31 BONUS MONSTERS!

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

When I began to put together "Ultraween," I didn't simply go with whatever I thought were the 31 most "extreme" or "best" examples of scary, freaky ultrakaiju; some were chosen because they were special to me, some were chosen because I felt they were under-appreciated, some were chosen just to balance out or diversify the list, and the final order they were put in was sort of determined by how it would "flow" when read in one sitting. I guess I'm a little obsessive.

Of course, this means that some monsters "left out" of the feature were even more inventive, bizarre, or terrifying than some of those included, and no matter how I put together the list, there was no conceivable way it could have ever represented more than a minute sliver of ultraman kaiju.

That's why, for a bonus page, I'm going to present for you an entire round of 31 more creatures, reviewed just a little more succintly, all on one page! It's a Halloween II Giant Monster Party!!!

TELEPATHY MONSTER DEVILON

Everything about this one is classic Evil Space Villain! He's originally found as a beautiful white crystal formation taken in by a museum as what people are quick to dub "the snow art" from space. Of course it's the cosmic prison of a space demon! Possessing the first human he encounters, Devilon warps them into his true form, if that's indeed what it is and not merely the form of a possessed victim. Scaly, slimy, spiny and green, with giant spidery appendages on its head, sucker-tipped cilia down his sides, fin-like flight membranes, a scaly tail and luminous eyes, he's pretty much the Full Package of Evil Alien motifs and wields cosmic "sorcery" to basically just drive people berserk with violence. He's here first because, while technically hitting every note for Ultraween, there still isn't much more I can say about Devilon; he's just a really bad guy with a really nice, slimy looking aesthetic!

It's also difficult to make out Devilon's face, and the features are quite vague and muddled even on the real costume...but this keshi toy gives us an idea of what they were going for!

BIZARRE PLANT GREENMONS

This is the third kaiju in this list to first appear as a small, inoccuous flower! The rare, tropical plant is brought back from a remote island for study, but little do the researchers know that its natural, immature stage is a ravenously carnivorous, motile and amorphous monster! Able to flatten itself and squeeze under doors like an ooze, the plant attacks a number of people that it digests whole before taking on a massive size. The costume interestingly gives it a flaring, somewhat funnel-like green shape with a single, dripping arm, though the idea was probably supposed to be that it had no single, particular shape.

BLOOD SUCKING SPACE ALIEN DRACULAS

This isn't the only bat-like vampire kaiju in Ultraman, but it is my personal favorite of them for its zany design! Most bat monster emphasize the wings first, but Draculas has a big, fat, hairy bat-man body with only dinky wings dangling from his arms, his most oustanding feature being his more rabbit-like enormous ears!

Draculas was capable of possessing corpses, and disguised himself as a dead woman in order to feed on other, living human women. In fact, his entire plan was to exterminate all women from the Earth in order to wipe out the human race.

LORD MONSTER OF WATER MAGA-JAPPA

One of my favorite newer Ultra designs, Maga-Jappa is sort of like an ancient, elemental demon beast, naturally one of several, splendidly resembling a bug-eyed seahorse with sucker-lined arms! Maga-Jappa's powers all revolve around pollution, corrosion and its horrible stench, too, poisoning all water it comes into contact with! I like how many toxic seahorse-like monsters I can think of in Japanese media. There's the boss from the Mega Man X games, Pokemon's Skrelp line...there's just something about seahorses that kind of looks like it ought to spew acid, I guess.

The debut of this monster even coincided with the anniversary of Godzilla vs. Hedorah!

FANTASY MAGICAL BEAST INCULAS

This kooky, creepy fiend comes from Ultraman Cosmos, and initially manifested in people's dreams as numerous cute, candy-pink sheep. Its presence trapped people in the dream realm as it fed upon their energy, and would soon kill them if they weren't freed. When confronted by Ultraman, the monster fused its many dream-avatar sheep into one giant, multi-eyed, demonic ram!

The concept of this monster is pretty great, combining the idea of "counting sheep" with an Incubus, hence the name! Excellent design twist, too, with a pair of additional horns on its back that evoke devilish wings in silhouette.

MISFORTUNE MONSTER KOKAKUCHO

What a design! WOW that is eerie! Of course, that's only because an alien plasma cloud reacts to a woman's mourning of her dead love and manifests into the form of an Ubume - the same mythical spirit that inspired "Momo!"

The way this big bird-woman looks like a decrepit stone gargoyle is cool enough, but the human face peering from within the beak, kind of like the visor of a medeival helmet, is what really makes this stand out from not only other kaiju but even other bird-like monsters out there.

FLOWER TYPE BEAST LAFLEYA

We sort of did neglect the wider variety of nasty plant monsters in Ultra continuity over those 31 previous pages, but check out this nasty specimen! Lafleya is a giant, predatory alien plant whose humped back appears to draw from the real-world predatory cobra lily, while the rest of the creature is a mass of spiny red leaves and a ghoulish, three-petaled mouth with three luminous stamens...or are those its eyes?!

Lafleya has the ability to tunnel underground, which is a fairly appropriate thing for any plant creature to do, and oh yeah, its yellow pollen can dissolve people.

PLASTIC PHANTOM ALIEN PLATIC

So this extraterrestrial creature is made of living plastic, and just for the heck of it, its design is modeled after a fly, though what resemble a fly's massive eyes seem more like blind, fleshy lobes in the monster's bulbous head! My kind of concept!

What's really remarkable however, is that Alien Platic is still capable of living as nothing but the "skeleton" underneath its plastic "flesh!" It doesn't last long before a final killing blow, but we can assume it would have slowly regrown its plastic exterior.

ROCK ALIEN ANNON

Appropriately named after "anonymous" and "unknown," this monster is originally little more than a space rock, but is accidentally blown apart by humans. Its single eye settles on Earth, embedded in a natural rock formation, while the remains of its physical body are reduced to a sliver of meteor shrapnel.

When Annon begins to restore itself, that hunk of shrapnel grows into an amazing looking kaiju roughly shaped like an elongated lizard, but comprised of shards reminiscent of wind-swept sandstone all but hiding its animal-like body plan. This monster is here because I feel it's pretty uncanny and haunting, but it is, in fact, ultimately peaceful and leaves Earth of its own volition.

BLOB TYPE BEAST PEDOLEON

Unfortunate-sounding name, but don't worry; it's just a corruption of Petroleum! These horribly toxic aliens feed on gasoline as well as people, and heck, do I NEED to tell you that the design we're seeing is what happens when a bunch of littler ones melt into each other? It's also, quite possibly, one of the most exquisitely slimy, meaty, gooey and grotesque looking of all Ultracreatures. The red feelers give it an overall slug-like appearance, but MOST of its underbelly is a toothless, vertical mouth lines with wormy little tendrils, and the rest of it is an only barely humanoid clot of convoluted, gruesomely warped tissue!

FEAR ENERGY DEMON BEING MORAVIA

This diabolical looking alien actually begins as an outbreak of mysterious, purple tulip-like flowers that spread from a fallen comet. The inconspicuous plants actually feed on human fear, and manifest illusions of whatever people fear most - including duplicates of various past monsters! When the flowers have absorbed enough power, they finally bring their true form to life; a giant, grinning, black-furred demon complete with flaming breath!

DESTRUCTIVE MAGIC BUG DOBISHI

Resembling a cross between a fish, a beetle and a bat, thousands of these small monsters are called upon by the main villain Ultraman Gaia as his final army, like a plague of locusts to destroy everything in their path...but they can also merge together into a kaiju form, naturally...

Looking not a thing like the individual Dobishi, KAISER DOBISHI is a totally wild design I would liken to a humanoid monster wearing an entire, crescent-shaped organic spaceship over its head. It's also another design with a mouth in the torso rather than the head, and you'll notice it also has three veiny, bulging eyeballs: one in the head, and one in each KNEE! It gets stranger, too:

What appear to be vertical, chitinous jaws in the monster's chest are really only the covering of a more menacing, eel-like maw that can extend on a slimy, red neck! It seems highly inspired by the chestbursters from Alien, considering where it also emerges from on the design itself.

Kaiser Dobishi very strongly communicates a sort of "epic final boss" look, but what's even more outrageous is that it's not just one super-monster. There are actually enough Dobishi to make an entire army of their Kaiser forms! That's plain overkill! That's like if a bad guy had a million Bowsers the way Bowser has a million Goombas!

EVIL LIFE FORM GUDIS

Ultraman: Towards the Future is actually an Australian television production made in partnership with Tsubaraya, and was in fact my own introduction to Ultraman as a child when its vinyl monster toys suddenly appeared at my local Kiddie City. My personal favorite of those toys at the time was a big, green insect I still have, but Majaba wasn't a menacing or grisly enough being for Ultraween. It's a shame the same toy line didn't include Gudis, technically the main antagonist of the series and actually an alien "virus" that can form a kaiju-size body as well as mutate Earth animals into giant monsters themselves.

Gudis has a very unique design in kaiju form, a huge slug-like monster with a pair of tentacles, a vertical set of needle-like white teeth and an exposed brain giving it a solid B-movie Alien Invader sort of style!

Gudis would also, later, reincarnate in a more powerful form with a slightly more humanoid, wizened alien face in a scaly cranium that looks very much like a "space helmet."

TRANSFORMING SUPERBEAST BROCKEN

One of Yapool's superbeasts, this monster has a bizarre shape with a reptilian, humanoid front and a huge, scaly rear with its own legs and its own long, whiplike eye stalks! Not only that, but each of its arms ends in a beaked, one-eyed head. Its combat capabilities are typical energy beams and fire breath, but it can also possess people...

...And people possessed by Brocken develop mouths and eyes on their own hands, too.

GHOSTLY POISON GAS MONSTER BARRANGAS

This is one of the minions of the Gudis virus, but honestly an even more frightening monster. It's such a bizarre looking reptile, with tubes for arms and those chitinous wing-like protrusions on its back, plus the additional tubes and slots throughout its design like organic "vents," from which it can emit toxic gas! It can also transform into gas for rapid travel, but most notably of all, it's somehow capable of shape-shifting some of its poisonous gas into a human form it can control from a distance.

SPIRIT PARASITE CHAOS JIRAK

In this episode of Ultraman Cosmos, a little girl is mocked by other children for her dream of swimming with a whale, so the main villain takes advantage of her feelings by manifesting a flying blue whale, which she names Jirak. When she's confronted that the sky-whale she loves so much is just a trick, her roiling emotions allow the illusionary beast to absorb her, transforming into a ghastly humanoid kaiju that seeks to hunt down and kill the girl's bullies.

Chaos Jirak is capable of generating an energy whip from her arm, a heat ray from her mouth, and also spit "energy swords," by which I mean literal, glowing medeival swords fly out of her mouth. Is that symbolic of the verbal bullying she was suffering? I'm not sure, but it's a visually pretty unique attack. Her design is also appropriately dreadful for what she is; a fleshy demon that doesn't necessarily look like the fusion of a human and a whale, but you can see how a whale's underbelly and overall shape might translate to the ridged, fleshy mass surrounding her head!

INSECT TYPE BEAST BUGBUZUN

This strange looking insectoid has a surprising degree in common with the later Inculas, as it has the power to infest human dreams with smaller cockroach-like insects! This oddly doesn't seem to do much harm to people, but that may be because there were some last minute cuts to the monster's role in the series; originally, those dream-bugs were even going to merge together into Bugbuzun, but this never came to pass.

It's also not quite clear how the original Bugbuzun fits into their "life cycle," as there are also more humanoid and human-sized creatures referred to as the Bugbuzun "brood," but these are not in fact the offspring of the Bugbuzun we just looked at. Intelligent enough to dress up in clothes and hide among humans, they stalk streets at night to kill and eat any humans they can find...and not even for their OWN sustenance.

The Bugbuzun brood mother is known as Bugbuzun Grooler, and she's not only much larger than any other form, but she controls the smaller brood in order to gather nutrients and devour them in turn! Most bizarrely, however, is that she has a different mouth at each end of her body, and it's the mouth on her tail end that cannibalizes the brood or snatches up humans with multiple, tentacle-like tongues.

PATHOS INCARNATION-BEAST ANGRILLA

This monster only fights with your standard brute strength and laser eyes, but two things stick out about it. First is the fact that it was summoned into being by an alien's vengeful fury when he thought that his fiancee had been killed. Second, that anatomy. It's a veiny, asymmetrical, gigeresque humanoid with one oversized right hand and a bizarre, lopsided "head" that looks kind of like a melting rib cage with a bunch of giant roots dangling out of it, but then its vicious, toothy mouth is way down where the stomach would be if it were more humanoid. It's magnificent. I would expect absolutely nothing less from something called a "Pathos Incarnation-Beast" and especially nothing less from a monster born out of an alien's grief!

TIME MONSTER CHRONORM

First of all, gorgeous. This monster is obviously inspired by a colorful Nudibranch, but just different enough to pass for something more alien; I especially love the pinwheel-like shape of the eye stalks, situated where an actual Nudibranch has smell receptors. Those large, black spots on its sides can also open up and extrude huge, yellow tentacles!

A psychedelic sea slug is a fine choice of motif for a time-shifting monster, and what Chronorm actually does is consume people's memories and personal timelines, transporting victims back into their own past as it metabolizes their very existence and, presumably, wipes them from history. It's fortunately stopped before it can finish its feeding cycle on any of Earth's inhabitants.

...That we know of.

PHOTOTHERMAL MANASTONE REZAITO

I didn't include this one when I looked at Bullton and its spiritual successors, because those living alien rocks were more focused on phantasmal, reality-manipulating powers. Rezaito here is a straightforward force of raw destruction, as you would expect from any normal non-living giant meteor! Its design is also another of my franchise favorites, a mass of slimy red flesh and tentacles with multiple silvery "shields" that can, of course, fit back together into one big space rock. Several Ultra Kaiju have managed to disguise the shape of a human wearing a costume, but I don't think any do it better than this sweetie!

We never know Rezaito's motivations, exactly, but once it lands on Earth, both its gravity field and its temperature begin to steadily increase with no sign of stopping. Growing hotter and heavier by the minute, it steadily sinks through the ground and threatens cataclysmic destruction if allowed to continue! This is a meteor that seemingly goes out of its way to destroy planets...or perhaps there's simply something it requires from a planet's molten core?

FIENDISH TYPE BEAST GALBEROS

This is originally another minion of Dark Mephisto, the villain controlling Nosferu, but has reappeared in a number of other series in different, always antagonistic roles. Inspired by Cerebus, Galberos is a xenomorph-like design with aspects of snake, but most unsettling for the wholly canine heads sprouting off its shoulders. The contrast between these relatively familiar faces and the blind, alien central head makes for an unforgettably twisted looking monster, and of course its powers live up to that: the dog heads can hypnotize and control humans, including dead bodies, it can generate terrifyingly realistic illusions of other monsters, and its bite infects victims with alien cells that simply cause intense, debilitating agony whenever the monster dictates, a demon dog that can torture its enemies from afar...and even keep causing torment after its own death!

Do you think they drew any inspiration from Canine Transmissible Tumor, perchance?

PHANTOM MONSTER BAKUGON

This is an interesting one, because it's not really "real" in-universe; it's the result of strange cosmic waves known as "Morpheus D" that arrive to Earth and somehow get mixed up in the subconscious of a random guy whose relationship problems have been causing him severe anxiety. When his girlfriend finally dumps him for another man, his bitterness manifests as weird nightmares of a giant, rampaging monster, and a projection of that monster simultaneously appears in reality - a monster that can cause very real destruction, but all efforts to attack it pass harmlessly through its body.

It's a highly creative setup, and the monster itself looks appropriately dreamlike; a demon with metallic tubes for hair, monstrous heads for hands, a fishlike creature for a right leg and a sort of tentacle-eel wrapped around its left!

FULL MOON SUPERBEAST LUNATICKS

This is actually one of Yapool's more important and powerful Superbeasts, and kind of a breakout star that's reappeared as an opponent to several other Ultramen! While themed around the Rabbit in the Moon, it's kind of a reptilian kaiju with only loose rabbity touches; white fur, that single yellow fang, a nose-like black horn and of course those weird, huge ears! It actually turns out that Lunaticks made the moon into that barren, dusty rock we know it as today, having been there for I suppose thousands or millions of years after draining it of its magma, because oh yeah, this big bunnysaurus eats magma.

The single funkiest thing about this monster, though, is that it has a limitless supply of replacement eyeballs, and it needs them, because it can fire its eyeballs as explosive projectiles.

FEMALE NINJA SUPERBEAST UNITANG

This is our last of Yapool's monsters, and up there with any other we've seen in absurdity. While resembling a hairy gremlin with pincer hands and bat wings, she's somehow supposed to be spider-themed, including the ability to spit webbing! She can also regenerate so well, she can survive her whole head getting lopped off...and in case you forget that she's a female monster, she also has four rows of giant human-like nipples, too.

None of these are the weirdest thing about Unitang, however. In fact, even these three things in combination aren't the weirdest thing about Unitang.

The weirdest thing about Unitang is her human disguise, or rather, her human disguises, as she has the power to split apart into a delinquint women's bicycle gang.

SPACE PARASITE CYCLOMETRA

The only endoparasitic worm kaiju I can think of! Cyclometra are gigantic, eyeless serpents that crash to Earth in a meteor-like egg pod, and while two of the three are quickly dispatched, the third one escapes and crawls inside of a previously killed kaiju, the reptilian Grossyna, which it reanimates until the carcass is blasted open by Ultraman!

The concept of a reanimating parasitic kaiju is a great one used far, far too seldomly, and holds up all on its own...but there's an additional threat here, too, because for whatever reason, Cyclometra are explosive. Explosive enough that if mishandled, just one can blow up a planet.

SYMBIOTIC SPACE LIFEFORM GIRIBANES

This is one of those monsters that's much, much stranger and more interesting than it might at first appear. The black and gold humanoid is an almost Ultraman-like figure, albeit quite a bit more gothic, with a curvy figure and a set of angular, mechanical looking black wings with their own staring, red eyes.

What you're actually seeing, however, is the merged form of two very different individuals in the same species. The humanoid, Giri, is the male of their kind, while the wings, Banes, are the female. The two can not only detach from one another, but both can take on human form...and both them are also blood-drinking space vampires!

The entire concept is incredibly cool, imaginative and unexpected, but I think it's Banes that steals the show here. I mean, she's a female vampire from space, and she looks - as well as functions - like a jet pack.

TRANSFORMED MONSTER GAZORT

This is a fun one, because it begins as completely harmless, gelatinous organisms dubbed simply "Critters," which apparently live in large numbers in our own upper atmosphere! Plenty of Ultraman monsters are actually native to Earth, but it's not often that they feature a smaller one as a harmless "cryptid species."

Unfortunately, it turns out that man-made electromagnetic waves have unnatural effects on the "critters," causing them to merge together in cocoons resembling huge, black storm clouds. What emerges is the terrifying Gazort, almost resembling a cross between a stingray and the hooded head of a cobra - and with eerie, yellow eyes all the way down its chest. The whole concept seems like an homage to both Critters and Gremlins, both pretty popular in Japan at one time, and the best (most disturbing) part of Gazort is its personality.

When the human team discover that Gazort was once a harmless, peaceful species, they attempt to open communication with a translation device. Gazort is told that humans are its friends, not its enemies, and Gazort agrees! It agrees that friends are good! It loves friends! ...Because friends are DELICIOUS!

It turns out that the "critters" were harmless to everything but each other, which they routinely cannibalized.

SPACE DEMON AKUMANIA

This is actually one that I should have kept in the 31 day feature, along with our next and final two, but I also didn't want this 31-monster bonus to be lacking in real A-list material!

This shapeshifter at first appears as cloud formations, then condenses into a giant, flying eye that emits waves of red energy. And what does this red energy do? It's a little complex, but it might be one of the weirdest as well as creepiest powers of almost any Ultramonster...

The wave initially "infects" flowering plants, so that anyone who smells the flowers hallucinates blue, humanoid hands reaching out for them. This passes the "infection" on to the victim and in turn to whatever else the victim comes into contact with, such as their entire home, where they'll begin to see the hands with more frequency, stretching out on inhumanly long arms, and distorting the surrounding space like a surreal dream.

The more people afflicted by this contagious nightmare, the more powerful Akumania becomes, until the hands and the spatial distortion cease to be hallucinations and are entirely real.

This is easily one of the most creatively original powers I've heard of for any monster, in fact.

Eventually, Akumania takes on its "alien," possibly "true" form, which is sort of like a big, scaly green cyclops head with arms and legs. He's actually kind of adorable this way, but perhaps that only adds to the creepiness factor; he's still a powerful and quite malevolent entity, now capable of controlling his surroundings telekinetically in an almost poltergeist-like fashion.

In alien form, Akumania can also fire small, biological missiles from the pupil of his eye, and when Ultraman severs his arms, he can still control them as they levitate through the air.

BLACK FLOWER ALIEN ATLER

Ultraman Leo has its share of dark, eerie episodes even before the arrival of the Saucer Beasts, and in this story, an alien being comes to Earth disguising itself as an orchid flower at a greenhouse. At night, the being takes on the form of a pale-skinned woman in white that stalks the town like a terrifying ghost, emitting strange sounds and indiscriminately killing people by converting their tissues entirely into a metallic "wax." God that's unwholesome. Her true form is a scaly alien from the planet Atler, with a flower-like black growth in her chest from which she emits the "light of fear" that transforms her victims...But why?

Well...just because, I guess. Most aliens in Ultraman are motivated by an actual desire for something, but all Leo has to say about this one is that Atler is known throughout the galaxy as a planet of fear and death, the Atler people known for exterminating life from entire worlds. Everything about this alien is fairly nightmarish, but perhaps most of all when she's in her more humanlike form. I'm just going to give you another nice clip:

Video not loading? Direct link here!

By the way, those "spacey" noises and soft howls that accompany Atler are confirmed to be the sound of her "breathing." Oh. Is that all.

PETRIFICATION DEMON BEAST GARGORGON

Ultraman has a MEDUSA...and she's a KNOCKOUT! Seriously, this is one of the coolest and most beautiful designs I've ever seen for something gorgon-themed! Her ornately scaled body is a brilliant combination of intense golden yellow and lizardy teal, while the eyeless "snake heads" on her shoulders look almost like carnivorous plants more than anything else, and her true, more lizardlike central head has the tried-and-true gimmick of an eyeball in its mouth...and only the one! Where eyes would otherwise go on the outside of her skull are only those two huge, twisted ram-like horns, and even these have a more interesting look than the horns of other monsters. They're so FAT! They're almost like a pair of big maggots erupting from her face! They also illuminate from the inside!

But enough about her good looks; Gargorgon can, of course, petrify anyone hit with the beam from her single eyeball, you know that because there's absolutely no way that wouldn't be an ability of something with one eyeball called Petrification Demon Beast Gargorgon. For good measure however, she can also fly, teleport, regenerate, open portals for longer-distance travel, transform into a flying ball of energy for space travel, and spit lightning bolts from her shoulder-heads!

All this, and Gargorgon is also capable of speaking, if rather rarely. She's not a mindless beast, but an intelligent and calculating foe who even makes some demands for the planet Earth, threatening to petrify all life on its surface if we don't hand over what she wants. This is such a unique looking, threatening and intriguing villain that I'd be fairly surprised if we never see her again.


Seabozu is the "official end" of Ultraween, and a note I'd still rather leave it off on - which is why I'm also inserting this page between the Saucerbeasts and Seabozu - but I hope you've enjoyed seeing so many more monsters, especially if you were only ever tangentially aware of Ultraman and never knew how much consideration can go into each creature. They're more than just big, rubber lizards for a hero to kick in the throat; almost every last one is thoughtfully planned and conceived to convey a certain feeling and communicate an idea that fits in with their narrative, and with only rare and special exceptions, nearly all must also do so within the medium of a functional, wearable costume that, to top it all off, must withstand enough punishment for a few minutes of on-screen battle. Living on as beloved fandom icons and children's toys, the imagination and craft that goes into a Tokusatsu monster is a unique and special art form following rules and traditions distinct from those that dictate almost anything else in modern media.

If you would like to learn more on your own about Ultraman kaiju, their category on the fandom wiki includes more images, more production details and even the trademark roar of almost each and every creature, a whole side of this topic I never did delve into in this feature. For a more quick, condensed look at almost all monsters, you can actually use the TVtropes Ultraseries character lists, showcasing every single Monster and Alien on a single page per series.

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