“The Bond of Brothers”

The Ultra-brothers save the city from an accordion dinosaur, and might have accidentally killed a guy?

Euri’s Thoughts

In a surprising twist of events that no one could have seen coming, episode two was the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ episode. Despite that super cool handshake, the two brothers have a little falling out over whether or not they should use their Ultraman powers to protect their home. A good conversation to have, and sure enough they eventually agree to kick monster butt once they find their family threatened by Black King, the accordion dinosaur who apparently has his horn broken a lot. The brothers’ disagreement wasn’t particularly well handled, but we did get to see Blu storm off in a very over the top manner.

The fight itself is pretty much the same as the previous episode, in that the Ultramen don’t appear to have much trouble dealing with it, even though they’re clearly still getting used to their new powers. One revelation during the fight is that the red brother is better at using fire, and the blue brother is better at using water (who knew!), so fingers crossed this is the last episode where we have to watch two separate transformation sequences to account for swapping tokens. We also know that Blu has one of each coin, so there’s also potential for some double water action in the future.

Unsurprisingly, Tony Stark is again made out to be the person behind the monster attacks. We see this when he witnesses someone with apparent supernatural speed catch a woman who is falling over, and Stark subsequently asks him for a favor. He also mentions the Ultraman name on the TV later in the episode, which is something Rosso and Blu only know about as part of their transformation sequences. He probably has some research-related history with their mum too, so I expect we’ll see him become the duo’s benefactor in the next episode, regardless of whether he’s the big bad or not.

Episode two hasn’t really shifted my opinion on the show one way or the other, but given the brothers are shown to approach Stark in the next episode, we should see some plot progression. Plus Gargorgon shows up, and that’s a rad monster even if the whole teeth-near-eyeball thing makes me very uncomfortable.

Random Observations

• We’ve seen Ultraman dispatch of Black King before, back in episode five of Ultraman X. Interestingly the monster that showed up in the next episode was also Gargorgon.
• The brothers perform their special handshake while in their Ultraman forms, which is totally how their dad and sister are going to figure out it’s them.
• Black King blew up pretty good, so I wonder what state it left the person using the monster coin in.
• Still no Dinosaur Tank.