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 11 ESCAPE.
So here we go. The first few moments of 11 definitely helped me feel better
about episode 10, which I obviously complained about in the last review. What
a relief. Like I said before, these people are not amateurs. They know what
they're doing. They've written successful and entertaining Ultraman
stories before, stories that I've liked, and it's good to see that it's going...
They're doing something. They're going somewhere with this. It's not just random
weirdness. So I like that Gento isn't even sure himself how they should deal
with Blazar. I think Yasunobu asks, what should we do if Blazar attacks? And he
says, play it by ear. And he just walks away. Captain Haruno is a scary guy. Both
the actor and the voice actor are doing good work. The actor is Mayasa, yes, Mayasa
Kato, and Keith Silverstein is providing the voice and the English dub. And like
I said, I think they both do a really good job. He's got a really good
presence, great face, great like physicality to him. But then also
Silverstein's voice for him is like spot-on. The other guy, like his
English voice is appropriate for the character, but it's not so great. And
that's, I guess, I guess it's Haruno's superior. So I didn't like his
performance as well, at least on the voice side, but I definitely like
Silverstein's for Haruno. So that's a good thing, I guess. So Earth-Grun running
away is simultaneously silly and cute and cool. Like it's cool that the Kaiju
was like so powerful and such a threat that Earth-Grun had to run away, but also
just like the way he was running away was like pretty adorable. So I really
liked that. And you know, I like the the mix of weird things in my tokusatsu.
That's what makes it fun. I especially love how they used the building in the
foreground to switch it from running to flying. I just got a great idea for
another short video to do. We'll see if I do it. It has to do with Guyver again.
Guyver 2 Dark Hero. Anyway, so there's great effects work going on there.
And it's magical. Like it's magical the fact that it's so cute with him running.
And it's also magical that they use that cute run into a fly of like, oh no, I'm
really dangerous. So he flies, but it's happening behind a building. So you can't
see as he's passing through the transition to a different model or to a
CGI or whatever they're doing. So you know, or he's on wires, whatever it is.
But it's really cool and I like what they're doing.
Blazor blocking with his feet is so cool. I'm pretty sure I made it the, like one
of the featured images on the thumbnail, because it's just so cool. It's
like an amazing thing to think about doing. And I haven't really seen it done much.
I haven't really seen it done much. I can think there's like a, there's like pairing
kicks in, again, in Guyver 2 Dark. Why am I doing with Guyver 2 Dark so much? Anyway, in
Guyver 2 Dark Hero, there's like these pairing kicks that these two Guyvers do
against each other, which is really fun. And let me just see. Okay, yeah. So getting
back to Blazor and talking about this actual show, I'm gonna say it like this.
Bruce Campbell and Jim Carrey, among others, have done wonderful two minds in
one body performances. See Dead by Dawn and Liar Liar if you want to know what I'm
talking about. And this performance by Hideyoshi Iwata, who's the suit actor for
Ultraman Blazor and Zed and a bunch of others since Nexus, I believe. He's doing
a great job. It's one of the great performances, I believe, of a suit actor
doing multiple things. I thought about mentioning Takara Sato from Kenshin but
more Deno, but I think that's different. I haven't seen enough of Deno to know if
he's switching between the two different characters or not, but definitely here
Iwata is portraying both Gento and Blazor as they're fighting with each
other and he's pulling, I think Gento's pulling him away from the battle and
things like that, and it's really interesting what's going on there. It
really felt like Gento and Blazor were at odds with each other and struggling to
figure out how to talk to each other and how to communicate and how to do this,
you know, battle. And it felt like, like I kept thinking like, oh that's Gento
acting, oh that's Blazor, like not acting like, you know, I'm doing a performance,
you know. That's supposed to be the skull hamlet. Anyway, so like I felt like there
were two characters inhabiting the same body, taking on different actions. I
really felt that as I watched the episode and it was a lot of fun. It was
really cool to see. So fantastic performance by Iwata. Okay, so earlier in
the episode they mentioned that this new meteor kaiju, which is a space kaiju and
it's called Kabalga, he could be especially bad for Earth's ecology. I
want to know are they just saying that or are we going to see more on that?
Maybe in the next episode we'll see how like an Earth, how the Earth can be
negatively affected by a space kaiju. I guess it's like an invasive species, it
can cause issues, but like what are those issues? I don't really know. I hope we see
more on that in the next episode. This is a two-parter so I don't want to like
really stretch out my description of the story or my thoughts on the story
because I pretty much, I wrote a bunch of notes and I read through all of them so
that's pretty much all I have to say. I like this episode a lot and I'm looking
forward to see where it goes and how Gento and Blazar solve their
differences or get on the same page with each other or whatever. Yeah, that's
about it. So until next time folks, take care. Go to mjwinyos.com, check out
my book work going on. I'm writing tokusatsu inspired books and I'm working
on finishing and finalizing a book to release that is inspired by Ultraman
and other things and I hope you check that out. I hope you look into that. In the
show notes there's a link to a story that's very much inspired by Ultraman
that has a little girl saving, for now it's saving her parents, and she does
that by ultimately at the end conquering her fear, overcoming her fear, and then
transforming into a giant of light to defeat the enemy. And I believe it is
literally distinct from Ultraman but it's enough in the spirit of Ultraman
that people who like Ultraman will dig it. And I think it's a good story on its own
right. I think it's a good story for kids and that's really all I have to say
about that. So check out my continuing arc coverage and my continuing Blazar
coverage and I want you to be aware of all the other stuff I'm doing and I'll
bring it up at a later date. Until next time, take care, be well, be Ultra. I hope
you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me, like and share to help me reach
more people like you, and go to MJMunoz.com to find your next favorite
thing. 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.