Netflix keeps trying, and that’s a good thing. Animation wise, they’ve never been considered a big player. And yet, they’ve been making great animated films for years now, better than most of the animated studios working today. Ultraman: Rising taps into Japan’s IP for a new adventure; it’s not the best of what Netflix can do, but it continues to raise Netflix’s floor on animated content. Plus, kids are REALLY gonna love this one because…
The star is Kenji “Ken” Sato (Yuki Yamada) a baseball player/superhero (OMG, every kid’s gonna LOVE this). After the disappearance of his mother Mina (Ayumi Tsunematsu), Ken relocates to play for the Giants in Japan. His real reason for moving though is because his dad (Fumiyo Kohinata) can’t handle being Ultraman anymore, forcing Ken to moonlight as the new Ultraman on the down low. Journalist Ami Wakita (Akari Hayami) sees through some of Ken’s swagger, and puts him on edge with some really personal questions, forcing the swash buckling Ken into an identity crisis as he tries to figure out what he wants to be: the big baseball hero his mom rooted for, or the real selfless hero his dad hopes for him.
Turns out, superhero baseball players are nearly impossible to pull off. That’s because the best of Ultraman: Rising is Ken’s struggle to find balance in his life. Well, not really balance: clarity of purpose. When Ken moves to Japan, he thinks he’s just gonna do his thing and people will love him, as that’s worked for him so far. However, he’s really under it all not living HIS purpose: he’s living for others, specifically his mom and dad. Underestimating this weakness in himself, Ken struggles to adapt to his ever growing responsibilities because he fails to understand how they fit into his idea for his life. This all changes when Ken is forced to care for a baby kaiju. Through this parenting process, Ken is finally able to not only understand what his parents really wanted for him, but he also shed’s the separate but equal duality of life and merges his existence into a whole that has different parts that work interchangeably.
Plus, those baby raising activities are really amusingly animated. Watching Ken try to do parent things with a giant creature twice his size that can’t speak is language is shooting animated fish in a CGI barrel, with lasers and fun flying sequences aplenty. And when the action goes down, the movie sticks to its Japanese roots, giving us decent enough anime style battles, with a nice little Miyazaki style complexity to the “bad” government men trying to hunt down the kaiju. It’s mostly playing the hits of animated films before it, but it’s doing it sweetly and competently to the point that you just smile and go along for the fun streaming ride before you put your kids to bed and they demand you get them a baby kaiju.
So keep doing what you’re doing Netflix. At some point, something you make is gonna be acknowledged the best animated film of the year, even though you already did it with Mitchell’s vs. the Machines at got hosed at the Oscars. Go find some great other cartoons all over the world, and see what they’ve got to offer. That’s my favorite movie recipe of yours!