EJ
Hello, and welcome to another special Ultraman Connection-exclusive discussion! My name is EJ Couloucoundis, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief of Ultramanconnection.com.
SL
And I’m Sarah Last, staff writer and Showa-era fan extraordinaire!
EJ
Now Sarah, it’s Ace Week here at Ultraman Connection, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the series, and the upcoming Ultraman Connection Holiday Special 2022. You and I both have a lot of love for Ultraman Ace, and a lot of opinions, but I think one thing we can really agree on is that Ace felt, more than anything, like the first time Ultraman fought a true “good versus evil” battle. Is that right to you?
SL
Yes, I’d agree wholeheartedly with that. In the previous three series before Ace, each Ultraman hero faced many challenges and lots of threats against the Earth. But these tended to take the form of more mundane — or rather, material — threats of destruction or conquest. Ace starts out with plenty of destruction in the first episode, however it sets itself apart by setting up a single, central antagonist who defines almost the entire season — Yapool.
EJ
Oh, Yapool… Sarah, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but for a long, long while, my favorite episode of Ultraman was a two-parter. Ultraman Ace 13 and 14: “Death Penalty! 5 Ultra Brothers” and “The Five Stars Scattered in the Galaxy”. They were episodes I managed to find relatively early in my life, while I was voraciously consuming any Ultraman media I could find, in the dark times before Mill Creek sets were easily available. And that two-parter, mashed into one single hourlong story, was on a VHS I found in Chinatown, New York. That was my first exposure to Yapool, his creations the Terrible-Monsters, and Classic-era Ultraman in general.
And I have to tell you, what Yapool did in those episodes made me terrified, and also pretty much defined him in my head as the greatest monster in the Ultraman Series. I still don’t really think he’s been topped to this day.
SL
He’s certainly in a class of his own! While other famous alien opponents of Ultraman have made multiple appearances throughout the franchise, Yapool has distinguished himself from other malicious alien invaders. Some aliens want to conquer Earth, to take control of its resources, to show their superiority over other lives, or have some other sort of goal in mind. But Yapool’s own form of malice doesn’t really have any specific purpose other than to settle some undefined grudge against our heroes!
At the end of the day, he just really, really, really hates humanity, and the Ultraman heroes who protect them in each season. That hatred can come out in hilariously petty ways — like kidnapping a kid’s pet pigeon just to turn it into a monster and use it to attack the Earth. Or it can lead to big, dramatic plots against the Ultras which involve trapping them all on gruesome crucifixes in the famous two-parter you mentioned.
EJ
You say petty, and that’s definitely so. However, I think that pettiness has a greater position in Yapool’s general plans. People find joy, and reasons to live, through small things every day. Hobbies, friendships, little moments of hope that make existence worth continuing. I think personally, more than anything else, that is what Yapool tries to destroy, what he hates most. This piece is going to be titled Ultraman Ace, Yapool, and the War on Hope, and Yapool’s monstrous work is just that, a war on hope.
In the context of the greater Ultraman Series, the various invaders that have targeted humanity prior and after Yapool have used spectacle and destruction as their weapons. Every King Joe that tries to stomp on a UN embassy have hoped to knock off the crown humanity wears, to subjugate them through pure power and terror. This, of course, never works, because human nature exists in opposition to this; they will always get back up when knocked down, even without Ultraman, and that’s why Ultraman is there.
Yapool, on the other hand, understands human nature in a deeply upsetting way. He doesn’t intend to knock humanity over, but rather, make the weight of life too heavy for them to be able to stand at all. He seeks to destroy the little things that make us human.
SL
We’ve made this point many times in talking about Ultraman Decker too. The main characters can stand up to any challenge, fight against them, and eventually overcome those dangers for the sake of very small, ordinary things. The connections of friendship, family, small hopes for the future, simple things that they can reach out and affect in their immediate lives, all contribute to the heroes’ strengths. As you said, Yapool understands the true strength of those bonds all too well, and many of his most horrifying plans involve systematically breaking them.
One of my favorite episodes of Ace, and really the point where I realized how unique Ace was compared to other classic Ultraman series, was in episode 3 featuring the Terrible-Monster Vakishim. The spiky, orange, hook-beaked dinosaur is a very powerful threat, but during the episode it hides itself as a young boy who was taken in by a kindly old couple living in the country. After it tricks the two heroes of the show, Seiji Hokuto and Yuuko Minami, into letting down their guard, causing them to doubt their own senses and skills, it murders the couple in cold blood before attacking the TAC defense team’s base!
Yapool strikes on all fronts, representing not just deadly physical threats of force, but deliberate psychological manipulations which destroy the trust and cooperation between characters.
Speaking of which, we should probably talk about our unique dual protagonists, don’t you think?
EJ
We should, we should! Seiji and Yuko, two of my favorite protagonists in the entire Ultraman Series! Ultraman Ace boasted a first when it came to its leads; two heroes combining into one Ultraman! Both Seiji Hokuto, a truck driver, and Yuko Minami, a nurse, were killed in Yapool’s first Terrible-Monster attack, having been caught in the attack of the missile-spitting horror Verokron while trying to evacuate children from an orphanage. In many ways, this charitable deed on their part was the first slap in the face against Yapool; a steadfast refusal to save themselves and abandon the people around them, to maintain their defiance and hope.
SL
Bold words to describe Seiji’s decision to literally ram a tanker truck into Verokron to try and take him down.
EJ
OK, so “slap in the face” is a bit of an understatement. Kick in the shins?
SL
A very explosive kick in the shins.
EJ
We could get into a full discussion about how bombastic Ace’s action is, even in comparison to its predecessors in the Ultraman Series. Today, however, what’s more important is to speak about the ideology of Seiji and Yuko, and by proxy, Ultraman Ace, who resurrects the two and gives them the means to combine into him using their rings and the high-flying “Ultra Touch.”
Seiji and Yuko, in my mind, have always embodied two emotional concepts that by their very nature defy Yapool’s aims. The hot-blooded, hot-tempered, hot-headed Seiji embodies passion, the roiling fervor in his heart that drives him to pursue not just his own dreams, but justice for humanity against Yapool’s cruelty.
Yuko, in contrast, is compassion, the warm heart that sees all the small and large pains suffered around her and seeks to support and validate them however she can. Of course, both passion and compassion exist in both, but the two do have contrasting personalities, and both of them are vital to Ultraman Ace, who contains multitudes of both.
SL
It’s an interesting angle, and one that fits the themes of the show perfectly. Since Yapool’s main threat against humanity comes from the way he breaks bonds of trust and cooperation between characters, it makes sense that the best way to fight back against him is through the efforts of an Ultraman hero who is fundamentally defined by those bonds in such a literal way. Ace’s power can only be called on when the three of them are acting together.
This point is important in some episodes, where Yapool’s machinations intentionally drive a wedge between the rest of the defense team, and Seiji and Yuko. Often Yapool’s influence is only suspected until it’s too late, and the rest of the team members don’t want to accept it until the big Terrible-Monster appears and starts stomping on buildings. But even if other TAC members don’t trust Seiji’s rash judgment or Yuko’s perceived naive sentimentality, the two of them can rely on each other, and that connection saves the day more often than not.
That’s not to disparage TAC — not too much, at least. Their incredulity and distrust are deliberately stoked by Yapool, after all. It’s more remarkable that the heroes can overcome that distrust at all, sometimes miraculously finding a way to foil Yapool’s plans at the literal last second. I think if Ace only chose to work with a single human host, like other Ultraman series of this time, then Yapool may have won. Uniting Seiji and Yuko together gives humanity an extra… dare I say, Ace up their sleeve.
EJ
At least, until the time comes that Yuko must go. You see, Yuko, for all her humanity, is not actually a native of Earth; she comes from the Moon, from a civilization that was once almost annihilated by Yapool in the past. When the Terrible-Monster that destroyed her people, Lunaticks, attacks and is destroyed by Ace, Yuko sees a chance to return to and rebuild her home. To undo Yapool’s desolation by getting back up again. And of course, that requires her to leave Earth, and perhaps more importantly, Seiji and Ace. She gives up her ring, wishes her friends goodbye, and leaves.
Of course, she’s not truly gone; not in the hearts of her loved ones. Seiji, now the sole host of Ace, has nevertheless learned compassion from Yuko, and carries her kindness and the lessons she taught within him. He has been made more whole by their time together, and though the sadness of their parting is clear for the rest of the series, it does not diminish the joy they felt together, and his drive to defeat Yapool. After all, Yuko may not have made the decision to return to her homeland if she had not learned passion from Seiji as well. Both are still together, in the hearts of one another.
SL
I was so pleasantly surprised to see her make some return appearances several times after that heartbreaking episode too! Later in the show, with the Christmas episode — which also set the fantastic precedent of Father of Ultra playing Santa Claus — eventually in the final episode, in Ultraman Taro and even in Ultraman Mebius. Even if Yuko’s character left the show itself, the franchise, its writers, producers, and fans never forgot about her or tried to downplay her importance in that legacy. She’s just as much of a warrior and hero as Seiji, even if her strength isn’t found in the same sort of reckless passion that Seiji represents.
EJ
Everyone fights to keep their hope alive in a different way. And that’s why Yapool does eventually lose, his final Terrible-Monster Jumbo King falling just like the prior ones, finishing off the threat of the other-dimensional demon forever!
Except it doesn’t. It never does. Nothing keeps Yapool down. The war never ends.
As soon as Ace’s successor series, Ultraman Taro, begins, Yapool is back with a new Terrible-Monster, Oil Drinker. And even though Oil Drinker was defeated by another monster, Astromons, it doesn’t change the fact that after Ace beat Yapool up and down the block dozens of times, he just got up and started again, his sheer loathing completely unaltered.
Over three decades later, during the tenure of Ultraman Mebius, Yapool was still returning, hoping to turn humanity against one another and collapse it before the arrival of the greater villain he served, the emperor of darkness known as Alien Empera. Even then, after getting defeated multiple times by Mebius, his allies in Team GUYS, and humanity in general, he still refuses to let things end.
And while that sounds dire, even bleak, the fact remains that so long as people fight that hopelessness, Yapool can fight as long as he wants, until the sun goes cold. He won’t win.
SL
In some way, I think Yapool’s nature is dependent on the fact that the fight will never end. He simply embodies the act of hatred, with no end or final purpose other than just to exist in that hatred. In contrast, Ultraman Ace, Seiji and Yuko, and all their allies, still fight with the hope that it will. That’s the ultimate source of their strength, and Ace’s unexpected cameo in Ultraman Z eloquently made that point too.
Yapool was attracted to that version of Earth by only the vaguest hint of revenge. The power of the medals used by Ultraman Z and his host and partner, Haruki Natsukawa, was enough to set off his petty, undying grudge and launch a new attack against them. When faced with that sort of all-pervasive evil which even stretches across the multiverse and brings destruction in its wake whenever it appears again, it would be so easy to just simply despair. But Ace returns to encourage Ultraman Z and Haruki to keep fighting, to keep that passion for protecting other lives, to keep the importance of those lives and their connections always in mind, and to use those bonds as strength to carry them through dark, violent times of struggle.
It’s a powerful message for newcomers to the series who may not be familiar with the full history of the Ultraman franchise. For viewers who have seen Ace’s own struggles in his original series, it takes on a new, tragic dimension, but that tragedy also makes his message even more imperative in context.
EJ
Of course, people watching Ultraman Decker week-to-week like us will note that, once again, Yapool still comes back. He’s more tenacious than the worst cockroach. This time, however, things went a bit… differently, in a truly horrifying bent. This time, we saw the true form of Yapool’s endgame, in a way nobody expected to see, including the monster himself.
Yapool came to this new Earth in order to help enable the genocidal revenge scheme of Agams, the Alien Bazdor from the future that loosed the Sphere on Earth to achieve some sort of pointless vengeance for his world that is being attacked by the Sphere in the future.
And Yapool did his job. Did it well. Using one of his Terrible-Monsters and battling alongside Agams, he managed to eject Kanata Asumi, aka Ultraman Decker, from the isolated Earth that he was the last line of defense for. The hero was left floating in space outside of the barrier, no way to save his friends from what would surely be a monstrous invasion to come.
However, things went wrong when Yapool tracked Kanata down to finish him off. Trying to find a place to regroup, Kanata and his ally Kengo Manaka stayed at a moon base infested by Sphere, and Yapool hoped to ambush them and finish both heroes off. However, what nobody could have expected was for the Sphere, the sheer force of assimilation and consumption that they are, to glom onto him.
What’s next, as Sarah can attest to, would chill any viewer to the bone. Yapool, the eldritch threat of 50 real-world years, who has never stopped, never been made anything but more hateful and more dangerous… was almost completely annihilated. Kanata and the audience alike saw these barely understood creatures strip away the hate, the viciousness, the hunger for revenge, feeding on it… and leaving Yapool a husk. Under all that bile and venom, there was nothing underneath.
SL
Describing Yapool as “eldritch” is a good way of putting it. Often in the Ultraman Ace series, the heroes are stymied by their attempts to fit Yapool’s actions and plans into a sort of rational logic. The complementary passion and compassion shown by Seiji and Yuko are usually how Yapool is effectively countered — even if that means temporarily throwing logic out the window. Yapool does not act rationally, ergo, he cannot be understood rationally, and it takes a different kind of stark passion to understand his influence and root out his plans.
This sort of irrational emotion ironically makes him a target of the Spheres, which appear to bleed out all the defining aspects of other lives unfortunately assimilated by them. In Ultraman Dyna the Spheres specifically see humanity as a threat because of how it is defined by irrational desires and flaws. So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that Yapool, himself a literal physical embodiment of irrational negative emotions like rage, despair, terror, etc., also falls victim to their inexorable propagation.
EJ
What I consider to be so sad about this is that Yapool has literally nothing else after being drained by the Sphere like this, to the point of asking, almost in a fugue state, “What is Yapool?” as if he doesn’t even know the answer without those negative emotions. It’s the end state of such a life. No matter how much we claim that Yapool can endlessly sustain himself on hate, when the objects of those hate disappear, there’s nothing left for him. He, ironically, has nothing to keep him going, just like he wants for the rest of the multiverse.
SL
Brrrrrrrr! That’s a really scary thought. Death by giant Terrible-Monster attack is bad enough, the cold, barren wasteland of a universe drained of passion and emotions is quite another.
EJ
Luckily, that future never has to come to pass. The Ultras will never give up hope, and so long as you continue to find joy in your life, no matter how challenging it may be, that horrible future Yapool pushes towards will never come. Take comfort in that.
I think we’ve said more than enough about the show; after all, we don’t want to keep you from watching it yourself! Ultraman Ace is available on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment everywhere media is sold, and we of course highly recommend it. I’m EJ Couloucoundis, signing off as Ace Week comes to a close.
SL
And I’m Sarah Last, you can catch my recaps of Ultraman Decker each week to find out where the fight against the Spheres leads next!
