Hello and welcome, Ultraman Connection readers! Over the past several weeks, we’ve brought you recaps and analyses for each new episode of Ultraman Arc. The show seems to have taken off in popularity thanks to the creative, flashy fighting style of Arc himself, borrowing from the imagination of his host, Yuma Hize.
The rest of the show’s cast also consists of a colorful group of characters with big imaginations and big hearts, just like our main heroes. The SKIP team is quite different from the last few defense teams in other recent Ultraman series, which took the “defense” part of their moniker seriously in a more militarized sense. SKIP, on the other hand, consists only of three individuals, who are experienced in scientific, analytical fields. They’re public servants who advise and direct emergency procedures, not soldiers who fight the Kaiju directly!
In addition to Yuma himself, we got to know the “captain” of SKIP, Hiroshi Ban, and his teammate, Rin. However, the most recent addition to their team, Shu Ishido, was still a bit of a mystery. We only knew that he’s an “investigator” for the Global Defense Force’s “Space Science” division. With his buttoned-up suit, polished leather briefcase and polite demeanor, he seemed at odds with the more… buttoned-down and casual feel of the SKIP team. That illusion was quickly dispelled in the first episode when we discovered he has quirks of his own – specifically, a complete addition to coffee.
Even then, we didn’t really know everything about his background, or the real reason he continued to work with the SKIP team. Over the past few episodes, the audience even saw hints that he was still working for the GDF on some secret assignment he was keeping from his new teammates! I’m sure it was true that the GDF was concerned about the extraterrestrial threats in Hoshiomoto City, but the single horn left from Monogelos’ attack 16 years ago – when Yuma and Arc first encountered each other – seemed to be the center of that concern for a mysterious reason.
That raises the question of why Shu and the larger GDF organization feel the need to keep this mission secret from the rest of SKIP. We don’t know enough of the GDF to guess whether their intentions are benevolent, or maliciously self-serving as was the case in certain previous Ultraman series. This week’s episode brings those questions to the forefront, but also re-introduces a theme which has been common in Ultraman series since the beginning of the franchise – of trust, paranoia, and gratitude.
Shu, Yuma and Rin found themselves at a secluded resort inn in the rural mountains this week, investigating a puzzling series of earthquakes originating from the area. The episode setup of “weird things start happening at a traditional inn located deep in the mountains” also happens to be a commonly-recurring plot in Ultraman, but it plays out in many different ways depending on the show in question.
At the Akebono Inn, the SKIP team discovered some mysterious clues, between the owner and her employees’ suspicious behavior, unknown electromagnetic signals, and a curious hand signal which Shu interpreted as something far more sinister. He immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario, assuming the rumors of a UFO crash in the area must lead to the conclusion that the resort was harboring an alien invasion!
And he was right! Sort of! The inn was indeed harboring an alien fugitive, but one who had no intention of invading, or harming anyone on Earth. Numata, the Alien Croco introduced here, only came to the planet while hunting mushrooms, and was accidentally left behind when his friends escaped an “anomaly” (presumably Monogelos’ attack 16 years ago) which struck unexpectedly. The electromagnetic signals the SKIP team picked up came from his attempts to rebuild his spaceship and return to his homeworld!
While watching, I found myself outraged at Shu’s actions, treating the kindly inn owner and Numata, her clerk, with such open suspicion, drawing his weapon on them and demanding answers so quickly based on only his hunches. However, his argument with Yuma about his hunches revealed something important. The SKIP team doesn’t deal with aliens or UFOs or anything of the sort, and only passes the findings of their investigations on to the GDF when dealing with extraterrestrial concerns.
But Shu does deal with aliens. That was his job before meeting the rest of SKIP! While SKIP deals with human beings, working with everyday people with everyday concerns and everyday examples of courage and compassion, Shu has spent his career seeing the worst of the universe instead. Some of Shu’s teammates have died because of their optimism, as he explained in this episode. It’s no wonder he’s a pessimist compared to Yuma’s idealistic view of the situation!
It goes without saying that there have been a lot of aliens and alien invasions in other Ultraman series – even ones which used a secluded inn as a front for their invasion. With that broad view of the franchise’s history, one might wonder why Arc leads us to sympathize with Yuma’s good-natured trust in Numata’s story, rather than Shu’s suspicion. The key here lies with understanding that Yuma and the others don’t just trust in Numata’s words but the effect he has had on everyone around him at the inn. Ms. Ayaka, the inn’s owner, even threw herself in front of Shu’s gun to protect him after his cover was blown.
But wait! Numata’s presence at the inn only explained the electromagnetic signals, what about the earthquakes in the area? The cause of that anomaly turned out to be totally terrestrial in nature, coming from Shagong burrowing underground, with no cause for further suspicion.
However it was a cause for extreme alarm once our main characters realize that these Shagongs are over 50 meters tall and carnivorous. The first one we encountered in the pilot episode was made that size rapidly by the Oo-ze, and driven to attack buildings because of a parasitic infestation — but they also just get that big? According to TsuPi, that’s an anomaly, but it was one that had to be dealt with nonetheless! They also apparently are pack predators too, just to make everyone’s day even worse.
I honestly love this aspect of Ultraman series, how all these different bizarre elements of the show’s setting can collide together in unexpected ways. Aliens, monsters, secret agents with laser pistols, all of it can be incorporated in so many original stories, but I never get tired of watching it unfold because it always centers on the same heart of the franchise.
Remember, Yuma was convinced that Numata was a good person not just because of his story, but because of everyone who cared so deeply for him at the inn. When Numata had an opportunity to escape Earth, a planet wrought by dangerous Kaiju attacks which even now threatened his way home 16 years later, he gave it up to try and save the inn – and the lives of all the human beings who cared for him in turn.
That is the fundamental heart of this franchise. It’s not the aliens and Kaiju themselves, although it makes the world of Ultraman far more interesting to visit every week! Rather, it’s about our response to the universe which contains such strange and often dangerous anomalies within its ever-expanding boundaries.
Numata could have easily fallen into the same sort of paranoia Shu demonstrated in this episode. He could have resented this planet after being trapped on it, alone for so long. Many times in Ultraman shows, human beings face similar problems as Numata, and find themselves in bizarre, lonely circumstances outside of our own comfortable worlds. Then we are asked the question – how would we respond in this situation? What would we choose?
Yuma and the others at the inn chose to trust Numata. Instead of assuming the worst, they showed him kindness, and gave him a new family and a new home where he could live peacefully. In the end, he repays that trust with gratitude, sacrificing his spaceship to protect his new home.
Not everything strange we encounter in the universe is hostile or evil. From the very beginning of the franchise, when Ultraman first arrived on Earth, humanity encountered something truly outside of our understanding which nevertheless showed us kindness. How can we repay that kindness with anything else other than gratitude? And how can we give anything less to those around us?
Numata’s story is a great example for all of us watching at home, and hopefully for Shu himself. It might take a little creative imagination to see the universe in this way, but that’s always been the secret of Ultraman’s power, after all.
