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 20, Night of Insects Chirping.
So let me just look real quick, I'm not gonna read the synopsis even though I'm kind of sometimes
including them and sometimes not in the show notes, but anyway. Yeah, so this was an interesting
episode. It was a little bit more of a one-off episode. I will remind you if you don't know,
or I'll say just in case you don't know, whether I'm reminding you or I'm telling you for the
first time, I want to let you know that I was very disappointed with Episode 19 of Blazar. It just
felt totally off to me. It felt like the win was unearned and it felt cheap and it felt like a big
toy commercial. I made a short about that and pretty much slamming it for being an empty,
soulless toy commercial. And in summation, Blazar has fallen really far, but it's starting to tumble
down and that's really sad because I love the suit and I love the idea of it and I love the cast. I
love Johnny Young Bosch being the voice for Gento. Like there's a lot good going on here and it's
just, it's too bad. It's too bad. So anyway, this episode, it's interesting. It's a little bit of
a complaint. So Sajik Sura told me about Ultraman, or Ultra Seven, Episode 24 or something like that,
Return to the North. And he talked about how that was referenced in a previous episode and, or it was
two episodes. It was the, it was the Alien Cannon episode, that's what it was. And it was referenced
there and it's kind of referenced again here. So it was a great episode. I fully admit that, but it
seems really strange to me that, let me see who this is. It seems really strange to me that they,
the creative team would go back and once again reference this episode. Let me see if the Wiki
notes anything about that specifically. But yeah, in that episode, the guy goes home and he is asked
to, the guy, Teraki in this case, goes home because his father has collapsed. In Return to the North,
the Sharpshooter guy from whatever the Ultra Seven team is called, sorry, I don't know, I only
watched the couple episodes of the show, he goes back because his mother collapsed and it's his
sister who tells him that his mother collapsed and you got to come home now. And in this, it's his
brother, I think it's his brother, who tells him you got to come home because dad collapsed. And
it's really strange. It's really strange because you have that connection and it kind of doesn't
make sense to go ahead and do that. And I don't know why they chose to reference that episode
again. You have the interaction between father and son as opposed to son or mother and son,
where they're talking about the career and like they're even bringing up like a wedding or marriage
profiles to him and Teraki's like, I'm not interested in getting married. And that was the whole thing,
the mom wanted her son to get married so that he can come and take over the farm and live a
peaceful life. And Teraki says, I can't do that until we've got too many kaiju to fight. And his
dad says, well, are you ever going to defeat the kaiju? And it's very much like a very similar vibe,
very much a similar feeling to the mother in that episode of, I'm just going to pull it up,
Ultra Seven, episode 24. Ultra Seven. Oh yeah, I did a whole review on it in fact. So let me see if I
linked to it in that, because I'm looking at my own notes, which are on jimwindows.com. So I
should probably link this episode to this because it's totally connected to each other. And it just
seems really weird that you would do that. Now I praised that episode because it had a very touching
moment for the characters and it had a very touching, yeah, that's right. So this was referenced in,
yeah, it's the Alien Cannon episode. That's the important thing for you to know. But yeah,
it's almost the exact same scenario. Let me pause this real quick. Yeah, when Fururashi was on the
way returning to Hokkaido because he received false report that his mother was ill, a patrol jet of
defense force crashed with a civilian. So that part's not true, but this confrontation between
mother, parent and child about what they're doing with their life and how they're going about things,
it's still there. And it's really frustrating because why would you be revisiting that when
you've already revisited it? Now I'm revisiting the argument against revisiting it, so I'll try
to stop. But it's really frustrating because while that was a great episode, having two
homages to a single episode in one season of a show, I don't think is a good idea. If you wanted
to expand that fantastic episode into a whole season, I could kind of see you doing that
because you'd have to, 24, 25 episodes, and you'd have to take chances or take different
routes and you'd have to really expand and do something else so that it's not just the same
thing every single episode, because that would be bad. And of course these people would avoid that,
so that's really interesting to me. I'm trying to figure out real quick, so that was... So how am
I going to figure this out? So I'll go back in here. I want to say it was episode five or six
of Blazar just to see... Oh yes, the invading aura, exactly. So the invading aura was written by,
let's see, drum roll, by Jun Tsujigata. Interesting. Written by Jun Tsujigata and the screenwriter
for this episode, Night of Dripping Insects, is actually Toshizo Nomoto. So two different people,
and they're referencing the same thing in the same series. I don't know how the show runner
let that happen. It seems like a really strange choice, and it seems... I mean, I think it's a bad
idea. I've been criticizing this whole time, so I'm definitely against it, and I just wonder
what really happened there. Aside from that though, it was an interesting episode. Teruaki
is an interesting character. He's an interesting balance of things, different character traits,
and I don't really have my head fully wrapped around who he is and what he is as a character,
but something I love from his interaction with his dad, which yes, I criticized doing it again,
but it's because the setup was almost the same. Had it been different, which they easily could
have made it different, it would have been fine. He tells his dad that the way I fight
and my involvement with the science patrol, what I do with my life, is inspired by you. It's because
of you. The way that you are, the way that you've been with this farm and with this family and with
whatever endeavors that I've observed through my life, that is the attitude and the demeanor and
the manner with which I proceed in my life. And I'm taking a different path from you, dad,
but I'm walking in your footsteps, essentially. I'm walking the same way. And that was really
touching and really moving. There was this beautiful moment at the end of the episode where
his dad's hacking away at the soil and he gets in on his hands and knees and he picks up the dirt
and he says, this is the earth or this is the ground that my son protected. And it was really
cool. But what's interesting about Teruaki is that he is like a thoughtful person. He was kind of
sympathetic to the kaiju. In the Nijikazaki episode, he wanted to talk to the professor and
he didn't want to kill the professor unless he had to. And he sees that there's some sort of
complicated relationship that people have with kaiju. And you get to see that in this episode
because he's a thoughtful, clever, interesting person who does what he has to and goes hard at
what he believes is the right thing to do, I guess you could say. And the interesting thing
about that is what he ends up doing towards the end of the episode is he ends up setting things
up so that the kaiju, these bug kaiju, are all massacred. He figures out that he can manipulate
them by using the fact that they're attracted by a certain call or sound to get them all...
He uses it tactically in the battle to have... He has Emi broadcast it and he diverts the kaiju
over here so they can do something. But then he gets C4, he gets a couple bricks of C4,
and he straps this device that he... Phone or whatever it was to capture the sound. And he's
playing the sound over and over again. And he throws it at this giant egg that's full of
larvae that are going to come out and it attracts all these other larvae to it because it's a
distress call so that they know to go protect the... Whatever it is that they're protecting,
the larvae, I guess. It summons them. So anyway, he throws it at them. And before he does that,
he says, I'm sorry. Or I think that's exactly his line, I'm sorry. And he throws the thing and it
blows up the whole egg sac, all the larvae in there, and then all the ones that are attracted
to it as well. So he recognizes the fact that kaiju are living, breathing creatures, and he doesn't
just want to mercilessly massacre them for no good reason. If they can be allowed to live,
he will allow them to live. And it's just a really interesting character. But then again,
he's like a farmer, right? He comes from this kind of family and there's varmints and pests that hurt
your crops or whatever. So he's probably used to dealing with those in an interesting, nuanced way.
And I like it because he's not like a bleeding heart for kaiju, but he's also not like brutally
cold and just like going to massacre all of them, wipe them all out. He treats them like they're
a real part of the world and has an interesting and nuanced approach to them, which I really
enjoyed seeing. And there were funny bits with the whole play that they have to do about how to...
What to do when you see a kaiju and all that stuff. And that's funny, but not really worth
mentioning at this time because I want to keep it short. But I liked the episode a lot. There's a
big improvement over episode 19 and the team being like come together and working and being clever
and like Earth Gurun got paced down by its mucus from the insect and so did Blazar. And he was in
big trouble and he really tried to fight and he was moving around a lot. And the way the action
worked out was a lot better. I don't even know, I don't even remember now if he summoned his
bird thingy, probably with the fire gauntlet thing to finish off the kaiju at the end or not,
which was a zuka something or other. No, I don't have it. I lost it. It's okay. But yeah, oh no,
here we go. The kaiju is called... Who's that kaiju? It's... Oh, Zugu gun. That's what it's Zugu gun.
Anyway, oh yeah, he does use the the Fjordrun armor. And anyway, just whatever. It's fine.
Like now that he has it, him using it isn't going to bother me too much, but the way he got it
bothers me. But I like how he used it just at the very end and how clever and tactical he was. Or
not tactical, just like he got through most of the fight on his own and he only needed the stuff at
the end to like free himself. He could have killed the kaiju any other way. They're just doing it to
promote the toy or whatever. And it didn't feel as hollow because like he earned everything else in
the victory. It was just the finisher that was done with the toy and whatever. I'm over that.
But I actually like this episode a lot. I thought it was a very good one. Hopefully they don't get
any less in quality than this one. Anyway, that's all I have to say. Check out my... I'm still slowly
working towards writing and getting published my tokusatsu inspired, Ultramanish inspired thing
with magical bugs battling monsters. And I'm writing a short story that I'm submitting. I
wrote two short stories. One is a noir superhero and one is a fantasy with dragons actually,
and a guy slaying a dragon. And then those are submitted. I don't know if those have been accepted
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...
It's Weird West for Rankin to repress. Weird West 2. It's a western that has my magical bugs
battling monsters in it in the Old West. And I'm wondering how that's going to come out. And I
think that should be interesting. So anyway, I'll let you know if that gets released, if it's going
to be published or not. And if it doesn't, hopefully it is, I'll go ahead and release the thing about it.
I know it's not... Well, it's tangentially related to Ultraman, but you might like it. So I'll
definitely let you know when that's out available for you to read, whether it's for free or through...
I'll let you know when it's available to read and you can check that out as well as looking forward
to the rest of my stuff. So anyway, until next time folks, take care, be well, and be Ultra.
I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me. Like and share to help me reach more people
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be well. This is MJ signing out. This has been a Story Over Everything production.