Tindle explains. “Somebody who once loved their dad, but they didn’t understand why their dad was always away. That grows into animosity, then they’re separated, then they start to blame their parents. And then as they get older, they start to understand them, and then when they become a parent themselves, they understand them more and better understand the sacrifices that parents need to make.”

When it started to look like Rising could be an Ultraman action movie, after all, these ideas fit right in. “It’s about Ken, who has to step up to that occasion, to be that hero, a reluctant father who knows what’s right and makes that effort, and I think that helps him grow into understanding the stakes and the challenges of the world,” Aoshima adds. “That theology is right aligned with the whole Ultraman lore.”

Evolving Ultraman

Netflix

One thing that did change through different versions was Ken’s background. In Ultraman: Rising, he’s Japanese-American, growing up in Tokyo before moving to LA for his sports career, coming back at the start of the film to join the Tokyo Giants.

The superhero movie’s first script took place in Tokyo, but then when production moved to a different studio, that was changed to Los Angeles, and it was decided that Ken would have a background from both countries. Once Netflix became involved, this concept solidified as another representation of Ken’s duality.

“It helped align the ideology or idea of what Ultraman is, with this symbiotic character,” Aoshima says. “Leaning into the two cultural differences and what Ken has to find within himself, his own identity, within what it means to be an Ultraman, helped with the character.”

There was some fine-tuning in that respect because before he settles into being Ultraman, Ken’s a hot-shot baseball player with charisma to spare. Originally, he was like Michael Jordan, pure confidence, but as Tindle learned, that’s not how Japanese baseball players handle themselves, leading to a compromise that elevated the narrative.

“Makiko Wakata, who’s on our production team, said, ‘Japanese baseball players don’t really walk with that same kind of swagger; that’s more of an American thing’,” Tindle recalls. “She had been born in Japan and moved to the United States, as had John. And they both were like, ‘Would you consider making him bicultural? He grew up in Japan. He had that culture’. To me, we could bring even more nuance to a character in ways that are atypical, especially in an animated or a family film.”

Familiar faces

Netflix

Utilized through all of this were lessons gleaned from collaborating with multiple huge names in TV and filmmaking, from the aforementioned Craig McCracken to Alex Hirsch, Travis Knight, and many more. Aoshima directed multiple episodes of Gravity Falls, and he remembers how that show’s pipeline prepared him for getting a movie over the line.

“Directing on Gravity Falls. I watched Alex Hirsch and Mike Rianda continue to improve the episode scripts all through production,” he says. “Even though there is a set TV production timeline, it didn’t matter to them. They wanted to make sure the story’s right, and the amount of iteration that they would do in order to make the best story and best episode possible was a lot more like how features work.”

Tindle has similar memories from working on the likes of Static Shock, The Fairly OddParents, and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Children. Being on the production line for those series allowed him to appreciate the added time on films, but made sure he knew when to be decisive.

“You have to be decisive. What I say a lot to folks is, ‘I reserve the right to change my mind’. So if something works now, or if you want to try something now, let’s try as quickly as we can so we see whether it works or not, and if it doesn’t work, we just do it again,” he states. “Having to think on a condensed timeline like that in different TV productions served me well when I transitioned into features, just because I can iterate more, I can think more about it, and I have to make a decision.”

Ultraman: Rising forms part of a resurgence of the hero. In 2022, Hideaki Anno directed Shin Ultraman, a spiritual successor to his Shin Godzilla that soft-rebooted the character. Rising and Shin Ultraman form two halves of a huge gateway for fans of all ages to get into the franchise, offering live-action and animation, as well as stories with contrasting cultural backdrops.

“They’re different things, but there are common elements,” Tindle states. “The ideas of family, the ideas of comedy and fun, the interaction between kaiju being pretty serious to the people in Japan. I think in all those ways, Ultraman: Rising and Shin Ultraman carry on that tradition.”

Aoshima adds: “It’s a new hero, new character, new message. That’s what the whole Ultraman franchise is about.”

Without giving too much away, Ultraman: Rising leaves a pretty strong hint toward a sequel. Should this one do good enough numbers, a trilogy could be on the cards. “I have ideas for two more films, where we’re going to lean a little bit more into some of the traditional Ultraman lore, but in our way, and maybe even do some things that they’ve never done in the series that, as a fan, I’d want to see,” Aoshima teases.

Ultraman: Rising is on Netflix Friday, June 14, 2024. Check out our Ultraman: Rising review here and our list of all the upcoming anime for more supreme releases heading your way.