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 9, Planet of Music.
So, there's a lot to say about this one.
Music saved the world, and that's pretty crazy.
Last episode I asked the question is...
Well, I talked about the fact that 7 and 8 were asked in the episode, or the science fiction tech question,
does humanity deserve to be saved?
And I think that the answer is yes, and I think that this episode is an answer to that previous two-parter.
And I think it's really interesting because...
These aliens who were sent to destroy Earth turned out they didn't want to,
and the catalyst for that was the discovery of music.
They were sent here 60 years ago, which is super cool because it does an Ultra cue, and that's fantastic.
Anyway, they were sent here 60 years ago, and they were intending on destroying the planet.
They were all set, they put their phones into motion, they called the meteor from far away,
and it took the kids to get here, I guess.
And the plan was for them to just go ahead and use their alien technology to control this thing,
and have it destroy the Earth, I guess.
And because they fell in love with music, they spent all their time until they absolutely had to do their duty playing music.
And if you watch the Ultra Cue episodes that relate to this, there's one more that relates to it than the other,
because it gives more specifics on the culture, and you actually see these aliens.
But if you watch that one, you see that when those aliens fail, they are killed,
and I guess the ship that dropped them off that's hiding wherever it goes off on its own is, I guess, the idea?
Anyways, that's a little vague, but basically, if they fail on their mission, they are killed.
So it's not like you've given them a chance to run at this.
There's no runback with these aliens.
So, anyway, so that kind of syncs for them.
But it seems to me like, because that was the reality for them, they waited and waited and waited,
and they just loved playing music, and they did it as a, I don't know, not a location,
like it wasn't really their job, or maybe, I don't know, not like they had a job,
it doesn't look like they really aged between the 60s and now.
Maybe the lead guy got a little grayer, but then it was black and white,
and then the images where you saw him in the past, I don't know, maybe they blackened his hair a little bit,
or they grayed it, I'm not sure.
But regardless, what I'm saying is, they wanted to delay destroying Earth as long as possible,
and by the end of the episode, you see that their hearts really weren't in it.
They just wanted to keep playing music because it was so beautiful to them.
And while they have sound, and they have manipulation of machinery or whatever through sounds,
they didn't really hold music as something, or they didn't really have an understanding of music,
and they ended up getting it, and that's what leads them,
that's what leads to the combination in this episode of everything that's going on, which is really interesting.
So, yeah, that's a little bit of a mess, but there's definitely something deep going on here,
there's something I really like going on here, and I find it to be very, very interesting.
Uh...
...
Yeah, and something that I wrote down in my notes is that, you know, humanity,
I believe we were gifted with music, I believe we were blessed with the gift of music,
I don't know if it's something that we discovered or made up on our own,
and I think it's really, music is wonderful, music does have a great power to it,
and a lot of wonderful things come about through music,
and it's really interesting because you get to see the humanity of these aliens through their exposure to music,
and you get to see how music is this one beautiful thing that we have,
or it's one of the beautiful things that we have that comes from man,
and that kind of makes somebody think twice about destroying the entire Earth,
which is pretty cool, if you ask me.
So anyway, um...
I'm confused, so that's all the really good stuff, but this is just kind of some random notes now.
Like, I don't understand why Blazar took control of Gento,
I don't understand why he drank that juice,
I suspect that's a seed for another Yasumobu focused episode later on,
or maybe even Teruaki, maybe Teruaki's family grows these vegetables,
and these vegetables have trace elements of something in them from something,
and he's been sharing that juice with Yasumobu,
so it's more about the vegetables being affected, so it's about his farm,
so it could be Teruaki episode, or it could be about Yasumobu drinking this vegetable juice for whatever,
as a sleep substitute, or I don't know why he's drinking it, but anyway, that's kind of weird.
This was an Henri focused episode, right?
But it kind of wasn't an Henri focused episode, and I found that a little bit strange,
and yeah, I mean, she was the one who made things happen, ultimately,
but it just, I don't know, it could have been more about her, it was almost more about these guys, which is interesting.
I like that Garamon did evolve to threatening,
no weapons worked too well against him, and he was really trouncing Blazar, which was great,
and I like things like Blazar was able to hit his stomach, and it did pretty decent,
but when he was trying to hit his back, it didn't work so well. Before then, Earthgeron was unable to really do much against the armor,
the meteorite-like armor that he has all over his back, and one of the spikes actually impaled Earthgeron and almost killed Yasumobu,
so that was kind of interesting, and it made me think about, from the Ultra-Q episode, is this Tilsenite, I believe is the name of it, this material, this...
So in the Ultra-Q episode, there was this little meteorite made of Tilsenite, and they couldn't do anything against this metal,
so they ended up putting it basically in a Faraday cage to stop it from transmitting signals to the same Kaiju, the Garamon, and yeah, that was pretty interesting.
But yeah, Garamon in Ultra-Q looked not so great, he didn't have the greatest showing as a Kaiju,
and it's a neat design over here, his actions and things like that were kind of weird,
and he's supposed to be a robot, but it's so very organic-looking, it's very strange, and in this they just roll with him being a robot even more,
and they say, oh, his heat signals show that he's a robot, but definitely the mobility of the suit and the performance that they got out of it,
it was definitely a scarier thing, and it was more threatening, and that was really good,
and I really like that Blazor even bashed his prism lance thing against it, and it broke it, and he's just like, oh, well, that didn't work too well,
and then he proceeded to get his butt kicked for a little bit until the music was stopped by your girl Henri shooting the cello man,
and that was kind of crazy, that was kind of crazy, which I'll get back to that in a minute.
So the Ultra-Q connections were great, I want to thank Cedric Schar again for pointing me to Ultra-Q,
the theme song from Ultra-Q was really cool, and I watched the two episodes, these two episodes with Garamon in them,
and I didn't tell him this, but I was like, yeah, I really like these, these are so great, the Ultra-Q music was definitely cool,
and I mentioned to him that the theme song was really cool, and I also liked the actor who played the alien in the, I think it was episode 16,
I liked him a lot, which I think is like Garamon Strikes Back or something like that, let's see,
but yeah, the theme song from Ultra-Q is super cool, and it was used to an amazing effect here,
and this like new different version of it, or this new take on it, or playing parts of it that we haven't heard before,
just from the TV size opening, was really interesting, and it was great, it felt creepy, it felt weird,
seeing the band start to play it, the quartet start to play it, was really cool, it felt like something alien and sinister,
and then it kind of turned into something beautiful too, and it kind of, it went here and there, and it was just, it was really interesting, I really love that.
Speaking of the alien quartet, it's interesting, like they have very long lives it seems, because they've been here since the 60s,
they have a different scale of time, an inhuman scale of time, they're these beings who live for so long that it must change their perspective on things,
they've been waiting decades, and they've just been living lives appreciating playing music for all this time,
until they have this thing to do or else they'll be killed by their superiors or whatever, and that's pretty interesting.
I like this idea of a cold patience, they have a high time preference, they can wait a long time for things to happen,
which is a quality human should take more, because rushing causes us to make mistakes, but anyway.
Another connection to Ultra Q is the meteor fall, it looked identical, I wonder how, like was it 99% the same effect, was it 80% the same effect,
I don't know, did they just digitally composite up the wires, I'm not sure, but it looked really cool,
and it looked almost exactly like the same type of shot with the meteorite falling, which is cool, and the meteorite opening as well, that was really great.
It was funny, they're at an empty concert hall, and that should bother me, but it doesn't, because it doesn't matter,
the details of the realism of it don't matter, because what it's about is André having this conversation with these guys,
and them having their last concert at this concert hall, and that's all that really matters,
and I thought it was kind of hilarious that André had the most American reaction possible to dealing with these guys,
and I was thinking, why didn't you just shoot the guy, that's the way to solve this, right?
And that's the most American solution I can come up with, and then that's what she does, so that's kind of interesting.
It's also interesting that they wanted her to win, and to stop them, and I don't know, it's really interesting, what do you think of this episode?
Thank you for watching!