Blog Feb 25, 2023

Ultraman Connection Watch Club: Ultraseven Episode 9 “Android Zero Directive”

Hello, and welcome back to the Ultraman Connection Watch Club! I’m EJ Couloucoundis, Editor-in-Chief of Ultraman Connection.

And once again, I’m Sarah Last, staff writer and content creator for Ultraman Connection! I don’t know about you, EJ, but after last week’s episode, I think we could do with a nice, light-hearted story. Maybe something with kids enjoying toys and just having a fun time?

Sarah, I love toys. Though this site’s collectible reviews are usually handled by Andrew over on Collectible Navi (check it out in our videos section!) I am just as big of a toy fan. Toys are a BIG part of my life, and I love seeing stories about kids enjoying toys.

This is… not that. And you knew that. And that’s terrible.

Okay, maybe I’m being cheeky. But this week’s episode, Android Zero Directive, starts out with a return to form by featuring something else near and dear to both our hearts — mysterious, attractive women trying to kill Dan Moroboshi. He just got lucky this time that Furuhashi accidentally was caught in the crossfire instead, while he and Soga are both out on patrol one night.

Dan Moroboshi attracts femme fatales like flowers attract bees. It’s crazy. Furuhashi, on the other hand, tends to attract, uh… terrible injury, honestly. At the same time, Furuhashi, why, on patrol, would you shake the hand of some random woman? I understand keeping up a friendly public image, but the guy got electrocuted mid-fan meetup.

Thankfully, Captain Kiriyama chides him for his carelessness when they both get back to the base. The encounter with the unknown woman leaves them with other questions as well — aside from why the guys on the team have such a weakness for pretty faces. In the scuffle, Furuhashi managed to tear off a jeweled brooch from his attacker, with a mysterious set of letters and an emblem hidden inside some sort of device. They may not know who she was, or why she was trying to kill Dan, but at least they have something to look for now.

Their search takes them around town until they come across a normal-looking neighborhood with a group of kids playing outside. Here, the episode takes a turn into something far more sinister, however.

Once more, Ultraseven takes this frankly anxiety-inducing shot about the future. I am frankly exhausted after decades of debate and reasonable panic about children with guns, and the show just brings us a group of children who are all packing (even if they don’t realize it.) America demands orange safety caps for a reason.

Just like in the previous episode, it’s all just a game to them, and they don’t realize the dangerous power represented by the “toys” they hold. They’re just fun ways to imitate what they see adults do in movies and on tv — and in the Ultra Guard. At least, I read it as an intentional connection, considering the guns and cool vehicles, weapons that are inherently a merchandised advertisement for the show!

These particular toy guns in-universe are being supplied by a kindly old toymaker. Of course this man just wants to see kids happy and playing with each other, and has no other evil motivations to load up children with frighteningly accurate looking toy rifles, I’m sure.

Naturally. I find it interesting, looking back into the culture of the time, how much Ultraseven tends to be kind of a counterculture piece. At this time, the idea of elders not having your best interests at heart was something that was kind of unheard of, no? Heck, there’s a level of paranoia to Ultraseven that was very radical, even if it’s kind of old hat now. Back then, bad guys LOOKED like bad guys in fiction. You could point to the slimebag and identify him at a glance. This time, the villains are a kindly old man and a pretty young woman.

While the Ultra Guard is trying to gather information about the man, everyone only has good things to say about him. He’s generous, he’s nice, he loves children, and keeps to himself. Everyone sees that generosity in providing toys to the children, but they don’t stop to consider exactly what kinds of toys he’s encouraging them to play with. It’s all just make-believe, right?

Actually, as we’re watching the episode this week, I think there’s a deliberate theme about distraction and how idle appearances hide sinister intentions in this case. The show immediately cues the audience into the fact that the toymaker is connected to the attempted assassination from earlier in the episode, since the Ultra Guard notices the same strange emblem on the pins he also hands out with his “toys”. However, in this scene, and subsequent ones, there’s a visual connection with all these shots being introduced by showing “child’s play” in other ways.

There’s a woman trying to soothe an infant with a brightly-colored rattle, while she mentions the toymaker had only just moved into the neighborhood a year ago. But the immediate next scene back at the Ultra Guard base also starts with Captain Kiriyama idly playing with his lighter!

I think it’s a pretty clear visual metaphor of literally “playing with fire”, and what that saying implies about the dangerous games the kids are now involved in.

It certainly isn’t subtle.

At the risk of reading into things with perhaps too American a lens, there’s something to be said about the old man playing chess being a very obvious metaphor. The old man here has couched incredibly dangerous things within innocuous toys here, a dangerous android within a beautiful woman. How long has that been something in American media? Movies portraying war machines as cool toys and selling the idea of combat as cool and heroic. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but it’s chilling how seemingly prescient this series can be, as often as it is.

I wouldn’t even say it’s being “prescient” as much as it sadly illustrates the fact that such issues were already a concern for writers and directors involved in these shows, even 55 years ago. The pretend war games, glamorous and fashionable appearances, are all commercialized ideals, thin veneers of reality, and our villain this week uses such disguises to hide his true intentions, unknown to the rest of humanity. Because, after all, we already hide under those appearances as a general course in our society.

While the rest of the kids and their parents might not yet understand what’s at risk, the Ultra Guard quickly uncovers the toymaker’s identity as an alien. The materials for the woman’s brooch, and his pins are all made out of “space metal”.

Side question, what exactly is “space” metal? Out of all the possible technobabble statements they could have used throughout the show, qualifying alien technology and materials as just “metal that comes from space” always struck me as funny. I suppose “unobtanium” wouldn’t have translated well in the subtitles…

I mean, it’s metal from space! In all seriousness, there is some scientific merit to the acknowledgement of it being from space. After all, iron that comes from the moon or mars would have differences to it from being exposed to the natural radiation of outer space that Earth’s magnetic field keeps out.

I suppose there might be a difference in the isotopic ratio compared to terrestrial samples that they could measure. Or maybe it’s an element completely beyond our current periodic table? That’s probably a discussion for another day, though. I’d have to pull out the powerpoint slides to cover that topic more fully…

This night is the night of the big toymaker’s plan, however. The android woman is revealed to have been specifically designed to distract and destroy Dan Moroboshi.

Which, wow. Is Dan’s weakness for dangerous ladies already this well-known in the universe? C’mon, man, this is almost embarrassing by this point.

Look, all I’m saying is the original Ultraman never had this problem in his show.

Ladies Love Cool Dan.

Anyway, the woman’s distraction obviously works, and Dan and Soga chase her into honestly one of the more memorable setpieces of Ultraseven for me. The unsettling department store after dark, with nobody around, but mannequins everywhere, the android’s voice echoing through the darkness… Dan and Soga were sitting ducks.

Of course, then the old man and the android come out to tell Dan what the plan is in person. They just couldn’t avoid gloating.

After a year of waiting, I can only imagine he’s just really excited for a chance to finally talk about his work.

And I also agree, this whole scene of Dan and Soga trying to navigate a shadowy maze of mannequins, models and artfully-placed mirrors gives the impression of a carnival after hours. You start seeing things out of the corner of your eye, second-guessing your own senses, imagining that someone is there, but then seeing only a rack of clothes or something else harmless.

Well, mostly harmless.

In any other show, a long sequence of the two of them creeping through the shopping mall might be boring, but it’s nerve-wracking and tense just waiting to see what kind of trap will spring on them next!

There’s the expectation of a trap, at least. Especially when the “mannequin” that Dan and Soga catch is the one used for the android woman. I always assumed that it WAS the android, reverting to mannequin form to avoid being captured.

After that, though, the two just share their evil plot. Transferring hypnosis waves through the space metal to control the minds of the children, and use them as an army to take over the planet. How devious! Even outside of the fiction, a children’s revolution would certainly cause problems.

He definitely seems proud of how perfectly he’s pulled off his plan without anyone realizing it. Dan and Soga find themselves at the literal Eleventh Hour before his plan begins, and the children of Japan come under his control. Of course they have to stop him!

But the toymaker has another trick up his sleeve. All the toys in the department store around them, the plastic tanks, model airplanes and cute little robots displayed around the shelves, all come to life at the same time, and start firing on them! Again, in another show this would’ve been funny…

Okay it is still kind of funny. But there’s also a real sense of urgent danger and terror as Soga and Dan retreat from the scene under fire. I think it helps that the camera here follows a low perspective from a theoretical bystander at the same tiny toy scale as those tanks and jets. So the shot of the toys with the explosions and fireworks really looks like a convincing scene from a war.

I’d definitely call this scene wacky, but not funny. There’s an inherent insanity to this episode. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the perspective of a child is the cipher to the mad tone of the story. It’s easy for a child to see a toy gun and imagine it’s real. To see a mannequin and believe that it could be a real lady standing very still. A lot of Ultraseven’s episodes make use of this sort of “childish visual language,” but I think this episode takes it to another level.

It’s that balance between its inherent cartoon wackiness and the dread regarding this evil plot and the danger our main characters face, that’s really what makes this episode one of my favorites in the series.

Speaking of dread, Dan and an injured Soga manage to drag themselves away from the attack, and get some breathing room just long enough to relay their information about the “Android” plot back to base. But when they find themselves cornered again, there’s only one way for them to stop the toymaker, his dangerous android “doll”, and his plan to take over the world.

Dan just has to literally punch Soga unconscious first so he can take out his Ultra Eye and transform.

… I know there’s a saying about “desperate times call for desperate measures” but sheesh, you couldn’t just duck behind a crate or something first, Dan?

OK I was wrong, this episode is hilarious. It’s not exactly “Shin Hayata pulls out a spoon to transform instead of a Beta Capsule,” but this episode has some stellar absurdity and comedic timing.

What’s similarly hilarious right after is Dan actually transforming into Seven and the old man immediately freaking out and scampering away. He can bring as many toy tanks as he wants, he does not want to be within Slugger distance. And he’s FAST! I have never cleared a flight of stairs as fast as this guy does while running from Seven.

Well to be fair, he did understand the threat that Seven posed to his plans, and tried to have Dan Moroboshi assassinated at the beginning of the episode. Maybe it was good after all that Furuhashi decided to flirt while on duty, I guess?

I almost feel bad for the android the toymaker uses though, he blames her one last time after Seven corners them both on the rooftop. You would expect the main “monster” of this episode to go out in a big fiery explosion, especially after the spectacle they faced downstairs against the toymaker’s creations. But after Seven disables the android, she just falls over and smashes against the concrete tiles, revealing inanimate ceramic and circuitry.

The toymaker himself also has no reason to keep up appearances, and drops his disguise as a kindly old man, revealing…

Oh hey, I forgot Chibu was first introduced here!

This design gave me NIGHTMARES as a child. Heck, it gave me nightmares when it showed up in Ginga S decades later. Alien Chibu is freaky. A giant, distended, bug-eyed, disembodied head with bony tentacles. One of the MOST unsettling aliens to come out of this series, and there are more than a few. And his laugh… Hguh. Way to make this episode a horror show in the last few minutes.

Plus, it’s remarkably tough, taking several kicks and punches from Seven. And so, with the tanks still approaching, Seven takes the… expeditious option of blasting the Chibu right in the dome with an Emerium Beam, killing him in another surprisingly gory scene. We get to watch his head — er, body — melting, leaving a deteriorated pile of goo and viscera on the ground. Yikes.

Unlike some other death scenes in this series, I’m not wasting any sympathy on this dude though. Good riddance.

The episode ends pretty much immediately after that, the rest of the Ultra Guard shows up, slaps Dan on the back, comments on how lucky they were that Seven showed up to defeat the alien menace, and then it fades peacefully to black. Or, well, as black as you can get with the blazing neon lights of commercial signage still blinking in the background.

The Targeted Town is a really hard act to follow, but I think Android Zero Directive does an admirable job of building on both the chilling societal horrors and visual style in order to sell its own unique story here.

Next week, we’ll take a look at a classic conundrum that has occupied the human mind since ancient times: What if my neighbor is an alien? Episode 10 “The Suspicious Neighbor,” is next. See you next time!