Trivia / Ultraman Max

• Contest Winner Cameo: Ruganogar from Episode 28 was the winner of a contest Tsuburaya held for children to create a monster to appear in a series.
• Creator's Favorite: Mizuki/Hitomi Hasebe is a fan of Alien Shamer, finding the contrast between the threatening image she had of him when reading the script and his actual personality cute.
• The Danza: Sean Nichols plays DASH's American transfer Sean White.
• Deleted Scene: A scene that only appeared in the initial broadcast of Episode 11 was a bit at the start where two children are seen playing with toys of Godzilla and Gamera and arguing which one is stronger before Antlar appears to trash the city. Shusuke Kaneko (who directed the episode) had to get special permission from Toho and Daiei to include the scene. It probably helped that he had worked on Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! and the 90s Gamera trilogy before that.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: As the first monsters Ultraman Max battles, Grangon and Lagoras use the respective roars of the first monsters in Ultraman Tiga, Golza and Melba!
• Production Posse: Both Kesam and Kerus' actors were previously Shiro Kanzaki and Shuichi Kitaoka. This is because of their longtime connection with their respective episode's director.
• Prop Recycling:
  • Halen was created from the Lidorias suit and later remade into Flygler. The suit was then transformed back into Lidorias for her cameo in Ultraman Saga.
  • Moetaranga was a heavily modified Grantella while Keplus created from Frogos from the same series (later turned back to Frogos when the Space Beast appared in Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle).
  • Alien Tarla reused Darramb's armor.
  • Satellite Basark was created from Scout Basark.
• Screwed by the Network: TBS and TsuPro relationship was pretty dreadful at this point. TBS was quite upset about the failure of Ultraman Nexus in ratings.^note  This is despite the fact the biggest reason for Nexus failure was because the abysmal timeslot the show was given by TBS themselves however they still had a contract with TsuPro so they demanded a new show to replace Nexus as quickly as possible, with three months worth of time for preproduction. This caused the series to be extremely rushed and only have 39 episodes made for it and to shelve any movie ideas. And then TBS killed the kid block Max was supposed to air on but for some reason, Max was the only show that wasn't moved to a different timeslot. Causing this Lighter and Softer show meant for kids to be sandwiched in between a morning variety talk show and an hour-long program about Japanese museums. However, despite the struggles, Max was a mild rating success and help the company bounce back after the failure of Nexus
• Shown Their Work: Episode 29 showed a fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the 1960s Ultra Q. At one point, the three humans are filmed with a smaller camera than with a bigger, more advanced camera for a shot that will have footage of a monster composited/split-screened in. That's precisely how the Ultra shows were filmed back then: filming most of the stuff on 16mm film to save costs but filming shots that would be optically combined with monster footage or other special effects in 35mm. That way, when the shots are combined, printed to 16mm film, and edited with the original footage, there was no loss in quality (the same principal is also how high budgeted films of the 1970s-90s were filmed, only with 35mm as the smaller format). It probably helped that two of the recurring characters were played by actors involved with Ultra Q and Ultraman.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ultraman Xenon's role in Episode 13 (Zetton) was originally going to be Zoffy, but they decided to make a new Ultra instead.
  • Ultraman Max went through several proposed names during development, including Ultraman Phoenix, Ultraman Wing (both in reference to the bird motif incorporated onto his chest armor), and Ultraman Xenon (the last of which was given to his superior).
  • Gomora's role in Episode 22 was supposed to be filled by Telesdon, but the monster was switched at the last moment.
  • Pagos was supposed to return in Episode 29, but Masahiro Yamada (who wrote Pagos' Ultra Q debut episode) died, so TsuPro decided to retire Pagos out of respect to the late writer and create Geronga instead.
  • Yametaranese, the monster that caused extreme lethargy, was meant to return in Episode 31, as well as his alien master, Sasahiler, but due to a lack of budget to create two new suits, the producers simply modified the Grantella suit to instead make an alien villain that causes extreme hyperactivity, Moetaranga.
  • The series was planned as a return to Showa continuity and to act as a direct sequel to the original Ultraman with the return of several Science Patrol members. This idea was quickly scrapped because the production felt like it was too much baggage especially with the rushed production.

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