Houses made from cardboard boxes, old shirts turned into battle gear with sticky tape, and bike helmets as masks. Welcome to Ultraman with Chinese characteristics.
When a group of five men in their early 20s from Guangdong province got together to make a short amateur video based on the Japanese science fiction series, they never expected it would be so popular.
But since it was posted on social media last week, the three-minute video has won plaudits from Ultraman fans in both China and Japan.
The Ultraman series is a Japanese pop culture phenomenon about a superhero fighting alien invaders and monsters threatening the planet. The character is especially popular among Chinese born in the 1970s and ’80s, when the animated series became a local hit.
Jiang Huan, who shot the film with his friends in a village in southern Guangdong, said he enjoyed watching the TV series when he was growing up and the video was “a salute to my childhood”, according to The Beijing News.
The five men met online and have recently set up a video studio together to produce commercials.
Jiang told the newspaper that although the props and costumes might look a bit shabby, they took a long time to make. Most of the props have been fashioned from cardboard boxes, which they bought online for about 200 yuan (US$30).
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They spent about two weeks and 1,000 yuan building houses, traffic lights, swords, a monster and the costumes before they filmed their Ultraman tribute.
That part took just one day – on a mobile phone, without any professional equipment. And with no training, they then had to learn how to edit the video by researching online. The editing process took them about eight hours.
Their labour of love has won over fellow Ultraman fans, and Jiang said he was blown away by the reaction to the video.
One commenter on microblogging site Weibo said it was worth viewing more than once. “It’s obvious they’ve put a lot of effort into this. It’s so funny – I’ve watched it many times.”
Another wrote: “Filming, editing and the performances are all good and their costumes and props show how sincere they are.”
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In Japan, fans have been similarly effusive. One Japanese Twitter user said he “was moved to tears” by the video.
Another comment read: “It’s almost like something produced by the young [film director] Hideaki Anno.”
And if the video is not perfect, what does it matter? “This video looks a bit rough,” a Japanese Twitter post read. “But I can tell these fans loved what they were doing.”
