Tsuburaya's Lost Heroes: A Thread

Now, when I say "a thread", I mean this is just a brief overview of the guys who never made it. A definitive thread on this subject would require a TON of research and access to materials I don't have sadly. But I'm going to try and cover what I feel are the most interesting guys

First on our list is Woo, one of the original concepts for Ultraman himself. Woo would've been a floating space alien with large eyes that went around with a photographer named Joji and would have the two solving all sorts of mysteries.

Woo was intended for a 1963 release, but in the end, Ultra Q was made in it's place, with several of the concepts from it being recycled into Ultraman. However, the base idea would be used for 2006's Bio Planet Woo some 43 years later.

On the subject of Ultraman, there is Bemular, a tengu inspired character that was one of the earlier "drafts" of Ultraman. He sadly didn't make the cut due to the fear audiences might not be able to tell which monster was heroic if they tuned in to the show.

Bemular didn't totally die though, as the general premise would be tweaked into Ultraman, and his name would be used as the moniker for the first ever opponent for Ultraman.

A character based on Bemular, Bemdora, would appear in Volume 3 of the Redman comic book!

And Redman brings us to-Redman! We're a bit closer to what Ultraman would be, but still far off. Redman here was a peace-loving alien who's home was destroyed by kaiju and he fuses with Science Investigation Corps agent Sakomizu to fight them

Redman's design would be tweaked into Ultraman, but the name would be used for several other shows such as Ultraseven and Fireman to keep the names of those shows secret until they could be trademarked. And of course, we'd get the character of Redman, whom I need not explain now

Moving away from Ultra, here we have Mirror Red, the brother to Mirrorman! He was meant to appear in the original show and then star in a sequel series. Sadly, this did not pan out. A damn shame, since I'd love to have seen a proper sequel to my favorite toku show.

Going back to Ultra, here's the hero from the unmade 1981 USA film, Ultraman: Hero From The Stars by Don Glut. This guy would've been the latest M78 hero and would've gone to Earth to battle intelligent dinosaurs. I like his sort of robotic design.

Jumping ahead 10 years, here's Tohl Narita's design for a "new" Ultraman. Note the lack of Color Timer here. Narita left the project (which evolved into Great) over arguments regarding what cut of the royalties he would've earned from this design's use.

Also in the 90's was Takara's attempt at a followup to Cybercop, a Toho show they sponsored. The idea was Cyberman, a hero who used different vehicles and gadgets as armor. For this, they went with Tsuburaya when it was decided that Cyberman should be a giant hero...

Cyberman would evolve into Bigman, which is probably one of the funniest toku hero names ever. Bigman would later evolve into Gridman, now being given a cyberspace theme.

Of course, I should note the common factoid that Gridman was meant to have a sequel show with Gridman Sigma, as well as Gridman F. While Sigma's show never got made, he'd get his own magazine story, merchandise, as well as appearing in the Trigger short-

Gridman F never had any concept art, but the general plot and characters would be adapted into the popular SSSS Gridman in 2018.

(forgive me for the next few photos, I took them a year ago with my phone camera, so the quality is iffy)

I'm not gonna talk too much about Ultraman Cross a whole ton since it became Nexus, but at one point, Cross/Nexus was intended to be a woman!

Before I move on, at one point Nexus was known as Ultraman Z! "Chant my name!"

Now for some REALLY interesting stuff: Here are some of the characters for the unmade "Ultra Mines". I don't know too much about the show aside from the fact that the Ultras would be human-sized.

There was also Ultra Fighters, recycled from Ultra Mines. It's really interesting to see this sort of concept's attempts to be made, I'm sure it would've been a really notable Ultraman show!

Around the time of Seven X, Tsuburaya was planning a show called Dartman. We could've had the first ever Ultra-dog here!

We're gonna roll the clock back to 1995, when Hiroshi Maruyama attempted to design a new Fireman for
the Kumamoto Land of Fire festival!

Maruyama would also design a new version of Jumborg Ace, Jumborg D around 2003, though I'm not sure what sort of plans Tsuburaya had in mind for it.

And for our last hero, Tsuburaya around the end of Ultraman Cosmos, would attempt a new Mirrorman show. While it didn't get off of the ground, one of the designs would be reused for Hunter Knight Tsurugi in Ultraman Mebius

While it's sad to see some of these heroes never see the light of day, I also think it goes to show just how much Tsuburaya saves any good idea. Ideas evolve and become refined and tweaked, never going unused. Even Tsuburaya's scrapped concepts have a lot of worth to them

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