Review: Ultraman Episode 20 - Terror on Route 87

 

Ultraman Episode #20

Terror on Route 87

Original Air Date: November 27th, 1966

Directed by: Yuzo Higuchi

Screenplay by: Tetsuo Kinjo 

Review by: Toku Tom Fool

Our episode begins at night with an officer being afraid of a statue and then he's afraid of a green light on a mountain. I hope he's just the local zoo officer and not a real police officer. SSSP gets the call to check Mt. Omuro Park to get to the bottom of this. They leave at night but arrive the next morning. Maybe they got the call early in the morning when it was still dark. This leads to a favorite shot of my when Muramatsu, Hayata, and Arashi are riding these swings up to the mountain. 

Back at HQ, Fuji is visited by a boy. She assumes he is a friend of Hoshino which he denies. He warns her of a monster named the Highland Dragon Hydra that is going to run wild on Mt. Omuro Park. The boy leaves and then Ide walks into the room. Ide says he didn't see any boy. He calls security and they say they have not let anybody in the building. Very strange. 

Muramatsu is talking to the officer from the beginning of the episode. The officer explains how the mountain used to have a thick forest before he suddenly dried up six months ago. That's too bad. Fuji calls Muramatsu and mentions the warning by the boy about the Highland Dragon Hydra. The officer shows the SSSP the statue of the Highland Dragon Hydra and he mentions that it was designed by an elementary school student in Tokyo named Akira Muto. They ask for the boy's address and get the Akebono Children's House. All the animals in the park are also asking strange.

Fuji and Ide go to visit the Akebono Children's House to meet Muto. When they arrive, they are told he was killed in a hit and run on route 87 six months ago. Same time that forest dried up. I doubt that was a coincidence. They are shown a picture that Muto made that would become the statue and they are shown a picture of Muto. It turns out Muto was the boy that visited Fuji earlier in the episode. I can't believe it! She was visited by a ghost!

 

It's night again and Arashi, Hayata, and Captain Muramatsu are standing at the base of the Hydra statue. They are going to go back to the hotel when the mountain erupts and the Hydra monster from Muto's drawing appears. Muramatsu goes against what he said in a previous episode and fires on the monster right away. I guess it's okay when he does it and not Arashi. Arashi does get to shoot at the monster along with Hayata and it flies away. 

I love the next scene back in HQ. Arashi is bragging that the monster ran away because of his Spider Shot. He's so proud of himself that it's hilarious. Hydra didn't run away and is instead flying around route 87 picking up cars and destroying them. The SSSP takes to the sky in two separate planes. Arashi and Hayata are in one and Ide, Fuji, and Muramatsu in the other. I wouldn't want to be in the one with Hayata because his planes tend to crash more. We cut to a driver hearing the warning about Hydra but he isn't getting out of his car because his car is worth more than his life. Hydra then destroys his car. I think that man survives. 

The SSSP are trying to defeat Hydra in the air but they aren't having much luck. Hydra knocks one of the planes out of the sky and of course it was the one with Hayata in it. Thankfully, this one didn't explode like some of the other ones. Arashi takes Hayata to a little camp for injured people to treat him. Hayata tells him to go after the monster mainly because he needs to sneak away to become Ultraman. Arashi does manage to find a vehicle that he drives at Hydra. Hydra picks up the vehicle but Arashi jumps out just in time and blasts the armed vehicle with his Spider Shot to explode it right in Hydra's face. This does hurt the monster but it makes it angry.

 

Ultraman enters the battle with Hydra. They start fighting and it's a lot of Hydra pecking Ultraman with its beak. Ultraman tries the Spacium Beam but Hydra flies into the air avoiding it. Then we see Muto's ghost flying atop Hydra. Ultraman decides not to fire another Spacium Beam at Hydra and Hydra flies away. It turns out Hydra is an incarnation of children killed in car crashes or maybe a protector of children. Who knows! Muto's killer turned himself in so that's good. Maybe it was that guy that had to jump out of the vehicle he cared for so much. Arashi is curious why only Fuji could see the boy and she says it's because she's pure of heart. Pure of heart but loves pearls way too much. The episode ends with everyone laughing about her pure of heart line. 

I don't think Ultraman should have let this monster go free. I watched Hydra pick up multiple cars and drop them. I assume multiple people died from this monster. You have to put this thing down. I don't care how many children it was protecting. I'll only allow it if every vehicle dropped had a hit and run driver inside but then it tried to kill Arashi too. Maybe it remembered Arashi trying to kill it multiple times in the episode. Overall though, it's a pretty paint by numbers episode. Everyone gets something to do but nothing of any real substance. The story of the ghost boy is interesting but I feel like we should have had a little more of him because we only see him in the one scene at the beginning and his ghost flying on Hydra at the end. I feel this was a missed opportunity at a good Fuji episode but oh well. 

I'm looking forward to episode 21 titled "Breach The Wall of Smoke" because Ide is dressed up like a scientist in the preview picture. I have to know what he's doing that. Follow me on Twitter @TokuTomFoolery where I live tweet the episodes!