This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is my Ultraman Zet review, which I'm calling Ultra-Guilt.
This episode of Ultraman Zet features self-doubt, bioweapons, and the best robot fight yet.
And I think this episode made me fall in love with the show.
And I will tell you all about that as I go through the different things, the different topics that I picked to speak on.
Starting off with Pilot's Burden.
So, Yoko and Haruki have this very interesting interaction while they're waiting for...
Ah, gosh, what's this guy's name?
Oh, Grigio Riden to come back.
They're waiting for Grigio Riden to strike back so they can defend against him and protect people from him, right?
And they have this super interesting conversation where Yoko comes up to Haruki and breaks the ice and talks to him and says,
Hey, you know, you're playing, doing this, that, whatever.
And he says, is it really justice to kill Kaiju?
And she says, you know what? It's not fair that Kaiju are in this world the way they are.
But I've decided to take upon myself the responsibility of taking a life of a Kaiju, of taking a life in general to stop somebody,
whether it's a little somebody or a big somebody, I guess, from hurting people the way that Kaiju can, the way that Kaiju do.
And I thought that was really interesting because it's not only the burden of a mech pilot in this fictional world,
but it would be the burden of, let's say, like a police officer or somebody in the military, you know, fighting in a war, in a volunteer war,
as opposed to like a drafted war, right?
I'm sure you see the distinction between those things where you're taking upon yourself the responsibility of
and the burden of killing somebody because you feel like you're justified in killing them in order to save others.
And not that you would wish that everybody would kill them because you know it's a difficult thing.
It shows like a maturity and an honor and a respect for the fact that killing somebody or something, ending the life of something,
is not easy and it's not something that weighs an insignificant amount on a person.
So if you can avoid, if you can volunteer and step up to do that for other people, there's some nobility in that.
For some reason that's making me think about the fact that today people who eat meat, which I am one of,
we don't have the responsibility for taking the life of the animals that we choose to eat the flesh of.
And that's probably not a good thing because it disconnects us from them in a certain way that might, you know,
be less than healthy for us as a species. But I'm not going to get distracted talking about that.
I'm going to go ahead and talk about this issue of kaiju, which Yoko says that kaiju aren't meant for this world,
aren't meant to be in this world. And I don't know if the cosmology, I would assume this is what it is,
the cosmology of Ultraman or the Ultraman universe is that aliens, kaiju, humans, all evolved at different times
and it's an accident of evolution, I guess, that humans evolved on Earth long after kaiju did.
I don't, if that's the case, I don't understand how kaiju can be a fundamental part of the ecology
because it just doesn't make sense with how large they are, with how much they would need to eat,
the amount of territory that they would have to use. I mean, I don't know, even there's only a dozen kaiju per Ultraman show
and they're all in a different universe, I guess, a dozen, two dozen I meant, if it's roughly 24 episodes,
I guess that makes sense to some extent, but it just doesn't seem right. Maybe like one kaiju per continent,
but then again, we see two Red Kings here and there was the Red Kings, there was the guy up in the mountains who had the allergy,
I can't remember who that was now, to, you know, he had hay fever, just like hierarchy, so it was like, it just doesn't make sense
and I think my bigger problem with, and I'm glad I'm getting distracted talking about this because I have another thing to say about them,
is that, like, why does it have to be that big? Like, you can have them be 20 feet tall or 100 feet tall,
I guess the idea, if you made them too small, is that you wouldn't need Ultraman, this unearthly force, to defeat them,
but then again, we do see in this episode that King Joe is able, you know, storage custom, is able to defeat Grigio Raiden on his own
and that's kind of interesting.
It doesn't make sense for the world to necessitate that Ultraman has to take care of the kaiju on Earth
and in some ways I can appreciate then, storage doing what they're doing with their robots and I like it and it makes sense,
but where the show is going, I'm not sure, I'm not sure that it's all 100% internally consistent.
I like it, I've seen the whole show before and I liked it then and I'm sure I'll like it now
and I've been enjoying it with the exception of a little bit being tired of some stuff in episodes like 9 and 10 repeating themselves,
but yeah, I don't know what more to say on that. I'll probably get into the other issue later.
Grigio Raiden is the seed of storage's robots, which I find very interesting.
It also kind of doesn't make sense, I understand that somehow in response to and as a result of having access to Grigio Raiden,
Storj was able to build the Sevenger and Windom robots, that makes sense.
I believe they are a reference to Ultra 7 and in Ultra 7 they were actually kaiju that Dan, was it Dan Marabushi or not?
I don't remember, I think it was, had in capsules, kind of like Pokemon, and he would release them and use them for fighting I guess,
but he would also turn into Ultra 7 so maybe they would tag team bigger kaiju threats or more powerful threats or something like that.
Anyway, that's interesting and is it possible that there's some sort of real deep cut lore nugget here that I'm missing?
The idea is that since there's genetic tampering that's been done with Grigio Raiden and they were seeking to turn him into a bioweapon
that maybe they cloned parts of him and kind of like in Evangelion there's a biomass, there's an actual living creature with a body inside of the mecha
and all the metal on it is just armor plating put on top of it to restrain it or whatever, is that what they're going for?
Because if they are, that's super metal and like a crazy cool idea, but also it kind of raises the issue again of kaiju autonomy and rights and...
I don't know, are these terrible people abusing these animals essentially?
Or do kaiju have such sophisticated sentience that they could be asked to cooperate with people? I don't know, it's really weird.
But then again, I haven't seen Ultra 7 so maybe it's handled equally weird in that where he's just kind of like capturing these mindless monsters and making them do his bidding.
I don't know, I don't know. But I find that a very interesting concept.
So I mean, I'm raising kind of moral issues with some of what's going on with storage and there's a big moral issue I think with Yuka.
I don't mind her collecting kaiju body parts and she brought out that Grigio skin sample or Grigio Redden skin sample in this episode.
That was gross and it made it for a real great funny freak out moment from the characters being grossed out by this like stinking hunk of kaiju flesh or whatever that she slapped on the table gleefully.
But she was really excited about the idea of it being a kaiju bio weapon that had been genetically engineered or engineered by human hands.
And that doesn't really seem to fit her character. I know she said she wanted to like... did she say dissect or vivisect Mr. Alien Spiky Juggler? I don't remember.
So like, I don't know, she's definitely out there and she's outlandish as a character, but being outlandish as a character doesn't seem to equate to her wanting to just go ahead and be okay with or approve of a kaiju bio weapon being forged by humans.
That just doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't make sense to me. Like, if you like having a real shark tooth necklace because you think sharks are really awesome animals, does that stand to reason that you'd like want to personally cut up a shark yourself?
I mean, going back to what I said earlier about how maybe you should kill a thing yourself if you're going to eat it, then you would say yes, you definitely should do that. But like, shark's teeth can be recovered through non-lethal means.
A skin sample can be obtained through non-lethal means. A horn sample could be obtained through non-lethal means. So like, is you just a psychopath who's into killing kaiju and like manipulating their bodies like an evil mad scientist with no regard for what it does to them or what?
Because that definitely seems kind of odd. And it's something that's a problem for me. But I don't know, I guess the rest of the show and the rest of everything going on around it is so much stronger than that quibble that I'm not going to say, oh, this is a terrible show and I reject it.
We should cancel Ultraman Z and all this stuff because that doesn't make any sense. But anyway, it's just kind of odd. Yeah. Very odd.
So, you know, last episode I posited that Haruki killed his father or felt very much as if he killed his father when he killed the Red King dad, just trying to protect his egg and his mate.
And we, I think we saw his transformation break. Oh yeah, he lost his energy. And this episode we see it again where in a much more dramatic fashion he loses his ability to do the Zestium Beam and then his transformation like devolves and it's just vanilla Zet up there, giant, but without the, you know, Alpha Edge or any of the other, I guess, Ultrafusion type things, you know, sustaining him.
And he disappears and, you know, it's pretty dramatic. And, you know, he's got this colossal dysfunction where he can't keep up the status of being, you know, colossal or tartanic or, you know, kaiju size because of how emotional he is over everything, you know, everything that he's done and how it reminds him of his father.
And I gotta say, it reminds, this moment reminds me a lot of in Giver, which I watched in the 90s because it was available then in the 90s from ADV Films.
ADV. Or was it Manga? No, it was Manga Entertainment. That's right, Manga Entertainment. Of course, that's what they call their anime company, which is hilarious. I wonder if they started off translating Manga and then moved on to anime. I don't know. I don't know the history of Manga.
Anyway, but in it, the titular character of Shofu Komachi is seriously injured in his alien bio suit, which I believe the more I've looked at it, the more I've thought about it, the more I've become exposed to Tokusatsu.
I'm pretty sure the gentleman who was the, or who is the creator of Giver, I'm trying to make it still ongoing, but I don't know, I gotta verify that, was a fan of Ultraman and Kamen Rider and decided to blend them into one weird amalgam.
And we got the beautiful and deadly and violent Giver. Anyway, there's even a guy in it who, well, whatever, I don't want to get too distracted. But at one point show, the Giver, Giver-1, the titular hero, gets his brain damaged, as in like, I think it completely gets destroyed.
So his armor takes over and defends him because they're a symbiotic, they have, it's a symbiote basically, or they're in a symbiotic relationship and it has its own life force and mentality and protocols or whatever, and it deals death upon somebody in dramatic fashion.
And show is regretful of that and he can't quite remember what happened. And when he eventually does remember what happened, he loses the ability to transform into Giver until he's able to forgive himself and move on from there.
And I love that in Giver and I'm loving that in Zet here. And I think it's really fantastic and beautiful and I like that it's talking about, I like the touching on like, I don't know, the cost of being somebody who kills, the cost of, you know, that whole pilot's burden thing.
And beyond that, like, this moral question and this moral quandary. And you know, I get that Yoko doesn't have that same moral quandary because she's already come to terms with that hierarchy.
I think he's so, I don't know, naive and gentle that he wants to save everybody and has to struggle with the fact that you can't save everybody no matter how hard you try and unfortunately saving, you know, thousands of people, hundreds of people means you have to kill one Kaiju or, you know, dozens of Kaiju over, you know, dozens of Kaiju you're saving thousands or tens of thousands of lives easily.
And it's just, it's really interesting. And I am struggling to remember how exactly this gets resolved. And I wonder what it'll be like. But it definitely reminds me of that, that story beat in Giver.
And that was something I loved in that show. And it was really novel to me and very interesting, very desperate to definitely ratchet up the tension.
And it even made for a sweet, I don't know, moment of realization and moment of resolve when Sho was able to move on from that. And yeah, I really like that. I really like that.
Let's see. So, okay, Yoko's piloting is peak performance. So not only, man, not only does Yoko, like she's mad, like she's a better pilot than Haruki, right? But she's totally mastered that, the united and separated forms of King Joe storage custom.
And it is astonishing to see her operate that thing in four separate parts. And it appears that she does it all in voice command. I don't know if there's some sort of other control that she's using as well within her cockpit in the, I think she's in the breast cannon, the breast tank.
But yeah, I think that's the, or maybe she's in the head, either she's in the head of the breast, but either way, it's head, breast, legs. And I can't remember what the fourth part is, but like, man, that was insane to see how she piloted that thing, how she used it to like totally dominate Grigio Raiden.
And I remember at the end when all was lost when Haruki couldn't maintain his transformation anymore and she had to save him and save, well, that was kind of out of there. So she just did what she had to do.
And when she, you know, fought and just broke through all the defenses of Grigio Raiden to kill it, that was amazing. It was astonishing. I noticed though, so I just, incredible piloting. It was super cool. And I really liked seeing it. And at the end of it, when he was still exploding, she was basically like reathed in flame and had flame as a background.
And she was standing in front of flame and it was just an interesting background image. And in that moment, King Joe looked really evil. Like, this is a weapon of war, you know. This is a weapon and weapons are made to kill people.
And as much as I wish that wasn't so and I could believe in Ms. Masao's sweet and naive talk, it's true that weapons are designed to kill. And I mean, that's what that, that's what King Joe did. And that's what she did very effectively.
But I mean, how many more people were going to die from this kaiju? So I understand it. It's just, I don't know, man. It's just, you shouldn't like war. You shouldn't like killing. And I think this show gets that across very well. And especially, I'm going to loop back to Haruki in a second.
But I love that, this is an aside, I love that Yoko's first concern once the battle's over and she's kind of like, you know, cooled down is, where's Haruki? It reminds me, honestly, and I thought this was brilliant writing. At the end of Revenge of the Sith, spoilers for, I don't know, 2005, whatever.
Old movie, almost 20 year old movie, that when Vader wakes up in, and Anakin wakes up in the Vader suit, when Padme wakes up, he asks, where's Padme? And she asks, where's Anakin? And it's just heartbreakingly cruel that these two were together and separated and have concern for each other despite everything that happened and despite their last conscious moments of interaction with each other.
It's just awful, diabolical, Palpatine is, Sidious is a monster. Anyway, so I love that Haruki's the first thing on her mind after she's come down from the heat of battle. And it made me feel like she was fighting for him to save him.
Like, you know, saving everybody else is great, saving the world is great, but, you know, there's this, I think it's a Joseph Soren quote that like, you know, five dead people is a tragedy or, you know, one dead person is a tragedy and, you know, a thousand dead people is a statistic.
It becomes, the number is numbing to the human mind. The human mind can't really grasp that many people dying and really register it in a way that it matters. So it feels like perhaps Yoko was fighting to save Haruki in that moment.
That's what had her motivated. That's what had her putting King Joe to its limits and coming out with the win in such an impressive display. But anyway, when she asks how he is, the camera goes to him and we see him collapsing, falling from, you know, being Ultraman to just being a man, a broken man.
And he gets up and screams because that's all he can do. And gosh, it's like the fragility and the vulnerability of Haruki, honestly, I think is what, it's not what keeps me going watching Z, or Zet, whatever, but it's like definitely a part of the charm of the show.
Like his actor does a really great performance and he really seems like a genuinely good guy who really cares, who wants to do his best and who's struggling to do that. And just seeing him go through all these ups and downs, it's really awesome.
And it makes sense that like Hevikura and Yoko and Yuka and everybody else is like much more well-defined. Like they're already like past a lot of their crises for the most part.
You'll see a little bit more with them as, you know, the episodes go on. But they're like, you know, 90% of the way done. And, you know, maybe he's 30% of the way there to hearken back to Zero calling Zeta one third hero.
And gosh, having him be that way and getting to see so much of his development in his journey and him questioning things, questioning himself, questioning what he's doing is so enjoyable. And it gives such a wonderful, humane, loving heart to the show that just makes me love it.
And yeah, that's all I have to say. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, what you think about what I think about it and just what you think about it in general.
I asked some questions and I brought up some stuff that you might want to chime in on. And you can do that by commenting on the blog. Go to MJMunoz.com and you can find this episode and just leave a comment there.
I would appreciate hearing from you and I'm sure you'd appreciate having the interaction, having the chance to have the conversation about this awesome show that we both enjoy so much.
So anyway, check that out and go ahead and leave your comments, but also check out my Ultraman inspired children's picture book, which has a draft draft 1.9 of Ava and the Grow Bug there on the website.
It's in the show notes as well in any of your pod feeders, pod readers. It'll be there for you to check out and enjoy.
And I have a new version of it that will go up soonish. That is a expanded, improved, worked on version of that story, which is even better, which I am working to get illustrations done for so that I can get it published and release it out there to the wide world.
For other people who are like me who enjoy Tokusatsu, enjoy Ultraman, who have kids and who want to share an awesome Ultraman and Tokusatsu inspired story with their youngins.
Anyway, with that, I'm going to go ahead and get out of here. This is MJ signing out.
I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments or other feedback you might have.
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