Ultraman: the Showa era

On the data. The Showa era boundary is a convention rather than a calendar fact. The Showa reign ran to January 1989, but Ultraman 80 is the natural endpoint because it was the last Ultra television series co-produced with TBS in a prime slot, after which television production stopped for roughly fifteen and a half years until Ultraman Tiga in 1996. Ultra Q is included as a precursor rather than a prerequisite. The case for it is production level, not narrative: it was made under the same Fantasy Special Effects Series banner, Japanese sources describe Ultraman as inheriting its world view, Ultraman's title sequence shows the Ultra Q logo shattering into the Ultraman logo, monster suits were reused, and the official franchise numbering counts it as entry one. But it has no Ultraman, no recurring hero and no returning cast. The shared universe genuinely begins with Return of Ultraman in 1971; before that, Ultraman and Ultraseven were made as separate productions with no in-story link. Ace then makes the Ultra Brothers a standing team rather than a set of cameos. Three episode counts on this page are contested and all three are worth explaining. Ultra Q is twenty eight produced and twenty seven aired in the original run, because episode 28, Open Up, was held back and first broadcast during a 1967 rerun. Kodansha's official site gives that first broadcast as 14 December 1967; English Wikipedia's prose agrees while its own episode table says 17 December, which is an unresolved contradiction in the most cited English source. Ultraman is thirty nine episodes. The figure of forty comes from counting the pre-broadcast special of 10 July 1966, which is not a numbered episode, though Tsuburaya itself treats that date as Ultraman's television debut, so the forty count is a different accounting rather than an error. Ultraseven is the big one: forty nine episodes were produced and aired, but episode 12 was permanently withdrawn after public criticism of an alien designed with keloid scars and named in tie-in material with a term derived from hibakusha. Tsuburaya renamed the character, then pulled the episode and the character from broadcasts, publications and home video, and Japanese sources record it as a skipped number. No legitimate release contains it, so every modern set runs forty eight, and Tsuburaya's own English site describes the Blu-ray box as containing all forty eight. That is why this page marks the count as unconfirmed: forty nine is what aired and forty eight is what you can watch. Return of Ultraman at fifty one, Ace at fifty two and Leo at fifty one were each verified against two sources with no dissenting figure. Ultra Fight's episode figure rests on a single source, which gives 196 produced and 253 airings including reruns, so it is flagged rather than stated as settled. It ran five minutes a day on weekdays from 1970 to 1971, partly as fight scenes cut out of existing Ultraman and Ultraseven film with wrestling style commentary and partly as newly shot outdoor suit fights, made as a near-cashless production during Tsuburaya's financial crisis after Eiji Tsuburaya's death. The Ultraman from 1979 is the case to be careful with. It is counted inside the official series numbering as entry eight and the first of the third period, but it is not in the shared universe: its hero Ultraman Joneus comes from the planet U40 rather than Nebula M78, and Japanese sources describe it as departing from the existing framework for space opera set on U40. It was the first Ultra entry to establish a separate universe, seventeen years before Tiga did it again. A much later crossover brought Joneus in alongside Andro Melos, and that is a multiverse device rather than a retroactive link. Almost the entire theatrical output of this era is compilation: re-edited television footage screened at the Toho Champion Festival. There are roughly fifteen such releases and listing them all would imply fifteen films you have not seen when in fact you have. The three listed here are the pre-broadcast special, the 1967 compilation feature, and the 1974 Japan and Thailand co-production, which is the one genuinely original feature of the era and also the one with a contested rights history. One structural oddity people notice: Taro is absent from Leo. Originally that was consistent, because Taro was written as Kotaro Higashi's transformed form with the Ultra Brothers as non-blood family; the 1984 film Ultraman Story retconned him into the biological son of Mother and Father of Ultra. On availability, the premise that there is a free official worldwide channel needs correcting. The official ULTRAMAN YouTube channel is real and free, but it is not a complete worldwide Showa library. When Tsuburaya began streaming the 1966 series with English subtitles in July 2021 it was region-locked, unavailable in Japan and potentially elsewhere. Under the sixtieth anniversary programme announced in July 2025, selected episodes from classic and recent titles rotate onto the channel from August 2025 with English subtitles only and each available for a two week window, which is a rotating showcase rather than a standing catalogue, and Tsuburaya's own channel guide page currently lists no Showa series at all. For North American viewers the dependable free routes are Tubi and Pluto TV, which carry Ultraman, Ultraseven and Ultraman Leo, and Shout! Factory TV, whose 2020 deal covers roughly sixteen series including Ultra Q, Ultraman, Ultraseven, Return of Ultraman, Ace and Taro but is explicitly North America only. Mill Creek's discs are the only route that reliably covers the whole era including The Ultraman and Ultraman 80. Finally, the reason classic Ultraman was largely unavailable in the West for decades is a rights dispute: Chaiyo Productions of Thailand claimed non-Japan rights on the basis of a 1976 contract, a Los Angeles federal court found the purported agreement not authentic in 2018, and an appeals court upheld Tsuburaya's overseas rights in December 2019, which is why every official Western release here dates from 2019 onward.

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