Picture of the Day 2

Evening! I like these two the best.

Ultraman review 2: Shoot the Invaders!

Episode 2: Shoot the Invaders!

Here comes the second episode… It’s now time for the cosmic side of the equation as the Science Patrol attempts first contact with aliens...

The Science Patrol is hanging out as usual in their base, when Fuji tells Ide there’s a call for him. But for some reason, Fuji finds there’s something very funnily wrong with him despite the obliviousness of the rest of the SP. But wait, what’s that on his face? It’s an impossibly large black eye! Ide notices this and tears the fourth wall right down; Characters don’t usually go around breaking reality like that so to sate out interest, he’s going to tell us why, where, when and how he got that. “It all began 38 hours ago…” He intones….

The scene switches to exactly 38 hours ago, which was right in the middle of the night. Poor Ide mumbles and counts sheep in his bunk in the SP base, kept awake by Arashi’s sleep apnea. For some reason the two of them are dressed in their orange suits and bunking together… probably pulling night watch, are we?

Ide can only continue to whimper; after all, it would be nuts to wake up a sleeping bear. Suddenly the alarm rings and Arashi is quickly up. What the hell? Has he really been logging it all night? If not, he’s just unnaturally alert. But wait, there’s another thing wrong… just look at the picture below…

Tights! Holy shit, men in tights!!! I always knew that their pants were strangely slim, but this confirms it! Whatever happened to the cool overalls that the later teams sported? What protection do tights offer against the elements? They look like nylon too. Do you know what burning synthetic material can do on your skin? Try dripping some burning plastic on yourself and see. Men in tights… that’s kinda gay… I guess I’ll have to overlook this fashion faux pas; it’s Ultraman after all. Ide continues whimpering and after getting their act together, the both of them slide down a conveniently-placed fire pole to the control room below where Captain Mura and Fuji are waiting.

Apparently an unidentified object has penetrated the airspace and Ide deduces it’s an UFO… Mura reveals that Hayata is already at an army base tracking it down and he gives the location of it being right in the city! The SP’s Paris HQ calls for some reason as well. Don’t really understand the next few sentences spoke; there. Too much advanced Chinese spoken here, and as I mentioned earlier, my Chinese is moderate at best.

Capt Mura summons Arashi to get ready and coughs in anticipation. It takes a few seconds for Arashi to pathetically notice that he’s wearing his night slippers instead of regulation boots. His face here really made me laugh. Arashi, all fired up to kick alien ass, only to find himself doing it in slippers. What a cockblock. Welcome to Dimsville, population-you, Arashi. Ide gets a kick out of this; revenge for the sleepless night! Instead, Arashi kicks Ide’s foot in retaliation sending him in pain. Raw flesh winning over leather boot? This and his other exploits serve only to show his musclery over mind.

The next day, Arashi is out and about in the official SP car, to the Scientific Technical Centre where reports of a UFO and strange beings roaming around. Suddenly Hoshino appears in the back seat with his stupid red cap… WTF? How did he get there? Arashi just acts like the concerned adult here but you can tell what’s really going on in his mind. Hoshino you fucking brat! I’m not going to take responsibility if the aliens disintegrate you! Sometimes it’s hard to be the older figure. Hoshino says he’s there to help, but to punish him for his nosiness, Arashi drifts the car, sending Hoshino’s unseatbelted ass all over the place.

Arashi arrives and does the usual ‘guard the car’ routine with Hoshino. It seems that the staff inside the STC is frozen in some green light. Arashi radioes to Hoshino to warn the SP and goes in to investigate. He sees the culprit, but is shot in the face and frozen too! That lobstery disposition, that fwo-fwo-fwo laugh… Congrats Arashi. You’ve been given the distinction of becoming one of the first victims of Ultraman’s infamous arch-enemy- Alien Baltan!

Hayata appears with some army muscle; the SP has to depend on them for their heavy artillery, while Hoshino gets chewed out by Fuji. Inside, two soldiers are quickly eliminated by Alien Baltan. Hayata finds Arashi’s body and Alien Baltan, which he proceeds to have a shooting battle with. The Supergun is useless as usual. It’s time to regroup.

Meanwhile, the Army heads and Mura sit down for a discussion; some nuclear fire is in order. Mura pleads for them to reconsider. After all, this is a First Contact situation, and there could be misunderstandings. The rest of the generals shut his ass down for being a pansy and after hearing the meeting out the head general nods at Mura in acknowledgement… Man that scene was scary. It’s like implying that he and Mura were shower room buddies or something. Eventually, the SP is given some leeway; they have a chance to negotiate with them before the Army launches cones of destruction (missiles) at them.

That night, the missiles are prepped at the Army base while the Army and the SP siege the STC. Hayata and IDe lead the charge, with Ide wielding the Spider-shot in memory of Arashi. But at the last minutes at the entrance Ide chickens out; Does the Spider-shot have enough energy? What to do when the alien appears? Will Hayata back him up? Of course, silly. He’s fucking Hayata.

However inside it’s Hayata’s turn to chicken out, saying he’ll guard the lower floor while the whimpering Ide goes up. Grow a pair Ide. Up you go! Ide gains some courage after an encounter with a mirror and soon finds Alien Baltan. Alien Baltan is ghosting around so Ide tries out his dumbass moonspeak to try to communicate with it. Hey, I’m all out for supporting the goofy secondary characters, but Keep that retarded stuff Ide, and I might have to change my focus. Poor Ide is left dumbfounded while Alien Baltan continues to ghost all over the place, fwo-fwo-fwoing in his face as if to say to Ide ‘Ha Ha! You’re fucked now!’ Ide is captured and turned into Alien Baltan’s bitch-er-prisoner, and is taken up to the rooftop. From out of the shadows steps out a figure… Zombie Arashi!

Alien Baltan has possessed Arashi and used him as a translator; man does Ide feel dumb for spouting out that retarded moonspeak earlier. Hayata suddenly appears as well and the negotiation begins in earnest. It seems that the Baltan homeworld in the M240 galaxy tanked from one too many nuclear tests. While looking for a new home, their UFO encountered engine trouble, so they went out looking in the STC for spare parts. Finding Earth to be kinda ghetto, they decided they’ll take it for themselves! Yu can see how this goes down with the rest of them. Hayata says fine, if they’ll observe earth laws, but that’s absurd. Zombie Arashi adds as well that there are approximately 6 billion of them, shrunk to microscopic size, waiting in the UFO. Mars is considered an alternative, but they decline ‘No fuck you, it sucks there.’ Eventually they decide that time for bullshitting is over and grow to giant size to begin the invasion.

Alien Baltan’s first act is to sideswipe Hayata, causing butterfingers to drop the Beta Capsule on a ledge. The Army launches their missiles, knocking Alien Baltan down. Alien Baltan just sheds its skin, and shrugs it off. The gloves are off now; it’s pissed! Alien Baltan proceeds to blow up the area with its claw cannons and flies off to resume to the invasion. Back at the STC, Hayata does a leap of faith, grabs the beta and transforms into Ultraman for a boring and uninteresting battle…

When I say boring and uninteresting, I mean it. For one, they decided to go with an aerial battle instead of the usual tussle, which means watching two poorly-made models getting thrown around on wires. Secondly, its at night, which means watching two poorly-made models getting thrown around on wires in the dark. I can see why aerial battles were shunned in the old series. With the advent of CGI, it was only then they could be fully realized. Also, the director screwed up the lighting. You can see absolutely shit, save for the light glinting off Alien Baltan’s lacquered body. Double fail. Lazy Mura and Fuji too just watch the carnage through the viewscreens back at base.

Ultraman and Alien Baltan chase each other down and struggle in the air… He manages to snap off Alien Baltan’s claw but despite thatm Baltan still manages to shoot after Ultraman’s ass. Eventually, Ultraman manages to Specium Beam Alien Baltan and its flaming body falls down to the Earth. Next comes the question of all the other Baltanians in the UFO. Ultraman finds it using his eye beams and carts it off. Puzzling is fact that the next scene shows dawn and a burst of light and the sound of explosion is heard. I bet I know the question in your minds right now; did Ultraman just commit mass genocide?

Now that was a great big red herring. Coming back to the true story of the episode, how Ide got that big fucking black eye, Ide explains that after the battle, he went back to sleep… This time however, Ide is the snorer while poor Arashi struggles. The boot’s on the other foot now Arashi! But poor Ide in his sleep rolls off his top bunk and slams his face on the floor… and that’s what caused the black eye. Moral of the story here folks: Whoever snores first wins. Just make sure you don’t fall down.

Many consider this a classic episode and I can see why. In my knowledge, this is the first one not to take itself seriously. It’s rare to see an Ultraman episode as light-hearted as this. The mystery twist in the later part of the story and Alien Baltan’s close-up suit effects was cool as well. It’s probably the success of these type of episodes that led the second series, Ultraseven, to be an almost entirely space alien fare. Now the battle, like I said sucked. Maybe they spent all the money hiring the extras and renting the building so they had to skimp? Maybe the Alien Baltan suit’s detailing cost too much? In any case, they probably learnt their lesson. Shit like this wasn’t seen again in a long time. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll complain like hell if the only action I see is two guys in a suit spinning crazily around.

Monster & Space Alien review: Alien Baltan

The apparently called space ninja, Alien Baltan has a shitload of weapons on him to reflect that statement. Teleportation abilities, size changing, paralyzing rays, claw cannons, bodily possession… the list goes on. I guess when the episode was conceived, Alien Baltan’s design was for shock value: If you encountered a lobster being with glowing yellow eyes staring at you, fwo-fwo-fwoing, who wouldn’t piss themselves? It’s these things you saw as a kid that made it this popular. Well, maybe in the 60’s at least.

This one is more of the goofy incarnations of Alien Baltan. Later ones like Alien Baltan II and Psycho Baltan are inherently more menacing. Strangely, enough, some people also find the design of Alien Baltan… cute. Yes, look hard enough and you can find plushies of him. Although I’m a fan of Ultraman’s space alien designs (Ultrazeven & Ultraman Ace are my favourites) my sense of reality is not that warped. Alien Baltan does the job, serving to showcase what other galactic fiends Ultraman will face in the future.

Picture of the day

Like something you'd see from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, eh? Cumulonimbus clouds. Surreal. Click on it to enlarge.

My review of the 2nd Ultraman episode is complete, just need to add in the screenshots. will be up tomorrow.
In other news, I bought something so spectacular, so wonderful, for just only a dollar. More on it coming up.

Ultraman review 1: Ultra Operation No. 1

Originally this post was meant to be about the haze finally fucking off from our skies, but since the camera is with my brother right now, I’m going ahead with my promised review of the Ultraman episodes. Oh, and do pay a visit to my bro’s deviantart site; http://k3n-e.deviantart.com/ (Shameless plug)

The very first Ultraman series… What can I say about it? For one, the premise of the series is definitely quite distinctive, compared to the cookie-cutter ones of the following series. It seems that in the future, giant monsters and weird-ass life forms are the norm and humanity goes on its destructive ways as usual, bumbling into them and finding new ways to destroy/exploit them for our own use. That is, if we don’t get squashed/eaten/poisoned/dissolved by them first.

Forefront of the defense is the Science Patrol, a multinational organization to investigate any strange events and exterminate if necessary. The Japanese branch, the most prolific one of them all, is staffed by the following:

From left: Capt. Mura, Ide, Arashi and Fuji. Hayata is the guy screaming at the red light in the picture below.

Captain Toshio "Cap" Muramatsu or just Mura for short. Played by Akiji Kobayashi who also played Tachibana Tobei from Kamen Rider. (See? I’ve done two out of six degrees already) Your normal fatherly leader of the team who enjoys a pipe and coffee made by Fuji.

Shin Hayata: The main character and the human form of Ultraman. A rather serious-looking guy who has his own light moments.

Mitsuhiro Ide: The inventor. He forms one half of the comic duo of the series with Arashi. He’s prone to be overtly emotional too.

Daisuke Arashi: The tough guy and marksman of the group. Being the muscle, he can be quite dim at times, and has his own custom gun, the Spider-shot.

Akiko Fuji: The female of the group. Her work profile includes: communications, making coffee, taking care of Hoshino, and making coffee… again. She does pilot the Jet-VTOL a bit and has a weakness for shopping and pearls.

Isamu Hoshino: Fuji’s kid brother with a strangely different name, belying the Fuji/Hoshino family’s strange tendencies. Frequently acts as the civilian on the front lines, which means causing trouble for the Patrol in general. Manages to get his own Science Patrol uniform and save them on occasion.

In keeping with the Sci-fi mystery of the show, the Science patrol is notably less militaristic than the other Ultraman support teams, more like a government department like the FBI. They even have two uniforms, a blue work dress when they’re in HQ and their orange field gear. Even the Jet-VTOL looks more like a utility aircraft than let’s say, an A-10 Warthog, that would be much more useful in killing monsters. And true, there’s minimal ‘kiddie episodes’ in Ultraman compared to the full-blown kiddie fare of Ultraman Taro a few years later.

Anyway you can find this and more in Ultraman’s wikipedia article. On to the review!

Episode 1: Ultra Operation No. 1

It starts off simple enough. One night while on patrol in his Mini-VTOL, our stalwart hero Hayata spots a giant blue ball floating around. Radioing back to base he’s spotted a UFO he chases it down. Deciding its run out of ball-fuel, the blue ball decides to settle down in a lake, right beside some happy campers…

Meanwhile, Hayata in all his clumsiness stumbles across another red ball (Man, what’s up with these balls?) And when I mean stumble, I really mean stumble. He’s only a few brief moments before a red mass appears in his face and he screams like a pansy. And you’d expect with the velocity and mass that Hayata and the ball are going at, the Mini-VTOL would have disintegrated or exploded. Instead, the ball knocks itself and Hayata solidly down in a blatant violation of physics. The police report in to the Science Patrol (now henceforth called SP) that a plane has crashed somewhere in the woods, they put two and two together and the SP suits up orange-style to go look for their fallen comrade.

Later, the same group of dumbass campers and policemen discover Hayata lying down neatly on the grass, serene and nary a scar in his trauma-induced consciousness behind a crappy projection of burning wreckage. Suddenly, Hayata is levitated off into the red ball… Hell, who would have thought that aliens were magicians too?

Inside, Hayata meets the main man himself, Ultraman! Ultraman explains that he’s a police man from the M78 system; he’s chasing Bemular from the monster graveyard, he’s sorry for smashing his ball-ship into Hayata’s ass and nearly killing him, blah, blah, blah, you know the story. And in remorse, he offers to merge himself with Hayata so he can survive, dropping the beta capsule on his body. When Hayata grills him on what happens if he uses the Beta, Ultraman, in a rare moment of assholery gives him a curt reply, “you’ll find out for yourself.” The ball then explodes and drops white shit all over the place, knocking out the idiot campers in its concussion.

The next day, the SP still hasn’t found Hayata and while tending to the campers Bemular decides to make his entrance with the frothing water churning and roiling thing out of the lake. I must add though, one reasons why I like marine monsters is because of this effect. Water going apeshit in the middle of the sea for no reason at all? A monster must be coming up. See? It’s that cool. Oh, and Hoshino appears in the base as well. Wait, WTF? What’s he doing in there? I know he’s Fuji’s bro, but what security clearance he has? If he decides to switch sides, we’re fucked.

The SP barely scratches it with their Superguns, and back at base Hoshino throws a tantrum on the SP’s incompetence in finding Hayata. Hayata’s voice suddenly appears on the radio and tells Fuji who’s stuck looking after the place as well to take the Jet-VTOL and S-16 submarine to the lake. Fuji leaves and tells Hoshino to look after the place. A kid. In charge of a hi-tech control room. Another WTF moment.

Hayata suddenly appears on a speed boat and takes the S-16 down, much to the consternation of the rest of the SP on the shore. After much cruising, Hayata locates and torpedoes Bemular’s ass, making it surface in pain. The Jet-VTOL attacks from above, but it’s to no avail. Bemular dives right back down. Hayata torpedoes its ass again to make it come up and this goes on until Bemular gets pissed and starts shooting his mouthray all over the place. Hayata blindly cruises right into its mouth for some reason, and bingo, it’s got a hostage.

Uncomfortable, Bemular dumps the S-16 down on the forest, making Hayata bust his head in the metal interior. Here is where Bemular’s shitty aiming comes into focus. Instead of hitting the S-16 with his breath, it sprays the surrounding area, igniting the forest. Eventually Hayata wakes up and flashes the beta capsule, transforming into Ultraman himself.

Immediately Ultraman goes all out against the rampaging shitbeast while the SP cheers him on. After much tossing and turning and a few love taps, Ultraman’s color timer begins flashing red… Arashi wonders aloud what that is, Ide replies that it’s a warning light everyone has and Captain Mura just basically tells Ide to shut the fuck up. Like I said, I’m somewhat rusty in Chinese, and this is basically what I can decipher from that conversation.

Ultraman then proceeds to dive on Bemular, give it a few punches and throws it back to the lake where it sinks… For a monster who supposedly escaped from the Monster Graveyard, I’m thinking it’s more akin to a Space Cockroach. Man he’s weak. Bemular tries to escape with his ball-ship but Ultraman fires his Specium Beam on it to oblivion. Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down.

Admist the cheering, he stikes his victory pose, puffing his chest up (and angular crotch) and shuwacths the hell outta there. As predicted, Hayata reappears again and a consensus by the SP is held on their savior; what the hell is he? Who the hell is he? What should we call him? Why, we’ll call him Ultraman!

For the first episode of Ultraman, it wasn’t so bad. You can see here already the exquisite sets and miniatures that would become the hallmark of Ultraman later. I could have done without Hoshino, but alas, Ultraman is a kid’s show and some measure of relation is needed. Still, the effects and fight was kinda simplistic. But then they are starting off after all, and it only gets better later in the series.

Monster & Space Alien review: Bemular

Bemular. What can I say.

He’s a rather generic one, brown skin, reptilian profile… The only thing distinctive was the wide face and the T-rex body (small arms large body). Bemular’s appearance was a tall, spiked-backed reptile with a streamlined wide face and ridiculously small arms Its easy defeat, generic looks and crappy weapon only meant one thing; it was a tease. Yes, poor Bemular, you were a tease, your moment of fame was to serve to give viewers a taste of what was to come for the next 40 years. But fear not; your goofy and awkward demeanor shall be remembered as the first of the worthy enemies to fall before Ultraman’s hands. Godspeed Bemular, Godspeed.

The declaration of Ultraman

I was just only 7 when I saw something that would change my life forever.

Back then, I just came back from living out my early childhood in Australia. It was a totally different world. If you haven't noticed yet, I live in Malaysia. When I arrived, I couldn't speak Malay, I forgot how to speak chinese, I got picked on at school for talking Aussie, and my teacher, god bless her cholesterol-choked heart thought that because of that, I was retarded, and put me in a 'special' class. And this was in a private school!

Anyway, I was spending a lonely weekend morning with the radio tunes of MC Hammer, Belinda Carlisle, and Paula Abdul wafting through the air when I caught something on my parents' old Trinitron. It was fleeting, but there it was, a grainy footage of a silver and red being beating the shit out of a prostethic monster. I was blown away by the special effects; this was even cooler than Thunderbirds! This was Ultraman!

Malaysia got to be fully immersed in the Ultraman experience a few years later in 1993 when Ultraman Ace was brought to our screens. We too enjoyed the merchandising blitz that followed, Ultraman keropok (can anyone remember that?) Ultraman playing cards, ultraman figures.... Ultraman became a permanent fixture in my childhood days along and the rest of Malaysia as well. The trend still continues today, with the new Heisei era Ultramans being watched these days.

10 years later after I've recently come into the possesion of a few Chinese-dubbed Ultraman DVDs. Although my skills in the language are just limited to swear words and meagre conversation pieces, this presented me with a great opportunity to relive my childhood. And to celebrate that, I'll be reviewing and giving an in-depth look into each episode, for the benefit of my fellow Ultraman fans. 'What?! sitting through 20 hours of a kid's show from the 60's ?! Are you insane?' you may think, but we haven't got a good episode review of the series since Absolute Ultraman folded a few years ago, and I've got lots of free time.

Look for it!

Insane foreign supermarket items 1: Instant currry rice

I like going to KLCC.

It's clean, snazzy, right near my house, and you can find Burger King and Kinokuniya there. But my secret reason is the Isetan supermarket. Like a guilty housewife, I always pay a visit, without fail. Even the people there start to know me by name. What gets it going is the sorts of myriad stuff they import from Japan.

• 150-dollar honeydews? - Check.
• A fountain of chocolate? - Check
• Enough weird ramen to bald yourself with MSG? - Check.
• An aquarium of tofu? - Check

You too can find other strange stuff like natto, glass-ball ramune, and vomit-like sauce mixes there as well. Jeebus, walking down the aisle was like an orgasm of funny pictures and colors. No wonder the Japanese are the masters of package design. They just leap out at you and you just feel like taking them home- contents be damned- and put it on the shelf to admire and jerk off to them.

But I digress.
One one such trip, I managed to succumb to the wily Japanese and got myself one of these strange sauce mixes, on the pretext of getting lunch. And today, while cursing the haze safely in my house, prepared to go where no man had gone before...



The box indicated that it was some type of Japanese curry rice mix and an egg and microwave was essential to the process. Hell, chances are the sauce in this would look like vomit, but I was game. I checked out the website of the manufacturer; http://www.marumiya.co.jp It prided itself on instant rice products, so there was a good chance I wouldn't be typing this from a hospital bed after having my stomach pumped out.



Literally, here are the ingedients I used; the foil sachet of sauce, a cup of rice, and a baby chicken.



After a disastrous session of cooking the rice (2nd degree burns, anyone?), first you poured in the sauce. To my relief, it didn't look like vomit, but like diarrhea runoff. Oh joy.



The instructions said that you have to mix the rice with the sauce thoroughly. Next, it was time to kill the baby chicken and spread its' liquid corpse all over the rice, the essential sacrifice of life required to complete the meal.



A quick two-minute zap of radiation and it was done. Or was it?
Now, no matter what I said, I always liked Japanese curry. It's just that the ones outside looked more fresh, sparkling with the layer of oil, lard or whatever it was on top of it. This one was rather dry-dull, and left little to the imagination. The half-cooked egg didn't help either. Decent enough for a quick meal, but pricy for the 7 bucks that it's worth. Not recommended unless you're a true Japanophile or just plain filthy rich.

Well at least the packaging was nice...