Henshin Inspection presents Going Ultra.
This is MJ.
I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com
Join me as I talk about Comm Reader Gov, episode 2, Tasty Zaku Zaku Chips.
I just have to say, right off the bat, I am kind of forcing myself to just roll with it
because as I'm watching this show, I'm thinking, this is so stupid.
I don't understand why any of this is going on.
I don't understand why this is the gimmick.
In my short, I actually talked about the fact that writer has to gimmick itself in order
to be successful in today's age, I guess.
I don't know what success looks like for Comm Reader toys, but I don't know.
Something like an Evangelion...
I don't know that Evangelion is a good comparison.
Yeah, this is what I'm going to talk about.
First of all, I'm going to get out of the way.
I did like this episode, so if that's all you want to know about, you can go ahead and
go.
The potato chip form is ridiculous, but also kind of...
I don't like it, but I think it's interesting in the way it's played off, which is that
if you eat a chip at the wrong angle, it cuts your mouth and it cuts your throat.
But if you don't eat it at the wrong angle, then it just crunches pleasantly in your mouth.
That's a ridiculous thing, and the fact that they got emotional buy-in from me with his
mom explaining to him about potato chips really kind of makes me irritated.
But it also shows Junko Komura's skills as a writer, because she's been writing tokusatsu
for a while, and she's making me connect with this guy and his mom over stupid potato chips
in this ridiculous form.
That's kind of the power of tokusatsu, and that's why I like it so much.
But getting back to the whole merchandising thing, I can't believe that I'm watching a
guy with potato chip superpowers.
Why is that so much more ridiculous than a guy with spider powers?
It's not, but if the guy started with spider powers and then he eventually got gummy powers
from eating gummies, then it would kind of bother me.
But yeah, Combinator is this weird thing.
You could say Super Sentai, too.
It's so strange that it evolves and it had to reiterate itself, and it's relaunching itself,
and it's putting this new spin on things to keep it fresh, to keep consumerism up in a
funny way.
There's a line that Shoma has that says, human happiness is not created for your consumption.
It's kind of funny, because as a corporation, Bandai and Toei are working together to make
these stories where the point of making the story is to make the toy line and to sell
the toy line, which means the toy...
Well, they operate independently of each other.
If the toy line is successful enough on its own, it can sell, and it kind of doesn't matter
what the show's doing.
But if the show's good enough on its own, it can be a success.
How do they monetize the effort that went into making that, though?
I don't really know.
I guess it's by selling DVDs and Blu-rays.
If they still do DVDs in Japan, I don't know.
It's by having people buy figures.
It's by the merchandise, and that's where the real money from the film is made, to quote
yogurt, and from Spaceballs, of course.
If you don't know that, check it out.
You'll like it.
If you like this at all, you'll be able to roll with yogurt and Lone Star and everybody
else and Spaceballs.
Anyway, so I'm watching this, and I'm enjoying it.
I'm enjoying it for the story.
I like what's going on, and then all of a sudden, he gets this potato chip for him,
and there are chips popping up on the screen, possibly with Japanese sound effects or in
the shape of Japanese sound effects, for crunchy or crispy or whatever.
I suspect that, but I don't know that for sure.
It's just ridiculous.
It's kind of ridiculous, but I also like it, and I'm enjoying it, so I don't really know
what to say.
I don't really know what to say.
This connection that Shoma has with Sachiko and also with Hajime as well and Honto is
interesting.
Honto is this reporter guy.
He's investigating.
He's a digital native.
He's called it by his boss, which is really funny because the guy's older.
He's probably not that older than me, but it's funny to hear him talk about the kid
that way or Honto that way.
Something interesting is happening where I said in episode one that I liked Hajime's
performance so much I'd love to see him go into further episodes.
He appeared in this episode in a sort of cameo.
His mom is there, and Honto's interviewing her because she was attacked by a monster
as was her son.
Two monsters.
Hajime clarifies that one of the monsters was trying to save him.
Hopefully, Honto will remember that because he gets a sketch of the monster from Hajime's
mother, and it's a sketch, a very rough sketch, of Gov.
It's interesting that he gets that and then he compares that to the sketch that he has
from when he was a kid of the monster that attacked and killed his mother.
He turned her into one of the press.
She's probably already been eaten by somebody.
I wouldn't think that he can get her back because I wouldn't think that a human would
last that long and would be able to provide stomach ink or whatever with the ingredients
they need for long enough to make anything last years.
It's been 18 years.
If she's lasted 18 years, I will be shocked and irritated with the show for doing that.
You could have made it one year ago.
It would be much better.
Anyway, it's kind of funny that he looks at these two sketches and he says, oh yeah, these
are the same thing.
Like that office meme.
They have the same picture.
It's not the same picture at all.
He saw the guy was very dog-like and I guess Gov has what could be considered ears or antennae
or whatever, but it's totally not that.
It's just odd.
What else?
I don't know.
I like this very human story, the story of connection that's happening with all these
weird antics going on.
I have the show running over here next to me so I can glance at it and hopefully remember
to say anything that I wanted to talk about.
Oh my gosh, her friend has a little lighting rig for doing the vlogs and stuff.
Interesting.
This is my lighting rig right now, by the way.
A little flashlight and it's currently charging so that's why things look the way they do.
Anyway, so yeah, the very human story of Sachiko wants to make people happy and happy is in
her name and her company is called Something Silly But Fun.
I don't want to go back to the beginning of the episode to look at it, but I might just
because I like it that much.
Anyway, Sachiko, it's cool.
She writes down and she shows him that the kanji in her name means happy or it has happy
in it and so she supposes that's part of her character.
That's why she wants to make people happy, which is really fun.
She lives in this wild place.
I don't quite understand the place she lives in.
Is it a crazy looking apartment building slash office building?
No.
Handyman Happy Parade is what it's called and it's really cool because the logo looks like
Kiki's delivery service.
I may take the time to put it up on the screen here, but I may not.
But just go look it up for yourself.
It's at two minutes and 45 seconds into the episode.
If you look there, you should be able to see it and it's really cute and it's really fun.
It's a really fun idea and it's cool because she talks about later on in the episode that
she wants to do things to make people happy.
Hey, she's going to get paid for it, but like something in her wants to help random people
be happy with the outcomes that they're experiencing basically in life.
You know, your toilet, your toilet craps out on you.
I didn't mean to make a pun there, but you know, your toilet goes bad or whatever happens,
she's going to come and she's going to do what she can to fix it for you and you're
going to be happy and she's happy that you're happy.
And then for her, the her favorite part of the job is when she gets paid.
That's not what she's saying.
It's a joke.
Sorry.
And I think that's really cool.
That's really interesting.
It's a nice way to present market interactions because all interactions are somewhat transactional
between people and you either transact with your time, your energy, your money, your attention.
And you can have, we're kind of forced to have interactions and exchanges with people
all the time and they can either be good or bad.
They can either be enjoyable or unenjoyable depending upon how we and others around us
conduct themselves.
And the highest ethic would be for everybody to act honorably and honestly and positively
with each other.
And then we have like a happier life together, right?
And yet some people choose to act in this predatory way.
Some people choose to act in a way where they take only from people and they don't give.
There's no real exchange or it's a very one-sided exchange where they kind of force the other
party into interacting with them in a certain way.
And that's kind of what you have symbolized.
This might sound ridiculous, but it all makes a lot of sense to me because Sachiko is operating
on like a fair exchange, a value for value kind of exchange.
And Stomach Ink, which is I guess, is that really what it's called?
Like, are we good?
Yeah, Stomach Ink, that's really what it's called.
Anyway, and Stomach Ink exists not on that level.
They are some sort of family business who does this thing, but they make the dark confections.
They prey upon humans and they get them.
I don't know.
I'm very unclear as to who they're targeting and how they target them, but they take people
against their free will.
They basically, they're hunting humans, basically.
That's the bottom line.
It doesn't, a lot of the details don't matter.
They're hunting humans to use them for ingredients for their dark confections, and those do something.
I don't know exactly what they do.
They have employees.
They have some sort of underground, upside down, black and purple CGI kingdom that they
live in or whatever.
I guess that's where Shoma was living with his mother for some time.
The difference in those worldviews, the difference in those ethics of I'm going to do for people
and help them and have these fair exchanges with them versus we are going to hunt down
people and kidnap them and kill them and put them into these possibly addicting food items
that we'll sell at exorbitant prices or whatever.
You can see the difference between those things.
You could say, oh, they're both exchanges.
But really, are they?
And at what point does, like, at the very base level though, the Semic Inc, what they're
doing is immoral because they're murdering humans in order to do it.
What about food companies that make animals animal products?
It's a different thing.
That's almost universally accepted that it's a different thing.
However, people who agree that eating animals is a good thing to do or an acceptable part
of life, they frequently would not like the animals to be tortured while they're being
killed.
They want them to be killed in as humane way as possible, to have as little pain as possible,
and for it to be done in a sustainable sort of way.
The best way is for it to be sustainable and regenerative as well to actually heal the
plant and help it grow and things like that.
But that's another story for another time.
If you want to talk to me about Regenag or anything like that, we can totally do that.
I'd love to.
Just let me know.
So yeah, it's really interesting that there's kind of these two worldviews, or not kind
of.
I think that's what's being presented, and my focus is on how it's business interaction
and voluntary interaction, business exchange and voluntary engagement with the person and
the product is what's at stake here.
And Suchico does more of like service industry.
So she's interacting with people and doing services for them, which is probably a little
nobler than just a straight up product, because if products can be scaled, then that means
that there can be like no care given to the end user, because look, you got your product,
I got my money, that's it, our relationship is done.
Whereas in a service business, you actually have to work with the person and you have
to make sure that they're happy with the service that you've rendered.
And it's a little more difficult.
It's harder to scale.
And when it's scaled, it becomes less good for the end user.
And it's kind of like I said, it's a little more of a noble business because you're directly
interacting with people and you're taking care of problems for them, giving them solutions,
and they give you time.
Of course, it's harder to become super wealthy off of that thing because you can't scale
that product because the product is you.
You're the product offering the service to these people.
You're the instrument for offering the service and there's only one of you, so you're limited
in that way.
So I think I've done a decent job talking about the contrast there between the two types
of businesses being operated, being shown in operation, this business and how they affect
other people and what that means.
One is very immoral, the dark sweets, dark infections business, and the other one, the
service business, helping people out is very moral.
Going past that, because I don't want to talk about this for too much longer, I'd like to
cover a couple more things.
I find it interesting that Shoma tastes the sushi and nothing happens.
He eats a gummy again.
The first thing he has is a gummy of some sort and little items are created for him.
Creation, destruction, death, life, consumable items, that's something I want to get to in
a minute, so let me hurry up with this.
So he is able to get more gummies out of him eating gummies for his belt, for the gov.
The sushi does nothing for him.
The potato chips do produce something for him, though.
He has a positive association, he has an emotional connection with his mother over potato chips,
and I would assume gummies as well, because it seemed in the first episode like he had
heard of gummies, but he doesn't really say that.
It just sounds like that's probably the case.
So I'm wondering if every food that he eats that produces something out of his gov that
can go back into his gov, which kind of doesn't make sense, right?
But whatever, will be something that he has a strong emotional connection to his mother
or to, and I think a lot of that will come from his mother, and it'd be really interesting
to see if something that he eats with his friends here, who he's making, Sachiko, probably
pretty easily, and then Honto maybe, maybe even Hajime, is going to be something that's
going to give him power versus things that, well, which would be cool because it would
be showing him having a new strong emotional connection with somebody, not just his dead
mother, but these new living friends who he has, these new people in his life who give
meaning to his life and really make the joy.
It's not that the joy comes from the food, it's the joy comes from who you share the
idea and the memory of the food with.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's something that gets worked on here.
Another thing, so I find it strange that his belt eats stuff and then stuff comes out of
it.
Well, at the end of his transformation into the potato chip, the zaku zaku, what are these
things called?
I don't know what they're called because I don't really care because it's a toy thing.
Oh, Gochizo, okay.
They're slowly becoming characters.
I might have Gochizo remembered by a couple episodes in, but we'll see.
The zaku zaku potato chip, Gochizo dies, it gets little wings and flies up to heaven or
whatever because it's gone.
He's consumed it.
So, it's a consumable item.
Manufacturing use consumable items.
Your toothbrush is a consumable item, you get rid of it and have to replace it.
So, he's going to keep eating and his belt is going to keep spitting out these things
and then he's going to use them and then they're going to have a, they're useful, expire and
he won't be able to use them again.
So that's interesting to me that there's this idea that those things are consumable and
that they go away and he has to get them back.
I don't know how that's going to be utilized in the show, but it did strike me as interesting
and I almost wonder if there's like a, if that's tied thematically into the show because
I'm sure if Komura and company didn't want it to be that way, it wouldn't be that way.
So I'm wondering what the purpose is behind that.
Is it supposed to show the ephemerality, the temporariness of things and how we have to
be thankful for them and not take them for granted or could it be something else?
I don't really know.
I really like these monster designs with the stomach in the middle of them and then that
like bear midsection.
It's just like this black void type thing, like showing the mouth, representing the mouth.
I think it's a really cool, clever thing to do and I like it a lot and I don't know, it's
a weird show, but I'm liking the things that are here and some of the, you know, crazy
Otoku Satsu elements in it and the modern stuff that I don't like, that's like so commercial
and so, I don't know, weird.
I don't really dig, but like at the core, it's something I really like and I find a
lot of value in.
And I mean, I'm really liking this.
So we'll see how it goes going forward.
I hope to continue liking this show and yeah, if you are liking it, let me know.
If you're not liking it, let me know.
Let's talk about some of the things I brought up this episode.
I'd be curious to hear your opinions on them and that's pretty much all I have to say.
Remember to like, subscribe, share, leave a comment.
I want to help, I want this channel to grow and you can help me do that if you're enjoying
what I'm saying and if you want to help me, you know, keep making this stuff, I would
really appreciate that.
So anyway, until next time folks, take care, be well and don't eat people, okay?
That's not good.
I hope you enjoyed that.
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Until next time, be well.
This is MJ signing out.
This has been a Story Over Everything production.