Alt title: A tiny man meets a big man for the first time
This movie is a direct prequel to the series. So before you start watching this series, watch this movie and see the origins of a young boy named Haruno Musashi, who has a dream of becoming an astronaut.
If you haven't noticed, some casts of the very first Ultraman series made the cameo appearances. Spoiler
(Nice to see you again, Officer Hayata)
(Also, that director of this movie also did the first Ultraman episode 2 which he fought Alien Baltan.)
What an odd film. They try to combine several messages or morals here and I'm not sure any of them are really fully formed. We get the usual conservation message ("you're destroying your planet"), the ever-popular "don't give up on your dreams", but also have hints of children/idealism vs adults/authority.
I'm also very confused on what the Baltan-seijins and Cosmos were even attempting to do. The movie starts off with them fighting - is Cosmos trying to keep Baltan away from Earth? Why, when at this point, in theory, Baltan would only want to settle peacefully there? Then we get the same children vs adult split amongst Baltan and his children, with Baltan retaliating in rage when attacked by the Defense Force and his children (or at least one child) disagreeing. But nothing comes of that. Cosmos arrives, kicks Baltan's ass, and takes all the glory for protecting humanity from a threat they provoked themselves?? Hmm. We also get the line "we don't know if Ultraman is an enemy to humans or not" right after Cosmos just levels half the city in his fight.
I dunno. Some of the acting and pacing felt very Showa-theatrical, but then we get interesting bits in the fight like Cosmos teleporting around that makes him feel legitimately alien. An... odd film.
we are here to take the blame; to take the taunts and live the shame
we are here to make you feel; it terrifies you, but it's real
I actually watched episode 1 before watching this movie. I would say that if watching this movie first might make wonder why you should care about Musashi especially Cosmos isn't much of a factor in the movie. Yeah this movie was a kids movie especially with keep away sequence in the middle of the movie. It still sad that all these years between the movie and episode 1 that the defense force are still shoot with everything they got and shoot some more.