Wednesday, August 21, 2024

"Ultra Q" drama from.... 1966(!), episode 24 of 28 recap

 


 Air Dates: January 2nd until July 3rd, 1966 though episode #28 didn't air until December 14th
Sundays at 7:00 pm on TBS, 28 total episodes that were 25+ minutes in length. Created by Eiji Tsuburaya, directed by his oldest son Hajime.
Subs by Tgwoe, screenshot dimensions 1436 x 1076(4:3). This classic series also has a color version but I prefer older shows/films in Black and White as that seems to give off a more creepy vibe which the subber also thought.

Ratings: **** Didn't find the ratings until the ninth episode but did update the first eight shows. This series had such high ratings but back in 1966 there were only a few regular stations and no cable. This drama ran opposite another sci-fi show called "W3" which was very popular and before this series began had an average rating of 23%. However "Ultra Q" was much more popular and the other show slipped below 10%!!!! The average rating  for these 28 episodes was 32.4%, the rating for this 24th episode was 30.1% and will update this section for each show. 



 In the middle are the main three characters, who they are will be revealed below. The man on the left end is Eiji Tsuburaya and he is the #1 special effects man/director of all time in Japan. He did all of the special effects for the classic TOHO films such as creating the costumes, sets, etc. and of course most reading this have seen the "Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan" and other movies. This TV series was the first of it's kind in Japan and Tsuburaya had created this series where he didn't want the focus to be on monsters but the story which was the format for the old American series "Outer Limits". But TOHO wanted his unique monsters and there will be a different one in each show, will update this top section now and again with more trivial tidbits. Tsuburaya had access to all of his old costumes so would often mix them up such as the head from a 1965 film, the body from a 1961 movie and so on.
 

**** This is a new feature that was added for the eleventh episode and will update it every other recap. This mini section will have the monsters/creatures that we have seen to date and you can see more of them as a bit further down are the links to all of the episodes. Did have just two screenshots of the monsters but now that I'm caught up with them will have four of them for the remaining shows. So the first four below are from episode 19 and the first one isn't of a monster. But of some slime from outer space which did transform into the monster in the next three screenshots. It never had a name but kept growing until his death as fire was it's weakness and it came from the planet Kemur. The second monster is the one I really enjoyed and isn't it so similar to the Creature from the Black Lagoon? It certainly was though this creature was a female who lived in an underseas empire called Ragon and somehow the egg of her baby had floated up to the top of the ocean! 
**** Skipped adding in any from the past two shows as for episode 21 it was just a huge Manta Ray like creature and in the 22nd show it was a man who grew to be a giant.










 Main Cast: Though it appears this had nothing to do with the "Ultraman" franchise in a way it does as this series is considered to be it's forerunner. The first "Ultraman" series began a little bit after this show ended in it's same time slot and there's not enough time to talk about that show and it's movies which I do recommend. Hiroko Sakurai who plays the reporter Yuriko in this show is quite known for her "Ultraman" work as she was in the first series plus a few more after that along with being in many of the movies. Will do some editing and adding as we go along though not as much as other dramas, the top three are by far the main characters. There will be many monsters in this series, perhaps one per episode! Won't give any details about them at the top but will talk about them during the recap.



**** Not sure how to explain this and perhaps it doesn't need it. But when the show opens a narrator tells us what we are about to watch will be something extraordinary, is what we view real or just a part of our imagination? A screenshot of that is above and that's how the American series "Outer Limits" also opened and at the end the viewers were asked to think again with about what we viewed, to date this show hasn't done that. Every episode has it's own title, this episode's is.... 

The Statue of Goga




Kenji Sahara as Jun Manjome.... Don't think any actor was in more of the classic TOHO monster films than Sahara was between 1954 to 1975 and also in four "Ultraman" series! Jun is a pilot for Hoshikawa Airlines, he can fly both planes and copters. Though a pilot Jun does dream of becoming a best selling sci-fi writer, he's also adept with guns and how that came to be is a mystery. Plus Jun is a master with cars and could have been a racer, one last thing is that Jun loves science which is how he and his mates are friends with Professor Ichinotani.


Yasuhiko Saijou as Ippei Togawa.... Jun's assistant at Hoshikawa Airlines but Ippei doesn't have any licenses yet but is close to getting one for flying helicopters. Bit of a goofball but seems to be much more intelligent than others think, Jun must see that too as he does trust Ippei fully. In episode fourteen did learn Hoshikawa Airlines was along the Tama River, that's 15 or so miles west of Tokyo.


Hiroko Sakurai as Yuriko Edogawa.... On the left below, will have a different pic in the future. 21 year old reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun(daily news) paper. Yuriko is the youngest at the newspaper but her editor Seki believes fully in her and sends Yuriko out on the harder stories such as the mysterious and unexplainable....


Ureo Egawa as Professor Ichinotani.... We finally met this older professor in the third episode. Know very little to date about him such as how did Jun and his mates come to be friends with this man who is ultra intelligent. Though him and the next character Seki are important to the drama each will only be in about half the episodes.


Yoshifumi Tajima as Seki.... Yuriko's editor at Mainichi Shimbun(daily news), older man who acts tough though is a softie and often gives Yuriko the stranger/mysterious cases. Not a huge role but an important one and in the second episode Seki was the Hero!


 
Previous recaps: There is no ongoing storyline but all of the shows have been entertaining so here are the links to all of the recaps done.












 There aren't many but a few videos of this show on YT, mostly short scenes. Did add in a new video two posts ago though it sadly doesn't show any scenes as ones I did find in that vein you couldn't embed. But the below video is still worth playing as it's the opening theme music for each episode which I thought was very good and it does have a creepy vibe....

 

 

 After today have four more episodes to go in this drama which is two more sets of recaps. Then will do some older horror/sci-fi movie reviews which viewers do tend to like and seems I just stick with one thing, either all dramas or all movies for a stretch of time. Have so many movies I've never seen and can't review all but think two will be "Rainbow Man" from 1949 and "The Human Vapor" that was released in 1960. Will have at least two others and then begin on my next series, it's not easy finding older shows in the sci-fi/horror vein from the 1960's/70's that are subbed. Well, there are so many Ultraman and Kamen Rider series but I've seen enough of those to last me a lifetime. So am seriously leaning towards a 1973 Tokusatsu series named "Zone Fighter" which isn't well known and that's the kind of show I was looking for. It's a 26 episode series that I did find subbed and while similar to Ultraman and other shows like that it also looked to be unique and it did feature some monsters from the Godzilla movies! Above is a promo pic for it and odds are high that will be my next Japanese show to recap but wouldn't start on it until about a month from now.


 No ultra cutie female guest star for this show but the above woman on the right was okay looking but not in the league of the past few. Her name was Hisako Tahara and say was for in 1970 she changed it to Yuki Asasuna. She was 27 in age for this appearance and under the name of Yuki was in quite a few 70's films and even doffed her duds in at least one of them. She also did quite a bit of dubbing of foreign films but seemed to disappear in 1981 at the age of 42. In this episode she played a spy named Aleen but actually her name was Liang Ming from Hong Kong, that will all be explained in the recap. This was the era of spy dramas and movies, for the first time that was part of a story and while I prefer episodes in the ~25 minute range at times it would help being a few minutes longer and that's been the case a few times in this series though all episodes to date are worth viewing.










 The action moved so quickly in the first ninety seconds so couldn't take any screenshots as they would have been blurry. That first screenshot is of the Segawa family arriving back in Japan from a trip to Hong Kong, they were from Yokohama and did just find out that while it's such a large city doesn't have its own airport. The elder Segawa was the ambassador to Hong Kong, with him had been his wife and also eight year old daughter Tami who was carrying a smallish statue. That statue is the main focus of this episode, the family was being interviewed in that first screenshot and you will notice the main  character of Yuriko asking a question. Surprised she wasn't more involved in this scene for shortly after a woman swiped the statue from the little girl Tami and jumped into a waiting car. Because Tami had seen the woman and her henchmen she too was thrown into the car which zoomed away. It was chased by the man in the second screenshot to a warehouse in Yokohama, a few seconds after entering he noticed a bomb and barely made it out in time as the warehouse exploded!

That woman above plus in many more screenshots was using an alias name at first which was Aleen and as it turned out she was a SPY! I had that impression early on and so didn't the man on the left below who is Hachi, he's the main henchman to the person he was talking with. Whose name was Iwakura, he was extremely wealthy and have no idea how he got that way, he also owns a very secret underground art museum and perhaps by stealing and then selling those object is how Iwakura got rich. Aleen stole that miniature statue from Tami at the airport for Iwakura, for now the little girl Tami was being held hostage but no harm came to her. You can see this mini object above and below, it's called the Goga statue and according to Aleen has had a 6,000 year curse on those who possess it! For instance she told the story of how it brought ruin to an Empire and you wouldn't think there was anything special about the statue by viewing it. To make sure it was real Iwakura had it x-rayed, it did appear to be authentic but also it seemed to somehow be growing! Once again that info was from Aleen who Iwakura had presumed was a professor from Aub University in Hong Kong and it's museum is where the statue was stolen from. That was true however he didn't realize that Aleen was also a spy but will soon discover she was. In the third to last screenshot the Mainichi Shimbun editor Seki was telling Yuriko about the Goga statue robbery, but it wasn't just that robbery Seki talked about but many other priceless objects that had been nabbed from numerous museums worldwide the last two months..... those robberies were courtesy of Iwakura and his gang!!!!










 In that top screenshot Iwakura's main assistant/henchman Hachi finally was able to discover the true identity of Aleen but for now Iwakura said to keep that info to himself until they could find out what her true her mission was. Aleen's real name was Liang Min who really was an archaeology professor at Aub University in Hong Kong, she let the statue be stolen for Liang Min knew it would lead her to the person responsible for all of the other worldwide art heists. Iwakura's other main henchman was named Cat(!?), he wasn't told why but had been ordered to keep a close eye on Aleen aka Liang Min and Cat could have sworn he heard her prowling around in the room that held all of the stolen art objects. That wasn't to be as the room was empty though not for long, something very eerie was about to take place. What did is right above, the Goga statue's eyes began to glow and of all things sent out a beam that killed Cat instantly! Not just kill him but his body soon disintegrated(!), that also happened to the statue as Goga's shell at first cracked and then fell to the floor where it smashed into a thousand pieces. Out of the debris came the above creature who I will continue to call Goga, to me it looked like a large snail with that shell and eyes sticking out of it's head.... Will admit insects and such are not something I am knowledgeable about so let me know if the creature isn't a snail.... could it be a deformed one?

 As Liang Min had said earlier to Iwakura this monster(statue at the time) was growing, was the 6,000 year old curse actually a Snail?! Its growing will continue and for now no one at Iwakura's hideout aka secret art gallery had noticed what happened to Cat but soon will. In the first batch of screenshots was the man who barely escaped that warehouse explosion in Yokahama, his name was Ono and was the partner of Liang Min. He had been tailing her since she stole the Goga statue and don't think the pair had come up with a plan on how to arrest Iwakura and his gang. That didn't matter as Hachi knew this man had been staking out their hideout, above you can see that Hachi aimed his rifle at Ono and shot him as he was driving in his sports car. Who hadn't been mentioned until now was the drama's main star Jun, he finally made an appearance along with his assistant Ippei and with the pair was of course Yuriko. Somehow Yuriko's editor Seki had some inside info on the art thefts so had her, along with Jun and Ippei, stake out Iwakura's place. So they saw Ono getting shot and in a nifty move Jun jumped from his car into Ono's just before it crashed into a wall! However that heroic effort was to no avail as the shot that hit Ono was fatal, at this time Liang Min didn't realize her partner had been killed. Watching that scene had been Hachi and some others of Iwakura's gang, they grabbed Jun, Ippei and Yuriko immediately and dragged them back to their hideout... makes you wonder why weren't the police staking out Iwakura's lair?










 Getting close to the end, what took place in the final seven or so minutes are the above screenshots and the top four below. Now that Ono has been killed the true identity of Liang Min was revealed, she too is now a hostage along with Jun, Ippei and Yuriko. But not for long as making an appearance was the snail like creature Goga, you can see above how quickly it had grown. It attacked some of Iwakura's gang with it's deadly ray, you can also see above that one man was disintegrating from the rays. That attack allowed the quartet to escape plus they did manage to rescue the girl Tami and that was a bit of a crazy scene as that underground art gallery was quite huge. Seemed they went around in circles for minutes but the five did make it out of the house in the nick of time. For Goga kept growing and soon Iwakura's large house was destroyed, Iwakura and his gang were all killed when the house caved in though Hachi managed to escape. Later on it appeared he may have been able to kill Jun and his mates but the Goga took out Hachi too, by that time the creature was bigger than a house! The group made it to the police station and as usual it seemed the only people who could protect Japan were Jun, Ippei and Yuriko though this time were joined by Liang Min.

 She was an expert at ancient archaeology and said the only way to eliminate the curse of Goga was by Fire. So with the help of an army soldier that group headed to the streets of Yokohama, there wasn't one other person or vehicle around! Liang Min had mixed some special chemical with dynamite, it was loaded into a bazooka and with Ippei as the shooter he hit the creature right in one of its tentacle eyes which was its weak point. Goga was hurt badly but managed to escape and slithered around underground but the army by now had their sensors on the very huge monster. It resurfaced in a different part of Yokohama, though it put up a valiant struggle what Liang Min had concocted finally affected Goga to the point of no return, it ended dying on an empty street so once again Jun and his mates saved Japan... and the world! But of course the spy Liang Min played a huge part and in the last few seconds we learned she was part of a secret organization that protects worldwide cultural properties. Whew(!), a lot did happen in 25+ minutes and while not the best episode more may have happened in this show than any other one which is why I thought an extra few minutes would have helped out.












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