Ultraman Gaia - The Battle in Hyperspace [DVD]

Like many fans of this genre, I grew up watching Ultraman on television, along with his human alter ego Hyata (sp?) and his cohorts in the Science Patrol. Watched in amazement as, every episode, a new gigantic monster arrives out of nowhere to destroy the city. Logic and rationality notwithstanding, I have a long abiding love for all things Ultraman, and this film is no exception. The uninitiated should be warned: there's no Science Patrol here.My understanding is that in Japan, every season brought a new Ultraman with a new human counterpart -- the Ultraman we knew in the USA was 1966's Ultraman Jack (I think) in Japan, just one of many. Hyata or not, this film will satisfy your jones for Ultraman.The story is not too hard to follow, and there is no shortage of action. The effects, while not exactly Industrial Light & Magic, are definitely an improvement on those I was used to. The main plot focuses on a bunch of kids and their use and abuse of a fantasy-fulfilling red ball, and as usual this kind of story can get tiresome, but the climactic battle -- on land, sea, and in the air -- with Ultramans Dyna and Tiga coming to the aid of Gaia, is quite the treat. It was especially interesting comparing the English-dubbed version's dialogue and story to the English-subtitled version. I highly recommend it.

Excellent.Very good quality.

This movie was very entertaining even though it is definitely targeted towards kids. This was the first Ultraman movie I've seen. I have seen a lot of the TV shows though. This is one of the very few Ultraman movies to be released on American DVD and since it is out of print you will pay a premium but if you find it for around $20 it's probably worth it.

Hi! My name is Karen Cheong.I Like watch Ultraman Tiga, Dyna, Gaia.It is best Ultraman.I hope I can watch Ultraman Gaia- The Battle in Hyperspace (1998).

I used to watch Ultraman everyday without fail when I was a kid. I bought this and let my kids watch and they love it too (to my surprise). Watching it now I can see the simple underlying moral of the story. Ultraman is a good hero. It's a great break from the slightly depraved Cartoon Network and Disney programming. And the direction is astonishing. Even without the subtitles, the story comes through clearly. My next purchase is the Tiga series.

Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia (Kazuya Konaka, 1998)I freely admit that back in the very early seventies, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper (okay, knee-high to a mutant ant from <em>Them!</em>) and barely out of diapers, that I was an Ultraman fiend. I couldn't get enough of the stuff. Then it disappeared from the after-school rotation sometime in, I think, 1975, and I was left with fond memories. (I vaguely recall a really bad, maybe animated?, American remake in the late seventies-early eighties with a very brief and depressing run, but IMDB is not backing me up on this.) Now, we've catapulted into the digital age. I have DVD box sets of the original first few seasons of the '66 Japanese series. Subtitled, even! I love progress. But as I dug around, I found out that while Ultraman petered out in American syndication over three decades ago, it's never stopped being wildly popular in its native Japan. So I grabbed a couple of more recent movies, as well, to see how much catching up I need to do. Answer: a whole lot.It shouldn't surprise me in the least that the human form of Ultraman, originally played by a staid, grounded salaryman-looking guy, slowly morphed over the years into something more resembling a visual kei character. The new human form of Ultraman (Ultraman Gaia, anyway; given the movie's title here [it was also released under the name <em>Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspace</em>]), at least the new human form in 1998, is played by Takeshi Yoshioka, a friendly-seeming, attractive young chap who's made a career out of playing Ultraman Gaia (he most recently appeared in the role in 2008, as of this writing). He's brought from the parallel universe where the Ultraman stories have always taken place into our universe by Tsutomu (Gaku Hamada, recently of <em>Fish Story</em>), a pre-teen with a major Ultraman fetish. (I can relate!) One day, a strange glowing red ball falls (almost literally) into Tsutomu's hands, and before he realizes what it is, he wishes he could really meet his superhero idol. And, poof, there's Gamu, the human form of Ultraman Gaia, showing up in his fighter plane (also sleeker than the original, natch). Gamu, Tsutomu, and Tsutomu's friends must figure out why the wishing ball (as they come to call it) has suddenly come to Earth, how Gamu can get back to his own world, and how to keep the ball out of those who would use it for harm, all while avoiding the authorities, who are quite concerned about Gamu's sudden appearance in Tsutomu's life, not to mention the airspace over Tokyo.About half the time, I had no clue at all what was going on, since I've been away from the mythology of the series for as long as I have (and even returning to it, I went right back to 1966). But once I got into the swing of things, it didn't matter a bit; it's just a barrels-of-fun action flick with cute-kid protagonists, Tokyo getting destroyed (again!), neat monsters, and just enough meta from the concept to allow it to poke fun at itself while still delivering a very good time. Not deathless cinema by any means, but if you, too, were an Ultraman freak as a kid, there's a wealth of new material out there that never got imported; this piece of it, at least, is worth hunting down. *** 1/2

This movie is great. The only problem I had was with the horrible enghish acting.I just change the audio to japanese with the eng subs.Other than that,I would recommend this movie to fans,but it seems this one was ment for kids.

Love ultraman!