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 Ark episode 3, Unleash Your Imagination.
So Yuma's tragedy hit me really hard.
I like this episode a lot.
I'll just get that out of the way.
When Yuma's tragedy hit me really hard, I talked about it in my short review of this.
And yeah, I was not expecting that.
I didn't think I wanted his full backstory, but I was really impressed by it and I was
really impressed by him as a character based on seeing this.
And I think the rest of the show is going to be really interesting.
Yeah, I'll talk about the other things I have to say and then I'll come back to Yuma's
tragedy and why it hit me so hard and how it made me change my opinion about his character
and what I thought originally and what I think now.
So I'm going to say Skip are absolute heroes.
These guys have no real weapons.
They have nothing really to help them at all.
And yet they're putting themselves in danger by standing there waving light like usher
rods or whatever they call those things that have the lights on them to tell you where
to go so they can evacuate to safety.
And they have no real defensive capabilities and no thing to help them be safe.
They're just holding those glowy sticks and wearing jackets that say skip on them.
That's about all of it.
And yeah, they're just out there doing their thing and a Kaiju is attacking and they're
staying as calm as they can just telling people to get to safety.
And it's shocking.
It's it doesn't really make sense.
It's kind of like the thing that people say in the United States about first responders
that you know when people are running away from things, they're running towards it.
And you know, that sounds hokey.
And of course, like that's real.
And this is not but still seeing it portrayed in this way in the show, it really does bring
that home that, yeah, there are some people who do the sort of thing where they actually
do put their lives on the line for others.
And it is really remarkable.
And thinking about, you know, whatever it is, a car accident, a shooting, you know,
a fire spill of whatever sort like those mundane occurrences for us.
I would say a Kaiju attack is even more.
It's like whatever the worst of those is or whatever, like a bad combination of multiples
of those would be is what is what a Kaiju attack is equivalent to.
And like we don't know the full scope of the background of these people, what their training
is in skip.
But we know that Kaiju been around for 16 years approximately.
And people know about them and they know kind of how to deal with them.
But there's really no way as far as we know.
Well, there's at least no way to really no reasonable way to deal with a giant Kaiju.
It's.
You're basically out of luck when it comes to a giant Kaiju.
And yet these people are just out there doing their thing.
And it really is remarkable.
OK.
And I just say Yuma is absolutely or is unbelievably heroic because in this first episode where
he just joined skip or flashing back to three months ago when he first joined skip, he isn't
Ultraman arc.
He doesn't know about this yet.
And he doesn't even know it's a possibility.
And when he sees that his grandmother and the kindergarten she teaches that are in danger,
he runs to them as quickly as he possibly can.
And I don't even know what his plan is, but he puts himself on the line completely.
And like, I'm not even sure what he was going to do, but he as a kid had this experience
when he was seven years old, which means he's 23 by this time.
Twenty three.
He had this opportunity or not this opportunity.
He had this horrible thing happen to him.
I guess I'm going to talk about it now where he saw his parents killed right in front of
him.
They were camping.
Kaiju attack happening.
It was a mono gayose mono gaylos.
I don't know one of the two.
And that's where the monohorn comes from.
Right.
Anyway, so he sees this Kaiju appear and it attacks and it kills his parents.
And yet he runs towards a Kaiju just like it is dying gayose, die, garros, whatever it
is, die, gellows.
I think it's mono gellows and die gellows anyway.
So he runs towards this Kaiju that looks very similar to the one that killed his family
and almost killed him and his mother and father.
I say his family.
That's what I mean.
And he just does it without a thought.
And that's really, really interesting.
That's really, that's really good.
That's a beautiful thing.
And it really impresses me that he went ahead and did that.
And I guess he was going to help them evacuate, just make sure they were okay or whatever.
It doesn't matter what he was capable of doing.
It almost makes it better that he was capable of very little and yet he went and did everything
he could to go ahead and save them.
That does make it more impressive.
I want to switch gears real quick and talk about the world building.
It's pretty neat.
Over the last 16 years there have been other Kaiju incidents.
They know how to measure a certain type of energy that Kaiju put off when they're emerging
or whatever, or maybe when they're just out and about.
There are mirages that are associated with Kaiju emerging into the world.
And the way that they showed this one horn and two horn Kaiju is that there was like
a split or something in the sky, like a phenomenon that split in the sky.
And then the Kaiju came out and they said it could have been something like a natural
phenomenon.
And then they decided against that.
Obviously when the Kaiju came out of there.
But it is interesting that that's a thing and that there is study of Kaiju.
And we heard in the first episode that Yuma is a Kaiju like physiology researcher, a scientist,
and he learned about Kaiju in school.
Now when I can't remember the renown, maybe when she said something to him like, you don't
remember that from school?
I thought she meant like as a kid he learned.
But if he's a Kaiju like physiologist or whatever, then he would have to have learned about it
from some sort of school, some sort of training that they've had on Kaiju over the years.
And it's just it's interesting because this Ultraman show, this Ultraman story exists
in a world seemingly where there aren't, there is not a history of Kaiju.
There's not a history of Ultraman or this giant of light, and these are a new thing.
And this world has adapted by changing to Kaiju.
Like the world is actively adapting to the existence of Kaiju and they're studying them
and they're learning about them and they're trying to figure out what to do with them
and how they can deal with them.
And I like that little bit of a hard sci-fi edge to the show.
Yeah, I got to say my impression of Yuma initially was that he was like young and naive and like
I called the fight that Ark had against the first guy like kind of kidtastic is the word
popping into my head right now, which I don't like the use of that word.
It felt a little juvenile and like he was young and untested and unsure of himself.
And that may be true because he's new to this whole Ultraman thing, but the whole juvenile
and naive thing I think is was a bit of a rash statement on my part because there is
a grit and there is a hard edge to this guy, but it's like a determination and it's a like
iron will to do things even against his own interest, even against himself.
And going back, like he watched his parents die besides go the last word that his father
said to him was it's time to run Yuma.
And it seems like he says it to himself to psych himself out so that he can get the courage,
get the gumption, get whatever he needs to get in him to motivate him to move when he's
in a moment of terror.
He's overwhelmed by what's going on.
He doesn't want to be there.
He'd rather be doing something else, but instead he chooses to be heroic and he uses his father's
dying words, it's time to run Yuma to propel himself forward.
And he even says something about like continuing to move forward into the future, something
along those lines, which I think is excellent and it's beautiful.
And it really gives meaning to his parents death.
And it shows like a, a sophistication and like a complexity to his character that I
didn't see at first and it was not clearly apparent.
And I like that.
I like this kind of humble, soft spoken hero who does what he does because he feels he
has to.
And like, it's not the great burden of Yuma or being Ultraman or whatever, but it's, it's
something, I don't know, more positive and more about life than that, which is just that
he has to keep moving forward.
He wants to propel himself to keep moving forward, like to fulfill his father's dying
wish.
And that means that he's going to fight Kaiju and try to save people.
And it's incredible.
It's beautiful.
I really love it.
So the story, I think, I think I talked about the goodness of the story.
There's a lot of good story stuff going on here.
The world building, the character motivation, the analysis of him, like I cried watching
this a little bit because it was so compelling that I just met his parents and a minute or
two later they're being killed and it moved me.
The music was moving, the kid actor, you know, did a good job.
The parents did a good job, but just the scenario of watching your child die in front of you,
watching your parents die in front of you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It was very striking and it was good.
Really struck an emotional chord with me.
It was beautiful.
So going into speculation now, I think Yuma is dead, or at least he was dead.
And I feel like the forms and the dream and imagination of this hero of light and whatever
that he had might be a sort of like a side effect of the integration between the two
as the ultra work to save and heal Yuma.
Like I almost wonder if after, I guess after the Kaiju was defeated, which I guess did
the ultra like lop off his horn and then that fell over and crush or no, because the Kaiju
had killed his parents.
And then I feel like the horn getting lopped off flew and then it hit and crushed and killed
Yuma.
I think that's what happened.
We didn't get to see it fully happen because why would you want to kill a kid on screen
like that?
But anyway, I feel like that's what happened.
And I think like either that like it actually like some mashed him is supposed to be the
big giant thing smashing little little Yuma.
Anyway, either it smashed him and somehow the ultra was able to save him regardless.
Or the ultra like gave up a bunch of his energy and went and like protected Yuma by merging
with him somehow.
And those three days where he was like, you know, not alive or dead or whatever, or he
was found miraculously alive.
I wonder if the ultra like used a ton of his energy to preserve Yuma, to keep him alive,
to keep him, you know, healthy and well and whatever.
Like think about the exposure for three days.
He was buried in rubble.
Maybe the exposure would protect him from the elements.
I don't know.
But anyway, like to be buried in rubble for three days is insane.
And I just wonder if the ultra somehow saved his life.
But I wonder if he had to give up so much of his energy that he ended up needing to
gestate for like 16 years, because I don't know how many more kaiju have emerged over
the years.
It doesn't feel like a lot have and maybe just a few have here and there every, you
know, X amount of years or whatever.
And maybe people dealt with it however they they have had to.
But it feels like this change is happening now.
And like three months ago in this dream flashback thing we got, the ultra appeared to him and
said like, you know, you and I are one and like we're two halves of a whole.
You know, your your imagination is going to fuel me.
I think that's what's going on here.
And I think that's really interesting.
I think that's really interesting.
Anyway, that's my speculation.
And I think it could be really cool.
Also, anybody who knows the gigabarrier to the shield thingy that he has this double
horn guy had one, too.
It was a little different.
It definitely made me think about AT field, especially because you get to see AT field
versus AT field combat happening.
It's from Evangelion, if you didn't know.
I want to know, did Ultraman have those energy barrier things first or did Evangelion have
it?
Did the original Ultraman have it?
Did a later Ultraman have it?
And then Hideyoshi put it into into Evangelion.
And now they've like brought them back with some of the I think it's more of a heisei
and on ultra thing, but I don't know for sure.
I definitely like the idea of Ultraman having these barriers.
But like the way they were at play, it felt so much like AT field.
It really was interesting to me.
So I want to know if anybody knows what came first, the AT field or the barrier that Ultras
and some Kaiju have, apparently, because I'd be pretty curious to know that.
Anyway, that's pretty much it.
I would like to.
Yeah, I'd like to end the review there.
I'd like to let you know that I'm working on my own Ultraman and took Satsu hero, Henshin
Hero, specifically inspired stories for kids, it's going to be grow bug chronicles.
And I'm working on getting those revised and finished up.
And I'm going to be doing art on those soon.
And we're going to get those published.
It's going to be cool stuff.
Not too long of a book take you a couple hours to read if you read in one sitting, or you
can read one chapter at a time, take you anywhere from five to 15 minutes to read a chapter.
And it's good stuff entertaining.
It's heroic and there's magical bugs that have bright colors and things like that.
And if you're into took Satsu, you should definitely like that stuff anyway.
So I'll let you know when that stuff comes out.
You always look to the website, mjmunoz.com to keep up to date with me on all that stuff.
And until next time, keep being ultra.
I hope you enjoyed that.
Subscribe to keep up with me, like and share to help me reach more people like you and
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Until next time, be well.
This is MJ signing out.
This has been a story over everything production.