Tension Inspection presents Going Ultra. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist,
I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com Prepare yourself for hard-hitting
Ultraman discussion and analysis.
This one's for you, Ishido. So I tremendously complemented Blazars clip
show episode, I believe. Well, hold on, no. There was already one Hoshimoto City
Branch clip show in ARK already. And that was the one where a guy who works for
Ultraman and who was in an Ultraman series as well, which is really cool, or
he works for Super Ray, he doesn't work for Ultraman. I wish! I wish he worked for Ultraman.
Actually, I don't, because then there'd be Kaiju and there'd be all sorts of trouble.
Anyway, he works for Super Ray Productions and he and Mike Dent went ahead and did
the dub of the episode where we got to meet Choppy, the other robot, and there's
the guy who works at the Hoshimoto City, or yeah, he works at another branch and
they were talking about Hoshimoto City. So that was like around episode 7, I think,
because we had that recap episode. And that one was really, was done really well.
The Blazer episode, I'm trying to remember right now, oh yeah, where they
were like working on the computer system or whatever at night at SCARD. That was
really good too, so that was really good. I think that set a new bar, the Choppy
one, where they were talking about, oh they talked about Peter as well, who
appeared in the Along Came a Spider, Spider-Man Ultraman crossover thing.
Peter's from Ultra Q, he's a, I don't know how to describe him, but he's a little
sea lizard, Kaiju thing, somehow. Anyway, too complicated, but they call him Peter.
Anyway, so he was in that one. And then this one we have, Ishido slept it at
SCARD, or at Skip rather, the Hoshimoto office of Skip, because he was working on
his report on them that he's sending back to the GDF, I believe. Let me just
make sure. Yeah, that's G Gundam by the way. Yeah, GDF. So he ends up falling asleep there,
and they're out of coffee in the office, and that flips him out, and he has
interactions with some of his office workers there, his fellow office workers,
and Rin comes in, and she boots up Yuppie, and then Hiroshi comes in,
and he... Ishido's like, what is that smell? And then Bon comes in, or Hiroshi Bon
comes in, and he goes over to this bag, and he's got the scat coffee. So it's the
coffee beans that are eaten by the cat, that they poop it out, and then it's
recovered, and people roast it, and they brew it into coffee. I like coffee a lot,
but I'm not interested in trying that, and I've never thought about trying that.
But they seem to be into it, so that's cool, you know, good for Shuu.
But yeah, I mean, not much happened here. It was a recap that went backwards,
which is interesting, and oh, interesting, it was written by Junichiro
Ashiki, who I talked about last time. Did he do the Gibus episode? No, it was... he
wrote... let me see, I gotta know this one. He wrote to my distant friend, which is
the one where the guy is getting messages from space, and he's talking to
that lady on another planet that's dying. Anyway, so I kind of had some issues
with that episode, in particular that he did, and this one I really liked, even
though it's a clip show. I like the character work that's done. There's a
great little moment where Yuppie says that, you know, Rin was responsible for
making Nezatron grow giant, and she says, what did you say? And it's off-screen, so
you didn't get to see her face, so they might have added that into the dub. I
don't think they did. It feels within the character, it feels within the
characters for them to have that be there. Especially I feel like with these
clip shows, they get a little sillier, a little goofier, they let the characters,
you know, be loose. In Blazor, the girls were talking about... they were gonna talk
about dating, or guys that they were interested in, not in the
group, just in general. Like, oh, are you seeing her? Well, there's this one guy, and then
they cut off. So, like, they allow for a lightness and a levity that you don't
typically get in your standard episode, because it's not a standard episode, it's
a clip episode, and they use it to give you a little bit of an insight into the
characters and the way they're thinking about things. Speaking of which, we got a
really cool insight into Yuma's perspective, where he's admitting the
fact, or he's reflecting on the fact, that he doesn't really know very much
about Ark. And Ark is a mystery to him, and I would assume that's a hint that
we're going to start digging into more of Ark's history, who he is, what he is, and...
maybe not his origin, but who he is and what he is. And, yeah, I think that's
about it. I think that's about it. So, that was kind of cool to see him reflect
on his memories and think about what exactly he's going to do with Ark and
with his, you know, his future. And it was a nice little character moment for him.
Also, a nice thing was that he was out shopping with his grandmother. His
grandma's a cool character. I like her. And I like that we are seeing, like, a
continuation of these characters' lives outside of Skip, outside of a big Kaiju
battle episode, where it really feels like they have their own lives and their
own, well, just their own lives. They feel that there's a realness to them
because of that, and I really appreciate that. I think it's a very good thing, and
it makes it more enjoyable. It makes it more fun, and it makes me feel more
attached to the characters. It makes the characters matter more when the serious
moments happen, because they have this downtime, this room to breathe, and
that's really cool. And I'm super curious as to what this onyx thing is that
Shu mentioned. Okay, that was not a Kaiju attack. I just knocked my phone over on
accident. So anyway, anyway, yeah, that's about all I had to say. I liked this clip
episode. It was good. There were good character moments in it. It was very
smooth. It felt very natural. I liked the conceit of Bon wanting help proofreading
the professor, the dinosaur doctor's Kaiju book, and they wanted to recall the
stuff about Kaiju, and they, you know, wanted Yuma to be there because he
knows so much about Kaiju physiology, and it got them all talking. They got
distracted. So it was almost like they were gonna be doing something else, and
most of the recapping that happened was them having casual
conversation and having tangents as they were about to do something else work
related. And that feels very office like as well, which is kind of fun and kind
of cute. So anyway, tell me what you thought about this episode. I'd love to
hear your thoughts on it. And please come back for more Ultraman coverage,
because I'm going to keep talking about it. Also, I don't know when I'm going to
get to it. But I do want to start covering probably chapter by chapter, the
Ultraman manga, which is now on Viz. I believe it's on Viz. It's on Viz or Shonen
Jump. I have both of them, so I don't know. But it's on there, and all 100 and
whatever chapters are there right now. And I read one, and it was cool. I didn't
even finish it, actually. I was reading it to my kids for bedtime, which might
sound weird, but whatever. It was pretty, you know, nothing crazy happened. Nothing
crazy happened. If you've seen the Ultraman Netflix series, the Ultraman
anime, Netflix series, the CGI one, that's based on this manga from that started
back in 2011, I believe. And anyway, I'm gonna start talking about that at some
point, probably after ARK is over, because there's just too much going on.
I'm trying to write my books and get those published. And anyway, anyway, we'll
see what happens with that. But yeah, I'm planning on getting that started as soon
as I can when ARK's over. And I think that'll be fun. I'll probably do like a
week by week type of thing. So if you're gonna read through them all, that's great.
Or if I, you know, spark your interest by covering it, that's cool too. You can
join along with me, and we could have a little bit of a conversation about it. I
think that'd be really cool. I hope you enjoyed that. Please remember to like,
share, and subscribe. I invite you to comment, ask questions, and share your
thoughts with me. It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation.
Until next time, be well and be Ultra. Visit MJMunoz.com for more of my work,
and help me build up the Fortress fiction.