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 Arc Episode 5, Ocean on the
Mountain Ridge. So I have some questions about this episode, or really some
statements, which is this mostly. Something feels unfinished about this
episode. It almost felt like there was something sinister going on with the
dinosaur expert, and I want to know if anybody else felt that. Either that or
the way that Hiroshi, the captain of Skip, interacted with him. It was
like he was acting too intense when he was watching him on the TV. It
didn't seem like, now that we know what happened, and of course the episode
didn't end their lives, that he was just thinking about the fact that he wanted
to go into the research, the Kaiju fossil research, or he got turned down
by his sensei, and he's like, oh no that can't be a real fossil of a dinosaur or
something. And they didn't know about Kaiju, because Kaiju Day happened ten
years ago, or 14 years ago, and ten years ago Skip was born, and he joined it. But
he was in school, and he had made this discovery at this Hoshimoto City, or this
mountaintop. Captain Hiroshi made that discovery more than 14 years
ago, before the Kaiju came. I'm not sure what was being said by that. I'm not
sure where that was supposed to be going, but it almost felt like he was
heartbroken or distraught, or like his life was ruined because he didn't get to
be a paleontologist, and he didn't get credit for discovering this thing.
Maybe it's because now the professor is giving credit for discovering
this thing, this giant, I guess I think it's
a Livyagera skull fossil that they find. I'm pretty sure that the
image goes by so quick it was hard to tell honestly what it was.
I can pull it up right now and see. As long as it's quiet.
Yeah, so I'm not exactly sure what was going on there, but it felt like it was
really intense, or like something really bad had happened, and things were really
wrong, and I was a little confused by that. So that's kind of weird.
It's kind of weird. So a little unfortunate, but I don't know. Maybe it's
fine. And let me see. Here's the official channel, here's videos, here's episode 5.
It's before the credits. Let's see if... Let's see. I'm scanning through. So yeah,
Captain Orochi's looking real sad and real serious. Okay, so it's the flooding
that happens very quickly, and that we don't get to see very well, but yeah we
do basically get to see the skull of the thing shown on TV, a photo of
Livajira fossil, which is why he calls it Livajira later. I was thinking, why did he come up
with the name all of a sudden on the spot? But he didn't. He actually knew that.
So it's the Daiko Mountain Ridge by the way, if that matters. So anyway, that's
kind of interesting. So yeah, you see the Livajira skull, and huh, very interesting.
Very interesting. Huh, anyway, so moving on. Moving on, getting back to my notes. I
found all that very interesting, and I felt like there was something undone
there, unsaid, unfinished, but I don't know. You tell me if you think I'm crazy, if
I'm like misreading the episode. I don't know. Anyway, okay, so the kaiju was very
cool. Livajira is great. It's got a great design. I love the name. It comes from
the Hebrew for Leviathan and the Japanese for whale. So Godzilla or Gojira is a
combination of gorilla and a whale, and this kaiju, Livajira, is a Leviathan whale.
Basically, that would be the translation of it, and that's neat because Leviathan or
Leviathan, as it's called in Hebrew, is likely the oldest kaiju in world history,
which I think is pretty cool. So yeah, if you don't know Leviathan from the Bible,
it's mentioned in the book of Job and Psalms, and I'm not sure where else,
but it's this giant water creature, sea serpent, potentially, maybe. We don't
really know. The details are pretty slim on it, but anyway, that's, you know, it's
there, so it's pretty cool that they called it that, and I appreciate the
reference, especially super I haven't been a Catholic. It's nice to see biblical
references in here. Somewhere like Belial is also a biblical reference that comes
from Psalms as well. So let's see. Oh, I like arcing the kaiju with the tree.
That was a lot of fun, and his imagination brain blast thing was simple
and fun, and I guess he used the barrier to disrupt the bubble shield, I think, or
like the the bubble net, the cloud that Livagere was making around him that Art
couldn't see through, but Livagere could see through the sonar. He like displaced
that somehow, and then he ended up finding him and corking him with the tree,
which was pretty great. That's me being Art calling the Livagere and then
shoving the tree down his spout, I guess. So anyway, I liked how the underwater battle was done.
It balanced clever effects, worked with cool action, and took advantage of the
setting. Like I said, to have him be unable to see and have Livagere be able
to see with the echo location, but you know they used the fact that there was
water and it could be distorted more easily than air, for example. If he was
like, I guess he was like a smoke emitting monster, he could, or a fog
emitting monster, he could do that, but he wasn't, and that's not where they were.
They were under the water, so they used that setting well, and I think that was
pretty cool. This concept of wings of imagination is neat. It's a neat
connection and a way to make ARK be the thing that inspires imagination in kids
as well as showing gratitude towards previous shows and stories that have
done the same. So what do we mean by that? So also SuperEye has this whole
imagination thing. They've had the Suwarae imagination with a little
bing, and also now they're saying like fantasy, imagination, and something else.
So they're using that in a lot of their marketing, and I feel like ARK is
definitely trying to capitalize on that marketing, which is something I've
mentioned before, but I would imagine that they're saying things like the
original Ultraman or Ultra Q or Godzilla, or like there's other things out there
that have made, like SuperEye, the story goes, that he would climb up into trees
as a kid, as he's SuperEye, and like look at the, I don't know if you would look at the
planes flying and imagine stuff, imagine he was flying, or if he would just look up in
the sky and imagine, he had some sort of plane fascination he would use his
imagination to have fun as a kid climbing up in trees and looking up at
the sky and stuff. And like that's, I think the idea is that's what part of what
drove his creativity and his desire to do these sorts of things and let him
his career working in Tokusatsu, you know, working on Godzilla and other
TOHO products, and then finally, you know, his own thing with Ultraman
and such, or Ultra Q and Ultraman. But anyway, I think like, it's almost like
this guy's homaging like, you know, for Americans, Mr. Rogers, or something like
that, because he talked about imagination too, but like it's homaging that and
it's saying like, yeah, but we're also that thing for this generation, the
current kids who are watching, and I think that's pretty cool, and I like the
idea that, you know, Ark looks at the situation is like, I'm gonna figure this
out, and then he does, you know, use his imagination to get out of sticky
situations, and that's exactly what we should be teaching kids to do, and you
know, if this show helps some kids with that, that's great, it's wonderful, and it
should, you know, it should inspire and it should compel kids on, and not just to be,
you know, sitting there consuming the show. They should be doing something with
it after they've taken it in, right? Let me see. Okay, so as an aside, do they
cast to write, or do they write hoping to pull in certain cast members? Like, do
they write the script thinking we want to get the guy who played a bari red, or do
they cast a bari red, and then they're like, you know, we should do a story
around him. So Kuichiro Onishi plays Hiroshi Ban here in the show, which is the
skip captain, but he also portrayed Avarad, who is called Ryuga Hakua in
Avarad. I've never watched Avarad, I don't know. And so he mentions something about being a dinosaur
kid to our guy, to Yuma, and you know, therefore he was a fan of the
professor, and then he went to go work for him when he got older, and I'm just
thinking like, how does it work? Did they cast him, and then they said we'll make a
story around him, or did they write this story with this character and think,
let's hope we can get Kuichiro Onishi because he played this character, and he's
also been in previous Ultraman stuff as well, I believe, at least one other
Ultraman show as another character. So I don't know, it's just kind of interesting, and
I don't know the question on that, and if you know, I'd love for you to tell me, but
if not, that's okay. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so until next time folks,
take care, and be Ultra. I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me.
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Until next time, be well. This is MJ signing out. This has been a Story Over Everything production.