Purely Academic #34 - ULTRAMAN 60th Anniversary Special! The Jissōji Akio Collection

All right, well, we are talking about Ultraman, obviously, but do you want to tell the folks why and what we are talking about today? Because if it's just Ultraman, that would be a 4,000-hour podcast.

But it's a specific Ultraman thing.

Yes, in lieu of doing Weekly Suit Ultraman, which, you know, that might happen one day.

Who knows?

I'd do it.

It sounds fun, but yeah.

Yeah.

We are doing, I think, a very, very fun Ultraman podcast.

One, I've had the idea for a long time, but we're doing it now for two reasons.

One, because it is the 60th anniversary of Ultraman, and two, because I finally got up to the point in my very long Ultraman journey I've been on for about seven years now where I've got to the point where we can do this episode.

which we are celebrating the birthday of Ultraman by specifically looking at the episodes directed by the guy who is without a doubt the most famous and most acclaimed and most influential director of episodes in the Ultraman franchise, which is Jisoji Akio.

And I very recently finished watching the show Ultraman Max, which featured his final two episodes that they brought him back to the franchise for um shortly before his death and i was like i watched his final episode and i had had this idea since back when i watched ultra 7 which had a bunch of gsog episodes that like man it would be very fun to do an ultra man podcast where i've seen all the stuff you know classic weekly suit gundam style i've seen it all i know i mean i have not seen every ultra man show but i've seen all of these ultra man shows of their entirety um and jonathan you are not a complete ultra man neophyte we've done our like sheen ultra man podcast you've seen a little bit of the original show but you not much um and to do a like let's just watch a g soji's episodes on their own as a set do a podcast on those be able to celebrate ultra man as a whole and the kind of weird scope of this very bizarre franchise but also celebrate its most bizarre and most wonderful creator within that kind of playground um and it just so happened that me watching ultra man max coincided perfectly with the 60th anniversary of the whole series in a Ultraman-like miracle that I find very touching.

Indeed.

So yeah, you selected, well, I mean, you didn't select, you listed the 15 episodes of Ultraman series that Jisouji Akio directed over a...

Over a 30-year period, although there's a really big gap in the middle there, obviously.

And, yeah, we watched them all.