It is time for The Ultraman Episode 29: The UFO with the Devil Heart Attacks!
Sometimes these titles are wilder than the episodes, but not this time. Buckle up, baby, because we’re in for some wall-to-wall Ultra action this time around. Also, we got a new intro that adds Captain Gondo and his sweet jacket to the mix.
The episode opens on planet U40 where Elec and Noto are being given special star badges by the king that will let them travel anywhere in the universe. Afterwards, they transform into their Ultra-forms and fly off. Wonder if we’ll see them again this episode?
Back in the vicinity of the Earth, a scout ship from the space station sees a bunch of UFOs heading towards the planet and they are clearly not friendly when they blow the scout ship up. The Earth Defense Force scrambles their fighters to intercept. The Science Defense Squad is watching as the Alien Jadan invade before heading out to help fight themselves. It appears that the invasion is stymied for the moment and they return to base. Meanwhile, two soldiers find a downed fighter and investigate it but it is empty with no sign of the aliens. Are they dead? Nope! As the men leave in a jeep, a strange purple gas follows them and takes them over.
The Alien Jadan, now with two agents on the ground, send the men in to the SDS HQ to destroy the computer so that they don’t have electronic eyes and ears anymore to aid in the fight. The spies are successful and Hikari runs them down but the aliens leave the bodies of the mean and fly away in gas form. The others stay to check on the damage and have Pig fix the computer but the captain orders Hikair to give chase. So he hops in a car and chases the gas, which conveniently stays above the road, making it easy to follow.
Hikari follows the gas and it turns back into two Alien Jadan soldiers who then jump off a cliff and merge to become Jagon, which is a two-headed dragon with two giant, spiked boobs. Yes, I’m serious. Anyway, the monster attacks so Hikari turns into Ultraman to fight it. However, the alien mothership starts attacking the city further away, hoping to split Ultraman’s focus between the two and tire him out before defeating him.
Will Ultraman be able to fight off two foes at the same time? Well, the answer to that is a resounding no, and it was a smart plan on the side of the aliens to make Ultraman run himself ragged. Unfortunately for the, they didn’t count on Elec and Noto showing up on patrol as they heard something bad was bound towards Earth. And lets be honest, not much can stand up to three Ultraman deciding to mess your shit up.
I wasn’t lying about the episode being action packed. You have space battles, you have ground battles, you have human on alien fights, you have Ultraman vs. monsters. The space ship designs were pretty cool too, looking a lot like the fighters from Voltron in terms of the enemy ships whereas the ones from Earth had a cool, rounded, bubble look to them. The Alien Jadan even kind of look like Zarkon and his peeps from Voltron, too.
The monster design was fairly well done except for the odd boob-spikes that don’t serve any purpose. They don’t shoot beams or fire the spikes out. Might as well just made it smooth like Ghidorah or give it some hands. A small quibble but it sort of ruins a cool design though I guess it does certainly make it more unique.
No new Ultra powers but the three Ultramen don’t mess around when it comes to the aliens. The Alien Jadan are fleeing and they hunt them down with extreme prejudice. Not a terrible thing as it certainly stops future invasions. It’s just surprising since many shows would let them go and just hope they don’t come back.
That’s all for this installment. See you next time for the next installment, Ultra Fans!
