This article contains spoilers for Ultraseven X. Please stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled!
Ultraseven, more than most heroes in the Ultraman Series, has found himself contending with some of the foulest threats around. Seven has faced truly malevolent beings, and forced them back to the shadows from which they crawl. Not too long ago, we talked about some of his darkest adventures, courtesy of the 90s-era specials.
Today, we’re going a great deal darker.
Ultraseven X, airing in 2007, was the first entry in the series made exclusively for an adult audience, and the world shown to those adults was one deeply unlike any the series had ever depicted prior. It is a world of sterile rooms and black, rain-soaked nights, where hope has long been extinguished. Humanity has found a sort of peace at last — at the cost of their freedom. A titanic, unavoidable surveillance state is in control of society, and the populace is pacified through endless, mind-numbing media.
In the midst of this, we meet Jin, a man who wakes up in a tower knowing as much of himself as we do — that is to say, absolutely nothing. Before he can find any answers, he is found by a woman who proclaims that he is being hunted, before handing him a very familiar pair of red glasses.
Jin finds his way back to a home that is allegedly his, but is empty. Before he can investigate that, he is once again pulled in another direction — this time by a command for “Agent Jin” on the Video-Ceiver wrist-mounted device he woke up with. He is part of a mysterious team, DEUS, that battles in the dark against alien threats to Earth. His supposed allies are other agents — the easygoing Agent K, and the undercover master, Agent S. Once again, everything feels wrong. The world is wrong.
A core understanding of the Ultraman series is that, well, humanity will one day ascend — one day step up to the cosmic stage alongside the Ultras.
That won’t happen here. The future of this world has been stolen. Though aliens threaten this world, the worst they can do to humanity, it seems, is simply kill them. Their spirit has already been extinguished.
And yet, despite everything, he appears.
Even Ultraseven looks different, more violent here. His design is more muscular, more violent — because he has to be more violent. The threats come not just from without, but within — because humanity has already been conquered.
They are known as the Shadow Rulers, but their true name is Grakyess — parasitic aliens who have the ability to control and manipulate information. They have been controlling society since before Seven arrived on this Earth, and are the true masterminds behind Jin’s amnesia, and all the alien plots over the course of the series — false flags and manipulation, using DEUS as their pets.
They are the reason Seven is here, and in so many ways the greatest challenge he’s faced up to this point. After all, humanity, despite every awful element of their society, is… happy, in a way. They are trapped in a dream, fed the metaphorical lotus by the Shadow Rulers through media and propaganda. It makes the series upsetting to watch, at times, regardless of the craft at play.
And yet, despite everything, this is still Ultraseven. The ideas presented, bleak as they are, do not run counter to that of the greater series. Even after everything we’ve said, humanity still has the potential to be great, to be better — but with the bad influences of the Shadow Rulers, and the opiates of technology and the illusion of security, their worst elements rise to the surface.
Ultraseven X is available across multiple platforms, but we recommend the home release by Mill Creek Productions. There is a story here that has never been told in the history of the Ultraman Series, and may never be again — it is a fascinating gaze into a dark mirror that only the sterling Ultraman series can provide, and we absolutely recommend it.
