This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Yeah, that's not how I meant to start it.
I meant to start like this.
Engine Inspection Presents Going Ultra.
Here we go.
So join me as I talk about Ultra in ARC episode 10, which is called To My Distant Friend.
And in my short I said that I didn't know what I was going to say in the review here
because I don't really know what this episode was about.
I don't really know who it was for.
I would give it like a 7 out of 10.
It was there.
There were some cool things that happened in it, but I didn't really get anything out of it too much.
I got no takeaways, basically.
I have no takeaways.
So I'm just going to go through my notes real quick and talk about each thing,
and then I'll circle back and I'll focus on what I think maybe they were trying to say and what they were trying to do.
And yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it because I just don't really know what to say about this.
So I've got Noisler.
Noisler has a cool design.
It looks a little bit like a Grimmin, looks a little bit like Toothless in his eyes anyway from How to Train Your Dragon.
And I thought it was a cool design.
I liked it a lot.
I liked the fact that it was framed in such a way that it looked like a ship in that shot.
It kind of looked like it was from Star Wars New Hope with him coming into the scene.
Like him eating noise or whatever didn't really make sense.
He didn't make the noise disappear at any point.
He absorbed a sound signal and then the next moment he made a thumping noise as he was walking through going to Kazuo's building to destroy it, I guess.
Why was he trying to destroy that specific signal?
It was so he could be baited to follow the rainbow spiral thing?
I don't know. I don't know. I really don't get it.
So Fio and Kazuo have an interesting relationship.
It's ostensibly a friendship.
I think they've been talking for a month, maybe two months.
I think it was a month.
And, you know, like the spoiler is she's this alien.
She's a humanoid or maybe she's a giant, you know, wombat in space.
Translation technology.
Why did wombat come to mind?
I do not know.
But she's talking to him and they have this relationship and he loves her so bad.
But she treats him like, oh, never mind.
Yeah, it's they have an interesting relationship where like he's kind of falling in love with her over the phone.
It's kind of like an online relationship.
It's kind of like a long distance phone relationship.
It's kind of like pen pals.
In a way, it kind of reminds me of Voices from a Distance Star, which is fantastic.
You should definitely check that out.
I don't remember how long that was.
And I watched a long time ago with my wife before she was my wife.
And she was like, I don't really get this.
And I loved it and cried.
It was amazing.
And something that similar vibes and there's like there's something there.
There's something there that I do like that desperation and that relationship between them.
It's kind of cool to see.
But like in Voices from a Distance Star, this guy and his girlfriend were texting each other.
If you don't know what that is, you should really check it out.
It's like I think it's an anime classic.
And if you don't know it, I think shame on you.
No, it just it came out at the right time.
I was in high school and it had come out sometime before then and it was just was fabulous.
So anyway, definitely check that out.
Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Hard recommend like.
I don't know.
Maybe I'll look it up and see and talk about it.
But basically, this guy's girlfriend is going off to fight against aliens across the universe, across the galaxy, whatever.
And because of like Fasted and Light travel, which is something mentioned mentioned.
So in Hard Sci Fi, apparently instant communications from one planet to another or ship to ship out in space would be super difficult.
I'm actually reading this interesting novel by Jeffrey H. Haskell, who wrote the Arsenal series, Full Metal Superhero.
If you like Iron Man at all, if you like Super Sentai at all or Power Rangers at all, maybe Combinator 2, you would definitely like it.
Jeffrey H. Haskell, Arsenal Full Metal Superhero.
Go check that out. It's fantastic.
It's really actually like the anyway, Mr. Haskell, you can handle the criticism.
The these books were traditionally published and there's like nine of them.
And I would say the first five are like rock solid.
And somewhere in there, they get a little bit less in quality.
But and it feels like there's stuff that skipped out on and that's like the details are fudged or left out or like there's something I'm missing.
And like that was the traditional publisher, let him put that through and they didn't catch any mistakes.
And I feel like those were mistakes and genuine things that give like a they lower the series overall.
But I re listened to it recently and it's still really cool.
Those issues were still there and I did pick up on them.
But the rest of it was really good.
And I would say like if the other books were like a you know, eight or nine out of ten,
then the ones where those like weird gaps in knowledge or information happen made it like a like a seven out of ten.
But it was still really good because you're getting to spend all the time with characters you really like.
And I would say the other series is a little less awesome and it gets a lot gorier.
So if you like go check out that because his character, she gets powered up every time she sheds blood of is it just bad guys or is anybody's blood?
I don't know. Oh, it's anybody I think. Anyway, but it's it's pretty crazy.
It's called a superhero by night and that one's called the Wraith.
So it's kind of like the shadow if the shadow was really murderous.
You know, like the high body count. So it's interesting.
Arsenal's really good. Anyway, Haskell's writing a sci fi series that I'm listening to now.
It's called Grimm's War. The first book is against all odds.
It was really, really good. And they talk about like sending packets, which is what you call in ISP or in the way Internet works.
We send packets of data. That's just that's how the Internet was structured.
And that's basically how it works, even though our Internet protocols have been updated.
But we still send packets basically. So hard science fiction focuses on the fact that not only would you have the Einsteinian theory of relativity thing where if somebody travels at the speed of light to the nearest star and then comes back and only takes some extra.
They travel somewhere and only takes them like a year their time to travel back and forth.
Multiple years will have passed on Earth, which is kind of scary concept. So voices from a distant star takes that concept and apparently it works with data transmission, too.
So this guy's texting his girlfriend and they're texting back and forth.
And at first it's like, you know, standard, like, you know, instant texting.
And then it becomes like a date, like a couple hour delay, then a day delay, then a week delay, then a month delay, then a year's delay.
And she's still off fighting as a high school student in her jumper and whatever in a giant mech that she's using to fight against these things.
And like it feels very romantic and it feels very like like the loyalty there and like the the longing is like as a viewer, you get to see that like, oh, this person's still longing for this person after all this time.
And it's really touching and it's really emotional. And I feel like they try to go for that here and it kind of works and it kind of doesn't.
The banter and the talking back and forth between Kazuo and Fio was really cool and it was kind of emotionally charged.
But like him like crying because she's dying towards the end, like it didn't really work for me and I wanted it to.
And I was like waiting and it didn't really work. I don't quite know why.
I don't think it's because it was the dub because I'm a firm believer in dubs and I just don't think there was enough that we didn't get to spend enough time.
Like had Kazuo been a friend who was mentioned in passing of Yuma's and like we knew that he was getting more and more distant from people as he was continuing to communicate or something like had been seeded more throughout the show.
Like it would mean more I think. I'm not 100% sure how to fix it but it just seemed off to me. So not a big fan of that.
The night shots in this were beautiful. I like seeing Japan lit up from space. That was pretty cool.
This like blind love, like this loving relationship, almost romantic relationship that he forms with this person who he can't see.
Like the idea of that is really cool and it's really kind of like moving and touching. But again, like she calls it a friendship and...
I don't know, being the last living being on Earth or on her planet, I can see her communicating with somebody like she would instantly form this deep connection with them.
And I can see why that would happen and it feels good. Like something about it feels good. It's just, I don't know, it was weird. It was a little odd.
And like the fact that her planet was dying from pollution felt a little preachy. I've watched a lot of Studio Ghibli movies in those.
Hayao Miyazaki preaches against war and he preaches against like disrespecting the environment and like pollution and things like that.
And I always love it. You know, it's a, you know, preach...
Preach harder daddy. Like that's where I'm at with him for the most part. And this felt a little like not so great.
Again, it's a totally different animal, but if you're going to preach, you got to do it well. Otherwise, it's not good.
It really takes away from your project as opposed to enhancing it. So yeah, I don't really know where they were going with that.
And let's see. At the very end, Kazuo is out. He's not stuck in his apartment anymore.
He's not, not communicating. Like we see that he has a problem with communicating with people and connecting with people.
And yet he was able to connect this person who was so far away on another planet.
And he says something that the distance... Or no, Yuma says the distance doesn't matter.
Like just because she was far away doesn't mean that you couldn't have a meaningful relationship with her and have this connection with her, which is a great and beautiful sentiment.
It goes, it works both ways though. And I find when people are trying real hard to say something that they find meaningful,
they sometimes lose focus on conveying the message and say kind of the opposite.
And this does go both ways because the distance doesn't matter.
Somebody can be right next to you and you could be not communicating with them. You could be not connecting with them.
You can be disconnected from them, even though you're ostensibly communicating with them and connecting with them.
You know, families where everybody's staring at their phones, everybody's watching TV in a different room with the house or all watching something different on their phones together at the couch or the table or whatever.
Like those things are not good. They're not healthy. They're not helping the people connect with each other.
And like maybe that's what it's about, but Kazuo doesn't seem to be paying any price or facing any consequence for having accidentally brought this Kaiju here,
which like why was Noisler after that particular signal and what did it want with it?
None of that really makes sense. And like I feel like we're supposed to take something away from this and really feel something from it that I just don't think it was affected, very effectively communicated.
And I don't quite understand why I don't understand what happened here.
And gosh, my computer is not working properly right now. I have it running a diagnostic.
Otherwise, I would check and see exactly who worked on this episode and what else they've worked on so I can get a better idea of it.
But yeah, it's really frustrating. I'm actually going to just close out with one more thing.
I like the use of, you know, they have these arc gags that they use. I think I don't know if that's the official term.
I feel like that's kind of the official term anyway. And in this episode, the arc gag was that he broke apart his shield.
His kick-up area, I think is what it's called. And he like, this is weird.
Did he break it and he threw it out and they like reformed into complete rectangular ones because it didn't look like they were shards.
It looked like there were multiple rectangular ones, which I would think he could just like, you know, make multiples of them and that would be fine.
But he didn't. Honestly, because of the noise thing, there were a couple of times where I thought about Spider-Man 3 at the end,
where he sticks all those poles, those like engine 5-8 stainless steel poles.
That's something I worked with at my job. So it's super familiar to me.
So, you know, Spider-Man 3 is like a round venom and then he bangs them and then he causes like this harmonic resonance thing to use sound as a weapon against venom, against the symbiote.
It almost felt like there were moments where they were like kind of hinting that that's what they were going to do.
And then when he does kind of the pinball thing where he sets the shields up and then they spin around with that rainbow blade thing he's got,
that very Ultraman, you know, classic Ultraman attack, the like saw blade thing, spiral saw blade.
He sort of did that. And then at the end, his chest thing was making, his color timer was making a sound that Noizler didn't like.
And then he somehow got the noise of it. Like, I don't know, somehow the sound of his saw blade thing resonated with Noizler as well.
And then he got it to chase it and go away. So like he didn't kill the Kaiju because I'm not sure why when he probably easily could have,
which I guess he doesn't want to kill if he doesn't have to. And it was just after the noise.
So he could just send the noise somewhere else. But like how indefinite is that thing?
But I guess if it's far enough away, there's no more noise on Earth because the transmission has died out because Fio's planet is dead
and it's no longer sending a transmission to Earth. And he'll just chase that until whatever.
Yeah, I guess it didn't need to die. I don't need him to kill in every episode. It's just kind of strange.
I just don't understand what was going on here.
OK, so I looked it up and the writer for this episode of Ultraman Arc is Junichiro Ashiki.
So I'm just going to read straight from the Ultraman wiki here. Junichiro Ashiki is a Japanese screenwriter.
He has participated in the screenwriting and series composition of the Ultraman series. OK, so big deal here, right?
Let's see. Ashiki began working at Subaru Productions Literature Department in the 2010s where he was responsible for writing scripts
for the company's works and also serving as a producer and sound effects artist. Cool.
And this one's about sound. In addition to his basic responsibilities for scripts for works and serialized works,
he also supervised the background settings for Ultraman Taiga. That's one I'm not familiar with.
Isn't that the one that got turned into the four kids dub? Let me just double check.
Ultraman, Ultraman. I think that's the one. Anyway. Yeah, sorry. Sorry I distracted there.
So on March 31st, 2022, Ashiki announced on his Twitter that he had left Subaru and would continue to pursue into
Subaru Productions work as a freelancer. OK, interesting, interesting.
So Ultraman series Junichiro Ashiki wrote the following episodes of the following series.
Ultraman Ginga, Friends Left Behind, Ultraman X, The Light of Victory, which exceeds all limits.
Actually, I'm going to skip the episodes that are relevant to me because that makes the most sense because I've seen them
so I can talk about them. So he wrote Insurance Hero, which is an episode I praise. It's from Ultraman Blazar.
It was episode 22. He wrote Ultraman 12. Let's go Blazar, which is where
Kabalga is in there and Hiruma calls the stone to himself after having left it behind and he transforms and fights it.
And that's a good one. Let's see. Escape is Ultraman Blazar episode 11. So it was the previous episode.
Yes, 12 does come after 11. And that's the one with the big starfish guy and that's Demaga, who's another of the space kaiju from that.
And then, yeah, that's the episodes I know. Insurance Hero, Let's Go Blazar and Escape, which I think I liked all those episodes.
If I'm remembering correctly, I think I praise them all. So interesting. Insurance Hero is kind of a more personal story, more human story.
And I would say that My Distant Friend is also a human story, a personal story, but I just don't think it's told as effectively.
And I don't think that it either just wasn't my taste, my speed, or someone was lacking it. I'm not sure which it is.
And that's all I have to say for now. So I want to know what you thought about this episode.
And if you're familiar with Ashiki and his work and if you found his other works good, like I did, and this one was lacking, or if you liked his other works a lot and you like this one as well.
So I'd like to hear that if that's the case. I'd like to hear what you liked about it so much because I'm a little confused as to what the selling point is or what the real strong thing is here.
So anyway, until next time folks, take care, be well, be ultra.
Please like, share, subscribe, check out mjwinners.com so you can find all my work there. I am working on a lot of things.
I want to get children's Tokusatsu books written for children as well as my stuff that's already Tokusatsu inspired.
So anyway, I appreciate if you check that out and see all the other work I'm doing there. And until next time, take care.
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