The first season of Ultraman aired back in 2019. That same year, a second season was announced. Fast forward to 2022, or three years later, and after much anticipation season 2 is finally here. A whole six episodes of about 25 minutes each, less than half of season 1's 13 episode runtime. Quality over quantity you might say? Nope. Instead, we have 6 episodes of rushed and messy plot.
If you don't know, Ultraman is based on a ongoing manga series of the same name. If season 1 was a faithful adaptation beat for beat of the manga, season decided to be original and diverge somewhat of the source material. The problem is that the anime condensed a big and eventful arc of the manga in a half-season. Furthermore, while they rushed the main plot of the manga and cut some of the biggest arcs of major characters, this anime had the gal to create new characters and side plots that were worse than the original. The result: a boring and uneven anime that feels empty and incoherent.
Like I said, the only reason I liked Ultraman season 2 is because of the action and tokusatsu vibe. The animation is a bit better than the first season and the first episode had me hooked for the rest of the season. I didn't know by then that everything would go down hill.
I don't know what happened, but even without an official statement from the producers of this show I'll theorize that this anime had a ton of production problems. How can Tsuburaya Prod. and the other studios producing the Ultraman anime can only deliver 6 episodes of bad anime in 3 years of production? There's no way this was the original plan for this project. Why go from a 13 episodes season down to 6? Why faithfully follow the original manga in the first season only to create a worst version of the source material? Why take 3 years to make a half season of anime? Something must have gone wrong really bad during these three years because even if Ultraman season 1 was no masterpiece, season 2 made the wrong choices at every turn and it's not even funny.
Ultraman season 2 is seriously a waste of time for everyone, fan of the first season or not. The long wait wasn't worth it and I cannot see the general audience having a good time watching this series, even with the short runtime. I don't expect a third season, but if it does ever happen I have no doubt this series will never be good again.
