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Okay!

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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.

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You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.

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Engine inspection presents Coming Ultra!

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Join me as I discuss the final episode of Ultraman Zett.

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It'd be really cool if they did a sequel series at some point,

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which is probably some of the issue with Commenator,

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but let's not get distracted by that.

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Let's talk about Ultraman Zep episode 25, which is called Warriors Shining Beyond.

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It was directed by Kiyotaka Taguchi of the upcoming Ultraman Blazar,

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and the screenplay is attributed to Kota Fukuhara.

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I've heard that since Fukuhara died before the main production of the show,

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or before the episode to episode production of the show,

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that actually what happened was he wrote the first and last episodes,

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and then everything else in between was done by others.

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And, well, anyway, I think they matched what he did to varying degrees,

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but we're not going to delve too much into that,

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because I've got to talk about everything else about the episode first.

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It was originally aired December 19, 2020,

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which kind of explains the joke in the episode, I think.

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And, yeah, that's all I have to say about the credits of the show,

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so let's go ahead and just talk about the episode itself.

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And I've got to say, this was fabulous.

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I just loved it so much. I thought it was so fun.

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I thought it was so good, and it made me so happy.

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Again, Ultraman Z is one of the best Tokusatsu we've ever seen.

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I've been talking with Cedric Ser in the comments of YouTube mostly

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about Ultraman and Z and some other stuff.

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Well, mostly Ultraman and Z, and other Ultras as well, Regulus and such.

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But it's interesting, because I've determined that...

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Well, I guess I'm just going to go into my negative stuff right here.

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That the work that Fukuhara did is excellent,

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and nobody else matched him as far as the good core writing of the essence of...

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Not necessarily what the essence of Ultraman is,

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but of the essence of this really great story that he had about power

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and the...not the abuse of it, but the misuse of power

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and the responsibility to use power in such a way that it is generative

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and life-giving and life-affirming and protecting as opposed to destructive.

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And I guess there's a question there of, like, who should wield power

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and how it should be wielded, but I think even more than that,

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and maybe the reason I didn't get this until the second watch-through

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is because it wasn't handled well enough by everybody else.

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While I think all of Ultraman Z is really good,

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it just...it falls short in some areas.

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I think issues with Celebro not being there for a lot of the time,

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there being a lack of structure to the overarching plot,

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maybe even some of the stuff with Juggler where he's there

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and he's got this, you know, playing both sides against each other thing,

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and I don't know, like, even his comments in this last episode,

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oh, maybe, and, you know, I was...you know, I just had to do it this way,

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and whatever, like, they don't really make sense,

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and they kind of fall short, although maybe I just don't know Juggler well enough

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to really know his character and say, oh, no, no, no, this is definitely him,

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and this is just how enigmatic he always is,

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and it's just part of the deal when you're working with Juggler, Juggler,

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so, you know, that could be fine, but the real examination of power

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is interestingly not done well enough throughout the rest of the show.

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We have those core things, you know, the destruction or the killing, I'll say,

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of King Kornkob, I mean, Red King,

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and then, like, all the back and forth with the Parossas,

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and that kind of stuff was interesting,

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but probably where we get the best definition of it

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or the best analysis of it is in these Fugahara episodes.

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I'm sorry, that's his name, right? Just checking.

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Yeah, Fugahara.

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It's probably done the best in these ones because, like,

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you get the comment at the end there from Yoko about,

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and this is, of course, full spoilers, right?

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You get the comment from Yoko about them going off

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and joining Haruki and Zet in space when they learn how to build a storage,

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you know, an SAA robot that can fly in space,

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and for some reason that's okay.

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I'm not necessarily saying that, well, okay,

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my mind automatically went to, okay, something like Ultroid Zero

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would have the power to go in space.

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That would be a powerful enough robot.

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I would imagine that in order to, like an Ultraman,

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just launch out of atmosphere into space,

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you'd have to have a great deal of power.

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So it made me think, okay, the progression or the development

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of these weapons of war to the point where they are akin to Ultraman

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is not an immoral pursuit.

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It's not a frowned upon pursuit.

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Haruki has no misgivings about that.

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Zet doesn't have misgivings about that.

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Man, Bako has no misgivings about it, nor does Yuka,

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and Yoko is the one who suggests the idea herself.

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So after all they've been through, you would think,

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if she was suggesting something like, hey, let's make an Ultroid Zero

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who has this power on par with Zet

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and who has the space-faring capability on par with Zet,

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that there would be misgivings about that.

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But there are no misgivings.

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There's no problem with it because they are going to work hard on it

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and develop the system, the technology, the capability in a natural way.

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And I can see, this is almost making me think of Star Wars.

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I've been getting into a bunch of Star Wars books recently.

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Old EU stuff, classic legends, legendary stories.

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But anyway, I will go off on that right now.

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But the idea that, like, Celebro and the D4 Ray

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and all that represented this threat because it was such an unearthly technology,

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such an unearthly power, ironically, xenophobic,

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if it's not from this earth, then I don't trust it.

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That's the message of Ultraman, right, guys?

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Anyway, that's not the message of Ultraman, it's just a joke.

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Phantom drama.

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Anyway.

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But yeah, so because this power came from outside of the earth

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and without human interaction, development and involvement, it's bad.

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It is, and maybe it's not even in and of itself that it's bad,

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it's that, like Celebro himself said, humans lack the maturity to handle it.

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So you would think that, you know, if you give a kid,

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if you give somebody without any training a gun,

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likely, you know, they're not going to follow the four rules of firearm safety

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and likely they're going to get in trouble

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and likely they're going to ignorantly use it to hurt themselves or someone else.

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And that's just kind of how it goes.

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However, if they take a training class, if they learn the rules,

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if they do all this practicing, dry firing, you know, learning how to clean the gun,

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everything that they need to know, they can handle it.

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And that doesn't mean that you need to be the one to craft your own individual firearm every time

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in order to be safe using it.

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It just means that you need to go through the procedure and the process

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and you have to work for the privilege or the right, whatever,

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to go ahead and fire off the firearm.

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And that thing is your responsibility.

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You are culpable for it and you take action that shows that.

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And maybe it's kind of similar with the default array

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and even the power of a robot that's strong enough to rival Ultraman

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that if it comes too easy, if it comes too quickly,

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if it comes without the hard work, then you haven't earned it

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and you don't have the right to or you don't get the privilege to,

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because I believe you have the right to, you know, defending yourself from whatever,

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you don't have the privilege necessarily to go ahead and use that extreme measure

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or that weapons platform, that system, that type or level of power.

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And it's because it's unearned.

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And I do like that concept.

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So had they thought about that theme that Fukuhara, I believe, was writing in the end game of the show,

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and I don't know if that's in the beginning of the show or not,

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because I'm thinking back to, you know, I originally called the first review I did, Two-Thirds Hero,

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and I believe this one's just going to be called Ultraman

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because I think Haruki's risen to that level and I think Zet has risen to that level

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and they're like fully arrived.

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I mean, of course they have more development, but like they're at a very good place

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for who they are as characters and I think they've had a really good arc

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and it puts them on the level of not being one-third of a hero and a one-third of a hero being two-thirds here.

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I think they're now a full hero.

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And I think something about Zero's comment about that, about Zet being a one-third hero

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and me feeling that Haruki was as well and how Zet and Haruki paralleled each other so nicely and so neatly

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in order to make them, you know, two halves, so to speak, of a whole.

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I know there's something there for sure and there's something about the fact that, you know,

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Haruki was down rescuing a puppy and causing issues for Yoko and Sevenger, sorry.

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And there's something with that and everything going around with that, you know,

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and then he fought in Sevenger later and then ended up getting killed by Mr. Sharkman,

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Space Shark, Denagon, Den-Dernagun, Den-Dernagun.

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I don't know, I think there's some connection there.

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I can't quite find what it is, but like, I don't know, if you just track his development through the series,

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through the show, he had to go through, you know, he had an opportunity to walk a path from being that guy

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rescuing the puppy to be this guy saving the world.

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And in a way, with his motivation being to save Yoko, he was rescuing his puppy.

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No, it's a weird joke.

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I don't know.

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And it wasn't that Haruki was eschewing power, it was that he was assigned,

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they only had the one robot at the time, he was assigned to a particular type of duty,

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protecting people while Yoko was assigned to attack that Gohaness and fight it off, you know, destroy it ultimately.

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So what does that mean?

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I don't exactly know what that means, but like, there's definitely a theme I can feel

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and there's an arc that I can kind of trace, but the specifics of it were, you know,

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and the whole questioning of using the power of Ultraman and killing Kaiju and do we have the right to kill Kaiju

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and, you know, it being a burden, being the one left behind, the one to survive and carrying the memories

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of those you had to kill or those you lost, either way, I guess, you could say,

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if you can't neutralize a target in a nonlethal way and you have to kill it, then you carry that with you.

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And anybody who you lose because you failed to save them, whether it be from a disaster or from a malicious attack,

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I mean, like a natural disaster or something like that, or even an accident or malicious attack,

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you carry those burdens with you and you carry those, you know, the weight of those lives lost with you.

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And like I said, lives lost either way, whether you had to kill them or because you failed to save them.

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So, I don't know, how he goes from saving the puppy to saving the world.

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And I'm not sure that's what I had in mind for people to hold on to or not.

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But it's what I'm seeing looking at the beginning and the end and how they interact with each other and what they say to each other.

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And I don't know. So really interesting.

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Anyway, so that's the real serious, you know, deeper type stuff. And I'll just talk about a few fun things before I get out of here.

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So I really loved the man that Maya Yuki, whatever her name is, ordering her soldiers to fire on on armed civilians, essentially.

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And then her firing on them instead. That lady is a piece of work.

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And I love how heavy current transformed into Juggler and deflected all their bullets, whacked everybody and knocked her out and caught her as she was falling to the ground.

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I didn't say I was unarmed. That was really cool. That was smooth. That was fun.

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I don't know what it is about characters like that who are like I'm not going to say he's a dark hero.

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I guess he's like a he's an antihero for sure. But I'm not even sure where exactly he's in.

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He's he's he's in the antihero archetype or mold. But I don't know exactly where he falls because he's basically a hero.

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Right. It's just he's the I guess he's the knight in sour armor or scoured armor or whatever they call that.

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And I don't know. He's a lot of fun. He's interesting.

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And I like as a kid, I always liked the dark guy, you know, guy for three and, you know, Proto Man.

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I wanted Proto Man to be a good guy because it's like, oh, it's cool. He's like Mega Man.

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I'm talking about from the Ruby Spears Mega Man cartoon. Anyway, yeah.

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So, you know, I like the idea of that kind of guy, but I really just like how he is in this.

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And I like, you know, at the end, him catching Celebro and oh, my gosh,

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Kavaragi coming back with Yuka and catching Celebro in the net and you take it off to dissect him or whatever.

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That was a lot of fun. Interesting. They made me think of like, I don't know, like anyway,

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they made me think of like a weird couple that you see online who like does live streams together or whatever.

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And just odd like, you know, he's going to take pictures of her and whatever.

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So that was a funny vibe. But I loved all the stuff with Yoko and Haruki.

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You know, the arm wrestling revisited him saying he's got to marry her.

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Oh, by the way, I was laughing because, you know, this aired December 9th and he said that he'd be back for summer New Year's.

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And she said, is that even possible? And I think she meant because like New Year's, you know, based on when the show aired is less than 30 days away.

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It's like 20 something days away. And, you know, how can he go and then come back by then?

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But I'm sure he meant, you know, the next summer and then after that.

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But who knows if the calendar date in that is matching the date, but it still seemed like a funny little like, you know, meta joke that I appreciated.

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So that was fun. Oh, but, you know, the arm wrestling thing and him saying he's got to marry her and whatever that joke coming back was fun.

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And like it shows the rapport between the characters.

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And I thought it was great. And I love that, like.

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She was in love or infatuated with Ultraman Zet because he's, you know, five thousand years old or whatever it was.

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And that she was interested in him, but then also, you know, looking back when she found out or when we find out as the audience about her arm wrestling so that she can, you know, find her husband, basically test her husband, her future husband, that fusing the identities of Haruki and Ultraman together.

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And like really him stepping up and becoming Ultraman, even in the visual language of the show.

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He you know, you see him doing the Zestium beam, Zestium Ray, whatever it is under Ultraman, which I like that effect.

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I would prefer like Comrade or build. They did it for sure.

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And I don't know where else, but they just cut to like the actor in their regular clothes wearing black or like in a black background doing the actions that you see the commoner at her suit, you know, doing.

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And they cut like back and forth to them to like really drive home the emotions.

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Like I think I think it was build this spoilers or combinator build well, he's fighting the big bad and combinator build and both of them, I believe, are in there, you know, it's the face actor in a suit or, you know, in their, in their characters clothing in the black background.

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And they're like, you know, punching at each other or like, you know, locked together.

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And then you get to see a cut of the two suits locked together too. And it like really drives things. I believe that's in like the end game of build where you see the big bad guy.

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Yeah, stock guy and and Mr. Genius Man fighting each other like that.

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That was really cool. And I would almost appreciate if they did that better here.

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Like I think Super Ride does a lot better with effects in general.

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And I'm not saying the effect looks bad. It's just weird because like they make the Ultraman suit.

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Like it's oh my there's the skunk again. They make it transparent. Sorry, my work.

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There's a skunk that comes around in the mornings and I'm scared of it. It's really cute. It's a baby. It's adorable.

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But I don't know. I don't want it spraying me. Does that mean I should just destroy it or I should let it live its life peacefully?

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Huh? Well, according to Ultraman Z, I should destroy it. No, I should live its life peacefully. Anyway, things adorable.

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Anyway, but I totally forgot what I was saying because I got so distracted by the skunk.

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So I'm going to I'm going to leave it be now and just move on from there.

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So. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's a great show. I really liked it.

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I dig almost everything about it. There are definitely missteps and things I didn't enjoy.

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But for the most part, it's a really good show. It tells a really good story.

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I think that's the thing. The story of like Harky's development, the story of dealing with the

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the use of power and the abuse of power by people and how like we need to be with great power comes responsibility.

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Right. It's all there. The story is there. The execution of it.

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Not so much. It falters in some places. It fails in some places and it just kind of doesn't work.

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And there's these weird, you know, slow patches or slow bits or just like places where while it was always entertaining,

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it would kind of fall flat and it seemed to lose focus on telling this greater, grander story.

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And it could have been served better. It could have told this greater, grander story, but it didn't.

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And I'm not sure why it didn't. I'm not sure where the distraction came in.

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I'm not sure where the lack of focus. I'm not sure.

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I'm not sure what to attribute the lack of focus to. And I don't understand it, especially because between I mean,

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I think the cast was great. I think the music was great. I think the suits are great. The effects are great.

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All that stuff. But on the writing department, like that's why it makes me think like Fukuhara must have been this.

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And I should look up what else he's worked on because I feel like I know the name and I feel like I know what he's done.

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Actually, you know, I'm going to take I'm going to call an audible and we're going to look it up right now.

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But anyway, it just feels like there was this lack of focus and it doesn't really make sense that there was this lack of focus

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and this distraction and that it would. I mean, it just doesn't just doesn't make sense.

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It would fall flat when like everything the rest of the production seemed to be firing on all cylinders like, you know,

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the the mech design, which I guess, you know, King Joe and Windom are reused designs, aren't they?

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So but the execution of the suits was really good. The effects on them were really good.

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But, you know, all the fights, I think, were really interesting and exciting.

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You get these all these cool cameos, too. And I don't even think that I think the cameos were actually more on the ball

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and more focused and brought this idea of, you know, stepping up to this responsibility in this role and this power of using

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or I guess the responsibility in the role of using this power in a responsible, good, righteous way,

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better than some of the episodes that didn't focus on or have.

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Ultraman cameos in them, which is weird, that's really crazy to me.

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All right, I'm going to end my comments there basically, but I'm going to go ahead and talk about Fukuhara because I looked him up real quick on the wiki.

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So just give me a moment and I will read that to you.

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OK, so I'm just going to read from the top. Kota Fukuhara, born December 23, 1982,

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in Omota, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, died May 17, 2020, age 37. My God, that's horrible.

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Occupation writer, series screenwriter, theater director, novelist and actor.

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And years active from 2009 to 2020.

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Let's see, Kota Fukuhara is a Japanese screenwriter. He has participated in the screenwriting and series composition of Ultraman Z.

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Death on May 17, 2020, Fukuhara passed away due to a cerebral hemorrhage.

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Due to the early start of the planning of Ultraman Z, all of the script coordination and writing work that Fukuhara was responsible for was complete before his death.

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In the credits screen at the end of Warrior Shining Beyond, which is episode 25, the subtitle, In Memory of Kota Fukuhara, is listed as a commemoration of Fukuhara.

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Works, Ultraman series, sorry, Fukuhara wrote the following episodes for the following series.

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Ultraman Z, it doesn't say the numbers. It's Chant My Name, A Warrior's Principle, Live Coverage, The Monster Transport Operation, which I think is 123.

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What Must Be Defended, Four Dimensional Capriccio, oh, interesting, very interesting.

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A Warrior's Duty, Prelude to a Nightmare, The Game to Extinction, and Warrior Shining Beyond. Okay.

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So those weren't posthumously credited. He did those. I was wrong on that before.

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And then others, Kaiju Club from 2017, and then the Kamen Rider BBB, no, B-Bill Gates from 2019. Oh, I think that was a, that was from Kamen Rider Ghost.

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Wait, no, no, B-Bill Gates, 2019. I guess that would have been Zio, right? Anyway, let's see what else.

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Apparently, he appeared in Ultraman Z 2 in episode 1, in episode 8. He's a chemistry class member, it says, in episode 1 for sure.

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And in episode 8, I don't know where he appears. Oh, look, they show him, Fukuhara's cameo in Ultraman Z.

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So he is on screen. How interesting. He's sitting next to a Hibikura's actor in that scene.

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So, oh my gosh, is that Mystic Power? That's when he goes to investigate Kaburagi. How interesting.

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See, and that's kind of, I was going to say, I feel like that's kind of where Kaburagi disappears.

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But, you know, he wrote those other key episodes. He wrote the, let me see, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

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Nine episodes out of a 25 episode run. That's over a third. So that's a lot.

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And if the other episodes, let's just say, like they had broken them down, but they hadn't written the individual episodes, I could see where things would falter.

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And I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say, oh, this guy was perfect and he's a saint and, you know, he did nothing wrong.

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I'm not saying he's not responsible for some of the failings in the show. I'm just saying, I, you know, I wonder what would have happened had he lived if the series would have been even better.

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And I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised. But again, I'm not trying to, you know, say that that's how it must have been because that's silly.

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And that's silly and un-nuanced. And I think I'd fair to him and dishonorable to him to say that his death ruined the show or made it something less than what it could have been.

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But I'm just saying there is a possibility that had he not died tragically at such a young age that the show could have been better.

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And, you know, even more so, you know, he and his family and his loved ones would have enjoyed having him alive for a lot longer.

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So anyway, I know it's kind of a weird way to end the show and this review, but I'm not sure how else to end it.

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And this is where I've gotten myself. I've talked to myself into a quarter.

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So I don't know what to say, although I will say this, the end of the episode where they're flying off,

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it made me think about a possibility full of future or I guess a future full of possibilities and how I mean, they literally say this is only the beginning, which is my daughter brought that up to me.

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She said, like, you know, sometimes I read a book series and at the end of the series of the books, they say this is only the beginning.

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And then they never write any more in that series. And that's dumb. And I said, yes, that is dumb.

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So, you know what? I'm going to slam for here for giving us a dumb ending to the show with saying this is only the beginning.

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But in truth, the in truth, because of the way modern Ultraman works, I think that will be in more things after this, like probably the Destin Crossroad, which I will watch at some point soonish,

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probably features that and that's fine. But it really does feel good because I do feel now that hierarchy is at a place where he is Ultraman.

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And I did notice to a subtle difference, which I don't really get it because the way the Ultraman Ultraman look doesn't really make sense to me.

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Alpha Edge, which I say, Alpha, Alpha Edge looks different from the like vanilla Ultraman Z. And I don't know why. Like, it's not that different, but it's different enough.

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And for whatever reason, they want to have that alternate form. Right. And it doesn't like I said, it doesn't really make sense to me.

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But at the end, when hierarchy transforms, he gets the Zetriser, he goes into Zet's face and then he pops. And then, you know, the Ultraman that comes up is vanilla Ultraman Z.

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So I'm assuming for his adventures in Ultra Galaxy Fight and all those different things, when he appears and has cameos or short fight appearances, he's just going to be vanilla Ultraman Z and then potentially use the other forms as well.

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I could see that probably Beta Smash, Delta Rise Claw and the best one, the Mystic one, Gamma Future.

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But like it was a subtle difference and it felt like it meant something, but I don't really know what it meant because I also think it's kind of dumb that Alpha Edge exists at all.

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Like it would make more sense if it was just Zet, Beta Smash, Gamma Future, Delta Rise Claw. Those things would make more sense to me.

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But again, I have like a lot of quibbles with the Ultraman suit designs because they don't really make sense to me.

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Yeah, they don't really make sense to me, but that's a discussion for another time.

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I want to end this on a positive note. So I will talk about this.

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I was under the impression that I really liked Taguchi and that like he was the one who really made Zet what it was.

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And that might have some validity to it, but I don't know his past Ultraman works.

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And but I do know his future or current Ultraman works, which are or which is really going to be Ultraman Blazar.

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So I am definitely looking forward to covering Blazar here.

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It starts next week. And I was a little bit worried.

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I thought the episodes were going to be back to back.

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Fortunately, there's going to be a break and we have room to breathe and room to just bask in the afterglow of Zet.

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And then we can go ahead and enjoy Blazar coming up.

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So I will be covering that and I am looking forward to covering Ultraman for the future.

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That was another joke because that was an Australian Ultraman co-production with Super Eye Productions.

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Anyway, yeah, so I'm looking forward to covering Ultraman Blazar as well here.

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On going ultra on Henshin inspection.

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And I invite you to join me there.

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And it'll I think it'll be a little bit interesting, a little bit more, a little bit different to talk about a show while it's currently running.

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And we can do speculation and we'll see what all happens.

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I'm hoping to do a little less like the whole two episodes a week plus regulos coming in there and other stuff like it was a lot for me.

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And that's because I'm doing this and like three or four other podcasts and trying to write books and have a family and all this stuff all at the same time.

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So it was a bit much.

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I'm hoping that this will be a little more laid back to enjoy Blazar as it's coming out and that will have a lot of fun talking all about it.

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So like I said, I invite you to join me on that.

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And yeah, with that, I hope that you are well, that you continue to be well.

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And I will say this is MJ signing out.

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I hope you enjoyed that.

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Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments or other feedback you might have.

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There you can find all of my analysis, art and fiction.

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I cover books, tokusatsu, comic books, anime and more.

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Look around.

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You're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well.

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This has been a story over everything production.