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

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Join me as I talk about Ultraman Blazar, Episode 20, Night of Insects Chirping.

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So let me just look real quick, I'm not gonna read the synopsis even though I'm kind of sometimes

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including them and sometimes not in the show notes, but anyway. Yeah, so this was an interesting

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episode. It was a little bit more of a one-off episode. I will remind you if you don't know,

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or I'll say just in case you don't know, whether I'm reminding you or I'm telling you for the

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first time, I want to let you know that I was very disappointed with Episode 19 of Blazar. It just

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felt totally off to me. It felt like the win was unearned and it felt cheap and it felt like a big

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toy commercial. I made a short about that and pretty much slamming it for being an empty,

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soulless toy commercial. And in summation, Blazar has fallen really far, but it's starting to tumble

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down and that's really sad because I love the suit and I love the idea of it and I love the cast. I

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love Johnny Young Bosch being the voice for Gento. Like there's a lot good going on here and it's

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just, it's too bad. It's too bad. So anyway, this episode, it's interesting. It's a little bit of

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a complaint. So Sajik Sura told me about Ultraman, or Ultra Seven, Episode 24 or something like that,

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Return to the North. And he talked about how that was referenced in a previous episode and, or it was

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two episodes. It was the, it was the Alien Cannon episode, that's what it was. And it was referenced

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there and it's kind of referenced again here. So it was a great episode. I fully admit that, but it

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seems really strange to me that, let me see who this is. It seems really strange to me that they,

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the creative team would go back and once again reference this episode. Let me see if the Wiki

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notes anything about that specifically. But yeah, in that episode, the guy goes home and he is asked

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to, the guy, Teraki in this case, goes home because his father has collapsed. In Return to the North,

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the Sharpshooter guy from whatever the Ultra Seven team is called, sorry, I don't know, I only

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watched the couple episodes of the show, he goes back because his mother collapsed and it's his

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sister who tells him that his mother collapsed and you got to come home now. And in this, it's his

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brother, I think it's his brother, who tells him you got to come home because dad collapsed. And

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it's really strange. It's really strange because you have that connection and it kind of doesn't

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make sense to go ahead and do that. And I don't know why they chose to reference that episode

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again. You have the interaction between father and son as opposed to son or mother and son,

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where they're talking about the career and like they're even bringing up like a wedding or marriage

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profiles to him and Teraki's like, I'm not interested in getting married. And that was the whole thing,

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the mom wanted her son to get married so that he can come and take over the farm and live a

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peaceful life. And Teraki says, I can't do that until we've got too many kaiju to fight. And his

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dad says, well, are you ever going to defeat the kaiju? And it's very much like a very similar vibe,

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very much a similar feeling to the mother in that episode of, I'm just going to pull it up,

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Ultra Seven, episode 24. Ultra Seven. Oh yeah, I did a whole review on it in fact. So let me see if I

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linked to it in that, because I'm looking at my own notes, which are on jimwindows.com. So I

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should probably link this episode to this because it's totally connected to each other. And it just

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seems really weird that you would do that. Now I praised that episode because it had a very touching

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moment for the characters and it had a very touching, yeah, that's right. So this was referenced in,

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yeah, it's the Alien Cannon episode. That's the important thing for you to know. But yeah,

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it's almost the exact same scenario. Let me pause this real quick. Yeah, when Fururashi was on the

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way returning to Hokkaido because he received false report that his mother was ill, a patrol jet of

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defense force crashed with a civilian. So that part's not true, but this confrontation between

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mother, parent and child about what they're doing with their life and how they're going about things,

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it's still there. And it's really frustrating because why would you be revisiting that when

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you've already revisited it? Now I'm revisiting the argument against revisiting it, so I'll try

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to stop. But it's really frustrating because while that was a great episode, having two

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homages to a single episode in one season of a show, I don't think is a good idea. If you wanted

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to expand that fantastic episode into a whole season, I could kind of see you doing that

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because you'd have to, 24, 25 episodes, and you'd have to take chances or take different

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routes and you'd have to really expand and do something else so that it's not just the same

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thing every single episode, because that would be bad. And of course these people would avoid that,

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so that's really interesting to me. I'm trying to figure out real quick, so that was... So how am

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I going to figure this out? So I'll go back in here. I want to say it was episode five or six

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of Blazar just to see... Oh yes, the invading aura, exactly. So the invading aura was written by,

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let's see, drum roll, by Jun Tsujigata. Interesting. Written by Jun Tsujigata and the screenwriter

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for this episode, Night of Dripping Insects, is actually Toshizo Nomoto. So two different people,

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and they're referencing the same thing in the same series. I don't know how the show runner

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let that happen. It seems like a really strange choice, and it seems... I mean, I think it's a bad

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idea. I've been criticizing this whole time, so I'm definitely against it, and I just wonder

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what really happened there. Aside from that though, it was an interesting episode. Teruaki

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is an interesting character. He's an interesting balance of things, different character traits,

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and I don't really have my head fully wrapped around who he is and what he is as a character,

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but something I love from his interaction with his dad, which yes, I criticized doing it again,

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but it's because the setup was almost the same. Had it been different, which they easily could

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have made it different, it would have been fine. He tells his dad that the way I fight

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and my involvement with the science patrol, what I do with my life, is inspired by you. It's because

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of you. The way that you are, the way that you've been with this farm and with this family and with

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whatever endeavors that I've observed through my life, that is the attitude and the demeanor and

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the manner with which I proceed in my life. And I'm taking a different path from you, dad,

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but I'm walking in your footsteps, essentially. I'm walking the same way. And that was really

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touching and really moving. There was this beautiful moment at the end of the episode where

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his dad's hacking away at the soil and he gets in on his hands and knees and he picks up the dirt

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and he says, this is the earth or this is the ground that my son protected. And it was really

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cool. But what's interesting about Teruaki is that he is like a thoughtful person. He was kind of

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sympathetic to the kaiju. In the Nijikazaki episode, he wanted to talk to the professor and

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he didn't want to kill the professor unless he had to. And he sees that there's some sort of

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complicated relationship that people have with kaiju. And you get to see that in this episode

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because he's a thoughtful, clever, interesting person who does what he has to and goes hard at

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what he believes is the right thing to do, I guess you could say. And the interesting thing

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about that is what he ends up doing towards the end of the episode is he ends up setting things

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up so that the kaiju, these bug kaiju, are all massacred. He figures out that he can manipulate

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them by using the fact that they're attracted by a certain call or sound to get them all...

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He uses it tactically in the battle to have... He has Emi broadcast it and he diverts the kaiju

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over here so they can do something. But then he gets C4, he gets a couple bricks of C4,

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and he straps this device that he... Phone or whatever it was to capture the sound. And he's

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playing the sound over and over again. And he throws it at this giant egg that's full of

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larvae that are going to come out and it attracts all these other larvae to it because it's a

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distress call so that they know to go protect the... Whatever it is that they're protecting,

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the larvae, I guess. It summons them. So anyway, he throws it at them. And before he does that,

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he says, I'm sorry. Or I think that's exactly his line, I'm sorry. And he throws the thing and it

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blows up the whole egg sac, all the larvae in there, and then all the ones that are attracted

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to it as well. So he recognizes the fact that kaiju are living, breathing creatures, and he doesn't

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just want to mercilessly massacre them for no good reason. If they can be allowed to live,

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he will allow them to live. And it's just a really interesting character. But then again,

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he's like a farmer, right? He comes from this kind of family and there's varmints and pests that hurt

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your crops or whatever. So he's probably used to dealing with those in an interesting, nuanced way.

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And I like it because he's not like a bleeding heart for kaiju, but he's also not like brutally

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cold and just like going to massacre all of them, wipe them all out. He treats them like they're

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a real part of the world and has an interesting and nuanced approach to them, which I really

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enjoyed seeing. And there were funny bits with the whole play that they have to do about how to...

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What to do when you see a kaiju and all that stuff. And that's funny, but not really worth

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mentioning at this time because I want to keep it short. But I liked the episode a lot. There's a

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big improvement over episode 19 and the team being like come together and working and being clever

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and like Earth Gurun got paced down by its mucus from the insect and so did Blazar. And he was in

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big trouble and he really tried to fight and he was moving around a lot. And the way the action

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worked out was a lot better. I don't even know, I don't even remember now if he summoned his

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bird thingy, probably with the fire gauntlet thing to finish off the kaiju at the end or not,

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which was a zuka something or other. No, I don't have it. I lost it. It's okay. But yeah, oh no,

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here we go. The kaiju is called... Who's that kaiju? It's... Oh, Zugu gun. That's what it's Zugu gun.

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Anyway, oh yeah, he does use the the Fjordrun armor. And anyway, just whatever. It's fine.

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Like now that he has it, him using it isn't going to bother me too much, but the way he got it

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bothers me. But I like how he used it just at the very end and how clever and tactical he was. Or

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not tactical, just like he got through most of the fight on his own and he only needed the stuff at

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the end to like free himself. He could have killed the kaiju any other way. They're just doing it to

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promote the toy or whatever. And it didn't feel as hollow because like he earned everything else in

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the victory. It was just the finisher that was done with the toy and whatever. I'm over that.

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But I actually like this episode a lot. I thought it was a very good one. Hopefully they don't get

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any less in quality than this one. Anyway, that's all I have to say. Check out my... I'm still slowly

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working towards writing and getting published my tokusatsu inspired, Ultramanish inspired thing

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with magical bugs battling monsters. And I'm writing a short story that I'm submitting. I

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wrote two short stories. One is a noir superhero and one is a fantasy with dragons actually,

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and a guy slaying a dragon. And then those are submitted. I don't know if those have been accepted

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or not. We'll see in a week or so. And then I also have a story that I'm writing. It's a wild...

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It's Weird West for Rankin to repress. Weird West 2. It's a western that has my magical bugs

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battling monsters in it in the Old West. And I'm wondering how that's going to come out. And I

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think that should be interesting. So anyway, I'll let you know if that gets released, if it's going

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to be published or not. And if it doesn't, hopefully it is, I'll go ahead and release the thing about it.

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I know it's not... Well, it's tangentially related to Ultraman, but you might like it. So I'll

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definitely let you know when that's out available for you to read, whether it's for free or through...

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I'll let you know when it's available to read and you can check that out as well as looking forward

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to the rest of my stuff. So anyway, until next time folks, take care, be well, and be Ultra.

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I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me. Like and share to help me reach more people

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like you. And go to MJMunoz.com to find your next favorite thing. And don't forget to let your

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voice be heard. Stories are always better when you're part of the conversation. Until next time,

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be well. This is MJ signing out. This has been a Story Over Everything production.