Extensive listening challenge 👂 (2022)

Oh, I didn’t know about that site, looks great! It’s not usually a genre I seek out, but I’m not opposed to cute. I’ll give them a shot! You’ve helped a whole lot with a bunch of things already; thank you so much.

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Oh this is great! I watched this show with English subs and picked up way more than I thought I would from just the audio, so I was thinking that it would be one of the more doable shows to watch entirely in Japanese. I’m really glad it’s available with Japanese subs! I’m still quite a ways out from really being able to watch something like this, but I’m making note of this to try watching in the future. I’ll feel much less pressured to fully understand everything, haha, since I’ve already watched it!

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So in addition to that, I finished 3年A組、今から皆さんは、人質です last night and it was also super fun. It very much followed a formula of tense opening → build up → emotionally climactic wrap up → set tension again for next episode but it didn’t get boring and constantly was peeling back new layers of the onion.

I watched with JP subs, but didn’t always need them - most characters spoke pretty clearly and by and large the vocabulary was a relatively small set. For me the most challenging part was reading text on screen while following spoken dialogue - because SNS played a decently big role in the show this was quite often.

I then watched the first episode of ダメな男じゃダメですか and don’t think I’ll continue it. Awkward comedies are pretty hard for me to watch and it’s looks like it will lean pretty heavily into that. If anyone is interested in it I will say that both the parents and the grandmother I had some issues understanding (dialect?) so for their scenes I only really caught the broad strokes of what was being said. Pretty much everyone else seems to talk normally.

Also watched the first episode of ミステリと言う勿れ which I think someone else in this thread was watching?! (@valkow ?) I’m probably going to continue this one, it seems fun, although watching it right after finishing 3年A組 feels a bit weird - 菅田将暉 (Suda Masaki) is the lead character in both and he delivers some lines almost identically for both characters.
It’s pretty easy to follow so far - the lead talks relatively slowly although he tends to monologue a bit. The only trouble I can see someone really running into is some stereotypical TV cop speak.

Annnnddd I’m up through episode 6 of ドクターホワイト. It’s continuing to be pretty run of the mill, but enjoyable. The acting is underwhelming, the villains seem pointlessly villainous, the medical mysteries seem awfully convenient, each episode wraps up so neatly, etc etc. I’m not sure I can even really recommend this for listening practice as it’s chock full of medical words, often delivered at high speed. Watch it if you enjoy silly medical dramas, otherwise you can probably skip it.

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I liked this one, too! Some of the young actors were less than great, but some were delightful, and the main character was fun. I agree about peeling back the onion and keeping things exciting. :smiley: (eta: if you liked Nagano Mei in this one, she is also great in ハコヅメ.)

Yes, me! I just finished watching ep7 today, so I am caught up. I’m really enjoying it a lot on its own merits (as in, trying not to compare it to the manga which is better). I think all the actors are great, the music is at times overdramatic, and the plots are fun. I feel like this is a hard manga to adapt to serial television, but they’re doing a good job so far. :+1: The only listening comprehension thing I can think of is that sometimes people speak very quickly, and also sometimes they talk about kanji (mostly in names).

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I’m now almost done with episode 3 and I thought of this. This show has a tendency to have scenes that feel like episode enders…multiple times per episode. It’s a bit disorienting. I’m still enjoying it, but I can definitely see that this is something they struggled a bit to adapt across mediums (haven’t read the manga, so no prior reference point for plot arcs).

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I caught up through episode 7 of ミステリと言う勿れ and now I have to wait for weekly episodes to come out :sob: Quite a few actors and actresses I like sprinkled throughout and fun (if sometimes a bit see-through) plot lines. I admit I was way more upset about the abused-child-turned-arsonist killing the cat than I was about him killing his “angel”. I’m also somewhat on the fence about whether or not ライカ is a real, live person.

I have been struggling a bit with some of 整’s longer monologues. I might eventually rewatch some of the episodes. It wasn’t enough for me to miss plot points but there were definitely a few ??? moments.

I still need to finish 桜の塔、最愛, Risky, サロモンの偽証, and うきわ so will probably prioritize finishing those while I wait on new episodes of ミステリ and ドクターホワイト.

Currently at 73 hours of listening done this year, or ~18% of my yearly listening goal.

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End of February update!

I did my Johnny’s group immersion challenge (Hey! Say! JUMP) and watched 10 variety episodes or behind the scenes videos, a drama (below), and a concert, plus a lot of music.

  1. 金田一少年の事件簿N
    Quality: ★★½
    Enjoyment: ★★★
    Ease of understanding: ★★★★

Despite the low quality rating, this is a kind of cheesy, possible low-budget mystery show that I generally have no problem enjoying for exactly what it is. However, in this one the main character, while interesting and fun in most aspects, is also a skeezeball who creeped me out frequently. That was the only big downside of this drama, but it was a big one! No specific problems in terms of listening comprehension.

I also just finished another drama: season one of おしゃ家ソムリエおしゃ子!

  1. おしゃ家ソムリエおしゃ子
    Quality: ★★★
    Enjoyment: ★★★★
    Ease of understanding: ★★★★

… This is a very, very silly show. :joy: Honestly I don’t know what to think about it rationally, but subjectively I enjoyed it a great deal and laughed a lot. Mostly the main character just goes around weaseling her way into men’s houses and then yelling a lot about how terrible they are in various ways.

Some silly caps of the silly show





This might have been my favorite episode: she goes to the room of someone living in a sharehouse for travelers and then just goes through and destroys all of them in turn.


SHE CAN ASTRAL PROJECT.


She has various inventions that all play on the word おしゃれ!


She will probably get the cops called on her at some point if she keeps this up.


Also she hangs out with these two all the time, and I love them.

Ahem, in terms of listening comprehension, there is a lot of very fast shouting… but it’s all about things that are shown on screen, so it maybe kind of evens out. There are also some made-up words. Sometimes I just let it wash over me. At some point I’ll watch season two.

In terms of airing dramas, I’m keeping up with ミステリと言う勿れ, working on catching up with 30までにとうるさくて, and trying out おいハンサム. I’m also trying ソロ活女子のススメ (because Eguchi Noriko), picking back up 恋です, and still inching my way through リバース. My March Johnny’s group is Snow Man, so I’m planning to watch 消えた初恋.

Finally, I didn’t make much progress with my audiobook, so I’ll have to push more on that in March.

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Was also my problem with it back when I watched it, the drama makes it way more exaggerated than the anime.

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I’m glad I’m not the only one! I read some reviews and no one mentioned it… which for me was hard to understand.

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I finished watching both Risky and うきわ. They’re very, very different shows but I enjoyed both.

Risky is basically a show about love, hate, and revenge. It aims to shock and to an extent, disgust. I was a bit dissatisfied with the ending and felt the whole final arch where her sister was actually alive and hated her secretly for years was…something of a cheap twist. I still recommend it as it’s entertaining and not too hard to follow, but it’s probably a 3/5 for me if I had to rate it.

うきわ was a 5/5 though. Cinematography, story line, acting - all on point for me. It shifted into surrealism a few times to showcase the emotions of the characters which I thought was really well done, and I appreciated that everyone in the show looked normal. It wasn’t the usual hotties lineup that I’ve come to expect. Even actors/actresses who could be cast in a hotties lineup where 地味ified.
Basically a show about two couples living next to each other, both with a cheating spouse in the household, and the resulting complicated friendship when the non-cheating parties turn to each other for comfort.

And finally I started listening to the audiobook for 屍人荘の殺人 - currently 10 chapters in. This one is a bit above my listening level. I’m not lost by any means, but I’ve pretty much lost track of all the character names outside of the main 3 introduced in the beginning. I might have to give in and read this along with the book, or just relisten to some chapters.
It also has made me yet again ponder where the line is drawn between ‘light novel’ and ‘novel’ as the writing style for this book feels very “light novely” to me. The voice acting for the audiobook is also very anime-esque rather than more…standard audiobook, I guess? Not sure how else to describe it. I decided to check and while it does seem classed as a novel, there are a couple reviews on Amazon calling it light novely:

私はそういった物が好きなのでそこまでは良かったのですが、キャラクターが萌え系アニメっぽいというか、ラノベ感が凄まじいのです。
[…]
別にラノベっぽいミステリがあっても良いとは思いますが、鮎川哲也賞を受賞したと聞けば、やはりシリアスなミステリを期待するのがファンというものです。

Light novels aren’t really my thing, but I know lots of other people love them, so perhaps if you’re a light novel fan and a mystery fan you’d enjoy it. There’s a movie based on the book which I intend to watch whether I finish the audiobook or not.

Also to check in on hours, I’m at 84 hours this year, or about 21% of my goal.

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Haven’t made much progress since the start of my challenge, but I did manage to finish season 1 of komi-san. Was kinda my mistake as I was watching the bebop live action as well and I alternated watching an episode of that and komi-san, but there would be large gaps between each viewing because bebop just didn’t cut it. I was removed from the curse and watched the final three episodes. My first anime with Japanese subs instead of English. I’d like to watch something now before the new season of komi-san starts maybe.

コミさんは、コミュ症です (12 eps)
It was definitely not that bad, but it’s not the best anime to start watching. Especially if you haven’t read the manga like me. The anime is pretty fast, they cover multiple chapters in just a few moments and they gradually add more characters in faster. That’s mostly from the sidecharacters with Najimi being the worst offender of chatting up a storm.Though komi-san can also write pretty fast. The last few episodes were bullet train fast. I guess they really wanted to cover up to a certain part of the story, at the cost of rushing through some great moments. That said I enjoyed watching it. Trying to get the gist of it while having subs to support it is a good feeling. Although it can be a bit too much with all the information on screen and things going on in the background. I tried not pausing it too much during scenes and kinda let it flow naturally to absorb it as best as I could.

As someone with social anxiety myself, I can relate to komi at times. There’s definitely the danger that people might interpret it as a gimmick, but that’s really more something I felt with the supporting characters. Especially because their names betray it immediately. There’s some wonderful stuff hidden in the anime, I think the first episode was pretty sweet and had some breathtaking moments, which makes me wish it would last longer.

Bit behind on my goals, but I think there’s plenty of time to catch. It’s not like I haven’t had any other practice in. For example I listen to Japanese music a lot more in the past few months, with the right songs I would also look at their lyrics on spotify to read/sing along. Anime on crunchyroll I watch, they don’t count for my personal challenge but they do add at least for getting more familiar with the language passively. Was lucky to be able to watch korone stream Banjo-Kazooie twice and really get sucked into it for a few hours. That also improves my stamina. It just happens to be one of the few games I really love, so that makes it easier. Could also just like with music put it on the background for a while and doing some reviews or light coding. Of course whenever a lot was going on, I would switch back and watch. Hoping to catch her final stream live, as she’s nearing the end of the game. I have also been watching some of meshclass on youtube, where she goes over grammar points that are similar or common mistakes people make. Watching it with Japanese subs helps me get both some listening and reading practice in. Ultimately I hope to not have to rely on subs for regular content like youtube or the news I’d consume, but atm I think it’s a good midway point to latch onto for a bit.

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I just finished ミステリと言う勿れ and I want more :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob:

There’s going to be a second season, thank goodness, otherwise I’d be eyeing picking up the manga like I did with 三角窓の外側は夜 (the movie was good but I could tell there was so much more under the surface).
Who knows, I still might. I just have so much to read already :grimacing:

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Hmm? But there’s still two episodes left to air? :grin: (eta: You scared me though, because I also don’t want it to be over!)

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Whatttt. I assumed the 次回予告 was for a next season because episode 10 is titled “ファイナルエピソード” and literally opens with a screen saying “Final Episode” (in English). Talk about confusing!

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Because of various health problems I’ve really been falling behind on this whole challenge thing, beyond mostly unproductively flipping through streams and the like. However, I finally got around to watching all ten episodes of this show! It was indeed fairly cute, and while it certainly sticks to the genre, it forced enough smiles out of me that I can’t be too negative.

Plus, I think I understood enough (with subtitles) to be satisfied. I don’t think I’m ever going to get over my annoyance at missing things, which maybe makes me rate my abilities lower than they are, but I know that’s not going away. I mean it’s a mixed bag, a lot of things I listen to sans subtitles and feel like I’ve caught 0% of the meaning, but there are both sides to it.

But anyway, I appreciate the recommendation! Even if I feel a little chained to subtitles too, I’m getting better at reading speed and somewhat better at listening comprehension all at once. I know some people see it as leaning on reading too much, but I can tell with something like a visual novel that the audio is working hand in hand to make me comprehend faster than I’d ever be able to with raw reading right now so I figure, even if it’s split, I’m getting some benefit to both.

Progress anyway, however slowly. I’ll have to think about if I want to watch that other show you mentioned next, or explore anything else…

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i don’t have any specific goals, but i am trying to watch at least one episode of japanese tv without subtitles every day. even if i don’t understand everything, it’s great practice!

i’ve also tried to find some podcasts to listen to during downtime at work. i listen to a lot of podcasts about formula 1, so i decided to find one in japanese! i found one called 「F1ファンになる方法」, which is pretty good! even though i have a hard time recognizing the more technical vocab, i’ve found that since i already know a lot about F1 and the current F1 news, i can usually understand most of it!

link to podcast: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/sad3c-8dc0f/F1ファンになる方法-

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Yay! The other show, Risky, is definitely a jump up in how hard it is, but with JP subs should be largely doable if you go in expecting lower comprehension.
I’m flipping through Viki’s catalogue right now and most of the shows I liked would probably not be good reccs. A lot of non-standard speech or unique vocab. “My Right Older Brother” I binge watched the first half because it was ridiculous and amusing, but never finished. It’s probably somewhere between 初恋 and Risky. Three Star Bar in Nishi Ogikubo is probably around Risky’s level and is calm and enjoyable - not a romcom, just short stories about people who come to a bar. Hakuouki SSL: Sweet School Life is completely ridiculous but I vaguely remember it being relatively easy? Grain of salt, it was a while ago.

Maybe some other folks will have suggestions too :slight_smile:

On subs

Assuming you’re talking about JP subs here, then, yeah? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with watching a show with the JP subs on. I would be utterly drowning in some of the shows I like without them because of how much new vocab there is sometimes, and when dealing with dialects it’s incredibly helpful to see how it’s written as it can turn on a lightbulb in my head.
I also have never been quiet about my love of reading along with audiobooks. As far as I’m concerned it’s reinforcing the skills. I’m being reminded of the correct reading for kanji along with the cadence of sentences and can connect the variations in speech directly to their written counterparts.
I wish I could insert audio snippets here, but learning to understand TV show cop-speech was my challenge for the longest time. I’m mostly there but by god do they love to slur words, smoosh everything together, and use slang never used in normal conversation.

I can watch some things without subs, and often do, but I also often don’t. I don’t consider it a failing. You’re building skills regardless and one day you’ll turn the subs off on something and just go, “oh, I’m following”. But other shows you’ll still need them. It’s not an on/off switch, especially if you watch shows that throw a lot of less common vocab at you.

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Thanks for thinking about some other stuff you’ve seen, really appreciate it!

I did mean JP subs, yeah. All I really meant I guess wasn’t even that anything was wrong with using them so much as, just, I’ve definitely seen some people make claims that go so as far as that they feel like using subtitles turns this it reading comprehension and not listening. Which hey, I’ll take anything I can get haha, but it does very much feel like the listening is still a big part of it. I’d like to get a little less reliant on them sometime, if for no reason other than how much I want to watch without easily available subtitles, but that’ll hopefully come eventually.

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Put my name on this list again to shame myself into maybe finally listening to Japanese podcasts. I’ve really been enjoying Japanese let’s plays on youtube in the background for a while, though finding good ones has been difficult (I listed hanna to minami because I’ve really enjoyed them, though they talk and read very very very fast).

I started watching the way of the house husband on netflix a bit worried I wouldn’t be able to understand it because of the extreme yakuza language, but it’s combined with slice of life enough that I’ve actually learned a lot about the more rough male speech patterns.

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I watched a (loose) trilogy of early Takashi Miike movies (the “Black Society Trilogy”).
I tried turning off the subtitles – but all three movies feature a lot of Chinese dialogue, and turning off subtitles meant turning off subtitles for that as well. So unfortunately for this thread they weren’t very good Japanese listening practice – arguably they were better Mandarin listening practice (I caught a 我, a 不在, and a 什么 but that’s about it).
I guess I’ll talk about them anyway though!

Black Society Trilogy

The handful of Miike movies I’ve seen are all over the map for me. At least one I love (Dead or Alive 2: Birds, of all things), but usually there’s edgy content that veers too far into unpleasant territory and so there’s a lot of “well it was interesting - that one part sure sucks though” reactions. So I pretty much knew to expect that going into these, and they delivered - they’re definitely interesting and held my attention but well, I think all bodily fluids are represented in some form herein, and some sequences… aren’t exactly endearing.
新宿黒社会 チャイナ マフィア 戦争 (Shinjuku Triad Society) is the most lurid and straightforward, about a corrupt cop hunting a particular triad member. I liked the setting (there’s a lot of good kabukichou scenery), and especially liked the two main actors, 椎名桔平 and 田口トモロヲ (who it turns out was the lead in 鉄男! He’s in all three of these movies and his eccentric performances are a big plus), but the protagonist using rape multiple times as an interrogation method disqualifies him from even antihero status, and that + the inane reason a female character switches sides to help him is a great example of the thing I was talking about where something in a Miike-directed movie crosses over from like, fun pulpy gross-out lurid to agressively unpleasant lurid. Homosexuality in the movie is on kind of the line between the two for me… It feels like just another tool for being provocative being whipped out and brandished a lot, kind of moreso than it feels like its actually saying anything about homosexuality itself.
極道黒社会 RAINY DOG (Rainy Dog) is probably my favorite of the three. It’s much calmer than Shinjuku Triad Society, and is about a cast out low-level yakuza working as a hitman in Taipei, while being followed around by a child he flagrantly neglects. I like the setting, and there’s great use of rain, and it stars 哀川翔 who I like a lot. So it’s all pluses for me but the ending is a heaping pile of cliches - like to the point I think maybe it’s like, a joke ending? Like an intentional shaggy dog type of thing? Like the sympathetic female character gets fridged, there’s a ‘lighter stops the bullet’ moment, a ‘mute character speaks at a crucial emotional climax’ moment, a ‘come back and kill me when you’re older’ moment, etc. – I do like the payoff to 田口トモロヲ’s character, but even that’s something you pretty much know is going to happen with its setup (even if you aren’t expecting it in the moment). Felt like a disappointly conventional conclusion to me that didn’t live up to the rest of the movie . Another positive though for me is that the movie shows it’s a Daiei production by having Show Aikawa pass time by… watching assorted clips of Gamera in grainy quality on his late-90s PC? I felt some kinship with the character in that moment.
日本黒社会 LEY LINES I think is maybe the most ambitious and interesting, but probably also my least favorite, mainly just because it’s a lot slower and less focused than the others - the plot and characters meander for a long time, which personally made me less willing to accept the signature Miike unpleasant parts. There’s again a lot of nice kabukichou shots and scenery, and some really funny parts like the scene where 田口トモロヲ’s balancing on the side of a building implied to be very high up, then falls off screen - and the other character’s cryptic reactions to his assumed death color their dialogue in a very interesting way - and then the camera pans and it turned out he just face planted on a lower balcony though.
All three movies kept my attention throughout and were interesting, so I can’t really complain (except about the subtitle thing, but it is what it is). I did appreciate at least that knowing Japanese I think helped my brain naturally parse the switch between the two languages in a way that I wouldn’t have grasped as much if I’d been watching it 100% with an English mindset, and just relying on like, brackets in the subtitles to tell me who was speaking what when.
I’m not really a big special features person, but I watched a little of an included interview with Miike that seemed interesting - to his telling, things like the luridness and the Japanese/Chinese intersection theme of the movie is more just what the producers were interested in, and he mainly provided value to them at the time by being a young director who’d just be willing to do whatever, where an older director would have been more strongly opinionated about what to do. He said his method is to just shoot what the script says – if you hit a part of the script you don’t understand, better to work out what you think was trying to be said via acting and shooting it than to rewrite the script to make it say something else. Which I suppose maybe explains why with different scriptwriters these movies can feel so different tonally a lot of the time. Anyway – the listening aspect does definitely make the prospect of talking head interviews in Japanese a lot more interesting and appealing, so I might try to watch more of these later but probably won’t get around to it.

I also watched one other movie: 怪談 本所七不思議. This one doesn’t appear to be at all famous, and honestly I didn’t know anything about it, I just found out the blu-ray player in my computer is region-free for DVDs, so I can play Region 2 DVDs, so I bought this just because I saw it on amazon and it looked cool.
My listening comprehension wasn’t very good! The 1950s-movie-on-a not-hugely-crisp-transfer audio quality and period setting both hampered it… It was pretty cool to see though as a precursor to those Daiei Yokai movies I watched last year! A lot of the same yokai are represented. The story presents them to less impressive effect though, and I found the movie lacking in eeriness and rather dull, even at just 55m, so I wouldn’t describe it as a hidden gem really, but still kind of neat. One specific complaint - when the yokai all gang up on the bad guy at the end, there’s like, bouncy triumphant music played! Like, you’re basically watching ghosts unravel the spirit of a dastardly villain to like, the saints go marching in. Really needed to sell it with something a touch more… spectral sounding.

As for TV, I finished ウルトラマンA (エース)!
This is the fifth “Ultra” series show, and I watched all ~50 episodes without subtitles while exercising. My comprehension definitely varied depending on how invested or tired I was on any given day, but I’m definitely at least at a point where I’m happy to just watch these without subtitles and don’t consider turning them on at any point.
At the beginning I thought Ultraman Ace had a ton of promise in concept, since instead of one protagonist character who turns into Ultraman, this one has two: 北斗星司 and 南夕子 both are given the ultra power and combine to transform into Ultraman Ace. I thought that had a fun potential to mix up the formula! And up to this point - all the main protagonist of Ultraman shows have been a stock standard gruff male protagonist. So seeing these plucky two:


should be a really fun and refreshing change!

Unfortunately, I think in practice they must have just not known what to do with this concept or how to use these two protagonists, because for one, Hokuto is played very gruffly, even occasionally chauvinistic, as if to make up for his babyface and sharing the splotlight. And worse – halfway through the show, Minami is bizarrely revealed to have been an alien from the Moon, and she pretty much literally says “I have to go now, my planet needs me” and leaves the show to watch over the moon and occasionally cameo in like, ethereal moon princess form. She is replaced by a mild love interest character and a kid to follow around Hokuto. This makes it the second Ultraman show in a row to abruptly revert back to this formula after trying something different, and just like with Return of Ultraman, I think it likewise prevents Ultraman Ace from really forming its own identity. This time, at least, I had read the pamphlet that came with the disks and knew it was coming! Otherwise I surely would have been completely flabbergasted and annoyed when it happened!

This show also has a first for the Ultraman shows (that seems to be an extremely common tokusatsu trope in general) - there’s a sinister main villain who gets cut to pretty frequently as a way to explain the source of various monsters. I liked ヤプール when he does take center stage, but I do like it when monsters at least have a touch of backstory, and this show (at least as far as I caught listening) seems to have a lot of “ヤプール made a monster appear” or just “a monster appeared.”
It’s definitely got the most so far in terms of like, Ultraman lore (such as it is) and appearances from the various “Ultrabrothers.” The Ultra characters aren’t really… characters? Like I mean… the costumes can’t exactly emote, you know? But they’re definitely fun in terms of spectacle. And ウルトラの父 is my favorite so far!

A few Ultraman Ace memories

My favorite monster design was this giant kappa:
image
Instead of a saucer on its head, it has a swimming pool! If you take a swim in it, it sucks you up and replaces you with a sinister alien double.

The Christmas episode where ウルトラの父 turns out to also be Santa Claus is a perfect episode of television.

The giant violin that turns into a kaiju is a really well executed example of an episode genre I usually don’t like: the “some kid has a problem, and that problem is going to turn into a giant monster” episode. In this case the problem is his mom really really really wants him to learn violin.
image

There’s also a tapir episode, an episode where a kaiju manifests from a piss stain, a whole lot of cameos from previous Ultramen, etc. etc. Still a fun show!

I’ve settled on just purely setting aside my exercise time for watching Ultraman, and tokusatsu in general. It’s a very good fit and it’s better to just be like “well it’s that time of day, time to watch ultraman” rather than waffle over what to watch and end up not exercising.
That means I don’t really have a set timeslot in my usual habits for watching other TV though - but I’ll try to fit it in as it is good listening practice (and would presumably be even better when not distracted by exercising at the same time).
I watched a chunk of Lupin III Part 1 and enjoyed it but wasn’t feeling a lot of momentum since it’s very very episodic. I realized that if it were a manga, I’d finish a volume or two and set it aside and come back to it whenever I felt like reading it again, so I figured I should do that rather than feeling like I had to watch the whole season/show.
Despite putting a lot of newer dramas into the hopper as well, the random choice of my backlog system landed on 恐怖劇場アンバランス, the Tsuburaya horror show that I heard about after watching 怪奇大作戦 last year, so I’ll try to plug away at that every so often. So far I’ve watched the first episode and it was much much more difficult than I expected - a strange adaptation of a literary story with 春雨物語 as the source material about a , that turned out to be directed by Seijun Suzuki! (potentially explaining some of the strangeness). I’m not sure I understood it very well at all, but I’m game to try the rest I suppose.

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