This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Join me for a discussion of Ultraman Zet Episode 11 featuring nostalgia, bloodlust, and collateral damage.
This episode is called Ultra Killer. At least my review is called. The actual episode is called something else.
And I don't know what it is. I think it's like protecting what's most important or something along those lines.
Anyway, this might be the saddest episode yet. Which, I guess there haven't really been sad episodes before this.
But this is definitely a sad episode. And you can find out why as I address a few topics that caught my attention.
So, first of all I'm going to start off with something a little light and fluffy, which is King Joe Storage Custom.
This fighting robot is pretty, pretty, pretty good. I was impressed, or I am impressed by how it looks.
It's funny that we get this awesome preview of King Joe in this episode.
But not until next episode do we actually see him in full action. And it's impressive.
So, it's a cool mech. Haruki is very excited. He opens up the episode yelling about how awesome King Joe is.
And that's kind of fun. And then we get, you know, then things kind of go downhill from there.
But it's a cool mech and I like it. It doesn't stink and I do like it.
So anyway, moving on from that. I noticed that Zero, I was rewatching episode 7 or 8, whatever that was,
where Zero shows up and fights alongside Geed and Zet.
And I noticed that he has a one inch punch sort of thing that he does.
And then Gamma Future also has a one inch punch type thing where he summons a little ball of energy magic.
And then he is very close to the Kaiju and he put it to Red King actually.
And he just pushes the thing at it and it hits it pretty hard. And I thought, huh, that's interesting.
First of all, I like that Zero has a one inch punch. But then I realized that has a one inch punch with Gamma Future.
And then I thought, oh, it's because he's his master and he admires him, looks up to him.
Unless one of the guys that he's, was it Taiga, Daina and, uh, Kaina? No, Taina. Taina?
Taiga, Daina and Gaia? Those are the three that make up Gamma Future. Is that right?
That may or may not be correct. Regardless.
I believe that's what's, I believe that's what the inspiration is.
Anyway, so that's kind of cool.
I was super surprised to see Haruki's dad.
A couple things. One, like I was wondering what the reasons were for these people to be in this anti-Kaiju task force.
That is storage. Hold on. It's a Kaiju emergency going on right now.
And I was kind of waiting for us to see reasons for them to be involved in storage.
And it was cool to see that, I mean, it's bad for the character, but sad for him.
It's sad for him, but cool for the character. It's cool for the audience, rather.
That Haruki's dad died protecting him and his mom and a bunch of other people from Kaiju, including, I think, a kid.
He grabbed some random kid and saved him.
And then that was in his hometown. And then we have on the anniversary of his dad's death in his hometown, these Red King awaken.
And, or Red Kings, I guess. Or Red King and Red Queen? I don't know.
But they awaken and he has to deal with them.
And man, that was rough. I got to tell you that C.P. Atone and just...
I don't know, man. It's just seeing kid Haruki when his dad disappeared and was gone for a long beat getting that ball.
It scared me and I thought, oh no, his dad just died. What happened to him?
I thought either that or his dad turned out to have run off and...
Oh, I guess I knew he was dead already, though. Did I?
Anyway, it was interesting. I like Haruki's dad. He's like a real man's man.
And it's super ironic that his mom's like, oh, you're so manly. My manly little baby. You've all grown up.
And he's like, mom, no one thinks I'm a super tough guy.
Which is, you know, it's funny and cute and kind of ironic because, you know, he may not be looked at and universally accepted as a super tough guy.
But, you know, he's got his martial arts prowess and he does, like, professional fighting of Kaiju as a career.
So that's just kind of interesting.
The moment, though, where Haruki kills the Red King and then he has the realization that he killed a father, Kaiju, protecting its baby,
he understandably has this crisis because in effect, based on the visual language and everything that we saw in this episode,
he basically killed his dad. He was the Kaiju that killed his father.
Because that's just how the visual language works.
I think you see the parallels of this man risking himself to protect his son and wife and other children,
you know, other children who don't belong to him.
And the way he runs off to fight the Kaiju, it's just, I feel like it's very much mirrored by the father, Red King, going out to fight,
going out to fight against Haruki, or Zet, rather.
And that's really interesting and really tragic and sad.
And it's something intense.
And I think that the humanity of the Kaiju, if you can call Kaiju, if you can say Kaiju have humanity,
was something that struck Haruki and I think that's what really wrecked him and stopped him from being able to continue to fight like he had previously.
And I think that's a really interesting move and I really like that they went there.
And I think it's an interesting and bold choice.
Anyway, I don't want to belabor that too much, so I will move on and talk about the fact that he ends up, Haruki ends up defending the Kaiju.
And I think Zet exclaims because he's surprised at what happened.
It's kind of interesting the way it works out. The two or so times that Zet has taken over for Haruki and transformed and become, you know, little Zet for 55 seconds at a time,
he like forcibly takes over Haruki's body and it looks weird and it seems strange that he would be like, you know, forcibly taking over his body.
But then again, the arrangement between the two of them, I guess, is that Haruki has control over Zet's, you know, Kaiju or, you know, giant size body.
And he has the autonomy to do whatever he wants in that body. And that's just kind of, I don't know, that's kind of interesting.
And the shock that Zet exclaimed with was really interesting because you can see, I guess, that he would have been okay with killing the Kaiju and abandoning that baby, abandoning that Red King egg.
And this is kind of interesting. And it may sound ridiculous to be having sympathy for the Kaiju, but, you know, this is this whole question of, you know,
what are Kaiju and how do they work and why are they existing on Earth?
And it's something I brought up with the Pegula episode, I believe, when we got the, when Haruki got the spear.
And it's basically being focused on here again, the concept is being brought up and it's being kind of, you know, introduced and played with.
And I don't, there's no definitive answer here. And I kind of wonder why that is, except for the fact that it's going to be explored more in the next episode.
But I don't know, I find that dissatisfying. And as much as I like this episode, and as good as I think it is, it's still deficient in a major way that surprises me, especially for how good the rest of it is.
And yeah, I don't really have much more to say about that. Just there's this question about what Kaiju are and what their purpose is and what they're doing here on Earth and how they're supposed to interact with humans.
And it's not being answered so far, but it's been raised, which I think is a good thing.
I just don't know if this show is the right place to ask that question or address that issue. But it seems to be what they want to do.
That's it for me this time. I have asked a bunch of questions, I've raised some issues, and I am curious to see what other people's thoughts are on this.
So go ahead and leave a comment for me, either in the show notes on MJMunoz.com or where you find this on the video platform.
I haven't checked if the podcast platform can be commented on easily or how that works exactly. I don't know if you can respond or reply to the individual episodes or not, or if it's just the show as a whole.
Anyway, definitely MJMunoz.com is the place you can go to leave comments and you can check out all the other good stuff that I have there.
One thing you can check out, which is actually in the show notes of whatever podcast video you're getting us on, it should be there, is my Ultraman inspired children's story.
I have it written down and I want to get it illustrated, but for now I have a nice draft version of it written down and accessible for you online.
I'll be uploading the polished new version of it, the no longer draft, the final draft of it pretty soon.
Not quite this week or next week, but pretty soon I have it and four others. I have a total of five of them and I'm working together to get written.
They're all based on and inspired by different tokusatsu stuff, so you can check all that out you know where.
So with that, this is MJ signing out.