This brought a lot of relief to Tsupro, but that still didn’t completely stop the production issues. Because of his usage of resources and what Tsupro already had to provide they were able to go through the cast and crew gathering part of production much quicker than usual. Sakamoto was able to quickly gather a cast and many other associates to work on the show which took a lot of stress off of Tsupro’s shoulders. One big advantage of having Sakamoto heading up the show was his connections. He had a new format to adapt to and he had to adapt to it quickly, in a show where he would have less time and fewer episodes than usual.
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Things were different this time, this would be his first time working on an Ultra TV show where he would use actual miniatures. Sakamoto is a highly respected and well-known director in the medium and had worked with Tsupro before, most notably the Ultraman Zero saga. So they decided to get one of the most recognizable directors in toku to take the reigns, that director was, of course, Koichi Sakamoto. Ginga was hot, but Ginga S was going to be hotter. The parent companies viewed this as a chance to correct mistakes made with Ginga and make something that could be even more relevant and profitable. So without the stars aligning in favor of a new work and drive and resources to build off of a previous show. Making an entirely new show without a base to build off of even when it is successful, is costly and Tsupro didn’t have the time nor funds to dedicate to doing it properly. While Tsupro since day one always preached a message of constant advancement and innovation in their TV shows, it may have been too risky to suddenly swap to an entirely new group and narrative in their current predicament. The safer a move it was, the more likely the folks at Tsupro (and by extension their parent companies) were to take it. Ultra was in a position where it couldn’t really take risks, failure was highly punishable and difficult to recover from at the moment. Yet, the most crucial factor was probably the fact that it was a highly safe move. These were important factors as to why Ginga decided to get continued. So there were a bunch of sparkdolls lying around, we didn’t have enough money or time to think of something completely new, and we had people from the last show really pushing for a chance to work on another one. However, because of the short time frame the companies were working on as well as the limited amount of funds that could be dedicated to Ultra at the time, making a new toy line was kind of improbable. The sparkdolls didn’t fly off of the shelves as much as Bandai wanted and Ultra had yet to have recovered from its hiatus, thus wasn’t too big of a pop culture presence at the moment. While Ginga was successful it wasn’t too marketable. This general buzz about wanting to expand Ginga started to leave an impression in the minds of the folks of Tsupro. Many of them wanted Ginga to continue in some fashion, one of the people that pushed this the most was Hikaru Raido’s actor, Takuya Negishi, who greatly loved his time working on Ginga and would’ve jumped at the chance to ever play the character again. When Ginga was starting to wrap up production many members of the production staff and cast felt like they were leaving the work almost unfinished. Now, this makes one wonder, why is Ginga S such a direct sequel? The answers, as usual, tie back into its production. Ginga S had the same characters appearing, basically the same final villain, same universe, and even tied back into past plotlines. Sure the previous characters appeared and old plotlines were brought back up, but it still wasn’t as close as what Ginga S would be. Though, even then the show was still about a new cast of characters with a huge time gap between Tiga and Dyna.
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The closest thing that the series ever got before Ginga S was Ultraman Dyna. While there are multiple shows across the series that take place in the same universe, never do they really ever follow the same cast of characters and Ultras or acted as a direct continuation. Despite how long and storied the Ultra series is, it is very rare for it to have direct sequels.