Review: Ultraman Episode 11 - The Rascal from Outer Space

 

Ultraman Episode #11 

The Rascal from Outer Space

Original Air Date: September 25th, 1966

Directed by: Kazuho Mitsuta 

Screenplay by: Tatsuo Miyata

Review by Toku Tom Fool

Rascal? More like rock from outer space. Maybe the title makes more sense in Japanese. I've also seen this title as "The Ruffian from Outer Space" but that also doesn't quite work for me. Okay, let's get into this episode. The episode starts with Hoshino and his friends. I could just feel the quality of the episode falling as soon as Hoshino appeared. It doesn't help that they were playing some weird leapfrog human centipede game. The children see what they think is a UFO crash into earth but it turns out to be a weird meteorite. Sadly, nobody gets their hands burnt when they pick up the meteorite. They quickly discover that if you think of something near the meteorite that it will transform into what you were thinking. For example, the kids have it transform into a toy racecar, piano, and cake.

Eventually, Hoshino gives the rock to the SSSP and they send it to Professor Yamamoto for him to analyze it. They hold a press conference where Yamamoto explains the results of his findings. He doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. There's a comedy scene where a guy uses the meteorite to transform into a wife but then it becomes a man for some reason. Was the man real or the rock? I wasn't sure. Dumb joke. 

A man with a cane was also at this press conference. His plan is to steal the rock and use it for himself. He sets up a device in the conference room that lets him communicate with the rock while he's outside in his car. Once everyone is pretty much gone, he has the rock turn into a liquid and then a rocket to fly to his location. The SSSP try to catch him but all that happens is a toy car crashes into a model building. 

What does the thief decide to do with the stolen rock? Well, he uses it to play practical jokes on people. Of course. He turns the rock into a monster named Gango and he uses Gango to play pranks on the staff of the hotel where he is staying. The best part of this is the maniacal laughing the thief does after every prank. Eventually, the thief wants Gango to become giant size. Gango becomes giant while inside the hotel and that hotel is demolished. Everyone in that hotel should be dead. The poor staff that had pranks pulled on them earlier should be dead. 

Somehow the thief barely survives Gango destroying the hotel. This guy should be dead. He had to have been on the bottom floor and gotten lucky Gango missed his part of the building and that the collapse didn't land on him. Hey, it's a television show with giant monsters so I shouldn't think too much about it. Gango can't turn back into the meteorite because the thief is unconscious so there's a giant monster roaming the city now. Hayata decides to get in a plane to combat Gango. Gango acts like a child while getting shot at before it knocks Hayata's plane into the water. Once again, Hayata survives something that should have killed him. He has to have Ultraman powers as a human. 

Speaking of Ultraman, Hayata transforms into the titular hero and we get our big fight of the episode. Like the episode, it's a comedy fight. Ultraman seems to be just stalling so the thief can regain consciousness and Gango will disappear. This leads to hilarious moments like Gango sitting on Ultraman, Ultraman accidentally jumping into the water, or Ultraman literally kicking Gango's butt into the water. Ultraman's timer actually goes off during the fight in this episode but it doesn't matter as the thief wakes up and the monster disappears. 

Back at the SSSP HQ, Hayata decides to ask Ultraman to take the meteorite back into space. Good thing he's Ultraman. Does the SSSP think Hayata has Ultraman's phone number? I think they think that Hayata talked with Ultraman in the first episode but I might be misremembering that. Anyways, Ultraman takes the rock back up into space to end the episode. 

We have a new worst episode contender. It's a comedy episode and all the comedy falls flat. None of our main characters really get any screentime. I like to make fun of the quality of episodes with Hoshino but he disappears from this episode after the first five minutes. Everyone else is just there with very few lines. The thief gets the most to do in the episode and he was the most entertaining part of the episode. Gango wasn't a very good monster but he's a comedy monster so he wasn't supposed to look cool, but all the Gango jokes didn't work for me. It all made for a bad Ultraman fight which I get was probably the point of the fight but I just didn't find it entertaining. 

Episode 12 is called "Cry of the Mummy" and I'm going to just assume there will be no mummy in the episode. Maybe there will be but it probably won't be the kind of mummy that I'm imagining. See me find out on Twitter @TokuTomFoolery where I will live tweet my findings.