You’d have to go out of your way to have avoided the many on-screen, large and small, incarnations of that Japanese superhero Ultraman that have traveled abroad since the mid-60s.

Action sci-fi involving a guy in a beetle-eyed space suit fighting the monsters that bedevil life in post-“Godzilla” Japan, I seem to recall reviewing a film or two imported to the U.S. And some of the many TV series might have crossed one’s field of vision, although the similarity of the suit and the villains to the Power Rangers and other variations on a theme muddy the memory.

Netflix gives Ultraman a slick, beautifully-animated updating, reboot, re-launch with “Ultraman: Rising,” a parable about workaholic Japanese looking for “balance” in life between work, child-rearing and enjoying the fruits of one’s labor.

The “balance” messaging is pounded home, time and again as our baseball superstar Kenji (Christopher Sean) returns to Japan, a U.S. Major League baseball superstar who comes back to play for the Tokyo Giants, but whose real summoning was to take over as Ultraman for his aged fighter father (veteran character actor Gedde Watanabe).

As Ultraman’s personal directive is now to “save” kaiju — those flying, swimming, crawling, city-smashing monsters — from themselves and the “wipe them out” Kaiju Defense Force (KDF), he finds himself stuck with an orphaned kaiju baby to raise in his “base,” his secrete underwater fortress of solitude.

Awww. Isn’t that cute? Even when the gigantic, flying, cooing and gurgling baby has “acid reflux?”

Kenji must tame his Westerinized ego, his “bro bro BRO” cockiness, to contribute meaningfully to his new team, impress the single mom reporter (Tamlyn Tomita) who asks him the hardest “life” questions in intereviews and keep the wandering, mischief-prone baby kaiju Emi in line.

At least he has a helpful hovering AI assistant to TCB.

As for the whole Ultraman thing, he’s got Spider-Man issues in terms of public perception. Nothing he does is ever good enough. “It’s like he doesn’t care,” the public whines.

“I didn’t even WANT this gig” is no get-out-of-Japan-free card. Kenji must man-up, take the hits, do what’s right and find that “balance.”

The narrative veers between the action-packed and the insipid often enough to give one whiplash. The messaging is so shallow as to simply invite shrugging off. And the jokes are few and far between.

The many Up Baby Kaiju and recapturing baseball skills montages are scored to the alcoholic anthem “There Stands the Glass” and the punk classic “Pretty Vacant,” which may be the most radically random needle drops in the history of animated features.

Other than that, there isn’t a lot here for an adult to chew on, much less to mull over or take delight in. “Ultraman: Rising” is more polished than the old movies and TV series with guys in rubber suits wrestling amidst the primitive effects all around them. But that’s all the praise this new iteration deserves.

Rating: PG, animated violence

Cast: The voices of Christopher Sean, Gedde Watanabe, Tamlyn Tomita and Keone Young.

Credits: Directed by Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima, scripted by Shannon Tindle and Marc Haimes. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:01