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.