This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Welcome to my review of Ultraman Zet Episode 9, which I am calling Ultra Illusion.
So, this episode of Zet features horror, tactics, and hand waves.
And I'm going to say that this episode, again, last episode I kind of felt the same way.
This time it's a little bit more so. It's a little bit off for me, and I'm going to tell you why as I talk about the following topics.
And before I do that, I'm going to remind you to check out my Ultraman inspired story for kids,
which you can find in the show notes of this episode and elsewhere on MJMunoz.com.
So, first of all, this is a cool thing actually. Did you hear a little bit of Godzilla's theme music in that GAF opening?
The opening where the GAF is hiding the medals or their metal...
They're doing whatever with the medals and then King Joe comes and attacks the laboratory.
Da da da, da da da, da da da da da da da, da da da da, da da da da da da da da da, like that, right?
Anyway, go back and listen to the episode. I found it's difficult to cut...
Well, anyway, I found it's difficult to cut stuff from these Super Ray productions,
and I appreciate them making them widely available, and I don't really begrudge them too much,
making it harder for people to grab stuff from them, if you know what I mean.
I can grab images and that's good enough, but grabbing audio and grabbing anything in motion is a little more difficult,
and again, I can understand why they would want to do that with their property, so I'll let that slide.
But anyway, if you listen to it, the Godzilla theme, pull up the classic one from the 1953, 54 movie,
and then compare it to the music at the beginning of this thing when there's creepy, you know...
I don't even know how to describe it, because it almost gives the GAF a creepy vibe, even though I don't think that was the intention,
although maybe it secretly was, because it's mankind messing with things that they don't understand,
and perhaps they shouldn't be, because it's too much for them, I don't know.
I really did like the alien hand on top of the scientist's head, the GAF guy that was captured,
or out of view as the only left survivor, I don't know if they all lived or what happened,
but anyway, it was mentioned on that recording, or it was mentioned in the context of that recording,
that the alien was puppeting this guy, basically, and talking through him, and that was really cool.
I always loved the moment from Independence Day, for example, when the lead scientist has the alien biosuit,
has a tentacle around his throat, and he's pressed up against the glass, release me,
and it's a very cool vibe, and it's creepy, and scary, and like I said, I like that, that's good stuff to have.
It's good things that makes for good tension, and good, I don't know, good stakes, I guess,
to think that these aliens could do this to other people, and you know, how terrible that is,
and I guess it makes you want to see the hero take them down that much more, so that's interesting.
They did something interesting here in the episode 2, where they had Windom flying, I don't know for how long,
and that's the thing, they played fast and loose, they were vague, we don't know how long Windom was flying,
and then fighting King Joe, and Har-Q was going to go get back in Windom,
and then he said that he didn't have enough time, I guess, to go run back to Windom,
but I wonder, had he gotten back into Windom, how much battery would he have left,
and do those batteries only, I guess, are they only run down, or drawn from when the mech is in full active combat?
Could you like, get lost in space, for example, and stay inside of the cockpit for a day,
running off of, you know, absolutely minimal power, only to give you life support, or something like that?
I think that would be interesting to know about, but I like how they cleverly rode around,
needing to address that by just having them say, I'm out of time, Mr. Z, help me,
and then he transforms.
So, oh, I forgot to talk about the feint.
So, I like the feint that Storage did, where they actually fooled Har-Q into believing that he was doing this mission in a particular way,
and it turns out that it was a trick that Yoko was actually taking the medals somewhere.
I think it was super cool that Yoko made a device that could emulate the signal from those medals,
that's pretty cool, and that opens up to other questions.
If they can emulate the medals, then could she potentially build something that detects the medals,
and then could she build something that detects the, I believe, the medals and the medal holder that Har-Q wears,
that people aren't able to see because it's made of ultra-metal, I think is what the idea is, metal, not medol.
There's a distinction between the little medallion coin things and the actual material.
But I wonder, like, could she potentially trace that or create a duplicate signal of that or even duplicate it itself if she can duplicate the signal.
I think those are interesting questions to ask.
Anyway, it was a funny, fun moment where they were deceiving Har-Q, and he didn't get why, and they said,
oh, you're just too honest.
So, that's kind of funny because, or that's cool and interesting because it reveals something about his character as well.
And then, Hebikura and Yuka knew all along.
And that's why, that explains their knowing glances at each other in the car while they were, you know, driving and being the diversion, the decoy rather,
that, you know, they knew they were deceiving Har-Q, and I know this is kind of funny, which is, I don't know, I don't think that's a bad thing.
I think it's very reasonable.
Then, my next point I have here is, no, the second faint.
So, the second faint is somehow Hebikura, no, not Hebikura, Kaburagi knew what they were doing and he interfered.
I have no idea how.
I feel like that's, I call it the second faint because it's kind of a, and I'm going to get a little more critical here,
it's kind of a faint on the audience as well because we had reason to, like, there's no reasonable explanation of how Kaburagi knew what was going on
and how they knew that they were running this deception and I feel like it's kind of unfair for that to be the case when we have,
like, I did, who knew in storage and if he's kind of on hiatus from storage because he kind of got caught by Hebikura,
then, you know, how do you justify him being available to access that information to know how to spoil their plan?
And yeah, I think those are serious questions that they just don't address.
The next thing is, you know, they use this Ultra Illusion trick which I named, or no, is it Ultra Illusion?
I don't remember. Maybe it was called Ultra Illusion, but that's what I named the episode because the more I thought,
first of all, I just thought, I really like this Gamma Future form. I think he's really cool and I thought it was, you know,
neat to see him using his Illusion, you know, powers again.
And again, I thought about it, or the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, is it really an illusion?
First of all, is it really an illusion if he's actually creating these duplicates and they're actually able to, you know,
act independently of each other even if they are all kind of slaves together doing the same kind of attack?
And you could say, well, that's not independently of each other. It's, you know, joined together.
And there's a, you can quibble with that, but my larger point stands that it's also an illusion.
So it's an illusion that it's an illusion. It's fake. Obviously it's fake, but from, you know, from, this is a show.
I'm watching. It's for children, whatever. But the writing in the show has been so good and so clever
that it's surprising to see that the end of episode eight, he split into four people, you know, with Gamma Future,
and then he does it again here. But here, it's like it's happening. It's played as if it's happening for the first time,
which it most definitely is not. And I do find that to be frustrating.
So I don't know why they would do that, but then also it seems evident that Zet had forgotten about the ability to do that,
and he needed to be reminded. And I don't think, like they had been seeing King Joe split up into multiple parts for a while,
or they knew even from the comms from Yuka and Hibikura that this was happening. I believe that's the case.
So why wouldn't they think, hey, he's splitting into four parts. We split into four parts before. Let's just do that again and we'll be fine.
It just seems kind of odd. And I don't mind Yuka giving him the tip to force him to split into four forms
or into into separate his body into four parts so that they could, you know, attack a vulnerability.
But like I said, the fact that they didn't remember that they could do that just seemed kind of silly.
And even through a hearty head of a guess, he said, can we split into four? Like, can we do that?
And, you know, Zena Robinson's performance was fine and the face actor, his performance was fine too.
But just being forced to say that by the writing team, it was less than thrilling. It was not a good move, not a good look,
because it's just kind of silly that it's not like it's the show's being internally inconsistent when it's been so internally consistent before.
It's disappointing to see. And yeah, so and like, yeah, beyond that, like, how does that even function?
Let's say they can separate into four like that because they do, you know, what is that?
But maybe that's the power of miracles from Mr. Dyna. I don't know. Anyway, moving on.
I like the very end. Well, yeah, I do like the very end as King Joe is being carted away by drones, as parts are.
We get this alien hand, this evil dead hand popping up from the debris. And I dig that. It's a good look.
Yeah, it's very visually striking. So I'm in full support of that, even if, you know, even if I don't dabble in horror so much these days.
But anyway, and then let me see. Yeah, I thought it was strange that Z forgot about something.
What was it? Oh, he forgot how to use the three new metals that they got in this episode, the ones that they intercepted from King Joe's tractor beam or whatever.
And I find that frustrating. And then, you know, I got to ask, did the show forget as well?
Because we had, you know, we had this repeat of the climax of last episode, episode eight, where they use the gamma future ability.
It's Gamma illusion. That's what it's called in the show. They used gamma illusion to split themselves up and attack the tri king or five king or whatever he was at the time with, you know, multiple attacks all at one time.
And I did. I went back and I looked at it and Gamma future himself didn't attack. He let the three others, Tyga, Dinah and whoever else attack.
And then he went in for an attack. So technically it's different because three of them attacked that time, but not four. But they did split into four individuals.
And the it was even more so they were even more substantive. The three, you know, this staff or split off forms of him, you know, being these three Ultramen, they seemed less substantive.
And yet they were able to attack on their own. I think reverse that they look like guys in suits, full suits.
And you got really good close up shots of them. And that was at the end of episode eight.
And the end of episode nine, they looked more illusory, more like they were, you know, composited with effects or whatever.
It was done like less carefully, but it had more. I don't know. I think you're getting what I'm saying.
I think I'm doing a poor job of elaborating and I don't think me trying to force myself to say it clearly is going to help.
So I'll stop before I hurt myself or anybody else. So, yeah, I was disappointed by that.
And like, it's not just the effects stuff. It's like the story stuff is kind of being messed up for me because this great story had been told so far, has been told so far.
And it had been done cleverly and really well. And everything was really tight.
And then we just have these, I don't know, indulgences, these bouts of laziness. I don't quite know how to define them.
But I find it very frustrating that all of a sudden there's, I would say, a dip in quality.
And I don't know why that's the case. And it's too bad.
And it, you know, makes a, it mars my enjoyment of it overall because, you know, all the ultra-nz is great except for these, you know, weird things that happen.
And then, like, I remember from watching it before, I'm going to love next episode, or at least I loved it back then.
I think I'm going to thoroughly enjoy it this time. And I almost feel like, was this all just like a setup for the coming episode?
I hope not. Is that why, I don't know, liberties were taken or I don't know how else to, liberties were taken or shortcuts were taken?
Perhaps? Again, I hope not. But that's what it feels like. And it's just kind of disappointing.
So anyway, those are all my thoughts on Ultraman Zet Episode 9 for now.
And with that, without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and get out of here.
I hope that you're well and I hope that you do well. And until next time, folks, this is MJ signing out.
Thank you for watching.