What Does Lucky Represent In Animal Farm 2025?

 

By Joe Gibson

I recently went to see the new(ish) Animal Farm in theaters (as I have ascertained, it technically debuted at an art festival last year between Netflix shirking the distribution rights and Angel Studios picking them up). As you can probably tell, given that this is a focused editorial on a small part of the movie and not a review, my reaction to the film is such that I do not care to go back to it for a more in-depth review. I did not like the film, I think it is actually pretty poorly told, I only laughed out loud once at an unintentionally funny part, and it is a terrible adaptation of George Orwell's book. However, it is very important to me that you understand that those are four distinct claims I shared and not one half-baked argument. Liking or not liking a film is subjective, as is humor. Why I think the adaptation is pretty poor will become clear with the rest of this article, but you must keep in mind I regard adaptation changes as "sideways" in quality, neither inherently good nor bad. As for why I think the film is bad, I think there are unfortunate interruptions in the arcs of Napolean, Lucky, Boxer and Puff that make me unable to track their growth and changing attitudes in many cases because of the jokes in this movie taking the easy shortcut to appeal to I-Pad babies. I am still open and willing to have discourse on this movie that can change my assessments; there are just four distinct areas to have those conversations. If you like the film and have watched it multiple times, your recollections of the film are probably more precise than mine, but I have done my best to remember and double check the plot points I will be discussing, as well as cross-referencing these decisions with Andy Serkis' stated goals from interviews. With that out of the way, we can begin the actual topic here.

One of the most puzzling changes from the outset of this project is the inclusion of Lucky, a young piglet played by Gaten Matarazzo, who is both student to Snowball and protege of Napolean. Andy Serkis has said that Lucky is supposed to be an innocent audience insert to frame this story, and he has also said that he pursued animation for this project to make it easier for kids to relate to the story, so the obvious answer for why Lucky is in the story is to make it more palatable for children with a likable lead and happy ending, already a concerning direction to take this story but I digress. (Making it a parable with animals is already enough to help it teach children important lessons. I think Andy Serkis should have consulted Aesop or the Brothers Grimm if he still thought children needed to be talked down to with these stories. Similarly, in contexts set after the fall of the Soviet Union, I understand Animal Farm better as a warning against revolutionary populists; "corporatism is the new communism" is probably not a theme you should include in a story where the happy ending is that the surviving characters all recommit to a new communism.)

Upon a first glance, Lucky's role seems to be the standard liberal archetype of 'being unable to do anything except token gestures against rising authoritarianism and getting swept up in the increasing compromises until they become the new bourgeoise and get backstabbed.' Once Lucky realizes Napolean has gone too far, his plan is to appeal to the pigs and humans' sense of decorum by showing in video how Napolean is actually crass, pathetic and irresponsible, the most fecklessly liberal plan imaginable (especially because Seth Rogen seems to be playing Napolean as though he were Trump, but that might have been unintentional yet inevitable the moment they dumbed the Stalin character down into a fat materialist celebrity with an exaggerated cartoon voice). Add back in the fact that Lucky never lost his privilege even once he rejoins with the oppressed animals and becomes their de facto leader, and it is actually very, very difficult to root for Lucky.

However, there is potentially more to Lucky's character and what he represents in this film than may be obvious. I mentioned earlier that there was one moment that I busted up laughing in the theater, and it wasn't Napolean shaking his butt or Lucky's plan destabilizing into suicide terrorism (I'll get to that in a moment); it was a 'touching' moment of Lucky using the memory and martyrdom of Boxer and Snowball to rouse the impoverished starving animals into a second revolution to purge the 'rightists' that have taken power from Animal Farm. It all clicked place into me there, and I could not contain myself. Lucky is, whether intentionally or not, Mao Zedong, and the movie is actually fairly propagandistic in shaping our view of Lucky and what he represents to Animal Farm.

I admitted that it is difficult for me to root for Lucky, but the film does not share those qualms. Boxer actually narrates the film, immediately casting Lucky in a positive light. Boxer was chosen to narrate this film because Andy Serkis resonated with the character all his life, but the fact that Boxer, the paragon hero doomed to die, vouches for Serkis' OC transfers some of that inherent goodwill onto him. Indeed, Lucky is Boxer's best friend and tries to share the milk Napolean hordes for the pigs with Boxer early on in the story. Though Boxer starts out as a mentor character to Lucky, we all know that Boxer is very naive and assumes the best of this movement, working himself to the grave. That is the first misspeak in the film; his narration is far more nuanced than he has the capacity to be, and Lucky even says in one of his last monologues to the Animals that even Boxer was not correct about their movement. The closing moments reveal that Boxer was narrating this film from heaven (the stars specifically, but if a fat pig can be Stalin without that ever being stated in the text, spirits in the stars can be Heaven), but, in order to keep that twist intact, when Boxer dies, his narration ceases, and it cuts to Lucky telling this story to the new generation. Lucky's narration also gets a wrap around in the ending, and, in lieu of a better way to square away two characters both claiming to narrate the film, I have to assume that the heavenly martyr Boxer is part of Lucky's propaganda.

Consider this. Lucky is the junior partner to Snowball during her illegal forays into the farmhouse and protege to Napolean as they make every other compromise through to the book's original ending of looking back from pig to human and being confused which is which. (The "cautionary tail" version of this story, as it markets itself, should obviously end there, and the POV switch to Boxer would be very chilling as we, the audience, could debate if Boxer was right about Lucky or if Lucky was this adaptation's version of the rose-colored glasses Boxer has for the regime.) Instead, Lucky flees and returns to the downtrodden animals, regains their trust and launches an assault on Animal Farm's dam. Though his plan is peaceful in the biased version of the story we hear, let us consider what actually happens, the suicide terrorism I mentioned. Napolean has a bunch of fireworks planned to show off his strength (for whatever reason he has started dressing like Stalin instead of a gang leader, as he was for the rest of the movie) as he holds a large rally of pigs and humans. Lucky wants to sabotage the fireworks, and so he unplugs them and the fireworks themselves wind up in a pit that just exists in the dam for some reason. Squealer plugs it back in, and the Andy Serkis voiced rooster is on guard to stop the fireworks. He stops the spark from going down the line to the fireworks but catches on fire himself, which sets the lines on fire. The rooster falls in the pit with the fireworks, and, as they explode, he says a nationalistic chant about fighting for Animal Farm. The dam explodes, killing countless humans directly and leading to the circumstances where Lucky gets to kill Napolean. (The rooster does not show up again for another tenish minutes, leading us to believe he died, until he pops back up to reveal that Lucky also survived, as the film was desperately trying to convince its child audience that Lucky had died escaping the deluge.)

It does not matter if Napolean deserved it, and it does not matter what the film shows Lucky's intent to be. This story is about questioning revolutionary populists that say the right thing and focusing on the indistinguishable actions of the Tsar and the Stalin. Lucky's Continuous Revolution immediately became the most violent action in the movie, and this is after he was complicit in the mistakes of Snowball and Napolean. Why, oh why do the other animals forgive him? Why is he the defacto leader in their charge on the dam? Why is it okay for Lucky to let the falling silo crush Napolean when it wasn't okay for Napolean to let dogs kill Snowball? The simple fact is that, after his arc two thirds in the movie, the movie does not allow us to question Lucky's motivation or his actions. (The cult of personality of this film is Lucky's.) As soon as he has reunited with the peasants and started to liberate them, all nuance disappears from the conversation. Ending Animal Farm with a continuous revolution where the animals are happy (even though it has been done before) removes the satire and reclassifies it as textbook revolutionary romanticism, specifically Maoist peasant fiction as the film make a point to show much poorer the proletariat animals have become since Napolean rose to power. (Also consider how much literacy is emphasized in these animals, how Lucky knows how to read and tries to teach Boxer, how Lucky's girlfriend Puff teaches the illiterate peasant animals, and how Maoist propaganda was the earliest form of writing education for peasant writers such as the prolific award winning author Mo Yan.)

Alright, even if you are still following me, Mao Zedong specifically is a little random. I've been sprinkling a few hints throughout this article, but I really should make this reading a bit more blatant. This film very clearly distances itself from the Russian allegory by having a 'Big Bad Duumvirate' of Napolean and the owner of Wal-Mart. That is obvious from the trailers, but the story also very deliberately removes Old Major (the Marx/Lenin of Animal Farm). I cannot speak to the intent of this decision as, to my knowledge, no one has asked Serkis about that yet, but it means that the communism of Animal Farm can mean other things with other figures. The way that we can know Old Major is Marx or Lenin is in his archetypal stylings and position in the story. How would we write an allusion to Mao Zedong? Well, he was a student during the earlier revolutions surrounding May Fourth 1919. Wait, Lucky is the student of Snowball during the first revolution against Farmer Jones. Before the revolution, he is merely an educated animal, failing to read the obscured S in slaughterhouse and getting in the van with the other animals, but after he is present for every major decision, the same way that the May 4thers became activists and political leaders (whether communist or nationalist). You have to admit there is something there, but I must again return to the moment I found so hilarious in the movie.

Within Maoist propaganda, there were certain ideal communist figures that Mao would valorize with propaganda. The thing is that pretty often these people all died for the cause, so the unfortunate implication is that Mao's ideal worker is a dead one, his ideal woman a dead one, his ideal communist, if they survived the great famine and depression of the Guomindang, starved in Mao's famine. Lei Feng was one such figure, the ultimate loyal and hardworking soldier. Selfless and devoted, he links up to Boxer in several key ways, and like Mao, Lucky uses his martyrdom to get the other animals into line. I am not a scholar on Mao, and the notes from classes into Chinese history are pretty much useless for me because I could not write the names down in time due to less familiarity with how to spell those pronunciations. But of the women martyrs that Mao valorized, I can at least tell you about Yang Kaihui. She was one of his wives that died in the 30s, but I think that Puff would actually map better on to his later wife Jiang Qing (gaining political power after a split with Lucky but then falling in line at least for a while). The idea here is that the people that Lucky valorizes are not the living members of Animal Farm, and he leads a much smaller force of peasants against Napolean's larger army because Lucky advocates for a continuous revolution of purging rightists (purging rightist authors often meant simply ejecting them from the society, such as Lucky's original plan for Napolean). Lucky's peasant underdogs succeeding against his enemies could match the underdog communists winning the Chinese Civil War in 1949, which means that Lucky's Animal Farm is still doomed to go through the Great Leap Forward (especially since Lucky alludes to hard work and communes for his future plans) and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Forgiving Lucky for his mistakes when they are still in dire straits due to destroying the industrialized dam and nearby humans is tantamount to forgiving Mao for the Great Leap Forward.

I might seem overly cynical about the propagandistic nature of this movie, but redeemed heavenly Boxer telling us a story from the stars he used to look at with Lucky is cloyingly sentimental, unless there is a purpose in the text for it. Initially, I thought it was one of those tropes that wound up in there because Angel Studios released it (because all of the Angel Studios movies I have seen have something subtly in there to point the kiddies back to Christ), but Angel Studios acquired this film very late in its history. This was going to be a Netflix film, which certainly means that they were not intentionally including Maoist imagery but also means that Christ is not on the forefront of the creative's minds. Realistically, the answer is that Serkis likes Boxer so much that he wants to think of him as going to heaven, but that is also how Mao felt about Yang Kaihui. The following is two lines in two translations of Mao's "Reply to Li Shuyi" that directly concern Poplar (Yang).

"I lost my proud poplar, and you your willow,

Poplar and Willow soar lightly to the heaven of heavens..."

"I lost my proud poplar and you your willow.

As poplar and willow they soar straight up

into the ninth heaven...."

Mao was a revolutionary romanticist. Though he censored a lot of Chinese authors, his own poetry is not as rigid as you might expect. He includes romantic appeals to nature, but he believes the collective that conquer it easily. From "Return to Well Ridge Mountain" - "We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven and seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas. Nothing is hard in this world If you dare to scale the heights..." So why is this important. When the Animal Farms works together, their yield is higher than it ever was under Jones. I am not pleased that they included this scene, but early in the movie all of the animals trade with some humans at the Animal Farm farmer's market, and they still pull in more cash than Jones ever did together. At the end of the movie, the Andy Serkis rooster goes out in a fiery blaze to take down the dam, but he survives it. The whole of the new Animal Farm survive the deluge wiping away Napolean's regime. In the most literal sense (outside of Rocky Balboa punching down trees and climbing a mountain), these communists conquered nature as Mao himself told them they could. The film ends by telling us they can all do it again. (If you think it is unrealistic for Mao to inherit a bad economy and famine and then balance the budget and restore the economy, he technically already did that in reality. Chiang Kai Shek's wartime policies against merchants led to an unparalleled famine and depression decades before Mao tried to skip Marxism's middle stages and starved everybody.)

But okay this still all feels random. Communist animals commenting on humanity, Mao Zedong, what's the connection? Well, I'm sharing a bit more of Mao's poetry than I meant to today, but here is one last poem from Autumn of 1965, "Two Birds: A Dialogue."

"Leviathan-roc spreads his wings

Rises ten thousand miles

By the whirlwind's force propelled

The sky on his back he surveys below

Walled cities where humans dwell:

Horizons lit by gun-flash

Shell craters all around

Startle a sparrow from a bramble dell

'Whatever to do?

Oh! I want to fly off as well'

'And whither, sir, shall you journey?'

Now comes the sparrow's reply:

'There's a fairyland, I hear tell,

Where a year or so back, when the moon was bright

Three clans contracted in peace to dwell

They've lots to eat there too

Potatoes piping hot,

Plenty of beef to sell.'

'Bullshit, my friend:

Just watch heaven switch with hell.'"

There are also other translations of this poem, but I am not copying a full poem in here twice for Mao Zedong of all people. I am not going to say if Mao was aware of Animal Farm when he wrote this poem or if he was merely engaging in the long-held tradition of Aesop to Grimm to Orwell of using animals to explain human concepts, but I am more confident in my reading of Animal Farm 2025 for knowing that Mao has also used animals in his communist writings. I think we are well past the point where a New Critic could read Mao into this story, and we are just left with "this clearly is not what anybody making the film intended." I will be the first to admit that as I have done so already. But that is kind of the lesson here, is it not? If you are writing or adapting such an important story as Animal Farm, you have to be really extraordinarily careful about what changes you make. If you want to valorize your own characters in a story with a moral about how you shouldn't let populist strongmen get away with anything, and you also want to undo the very purposeful logical negative ending of a retelling of Stalinism, you need to be very careful to not accidentally rediscover Mao. (If you would like a more in-depth version of this in video format, I can make no promises. I really don't want to rewatch this movie.)

In the Ghost Hours captures in poems the diverse sentiments of death

 

In The Ghost Hours: A Volume of Gothic Verse, by Andi Brooks, (Kikui Press, 2026), is a slim volume of poetry that captures the many emotions and mysteries that death offers us. There's a strong gothic flavor in the verses that capture many sentiments, including fear, love, regrets, resignation, as well as touching on the supernatural. 

My favorite poem is Reflections in the Ghost Hours. It expresses the feelings we have as we've moved through life into the later stages, where we begin to reflect on whether we've had a successful earth journey. Another poem, In Words of Truth, is a deeply affecting passage depicting a love between a father and son, and the immortal expectations young sons have for their fathers. 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Lady in White (An Irish ghost story). Enjoy the atmosphere of this verse:

Out of the dark and o'er the fence

she’ll suddenly appear,

To walk awhile by your side

‘Till the crosswords draw near.

The Shriving of a Lost Soul is a marked poem of regret, anguish and madness from a father who has committed a great evil. Eidolon finds a romantic partner yearning for a kiss from the lover who kneels at his grave. The Old Forgotten Cemetery reminds me of the many abandoned cemeteries found in ghost towns of the American West.

These are just a sample; all of the poems show considerable talent from a writer who can touch our feelings. Included are a poem that talks of Christmas and another that may make the reader dread the sound of bells.

There are 32 poems to enjoy and re-read often.

– Doug Gibson

Part 2: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

 

By Joe Gibson

 

The following is the second part of the transcript of a recent video on Plan9Crunch’s YouTube page that you can watch here: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP

Previously, we covered the first film in the trilogy, describing its similarities to the first few arcs of Attack On Titan (which you can find here: Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP, Part One),. This entire project will spoil AOT and the anime trilogy quite heavily. Make sure to watch those first or proceed with the utmost caution and discretion. At the end of the first film, after they kill the average size Godzilla Filius, an absurdly large specimen called Godzilla Earth showed up.

 

All in all, this moment of false confidence from Haruo constitutes the first couple episodes of Eren’s first battle in Trost in terms of challenging his confidence leading his comrades into battle. But whereas those episodes used that opportunity to flesh out Armin, Mikasa and Jean Kirstein, Haruo gets rescued by one of the humanoids that watching them earlier, a young girl with buglike antennae, and we will focus again on his perspective as he finally starts to have an arc in Godzilla: City On The Edge Of Battle, but right now I’m going to call it–

 

GODZILLA: Cigarettes On The Edge Of Battle

Okay, we are now reaching the section of this essay where I have to go beyond the first film, and that also means spoiling more parts of Attack On Titan. If you are so inclined to proceed, I would encourage you to find this trilogy and AOT whether in print or animation. The trilogy is on Netflix, and Hulu has Attack on Titan. Okay so in Attack on Titan, something very interesting happens in the Battle of Trost, and this is a spoiler for the first season but in the marketing of every subsequent one: Eren somehow becomes a 16 meter tall intelligent Titan. In order to destroy that which he hates, Eren literally becomes it. I’m going to be a lot lighter on the AOT spoilers from here on out, because I want you all to watch it, but when, at the end of the season, Armin tells Eren that in order to defeat monsters, they have to let go out of their humanity, that is built into the stakes of the show. That statement from Armin comes back in every major plot point after, and that is the question City On The Edge Of Battle tries to explore through its 100 minute runtime: is it worth it to defeat your enemy if the cost is your humanity?

 

Okay so you already know two of the titles by which to refer to this film. Well let’s add a third. The direct translation is GODZILLA: Battle Mobile Proliferation City.

 

Okay so the film opens with the central committee offering a bit of foreshadowing on the Aratrum. Meant as an “oh crap” moment, they ascertain that anything on the scale of the 300 meter Godzilla Earth could destroy their mothership by shooting its beam into the sky at them. There will be no payoff for that in this film, and it won't even be Godzilla that destroys the ship, but the purpose of the scene is clear. Plot twist that jeopardizes the perceived safety of their enclosure that the characters are reacting to with reasonable fear.

 

This is the “the damage at Stohess district reveals there are Titans inside of the walls” moment, in other words. And I want to take a brief moment to again talk about how the action adventure show handles foreshadowing for plot twists as opposed to the melodramatic philosophy lecture.

 

I told you Eren is a Titan. Well, a couple episodes before the reveal, you see actual evidence of this. When he gets injured, his head steams to heal, a trait unique to Titans. It is a very subtle thing but lays the groundwork for the first major plot twist of the show. To solve its mysteries, you have to take note of what cuisine and technology our heroes have and what our villains have. Some plot points are as obvious as Metphies’ manipulations, but we see those characters acting in ways that the reveal contextualizes not, as this trilogy did, one of our first scenes of Metphies being him and a Bilusaludo member both casually admitting to each other that they both tried to take over the Earth before and are manipulating things to take the coalition back there.

 

Again, the point of this essay is not how AOT is the only way to tell this story. Different approaches work. NBC's Grimm has a surprising amount of plot points and arcs in common with AOT, but it plays those out in its own unique way. This trilogy just oozes of pretension when the runtime gives us more quiet moments to solve its mysteries, and they are easier.

 

Alright I should clarify the point I made a few paragraphs ago about how the chain of command should have prevented Haruo from taking control even though you can chart a chain linking Leland then Metphies then Haruo. For one thing, Yuko is directly Haruo's superior on this mission and has to give him a power suit later, but she wasn't the one to free him. That was Metphies against the orders of Leland who was still alive at that point. And then he is risking not only his company's materials and soldiers but other companies, and Belu-be, Galu-gu and Martin have all been able to move more freely on this mission than Haruo and at least have comparable power to Metphies when he was advising Leland earlier. Though they are friendly with Haruo, as I pointed out, the film was more concerned with showing the technological means of transmission for his message reaching all of them and less so about his charisma to convince them. After his speech, I guess I have to take for granted that he can convince them to go on the same mission that just killed Leland, but the film didn't show us why they would go along with it. They just do and for some reason don't take any of the available outs to discredit him that they have. The reason I bring this up is again that scene about the Aratrum that opens this movie.

 

Even though their literal captain is giving them the order to stay in Earth's orbit under risk of Godzilla beam, they have different privileges, responsibilities and expertise in their sectors so they argue because it is a matter of operational security. Since it concerns probabilities of landing team survival, the Exif delegate gets a say. Since it concerns physical vessels, the Bilusaludo have a say. And it's just really interesting that the conversion that should have been happening about Haruo's death march is happening based on a hypothetical about Godzilla's beam being capable of reaching their altitude.

 

The title card uses the imagery of replicating nanometal twisting to form the title, and the movie will utilize the nanometal in a way that ties into my PCP analysis so just keep that in mind.

 

Haruo wakes up, his maladies treated and skin covered in a fine powder. Now, this powder over his skin, some very sacred scales, is actually going to effectively grant him immunity from some of the other physical ailments that will lead to reduced respiration, reduced blood pressure and coma in the other characters. And why I find that important to note here is that it is an angelic dust granting Haruo immunity, an immunity that will amount to invulnerability that empowers him to use violence and anger to singlehandedly reverse the status quo. The whole PCP aspect of this is technically ‘Begging The Question’ in order to actually have a platform to talk about the storytelling of the trilogy, but you must admit this is the most apt comparison so far.

 

It takes only like 10 minutes for Haruo to reunite with the crew from the last film, and it does so in a way that removes so much of the tension that could have been there. We see a Houtua girl tending to Haruo’s wounds, and another identical one attacks Yuko, Adam, Marco and Belu-be, but the film makes it pretty clear almost immediately that they are two separate people, never allowing us as the audience to worry what she might do to Haruo if she is that hostile to the other humans. At the same time, after the Houtua people take our human survivors into custody, we almost immediately see that Martin is there, and he confirms that Metphies is not there (but says so in a way that implies he is still alive), and Belu-be and Galu-gu reunite. Not only are we confirming so soon that every main character survived, but we are literally just biding time until the Bilusaludo realize what the Houtua use for their arrowheads.

 

I do not want to be impossible to please. Yuko is finally being treated as a main character, even a leader among her group at the beginning of the film, and this film will show us friction in this coalition as the Bilusaludo have their own goals independent of the humans. Haruo is allowed to show more than one emotion, and this is the beginning of an arc he will have though it is against the way he was characterized. He genuinely believed that Godzilla robbed all of the attributes that made them human, but when he defeats them again, he is fine. Sorry I’m complaining again. This Haruo is a lot more pleasant to watch even if it took literal angel dust to get here.

 

 

Martin puts together that the people with antennae living in tunnels in the ground evolved from bugs, and the Bilusaludo expose their technologically based racism against the Houtua, all while the people still ultimately look to Haruo and accept it when he decides to go fight Godzilla again. Specifically, the old Haruo returns when he gets angry about the Bilusaludo casually talking about slaughtering the Houtua, and a flashback to Metphies reminds Haruo he should be angry at Godzilla.

 

A question I have to ask myself in this process is “how often can I just keep pointing to the same narrative confusion, the same detachment and violent tendencies from characters, sometimes the exact same dialogue, as unique talking points for this PCP comparison?” Well, the rage transfers from Haruo to Yuko for a good bit of this movie while she gets jealous about the attention and care Haruo seems to have for the twin Houtua girls Maina and Miana, the angry one and kind one respectively. This means that PCP-induced rage is an aspect of the trilogy, not just Haruo.

 

Martin’s exposition teaches us that the Houtua communicate psychically when the twins channel the Mothra egg’s power and that the Houtua, though seemingly primitive, have a rich culture. He has even also learned that Godzilla Filius was a subspecies and that the entire surface is mimicking Godzilla. Logic be damned, Martin will always be right because he is a mechanism in this story. I find the approach taken with Hange more suitable: someone who obsessively spearheads the search for truth because of the odd kind of person they are not for what the story can make them say.

 

At some point, I need to mention that during the initial landing of this Earth advance team, they had to drop some bombs to land, and the Houtua understood this to be terrorism on their home. Haruo earnestly tries to explain otherwise, and I think that is the actual reason his character needed to be more even tempered in these scenes. It’s the prequel Anakin Skywalker effect. A smart and empathetic woman like Padme is not going to fall for the emotionally stunted, genocidal fascist like Anakin unless he is really, really nice to her. Even so, our heroes suffer no consequences, and neither Houtua nor human/Bilusaludo blood is spilt. Now, obviously the lesson here is to be more like the Houtua, but this is a very shallow exploration of these actions in such a talky show. You may not have seen AOT, but you’ve probably seen Kong Skull Island, which used the Vietnam War as the lens through which to analyze the journey to Skull Island instead of colonialism, and the bombs they drop at the beginning are the first tangible effect of the violence that the film interrogates and punishes as its theme.

 

Now, Marco does confront Haruo about wanting to fight Godzilla again, but that conflict is pushed aside to favor the aforementioned resentment of the twins from Yuko, and that leads to worm-type Servum using their tentacles to pull her legs apart and then trying to ambush her. Since the filmmakers refused to give Yuko characterization in the previous film and are now borrowing objectifying imagery in having her be preyed upon when Haruo was not when he was in this area earlier…it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Even this escapade, Yuko’s biggest moment so far only exists so that we can see Galu-gu realize that the Houtua’s arrowheads are made of nanometal, and then Metphies does a Deus ex machina to save the characters from some flying type Servum. 

 

Earlier, we saw Haruo question himself again and cry out for Metphies, which shows the hold this Exif has over him. I actually cannot complain too much about this. I think the very simple and subtle way of showing that Haruo’s sense of self-worth and justice ties back to Metphies does the legwork of the foreshadowing here. As you will find out whenever I get around to reviewing Gamera Rebirth, I really appreciate foreshadowing that subtly reveals character dynamics through their relationships to each other. I guess that means Seshita does too. As you’ll see though, liking Metphies and Haruo a lot more in this movie is not going to affect my overall assessment of this film’s conflict and themes.

 

The argument aboard the Aratrum between the committee members representing the Bilusaludo and Exif sets the tone for the rest of the film. The Bilusaludo look to technology, and the Exif use their mysterious God to make decisions. When Metphies tells Haruo of the committee’s plan to leave the solar system, Belu-be and Galu-gu come up next to them, and Haruo is framed between the two delegations. After the Bilusaludo tell Haruo they can win using the nanometal, he addresses the survivors of their mission. Once again, Marco speaks out of turn, and Haruo invites Belu-be and Galu-gu to explain the nanometal. Haruo’s moment of asking the remaining men if they want to stay but not blaming if they do not is something Erwin did in Attack on Titan, but Haruo steeps it with his thoughts on living in the ship, which can best be described by how Eren regarded living in the walls, living like cattle.

 

Now, are we meant to assume that seeing Leland’s sacrifice and being influenced by Belu-be as well as Metphies has led Haruo to mature, or should we assume that this dialogue and plot point was the starting point and Haruo was the easiest for the narrative to make say these words? I am clearly arguing for the latter perspective, but if you believe the former, we can have that debate at a later time.

 

The scene of the surviving cadets choosing to join Erwin’s Scout regiment was a very emotionally impactful scene because while we always knew our main trio was going to stay, the characterization of Jean throughout the last dozen episodes leads to a very difficult decision to stay and fight and avenge the people he has lost. There’s not really a moment like that here. Haruo was always going to stay and fight, Yuko was always to stay with Haruo, and Metphies needs to manipulate Haruo, with the Bilusaludo spearheading this part of the mission. Martin was always going to keep studying the planet’s curiosities, and Marco…was always going to leave because the story was never interested in exploring dissidence in Haruo's leadership outside of bastardizing the Bilusaludo in this film and the Exif in the next.

 

Martin, as the primary tool for exposition, explains monster factors in changing the florafauna and that Earth seemingly has restructured to serve Godzilla’s needs as if it chose him. Haruo already viewed his mission as taking the Earth back from Godzilla, and this justifies his perspective on that, inflating the self-importance of this mission. He defensively declares that they will have to take the Earth back. This also plants the seed for Haruo that humans should liberate Earth from this state and not accept that kind of control over the Earth coming from anyone other than them. You should keep this in mind when the characters then stumble on a city made entirely from the nanometal in Mechagodzilla’s carcass that spreads and consumes a few Servum. The Houtua twins warn Haruo that Mechagodzilla City is poison, but, since they use nanometal in their tools and technology, we can understand this warning to be of the same caliber as “hey be careful if you walk into an oil refinery, and just make sure to be safe around the product.” 

 

 

The nanometal’s AI explicitly serves the directive of fighting Godzilla, and the nanometal has reproduced Mechagodzilla’s production plant at a larger scale. And a Giant Mechagodzilla is on the poster, lording over even Godzilla so you would be forgiven for thinking that the nanometal will form a giant Mechagodzilla. The characters just handwave that aside immediately and end up augmenting the power suits into flying Vulture Mechs. For what it is worth, Metphies is the final person to speak against rebuilding Mechagodzilla, but Galu-gu this whole time was talking of other projects. The city itself becomes the very specific terrain needed for Haruo’s Godzilla Defeat strategy, and, though I think the film is only kind of aware of it, there is a very clear parallel between Haruo and the nanometal AI. 

 

Both operate mainly under the goal of defeating Godzilla, and both push aside ideas like Mechagodzilla to favor one singular ideal strategy. Consequently, unless we are drawing these similarities to their logical conclusion, the Bilusaludo created AI should have made another Mechagodzilla. That would have made more sense. The idea is supposed to be that the Bilusaludo will try to tempt Haruo into merging with the nanometal and becoming a monster by showing that the nanometal will be the only way to defeat Godzilla and the only conscious agent that cares as much about doing that as Haruo does, but already he is a synergy with the nanometal that Galu-gu, passionate creator of Mechagodzilla, isn’t.

 

As the movie develops, more and more Bilusaludo allow themselves to join with the nanometal, and this shapes the vague ‘destroy Godzilla directive’ into a more well-defined misanthropic worldview of submission. If you are familiar with Attack on Titan, you might know what comparison this naturally brings, and it is a pretty spoilery one. So I will put this in simple terms. Of the intelligent Titans, one is near omnipotent, however it comes with a certain mindset, almost a hive mind of all of the holders of this power. The arc in question is also the one that broke down Eren’s philosophy, making him question if his mission truly was the best one. And so for that to happen to Haruo now when the nanometal is on his same page makes more sense if they started with AOT and then extrapolated outward.

 

Metphies asks the Bilusaludo for the ability to repair his religious artifact, and Yuko practices flying in a Vulture. The former will diverge from the Bilusaludo’s intentions, and the latter will actually embrace them. First, however, Yuko reassures Haruo after he voices his insecurities, though it does not exactly work. Right after the film first alludes to it, Martin explains that the Houtua’s treatment and scales has made those treated with it functionally allergic to Mechagodzilla City, and so Haruo, who is suffering those symptoms, leaves the City briefly to ask advice from Metphies. Metphies spoonfeeds Haruo the author’s assessment of the nanometal as monstrous and parasitic, and then whispers the name “Ghidorah” into Haruo’s ear as the name of the Exif world’s monster. Now, when this scene was in the trailers, because of the art style and the way the camera pulls back, a lot of people thought Metphies was kissing Haruo. In the very next scene, Yuko kisses Haruo after his ego is sufficiently inflated to declare that they need to defeat Godzilla, will defeat Godzilla and that he will show Yuko what being on Earth was like. Checking back in on the PCP symptoms, yes that is the sense of invulnerability but also the allergy to the nanonmetal could be interpreted as nausea and dizziness depending on how you view Haruo clutching his chest and stomach. This is only the second Godzilla film to include two main characters kissing, and the first was Invasion of Astro-Monster. It’d be really funny if the next film jumped to a different milestone and featured the first sex scene in the franchise with just one of these characters and not both, but there’s no way that can happen right?

 

So Godzilla wakes up an hour into this movie. And when he finally starts moving, a single step takes over 7 seconds. That might contextualize what I mean about lethargy being a major motif on his end. 

 

Anyway, Adam informs Haruo that the City is eating some Bilusaludians, and all of the humans in the room instantly think this is too far even though it is a volunteer thing. Yuko, who overhears only part of this, wanders in and defends the practice. Having Haruo and Martin, the POV character and exposition machine respectively, both oppose it kind of poisons the well and takes out the suspense. Haruo is not even considering joining the nanometal now even though it flows so easily from his wants, and the way you write a suspenseful climactic decision is to make either choice seem possible based on cause and effect, think Luke’s temptation to the dark side in Star Wars episode 6, the suspense is there because of his struggle and the fact that his dark clothing and force choke usages suggests to us a level of compromise between light and dark. The only reason Haruo gets into the third Vulture for this final campaign is to resolve morale after the argument. It’s really taking the teeth out of the film’s central question to have the answer so clear not only to the audience but also the major characters aside from Yuko who spoilers will choose to regret her opinion.

 

 

The battle reenacts last film’s climax, but this time Godzilla Earth can weather the attack because he is a lot stronger than his offshoot. This manifests as Godzilla attaining a Scarlet Mode that somewhat references Burning Godzilla from the 90s films, and Martin explains this. At least this time, it makes sense to explain to people why they must evacuate, unlike his rants earlier and later. Martin leads the remaining humans away, while the Bilusaludo merge with the nanometal, and Galu-gu holds out hope that Harou will join them. Scarlet Godzilla is too hot for the Vulture pilots to approach, and since only the human inside is susceptible to heat, Galu-gu starts to fuse the pilots to the nanometal. Being rubbed with the scales earlier allows Haruo to resist, but Yuko loses control of her craft until Haruo can save her.

 

Still, this is where Haruo realizes that it is not worth it to become a monster just to defeat one. His options are fusing with the nanometal to be able to kamikaze run into Godzilla and destroy him or follow Metphies’ advice to destroy Galu-gu and the City control center. Though I have voiced major criticism with the arc, this is Haruo’s arc in the movie, and it should make the next movie’s conflict impossible based on Haruo choosing his humanity, but we’ll get there. He does agonize over it in the moment though. Changes in body awareness is one of the weird psychoactive properties of PCP use that is hard to fit into any reading of media except insofar as merging with the nanometal changes the boundaries of your body and mind. That is all that we can use to describe that here really. Oh, and Yuko winds up in a nanometal induced coma, another side effect of PCP that we have not gotten to yet. This movie gives us a bingo.

 

The morality has also shifted in a notable way. For probably the first time in this series, we are meant to view Godzilla destroying a City as the lesser of two evils. While Godzilla was explicitly evil in the first film of the trilogy, he is a more amoral figure in the latter two. That is why it is so interesting to compare it to Attack on Titan. Armin, the wisest of the main trio, tells Eren that they have to let go of their humanity to defeat the Titans, and boy does Eren listen? But the point is that there is likely a point where you will stop agreeing with Eren. According to this film and most that try to tackle the problem of losing humanity to defeat an inhuman threat, that point is at the adoption of the belief not its fruits. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

In the kaiju genre as a whole, the audience has a certain level of detachment that allows them to condone certain operations. It is not just that it is an underdog military going up against an inhuman threat, though that certainly helps, but the audience also can quickly accept and move on from a plot point wherein the government severely raises taxes to build an anti-Godzilla mech that promptly gets destroyed. In the real world, there would be outrage for that. Not so for the kaiju audience. One question Attack on Titan asks you is how much will you reconsider the blank check you grant the heroes striking back at their Titan oppressors when there is a civilian cost or when they are using those same tactics against humans? Unlike this trilogy, where you are watching a rudimentary morality play, your introspection is part of the conversation within Attack on Titan.

 

That will be all for this upload. We will cover the third film at a later date. In the meantime, please watch Attack on Titan and the anime trilogy so that I have not spoiled everything for you.

Andy Milligan's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me! - Domestic discord

 

The recent Severin Gutter Auteur Blu-Ray release features two previously thought-lost films from cult director Andy Milligan: The Degenerates and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me! a filmed-in-1966 soft-core domestic -- New York City -- melodrama that was released in Britain in 1968; and in the United States a year later.

Kiss Me ... was a hit for William Mishkin, Milligan's tight-fisted producer and money man. The tale of a brassy, adulterous, sometimes-alcoholic housewife (Natalie Rogers) was reviewed by the New York Times (below) and Boxoffice Magazine trade publication (further below). Even Variety gave it a plug.

 

The plot: Rogers and Don Williams are lower-middle class couple Jean and Stan Novak -- with one child -- living in a cramped '60s tenement. They're a dysfunctional pair, with Stan -- consumed with self-pity -- occasionally beating his loquacious wife.

 

Jean appears to love her husband despite his abuse. But beneath her Type A personality and chattiness there are unsatisfied sexual needs that result in affairs, particularly with her husband's close friend, Eddie (Peter Ratray). Eventually Stan and Jean introduce Eddie to Stan's sister, Ellen (Joy Martin). Eddie and Ellen fall in love. That leads Jean to alcohol binging when she realizes Eddie won't sleep with her anymore. Chaos results. The final 15 minutes is pure Milligan screaming, violent dysfunction that ends darkly.

This was not a film that Milligan wrote the script for. Josef Bush, a screenwriter who also acted in two currently lost Milligan '60s films, Depraved and The Naked Witch, wrote the screenplay. As a result, this is more restrained Milligan through most of the film. Non-Milligan touches include a montage, a long scene in an art gallery, and another with our four principles enjoying a double date at the beach. Also, as Milligan historian Alex DiSanto notes, there is little of the long Milligan-style dialogue stretches between characters.

Still, it's a Milligan film, with in-depth, close-up shots of the characters with the wheezing Auricon 16-mm camera. The crowded tenement life is well captured. The film also beautifully shows New York City of that era. Outside shots, including the beach, the tops of the tenement, its crowded stairway, beds on the floor, sleazy cafes, and trips to street stores capture the era. Several Milligan "troupe" actors have small roles, including Gerald Jacuzzo, Veronica Radburn, Robert Dahdah, Matt Baylor, and even Ron Keith. The Novak's small child, Jimmy, is played by Sean Martin, Joy Martin's son.

This is Natalie Rogers' film. Finding this movie provides a glimpse at her considerable acting talent. Rogers was a method actor, and her portrayal of Jean dominates. Her character is a full-of-life overt who nevertheless is struggling to maintain her sanity in an environment she clearly wants to change. The cord that keeps her relatively sane eventually snaps. Her relationship with her husband Don is dysfunctional but fascinating. They argue, he beats her but there are still intimacy and comfort between them through most of the film. It's certainly a sinister form of enablement. According to DiSanto, Rogers was paid $500, twice the amount of the other main actors received. Today, $500 would be about $5,000.

Producer Mishkin saw the handsome Peter Ratray as a Marlon Brando type, and Natalie Rogers as a Marilyn Monroe type. That's not a bad interpretation but I'd argue Rogers is a combination of Monroe, Judy Holliday and Barbara Nichols. Ratray moved on from low-budget films and has enjoyed a distinguished career since. Nichols married, helped run the Dove theater in New York City, and entered academia. Her accomplishments include writing a best-selling book on public speaking.

Watching this low-budget, soft-core (R-rated today) chaotic drama, one might think today that it might have been a film that an up-and-coming director would make before moving to A features. But we know that didn't happen with Milligan. On the bright side, however, had he moved up we likely would never have enjoyed the rest of his considerable, unique cult films.

I hope more Milligan lost films can be discovered. I believe they will be.

-- Doug Gibson

Thanks to Alex Disanto for providing the images of the New York Times and Boxoffice Magazine reviews.

Final Fabulosities/Frustrations For Ultraman Omega; Episodes 18 to 25

 

By Joe Gibson

 

As you know, I have been reviewing the episodes of Ultraman Omega (which, as you know, is about a red-faced amnesiac Giant of Light battling monsters on Earth with the help of three Meteokaiju). You can read those thoughts here: 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/08/some-truncated-thoughts-on-ultraman.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2026/01/more-mini-reviews-of-ultraman-omega.html

 

In due time, these three articles will be condensed into a supercut video review, so stay tuned for that.

Over the course of the show, we have seen Kosei grow in maturity, Omega grow in ability and a research team start to form consisting of our main characters. The show has consistently been enjoyable and often really impressed me.

 

But now comes the day we can truly weigh in on the important question surrounding this show: does this show have Ultraman’s most fabulous labors or is this show a frustrating fall from grace following the acclaim of the last two shows?

 

Episode 18, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

I was hesitant going into this episode because Barossa, in the Ultraman discourse, is one of those characters that has gained public ire from being overused, and, based on the trailer, this had all the trappings of a filler episode making us wait even longer to learn anything more about the mysteries. Still, this was actually a very fun and interesting episode that does a lot to characterize the meteokaiju in their miniature toy forms. 

 

While episode 16 had much in common with the formula of Scooby Doo, this episode seems to be drawing from classic fairy tale scenarios. A traveling Barossa Seijin kidnaps the boys and the meteokaiju, but a young girl aboard the ship called Gilda wants Kosei to be her doll of an Earth prince. Ayumu gets involved trying to free Kosei, and the imagery as I have already described it, just has a Grimm’s Fairy Tale feel to it.

 

I will have more to say about this episode in a later video, because it is also very interesting to examine under a critical lens.

 

Episode 19, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

Episode 19 is a triumph, demonstrating the growth and maturity these characters have attained over the course of the show. Rather than regress Kosei to acting like a child (again), this episode invents a new child, establishes a plot mechanism that makes adults act more immature and still has a wistful Kosei reflecting on his past to help that child learn the lesson of the story. At the same time, it also functions as a sentimental reflection on the art of tokusatsu itself. The young boy, Eiichi, finds his joy in creating dioramas of kaiju scenarios with his friends. When he finds an emotional resonance crystal that summons the monster Bagrigon (just go with it), he uses it as the centerpiece of his photography. Though it amplifies either emotion, this episode shows it feeding on negative emotions and, so, it alienates him from his friends. That is when Kosei and Ayumu start to mentor him, and, by the end of the episode, Sorato and Kosei are helping him set up his kaiju dioramas, and the crystal glows with their positive emotions. This symbolizes how all generations can come together to enjoy these Ultraman shows and Godzilla films. It is so inspiring that I am going to ignore the fact that Tsuburaya Productions has begun to partner with AI platforms until that becomes necessary for a critical analysis. Again, I will have more to say on this episode in a later video that will partially examine the state of suitmation and tokusatsu storytelling.

 

Episode 20, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

Okay, this is the worst episode so far of this batch, but it is not bad. Simply put, it is just uneven. The opening suggests a conflict in the way that Sorato and Kosei deal with pests; Kosei puts out a mousetrap while Sorato feels sympathy for mice that fall victim to mousetraps. This tracks with the previous characterization, as Sorato viewed even vicious monster Graim as part of a race in neutral enough terms and only killed a Graim when he had to. The issue is that this does not really connect to the Monster of The Week as well as they might have wanted it to. A time traveling dinosaur called Chronoceros is the MOTW, and, this week, they are trying to save it, not fight it. It appears very frightening at first, even accidentally pulling Kosei through time with it, but the team pretty quickly deduces that it is separated from its flock and so tries to help it. This reads as preserving an endangered species more than it does having mercy on a pest. 

 

Aside from that, the goofy comedic hijinks as they fail to get to it before it time-travels are well done. However, right after that, it keels over and dies, and the show tries to get serious as Ayumu tries in vain to resuscitate it (one of her best moments in the show so far though), and then she gets Kosei and Sorato to help her. Even though that scene was doing its best to convince us there was nothing they could do, it suddenly works, and the tonal whiplash kicks into a triumphant gear, and there's still more episode left. The ultimate lesson Kosei learns is compromise; he puts red peppers out as a mouse deterrent instead of a violent punitive measure, but the episode’s climax featured Kosei and Sorato traveling to the future to revive the Chronoceros’ mother and then destroy the advanced (possibly human) fleet trying to kill both Chronoceros, so the reasonable payoff with mice would have been finding a lost mouse's mother, not teaching a concept that has no relevance to the rest of the episode. 

 

I can't even be mad though, because, once it got to the future, this was genuinely great; Sorato applied the CPR he learned from Ayumu, Rekiness got to protect the young Chronoceros, and the cinematography of Omega slashing the UFOs and motherships was very inventive. The last two episodes were great across the board; this one just has higher highs and lower lows. The comments on the YouTube upload were also predominantly positive.

 

Ultimately, the main reason I am notating this as frustrating, though, is because, in order to create the Chronoceros suit, Tsuburaya Productions modified the Doglf suit from Ultraman Arc's movie, and now we'll probably never see Doglf again. That's what frustrates me more than anything.

 

Episode 21, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

This episode feels like it was missing from the first half of the show, so my issues are less with the events than their presence now.

It revolves around an annoying side character making life difficult for our trio, and it gives Ayumu another sorely needed episode in the limelight. At the same time, the gimmick of Gabora this week makes him a sufficient counter to any of the Meteokaiju Kosei has, and the motivation of Gabora seeking Kaen-102 remnants of a meteorite would work better to foreshadow Bagrigon and his emotional resonance crystal than following that up. I suspect Kaen-102 will be even more important later on, and I am beginning to think that it is what powered that fleet in the future. I suppose I should explain more before I get going.

 

Ayumu Ichido is a very understated member of this team. She is very studious and very driven, deferential to her other teammates in acknowledging what they bring while trying to be the best she can to live up to them. She is very mature in her outlook and offers advice and data analysis that saves the day. In the chain of command, Uta names her temporary leader while she is gone, and Ayumu steps up. When Makoto Raoniji prevents them from carrying out their duties, she takes responsibility for their actions and his mistakes.

 

I have my suspicions about what world figures Raoniji could be parodying but I like his character anyway and think he would have been a very interesting main cast member. Imagine if someone like that got his hands on one of the meteokaiju or, God forbid, the power of Ultraman himself. If done right, that would make for an all-time great arc of gaining maturity.

 

Gabora is a kaiju from the original 1966 Ultraman show that is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Gabora is one of the Baragon Brethren, that is to say, the exclusive list of kaiju made from modifying a Baragon suit on loan from Toho: Pagos, Neronga, Magular and Gabora. Pagos, Neronga and Gabora appeared in Shin Ultraman as both a reference and cost cutting measure, but this is actually the true return of Gabora to the Ultra series since the original Ultraman (he was in Ultraman Powered, but that was basically a loose remake of the original show anyway). As far as I can tell, this Gabora is modified from Neronga again, but I am unsure if this is the same suit that portrayed Pagos a few episodes ago. That many modifications in that short of a time frame would be standard fare for the first Ultraman shows but seems very strange for something right now. Gabora’s gimmick this go around is that his segmented frill can spin, allowing him to fly faster than Omega can react. And yeah, that works to address the power creep of a knowledgeable Omega and Kosei partnership; Gabora has a beefy enough body to where he will be hard to move, his beam has increased in width, and he can fly so powerfully and unexpectedly that Valgeness cannot down him with telepathy.

 

Episode 22, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

This episode ushers in the last leg of the story, answering many of the questions we have about Omega, his backstory and what he represents in the story. One criticism I should also levy against the last four episodes is that they did very little to address this mystery. The introduction of another Sorato talking to himself seemed to mean answers would be immediate, but even as of this episode, that other Sorato is still slightly anomalous. Here is your last chance to share your predictions in the comments. In any case, Omega is a Space Gazer, non-interventionist beings of light that exist to document the happenings of each planet, especially in their Time of Awakening where monsters arise every few thousand years to terrorize the humans. Geness is the name of a planet and formerly humanoid people who created Zovaras and other such technologies in order to fight off their own monsters, inadvertently destroying their planet. They tried to invade Earth, but Omega stopped them. In the battle against their controlled Vagsects and subsequently against Zovaras, Omega lost his memory and startled the surviving Geness when he started to actively fight for humanity on Earth. The non-interventionist policy is presumably why no other Space Gazer tried to get Omega to stop until episode 17, if that other Sorato even is another Gazer and not just Sorato’s missing memories like what I speculated that child from the Mons-Ahgar episode was.

 

You might be thinking this is a lot to tell us in an episode where I have not even described a MOTW yet. That is because this episode takes the form of a prolonged exposition dump where Kosei and Sorato follow clues left behind by a mysterious figure telling them all of this: a kind old man who rescued Omega immediately after he fell to Earth. As this episode reveals, that old man is a Geness Seijin called Ahdel. Even though he is a token good teammate that opposed his compatriot’s Earth invasion plan, Ahdel is a far more complicated character. Though he, himself, was dying, he rescued Omega, and, once he saw Omega start saving humanity, he actually grew very bitter and died while preparing this path to return Omega’s Space Gazer memories to try to dissuade him from helping Earth.

 

Despite being a larger scope villain in this episode, Ahdel poses an interesting question. Why did Omega break code to help humanity and not the Geness Seijin? Sorato has an answer, even though this all shakes him: the people of Geness destroyed their own planet trying to defeat the kaiju and then ended up trying to colonize Earth, while humanity just innocently could not defend itself from Geness’ army or Earth’s own kaiju. The Geness Seijin are humanoid but converted their bodies into energy and invented other means to control kaiju so my working theory is that either the Vagsects were being controlled the same way Zovaras was or the little ball of energy Geness guys were literally inside of the Vagsects during that big fight scene. And this should strike a chord because the future scenario from a few episodes ago could be Genessian invasion…or it is the consequence of Earthlings doing the same thing. That is the tension that would likely exist on a temporal scale for Omega: did he really do the right thing or did he essentially empower Geness even sooner? This episode starts with a new international squad forming to deal with the kaiju. I, for one, trust them less than I do the KSCT.

 

I would be remiss not to at least mention the MOTW, since there actually was one. I did not catch his name during the actual upload, but it is the Ultraman Blazar monster Taganular, who seems to be a new regular since he was also in Ultraman Arc. Apparently one of Zahgon’s trophies from episode 18 included some Taganular claws. That could have been a hasty modification to put those back on here, or they just had multiple suits and props as there seem to be multiple Taganular individuals in his other canonical appearances.

 

Episode 23, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

Episode 23 picks up right where the previous one left off in Sorato’s anguish and drops the additional nugget that the other Sorato that he has been seeing for the last 5 or so episodes claims to be the real Omega trying to get Sorato to remember. Now, this would be a good time to decide to differentiate these characters going forward by calling the one who has been in 23 episodes Sorato and the one who has been in 6 Omega, but, for reasons we will get to at the end of this episode, that will also be very difficult. Otherwise, I would throw a picture on screen to show which one I am talking about, but they’re identical. Let’s get back into the plot recap.

 

Sorato, in this episode, really struggles between his old and new self with a lot of inventive psychological drama for the Ultra series. The show thus far has given its share of foreshadowing, but it is still abrupt given the nature of the previous few episodes, so the specific scenes of Sorato’s fatigue and when he loses awareness conversing with his other self help to ground this plotline effectively.

 

For the other main plot of the episode, the Time of Awakening is here upon us or has recently accelerated toward its peak with monsters popping up all over at unforeseen rates. The MOTW this time is Gairyuga, a Spinosaurus whose body converts Kaen 102 into a devastating beam so powerful it can destroy a mountain with one blast. The last few episodes in this batch have had threats that were not necessarily stronger than those faced earlier, just weirder ones, but Gairyuga is doubtless the strongest one in a while and at least top 3 of the show so far in general. At the same time, and your mileage may vary on how contrived this is, another Pegunos has popped up to make life more difficult for the KSCT during their attack on Gairyuga. To really show off how much stronger Gairyuga is than the other monsters, he gets to fight Trigaron, Rekiness, Pegunos and Omega with Valgeness armor all in one episode.

 

The KSCT together with Mr. Taira have developed a weapon that converts Kaen 102 into an energy beam the same as Gairyuga, something that should concern us based on the trajectory of the Geness Seijin from before. When it fails, Kosei does the coolest thing imaginable through Rekiness, redirecting the missed beam back at Gairyuga, but this new Pegunos finally gets his revenge for what happened to the previous one, oneshotting Rekiness. While Pegunos celebrates, Gairyuga gets back up, and if you are as attached to Pegunos as I am, you will not want to see what happens to him.

 

Sorato can finally muster enough willpower to stand up and fight, but, midway through, his personality snaps back into being a Space Gazer, so he gives up the fight and goes to witness the arrival of a new potentially world ending monster far away, Zomera, who will be the main villain of these last two remaining numbered episodes. Omega also took the meteokaiju with him, so humanity has to depend on the often ill-advised technology of the NDF.

 

This is a very impressive episode that I cannot do justice just describing. It really proves my point about the maturity of this half of the show, especially compared to something like Ultraman Orb that still felt somewhat juvenile throughout even while dealing with depression, terrorism and self destructive rage. Notably, the end of the YouTube upload usually features a picture of Ultraman Omega with cards for what videos and playlists are relevant, but, once he leaves, Omega leaves the end of the video too.

 

Episode 23.5, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

This episode, while having the sloppiest use of recap stock footage, is actually probably Nariaki’s best so far, because it slots nicely into the arc of the show’s storytelling in a way I will struggle to explain for the next section. If you will recall, the directly previous episode featured a MOTW but the focus was on Sorato’s slipping mental state as visions of his true self keep happening around the depressed Ultra hero. It was an innovative form for the episode’s storytelling to take. In this episode, Nariaki Akaji is depressed about how the kaiju are costing him business, sitting at his desk listening to the radio for comfort while stock footage events happen around him and take over the screen, even clips he would have no way of knowing about (the fight scene in the future). This proves less effort to tie Nariaki into the narrative, but it matches what Sorato was going through last episode perfectly. You may accuse me of the intentional fallacy, and you may be right, but I think it is pretty clear that the intent is to juxtapose Sorato and Nariaki.

 

Okay, to what end though? The episode is called The Hope of Nariaki Akaji, and usually just thinking of Sorato and Ayumu is enough to get a depressed Nariaki playful again. That is where another thing clicked into place for me. This is the Recap episode. The only reasons to watch this are if you made it this far in the show and want more or if you watch the show but got confused about the airing schedule and misclicked. Anyone watching this episode already knows that Omega reawakens and leaves the fight against Gairyuga, but the news anchors and Nariaki do not. The dramatic irony is palpable as the secondary trio reflect on Omega’s adventures out of order and without the context of the being’s sanity slippage to regain hope that Omega will defeat Gairyuga. (This episode is set in the middle of episode 23.)

 

When Nariaki finds his hope and writes a message into the radio show trying to inspire the common people, it twists the knife a little more because we know that Omega is going to leave no matter what epiphanies Nariaki has. Furthermore, it now reframes the hope and trust the public has built in Omega painstakingly over this half of the show into a vain pursuit because he will leave. That was the point of this arc. It was not that we were going to have an episode where Omega or the NDF turn against each other for a neatly resolved episodic conflict, but that Omega won everyone over…only to leave when they need him the most, when the two most powerful kaiju in the entire show awaken back to back. Make fun of me all you want for only realizing where they were going with this in the dumbed down recap episode, but this has the potential to be even better than a single episode of an Imitation Omega style scenario would have been.

 

And again, this proves my point about the maturity of the show. Nariaki is a manchild, but the show uses him to shift its tone darker and restate the increasing stakes through showing another side of the world. All that said, there are some issues: the clips themselves are a bit superfluous, the episode kind of has a false ending by including a song that summarizes Sorato’s arc and possibly hints at its resolution, and it is most evident here that this episode was just the camera crew and one guy in maybe two shoots instead of another chapter of this story (Nariaki is usually dynamic enough for this one-man show to work, and sometimes they have other characters call into the radio in these episodes). Also, the episode placement is intentionally frustrating because as the audience, we want to know if Omega will come back, and instead, the schedule had this episode the week after episode 23 and then a brief hiatus. That is why I have both Frustrating and Fabulous selected; it was not a mistake.

 

Episode 24, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

Episode 24 begins the last two parter of Ultraman Omega with the highest stakes in the show so far. Zomera is a potentially world-ending villain created through mankind’s hubris in trying to study and harvest the cells of Eldeghimera and Zovaras for their own use. This directly ties back into the mistake Geness made. Sorato, now fully Omega once more, watches the rampage within interest and even Henshins to full size and pulls out his slugger (in other words an Ultraman’s detachable mohawk dagger). However, as it turns out, this is merely part of his observation and cataloguing process; as Zomera is a new kaiju, Omega needs to see Zomera’s abilities in action. If you will recall, every fight has begun with Omega looking at the kaiju through the gap between his finger and his thumb, and this is because his true purpose has been to examine them.

 

Now is probably a good time to explain Zomera’s abilities. As Eldeghimera’s cells are dominant in this fusion, it can absorb other kaiju to gain their powers (so arguably this is less Zomera than it is Eldeghimera post snacking on Zovaras), and the main ability it inherited from Zovaras was the control of other kaiju. Rather than build an army to take on the world however, Zomera wants to consume all of the monsters, drawing out a new Demaaga, from which it gains the fire projectiles, and a new Gomora, from which it earns the special energy power that specimen had. As the KSCT and NDF find out when they use the Kaen-102 beam on it, Zomera also found and assimilated Gairyuga and its beam offscreen. That is a little bit frustrating to resolve the Gairyuga situation offscreen, but it helps elevate the drama with an “Oh Crap” moment because evidently Zomera is so strong that a fight against Gairyuga was of such little consequence we do not get to see it. In its place, Gomora puts up a better fight, and I am happy Gomora got more to do this season than just his episode. We never see Zomera control Gomora; it just eats him when it gets him off balance, so I am going to assume that Gomora’s will was simply too strong for that.

 

At one point Kosei reaches out to Omega, trying to get him to fight for them one last time. This does not work, but Kosei’s invitation to remember their time together gets Omega thinking. This scene leverages their connection across the entire show so well and, in retrospect, makes even the filler episodes feel important. Omega also witnesses the little girl they saved in episode one and has a flashback. You could view this as a contrivance or consider that Sorato, somewhere deep down in Omega, made sure he gazed at those people. While this happens, several disembodied voices including the radio hosts bemoan Omega’s betrayal of humanity.

 

Some aspects of this episode seem evocative of Shin Godzilla. The KSCT and NDF, mostly shown through our main group of oddballs, meet in a nondescript building to discuss the slow approach of Zomera, a monster who constantly mutates to overcome its weaknesses. That said, it is different enough to where it is either coincidental or just a reference. This episode is not satirizing anything, just earnestly playing into the drama of what happens when an Ultraman stops protecting humanity, and it is far more action oriented than Shin Godzilla. The episode ends with both the promise of a chemical solution to Zomera from Ayumu (which is similar to Shin Godzilla) and a roused Omega/Sorato possibly preparing himself to fight Zomera, so we will see what happens in the last episode of Ultraman Omega.

 

Episode 25, Fabulous or Frustrating?

 

 

Cutting right to the chase, the episode opens with Ayumu’s idea about defeating Zomera. If they aim their Kaen-102 laser at the Kaen-102 conversion organ that Zomera gained from Gairyuga, that should weaken Zomera, at least removing that power and hopefully killing it. This does not work as planned; based on the changing color of the beam, it seems it merely taught Zomera to convert Kaen-102 into energy more efficiently. That said, it still felt the need to sabotage the attack by boosting its brainwaves to agitate humanity and cut off the wireless connection, so maybe this was about to work.

 

Kosei, seeing this has failed, runs off to the downed VTOL with a power source to aim the Kaen-102 cannon at Zomera manually. All this time, Omega has been pretty much stuck where we last saw him, watching the proceedings but with turmoil in his expression. Despite the captions saying Kaen-102 as I have been typing it, the apparatus labels it as Ka-N102. 

 

Kosei calls out to Sorato, telling him that Sorato helped him find his purpose, and this rouses Sorato from within Omega, who argues with himself again. Omega argues that the way for cosmic stability is strict observation until a solution presents itself, but Sorato points out that they never found an answer that way. Based on how humanity accepted him even knowing he was an alien, Sorato speculates that the answer to lasting peace might be found in harmony with humanity. Let us think about that for a moment. Yes, humanity is responsible for Zomera, but the original sin of Geness with Zovaras still remains within that abomination. Humanity was less developed when the Time of Awakening began, as Sorato points out to Omega. This incredibly confused being that contains both the personalities I am designating Sorato and Omega finally drags himself over to Kosei to finish this monologue/dialogue, saying that they must join with all life hand in hand to figure out the answer.

 

Omega embraces his identities of Sorato Okida and Ultraman and rises once more to fight Zomera. Kosei declares he is fighting with Ultraman and advises Sorato to get rid of Zomera’s chest armor so that Kosei can land a Kaen-102 strike on the beast. Zomera returns fire, and Omega flies into the beam in an effort to save Kosei. Instead, they both die. Bear with me here. If you are consuming this review, you likely have already watched the show in full. If not, what are you doing here? You can binge it on YouTube or Prime. 

 

As Kosei and Sorato walk through their shared memories, the pair talk about what their partnership has meant to each other. Kosei declares that it cannot end like this, and Sorato agrees, so Omega proposes an option that should be very familiar to fans of the Ultra series…though it usually does not happen this late in a show. You see, in the original Ultraman show, Ultraman inadvertently killed agent Shin Hayata and so tied himself to Hayata in order to save the man’s life. That was the beginning of that show, but here, it pays off the arcs these two men have had about saving humanity. 

 

This new Ultraman Omega fights with newfound fervor and strength, ducking and blocking Zomera’s strikes. Their brotherly bond gives this Ultra further strength to pierce Zomera’s forcefield and summon all three meteokaiju at once, which also allows Omega to switch between the associated armors. As the crowning jewel of this innovative spin of the classic Ultra hero merging, this fight takes three minutes, the original limit for how long Hayata could be Ultraman in one sitting.

 

The radio hosts conclude with some exposition about the (immediate) future of this world. With more funding, the actual international kaiju response organization that springs out from the KSCT tries to focus on coexistence with the kaiju and even possibly communicating with the Space Gazers. Sayuki Uta, who I have not mentioned that much for brevity’s sake was against the Zomera project in the first place, drained by the meetings with her more militaristic compatriots and initially drawn to Ayumu for her curiosity and tenacity, naturally has a high up status in this new organization. She has been a very strong mentor character in this show, but these are mini reviews. Anyway, the new organization is called KSSIT, short for Kaiju Special Investigation Team, and Ayumu and Kosei work for the Tokyo Branch. This feels like the beginning of a classic Ultraman show, but, as Sorato tells Kosei, it is more than that. It is Earthlings, aliens and kaiju all working together to make a new Earth.

 

Verdict

 

All in all, this show blew me away and is going down in my book as an all time great season of tokusatsu. That may be a little bit dramatic on my part as I have not seen nearly enough tokusatsu shows yet, but you can see for yourself the fabulosities outweigh the frustrations.

 

You can expect further coverage of this show from me; I still need to rank the show’s monsters in full, and I will adapt these episode reviews to our YouTube page, so stay tuned for those.

 

Here are some more screengrabs I found entertaining: