“Welcome to Aizen Tech”

The Minato kids head off to meet Makoto Aizen, who is definitely not just a Japanese Tony Stark. Then a monster shows up and OH MY GOD GET THOSE TEETH AWAY FROM THAT EYEBALL.

Euri’s Thoughts

What surprised me the most about this episode is how Aizen talked more about search efforts relating to the disappearance of Mama Minato than anyone has in this series so far. When her absence is brought up back in the first episode, it sounds more like she’s gone off the grid, wandering about for some scientific purpose. When brought up by Aizen, he mentions the lengths he went to in order to find her. It’s an interesting discrepancy, and I wonder if it’s important. For example, the stories might line up if Mama Minato was hiding from Aizen (and it seems she’d have a reason to), but the kids don’t seem particularly shocked that there were search parties.

On the subject of Aizen, he’s clearly the best character in this show. He’s a complete goofball, and you can tell that his actor is having some fun playing that role. Given that we know he was behind the Gargorgon attack, I would expect he ditches the clumsy facade before too long, but part of me hopes there’s more to the monster attacks. We don’t yet know what his motivations are, and he doesn’t seem to be hiding his knowledge of the Ultramen, though how much he knew about the identities of Rosso and Blu before the Gargorgon attack remain to be seen.

An interesting point that was raised by colons when we watched this was that the buildings that are getting wrecked by the monsters/Ultramen are meant to have people in them, right? Gargorgon showed up out of nowhere and landed on some buildings, before proceeding to destroy more before Rosso and Blu appear. There’s no chance of an evacuation before all of this happens, so people are dying, right? I find it hard to believe that the show will acknowledge this when Aizen is found out, but keep it in mind if we see him apologetic.

Random Observations

• Aizen comments on the ‘powerful’ nature of the stranger’s hat at the end of the episode, yet Red King is not exactly the first monster I’d think of if this guy is related to that.
• I would have loved to see a bit of consequence to Blu getting turned to stone, even if it’s a minor moment of peril before freeing himself. There really hasn’t been any negative consequences for the Ultramen in the fights so far.
• Me and colons simultaneously singing ‘I’m Horny’ by Hot ‘n’ Juicy and Mousse T when Rosso pulls his new weapons out of his head is a top ten anime moment, for sure.
• Still no Dinosaur Tank.

colons’ Thoughts

In case the parallel between Aizen and Tony Stark wasn’t already 100% clear, our Ultramans today visit Stark Tower, where he is based. They enter as he’s testing another ~bad compositing~ very good science device, which this time is some kind of jet pack.

Later, the Ultramans fight a big ol’ monster, and we witness one of the most frustrating whiffs on Chekov’s Gun I think I’ve ever seen. The show sets up pretty early on in the fight that the monster’s beams reflect off buildings. After about two or three transformation sequences, The Ultramans remember this and, after one more transformation sequence, cleverly manoeuvre themselves so that they’re directly perpendicular to the surface of that same bui- wait, no, they just use some bullshit reflective shield superpower and use that to reflect the beam back at the monster. The building in question hasn’t been knocked over or anything, it was definitely still an option. The mirror they do eventually use is made of water, not glass, so there’s no way they could have been sure it’d work, either.

Can we talk about how everyone is wearing the same shirts they’ve been wearing since episode one? I get why the red and blue jackets are necessary, but I’m getting increasingly worried that they’re not gonna take proper advantage of the fashion store that they spent so much time establishing as a source of great new shirts. I was hoping I’d be able to be the fashion correspondent on this show, and while everyone does have an interesting uniform, there’s only so much you can comment on when everyone’s in the same outfit every episode. There’s also, of course, the eternal question of laundry.