The Ultraman (lost English pilot dub of anime series; early 1990s)

Key art.

Status: Lost

The Ultraman is a Japanese anime series by Sunrise based on Tsuburaya's Ultraman tokusatsu franchise. The first animated adaptation of the property, it aired for 50 episodes on TBS in Japan between April 1979 and March 1980. In the 1980s, two VHS compilations were produced for the English speaking market. While wholly separate, the two used actors from the Los Angeles, USA area. The US cable channel TOKU announced in April 2017 that they'd air the show and later premiered it in January 2018 in Japanese with English subtitles.

Sometime in the early 1990s, the Vancouver, Canada-based Ocean Productions were approached to produce an English language pilot. Voice actor Michael Dobson lists himself as having played "Murume" in it. This is believed to have been a minor typo of "Kei Marume", which would indicate the pilot adhered to the Japanese version closer than the two prior English adaptations.

The pilot has never been released and no footage of it is known to exist online. Karl Willems, who directed the pilot, claims to have owned a copy on VHS, but in a podcast dismissed the idea of releasing it onto YouTube due to copyright concerns.

See Also

• Ultra Q - The first series in the franchise was dubbed into English, but due to a shifting television market it has gone unreleased since its 1960s production.
• Ultra Seven - The third entry in the franchise was dubbed into English twice and both have spotty availability.