It’s time for The Ultraman Episode 24: Twin Sister of Mutsumi!
The episode opens with a strange light crashing down into the Japanese Alps. We know from experience that is never a good thing. Cut to Mutsumi running to a Badei fighter in the night in her street clothes. She apologizes to the captain for it but she was the only one on when the alarm rang so she just hopped into action. The captain is understanding since the others are all away on routine patrols. Which makes you wonder why they couldn’t reroute one of them from a patrol but I digress.
Mutsumi gets to the location and finds a flying saucer! She’s making first contact! Or 40th, by my count. She gets zapped by a ray and fall unconscious as the saucer opens and a pink goo oozes out. For a second I thought she might be getting eaten by The Blob, but fortunately, that is not the case. Our heroine wakes up later and finds her communicator is gone and so is her ship! She stands there, wondering what the hell happened and how she is going to get home.
HIkari and Marumu are flying their own Badei back from patrol, curious as to how Mutsumi is faring since she isn’t answering them on the radio. Then they see her ship flying and fall into formation behind it and hail her. This Mutsumi seems confused but they take her back to HQ. Something seems off about her but they just wave it off as her being weird. Even Pig has a strange run-in with her but thinks nothing of it.
Mutsumi goes back to her room and puts on the radio and dances, as one does. Hikari shows up and asks her to go into town. They head to a theme park where they go on rides and have a pretty wonderful date. Are these two finally going to get together? Probably not, since we know that there are obviously two Mutsumis running around. Also there is a strange old man dressed like he belongs in a Ricola commercial hanging out, watching them.
Back at base, Mutsumi shows up and everyone is surprised since they knew she was out with Hikari. She said she was out at the mountain and got picked up by a patrol and came back as fast as she could. They realize that means Hikari is on a date with an alien doppleganger! They go to save him from his fate of…having a fun time and riding the carousel, I guess.
At the amusement park, fake-Mutsumi is accosted by the strange man, who takes her and runs away. Hikari pursues him but stops when he sees the rest of the crew show up with their own Mutsumi in tow! They let him know what is going on and he runs after the man and the fake Mutsumi. He catches up but the man pulls a gun, threatening to put him to sleep! That’s not a weird edit. It’s actually a gas gun and he uses it on Mutsumi before Hikari karate chops it out of his hand and captures him. He tells Hikari that he is the guardian of the princess of his planet who has taken the form of Mutsumi.
They take the sleeping fake Mutsumi back to base and the old man tells his story of how they were on a routine diplomatic mission when they were attacked by an assassin’s ship and forced to flee. They outran him but ended up lost by Earth. The princess ran away in her own ship and landed and he went after her and took the form of a mountain climber. He supposes she had a busy schedule and just wanted some time away. Mutsumi asks Hikari to come with her so they leave. It turns out that she’s the fake Mutsumi and somehow there was a switch pulled. Not sure how they did that one but I am shocked! She’s had a good time with Hikari, who is apparently the mack of the Ultraverse. They’re having a nice moment on a hill when the assassin attacks! They try to flee but the ship turns into a giant mecha snake! Can Hikari defeat the giant snake and save the princess! Will we have two Mutsumi’s forever?
You know it!
This was an enjoyable episode. It sidelines Mutsumi for Mutsumi but any Mutsumi is good Mutsumi. That was a lot of Mutsumi in one sentence! I feel like we’ve seen this before but I can’t remember where so I’ll allow it. It was a nice, relatively low stakes episode, save for the assassin at the end. The mecha snake was a pretty cool monster. Not sure how that works for an assassin as you aren’t exactly stealthy there but I guess when you’re a giant metal lazer snake, things are going to die.
Favorite part of the episode? Ultraman is ensnared by the snake and it is going to use its buzzsaw tail on him. The captain in the Super Maddock has them shoot it off where the blade is embedded into the snake’s head. Then Ultraman punches it in the mouth. That got a laugh out of me and I love it when a monster gets their own weapons used against them.
Least favorite part? The disc was skipping again and I’m not sure if it is my player which is around 15 years old or the disc since it doesn’t do it all the time. I’ll have to figure that out as watching with blocks of time missing isn’t fun.
See you next time for the next installment, Ultra Fans!
