Ultraman Powered (1995) - The Unfortunate Hero | Ultra Retrospective

One reason I really respect Tsuburaya as a company is that unlike most long-running franchises, whenever a bad series is made, they never try to bury it, make fun of it, or act ashamed by its existence. Despite Powered being a failure of production and a straight-to-video release in Japan, Tsuburaya still embraced Powered as a fellow Ultraman, making toys and merchandise of him all the way into the late 90’s, and even recently getting Kane Kosugi back to reprise his role in UGF.

Its amazing how his 40 second cameo from galaxy fight did a better job at his fighting then the entire show

They fight like siblings do when parents are watching. An intricate ballet of not being the one who gets yelled at while still doing the most damage.

Ultraman Powered's theme and suit designs were its major redeeming qualities

I've actually watched a few episodes of Ultraman Powered with some friends, and one of my friends put the fight scenes best. "This is like watching a bouncer deal with a drunk guests at a bar while also being drunk." Also the Powered DaDa suit was actually reused from Powered. Well except for the heads, that came from the 3do game, (yes there was a 3do game, I don't know why either)

This series has been both a guilty and honest pleasure for me (yes, the cheese and production history are...unique, but I'd hold up significant portions of the soundtrack with any of the Heisei and Reiwa era shows). I had a chance to spend time with Jeffery Combs last month at Grand Rapids ComicCon. He signed my Powered (Pawado) Bluray import from Japan, and I showed him some scenes from his episode, which he had completely forgot about. "I got a call from my agent asking me if I wanted to show up in Bronson Canyon for a weekend to make some quick money." We had a great chat about what shooting the episode was like.

Fun fact, for "Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy" where Powered made an appearance, the English dub is played by Kane Kosugi, the original actor who played Kai.

Ultraman Powered: “We have Ide at home” Ide at home: 5:46

I acknowledge all the faults with the show. But the monsters looked great and some of the music is catchy. And I adore the evil AI origin for the Dada. Not to mention the two female members of the team are incredibly beautiful. Had a crush on them when I was younger.

I’m definitely in the minority, but I just can’t hate this show. I have so much nostalgia for it because it was one of the first Ultraman shows I ever watched, back in 2007 when you could watch pretty much anything on YouTube. And its music was composed by Toshihiko Sahashi so like Gundam SEED, the music is the best part of the show.

I think powered should be remade. I think this ultraman could be a great live action blockbuster character.

Powered to my understanding wasn't actually based on B movies, but rather was made like it is because of the misconception that toku is cheap. For some reason Major Havoc wanted to intentionally tap into that notion with cardboard buildings, poor suits, and other things. They told Tsupro about this, making the company panic as they sent over several people like Shinji Higuchi and others to make sure the product was something good. Powered coulda been even worse. I have heard that the Japanese dub for Powered is better by some degree.

i was born in '66 and fell in love with the show. even today i get my Ultraman fix with Override: 2 for the nintendo switch. getting to fight as Ultraman while limited is still fun.

In hindsight, the episode with Jamila could've been more emotional if it was revealed the Baltans were the ones to experiment on him. Not only would it show they were trying to come up with counters to Ultraman, but give the audience more reason to see the alien invaders to be defeated.

Watching this gave me a thought. Since Tsuburaya was trying to have the Ultra series branch out to other countries in the 90's, imagine if there was an animated American Ultraman series in the same vein of DC and Marvel's superhero cartoons at the time.

Having seen both Great and Powered back to back, I really have to agree on the "genuine effort" part : Towards the Future has a lot more going for it with how things ended up being in the final product. That being said, I also find Jack Shindo and Kenichi Kai to be exact opposites in their impressions on me as characters. While likable enough Shindo often times felt a little too "I know better than thou" while Kai had little to no discernable traits to feel like an interesting character. I actually think WINR's leader Edlund was more interesting, if only because I found him more sympathetic. Also, I always found it weird how they apparently have more than one base, but there's ever only five people we know of in Powered's attack team.

That's so cool that they had so many big names attached to the story making and Jeffrey Combs as an actor, the suits looked pretty awesome too, shame it wasn't executed properly

"They compromised the choreography for a demographic that never even got it" So this is where modern corporations learned their lessons from

When I watched Powered last year, I was pretty conflicted on it myself. I still really dig the monster designs, and I think attempting a modernized take on the original show is an interesting idea, even if something more reflective of American culture may have been better, like you suggested. I think the show had interesting ideas, but a lot of them went to waste with the stupid quips. I really enjoyed the setpiece with the Baltan aliens in episode 1, it had a nice tension to it… up until the characters start cracking wise. Like you mentioned, I think the show wanted the audience to laugh with them, but at the end of the day it’s more just laughing AT them. The only part of Powered that truly aggravated me was the idea of them taking serious episodes of the original show and subjecting them to this cynical, sarcastic tone. I really enjoy My Home is Earth from the original show, and seeing it get turned into 90’s schlock really got under my skin. I think I could say the same for the final episode as well. They both just feel like they absolutely missed everything that made those original episodes so iconic and lasting. All in all, I don’t really know what to think about Powered. I want to laugh at its unadulterated 90’s stank, or the hilariously unfunny quips each character regurgitates every 30 seconds, but the show also really isn’t entertaining enough to really get enjoyment out of it. For me, Ultraman Powered will forever be a curiosity that intrigues me, an utter failure of a production, only memorable for being the first of its kind in a few ways. I hope TsuPro takes another crack at an American Ultraman production one day, I would really love for this franchise to finally have some foothold in America for once. If they do, we can only hope it doesn’t end up like Masked Rider… I suppose only time will tell! Either way, another great Ultra Retrospective, I can’t wait for the next one!

And for some reason, it has a tie-in game for the 3DO of all things.