It is time for The Ultraman Episode 46: The Remote-Control Monster!
The episode opens with Hikari doing some training by running around the countryside by the base, as he is prone to do. Suddenly, a strange noise distracts him. It’s loud and obnoxious and Ultraman confirms that only he can hear it. Hikari searches for the source and finds it at the base, where Tobe, Marume and Mutsumi are gathered around a machine. It is a receiver they rebuilt to operate on a unused frequency that Tobe speculates that only Ultraman can hear. So it’s weird that Hikari just burst in like that, huh?
Marume talks some shit about Hikari never being around when Ultraman shows up when the Captain enters to see what they are doing. They tell him about the device and he scolds them for wanting to call Ultraman because they should be able to defeat everything themselves.
Which is good because it’s about then that a robot monster appears in the city and starts destroying buildings. The Science Defense Squad takes off in the Ultria and scrambles the Badei first to attack the beast. Mutsumi’s craft is damaged when flying to close to the monster Gedon, and her controls make her fly up into the atmosphere where she sees a spacecraft.
She radios the captain to tell him that the ship must be controlling the monster but is shot down. Hikari lands to find Mutsumi in pretty bad shape. He radios the medical crew and is ordered to stay with her until they arrive. The fight between Ultria and Gedon is going pretty badly and Hikari is jonesing to turn into Joneus, but is torn between that and staying with his friend. He chooses combat and fights Gedon until it retreats at the behest of the Heller army captain, who just wanted to test it anyway. The rest of the team finds Mutsumi with Hikari nowhere to be found.
Even worse–Mutsumi is dead!
Captain Gondo jumps into action and grabs some cables from the ship and rips open Mutsumi’s uniform and shocks her back to life. Hikari shows up about then and Marume runs up and kicks the shit out of him for running away. Then the medical team finally shows up to take Mutsumi back to base. The others want Hikari off the team because he’s always running away and Gondo says he will give him a chance to redeem himself.
Hikari wants to tell them that he is Ultraman so they’ll understand why he disappears. He’s not running away, he’s changing into the person that saves them all the ding dang time. But Joneus says he must do it with his own abilities. One day he can tell them, but not now.
It’s about that time the monster decides to attack again. There’s no time to launch the Ultria so it is grounded during the battle and things aren’t looking good. Pig walks into Mutsumi’s room to see Hikari leaning over her before running out. Even the little robot doesn’t like Hikari now and goes to see how Mutsumi is doing.
Hikari turns into Joneus once he is out of view and enters the fight with the monster. In the hospital room, Mutsumi awakens and Pig tells her where she is and what is going on. She asks for a monitor to watch the fight and tells Ultraman on the screen where the ship is controlling Gedon. Pig scoffs and says that Ultraman can’t hear her, but the red and silver giant looks up and flies off into space. Ultraman finds the ship and destroys it, which makes Gedon go berserk. The robot monster is destroyed by Ultria and Ultraman’s combined efforts.
Back at the room, the team finds that Mutsumi is awake and they curse that Hikari once more isn’t there. Mutsumi tells them not to be down on him because Hikari actually fixed the transmitter so they could talk to Ultraman and that was how she was able to tell the giant where the ship was. Tobe is impressed by the design and the Captain says they can keep it just in case they need it.
Afterwards, Hikari is training as Mutsumi and Marume watch them from afar. Mutsumi figures that Hikari has a secret that he can’t tell them for whatever reason and Marume asks what it is. She says if it is what she thinks, it is too unbelievable and they leave it at that.
Finally, someone figures out that Hikari might be Ultraman. Of course we have about five episodes to go so they took their sweet time getting there. I feel like the captains usually figure that out a lot faster though I bet we find out Captain Gondo knew that all along somehow.
I feel like we’ve gone through this before in an episode, where Mutsumi is hurt and everyone is down on Hikari and he feels he needs to prove himself. And this is because we have. At least this leaves us with an Ultraman communicator, which I’m sure will be used in the next eps and Mutsumi might have figured out the secret. We also have some partial nudity, as we see some side-boob when Captain Gondo opens Mutsumi’s uniform. For a relatively chaste start to the show they’ve really ramped up sexy angle in the past ten or so. Of course it wasn’t a sexy moment but you also didn’t need to do it as it is a cartoon for crying out loud. But if you did, Mutsumi didn’t need to be going commando under her uniform.
The monster design was great though. It was basically a guncannon from Gundam with a giant eye in a glass dome. Simple but pretty freaking cool. I feel like that is true of a lot of the best designs. I’m also surprised they don’t do more robotic monsters they are usually armed to the gills and provide a decent fight for the SDS and Ultraman.
We’re in the home stretch now with only a few more episodes to go. Can’t wait to see what we have in store next week.
That’s all for this time. See you next time for the next installment, Ultra Fans!
