Directed by Yasushi Okada. Written by Hidenori Miyazawa. Airdate Oct. 19, 1996.
Rena has her first star-turn in a heavy father-daughter drama mixed with an alien invader story. Until now, most of what we’ve seen of Rena has been teases about her possible romance with Daigo. Now Daigo steps into the background — and to an extent, so does Ultraman Tiga — for Rena to work out her family issues parallel to combating a manipulative alien who also has family issues.
When an alien craft is on a collision course with Space Station Delta in Earth Orbit, the TDF chief orders it shot down before it kills everyone aboard the station. But the station’s engineer, Omi Yanase, hesitates about firing on the ship, hoping to buy time to communicate with it. After a tense moment, Yanase finally follows orders and blows up the approaching alien craft.
Why is the episode putting focus on this new character? Because it turns out that Yanase is Rena’s father. He abandoned her and her mother when Rena was 13, and they’ve been estranged ever since, with neither of them showing any desire to reconcile.
One alien survives the destruction of the ship, Alien Reguran. He captures Yanase to take revenge on him for blowing up his friends and family. When Rena comes to rescue her father, Alien Reguran takes her captive as well, slaps her onto a crucifix,* and starts up the psychological torture between Rena and her father that forms the core of the story.
We learn a great deal about Rena through the flashbacks to her childhood and the contrast with her as an adult. As a child, she asked her father for lipstick as a birthday present, but in the present time she’s perceived as the tomboy who doesn’t have interest in the traditionally feminine — and the show takes her side here, even if the lipstick eventually gets used as a token of reconciliation.
It’s surprising, given the Ultra franchise’s rocky history of handling its female characters, that the first episode centered on Rena has almost nothing to do with Daigo. She isn’t defined through her love interest. In fact, this is a good time to mention that Daigo is one the lesser characters of Ultraman Tiga. He comes across as likable mostly because of Hiroshi Nagano’s performance, but he’s one of a line of Ultra hosts who have less going on than their team members. We’re only seven episodes into the show and we’ve already seen more depth from Rena, Horii, Munakata, and Captain Iruma.
Speaking of Iruma, she sides with the renegade choices of both Yanase and Rena. When Yanase hesitates at blowing up Alien Reguran’s ship, Iruma tells Rena that her father’s actions were commendable. When Rena flies off alone to rescue her father, Iruma only has an understanding sigh: “Violating orders just like her father.” No earlier defense team captain would show such empathy in the middle of official duties. I’ll keep saying it: Iruma is Ultraman Tiga’s best character and arguably the best defense team leader in the franchise.
Alien Reguran is a juicy villain and the perfect complement to the family drama. He doesn’t need to have a human form to make an impact in his scenes across from Rena and Yanase. His design (based on salmon fillets) is a wonderful example of the angular style of many Heisei aliens, and the voice actor’s performance has the perfect mocking attitude. Reguran wants to torment Yanase more than destroy him, and in the episode’s major plot twist, it turns out there’s a strange similarity between the two. We’re briefly tempted to feel sympathy for Reguan — until we discover what he’s actually done. Reguran also has a priceless line of meta-dialogue, interrupting one of the father-daughter flashbacks with “I have no interest in such worthless melodrama.”
“The Man Who Came Down to Earth” is primarily dialogue-driven drama, but the battle between Tiga and the giant form of Alien Reguran in the middle of a wind farm is a good one. Reguran turns out to be a smart opponent when it comes to both physical and psychological combat. But Tiga/Daigo are almost entirely outside of the main conflict. Daigo knows nothing about what’s been going on between Alien Reguran and his captives; from his POV, Reguran is just another alien monster to defeat. So although the fight is fun to watch, it only has genuine tension when Yanase and Rena throw their hats into the ring. We’d much rather see them defeat Alien Reguran.
This isn’t the last time we’ll see Alien Reguran, although he won’t be back until an episode of Ultraman Dyna, “A Vanishing Dream.”
Rating: Great
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*This is the first time I’ve written about an Ultra episode where a hero gets captured in a crucifixion pose. This happens with unusual frequency for a Japanese program. Eiji Tusburaya was Roman Catholic, and Christian imagery remained a tradition in the franchise even beyond his death.
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