Are any other Ultraman shows subbed (well) anyway? Should I even bother.
I downloaded Ginga though, it's apparently like an Anniversary thing, but will I need to know the prior series to enjoy it?
Ultraman Nexus, Mebius and Tiga are fully subbed, and the original Ultraman and Ultra Seven are out on DVD. Nexus was subbed by TV-Nihon, so, y'know, take your chances with that one.
The original Ultraman is hard to go back to just because the show is so old. You can tell that there was a learning process going on behind the scenes, because it lacks polish in some areas. Still, it has some decent episodes and some of the most iconic monsters in the series make their debut in this show. Ultra Seven is a total classic, good times all the way through.
Mebius is another anniversary series, but it's actually pretty free-flowing and you don't really need to know much about the other shows to enjoy it. Tiga's from the '90s, but it holds up pretty well.
I think they're all worth watching, even if you're not super-excited about watching giant monsters smash into buildings. I think that the appeal of the series lies in the monsters and aliens, how they deal with or try to take over the earth and the people on it, and how the human characters, in turn, react to alien life (Nexus focused on that last point pretty heavily, truth be told). There's also a strong sense of hope in most Ultra shows, which I find somewhat refreshing.
As for Ginga, I don't think that prior knowledge of the series is really important, but it's only the first episode or so, so time will tell. It's going to be a short series (12 episodes and 2 movies) so we'll see how much stuff will be packed into it.
Hey, don't blame the series for 4Kids' shortsightedness. If they had any sense, they'd have brought over the Tiga movies and made Eric Stuart sing theme songs for those as well.
Then again, we would have gotten schizophrenic dubs for those as well.
On second thought, it's not worth it. We dodged a bullet.
