1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 Tension Inspection presents Going Ultra. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,000 Find all my work at MJMunoz.com Prepare yourself for hard-hitting Ultraman discussion and analysis. 3 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:18,000 So Ultraman Ark episode 12 happened. It was interesting. 4 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:24,000 Believe it or not, I didn't quit watching Ark because 11 was so bad or so terrible or because I hated it so much. 5 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:30,000 I don't hate the show, it's just I'm wanting more. I'm expecting a lot from it because I've liked it so far. 6 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:34,000 It's been really good. And episode 11 was a little bit of a letdown. 7 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:40,000 And episode 12 was... less of a letdown, but it wasn't great. 8 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:50,000 I'm a little disappointed that the conflict between Yuma and Ishido was closed off so quickly. 9 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:56,000 They didn't really explore that at all. Ishido did. It seemed like they didn't explore it at all. 10 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:02,000 And it seemed like the conflict was just over. But then Ishido was in support of and telling Yuma that he just 11 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:09,000 has to deal with the fact that they are coming to destroy Gi-Vas and there's nothing he can do to stop it. 12 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:15,000 And the GDF is on their way and Ishido doesn't really seem to have a problem with that, which I'm fine with because, 13 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:24,000 again, it seems like he's a threat. Very quickly they make another device. 14 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:27,000 They make a translator and it translates more of what Gi-Vas is saying. 15 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:35,000 And we learn a little bit more about it, which is kind of interesting. 16 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:46,000 It's kind of interesting, but it's not super, super big. 17 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:53,000 We don't really get a lot from it, I think. Let me see. 18 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:59,000 We don't really get a lot from it, and I find that to be a little bit disappointing. 19 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:05,000 It just kind of went on. And the best part of the episode probably was when Yuma climbed the... 20 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:10,000 He scaled Gi-Vas, which I didn't realize he had such a textured structure, but he does, which is cool. 21 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,000 But he scales Gi-Vas, he opens up the cockpit, basically, which I guess is near the head. 22 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:21,000 Yeah, it's like in the throat area, I think is what it showed on the heat map that you can read it. 23 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:26,000 Anyway, so he goes into there and he sees this person, this alien. 24 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:30,000 He goes to touch them and they crumble because they're dead. And then he puts on the headset thing. 25 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:40,000 And he gets this really interesting backstory, which I liked a lot, that Gi-Vas and his master are from a planet that's far away. 26 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:46,000 It's apparently in Numa's, Numaata's solar system, which is cool. Nice connection, so he knows. 27 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:50,000 And it's great that they didn't kill him because now they can talk to him. 28 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:57,000 But he's still kind of leads them... He's okay with leading them towards possibly killing this robot, which it's a robot. 29 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:02,000 It's not a person. There's not a person inside there. There was a person in it before. 30 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:10,000 And he's the master of Gi-Vas. And when he died, when he knew he was going to die, he didn't want Gi-Vas to be lonely, 31 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:17,000 which is a really interesting concept. So he sent him on a potentially endless journey through the universe looking for a friend. 32 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:24,000 And possibly also looking for a moon. I was very confused about the whole, our moon is gone on this planet and the moon was our guide, 33 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:32,000 so now we're going to do something. And then at the end of the episode, Yuma points Gi-Vas to the moon, which... 34 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,000 I guess... 35 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:43,000 Didn't Gi-Vas get there at dusk before? Yeah, because when he saved the kids, it was dusk, so he should have seen the moon. 36 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:48,000 It's not a new moon. They should have changed it so that it was a new moon, or there's no moon that night. 37 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:52,000 And then the next day, you can see the sliver of the moon and Yuma tells him, see that? That's our moon. 38 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:56,000 It's just, you know how moons work? They wax and wane. So go to that moon. 39 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:03,000 But to me, what I'm taking away is that Gi-Vas is now living on the Earth's moon for some reason. 40 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:07,000 I can only imagine it so that he can come back towards the end of the show to do something interesting. 41 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:15,000 I kind of thought if this Gi-Vas is from, if this robot, whatever, and oh, Gi-Vas means friend, not enemy, friend. 42 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:18,000 It can mean both because there's dual meanings to the word. 43 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:26,000 So you can say I turned the light off and the fire alarm went off. Both off means opposite things, which happens in languages. 44 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:29,000 So it's not like a ridiculous concept. 45 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:38,000 But it kind of sounds like when the moon is out, Gi-Vas means friend because they are the moon people. They're people of the moon. 46 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:44,000 And when they are, I guess when the sun's out, when the moon's hidden, then Gi-Vas means enemy specifically. 47 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,000 So, you know, that's kind of an interesting cultural nuance and cultural detail about our linguistic detail, I should say. 48 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,000 But it doesn't make the episode good or like great. 49 00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:01,000 What's interesting is that I would have thought like Numa wants to go home, right? 50 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:06,000 Why shouldn't Numa be Gi-Vas's friend and he pilots Gi-Vas back home? 51 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:15,000 Like that seems to me like it would have made a lot of sense and it would have been a cool way for things to kind of be resolved. 52 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:19,000 I mean, that would have made a lot of sense. I really was expecting that to happen. 53 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:28,000 And for. I know, I just thought that would have happened and it didn't. 54 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:34,000 The fight was decent, you know, like it's Ultraman. Ultraman Ark does a good job. 55 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:39,000 I don't think they did anything really unique with Ark this episode. 56 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:48,000 Like I can't think of a gimmick he did. He had the shield up and he got splinted over time with Gi-Vas attacking it over and over again with his ranged attack. 57 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:52,000 Besides that. I mean, he untransformed. 58 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:59,000 We got to see him and it was like a cool spiral that went down into the D-Transformation until it was just Yuma. 59 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:04,000 And he didn't do before, after, before, after, before, after like Ultraman Rising, but he could have. 60 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:09,000 I for a split second I thought he might do that. And then I realized, no, I thought I'm going to have to. 61 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:14,000 Anyway, I'm trying to think. Was there anything special that he did? 62 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:21,000 POV shot. 63 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:27,000 I can't really think of anything specific, like a gimmick that they did for this one. 64 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:33,000 Overall it was a decent episode. At the end, Bon, Hiroshi Bon asks, 65 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:41,000 What was the thing that it was looking for? Like why was it looking for a moon? I can't remember what his exact line was, but it's something along the lines of that. 66 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:46,000 I think. Yeah, you're right. Great question Hiroshi. What was he looking for? 67 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:55,000 And what are we going to do with that? Because now there's like a plot hole or like a thing left to be done, a thing left to be addressed in the future, which I think is a good thing. 68 00:06:55,000 --> 00:07:00,000 I like when they do that in storytelling and it's good to have. 69 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,000 It's good to have. I'm playing it back right now. There's still something bugging me. 70 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:07,000 Hiroshi says, What was that new moon? Givos was looking for. Yeah. 71 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:16,000 I was thinking at one point, oh, maybe Givos is going to like try to steal the moon and then I'm going to have to tell him, Givos, you can't do that. Like physically it's probably impossible. 72 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:20,000 And second of all, you'll kill everybody on Earth if you take the moon away. 73 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:25,000 So I'm almost wondering if they're leaving Givos to become a threat later on if it has a moon. 74 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:30,000 But if it didn't, I think Givos, the robot knows that his planet's been destroyed. 75 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:37,000 So and the master didn't want him to like aimlessly wander throughout the universe or something. 76 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:41,000 So he sends him aimlessly wandering. I don't know. I don't really get it. 77 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:46,000 I don't know. Like it's a nice thought. It's a nice thought that he doesn't want his robot to be lonely. 78 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:50,000 And I like that. It's very sweet. That was touching to me. And I like Givos. 79 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:54,000 Like I want Givos to be a happy robot. 80 00:07:54,000 --> 00:08:02,000 But like it's not enough. Like that emotionality, that sentiment is not enough to anchor a story to. 81 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:11,000 And like I think everything around it, the mystery and the tension and, you know, Numa's perspective and all that stuff. 82 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:17,000 And, you know, Ishido and the team were already doing what Yuma wanted. 83 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:23,000 They were trying to find a way to save Givos essentially, even though they were willing to kill him if they had to. 84 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:28,000 But like that's exactly Ultraman's position too. Like Yuma will let people go. 85 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:33,000 Like how do you go if he can, but then he kills when he has to. 86 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,000 So it's almost like it feels like a distinction without a difference. 87 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:38,000 Like they're trying to say like, oh, yeah, we're trying to do something really different here. 88 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:41,000 It's like, well, not really. You're doing what you've been doing the whole series. 89 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:49,000 So that was kind of frustrating. I don't quite understand what exactly they're going for, what the point is of it. 90 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,000 Yeah. What did you think? Do you agree with me? You think I'm crazy? 91 00:08:51,000 --> 00:09:04,000 Like, I feel like I'm missing something and I feel like, like there's all this stuff going around and I'm I don't know what these things are. 92 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:10,000 Trying to make an analogy to like Obi-Wan's Lost Planet in Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. 93 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:16,000 Like, you know, there's all this stuff going on and I can see the shadow of gravity, but I can't see the star. 94 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:21,000 Like, it feels like there's something there, but I'm missing the point. 95 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Like, here's the point. And then like the episode is doing all this stuff with the characters around it and the action around it. 96 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:30,000 And I see all this, but I don't see this here. I don't see the point. 97 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:34,000 So I don't really get it. I'd love for somebody to educate me and tell me something. 98 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:37,000 Then I say, oh, you know what? You're right. This was a really great episode. 99 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:43,000 And now I understand why I was missing this crucial aspect or idea or concept or thing that they talked about in the show explicitly. 100 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:46,000 And I somehow missed because I just don't really get it. It looked pretty. 101 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:51,000 It looked pretty. It was a beautiful design. I like his two sidedness. 102 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:53,000 I really like the design of that alien that we didn't get to see. 103 00:09:53,000 --> 00:10:01,000 I don't know if those aliens show up in something else or if they're new to this, this, you know, if they're new to Ultraman arc or what. 104 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:08,000 But, you know, it looked cool. Look cool. I like that they have the I like the control crown and the control crystal things that Yuma put his hands on. 105 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:15,000 Reminds me a little bit of Martian success in a disco. And, yeah, I know. 106 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:18,000 Tell me what you thought about this and tell me if I'm wrong and tell me how I'm wrong. 107 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:22,000 And please help me to enjoy this episode better than I did or this pair of episodes better than I did. 108 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:28,000 I love D-Vos though, like D-Vos and then like knowing he had a master and the master cared for him so much and all that. 109 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:42,000 Like that's super cool. But. 110 00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:45,000 I hope you enjoyed that. Please remember to like, share and subscribe. 111 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:49,000 I invite you to comment, ask questions and share your thoughts with me. 112 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:54,000 It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation. Until next time, be well and be Ultra. 113 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:59,000 Visit MJMunoz.com for more of my work and help me build up the Fortress fiction.