It is time for The Ultraman Episode 39: The Hell Cat Appears!
We’re back and it appears we have our enemies set up for the rest of the series, or at least a good chunk of it. The episode opens with the team looking at the Ultria and admiring it, because it is a bitching warship. Then we cut to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons and the most popular one among science fiction writers, where Heller’s army is setting up a base, led by Roigar, Heller’s second-in-command. He wants to destroy Ultraman Joneus but knows they can’t act against Earth with the Ultria in play. That’s ok, because Roigar has a plan to destroy Earth without even lifting a finger.
Cut to the space station EGG-3, where the crew has detected something headed their way. It’s a ship that was sent to Saturn and back. Most of the crew is happy but the captain of the space station is more wary, and rightly so considering the ship wasn’t due back for a year, so it is very ahead of schedule.
On Earth, the team is told that there is a situation on the space station whilst they are all discussing how much they want to drive the Ultria. They take off and a few hours later dock with the station and find that the EGG-3 crew has brought the Saturn rocket into the hangar. There has been no reply from inside so Captain Gondo orders Hikari and Marume to head in to check it out. The two find that the crew members of the rocket have all died and been mummified, which is a little odd. They also find that there is one survivor–a small cat. Instead of doing the right thing, Hikari brings the cat with them where the crew feeds it and Pig fawns over it. They idly wonder what it at for the months it had to have been on board the ship with the crew dead. Gee, I wonder.
That night while the SDS sleeps on the Ultra, which is still docked, the cat sneaks out onto the space station. A EGG-3 worker finds a door open and goes in where the kitten has grown to enormous size and attacks him. His body is found the next morning and the kitten is missing. Captain Gondo jumps right to the correct conclusion that the cat did it and they need to hunt it down and destroy it. Right on! The captain of the space station says that his people will handle it and send Gondo and the SDS members back to the Ultria, presumably in case anything goes wrong.
However, Pig didn’t get the memo and finds the kitten and brings it on board with him unbeknownst to the rest of the crew who are monitoring the space station in case they need help. Pig is getting it some food when the cat grows large and attacks him before running off into the depths of the ship.
Mutsumi is this down time to take a shower, resulting in the first shower scene in an Ultra series that I’ve seen and giving us a long and lingering shot of her ass and some side-boob. As with all good shower scenes, this one too must come to an end as she is attacked by the cat! Pig runs into the cockpit and warns everyone about the cat and Hikari takes off running and changes into Ultraman on the fly, saving Mutsumi in the shower, the lucky duck. Then engages in combat with the Hell Cat.
Can Ultraman defeat this feline foe at his normal size? Will Pig learn his lesson about picking up stray animals? Will we see more of Mutsumi in the shower? The answer to at least two of those questions is yes. Sadly, it isn’t the third one.
This has got to be one of my favorite episodes. Space mummies, evil cats and a shower scene? How can you go wrong? Ok, it’s mainly for the shower scene because of my crush on Mutsumi and the fact it is something I did not expect to see when I flipped it on this morning. There isn’t much mystery to the story since we see what is going on pretty quickly and sharp-eyed viewers will remember the cat hanging out with Heller in an earlier episode, but it’s 22 minutes long so there’s not a ton you can do. I did like that Gondo was very on the ball and suspected the cat from the start. I hate it when
The monster design is so-so, but it is also in normal cat form for a while so it isn’t like there’s a lot of variation they can do there without tipping people off that it might not be a regular cat. When it grows to colossal size, it gets darker, grows some dorsal plates and a spiked tail, which makes it more formidable. Then Ultraman jacks it up and the day is saved.
That’s all for this installment. See you next time for the next installment, Ultra Fans!
