Slicing Up Kaiju, and the Most Recent Occurence

A neat way for Ultras to deal with kaiju in the Showa era was to cut them up, be it decapitation, slicing into two, three, or even nine pieces. For the most part these are unbelievably violent for today's standards, but many fans still love them. For a few examples, Ultraman segmented Red King II into three blocks, Ultraseven famously slashed off Eleking's head causing all that purple internal stuff to gush out, and Jack removing Gronken's limbs traumatically. Of course, there's Ace. Just to name a few victims of Ace's cutting techniques: Vakishim, Doragory, Sphinx, Barbaras and Jumbo King getting decapitated, King Kappa, Metron Jr. getting sliced vertically, the sad Bad Ballon losing his head and then getting his body split in two. There was a great deal of realism put into the scenes, such as Metron's guts flowing out, or painting things like bones in the wound.

There seemed to be not much consideration for child appropriateness with this level of graphic violence, nor was there strict regulation to prevent such kaiju slicings. Of course I guess times have changed and those scenes wouldn't have been that bad for those who watched Redman's killings. Or perhaps they enjoyed it, as shown by that 1970s kid in Ace who cheered after seeing Barabas's violent death. Indeed I too had a sense of satisfaction watching kaiju choreograpically dismembered, even if that sounds psychopathic. By Ultraman 80's time, after people had their fill of violence in Leo, the show became milder in some way and more child-friendly, or that the definition of child-friendly changed in the 80s. Only Baltan IV was cut in two in that series. Following that, Sakuna Oni suffered decapitation at the hands of Tiga for the first time in a long while. Arigera also was divided by Ultraman Mebius, but the way it was filmed hid the violent parts.

Meanwhile, all other Heisei slicings were depicted like the following: show slashes as lines of light without the kaiju breaking apart; have an explosion immediately occur; cut only tails/tentacles/horns; using inorganic opponents as the slice victims, such as robots; have a regenerative monster. Such things served to decrease the disturbingness as television regulations probably got stricter. Even Ace lost his ability to slice, as shown in Ultra Fight Victory where the Ultra Guillotine made Verokron simply explode. Too bad, Ace. Something else that fans have scoffed at is how Geed's slash at Arstron's horn did absolutely nothing to it.

Fortunately, true kaiju slicing returned in the Ultraman Orb movie, whereby Deavorick and Alien Sadeath were vertically dissected by Orb Trinity's Orb Slahser. Director Taguchi Kyotaka wanted to bring back this phenomenon by borderlining the regulations, making both kaiju and seijin into cyborgs. Not truly mechanical, but also not entirely biological to be considered disturbing. The sound of the Showa slash and the kaiju falling over clean in half is something I hadn't heard in a long time, so it was quite a surprise to see that in the movie.

I guess slicing things aren't gonna be back the way the were, but at least there are people who appreciate the fun of this. Once again, I apologise if any of this sounded psychopathic.