Episode 5 of Ultraman Omega was mythic. It was
beautiful, restrained, emotional, and intentional.
Episode 6 feels like the opposite. Not just a
weak episode. Not just a weird episode. This
feels like a mess. I was actually thinking, who
wrote this? I haven't checked, but it can't be
the guy who wrote 5, right? What makes it worse
is that it's a mess right after Omega proved
it could be transcendent. So today, I'm not here
to dunk on Omega. I'm here to explain why Episode
6 feels like a broken promise and why this might
be one of the most structurally bad episodes
Ultraman has delivered in a long time. Yeah,
I stand by that. I definitely stand by that.
So the first issue with the episode is that it
breaks Omega's premise. Kaiju are new, supposedly.
They've never dealt with them before and they're
trying to figure it out. And yet somehow there's
an analog to this earth animal that looks just
like it. In this mole video that we see that
Ayumu pulls up, it's the same suit reframed as
a little mole instead of this giant kaiju. And
it's strange because it's supposed to be something
novel, something new to the world, but it has
this parallel to something familiar and that
loses the immersion, that ruins the fact that
this is supposed to be an intrusive kind of invasive
species and it just doesn't work. The next thing
would be the biology and logic collapse. So supposedly,
I can only assume that they're assuming that
these kaiju have the same life cycle as this
little mole, which lives underground, emerges
every now and then, and it does this mating dance
with this dancing or whatever. And I don't remember
if the little mole is actually underground for
years or not, but that's kind of what they think
is going to happen, that if they take the kaiju...
the pair and put them back underground and bury
them, everything will be fine because they have
this nesting behavior and they're inferring from
that that it's going to be the same situation.
However, these moles are this big. The kaiju
is that big. So how can you assume that their
life cycle is going to be the same, especially
on a world where the kaiju are new and you have
not been able to establish a pattern to observe
the data? They have all this confidence in what's
going to happen with the kaiju, even though they
shouldn't because kaiju are new. Also, the female
appears to be dead. And then episode never, like
they call her a corpse. Kosei says, oh, it's
just a corpse. Why are you worried about that?
Why are we going to go out there? And Soto feels
like he should because something in his memory
is telling him there's something else going on
here. So he must know that there's a second one
that's going to appear. Which makes sense. That's
internally logic all. What isn't internally logic
all is the fact that at the end, even though
she's dead, or appears very much to be dead.
They almost treat her as if she's hibernating
because she had been hibernating before she died
from the sun, I guess. And then her corpse gets
put into her nest and her mate gets put into
the nest and everybody acts like it's a happy
ending. And that's really weird. It's like this,
oh, they'll be fine and they won't be troubling
anybody for a while. She's dead. She's not ever
going to trouble anybody ever again. When the
mail comes out in a year, two years, three years,
10 years, 15 years, I don't know, whatever. He
might go on a rampage because you put him in
there with his dead mate or mate. I don't want
to go. That's gross to think about the biology
and what it can mean. But so I'm moving on. I'm
moving on. And then third, the episode breaks
the promise of quality. Episode five was so good.
It's a beautiful mythic episode. And this one
is just a mess because it doesn't make any sense.
And even. You could argue that episode five doesn't
make sense in some ways, but I would argue that
in other ways it does, because it's more of a
mythic episode than it is a non -mythic episode,
like a regular episode. But it's very meaningful
and very beautiful and very well done. Speaking
of well done, I've been complaining about the
quality of the story, the lack of logic, but
the action in this episode wasn't even very good.
There was a lot more action in episode six than
there was in episode five, but the minimal action
in episode five... was executed so beautifully,
done so well. It was so thematic and meaningful
that it blows this episode's action out of the
water when there was a lot more of it, but it
was just a lot lower quality. So that was not
good. And the episode five was just, it was a
beautiful episode on many levels, including the
action. That little tear from the sakura petal
that looked like Omega was crying. It looked
like Omega was crying. Gorgeous. Here. We get
silly music and weird dancing and an odd fight.
It's super awkward. It's poorly staged. There's
like no meaning to it. There's no emotion in
the battle. It's just something that's happening
because it has to, I guess. And I definitely
think this episode is a craft failure. And it
feels like the trust is broken because while
there have been things in Omega that didn't make
sense, like in episode two, they talked about
this amphibian type kaiju that was... also had
its nest disturbed by the changing of the levees
or the dams or whatever from like decades ago,
which didn't make sense. This doubles down, this
goes even farther and just continues to make
that mistake. It compounds that mistake. It compounds
that error and storytelling and choice and ruining
of the scenario for what gain? I have no idea.
And it cements it as like, this is a show that's
not going to take itself seriously. It's not
going to take its premise seriously. It's going
to be all shucks for no good reason and just
want to treat the audience like they're idiots.
Like the kids watching, like, it doesn't matter.
They're going to pick on me on the logical fallacies
and on the inconsistencies in here, but it doesn't
really matter because they're just kids. And
I don't want to ascribe an attitude or a reason
why it ended up like this to anybody, but there
has to be a reason it ended up like this. Was
nobody paying attention? Was somebody shackled
and they let somebody ruin the episode? I don't
know. Actually, I'm calling an audible. I'm checking
into this episode to see who wrote it because
it's just too different to not matter. It's too
different to not matter. Somebody has to know.
Somebody has to be held accountable for this
in some way. So, okay, I'll just go through one
by one. Here Comes the Alien was written by Tojizo
Nemoto. As was Episode 2, which had a little
logical fallacy in it. Not a huge deal -breaker,
but weird. Episode 3 was written by Junichiro
Ashiki. Episode 4 was written by Junichiro Ashiki.
Or Ashiki. Okay. Episode five was written by
Masaya Hondo, which makes sense. I raved about
him previously. And okay, episode six was written
by Akio Miyoshi. Let's look at what Akio Miyoshi
has done. I feel like this is not wasting our
time. I feel like it's value added because I
want to know why it's so different. And I'm going
to check and see if he worked on any of the other
episodes. So we can anticipate whether or not
there's going to be another strange one like
this and another outlier. I'll say I'll be nice.
He wrote two episodes of Ultraman Ginga S. One
episode of Ultraman X, one episode of Ultraman
Orb, and two episodes of Omega. Okay, it already
tells me. The Kaiju Search and a close -up for
the two. So I'll just anticipate that episode
two, or episode 10 rather, is not going to be
very good. But we'll see what happens when we
get there. Yeah, wow. Okay. I wish him well,
and I hope episode 10... proves that this was
just an aberration for some reason. And it's
an amazing episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts
on the episode, what you thought about it. Do
you agree that like Omega is kind of breaking
its promise here that it made with the rest of
the show so far? Did this lose your goodwill?
What did you think about it overall? I would
love to know. Let me know in the comments. Also,
you can find all my other Ultraman Omega analysis
in the pinned comment. Until next time, folks,
this is MJ with Going Ultra and Henshin Inspection
signing out.