Ultraman Dyna - Final Chapter (final thoughts)

Yep, final post for this finale.


"Final Chapter" is a good enough ending. The seriousness was upped to the point that we see very little of Dyna's lightheartedness, which is a good thing. Asuka is at his least annoying here.

As for the villain, Gransphere is a pretty cool antagonist. It's a bizarre, intimidating, and inhuman agent of darkness, but not a rehash of Gatanozoa. Basically, a good counter to an Ultraman. And the way it appeared before humanity all over the world (pictured) was uh, grand. True, the giant glowy space balls aren't visually impressive, especially given the visual effects used.

I love the spaceship/base thing Super GUTS used (pictured right, from different angles). It's much cooler than Tiga's Art Dessei. It's some sort of X-shaped mobile platform thing that folds up when it lands. I wish I knew what it was called. It shows up outside the finale, but it was used very well here.

You get the sense that these episodes try to imbue Dyna with a sense of humanity. Things like Asuka recalling his father talking about ancient peoples, and mentioning that he does things because he's human, and that when Dyna speaks, it's actually Asuka. It works, given that this is a sequel to Ultraman Tiga, which really gave Ultraman a sense of humanity as well.

The music used in the finale ranges in quality from generic, but alright to absolutely amazing. I can't help but feel the lack of "Takeoff! Super GUTS" in these episodes to be a minus point.

Ultraman Dyna may not hold a place in any list of greatest tokusatsu ever, but it's worth watching if you are a super hero tokusatsu fan. At least for the Gransphere-related episodes, and watching Tiga beforehand isn't really necessary. (no, I'm not recommending Dyna over Tiga, just that watching them in sequence isn't really necessary)

I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to talk about the DVD I watched this on. It's the Malaysia release by Speedy Video Distributors and it is awful. Not just the disc containing the final episodes, but their Dyna DVDs in general. The default aspect ratio is set at 16:9, but you actually just get a stretched out 4:3 image. Fortunately, this can be fixed when viewed on a computer, but it shouldn't be an issue at all. And that's not even getting into image clarity yet, (notice that none of my screencaps are at full DVD resolution). although I haven't really sat down and compared video quality on Speedy's Ultraman DVDs, so maybe that's a topic for another time, if ever. The Malay audio track is muffled on at least some Dyna episodes (although not episode 50, at least), and that includes the music, so watching the Malay dub is a more painful experience than usual with the Dyna DVDs. I loved the finale, but I had to watch each episode at least twice to review. Once to experience the episode in a non-painful way, and once to understand the dialogue. Malay dubbing tends to be so awkward that my mind blocks out specific details and wording, anyway. One flub that stands out hilariously is where an old guy from Asuka's former flight school sees Asuka's GUTS Eagle Superior and says something that basically means "look, honey, that's our son". He was referring to Asuka's father in the Japanese audio, but I'm pretty sure the "honey" and "our" part shouldn't be there.

My understanding of these episodes has been a combination of guesswork, the Malay dub, and what I've read online. I really, really wish I could find subtitles for this show that I could understand. English subs do exist, (or so I've been told) from Ultraman Dyna's broadcast in California a while back.

 Ultraman Dyna is © Tsuburaya Productions