"Ultra Q" drama from.... 1966(!), episode 25 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 25th episode was 31.5% 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. The first four screenshots below were from the 23rd episode, no creature from outer space but an Octopus called Sudar which grew to the size of a giant! It was both a God and Enemy of the small Compass Island in the South Seas, after those are four from episode 24. This time the creature began off as an innocent looking statue but grew into this massive snail like looking monster which could shoot laser beams from its tentacles!

 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 Devil Child

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.

Episode one: Gomes .... Episode two: Goro and Goro .... Episode three: A Gift From Space

Episode four: Massive Flower .... Episode five: Pegulia .... Episode six: Grow Turtle!

Episode seven: SOS Mount Fuji .... Episode eight: Terror of the Sweet Honey

Episode nine: Baron Spider .... Episode ten: The Underground Super Express

Episode eleven: Balloonga .... Episode twelve: I Saw A Bird

Episode thirteen: Garadama .... Episode fourteen: Tokyo Ice Age

Episode fifteen: Kanegon's Cocoon .... Episode sixteen: Garamon Strikes Back!

Episode seventeen: The 1/8th project .... Episode eighteen: The Rainbow's Egg

Episode 19: Challenge from the year 2020 ... Episode 20: Primordial Amphibian Ragon

Episode 21: Space Directive M774 .... Episode 22: Metamorphosis

Episode 23: Fury of the South Sea .... Episode 24: The Statue of Goga

 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....

 

 

 

 A few times have talked about how the episodes weren't aired in the order they were filmed and it was easy to tell by the length of Yuriko's hair. If it was short it was an episode filmed early, her longer hair meant it had been filmed towards the end of the filming schedule. Not that it's important but the first show filmed was aired as the fourth episode, the first episode aired was the twelfth filmed! The last show to be filmed was episode sixteen, the final show was episode 28 and that was the fourth show filmed! Bet it sounds confusing but always like to add some trivial facts in, this 25th episode was the third show filmed and makes you wonder why was there such a long wait until it or some other shows aired?

 

 No known guest stars for this show, the above girl was the main one. Her name is Noriko Sakabe and was hoping to say this was the beginning of a long career for her. She had been in five films up until 1966, this was her first TV appearance and guess what.... it was her final acting role and have no clue what became of her! No kind of monsters were in this episode but it still turned out to be an interesting watch as Noriko played a young girl(eight in age?) named Lily who split into two girls, one a ghost and the other her regular self. The ghost was quite cruel and even tried to kill its host(!), all the details are in the recap and the above is from the end of the episode when the narrator said that despite what took place Lily wasn't a Devil Child which was the title of the episode. This was also a rarity for after writing up the previous sentence viewed the next episode and 90+% of the time when writing up recaps finish one episode before moving on to the next one.

 This episode didn't have a creature such as some ET from outer space and in a way the next show didn't either though both stories were solid. The top screenshot is of two Mainichi Shimbun reporters covering a story, Yuriko isn't the only newshound in Tokyo! There's been a series of mysterious vehicle crashes recently in Tokyo, all happened overnight plus the driver was always alone and seemingly a very insignificant object had been stolen or somehow disappeared. More on this mystery coming up but as you can see above in the second and third screenshots the three main characters were taking in a show by the Great Eastern Magic Troupe. In that third screenshot going from left to right is Ippei, Jun, then the minor character professor Ichinotani and next to him is the reporter Yuriko. The quartet were enjoying the performance, especially the part where the little girl appeared to be walking on air! Her name was Lily and the ten year old(?) girl ended up being the key character in this show. Lily was shut into that large box above, outside the magician and father Akanuma said a few magical words which actually hypnotized her and to the amazement of the audience Lily as mentioned seemed to be walking on air. But the professor Ichinitani didn't seem to be as impressed as everyone else was about this 'magic' and was actually worried about the little girl Lily.

 Ichinotani had good reason to be worried for while Lily appeared to be such a happy young girl there was trouble brewing, she and her father Akanuma had no clue what was about to happen. When Lily entered that large box Akanuma seemed to hypnotize his daughter and that's what worried Ichinotani, it's not wise to do that often to a person and especially not one so young. However Lily was hypnotized at least twice a day, always at night for it's the only way she can fall asleep. Above Ichinotani was explaining some of his wisdom to Jun who is also an expert at science, what Ichinotai felt they witnessed at the magic show was Lily being frozen, not her body but mind due to the hypnotizing. Luckily the science talk didn't go much further as I nor most viewers would understand what the professor was talking about but there will be more about that condition just below and at the end of the show. In the last two screenshots above Akanuma was putting his daughter Lily to sleep, not positive what happened to her mother but Lily is under the impression she's off in some mountains but think she's dead. When Lily falls asleep Akanuma also uses a music box to go along with his hypnotism, Lily falls asleep quite easily and during this latest 'spell' we found out what is causing these mysterious vehicle accidents at night that have resulted in at least three deaths. While Lily was fast asleep coming out of her body was what you see in the bottom screenshot above, the ghost of Lily(!) which could walk through walls and such but also had the ability to pick certain things up.

 Those certain things that this second Lily can pick up are only what have been missing at these vehicle crashes such as dolls, flashlights and other oddball items which had confused all. That's what Yuriko was telling her Mainichi Shimbun editor above and right after that was a short but very important scene. For Jun, Ippei and Yuriko to better understand what he meant by Human Bioelectricity the professor Ichinotani showed his friends a live experiment and used Ippei as his guinea pig, that scene is above. What happened was that a Ghost of Ippei slithered out of his body, as Jun said perhaps you could also call it his Soul and though a ghost all could see it. Ippei had been conked out during the demonstration and had no clue that his 'Soul' had left his body, when Ichinotani turned his machine off the ghost returned safely to the body. Ichinotani explained that all humans have some electricity in their body but the voltage is so low it's unnoticeable. But one out of 10,000 do have a semi-high level of voltage and to the professor Lily was one of those people as she didn't need a machine to get that ghost, soul or specter to leave her body such as Ippei did. WOW, a lot of science teaching did take place which was easy to understand but sure I'll soon forget it all. 

 Now the quartet of Jun, Ippei, Yuriko and Ichinotani have a theory that after Lily is hypnotized at night her Soul leaves and has been the cause of these late night accidents. That Soul has also been taking those oddball objects and for now why those items remained a puzzle. Jun and his mates went to another Great Eastern Magic Troupe show to observe Lily and Akanuma once again however halfway through the performance Lily seemed to pass out and the show ended early. Backstage Jun told her father Akamuma of professor Ichinotani's findings and how Lily passing out may have been due to being hypnotized too often. Until now Jun, Ippei and Yuriko hadn't realized that she was also put to sleep every night by hypnotism and all observed her father doing that act, the trio was now 100% certain it was Lily's 'Soul' causing these vehicle accidents. When that ghost figure would appear on a deserted road of course the driver would panic and crash, after is when the ghost Lily would rummage through the car looking for certain items. In the bottom screenshot above Akanuma was showing the group that music box that Lily listens to when she gets hypnotized. It didn't appear to be anything special, Akanuma said it was from a deceased Chinese sword artist named Chin and in the box was also a Jade necklace, hope I didn't fall asleep for ten seconds and miss something!!!!

 Final segment, what took place is right above and the first three screenshots below. Now that I think about it that music box also had a hairpin and one other item besides the Jade necklace, it seemed as though Lily's 'Soul' was starting a collection as those were taken from the vehicle accidents. **** The main enigma for me and also think for Jun was why the ghost was collecting these oddball items, could it be for a memorial as I think Lily's mother was dead and buried in a remote mountain grave. This second Lily isn't done collecting things and as you can see above in the final scene which was long this ghost once again left her host body, This time the Soul was on the hunt for a special ring and as you can see was even able to walk on water! Even more impressive was that Lily's ghost could soar to a great height and found that ring in a small airplane, her face at the cockpit window scared the life out of the two men in the plane which soon crashed but this second Lily now has its special ring. That plane crash hit home for Yuriko as the two men were a Mainichi Shimbun reporter and photographer, this ghost Lily is actually a Devil 😈 which is where the show's title came from. There's now been a total of five deaths caused by this Ghost and it wants a sixth who was.... the real Lily(!) but would killing its host also be the end of the Soul/Ghost?

 By telepathy the ghost had Lily wander to a desolate location but one where there were train tracks and you knew what would be coming soon. The professor Ichinotani had invented a a device called an Ultra Short Wave Diathermy which could track the energy from ghosts or lost souls, Jun and Ippei used that to locate the the Devil Lily. As you can see above the pair were walking hand in hand down the tracks, naturally the oncoming train would pass right through the ghost but not the human Lily! Of course with Jun nearby her being killed would never happen and with only about five seconds to spare Jun hurled himself at Lily and the pair rolled off the tracks to safety as the train whizzed by. That action also caused the demise of this ghost/soul/Devil Lily as Jun and Ippei witnessed it returning to Lily's body but that happens every day when Lily wakes up. But now it's known that hypnotism was causing this ultra weird phenomenon and Lily's father Akanuma will never use that again to put her to sleep nor ever again in one of their magic performances. So there was a happy ending to this story which didn't have much action but was very interesting and all of the stories to now have been different. Have viewed the next episode which is the following post and that too was very different than most of the previous stories.