Last year, we ranked Dr. Iwamoto's appearances across various Ultraman '66 manga for Ultraman Day. This year I wanted to write something a bit broader in scope, just a bit of a general low-down on the man himself. If you're here, it's likely that you already have some familiarity with the Ultra series, but I'm going to try to write this post with the assumption that my audience knows absolutely nothing about the character I'm talking about - while still trying to make it interesting for those who do.
So, please, if that sounds even slightly appealing to you, read on for lore, trivia, behind-the-scenes history, extra-canonical appearances, and... choose-your-own adventure books, I guess?
I. Okay, Who Is He? (The Part You Can Skip If You Already Know)
Dr. Iwamoto was a semi-regular character on the 1966 tokusatsu television series Ultraman, played by Akihiko Hirata. Dr. Iwamoto appeared in a total of six non-consecutive episodes that aired between August 14th, 1966 and April 9th, 1967. His very first appearance was in episode 5, Secret of the Miroganda, in which he analyzed some snot. (This did include the sniff test.) Dr. Iwamoto's role within the show was as a kind of science consultant for the SSSP (Special Science Search Party/Patrol), who would offer analysis and advice on strange phenomena the team encountered and assist in developing weapons, vehicles, and other technology for them as well. Dr. Iwamoto was the inventor of most of the Japan branch's weapons and vehicles, including the Jet VTOL, the SSSP's main all-purpose aircraft, which still remains an iconic, recognizable fixture of the original series.
In the original United Artists English dub of the series, Dr. Iwamoto is voiced by William Kiehl, a notably deep-voiced American actor who had previously voiced Hercules as well as two characters played by Christopher Lee. This dub is available in full here, although not in the best quality. More recently, in 2025, Okratron5000 produced a new English dub for Tsuburaya's compilation project Ultraman 4K Discovery; as some of the episodes selected for the compilation do feature Dr. Iwamoto, I assume he was dubbed into English as well, but unfortunately I haven't seen 4K Discovery and cannot find a credit for his English voice actor.
While Dr. Iwamoto was never really the subject of an individual storyline, the closest he got to a "focus episode" is probably episode 16, where he is involved in a contest with another scientist to develop a new rocket. Iwamoto is presented as an example of a good, diligent scientist who is willing to take extra time to ensure that his work is viable - even though it loses him the contest - in contrast to the other scientist, Dr. Mori, who rushes to complete his rocket at the expense of safety.
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| I really have always wondered what the stage direction was here. I imagine it was something like "Pose like you're possessed by an alien" with no further elaboration. |
Dr. Iwamoto is also featured quite prominently in the series finale (episode 39). He is the victim of an Alien Zetton plot to kill Ultraman, wherein he is knocked out, has his appearance stolen, and is used as a disguise to incapacitate Agent Fuji and infiltrate the SSSP base. Alien Zetton wearing Dr. Iwamoto's black business suit has also become somewhat of an iconic image from the series, and it is directly referenced in the 2019 ULTRAMAN manga by Edo, an Alien Zetton whose default outfit is a black suit and tie. (Whether or not this is the same Alien Zetton from the finale is never confirmed or denied.)
II. Extremely Cogent and Articulate Analysis (Trust Me)
The thing about Dr. Iwamoto is that he is an absolute nothingburger of a character. He has very few traits besides being a good scientist. I personally laugh every time I watch Science Patrol Into Space, because his "Impressive. I lost." line (more or less a direct translation) is more or less the only time in the entire series that he shows any personality.
But. But! The fans love him.
The proof that the fans love him is that, in the early 2000s, when a BBS for Akihiko Hirata fans ran a poll where visitors could vote for their favorite of his many roles, Dr. Iwamoto ranked within the top 5. There is also a small but respectable amount of fanart of Dr. Iwamoto out there (cute example). I'm going to go ahead and argue that Dr. Iwamoto is a fan favorite not because people like Dr. Iwamoto himself, but because people like Hirata. It was a great casting choice on Tsuburaya's part: almost every episode of the original Ultraman has a guest star who viewers would know from some tokusatsu movie or other, but having one of the Godzilla franchise's most recognizable actors stick it out throughout the entire series instead of just showing up for one guest appearance and never returning is, to put it plainly, fun. We love to see it. We've loved to see it for 60 years now.
III. Into The Weeds (And Also Into The Gotenyama Science Center)
Now, as I just said, within the main series, Dr. Iwamoto has no characterization whatsoever. We don't get to see anything at all of his life outside of Doin' Science. We don't even know his given name. The most personal detail about him that any Ultraman-related media has ever offered is that he is 40 years old. (To be fair, basically all of the characters from the original 1966 series have little to no backstory as well.) In this section, and what follows, I'm going to sum up what we do know about him based on canonical and extra-canonical sources, starting with his place of employment.
Dr. Iwamoto is the director of the fictional Gotenyama Science Center, staffed by many other scientists and their assistants, seen sporadically throughout the series. Gotenyama, for my readers unfamiliar with Japanese geography (I myself am also deeply unfamiliar with Japanese geography, so don't feel bad), is a hill located in Tokyo's Shinagawa ward. I'm gonna take a vague and extremely uninformed guess and say that the decision to place the Science Center in Gotenyama specifically might have had something to do with it being Sony's headquarters for many years beginning in 1947 - it could be that the area had an association with technology, development, etc due to Sony's presence. But, again, this is an uninformed guess.
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| You're damn right I'm using a Hokusai painting in my article about Dr. Iwamoto from the 1966 tokusatsu television series Ultraman. |
The filming location for the fictional Gotenyama Science Center was the real-life Nagasawa Water Purification Plant, which you can see more pictures of here. Below is a picture of the site as it appeared in 2015. The plant served as a filming location for not just Ultraman '66 but many other tokusatsu shows as well, both within the Ultra series and without.
Dr. Iwamoto's status as director of the Science Center actually makes him the only human character who directly links Ultraman to its predecessor series Ultra Q, although the connection is, like much of our information about him, never stated within the original series. In the game Ultra Operation: Mobilization of the Science Patrol, Dr. Iwamoto is established as having taken over Dr. Ichinotani from Ultra Q's job after the latter retired due to injury.
While there is some post-series media that has looked at what happened after the events of Farewell Ultraman, to my knowledge, nothing has ever confirmed with any reasonable degree of canonicity (or even an unreasonable degree) what Dr. Iwamoto did after the end of the series. My personal headcanon is that he continued to be director of the Science Center until Hoshino came of age and then handed over the post to him. It's entirely made up, but I think Hoshino fanboying for Iwamoto's rocket in Science Patrol Into Space would make it fit nicely into series continuity.
IV. What Could Have Been
If you've watched the entirety of the original 1966 series, you'll notice that several episodes feature random scientists who show up for a scene or two, explain something, and are never seen again. Behind the scenes, every single one of these characters was actually written to be Dr. Iwamoto. This is one positive that arises from Iwamoto being such a paper-thin character: giving him a distinct personality would have made it impossible to sub in other actors last-minute. (But imagine if we'd had him in eleven episodes instead of six!)
I can think of no other way to illustrate this point than with a home-cooked meme. I apologize in advance for it.
From looking at changes made between early script drafts and finalized episodes, we can get a better idea of how Dr. Iwamoto developed into a character who was specifically associated with Hirata; I.E. it seems (operative word "seems", this is a theory) that if they couldn't get him in the studio that day, they just wrote in some other scientist instead, and if they did get him, they changed the role to be Dr. Iwamoto. Case in point: in Cry of the Mummy, there was originally a different guest scientist named "Dr. Shibata" who had what ended up being Dr. Iwamoto's role in the final version.
Even within the episodes that Dr. Iwamoto did appear in, there were changes made from the early scripts. For example, in Cry of the Mummy he initially had a more involved role in defeating Mummy Man, and it was going to be him instead of Arashi who uses the Spider Shot. We do in fact have a still from a deleted scene where Iwamoto and the team try to catch Mummy Man:
Dr. Iwamoto was also initially going to be a botanist, as per the script for Secret of the Miroganda; one assumes this was scrapped because a botanist would not be of as much use to the SSSP on a regular basis as just a generic scientist. It's worth mentioning as well that there is a whole host of unproduced scripts for episodes of the '66 series that never ended up being shot, any of which could, I guess, hypothetically have featured Iwamoto.
In terms of production background, and not just Dr. Iwamoto specifically, Hirata was slated to be involved in the series as far back as before it was even decided that Ultraman was going to be Ultraman (some early ideas for the series had the main protagonist imagined as a friendly, birdlike alien named Bemular who assisted the SSSP). Around this time Hirata was also considered for what ultimately ended up being Kenji Sahara's role on Ultra Q. I think we can draw a conclusion here that, as a young company making its foray into tokusatsu TV, Tsuburaya seems to have wanted Hirata in their series from a very early stage.
V. Appearances Outside of the Main Series
While Ultra Operation: Mobilization of the Science Patrol establishes pretty much the only backstory we ever get for Dr. Iwamoto, he does show up in a few other adaptations, spin-offs and other extraneous materials as well. I'm skipping over manga, having already covered it last year, but I'm still going to show you Yuzo Takada's Dr. Iwamoto again because, really, truly, if anything lives rent-free in my brain it is this.
Now, we've got some other video game adaptations to look at. As mentioned above, Dr. Iwamoto appears in Ultra Operation: Mobilization of the Science Patrol with some added lore, consulting on the process of defeating a kaiju that is original to the game...
Iwamoto also appears very briefly in the PS2 Ultraman game via archival stills taken directly from the series. It seems like the whole storyline about Iwamoto being used to infiltrate the base is deleted from this part of the game; he shows up only to deliver the Pencil Bomb to the SSSP.
As a segue out of video games and into books, I'd like to take a moment to bring up Pat Cadigan's inclusion of Dr. Iwamoto in her novelization of the original series, because while I do of course appreciate that she wrote him into the book at all, she seems to be describing an entirely different guy. Throughout the book Dr. Iwamoto is written as being old - as in old old. This is a direct novelization of the original series, so there is no time-skip at play here; there's no reason why Dr. Iwamoto would not be the age he is in the series. One could almost get the feeling the author was talking about Dr. Ichinotani if he was not also described as being noticeably taller than Ide. It's weird, it really is. I don't know what's up with it.
Anyway, moving on to other novelizations, Dr. Iwamoto also appears in Tetsuo Kinjo's 1967 novelization of the series. Unfortunately, this novelization has somehow escaped English translation for going on 60 years now, so I know nothing about what his role within the novel is or if he gets any extra backstory besides what's given in the series. There's surprisingly little information about this book out there, and secondhand copies tend to be hard-to-find and expensive. (Maybe if we try hard enough, we can summon Dr. Jeffrey Angles with the power of our minds to help with the situation.)
Another category of Ultraman '66 tie-in media that has gotten surprisingly little English-language coverage is "choose your own adventure" books (referred to in Japanese as "game books"), of which there are two that I know about. Dr. Iwamoto is featured in both. In Shoot the Mysterious Meteorite Swarm!, published in 1986 (seen below), there are a whole bunch of scenarios that involve Iwamoto, including one where he (and several other people) get possessed by Alien Baltan. This game book also introduces a few original characters, such as Dr. Iwamoto's colleague Dr. Togawa and an agent named Natasha from the SSSP's Moscow branch.
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| I think it's nice that they gave him a friend :) |
The second game book... okay, can you bear with me for a second?
The second Ultraman game book, 1987's Tokyo Rescue Mission, is set in the 1980s, and features all of the same characters as the 1966 series, including Dr. Iwamoto. The problem here is that the 1966 series actually does not take place in 1966; as implied by Jamila's gravestone seen in My Home Is Earth, the series is set in 1993. This would mean that Tokyo Rescue Mission actually takes place before the events of the 1966 series, and if we go by the assumption that Iwamoto is 40 as of 1993, it would also mean that he'd been working as a scientist for the SSSP since his late twenties.
Or - and this is more likely scenario - it implies that the people who wrote Tokyo Rescue Mission forgot or didn't know or didn't care that the series was supposed to be set in 1993. I prefer this explanation, because if we assume the original series all took place in the '60s and the game book takes place in the '80s, then that means Dr. Iwamoto had a nice long career with the SSSP, and provides some insight into what he was doing after Farewell Ultraman.
In any case, I also own a copy of Tokyo Rescue Mission, and I can tell you that Dr. Iwamoto does not have much to do in it at all. Unfortunately, this second game book does not have any fun illustrations like the first one, just a lot of blurry black-and-white stills like any good publication from the early days of home media.
VI. In Conclusion
There's no conclusion! Now we all go and watch Science Patrol Into Space for the 500th time! And we enjoy the fact that such talented, creative people came together to produce a show whose beautiful practical effects and message of hope and collaboration are ever-green!
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