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. So I want to talk about Ultraman Arc
Episode 14, Flash of the Past. And anyway, it was a really great episode. Just yeah,
just to spill the beans, I liked the episode a lot. It was fantastic. There
was nothing wrong with it. It's you know, it was kind of a dialogue heavy,
exposition heavy episode, but I didn't feel like it was an exposition dump. And
I didn't feel like it was just characters talking to each other. I felt
like it was us getting all these revelations and I like how they did it. I
think they did it in a lot of clever. I think they did a few clever things. I'm
gonna say like three for sure clever things that they did in this episode
that made it more exciting, more interesting, more dynamic, and more
engaging even though it was just a lot of people talking to each other back and
forth and us seeing these flashbacks of the past, which it's funny. Flash of the
past flashbacks. Anyway, real quick. So the writer on there, the director is
Takanori Tsujimoto and the writer is Jun Sugita. So real quick on the director
Tsujimoto, he's done a ton of Ultraman stuff I believe and didn't he do? Hold on, let me see.
Ultra series, he did Ultrazone from 2011, Ultraman X, some of, not all of, Rube or
RB, Taiga, Z, Trigger, Decker, Blazar a few episodes as well. I'm gonna say I'm
pretty sure this guy was, let's see, okay never mind I thought he was somebody
else and I apologize for that but still the episode was very well directed and I
thought he did a really good job with that. It was very emotional, it had a lot
of really good things going for it. Gaining over to the writer, let's see, who
is this fellow? So he wrote the following episodes for the following series. So he
wrote on Zone, Z, Taiga, or Trigger, sorry, Decker, Blazar, interesting, and Ark. He's
the head writer of Ark. So he wrote Ark to the Future, Legend in the Woods, Unleash
Your Imagination, which were the first three episodes, and then Welcome to Akebono
Inn, which is a fun episode. So that's interesting. Yeah, so he's the head writer
for this and this does very much have head writer energy, which is something I
said in my Ultrafast review, it feels like a final episode of the show.
However, in the past I feel like Ultraman, Blazar specifically, I'll lob this
criticism at, and maybe Z too, like they kind of like hold on, hold on, hold on to
the story, like the real meat of the story, and then you get it at the end, like
here's the last episode or two and we're throwing all this story at you and all
these crazy things are going on and what's gonna happen? As opposed to having
more of like a slow burn. And with Z, you did have, you know, spoilers, you had
the final bad going from place to place to place, I'll say it like that, and
slowly working their plan. In Blazar it was much more abrupt and much harder to
understand, I would say, even though I like Blazar a lot, maybe in some ways I
like it better than Z, and I don't know, I just find it really interesting, I find it
really interesting that the dynamic that, yeah, I finished Blazar, I finished Z,
I'm working on Ark, and that's about it, but it's just kind of odd, it's an odd
way to do things, to hold things back so much until the end, and they're not
doing that here, which is really great. The whole, you know, truth about Ruteon
and his origins has been a mystery, has been something that we've been not aware
of this whole time. We've had little bits and pieces and it's interesting, this
episode confirms some things and then spells out some things, but we're not
getting many new revelations, we are getting some, and I'll go back to the
three things I thought were really clever. One, we have the idea that by
meeting face to face or talking, you know, directly to each other, it uses up a
bunch of energy that Ruteon and Yuma have to utilize together, so when he
finally transforms towards the end of the episode, like, you know, three quarters or
more in, he's instantly got that color timer blinking and he's in trouble, which
is good because it creates stakes and it creates a reason why this sort of thing
hasn't happened before, so if people have been wondering why are they just talking
like Z and Haruki would do, this is why. I don't know if there would have been a
better time for him to do this or not, but it doesn't really matter, it's a
story, it's fiction, it's plot, it's, you know, it was gonna happen when it was
gonna happen, and I find that to be interesting. Also, we get confirmation
from Ruteon that he did save Yuma 16 years ago. Something really interesting to
note is that when he is reaching for him, it doesn't look like he's moving
towards him, it looks like he's sitting here and his arms alone are going
forward, like, almost like his arms are actually extending, which I thought was
kind of interesting, but maybe in that state when he was traveling through that
wormhole, for whatever reason the Monohorn creature, Mono-Gellis, was like a
full-bodied creature versus Ruteon was more like a creature of light and maybe
he was in more of an energy type form, and that hasn't really been explained,
but visually it appears that way from the little movie diagram thing that we
got going, or the, really, it reminded me of the, not that I've ever seen one in real
life, but it reminded me of the idea of the the the paper shows that they would
do. Hold on. What am I talking about? I'm talking about Kamishibai. Kamishibai, or
paper play, is a form of Japanese street theater and storytelling that was
popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the post-war period in
Japan until the advent of television during the mid-20th century. Kamishibai
were performed by a kamishibaya, or a kamishibai narrator, who traveled the
street corners with sets of illustrated boards that they placed in a miniature
stage like device and narrated the story by changing each image. Kamishibai has
its early origins in Japanese Buddhist temples where Buddhist monks from the
eighth century onward used picture scrolls as pictorial aids for recounting
their history, their history of the monasteries, an early combination of
picture and text to convey a story. Very, very cool.
Ogonbat, or Goldenbat, originally appeared in these famously before his
anime, and even the the picture on the wiki, it shows the kamishibaya with
Ogonbat behind him in his old form where he's like more like Phantom of the
Opera type guy. Anyway, very cool, very interesting, and I feel like when they
were in the movie theater and they were watching that movie, which that's the
other clever thing that they did, they went into a movie in Yuma's memories or
whatever that they had been to together because they've been together for 16
years, and there he got to see the memories played out in this interesting
way. Of course you could have just told him because this is a visual medium,
we're getting the audience is getting this visual illustration of it, and it's
really interesting that there's this threat to Ruteon's galaxy, his whole
galaxy full of billions of people, trillions of people, I don't know, there's
eight billion people on this planet alone, so if you have a cluster of
planets or a cluster of galaxies that have communication with each other and
whatnot, and there's no there's just the one Sun, yeah, there's just the one Sun,
excuse me, so it must be, I think, that there's the single planet or single
solar system with multiple planets in it that have life, and they all work with
each other or have interactions with each other, obviously, because they're
trying to stop their their planet from being destroyed, so this great, this
super interesting idea that you have this moral quandary kind of of
Ruteon and people who he's allied with are trying to stop the Earth from being
destroyed because this Zaisu fellow came up with this idea, this amazing creation
that he has that can suck the energy from the Sun and disperse it elsewhere in
the galaxy, there's a lot of empty space in outer space in our universe, and he's
thinking, hey, let's just move the energy, but for some reason, I think it was an error,
the Earth is actually in one of the dump spots, and the whole Earth was going to
be destroyed, but Ark already saved the world! Ruteon already came through and
saved the world from being destroyed by having the energy output there, but
Monogalos was sent after him, and Swede now has been sent to find this wormhole
end that he somehow sealed with his powers, which that seems unbelievable
that he has that much power, but anyway, that's something to discuss later, and now
it's resulted in this Onyx thing, this, oh gosh, what do they call it? I don't
remember what they called it, but Ishido knows of it as the Onyx, and it's
something that's gonna play a significant role in the future episodes,
and anyway, so like I said, he already saved the world once, which is really cool, and
now the world has to be resaved because, or prevented from, yeah, there's that gate
there, it's been sealed, or they call this seal, that's what it is, so the seal is
closed, and if it's unsealed, then all the energy will come through and kill the
earth, but at the same time, you have to think that there must be deleterious
effect, I wouldn't think that one seal on earth sealed all of the shunts, let's
call them, or vents, for the energy from their son back in Rition's home
galaxy, but if that turns out to be what they make for the story, that it's
either like earth is killed, or this whole galaxy is killed, full of trillions
of people, or whatever, that to me is kind of like a bad moral, like the math on
that doesn't make sense really, everything should be done to save as
many lives as possible, but if you're, I don't know, like sacrificing, I don't know, to
me it feels interesting, like it's a really interesting moral question, but
if you can stop millions or trillions of people from being killed by killing
billions, do you do that? It's the trolley problem, right, but just dressed up in
space stuff, dressed up in a spacesuit, I mean I would think you have to find a
way to save everybody, and that's the goal, and that's what Rition's friends
are working on, or allies, whatever they are, and I think that's really interesting,
but it creates a really interesting question, but just because the earth, when
shunt is closed off, doesn't mean the others aren't open, and they, you know,
can't be moving energy through there, it's a sufficient way to do things, but I
wouldn't think it would shut everything down, and really put all those people,
trillions and trillions of people, at risk of dying, and if that is the case, I
think that's definitely a weird choice to do. It makes more sense, it makes
Rition more heroic, it makes Ark more heroic, and it makes Swede and Zessu more
villainous if they are now running at like, you know, 80% or 90% efficiency, but
they're still willing to kill people to be at 100% efficiency, especially because they
probably will not have a problem surviving with just one access point
shut off, and you know, I could just open a new one, so I think that's really
interesting, so I like this episode a lot, there's a lot of cool stuff going on here,
a lot of interesting reveals, I like the way that the reveals were done, and I
know I just felt really cool, it felt like a, like, very much endgame energy, and it
felt like the end of the show, but this is just the middle point of the show, so
I think that's really exciting, and I'm really happy that I've stuck it out, and
I'm really happy that Ark is doing what it's doing now, because it's really good,
it's very fun, so, Ritual Night After 3? What did you think of it though? Because I
want to know, what other people think? Do you think it's just a trolley
problem dressed up in space armor? Do you think it's cool? Do you dislike it? Do you
like Swede's addition? Do you enjoy her energy? How do you think things are gonna
play out, because now we have this big floating ball of death? I, one thing I
really like is that, I think, the, Ark's Galaxy is a ball with these two bands
around it, and the seal looks the same way, it's this ball with these two bands
of debris, rocks, and stuff around it, which I think is a really cool thing to
do. I don't know the significance of it, but it's a cool visual, so yeah, tell me
what you think about it, I'm curious to hear what other people think about the show.
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.