Ultraman Blazar ep 16: Zura janai... A-kun desu!

This episode upped the intensity a bit but still have its silly moments here and there. The episode revolves around a Kaiju named Mogusion, whose notable ability is, to simplify, cause hallucination of fear to its victims. Fear itself is still part of a character’s trait, and can be used to learn something more about them. It could be as minor as a fear of a certain animal or as serious as whatever Gento and Emi saw in this episode. This episode is also the debut of Earth Garron’s voice interactive AI system, the EGOISS.

It’s started when a Kaiju shows up from under a construction site and terrifying the workers there. However, the strange thing is, all of them witnessed a different being, yet somehow SKaRD managed to come out with an imagery of those beings together. What’s even weirder is the imagery Teruaki saw when he made an eye contact with the Kaiju. Teruaki has a theory that a spontaneous toxic gas combustion caused by the light exposed by the Kaiju made its victims confused, thus influencing their statements. Then he was exposed to the Kaiju’s light later on then terrified on what he just witnessed, a friggin’ bean cake, the thing that terrify him the most to the point where he freaked out when Gento gave him one. To be fair to him, the way they depict them in that scene is really unsettling. Just imagine a basket of bean cakes just steaming and “pulsating” underground like that.

Teruaki’s incident then gave an idea to Anri, about the pattern of witnesses’ statements, where they’re all seeing the image of something that terrifies them. This is proven later by Anri, Yasunobu, and Gento themselves when the check on the Kaiju. Anri is seeing the image of Taganular as a representation of her fear of bugs, Yasunobu is seeing the image of Alien Canaan signifying his fear of losing Earth Garron to their hands, and Gento is seeing the image of Earth Garron falling apart which symbolize him failing an operation. Thankfully, due to Gento’s training of controlling fear, he came out okay and managed to gather some information regarding the Kaiju’s ability with Teruaki. What’s funny is how Teruaki got this info. So, he secretly took his own health exam result while being on a strict bed rest. I appreciate the lengths that he’s willing to go to gather intel for Gento. The scene following that is also hilarious, where Anri and Yasunobu are brought inside the hospital and Teruaki is dragged back to his bad. What makes this funny is how Anri and Yasunobu is questioning why Teruaki is in the hospital.

Switching focus to Emi, since she’s alone and there are no one that could pilot the Earth Garron, except her. Thus, Gento ordered Emi to launch Earth Garron, together with the voice interaction AI, the EGOISS. First off, I have to appreciate Gento’s confidence in his subordinate’s abilities, to the point where he believes in Emi to launch the Earth Garron even though she never pilots it before. Obviously, this is to test how reliable EGOISS is as a voice AI, presumably used as some kind of guide for the pilot to decide what to do. Seeing how it performs, Gento’s faith hasn’t been misplaced. Even when Emi went against the safety warnings and crashed into the Kaiju, the EGOISS said that it was a correct decision at the end.

Now onto the fight with Mogusion. There are some interesting things that I can find here. First off, it’s about what Emi’s fear is when exposed to Mogusion’s flash, and it is so bizarre. What Emi saw is herself, and the way they depict this image is something that you could find from a horror show, with the image going up close to Earth Garron’s camera and all. Not only that, just the image of Emi roaring, beating up Ultraman Blazar, and then laughing at him is also rather unsettling. Also, what could this possibly mean for Emi? Is she scared of her inability to accomplish her mission? Is she afraid that her espionage stuff later on could endanger everyone that close to her? Like what Chief Haruno said to her back in episode 14?

Next up is how the fight between Blazar and Mogusion went. From what has been shown, it seems that Mogusion is a really clever Kaiju. It managed to catch Blazar’s Rainbow Slash and launched it back at him. Not only that, Mogusion can use its flash ability as a feint to trick Blazar into closing his eyes and then attack him at that moment. Blazar’s solution to this problem is also pretty simple, but pretty risky. Blazar dimmed the light on his eyes, which is another way to say that he closed his eyes, and don’t look at the Kaiju directly. Thankfully there’s Emi in the vicinity who managed to shake of her fears and helped Blazar to point out where the Kaiju is and then attack it with the Chilsonite Sword.

This episode is a rather…personal one, especially for Gento and Emi – where their fears are different from your usual “phobias”. The debut of Athru…I mean A-kun is very nicely done, though his looks and voice doesn’t match at all. We can definitely see more of Emi’s “development” in later episodes as the GGF plot “unfold”.

Aaron

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