YMMV / Ultraman Tiga

• Awesome Music:
  • V6's Take Me Higher being the show's opening theme. Doesn't hurt when Hiroshi Nagano, Daigo's actor is performing with the band. The song spawned many cover versions of the song over the years being looked around on YouTube.
    • One year after Tiga first aired, Take Me Higher received an official English cover variant from its original writer Dave Rodgers (yes, that Dave Rodgers). While this variant had lyrics that are closer to Rodgers' roots as an Eurobeat composer than what V6 used in Tiga, it's still just as awesome to listen.
    • Even Takeshi Tsuruno did his own cover of the song in 2020.
  • Ditto with Brave Love Tiga, the show's ending.
  • Even the Gag Dub had a pretty cool theme. "LARGER THAN LIFE!"
• Bizarro Episode: Episode 37 "Flower" and Episode 40 "Dream" are full of nonsensical imagery, weird audio cues, strange visuals, inspiration traditional Japanese theater and poetry, and have surreal monsters (Alien Manon and Bakugon). Of course, they're both written and directed by Akio Jissoji, the master of weird Ultraman episodes.
• Broken Base: Depending on who you ask, the 4Kids Entertainment dub is either So Bad, It's Good or straight up horrible.
  • In the 4Kids dub of episode 1, Yuzare uses telepathy to speak with Daigo to guide him to the pyramid to awaken Tiga, rather than having him rely on pure instinct like in the original. Was that an improvement or unnecessary exposition? ^note The Dark Horse comics seems to think it's the former, as in their comic, the telepathy remains.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Golza, full stop. He's pretty much the Gomora of the Heisei Ultra kaiju. But among the less frequently appearing monsters, Melba and the Kyrieloids are pretty popular.
  • Gatanozoa. Being a HP Lovecraft creation who fights Ultraman gets you places. Evil Is Cool indeed.
  • Keigo Masaki/Evil Tiga and Gardi are considered to be among the most memorable characters in the series.
• Fandom Nod: Naming Ultraman Tiga after the Malaysian and Indonesian number 3. Tsuburaya realized that Malaysians and Indonesians are some of their biggest fans and this is possibly the highest order of acknowledging the Fandom possible.
• Gateway Series: For many children that were born in early 90s to early 2000s, Tiga is the series that introduced them to Ultra Series instead of the Showa series.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Ultraman Tiga is the most popular Tokusatsu show in China, bar none. While Ultraman shows have been dubbed in Chinese and broadcasted on Chinese TV stations since 1993, Ultraman Tiga's release coincided with a time when Chinese media companies had a drastic uptick in interest on Japanese TV shows, leading to an extremely high quality dub and widespread broadcasting of the show. This, combined with the already superb quality of Ultraman Tiga, led to the show becoming the most famous Japanese Tokusatsu show in China for a generation of children.
  • Case in point? The renown TVB actress, Rebecca Chan, named her son "Tiga" after the show's titular hero. For real.
  • The show is so popular in China that when the broadcasters took it down from major video platforms due to government regulations, there was such a backlash that the show was unbanned after 3 days
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Darramb's habit of referring to Tiga as "My Friend" is a somewhat unexpected and amusing quirk for his character. In Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga, however, that line would end up being one of the biggest Tear Jerkers of the show.
  • In episode 14, Alien Muzan's modus operandi is eerily similar to the Grongi's Gegel killing games; his actor would also portray the human form of La·Doldo·Gu.
  • Also from episode 14, at one point Zara jumps off a cliff while avoiding Alien Muzan's laser blasts. Zara's actor, Shogo Shiotani, would commit suicide in 2002 by jumping off a building.
  • Despite the title being a Fandom Nod to Malaysia and Indonesia’s then huge Ultraman fandom, the show itself took 3 years to be exported to those countries, largely due to Johnny & Associate’s meddling. For comparison, Hong Kong and China got the show in just a year after it aired in Japan because they chose to write their own theme song instead of trying to license “Take Me Higher”.
  • Daigo's final words after the Sparklence disappears is to reassure Rena that "any human has the power to become a being of light". While it does have a basis in future instalments where Tiga returns through mankind's hope, the quote becomes ironic as succeeding series that tries to connect with Tiga's world building in one way or another are often met with mixed receptions from audiences. ^note Despite being shaping up as a sequel series, Dyna (per the lead actor's words) was unfairly compared to its predecessor due to a change of pacing and its comedic nature while Trigger suffers from Vanilla Protagonist, with situations like Executive meddling making it From Bad to Worse.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the guest actor's name in episode 11 is Shin Asuka. Three guesses as to who is the protagonist of the next Ultra Series.
  • The plot of episode 10 ended up getting used in The Simpsons Movie, complete with a sinkhole, except with the EPA in place of a Kaiju.
  • One of August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories featured gigantic aliens able to fire lasers from their hands called the Star Warriors of Orion, which has been noted several times on this wiki as being suspiciously similar to the Ultra Series. The inclusion of Lovecraftian elements in Tiga (Rl'yeh, Ghatanothoa, Lloigor/Zoiger) bring it full circle.
• Macekre: The 4Kids dub, although some find it hilarious.
• Memetic Mutation: See the Franchise page.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The fanfare that plays when Tiga shows up.
• Mis-blamed: A popular rumor is that the driving force behind 4Kids' interest in licensing Ultraman Tiga was to explain an Ultra Series reference in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. This is untrue, as for one, the deal had been closed before Kirby had even started airing in Japan, also Tsuburuya had been shopping it around themselves and went with 4Kids because they were the only company willing to dub the show directly instead of making an adaptation like Saban did with Power Rangers and DiC did with Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. Also, according to Beckett's Yu-Gi-Oh! magazine, Norman J. Grossfeld was excited to bring it over because he was a huge fan of the classic series growing up.
• Narm Charm:
  • The 4Kids dub for those who don't find it an insult to the original show. Full of such lines as:
    Munakata: (reacting to the appearance of Melba) It looks like my mother-in-law.
  • Darramb speaks in Gratuitous English despite having no reason why he should even know the language. It's an improbable Verbal Tic for his character to have, but at the same time provides a memorable quirk for an otherwise unremarkable henchman to Camearra.
• Win Back the Crowd: For 15 years, the Ultra Series was on a semi-hiatus, with no full series being produced (mostly just cheap movies and specials) and Tsuburaya Productions in bad shape (at one point, they only had three employees). Fortunately Ultraman Tiga ended the small-screen absence and revolutionized the franchise, making it a smash hit with viewers and proving that Ultraman could still be a force to be reckoned with as the 21st century came around the corner.
• The Woobie: Poor Shiela. She was originally an ordinary pet cockatiel who lived with her owner Asami until an experimental element called zelda gas exploded, killing Asami and mutated her into a horrific monster. All she really wanted was to destroy the zelda gas so it doesn’t hurt anyone else, but GUTS mistakes her for a hostile kaiju and Tiga beats her half to death. The sight of her with Blood from the Mouth still desperately trying to crawl towards the zelda gas is downright heartbreaking. Fortunately she destroys the gas in the end and ascends to the afterlife to be with her owner.
• Woolseyism:
  • As stated above under Broken Base, in the first episode of the 4Kids dub, some people believe the extra telepathy from Yuzare guiding Daigo into the Pyramid of Light worked better than him acting on pure instinct. Arguably, it does add more weight to Daigo continuing to attempt to awaken Ultraman Tiga even when Golza and Melba already destroyed the other statues and his GUTS Wing was already damaged. The Dark Horse comic adaptation even used that part.
  • From that very episode, a scene with Daigo and Rena fighting Golza was removed, which added to the surprise effect of Golza and Melba appearing together later on.

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