Henshin Inspection presents Going Ultra. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Join me as I talk about Ultraman Blazar Episode 5, The Mountain Roars.
This episode is an honorary focused episode. She goes to her hometown. I don't remember the name of it.
We see one of her childhood friends, Mizuho?
Mizuho, yes. And they get to talking about things.
And basically, Mizuho can somehow hear the voice of animals and birds and insects and maybe,
and this kaiju as well, this kaiju's name is Dorgo.
And when they were kids, they would go and pray at the shrine that is on the property of Mizuho's family,
like her ancestral property basically. And there was a shrine there to Dorgo.
And they would go and pray there and stuff, which is a little interesting.
But it's another culture and I just, you know, I accept it. I'm watching a Japanese show.
I have to accept things from Japanese culture, even though it seems kind of interesting or funny to me.
And Dorgo is supposed to be this guardian deity, yeah, guardian deity of that area.
And he makes their water really good, makes their soil good.
And I don't know why he does that stuff, but that's what he's there for.
And I can't remember the lore of it, but for some reason, about a thousand years ago,
he fell asleep and turned into a mountain or collapsed himself into a mountain and then has been sleeping there.
And he's been watching over the place ever since then.
That makes me think, what was he watching over the place for? What dangers or what threats did he do away with?
Or is it just that he makes their soil and their water clean or good for growing food and clean
so that it's very nourishing to the people who live there? I don't know.
And is that just because he gets their prayers or what's up with that?
It's not explained, but that is kind of some interesting world building or lore stuff I would like to know about.
But I guess that's for a different time or maybe a different Ultraman show.
I'm going to go ahead and say, well, I'm going to say my whole list of things
then I've got a bunch of stuff to say at the end there.
So that was interesting.
Dorgo wakes up and then he like runs past.
I can't remember what happened to Earthgoron, but Earthgoron was like busted and he just shut down.
And Doron or Dorgo, sorry, Dorgo runs past Earthgoron, him,
and drinks some water and promptly falls asleep.
By the way, Dorgo's got a fantastic design.
He's got like a beard made of moss or plants or whatever, and it gets all wet in the water.
And that's really cool. He's got this horn and this like stairway arch thing
that ends up going up at some point when he's firing off his electric shot power from his nose or whatever.
Super cool. Anyway, and then they say that he's asleep for one hour.
It's going to take about one hour or he's asleep for an indeterminate amount of time.
He's adjusting to being awake now, which is why he was up and then collapsed almost immediately.
But in about an hour, Earthgoron is going to be ready.
So they're hoping that they can get this fixed.
Mizuho wants them to put this idol or shrine item thing,
a little statue of like a Buddha type figure, back in the shrine.
And she thinks that will subdue Dorgo and put him back to sleep so that this won't be an issue
and they won't have to destroy him.
They want to destroy him, but she's saying no.
And she's kind of been fighting with the people there who are doing the tests.
And they said, oh, we did soil samples and we tested the Earth and we're sure there's nothing here.
And then lo and behold, Dorgo ends up being there.
And she was telling them about that.
So the people in the area think that Dorgo is just a fairy tale.
Mizuho doesn't believe that.
Her family has an ancient scroll that she pulls out and she shows.
And it's, you know, old style Japanese art like the ink.
It's not okia. That's woodblock prints.
This is on a scroll and it's, you know, painted on there or whatever.
And it looks really cool.
But anyway, she shows that to them and she's talking about it.
And they use that to gather clues for what they're going to be doing with Dorgo, how they're going to subdue him.
And Scarred finds a way to do it nonlethally, which is that she's going to go off and she's going to put the idol, the relic,
I don't know what to call it exactly, the statue back in place where it was.
And that should subdue him.
Something really interesting that happened was that when he awoke, there was chaos.
And Gento ended up getting thrown off of a cliff or whatever.
And as he's falling, it's really cool we get this POV shot from him where you see his hand go up and he's spinning around.
And you see his hand with the brace on it.
And then he gets out the blazar stone, puts it in there and transforms.
And that's cool. That's always fun when a hero is falling and their transformation is able to save them somehow.
I really like that stuff that was done in the original Ultraman series at least once, if not a couple times.
And it's always good. It works really well.
So anyway, Earthkaran, when he wakes up and he's fighting Dorgo, he does this cartwheel.
And while he's cartwheeling, he's arcing through the air and he's shooting off his handguns or whatever, guns from his hands,
he's shooting at Dorgo and it was just crazy because he goes... and he's shooting the whole time.
And it reminded me of a John Woo thing or I'm not even sure what.
And it was just really fun. It was really fun.
And then one of the coolest things is that Dorgo has the cannons on the mountain that is him.
And they're on two of the protrusions that come out of him.
And somehow he's able to tap into those cannons because he's this powerful kaiju.
And he's able to actually shoot them.
So he's shooting the cannons at Earthkaran and then when Blazar shows up, he's shooting at him as well.
And even Blazar jumps at one point and Dorgo blasts him and he falls to the ground.
And there's something I like.
So I pointed out that I feel Blazar is a little bit silly in the way he does things or some of the things that he does,
some of the noises he makes, things like that.
But I don't dislike him. It almost makes me sympathetic towards him.
And like definitely, so there's characters who I like seeing get beat up in shows or movies or whatever,
but just because I just like them.
And then there's characters who get beat up and I like to watch it a little bit because,
or something about it especially tickles me because I like them and I like how they deal with it.
Blazar is the latter category. He falls in the latter category.
So like seeing him get knocked down by the mega shot and things like that is fun.
And I enjoyed it and I wanted to see him get back up and defeat Dorgo somehow peacefully,
you know, without killing him. And we got to see that and that was really fun.
You know, Henri goes and she like psychs herself out and does martial arts type stuff and then implants the thing.
And then Dorgo falls asleep and Blazar gets him back in his spot where he belongs so he can continue being the guardian deity of that area.
And that's cool. I appreciate that. It was really cool to see him not kill him.
But it was really cool to see Dorgo operating his own Kaiju cannon there. That was pretty fun.
I noticed something though that Misuho has a Minnesota type accent, like a middle Midwestern,
middle Western of the United States type accent. And they're in the country.
So I was thinking, oh, is this kind of like a Kansai accent that the actress would have had or used in the performance?
And are they reflecting that in the dub by giving her a little bit of a Midwestern accent?
And even Henri does it. And she says something to her like, such like, it's really dangerous here, don't you know?
And Misuho responds, you sound like your father. And she's like, no, let's go.
And then later on at the end of the episode, it's highlighted by Gento repeating it, but she tells Misuho as she's leaving Henri,
they're parting ways, she's like, you betcha. And then she goes and gets a hand with Gento and he's like, yeah, it won't be a problem.
You betcha. And it was a lot of fun. I really liked that.
I like the idea of adapting the accent in that way with the Midwestern accent.
And I happened to move recently to the Midwest, the Middle West, and I have jokingly said Minnesota.
But I heard one other guy say it, but he's not from Minnesota and he's not from this state either.
But he knows about it. And I, anyway, it's just kind of a joke with my family about a little bit about that Midwestern accent.
But it's cool. It's cool. I like giving it that different feel.
And like Misuho had like this, like she's got like the way she's dressed.
She feels very country, very hikery and like, you know, way different from these military people who are there trying to execute their operation on behalf of, you know, all of Japan and stuff.
And she's representing like this little section of Japan and like the things that are important to it and the way that it is.
And she wants to preserve that way of life by protecting Dorgo and not allowing him to be messed with.
And the like there's kind of like a balance of nature thing, like if you treat the earth right, it's going to treat you right.
And I find that interesting. But I'm going to complain about a few things.
Oh, also, there's this really cool moment where Blazar. So that's kind of like my story stuff.
Now I'm going to get into the last minute or so of this and do some kvetching, some complaining.
So Blazar breaks his Blazar staff javelin thing in half. He breaks it over his knee.
He goes back and he swings forward and he is the first Ultraman to arc. I don't know if that's true or not.
But he like bends back all the way and makes an arch with his back and swings forward.
He stabs the things into the ground and then he throws them both at Dorgo to to mess with the mega shot, I believe, is what he's doing.
So like he does that. But so like he's the original Ultraman arc. That's my joke for this episode.
And that was interesting because he actually he snapped his thing in half, which is what arc did in the first episode with the shield.
And then he used it to stab the kaiju and kind of a similar thing is happening here.
And then I'm just thinking back, I was thinking back, you can know, I believe in Ultraman Z was from a small town and her grandma had a scroll.
And there was a song that helped calm this kaiju. And then in Blazar here, we have honorees from a small town.
And there's this scroll that's owned by somebody. And they have these stories about this kaiju and how it was quelled by the people there.
And then in arc, arc episode two, I think we have there's a construction thing going on at a place.
Somebody who a young person who wants to warn people about disturbing this kaiju and it's a fairy tale and everybody's ignoring them.
And I can't help but think how unfortunate it is that while the execution of all this stuff is really interesting, really neat, that there's a little bit of a.
Repetition going on. I mean, a large repetition going on with this nature story.
I find that very unfortunate, especially find unfortunate because the Takaguchi is the like producer, director slash producer of Z and.
Well, he was Blazar, so he did both of these nature episodes. I don't know who's running arc, but it's too bad that they're like very closely repeating stories.
And I think that's a detriment. It takes away a little bit of my enjoyment.
Because they think, oh, here's the nature episode and I like nature. I'm out here in nature right now, but it just doesn't make sense.
It's less compelling and it's frankly a little insulting to the audience, even if it's kids who turn over year after year.
And I don't I don't think it's good. I don't think it's a good thing to do.
And I think it's unfortunate that they went ahead and did that. But anyway.
I don't know what else to say about that. Anyway, I enjoyed the episode overall.
It was lots of fun, but in the continent, the larger context of Z, Blazar and Arc, it's too bad that we're seeing that, especially because those are having the Western adaptations, the Western presentation to the Western audience, to the English speaking audience, actually globally.
It's too bad they're doing that and they're not being mindful of who their audience is beyond the Japanese audience.
And you're going to get critics who are going to say this sucks because it's just recycling the same things over and over again, which is unfortunate and I think a little unfair.
So that's all I have to say. Look forward to the next Blazar review and as well as Arc.
And if you like what I have to say and you like the way I think about these Kaiju stories and these monster stories that involve kids, I encourage you to go to MJMunius.com.
Follow along for the book series that I'm doing. Grow Bug Tales, Grow Bug Chronicles is what it is.
It's the Grow Bug books and in the Grow Bug books, you have magical bugs who battle monsters and they're saving kids and they're saving themselves from these creepy monsters who transform their bodies in different ways sometimes and are just kind of creepy and wonderful.
It's very Tokusatsu inspired and I think that people who enjoy this kind of stuff will enjoy my work as well. I'm working on getting my book finished, the first book finished, doing some last edits to it and then I'm going to work on getting it published.
I'm going to start doing art for the chapter headings and some like diagrams to show things in the book as well because I am an author, artist, and analyzer.
So I'm analyzing here, I'm telling you about my stuff I'm writing and about the stuff I'm going to be drawing for that book. So anyway, if you want to follow along with that, check out MJMunius.com and I don't know, keep being Ultratastic.
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And don't forget to let your voice be heard. Stories are always better when you're part of the conversation. Until next time, be well. This is MJ signing out. This has been a Story Over Everything production.