Directed by Yasushi Okada. Written by Junki Takegami. Airdate Feb. 8, 1997.
Wow, Yazumi actually got to go out in the field with the rest of the GUTS team! Aruma told him to go, he didn’t even need to ask. He looked so happy! A momentous occasion.
Anyway … giant alien-controlled cyborg dinosaurs. That’s an exciting jumble of words, isn’t it? The episode doesn’t hold back: it gives us two awesome cyborg dinosaurs that look like Tyrannosaurs outfitted with Macross technology. The discovery of the preserved bodies of super-sized dinosaurs (in the 50-meter range of the standard Ultra kaiju) with alien cybernetic enhancements is a concept that will thrill the kids and adults who tune into shows like this.
The dino action does not disappoint. There’s an excellent finale that places Tiga between the dinosaurs — known as Weaponizers — as he attempts to stop them from joining and activating the neutron bombs in their bodies that will wipe out life on Earth. The GUTS Wings get involved in the battle, and the spectacle is fun in the way we’ve come to expect from Ultraman Tiga. The design of the Weaponizers is an interesting break from the usual Ultra creatures. This is a rare situation where the kaiju are designed to look as much as possible like realistic dinosaurs, except bigger and outfitted with laser guns and armor.
If you’re now expecting me to get to the bad news … yes, I do have some.
This is another undercooked Ultraman Tiga episodes (“The Girl Who Waits for the Monster,” “The Unleashed Target”) where the writers and producers tossed together too many concepts and didn’t have enough time to hammer out a better story spine.
The guest characters are two evolved dinosaurs (a.k.a. Dinosauroids*) in human disguise named “Adam” and “Eve” (Yoji Matsuda and Misato Suzuki). An alien race, the Naga, evolved the Dinosauroids from Stenonychosaurus in the Cretaceous and returned them to Earth as their agents. When the Naga arrive over Earth in an Independence Day-style ship, Adam and Eve activate the Weaponizers to carry out their masters’ plan. As GUTS tries to prevent the two Weaponizers from uniting and igniting, Adam and Eve discover the goal of their mission wasn’t what they believed. Now, they must confront their roles as the Naga’s agents.
This is a lot of work to do in a half-hour television slot, and something got lost in the writing and direction on the way to the TV screen. The story of Adam and Eve that should be central to the story doesn’t pack the punch it should. There’s not enough time to fully develop either of them. The plot is also tangled and requires leaps in logic to connect all the dots. The Naga’s scheme is absurdly long-term and relies on too many tenuous strands and contrivances.
The Naga are the script element that should’ve been left out. It’s unnecessary to bring in alien invaders in a spaceship: Adam and Eve could have been waiting eons to act on their orders to bring the Weaponizers to life, similar to how the Gobnu in “Guts Into Space” acted on programming from a long-forgotten race. If the Naga were removed as an active presence, not only would Adam and Eve have more time to develop, their questioning of their past more would be more probing and interesting. It would also remove the nagging question of why the Naga chose to have this happen now after waiting for 65 million years.
According to writer Junki Takegami, the Naga were not part of the original script. He wanted to write an episode similar to Ultraseven’s “Ambassador of the Nonmalt.” Which, of course he wanted that. Who wouldn’t want to write their own version of one of the best episodes in the history of the franchise? But the bleak theme of genocide in “Ambassador of the Nonmalt” wasn’t ideal for Ultraman Tiga. The story was softened to make the Dinosauroids the agents of alien aggressors rather than the original inhabitants of the Earth who wanted to reclaim their planet from human “invaders.”
Even with their truncated screen time, the two Dinosauroids manage to make a decent impression with a touch of tragedy. They get a hilarious moment at the end when Adam remarks that the Naga had tricked them and Eve gives him a deadpan “Gee, do ya think so?” look.
At the end of the day, I’m just glad Yazumi got to leave the house and join the rest of the GUTS team. He didn’t get to do anything and the episode wasn’t remotely about him, but he deserved it. He’ll get his moment to shine later.
Rating: Mediocre
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* The dinosauroids are based on a 1983 hypothesis by paleontologist Dale A. Russell, who described what Stenonychosaurus might have evolved into if it had not gone extinct in the K-Pg extinction event. Horri repeats essentially the same information about Stenonychosaurus.
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