Marvel's new Ultraman comic book shows a modern take on the classic Japanese superhero, as well as introducing a super secret organization that holds deep secrets from even its own members. Written by Kyle Higgins and Mat Groom, The Rise of Ultraman raises more questions than it answers in its first issue -- chief among them being the secret agency, the United Science Patrol (USP), and how they manage to supply agents with their amazing future technology.
In this series, readers follow Kiki Fuji, an agent new to the USP who is still trying to find her place in the vast organization while feeling great frustration over the secrets kept from her even though she is now part of the agency. Kiki works primarily on the USP weapons called K-Rays, and even though she spends every day with them, she has no idea how they work or where the material comes from. However, readers will learn by the end of issue #1 that the deep dark secret of the K-Rays and the USP is that all their impressive technology comes from the very monsters that they fight.
After the main story of Kiki and her friend Shin is "To Be Continued", there are a few extra world-building stories included for the reader. One of them is called, "Kaiju Steps with Pigmon" and it has a central theme of: "Don't use your K-Ray to dispatch a Kaiju unless you're sure it doesn't have abilities the USP might be able to reverse engineer and utilize." The way that the USP goes about taking down enormous, dinosaur-like monsters -- know as Kaiju -- and reverse engineering their strengths to then use against other monsters is very reminiscent of another incredibly popular Japanese property, Monster Hunter.
The Ultraman series predates Monster Hunter by quite a few years (38 to be exact) but the connections between the core mechanics of the USP and the Monster Hunter video games are easy to see. Monster Hunter is a game with many complex systems and menus to learn, but under all that is a very simple loop: kill a monster and turn their body parts into weapons and armor to then kill a bigger monster, and so on and so on. Monster Hunter is set in a primitive world that hearkens back to the time of humanity's hunter-gatherer roots, but what if the setting were a bit more futuristic? What if instead of bone swords and insect-shooting sticks, hunters used pure energy and lightening-powered guns? Well, that is precisely what the world of Ultraman promises to show readers through the USP.
In Monster Hunter, the player falls into the loop of killing bigger and cooler monsters to get stronger and cooler gear, and it is likely that in the continuing issues of The Rise of Ultraman, readers will see Kiki and Ultraman fight amazing creatures that continue growing in both size and power. It's still a mystery to how the USP is able to capture and learn how Kaiju do the amazing things they do, in addition to the weapons they craft from Ultraman's enemies. If it were Monster Hunter, it'd probably an enormous ax that turns into a sword, but only time will tell.