Blog Jan 16, 2023

ULTRAMAN CONNECTION WATCH CLUB: ULTRASEVEN EP 3

Hey folks, welcome back to Ultraman Connection’s Watch Club! I’m EJ Couloucoundis, Editor-in-Chief of UltramanConnection.com.

And once again, I’m Sarah Last, staff writer and content creator! So, what are we tackling this time, EJ?

Oh, Sarah, we’re tackling one of your favorite episodes! It’s Ultraseven Episode 3, “The Secret of the Lake.” AKA, the episode that introduced what I believe is your favorite Kaiju?

Yes! Two of them actually, but I think you’re referring to Eleking, right? He’s got such a unique and instantly recognizable design with the patchy black-and-white skin, the eyeless face and rotating radar dishes for antennae! There’s lots of things I could say about how cool Eleking is, and why it’s been one of my favorite Kaiju ever since I first watched this episode, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. There’s plenty of other cool aspects to this episode that we’ll have to discuss in addition to our lovable electric eel Kaiju buddy.

There sure is! After all, this episode introduces a lot of elements that would come to define Ultraseven— including how Dan seems to lose the Ultra Eye he needs to transform every 20 minutes.

He does have a bad habit of letting aliens disguised as pretty women steal it off him, doesn’t he?

Sarah, Dan could get that thing stolen by a tree branch on the way to work. It’s a necessary plot device because Seven is so good at solving problems that him being able to use it immediately would ruin the stakes, but still.

Speaking of work, the episode starts, as so many episodes of Ultraseven will, with the Ultra Guard coming off a patrol shift. This is an element of defense teams I’ve always enjoyed-- there’s a vigilance to them that isn’t seen in a lot of western series. Proactive heroism, attempts to find issues in the community and do what can be done to improve them, is cool to see if done effectively.

One way this series, and a lot of other classic Ultraman series of this time, shows that off is by giving us a lengthy, detailed shot of miniature jets taking off from the base! It just looks so cool seeing all the moving mechanical pieces of the hangar slide into place before Dan and Furuhashi rocket out from behind a waterfall! Even if they’re just going out to the middle of the peaceful countryside to investigate a UFO sighting, it gives the whole sequence a lot of pomp and circumstance that I love.

Yeah! Tsuburaya, even though he’s generally considered the “God of Tokusatsu,” was never one to shy away from inspiration from sources all over the planet, and you can see his love for the works of Gerry Anderson (The British creator of several famous series involving miniatures and puppets, like Thunderbirds) in scenes like this.

Anyway, patrol has ended, and the coast seems generally clear, save for a report about a fallen object in Kiso Valley, by a couple of children.

Actually, Sarah, I want to take a quick aside here to talk about how the Ultraman series treats children, and why I think it’s such an effective show for younger viewers. I think a mistake in a lot of fiction is to, well, “kiddify” a lot of plots and a lot of stories. Children show up often in the Ultraman series, but I don’t really feel like it makes the show about those kids when they show up. Rather, children get taken seriously, and respected by the adults, but aren’t made to be anything much more than, well, kids.

It really is interesting to see how the tone of Ultraman shows shifts over time in that respect. But even if some series are more focused on kids and kids’ perspectives, with younger characters forming more of a core of each episode’s plot, the more “mature” ones like Ultraseven here are very clearly written with an audience which includes children in mind. Take the sequence I mentioned with the Ultra Guard’s jets taking off from the base.

I can imagine kids going wild over that sort of technical spectacle back then, and even today! And there’s nothing in the plot of this episode that would completely fly over a younger audience’s head or be incomprehensible to them. Even if kids watching at home don’t pick up on every detail and nuance, it’s still easy to immerse yourself in the adventure and exploration that the franchise depicts in every season.

Honestly, I think the charm of the franchise comes from how easy it is for adults to immerse themselves into the events of each episode in that way. Not necessarily to say “turn your brain off”, but to come at things with a perspective from childhood, which looked out into space, or into the ocean, or to new experiences in general with curiosity and awe.

I think you’re right. The best part of the show is how easy it is for all ages to enjoy.

Anyway, let’s cut at Ultra-speed to a lakeside where Dan and Furuhashi touch down to try and investigate the report. They meet a fisherman, but more interestingly, a young lady swimming around, who mischievously breaks the fisherman’s line and swims off. Perhaps most interestingly of all, however, is the thing that the fisherman almost caught…

Everyone assumes it’s just a fish, but in the next scene, we see the mysterious girl talk to something… which is definitely not an ordinary fish! The younger, more eel-like version of Eleking shows up in a few other places where the giant kaiju appears, even if his bigger version is the more recognizable one, which I think is a neat detail that’s stayed consistent across different series.

I also find it interesting how the girl treats Eleking itself. The alien monster almost seems like a pet, rather than a terrifyingly destructive weapon against the Earth. That’s another angle that seems to have been consistent across the franchise as well. Eleking isn’t something that’s been bioengineered purely for the sake of warfare, it seems like a natural creature that has its own place in an ecosystem or society -- even if that ecosystem definitely isn’t from Earth!

I think that’s one of the reasons Eleking’s been beloved for 55 years now. Even after reappearing in Ultraman Decker, over five decades later, Eleking is still a monster that people care about. It’s had several variations and age ranges, and its raising is consistently a powerful story.

After freeing Eleking, the girl runs and hides just as Dan, Furuhashi, and the fisherman pursue. Having lost her, Dan and Furuhashi move on to continue their investigation. And what do they find, but an alien spaceship!

Then their first plan of action is to open it up and take a look inside, as if they’re just going to write a ticket for some unknown aliens illegally parking on the beachside.

Oh wait, Furuhashi reminds Dan to be cautious -- by quickly glancing at their weapons before going inside of the UFO completely blind.

I know the episode has to keep the story moving but really, is there no protocol for, maybe… calling in to check with the base first?

Nonsense. Every member of the Ultra Guard is the best in their field, they can handle any crisis on their own, especially one young lady in a strange spaceship—oop, gas attack. Come on guys…

Dan stays awake just long enough to see the true form of the girl, an alien, and gets the Ultra Eye stolen. He wakes up first due to his alien biology and gives a cursory wake-up call to Furuhashi before…going rogue again?! Come ON, Dan!

Captain Kiriyama HAS to know he’s Ultraseven, right? Right? There’s no other reason I can think of why he’d so casually trust the guy who’s been on the team for only two weeks to run off by himself.

I think it’s funnier if he doesn’t know, and he feels like sometimes you just gotta let the guy run wild.

I suppose I’m just being too hard on the team. Speaking of hard times, the Ultra Guard finds themselves in just that situation when they unwittingly take back an alien disguised as an innocent girl to their base. Her part of the plan seems to be to keep them distracted and sabotage the headquarters so they can’t fight back against the full-sized monster Eleking when her double summons it from the spaceship back at the lake!

With the defense team sabotaged, and Dan stuck without his Ultra Eye, everything seems to be in place for their attack against the Earth to succeed!

Well, you know what they say.

It really is funny. I think the Alien Pitt twins are up there with the most effective foes that the Ultra Guard ever faces in the show, simply because the whole team kind of keeps bumbling around them. Eleking is also a big threat, but he’s engineered for that, so I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t.

I was discussing this episode with some friends who had recently watched Ultraseven for the first time, and one of them noted that the Alien Pitts’ scheme seems more like two girls messing around on spring break and decide to take over the Earth on a whim, rather than a concerted military effort. It is rather concerning then to see how close they almost come to taking out the only real obstacles to their effort.

Going back to our note about seeing this show from a kid’s perspective, there’s obvious bits of humor in those events. However, for adults watching, it does make for a rather chilling note to see the razor-thin line between success and survival, and total defeat, that the Ultra Guard and Seven repeatedly tip-toe between through the show.

Oh wait, we haven’t even MENTIONED the other Kaiju that was introduced here, have we?

We haven’t! It’s time to talk about the boy. Possibly the most popular of the Capsule Monsters, and a Kaiju I would refer to as a mascot, it’s Miclas! This pugnacious puggalo (that’s pug+buffalo) is… well, he’s a bit of a coward, and not the best fighter here. But he’s got heart! And heart is what really matters… in any moment except a fight against a marauding monster. Which is the only time Miclas ever gets summoned. Hmm.

Hey, Miclas makes a pretty good showing for himself here! Eleking is clearly a tough opponent, even out of the water. The fight I think does a good job of making them feel evenly matched… until Eleking pulls out the electric shocker attacks that provide part of his name. Even when Seven finally DOES manage to retrieve his Ultra Eye and transform to fight, those same attacks force him to fight harder than either of the previous two threats of the series.

Like the Waiell alien last time though, eventually his Eye Slugger makes a rather gruesome mincemeat of this particular Eleking. Which then also catches fire and explodes. There’s lots of fire in this episode, between the Ultra Guard’s own attacks against Eleking using their laser pistols and jet fighters, and the Eleking’s electric energy beams. The fight to finally take it down is much more of a big, show-stopping spectacle than the previous episodes, which I think is another reason why this one stuck out so dramatically in viewers’ minds.

Yeah, this one’s got a lot of spectacle to it, right up to the end when the escaping Pitt spaceship, swearing revenge, is completely destroyed by an Emerium Beam. Uh… Rest in peace, girls. You can’t feel too bad, because they were totally unrepentant, but man. Ultraman.

Then the episode just ends! Right there! We don’t even get enough time to see the flaming wreckage fall to Earth!

Efficient storytelling, what can I say? The girls had the Ultra Eye for a little too long. Also, um… the less we think about what happened to them, the better.

All in all, this is one of the best “fun” episodes of the series in my opinion. It doesn’t pursue a particularly deep subject, but the action is a ton of fun, the Pitts are a delightfully devious foe, and Eleking and Miclas are some of the most legendary monsters in the series for a reason.

There’s just so much going on in this episode! It’s tremendously entertaining all the way through, and the twenty-three-minute running time passes by in a snap. You have the tension of Dan having to find his Ultra Eye again, the chaos back in the base, the multi-stage fight against Eleking, and then finally the *explosive* climax when Seven is finally victorious over the invasion attempt. If the first two episodes set the mood to distinguish Ultraseven from its predecessors, this is really the point where the gloves come off and it starts showing off what it can do with its characters, effects, and technical imagination in fitting all these parts together.

Next week, in my opinion, grabs that premise and takes it to the moon—almost literally! Join us next week when we look at Ultraseven Episode 4: “Max, Respond!” See you there!