Henshin Inspection presents Going Ultra. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
You can find all my work at mjmunoz.com This time I'm talking about Ultraman Arc,
episode 7, the full moon's answer featuring the Kaiju, Big Mama Kaiju, Big Mama Bomber Kaiju,
um, Hamger. And Hamger has a life cycle of centuries, I guess. And the deal with Hamger is that in
order to give birth to her baby, to transfer her life energy to her baby, she has to explode.
The explosion of a Hamger mother is so powerful that it could kill or it could destroy all of
Hoshimoto City, which I would assume has tens of thousands if not millions of people in it.
I don't really know the scale of cities in Japan, so maybe that's part of my problem with this
episode. But like, New York City, which again is not in Japan, has I think 10 million people the
last time the numbers were updated. As of 2001, it was 8 million because that's the number that
Green Goblin used for Spider-Man. There are 8 million people in this city. Um, sorry.
And those gaming masters exist for the sole purpose of lifting the exceptional up under the shield.
You, me, we're exceptional. Sorry. I watched that movie like over a dozen times the first weekend
it came out over on DVD. Came out when I was in high school and blew my mind. Anyway, moving on.
Excuse me for my Will-in-the-Phones impression. Um, or Green Goblin, I should say. Or,
or the real thing to say. Anyway, moving on. So like, I was thinking like 10 million people?
Okay, bitch, Japan. Uh, 1 million people? 5 million people? I don't know how many
millions of people this cage you could kill. And it's interesting the way it was approached.
Um, yeah, my short I Really Go Crazy, uh, in it. And I hope you check it out if it didn't
lead to this full review. And I'm not going to try to duplicate that because that'd be pretty
inauthentic. But just to explain. Well, okay, now to the normal minute deal. I'm going to talk about
what happened in the episode, what I thought about it, or my criticisms of it, my positive things I have to say
about it. And then I'm going to talk about the different approach, which is something I talked about
in the context of Ultraman Rising. I talked about it in the context of Ultraman Blazar. And I talked about it
in the context of the stuff that I'm working on writing as well. So here we go. Um, yeah, I think
first of all, I think this episode might have been message fiction. And I don't know if it's about
climate change or global warming or whatever. But one of the problems that people have when they write
message fiction is from the from the stuff that I've seen that contains a message about something,
they often will get the broad strokes correct and then get the little details that really matter,
that define and contextualize the matter completely wrong. If this is about climate change,
which there's a recent news report that I think it's the Atlantic Ocean is rapidly dropping in temperature
and scientists don't know why. And I'll just come out and say I'm of the opinion that anthropomorphic,
no, anthropogenic climate change is not a thing. If you believe the Earth is billions of years old
and there was ice age before, we did not have manmade industry causing the ice age. If you don't believe
in such things like the Earth is younger or whatever, well, regardless, actually, the Earth probably has
natural cycles. Who knows how much energy or heat is stored within the Earth. There are concepts in farming
and in raising a garden within a greenhouse where you can actually have heat sinks in it. You can have your
greenhouse and have that heat sink in it that actually absorbs heat energy into the ground and then it slowly
releases over the winter. And because you're in a greenhouse, you're capturing it and you can have heat
that you've collected naturally through using the Earth as a battery to hold the heat released over time
throughout the winter and even have things grow out of season in your greenhouse by manipulating those
facts of nature. That's on a garden scale for a greenhouse. There's one crazy guy who manipulated,
he lives somewhere where it's very cold where you shouldn't be able to grow oranges at all, and he grows oranges.
It takes a lot of energy and a lot of input for him to do it, and I think it's mostly natural means,
but it's like a huge a**hole. You couldn't have an orange orchard up there without being really crazy
wherever this guy has it going. But it is possible. So it's possible to manipulate the Earth, but what I'm saying
is how much more so if it's possible to manipulate the Earth on a small scale to do things like that,
is it possible that there are batteries of heat energy that we do not understand because we haven't been
able to observe, examine, experience on them because we're puny humans on a gigantic Earth rock,
and the universe as we understand it exists on a scale that is mind-blowing and we can't even fully grasp it
because there are planets much larger than our planet. There are stars. The stars that we see in the night sky
are way bigger than our nearest star, which is our Sun, and it's just something we can't believe I said.
I don't know. Anyway, regardless of that, it wasn't climate change because it was a kaiju causing it,
but then again, this kaiju is a natural part of the world, right? This kaiju naturally occurs and naturally
has a life cycle, and I guess somehow it's sticking around on the Earth unsteady. It must mate in the Earth
unless it's a, I guess it could have asexual reproduction, and it could just be that one child is born, one mother,
and for whatever reason she has to rise to the surface, I don't know that it doesn't really make sense,
and explode, and that transfers the energy to her child so that it can do that sometime later after going
back down into the Earth and living. Anyway, I got a little distracted from what I actually wanted to do,
but I'll get back on track now. It was a really quick turnaround. They discovered what the kaiju was about,
and what was going to happen, and they tried to take care of it as soon as possible. I'm not exactly sure why
the skip members were there in town if they don't really have a way to defeat the kaiju or to divert it
or whatever. Like, they should have been evacuated from town, that's kind of silly, but they evacuated
all of Hoshimoto City. I realize they just called it a town. I used it in town colloquially, not literally
like it's a town. Irregardless, skip is there. Among skip, of course, is Yuma, and this is an interesting
parallel, but I don't know what it means, especially when I get into it. Yuma's mother, who's dead
and who he's having memories of, told him that he should be like, whenever he's scared, he should look
to the moon, because the moon is always up there protecting us. Maybe she was a Naka Takuchi fan.
Anyway, so she encourages him to think of the moon as this protector, and then he drew as a kid
this Ultraman drawing, Ultraman arc, whatever, with this...he didn't name it arc, he called it whatever.
I don't really call it. Anyway, arc comes from Ichigo, but the moon armor, whatever, he drew the sun armor
and the moon armor is a kid. That's my point. The moon armor is all about protection. I guess the sun armor
is all about attack, the moon armor is all about protecting. And it's able to create solid afterimages
of itself, it's able to create barriers and shields, it's got a cool little shield thing on its arm,
a buckler I would call it, because it's a tiny shield, I love those, by the way, and stuff. Super cool.
Anyway, and what he does is, at first he tries to fight the Kaiju, but it's a little much, a little difficult,
and this spirit of this lady is appearing and yelling at him, irritatingly, in my opinion, to tell him to stop
fighting the Kaiju and to not kill her, because she just wants to transfer her life force to her baby,
killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of innocent humans in the meantime,
which is a big problem here, and then her baby will be born in a couple hundred years, he'll do the same thing again.
Anyway, I'm going to get back to that, I'm going to get to that very soon. So what happens is that Yuma gets the moon armor,
which they've got what, solar farmers, this will be called lunis or lun, whatever, I think, it's the moon armor,
and he creates a barrier around her so she can safely explode, it's a mostly peaceful explosion,
where she does apparently no property damage, and, I guess, and proceeds to die, and then her baby tunnels into the ground,
we're left to presume, because we're not shown it at all, we just hear a little infant cry, and then the skip members talk about that,
and I think Art let it go on purpose, whatever, so yeah, it's a little vague, it's a little odd, but that's what happens,
he lets it go, and Yuma reflects that in a couple hundred years, the same thing will happen again,
and Art, or Skip's responsibility is to leave records, accurate, robust records, that hey, every other man, there's this guy too,
and it's a mama, she's just trying to have her baby be born, but in order to do that, she needs to explode,
so y'all gotta find a way to have her not kill thousands, millions of people, you gotta find a way to have her not,
like, don't kill the kaiju, let her have her life cycle, item interruption, I'm gonna wrap it up real quick, here we go,
it doesn't make sense to let the kaiju just have her life cycle, for a couple reasons,
one, these kaiju are an invasive species, as far as we know, 14 years ago, or 16 years ago, 3 days ago,
there was a split open in the sky, a dimensional rift opened, and the kaiju came to earth and started causing some issues,
they're not really part of the natural life cycle of this earth that Yuma is on, and that the show Ultraman Art takes place on,
if they are not from another dimension, let's say they're from, it was a wormhole, they're from outer space, from another planet,
they're still an invasive species, does that mean that you go and you poison and drown and kill all invasive species no matter what?
No, it doesn't mean that, that's not what I'm saying, I am saying though, that when, well, when you have to,
like the Shigong in the last episode, Yuma had no problem killing them, and the Shigong obviously reproduced,
so he was fine killing the parent Shigong last episode, episode 6, proper episode, but episode 7 he's not okay killing a kaiju because she is in fact a mother,
but it doesn't really make sense, it doesn't really hold up, there's too many questions, too many holes in that mechanism,
the mechanism doesn't make sense, if somebody was in the alien movies like I brought up earlier, and they were defending the facehuggers,
and the queen of all the xenomorphs or whatever and saying like, no you gotta allow her to propagate,
that doesn't really make sense because they're just murdering people or killing people as a consequence of, you know,
heresically reproducing through them against their will, and that's not really fair, is it? It's not really fair to leave this kaiju to deal with people,
or to harm all these people in the future, is it? I don't think so, definitely there's a responsibility to leave records about it,
but that's not the only responsibility, and I don't really, I don't really get it, so like this episode really had like a moral feeling to me,
a psychological feeling because it just didn't make sense, if they wanted this to make sense, they should have changed the argument, changed the direction,
so I have not speculated on this yet, but I will do some minor speculation, because I just haven't talked about Ultraman Rising again recently,
and I was going to save this for a rising discussion, but I'll have it here, and maybe I'll talk about it more later, but for sure I'll talk about it here now.
In Ultraman Rising, there is a kaiju island, kaiju exist within the world, Hayao may have come from outer space as an ultra, I don't know, it's unclear,
but he directs and deters kaiju as much as he can, so they leave Tokyo alone and go to kaiju island, which has been unfound until now,
for 30 or 40 years or whatever that he's existed as Ultraman, and even the KTF wasn't able to find him, limited resources, whatever,
however, at the end of the movie, they definitely find kaiju island, but we also know in addition to kaiju island that Yabula M78 exists,
because that's where, spoiler, we get the distress call from Emi, his mother, Kenji's mother,
so, for whatever reason, the Hayao Ultraman of Ultraman Rising doesn't kill the kaiju unless he has to, he sends them back, he sends them away,
therefore, or, and, the fact that there's a kaiju island hints to the fact that there is a natural reason for kaiju to exist within the earth,
maybe there's a dimensional rift on the island, they come through there, there's really a whole kaiju universe, or it's on another planet, whatever, I don't know,
but they originally are contained to this island, and they can be sent back to the island and not have to be killed, it's wonderful, it's great, let them have their life, however,
he still tries to stop them, maneuver them, move them away, so that they are not accidentally killing people while they're doing whatever,
I would think that there needs to be a logical reason why the kaiju are going to Tokyo,
Gigantron was seen to go after her baby, kaiju can sense things, I have a little pet theory,
Stephen plays Ultraman Rising 2 or 3, there is something in Tokyo hidden somewhere that the kaiju want, or perhaps need,
and it's either there for humans or evil reasons, or it's there because of some sort of accident, and it kind of just can't be helped,
and it's something that they, they being the kaiju and the humans, have to kind of figure out together to figure out some sort of solution for kaiju to have the thing they need and human resources or not,
to get their cities wrecked and such, so I would think there has to be some sort of logical explanation for why that's there,
and if there's not, I'm going to be severely disappointed, just like I'm severely disappointed that the people who were making this episode,
I'm pretty sure this is a new kaiju, right, Big Maru of Armor, I still think it's funny,
um, Hongar is a new kaiju, and, wait a minute, K-Ding happened 16 years ago,
aliens are real, but Hongar is a kaiju from hundreds of years ago, and has a life cycle of hundreds of years, why?
That doesn't make any sense, what's going on here? Anyway, so that's, okay, that's two super irritating things,
one, apparently kaiju have existed in the World of Ultraman arc for far longer than the 14 years or 16 years ago that we thought,
and two, the creators made it this way, and they didn't have to have Hongar explode like this,
it could have been like she was exploding because there's human pollution, or because human noise,
or something like that caused an ill effect to happen, an unintended consequence,
and like if humans had to be careful to not pollute the water, not pollute the earth, like the dirt, the ground,
or different things like that in order to not trigger this response in Hongar where she explodes, then I would understand that,
but, and I know hundreds of years ago, would you be able to have an explosion caused by some human effect?
Maybe, like maybe humans were tunneling in a mine or something like that,
or there was an original Ultraman had this episode with this Angus Nagiros, the Electric Horn kaiju,
the first time he shows up and he's like invisible, he eats energy, anyway, the first time he shows up,
I think they're like blowing up stuff underground and they wake up the kaiju and it comes out from underground and causes stuff,
Nieronga, that's what it is. Anyway, like those sorts of situations and scenarios make a lot of sense,
but this, Hongar, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense, and that's on the creatives behind the episode,
and I'm really disappointed, I gotta look up who wrote this and see what else they wrote in,
I hope this is the first episode in ARK, is what I'm saying, but I'll look up and see what else they wrote in ARK and see if there's some sort of,
I'll just see, I'll see and I'll find that out later, maybe I'll talk about it in the next episode, I'm not sure.
Anyway, very odd, very frustrating, doesn't make sense, it's been a fun show so far, but this is just goofy,
and didn't have to be this way, and they made it this way on purpose. Why? What's the point?
Or were they trying to do something or say something and it was so important for them to say it,
that they let the outcome that they wanted override writing an actually good story that made sense.
Anyway, I hope not.
Real quick before I go, subscribe to help me grow the channel, I really want to get this channel as big as possible,
I want to keep talking about Ultraman and other Tokusatsu stuff, because I love it, it's very fun, I love the spectrum, I love the stories,
and I want to get to at least a couple thousand subscribers, and have a lot of people interacting with me,
and being able to have a great conversation about these things, but I care about story a lot too,
I have a second channel that I'm running, I just renamed it and I got to do some other stuff to tweak it,
but it's called Story Over Everything, I believe I have it linked in the back end YouTube channels stuff,
but I'll start linking it here as well, but you can find links to everything that I'm releasing on www.imgimgnews.com,
the website, and links to both, if you go there you can find stuff from either way,
so if you came from Story Over Everything and you went to www.imgimgnews.com you can find Tokusatsu stuff here over at Henshin Inspection,
if you came from Henshin Inspection you can go to the website and go back to the YouTube channel, Story Over Everything,
and yeah, I'm talking about a lot of books right now, a lot of mid-grade books,
I'm trying to figure out how to work out things so that I can write a great middle-grade series of books,
we've got the Ultraman middle-grade series of books which I want to check out,
we also have Titanius, I think I said that right, Titanius by Titan Goji,
whose name I don't remember right now, the real name, but Titan Goji's got a YouTube channel, he talks about tons of great stuff,
I've enjoyed a lot of his videos, he's very broad in what he talks about and definitely like a different pace and different taste from me and this channel,
the way I talk about things, and I'm super excited because he's been working on this book for like two years,
released it, I ordered it, I have it incoming, I should get it within a week or so,
and I'm definitely going to check it out and I'd love to read it and review it and see about reaching out for an interview if he wants to,
if he's available to do that sort of thing, that'd be cool, and anyway, I'm selling a Tokusatsu,
I even want to read books about Tokusatsu type stuff, and I want to write books about Tokusatsu type stuff,
so story over everything, I talk about stories, and I figured out something, I just had a brain blast the other day,
and I figured a way to have constant content over there that's meaningful while I'm working,
while I'm not getting distracted from writing my books and finishing them up, and anyway,
right now and currently as this goes out, I'm working on Peter Pan, reading Peter Pan and talking about that,
but I'm also doing chapter by chapter reactions as well as I'll have a full book chat type of review thing going on,
and I'm going to be talking about a bunch of other classic and modern children's literature, children's fiction, middle grade stories,
I talk about words of honor so far in there, what was one of the greats? Oh, Little Women is an amazing book,
so it's not just like children's, it's classic children's fiction, Anne of Green Gables is fantastic as well,
the first book of that I read, I'm going to try to think of something a little more masculine,
but I don't have anything at the moment that I can think of off the top of my head,
but I give very honest criticism of books, just like I give honest criticism of my Tokusatsu here,
and I talk about the things that make sense in the story, the things that don't make sense in the story,
things that are good in them, the things that are bad in them, so you definitely check that out,
I'd really appreciate it, and I want to grow that channel to a few thousand as well, and really get something going there.
I entered into a writing contest the other day, two stories, and if they didn't make it,
I'm going to go ahead and publish those over on story over everything, and I'm going to go ahead and read them,
as well as put them on my website so you can check those stories out as well, kind of see what kind of fiction they write,
one of them is a superhero story, one of them is a fantasy story, which is part of,
they're both part of larger things that I want to write at some point in the future, so anyway,
until next time folks, take care, be well, be ultra, and don't read for use by blowing up and killing hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
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.