Spoilers for the Land of Light continuity of the Ultra Series, namely Ultraseven will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Ultraseven X is a 2007 tokusatsu Cyberpunk Dirty Martini Spy Fiction series produced by Tsuburaya Productions. It is a Darker and Edgier reimagining of the classic Ultraseven series.
In the 23rd century, Deus agent Jin awakens in a strange apartment to find his memories missing. A mysterious woman hands him a strange item, the Ultra Eye, with which he can change into the mysterious giant called Ultraseven X. Now, he must fight the alien invaders that threaten his world and figure out the mystery behind his missing memories.
This is one of the few Ultras in the Ultra Series aimed exclusively at adults.
Sci-Fi Japan has a series guide here
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Ultraseven X provides examples of the following tropes:
- Art Evolution: Ultraseven X was given an edgier, sleekier and more-muscular heel-wrestler appearance (similar to ones in Japanese puroresu), compared to his original counterparts.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Big Bad appears as a group of middle-aged people. Their true form is a Hive Mind of insectile subterranean creatures known as the Graykess.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: The Ultras of the M78 universe were unaware of the Grakyess ruling this alternate Earth. Then the Grakyess decided to invade their universe, only to fail miserably and retreat. Cue Ultraseven following them back to their universe and ultimately annihilating them all.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Well, it is an Ultra series, but surprisingly averted most of the time. A lot of the Monster of the Week are human-sized. It turns out that this alternate universe has no Ultras or equivalent, meaning that any fight Ultraseven engages in here is assured to be quick against enemies that are not used to Ultras.
- Action Girl: Agent S.
- Awful Truth: The world is secretly controlled by a mysterious group via manipulation of information and constant surveillance, DEUS is firmly under their control and has been servicing their agenda, and they plan to cross over into an alternate universe to expand their rule.
- Back from the Dead: Agent D. Turns out he faked his death to be with his alien lover.
- Jin himself. He died prior to the start of the series, and was resurrected by merging with Ultraseven.
- Badass Bookworm: Elea Saeki, Jin's lover, is a scientist who is quite proficient with guns.
- Badass Crew: Jin, K, and S are top-of-the-line DEUS agents.
- Big Damn Heroes: Seven, of course, especially in the final episode once he gets his memory back. The best example has to be when he rescued the injured K and S, preventing their Heroic Sacrifice.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Episode 8, which revolves around aliens killing people and leaving messages in blood. One scene of a couple eating dinner is made creepier with the wife (really one of the aliens) having blood on her face, and the room itself having some blood splattered around.
- Breather Episode: One episode has a non-malicious spacefaring alien, the final living member of its species, who attaches itself to Jin's space otaku friend to take him with it into space as a companion. This is the only episode where absolutely no one gets harmed. In fact, the reason Jin turned into Seven was just to give them a proper sendoff into space.
- Butt-Monkey: Agent K, especially when Agent S is around.
- The Cameo: In the final episode of the series, Dan Moroboshi (Kohji Moritsugu) and Anne Yuri (Yuriko Hishimi) are shown reuniting after Ultraseven returns to his home universe.
- Combat Pragmatist: Seven does not pull his punches and often uses his most powerful moves as soon as the battle begins, averting Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? situations and letting him end fights as soon as they start.
- Connected All Along: The series is actually connected to the original Ultraseven show, however, it is not really clear if it's in continuity with the Showa timeline, the Heisei Ultra Seven timeline, or a different continuation of Ultraseven show. The only thing that's clear is the original Ultraseven series happened before the events of X.
- Cosmic Horror Story: It turns out that the world is actually ruled over by inhuman aliens deep below the Earth who have long enslaved humanity. This is one reason Ultraseven ironically has such an easy time with most of the enemies: Ultras don't actually exist in this universe and he's an Outside-Genre Foe.
- Crapsaccharine World: The world where this series takes place might look like a technological utopia where prosperity reigns, but there are a lot of darker conspiracies and things going on behind the scenes.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: K is pretty laid back most of the time, acts like he's terrified by S, and usually fits the group's The Smart Guy role. In the final episodes, he showed us just why he was chosen as a DEUS member by disarming S, who was pointing her gun at his head, and holding both her and Jin at gunpoint.
- Darker and Edgier: One of the darkest shows in the Ultra Series.
- Did You Actually Believe...?: Inverted; when K finally meets up with Jin and Elea, K holds Jin at gunpoint. However, after Jin remains resolute in helping her and asks for K's trust, K laughs, puts down his gun, and asks if Jin actually thought he was going to fire.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: When Ultraseven fully awakens and mops the floor with the Grakyess in a matter of seconds. If he hadn't had to seal his memories for most of the series, he would've been that strong the entire time.
- Driving Question: What happened at Lake Nousu, and what does it have to do with Jin's memory loss?
- Early-Bird Cameo: S appears in the first episode disguised as a waitress before her proper introduction in the fourth episode.
- Easy Amnesia: Jin is unable to remember anything about his past. It was actually Seven who purposely sealed away his consciousness, along with Jin's memory, because the former feared he would erase the latter's personality upon fusing with him.
- Enemy Mine: All over the place. One episode has civilian delinquents and DEUS agents fighting the murderers.
- Evil All Along: The boss of DEUS is the Big Bad, and the purpose of DEUS is to destroy threats to their rule.
- Face–Heel Turn: Agent R, who sided with the abductor aliens after he lost his wife. Near the end, every DEUS agent except K and S were sent to eliminate Jin, Elea, and K and S themselves.
- Foreshadowing: In the sixth episode, the bartender at the bar Jin is visiting asks him to bring his girlfriend sometime. Jin replies that he doesn't have one. In actuality, he does: It's Elea. Jin just doesn't remember due to the nature of his fusion with Seven.
- Fun with Acronyms: Averted with DEUS; it's just typed out in all uppercase letters.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Almost happens to K and S in the final episode.
- Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Ultraseven himself doesn't normally appear beyond the last 5 minutes of the episode, and his battles in some of the later episodes were almost single-stroke battles. Also used by Seven, who sealed his consciousness for fear that he will erase Jin's, giving him his Easy Amnesia.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The third episode in a nutshell. While there is a Monster of the Week building a device for conquering Earth and using people's minds for an energy source, he's being willingly assisted by human workers. Even when Jin flat-out tells them that their boss is an alien, the device they're building will be used for invading the planet, and they're literally killing themselves, the employees state that they don't care as long as they're being paid. Even worse, the alien confirms that the clients he's building the device for are humans themselves.
- Inter Species Romance: Happened between agent D and an alien girl who was so entranced with Earth music that she abandoned her invasion mission. There are two other examples, but they both ended in tragedy.
- Lettered Sequel: With the letter X.
- Like an Old Married Couple: Invoked when K told S that, being agents who are considered nonexistant to the rest of the world, she was the closest thing he had to a wife right as they prepare for their Heroic Sacrifice.
- Mugging the Monster: The Grakyess attempted to invade the M78 Universe and failed miserably once they had to face the Badass Army of Ultras awaiting them, they wasted no time calling it quits and running back to their universe, with Seven chasing them. Once he ends up in their world, Ultraseven's response is to decide to save both worlds. It becomes very apparent during the Final Battle that the Grakyess never stood a chance of conquering M78, as while three Mecha Grakyess are able to beat Jin as Ultraseven, the fully awakened Ultraseven mops the floor with them, then proceeds to end the Grakyess' occupation of the alternate Earth in a matter of seconds.
- Mutual Kill: Happens at the end of Episode 5, when two alien races at war blow up each others' planets. To drive home the fact there are no survivors, a number of ships are shown trying to flee... but don't make it.
- My God, What Have I Done?: One of the aliens has this reaction when he realized that he killed his own wife and, unable to cope with reality, modified his own memory where his wife was the monster instead of him.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The fifth episode has the agents help retrieve an alien race's stolen power crystal, which was revealed at the end to be a planet-destroying bomb which they will use to wipe out their rival species. Both species' planets end up being destroyed in the ensuing conflict.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Grakyess' attempt to invade the original universe not only fails, it ends up drawing the attention of Ultraseven, who decides to Save Both Worlds. The Grakyess' ultimately got themselves (and a number of other alien invaders) killed by making an attempt to invade a world way out of their league.
- Outside-Context Problem: It turns out Ultraseven X is the original Ultraseven, who decided to Save Both Worlds when the Grakyess tried to invade his world and failed miserably being forced to retreat. Ultras don't seem to naturally exist in the alternate world, and thus most aliens are ill-prepared to go up against him and go down in seconds.
- Outside-Genre Foe: Inverted: the universe the series is set in seems to be a straight Cosmic Horror Story... then it is revealed that before the series even began, the Grakyess decided to try invading another universe, which turned out to be the Showa Ultraman timeline and Ultraseven followed them back. It's rather clear they and other aliens in their universe are ill-prepared to deal with a giant Tokusatsu superhero.
- Peace & Love Incorporated: The giant floating TV screens of Maximum Corporation all around the city preach about how to be a good citizen through adhering to society's rules. These are actually surveillance and attack drones of the Graykess.
- Punch-Clock Villain: One Monster of the Week fashions himself as a recruitment agent for his WMD factory and he fights in order to protect his business interests, not an invasion plan. On top of that, his clients were humans.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: One alien does this after his human form was killed, turning him into a crazed monster who killed his killers and his own wife.
- The Reveal: The science facility at Lake Nousu accidentally opened a portal into an alternate universe, which the Grakyess, who secretly rule the Earth, plan to utilize to conquer other worlds. However, the universe they reached into is the classic M78 universe, home to the Ultras of the Land of Light which made them retreat once they tried to take it over. One of them, Ultraseven, came through the portal to stop the Grakyess and bonded with Jin to save his life (which in turn led to Jin's memory loss).
- Shout-Out: The eighth episode turns out to be one to Psycho. Jin even explains the film's premise near the end, though he doesn't mention it by title.
- Save Both Worlds: Ultraseven invokes this. When the Grakyess attempted to invade his world and failed, he decided to come to their world and save it too.
- Sweet Tooth: Agent S really likes her chocolate balls.
- Spell My Name With An S: Agent K is a One-Letter Name like some other DEUS agents, but is he really named Kei like it was pronounced?
- Transformation Trinket: The Ultra Eye. Now with a new design reflecting the evolved design of Seven.
- Vagueness Is Coming: A lot of Elea's dialogue with Jin comes across as this, since it's obvious that she knows much more about what's happening than he does and is withholding the information. She's keeping the full truth from Jin (her own love interest) since, due to his fusion with Ultraseven, he risks losing his consciousness entirely should he regain his memories.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Agent R. Also happens to the main protagonists, as DEUS was secretly ran by the Graykess and they no longer served a purpose in their organization.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: In one episode, S ate an alien organism and had severe stomach pains afterwards. Turns out Jin had swapped the tablet containing the parasite with an ordinary multivitamin tablet...S was not happy.
