WHY THEY CRUCIFIED ULTRAMAN

Last night I was rearranging my Star Wars dolls when I came across a weird little toy I'd bought a few years back. It depicts four Ultramen crucified in front of a petrified tree. I've always found the tableau beautiful and there's something that frightens me about the realistic tilts of the crosses. As I was gazing upon it I finally decided to get on the googler and figure out what these guys' deal is and how they ended up on hill on crosses that got memorialized in plastic.

Apparently the scene in question was from an episode called "The Crucifixion of the Ultra Brothers" in which the Ultramen descend to a planet called Golgota where an invisible voice turns the temperature down to "negative two-sevendry degrees." Then some orange-suited Japanese people from the 1970s fight a really cool-looking monster who's smashing up their city. After some oddly-dubbed confrontation between the Ultramen the ones left on the planet are pulled onto crucifixes by invisible forces and chains, seemingly of their own volition, whip around their wrists and ankles to secure them in place. The sole Ultra Brother allowed to leave looks back and proclaims,"My bruddas…" like a saddened old DeeDee Ramone. Then some other stuff happens, but it is seriously weirder and less explicable than anything I've described.

You can watch it here at MegaVideo for some reason. Just click the Play button and not the "high" or "low" buttons next to it. Again though, heads up, the English dubbing is pretty bad.