EJ
Hi all, and welcome back to the Ultraman Connection Watch Club. I’m EJ Couloucoundis, editor-in-chief of Ultraman Connection.
SL
And once again, I’m Sarah Last, staff writer and content creator at Ultraman Connection!
EJ
Tell me Sarah, are you well-versed in cave safety procedures?
SL
Can’t say I spend much of my time spelunking around in dark, confined spaces, no.
EJ
And that’s precisely why you need to be up-to-date, in case you find yourself in a cave unexpectedly!
But I digress. More importantly, Sarah… have you ever heard of the legend of the doppelgänger?
SL
Ah, now that I’m more familiar with! A reflection of the human psyche, one which underlines and delineates the limitations of our cognition; familiar and yet foreign in the uncanny resemblance of something decidedly not ourselves. It’s a trope commonly used in folklore such as-
EJ
Sarah. Sarah. I get it, you’re familiar.
It is actually a good thing that you know so much, though, because this week’s episode, “Underground Go! Go! Go!” blends your favorite topic here, doppelgängers, with mine, rigorous cave safety.
It also brings up an interesting question that you may not have even known you had: Where did Dan Moroboshi come from? Not the Ultra, but the man. In Ultraman, the titular giant’s human body came from a merger with Shin Hayata of the SSSP. Dan, however, seems to have been created for Seven from whole cloth… or did he?
SL
He definitely just… appears in the first episode, sitting laughing on the roof of the Pointer. It seems like he was just a wandering traveler at first, but that does raise the question… where did his travels take him before joining the Ultra Guard?
EJ
It seems that even while he’s part of the Ultra Guard, Dan is picking up shifts at a local mine. Just kidding! This is Jiro Satsuma, AKA “the miracle man,” a miner who somehow survived a 200-meter fall while saving a friend during a rock-climbing accident. Nobody knows how he survived, and he’s got some amnesia of the event, but, well, he made it!
SL
This episode’s cold open launches us straight into another disaster, a cave-in at the mine where Jiro is hard at work. The other miners make it to safety after this mysterious earthquake, but Jiro is trapped when he runs back to rescue his pet mouse Chukichi.
I was about to give him grief for that, but c’mon, it’s so cute! I admire a guy with a soft spot for animals, even if it might have sealed his certain death in this case. The other miners don’t give up hope though, calling for the Ultra Guard to investigate the cave-in, and contribute to the rescue efforts.
EJ
As a quick aside, mine work has kind of been a regular story element to the Ultra Series since it began. The very first episode of Ultra Q took place in a mine, and honestly set up a similar situation to this to a degree.
I’m not sure exactly how Eiji Tsuburaya felt about mines. I think he respected miners, definitely, since almost every miner we meet is a good, hardworking person, but there always seem to be some subtle messages about the lack of safety standards in the industry considering how many cave-ins happen in the series.
SL
Even with rigorous safety standards, underground mining is a hazardous occupation just by virtue of what it involves: digging hundreds of feet down through destabilized rock, potentially toxic gases, and pitch darkness. I wonder if mining in this sense is comparable to how space travel is considered in other science fiction stories. That is, ordinary human beings venturing into a place that is hostile to humanity, and trying to discover what might be hidden there — for better or worse. The same hazards would be expected from astronauts, or even deep-sea divers in a submersible thousands of fathoms under the ocean.
That being said, it is definitely a nice change of pace to see a mine operator actually concerned about the welfare and safety of his crew. They aren’t sure if anyone’s left alive after the shaft’s collapse, but they’re determined to save whoever’s left.
EJ
To actually carry on from the prior conversation and patch it into Ultraman as a general topic, humanity is at its best in this series when it is regular people doing what they can. The show really makes an effort to remind you that the average person is generally kind and decent, and it’s something I really enjoy — as well as something doubly painful when we see the hard decisions that humans have to make.
Anyway, cut to the Ultra Guard. This cave-in is suspicious, as there weren’t any earthly signs it was about to happen, or causes they could discover, and so the miners have called the Ultra Guard, to both determine the cause and rescue the still-trapped (and hopefully still-alive) Jiro. Once the whole team arrives at the scene, they are updated of the situation by the mining crew, who inform them that this cave-in — heralded by a mysterious flash of light — is the third such accident to happen this year. They’re still pumping in air, but they don’t even know Jiro’s condition right now.
SL
I like how this episode sets up an idea of Jiro’s character through the other miners trying to rescue him. We don’t know who he is or how he’s connected to Dan Moroboshi, but it’s clear that his fellow miners have a lot of respect and admiration for him.
While the Ultra Guard and the rest of the mining crew try to work out a plan of attack, Jiro himself is trying to work out a way to signal his location. Dirty, disheveled and sarcastically teasing his pet mouse about the situation they’re in, he comes across totally different from the buttoned-up and professional demeanor that Dan Moroboshi often has as a member of the Ultra Guard. I really feel like Kohji Moritsugu, the actor, put in a lot of effort to distinguish the two of them in this episode.
EJ
Agreed, this episode was one of the ones that really showed Moritsugu’s talents as a performer — playing two characters in a single story is hard!
Both performances are important to saving Jiro, however, as the miner himself starts tapping on the air tubes to make sure that his would-be rescuers know that he’s alive — a sound Dan is the first to pick up. Using his superior vision, Dan sees Jiro’s face — his face — and recognizes him, flashing back to the “miracle man” incident. Jiro Satsuma had cut his own rope in order to save his friend from falling with him when their rock-climbing expedition had gone awry… only to be saved from certain death by Ultraseven, who had just appeared on Earth.
…Wait, hold on.
The miner who had mentioned Jiro’s fall stated that it had happened the other day.
HOW LONG HAS THE SERIES ACTUALLY BEEN GOING ON IN-UNIVERSE?!
This is Episode 16! “Other day” is the sort of thing you use when talking about something that happened like, last thursday! When they say the Earth is under constant invasion by aliens, they’re not kidding!
SL
You know how it is, wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, don’t worry about it-
But you know what is consistent in this show? How much Ultraseven admires the self-sacrificial heroism of humanity, just like his fellow Ultra Brothers! Hayata joined with Ultraman in the first series so they could both best protect all the lives on Earth with their combined strength. Later on in other Showa-era series, other Ultras would find hosts who similarly demonstrated that same courage, and were willing to risk their lives to protect others. Even though Seven doesn’t have a human host he joins with, he’s so moved by Jiro’s example that — not only does he save his life from the fall — he takes his appearance to become “Dan Moroboshi”.
You know what they say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. More seriously though, Jiro represents something specific about humanity which Seven wanted to emulate, an ideal of heroic virtue that he decided to literally embody through his persona while on Earth. That’s pretty impressive for a guy like Jiro who seems so ordinary otherwise!
EJ
Like I said, the average person is fundamentally good, and the capability for heroism exists in all of us. Dan is unwilling to let Jiro, who in many ways is responsible for the creation of Dan Moroboshi, die like this.
Anyway, time for cool drill tanks! The Magmariser doesn’t make a ton of appearances in Ultraseven, but it’s one of my favorite of the vehicles that the Ultra Guard uses. It reminds me of the Gotengo from the movie Atragon, one of my favorite tokusatsu movies — and one whose effects were created by Eiji Tsuburaya!
SL
My love of the classic drill tank is well-documented. Number one on my wishlist for any new Ultraman show with a defense team is more cool vehicles like it. Maybe this year will be the time…
The next sequence in this episode is devoted to showing off how awesome this new piece of technology is, but even the power of their drill runs into trouble here! Jiro is quickly running out of air, there’s only minutes left, but they can’t seem to break through the last layers of rock to reach him.
It’s time like these which also highlight those core themes of Ultraman, and what defines heroes in these shows. Even when they’ve run out of options, when they’ve tried everything, and gone as far as what seems to be possible, the Ultra Guard, Dan, and Jiro refuse to give up. They continue to do what seems to be impossible, not because you have to be Ultraman to overcome those challenges, but because they never stop trying to fulfill that ideal.
And finally, a last ditch effort to blow a hole through the seemingly-impenetrable rock brings them… to something else which seems quite impossible. A mysterious hidden base, laying undetected underground!
EJ
This sequence is an absolute race against time, unfortunately, as the Magmariser’s digging has caused debris to block the air pipe for Jiro, meaning he’s running out of air.
The base itself, made of material too hard to drill through, is manned by mysterious robots, known only as U-Toms. One of them even captures Dan, all in an attempt to protect their base!
SL
They’ve been hinting at something weird and otherworldly being behind the mine accidents, but I have to say, I wasn’t expecting an entire city of robots who sound like mechanical turkeys to be behind it all.
EJ
It’s weird, isn’t it? There’s a vibe that these guys aren’t actually in charge, but just maintaining the base for their creators, who we never get so much as a glimpse at.
Unfortunately for the U-Toms, Dan is able to free himself and become Ultraseven, destroying his robotic captor. Once free, he immediately flies up through the cave system to find and rescue Jiro (and Chukichi!), as Anne, Amagi and Soga plant bombs to detonate the alien complex, ending its threat. Nevertheless, the Ultra Guard has to wonder — What was that underground city? The episode ends on that wondering…
SL
It’s a strange note to leave on, turning a heartwarming tale of humanity’s courage and perseverance into a more sinister story about an unprovoked attack on an unknown city which may have been resting peacefully for thousands of years before humanity even existed!
And humanity — along with the audience — will never learn which of the two is the truth. While I’m sure that ambiguous tone is intentional, it sure does put a damper on the celebratory fireworks at the end of the episode.
But it’s a warning that will prove all too prophetic as we come to some of the episodes later on in this series.
EJ
Next time on Watch Club, we take a trip with the Ultra Guard to a mysterious alternate dimension, where nothing is as it seems, and everything is hungry for delicious humans, in Episode 17, “Escape Dimension X”! See you then!
