Directed by Toshihiro Iijima. Written by Tetsuo Kinjo and Toshihiro Iijima. Airdate Feb. 13, 1966.
Mount Fuji has not erupted in over 250 years … and that can only mean another major eruption is imminent. But since this is the world of Ultra Q, we won’t witness any normal eruption. Instead, we’re going to see a monster formed from a conglomeration of igneous rocks battle a “Japanese Tarzan.” Why do anything normal when you can make good TV instead?
Yuriko is on the case again, with Ippei tagging along, probably because of his unrequited crush I keep noticing. Yuri-chan initially investigates the warnings of a possible Mount Fuji eruption. Then she discovers another local story: a “Tarzan of the Forest,” a man named Takeru (Eishiro Takashima) who has survived in the forest of Aokigahara since he vanished there as a child. His sister still has hope of finding Takeru and bringing him out of the forest.
You might have heard about Aokigahara: it’s the Japanese “haunted forest” on the flank of Mount Fuji that’s made several appearances in Western horror. The episode never touches on the legends of hauntings or spirits — and certainly not the forest’s notorious appeal to suicides — but Aokigahara works as the mysterious dwelling of a feral man. It aligns with Ultra Q’s general aura of enigma. The script contains bits of local lore, such as a story about Takeru killing a bear with only his hands (a very Tarzan move) that help build up a mysterious setting where anything could happen. No need to have Professor Ichinotani around to dole out a scientific hypothesis.
Before Fuji gets far on the Tarzan story, a large, strange stone rises from a heated pond near Mount Fuji. Civil engineers explode the boulder, but the pieces reform and turn into an igneous rock monster with a glowing core. Why did this happen? Like I said, strange things occur around Aokigahara and Professor Ichinotani isn’t here to explain. (This was one of the last episodes produced, and Ichinotani had stopped appearing by then. I’m not certain of the reason.)
Writer Tetsuo Kinjo (co-writing with director Toshihiro Iijima under his pseudonym Kitao Senzoku) appears to be revisiting his previous forest adventure, “Goro and Goro,” with a similar outsider character at its heart. But where Goro was drawn to protect the giant monkey of the forest, Takeru takes on the role of slaying the dragon of the forest, Gorgos the rock monster. Gorgos is a better kaiju design than Goro, although sticking an unmodified Godzilla roar in its mouth is distracting.
“S.O.S. Mount Fuji” isn’t one of the home run episodes of Ultra Q, but it’s a good example of what makes for a solid second-base hit. Yuri-chan is on a case looking into a mystery with a specific Japanese cultural referent, which eventually yields up a giant monster as well as an interesting parallel human drama. Jun and Ippei are along for the ride, and Jun flies his helicopter. There’s character comedy throughout, most of it courtesy of Officer Yokohama (Dai Kanai), a bumbling local police officer. Yokohama-san is a common figure of Japanese comedy: the bicycle-riding small-town policeman who’s irritated that nobody takes him seriously because local mischievous kids continually trick and embarrass him. We’ll see more of his type in future Ultra Series episodes.
Oh yeah, the kids. If it’s a standard Ultra Q episode, we gotta have kids running around somewhere, creating additional chaos and occasional snide commentary. (In a nonstandard episode, the kids run the whole show.) This pack of Mount Fuji rascals plays a minor role in the story, except for the one whose bubble-gum blowing distracts an engineer, causing him to detonate a boulder early. The final shot of the episode implies that the kids may have all blown up, although I’m not sure from what. Don’t stand so close to Mount Fuji, I guess that’s the moral.
Rating: Good
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