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Henshin Inspection presents Going Ultra. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist,

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I'm an analyzer. Join me as I talk about Ultra 724? Huh, return to the north. So,

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a little bit of a shtick there. Yeah, Ultra 724. I'll tell you about why I'm

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watching it and then I'll get back to here at the brick wall and tell you a bit more

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about what I thought about the episode. Richard Star told me about this and I

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went ahead and watched it and I liked a lot so I wanted to go ahead and talk

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about that now. So, in episode 24 of Ultra 7 we get the first appearance of

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Alien Cannon, who is the one who has the gun that controls the machines in

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Blazor 6. Anyway, Blazor 5 and 6, even though you didn't know he was there in 5

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at first. Anyway, so what happens in this one is there is one of the Ultra Guard,

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his name is Shigeru Murashii, I believe. Anyway, there's this thing where his

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sister tries to get him to go to see his mom and there's this conflict between

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him and his mom. They run a farm up in Hokkaido, which I believe is in the

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north because that's the episode's called Return to the North. Anyway, he, so

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anyway, just to clarify something real quick, this is my first exposure to these

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characters. I didn't know anything about Murashii. I didn't know anything about Ultra 7

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other than like Windom comes from it and stuff and I've never watched the show

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before. The actor for Murashii also plays one of the guys from the SSSP in the

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original Ultraman, so his face was familiar to me and I think he's a

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sharpshooter in both shows, which is kind of funny that they would do that when

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they knew that it was the same guy playing two different characters, so

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that's kind of a funny thing. But anyway, I was really stricken by, well, two

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things. One, Alien Cannon was not in the episode as much as I thought they would

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be and we did get to see that there were a few of them in this ship and it was

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hidden in like a antenna tower type thing, so kind of how it was hidden in the

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windmill in this episode of Blazar. And it's a great design. I like basically

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that everything's 100% the same. They could have even pulled the old

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costume and a mask out of mothballs and used it in Blazar, which is really cool.

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So either they faithfully recreated it or they did just that good of a job

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creating it in the first place and they were able to use it, you know, decades

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later, which is really amazing. So anyway, I'm sure they recreated it, but still,

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what I'm saying is the overall design of it is so good and compelling that it's

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cool that they were able to reuse the design basically unchanged. So the more

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important thing to me, though, other than the Alien Cannon, who wasn't in it for all

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that much, is this really important, well, this really well-made emotional story

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because Shigeru, like, doesn't want to go back to the farm. His mom wants him to

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leave behind the Ultra Guard. You know, I'm sure it's partly because, you know,

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what mother wants her son in danger. But she wants him to take on the

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responsibility of running the farm and, you know, taking on that role in the

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family as, you know, she's getting older and passing and whatever. She's not near,

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she's not like in Death's Door a step or anything like that. It's just, that's

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how she was feeling. That's what she wanted to do. So she tries to convince him to go

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with her and he tries to avoid his mom. He tries to avoid her, tries to avoid her.

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Then, because of Alien Cannon, he gets in a situation where he's in a plane, his

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ship, his, you know, Ultra Guard plane, a fighter or whatever. It is set on a

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collision course to crash into a commercial airliner with like 300

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passengers on it, plus the pilots and other crew, and his plane, it's flying and

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it's on its collision course, but the Alien Cannon disables the ejector. He was

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going to self-destruct the plane and eject or eject then self-destruct the

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plane so that it wouldn't crash into the civilians and kill all of them, but he's

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unable to because of what Alien Cannon did. So now he's stuck in this plane.

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There's a ticking clock. The mileage is getting closer and closer between them.

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The time before the self-destruct goes off is getting closer and closer because

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I'm sure they wanted to detonate before it was too close to the, to the, to the

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plane because, you know, it could hurt it and hurt the people in there, and you get

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like this really intense performance of him by himself in the cockpit, and then

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his captain of Ultra Guard calls his mom and has her brought in, and she gets on

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the comms and they're talking to each other, and it's just this really

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interesting, really beautiful interaction or set of interactions between them, and

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I found it super compelling. So I'll try to wrap this up quickly. What was so

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great about this was the performances between the two actors or of the two

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actors because they were on totally different screens, on totally different

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sets, you know, just back and forth between the two of them, and at one point

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he starts laughing because of this interaction that they're having, and he's

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laughing so hard that he's crying, but it might be that he's crying to cover up

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his, or he's laughing to cover up his crying because he's so emotional because

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he thinks he's gonna die and never see his mother again, and they just had kind

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of not creating their action previously, and also, you know, he doesn't want to die.

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So anyway, that was really, really fantastic, and it's just a great episode,

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and here's the thing. The reason I mentioned I didn't really know these

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characters and I don't know Ultra Seven is there's no nostalgia here for me.

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There's nothing pushing me to feel anything about these characters except

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for the episode as it's presented and the work that everybody did on the show.

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The costume design, the set design, the sound guy, the composer, the actors, the

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directors, everybody, the lighting, don't forget about the gaffer. Anyway, all these

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people put all this effort in, and in this 22, 24 minute episode, I really felt

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something genuine from these, you know, characters in this fake show with cheesy

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special effects. Tokusatsu's art, guys. I don't know if people will appreciate that

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Tokusatsu's art, and it just gets me because I'm not saying Tokusatsu is the only way you can get these sorts of things happening altogether,

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where there's an alien, a giant monster, and, you know, silly, not silly, but like kind of funny, battle between, you know,

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Windom and Ultra Seven and like the spectacle and the depth and the heart.

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I'm not saying you can't have both of those in anything or I'm not saying you can only have that in Tokusatsu.

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I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that people just, it's weird to me, it's wild that people don't appreciate how amazing Tokusatsu is.

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If you just kind of look past some of the stuff, if you just, I don't know, and that's the effects are bad because they're not.

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They're not bad. It's just they're, you know, they are what they are. They're at a certain level and they're executed well at that level.

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And like letting that bother you from this beautiful story and these beautiful, like, interactions between these characters and these

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beautiful moments is, it's a shame if you can't see the beauty of Tokusatsu or the beauty in the Tokusatsu shows,

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then I don't understand and I feel bad for you. So anyway, yeah, like this was just like a really great story.

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And the stakes are ridiculously high. This man is literally flying to his death while talking to his mother about how great things

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I think have been and are going to be or whatever. Like they're totally ignoring the reality of what's going on and having this conversation.

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And I almost feel like they would have just kept talking until he crashed into the plane and this woman lost her son and three hundred

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plus innocent lives also were snuffed out because of the machinations of this alien.

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And I don't know, that's beautiful that they would just keep talking and pretend like nothing else is going on.

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And it was really beautiful that the captain had the presence of mind to do that.

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And there was this thing going on about, like, oh, you know, this is personal and, you know, where this is business,

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like we work together as a business type of deal, even though they're not, you know, like selling phones or anything like,

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you know, this is professional and we're going to be professional here at the office and we're not going to let business like personal stuff mix in with it.

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And at the end, the whole team turns out and they tell him like, oh, no, this is personal or this is business.

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You can't bring your personal feelings into it. And the captain sends him to Hokkaido to go patrol.

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And I believe that he has a conversation with his mother. The way it's presented is kind of weird.

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You would think they would have cut to like them having an actual scene together, but it was her like special effects

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composited into the scene, talking to him in like a little window, like he was remembering their conversation.

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So anyway, regardless, that doesn't matter. Like that technical aspect doesn't matter.

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But what doesn't matter is that like this group of strangers and show or this group that has,

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you know, their own dynamics and everything that they've been through together over the course of 23 episodes now has like an established way to behave with each other.

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And I was able to absorb that through this one episode, through a couple of key scenes.

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And just it was amazingly powerful. It was a beautiful episode. That's that's all I have to say about it.

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So and I think I've said that maybe six times now. So let's let's go ahead and end the episode.

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But I do want you to take the time to go on Tubi or wherever else you're going to look for it, Pluto, whatever,

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Shell Factory and watch this episode and tell me what you think about it and tell me don't you think about it?

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I want to know good, bad or different.

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I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me.

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Like and share to help me reach more people like you and go to MJMunoz.com to find your next favorite thing.

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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.

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Until next time, be well. This is MJ signing out.

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This has been a story over everything production.