Blog May 14, 2023

Ultraman Connection Watch Club: Ultraseven Episode 20 “Pursue the Undersea Base!”

Hey there Ultraman Connection faithful, welcome back to the Watch Club. I’m EJ Couloucoundis, editor-in-chief of Ultraman Connection.

And I’m Sarah Last, staff writer and content creator at Ultraman Connection!

Sarah, I love boats. My father was a maritime man, and instilled a deep love of boats in his boy. This episode, however, has taught me a harsh, but necessary lesson.

Sometimes, boats can be evil.

Okay, so I’m admittedly a lifelong land-lubber, but you’re going to have to back up and explain that one. What do you have against boats? Or, I suppose it would be better to ask, what kind of boat-related danger do we have in store for this week of the Watch Club?

I have nothing against good boats! Boats who are productive members of society and not underwater bomb jerks! Unfortunately, in Ultraseven Episode 20, “Pursue the Undersea Base!”, we meet the latter.

Somehow, out of all the threats of alien invasions and destructive kaiju attacks, the idea of an evil boat strains at my suspension of disbelief. But I suppose we’ll find out as we watch the episode!

Speaking of which, our story this week starts with an ordinary commercial ship, cruising the seas on a seemingly-peaceful night, until a crewmember and his captain spot a “shooting star”. The captain thinks it might be a strange omen, and he’s right, as they’re immediately attacked by…. Well, something. The camera’s focus in this shot, as a misshapen hulk rises out of the ocean and turns the boat into a smoldering, sinking wreck, is blurred and I think that’s a deliberate move here. Between the smoky flames and the hazy focus, I think this cold open is specifically trying to obscure the identity of the mysterious monster.

Honestly, this is the most realistic panic moment of the series so far. This is 1967. Smack-dab in the middle of the Cold War, and something submarineish just rose out of the depths. I’d panic too. Thankfully, it’s just a mysterious monster.

Unfortunately, it does also, y’know, blow up the ship. Still, could be worse!

We learn moments later from the Ultra Guard that a number of “strange accidents at sea” have been happening for a while now, and they receive the SOS while talking about another missing vessel. Whatever this thing is, it’s getting a lot done.

As a small aside, I just noticed that so many of these threats in Ultraseven start with mundane events. Last week it was earthquakes, but this week it’s accidents at sea. The very fact that there are disasters and a loss of life at all is a tragedy, but these are ones that we expect to face in the course of an ordinary life on Earth. Those same tragedies only attract the attention of the Ultra Guard when they reach a certain scale, or can no longer be rationalized away by mundane causes. The Ultra Guard’s job, however, isn’t to stop all disasters and accidents, but to prevent the ones they can from escalating and causing a greater loss of life.

Realizing that just made the Ultra Guard’s work, and Dan Moroboshi’s mission alongside them, take on a different significance.

The consistent message from the first episode is that these invasions are meant to destroy the order and routine of humanity. Things that are natural, even negative ones, end up in the crosshairs of invaders.

It kind of goes back to the classic idea of “unbalance” from Ultra Q, doesn’t it? So many of these episodes aren’t about creating an idealized world as much as they are about allowing a space in which all these things — tragedies included — can exist at all in a way that allows others to live and grow through those experiences.

ANYWAYS, we should circle back to that thought later, to borrow a terribly clichéd phrase. How does this week’s threat ratchet up the danger for our main characters?

You know the trouble is about to start when Amagi is the one sent out as the primary investigator. That guy’s luck is bad. But we’ll get to that later. Dan and Anne return first, with interesting news: the survivors of the ship saw something that resembled the battleship Yamato rising out of the water before they were hit.

Wait…. That Yamato?

To be clear, the Yamato was a real ship and not just an anime in space.

Moments later, Amagi returns to report that there’s no trace of the destroyed ship, not even oil on the water.

With nothing else to go on, Captain Kiriyama sends Amagi and Furuhashi back out — using the Hydrangers this time — to begin what might seem like a wild-goose chase at first. But if the survivors reported that they saw the Yamato, then they might as well start the search for answers at the ship’s final resting place.

As they arrive on the seafloor to examine the shipwreck, they find something even more bizarre, however — the Yamato has vanished!

What they find instead is a star-shaped craft that plays a game of cat and mouse with the two Hydrangers. Like I said, Amagi is not lucky. The guy gets taken out by bubbles!

As this is happening, the Ultra Guard gets pulled in two directions as the mysterious ship- now clearly some kind of rusted hulk from the seabed- rises from the deep and attacks a harbor!

I absolutely love how this dramatic debut is set up. It starts out with long establishing shots of the peaceful fishing village, and all the people going about their business among the rows and rows of ordinary little fishing boats. Then the corroded wreck of the Yamato literally bursts from the ocean, and all of them react — not with amazement or curiosity at this relic of the past rising from the depths — but in abject terror at its appearance. It’s an intrusion, a terrifying specter of history, back from the dead.

I think that comment about the Cold War plays better than one might think. We’re just past 20 years from the most traumatic moments of the country’s history when this episode is filmed. That trauma from World War 2, mixed with the fear of the Cold War, feels like the author of moments like this, and it’s bitterly effective.

It’s also notable that this episode takes something from the Imperial history of Japan and uses it as the primary threat of the episode. The American equivalent would be something like an alien UFO raising the USS Arizona and siccing it on San Francisco. We don’t have the space to cover a nuanced discussion of the varied sides of World War II (and my area of history buff expertise is the European theater, to be honest.) However, by using this symbol of military power and turning it on human beings who once controlled it, this episode presents a shockingly explicit refutation of that same military might, I think.

Furuhashi’s attempt to find Amagi gets him captured the same way, and the next morning, the battleship behemoth, Iron Rocks, attacks another harbor. And this time, the town is not unscathed. The conglomeration of ships opens fire, utterly destroying the port and everything else within reach of its guns.

Worse yet, Dan himself gets shot down when he tries to approach Iron Rocks in the Ultra Hawk 3.

While all this is going on, the remaining Ultra Guard members launch their own attack to stop Iron Rock’s onslaught. Watching this whole sequence, with the huge underwater explosions and deafening series of artillery shells being launched on all sides, really gives the impression of an actual naval battle against the ghostly hulk of the battleship. Even the Pointer gets outfitted with missiles!

But none of their attacks seem to even make a dent in its heavy armor. And even worse, the Ultra Guard learns that Iron Rocks itself will explode in 15 minutes if they can’t find a way to destroy it. At this moment, with half his team missing — and presumed dead — and seemingly nothing more they can do to stop an entire town from being wiped out in the blast, I think this is the first time on the show when we’ve seen Captain Kiriyama actually give into despair. It’s a powerfully desperate moment, watching both him and the commanding officer of the TDF seemingly paralyzed by their helplessness.

It’s a good thing Dan Moroboshi picks exactly this moment to come back to consciousness and transform.

It’s moments like these that help really establish why the Ultras matter in these series. The Ultra Guard tried absolutely everything at their disposal here, and Iron Rocks couldn’t be stopped or even slowed. It would have been the end of humanity. Because there’s no other way, the Ultra intervenes. This isn’t solving humanity’s problems for them. The Ultra Guard is anything but complacent.

And because the alternative is destruction, Ultraseven arrives.

The aliens controlling Iron Rocks, the “Mimy”, brag that they can defeat Seven anyways. They claim that since humanity ignores the “wealth of resources” under the ocean, they’ll make use of it to destroy humanity in turn!

Fun fact: Humanity is desperately using those resources. Ever since the first detonation of the atom bomb, our atmosphere’s radiation levels have changed slightly, and that has changed the radiation levels of steel since then. Though radiation levels have returned to normal levels in the past few years, steel produced before that first nuclear test was highly prized for sensitive instruments like particle detectors. As a result there’s a BIG industry historically of dredging up these ships to harvest that steel. Just a neat tidbit to share in between one of the rawest fights Seven ever gets into.

Interestingly, the aliens’ strategy for winning this fight against Seven doesn’t involve firing more rockets at him. Instead, Iron Rocks shoots out manacles, immobilizing Seven literally in chains as the clock continues to tick away.

Even though there’s not a knock-down, drag-out, punch-up fight here like we’ve seen in other episodes, I’m not exaggerating when I say this climactic showdown had me on the edge of my seat, eyes wide, holding my breath while waiting to see the conclusion.

Honestly, my fear was less for Seven’s safety, and more for the countdown. All through the fight, which has almost no music, there is the ticking and visual of a clock, counting down to the detonation.

Thankfully, Seven employs a nifty flying spin to free himself of the chains and destroys Iron Rocks with an Emerium Beam before it can detonate, ending this threat.

But man, it holds on the burning wreckage for a while…

As I said, there’s so much we could talk about in terms of this episode’s style and its straightforward intensity. It’s a notable standout in this stretch of episodes, because of its focus on such a starkly ambitious threat which tests the Ultra Guard and Seven himself in dangerous ways. I find it absolutely baffling that this episode isn’t talked about alongside some of the other famous stories of Ultraseven, such as The Targeted Town.

Especially because after Amagi and Furuhashi rise from the depths to take out the Mimy ship, the episode ends on Dan staring, some would say judgmentally, at a rising sun.

Real subtle.

I didn’t see it as “judgemental” myself, but rather a way of casting Dan’s example as Ultraseven in a… shall we say, new light. That is, representing the inspiring dawn of a new day. Circling back around to our point from earlier, Ultraseven is all about representing power and strength in ways other than simply wielding terrifying, iron-clad military might. That seeming paradox is on full display in this episode.

I think that’s a valid way to read that, but it is ambiguous, certainly, and that’s part of the fun.

Speaking of fun, next week we’re doing something special, Sarah. Did you know that Ultraman Regulos comes out on the 23rd?

I certainly did, but thanks for the reminder! I’m super excited for it’s debut, but why are we talking about that here? This is the Ultraseven Watch Club after all…

Well, in honor of Regulos, we’re watching something with Ultraseven in it — We’ll be watching episode 1 of Ultraman Leo, “The Death of Seven! Tokyo is Sinking!”

…That name doesn’t sound ominous at all. See you then!