Ultimate Girls anime review
Well, here I am, over two and a half years later, re-visiting this lame excuse for an Ultraman "homage", and for what? Well, a full review, for one.
Ultimate Girls was m.o.e.'s last anime series before the company went under. Instead of going out with a bang, though, they went out screaming and kicking like little babies. Ultimate Girls tries in such a desperate attempt to be funny that it fails to even be a guilty pleasure for lovers of moe and fan service. It's fine if you like laughing at innuendo and phallic imagery, but I already saw my fill of that in Puni Puni Poemy, and m.o.e.'s writing staff pushed out anime that typically made that, and Nabeshin's other works, look downright intelligent and philosophical by comparison.
Where does the fun begin? The moe character designs, for one. They're not quite as bad as recent anime in terms of underage looks, but if you told me for a second Tsubomi is supposed to be 17, I wouldn't believe you. Even worse than that is the girls' behavior themselves. Silk is an annoying crybaby, Vivian the older-sister lesbian (what?), and Tsubomi the loli cosplayer. In short, nothing new or interesting here. In fact, UFO Man is probably the series' high point character-wise (and be voiced by veteran seiyuu Tohru Furuya, they throw in plenty of references to his earlier anime roles), but at the same time he's also responsible for all the disgusting innuendo that cements this series.
Speaking of which, remember when Ultraman started to strip when he fought monsters in ANY installment of the series? Me neither. The girls have a very small time window to attack in their "Ultimate" forms, and during this they actually strip naked. Due to television standards they never get completely naked, but it's uncomfortable all the same (and pointless). Even worse, the monsters they fight are some of the stupidest / creepiest Monster-of-the-Day fights I've seen in anime since Sailor Moon Super S, with a recurring "joke" being that most of the monsters must be defeated by pulling on (or off) something that vaguely resembles the human wang. This crap that wouldn't be funny in Crayon Shin-chan, much less here (oddly enough, an episode of Shin-chan did feature a parody of Ultimate Girls in one episode. Weird). Sound stupid and/or disgusting? It is. I can't really describe it any other way, in all honesty. All the monsters also make really creepy sounds, just to add to the yuck factor.
And then there's the supporting cast. I didn't mind Tsubomi's older brother, Makoto (who, unlike his sister, looks like a teenager), or even Silk's news reporter sister, but the latter's anchorman annoys me to no end. I mean, you can tell he's such a deep and wonderful character by the way he calls each girl by their bust size in their giant-sized forms ("Ultimate Girl Loli", "Ultimate Girl Breast", etc.). Fun character that man is.
Eventually they cut down on the phallic imagery and innuendo (if not for a little while), but by then it's too late, too late: the show's pretty much over. By the time the series tries to become serious with its material it's practically finished. And while the ending didn't leave me feel cheated (like, say, Air), there wasn't anything for me to get upset about prior to finishing up this anime. It sucked from beginning to end, and although it improved a little in the middle, it still was far below acceptable in terms of writing.
In fact, the only thing Ultimate Girls doesn't fail miserably is in the art and animation department, inconsistent character designs aside (as well as inconsistent heights when the girls battle in their giant forms). The opening song is pretty, but the actual in-series music is lame and forgettable, as is the weak voice acting and annoying sound effects. Most bad anime at least have decent music, but not Ultimate Girls. Unless you can stomach the content of this series and are a gigantic fan of the concept of a gender reversed Ultraman who slowly gets naked as she fights, stay far, far away from this series.