Directed by Koichi Sakamoto. Written by Akio Miyoshi. Airdate July 29, 2013.
The production team on Ultraman Ginga S wants you to know they definitely have a bigger budget than the previous show. See? They’ve got a battle in the middle of a city where Ginga and Victory take on a horde of Imperializer robots. You never got anything that large in plain old Ultraman Ginga, didja? Sure, the digital copy-paste is obvious, and the Victorians’ underground realm is mostly a flat green-screen limbo. But look at how much more of everything there is! How much more of it takes up the episode!
I’m grateful that Ginga S had the money to do more than hang around on one forest set. But this is the first episode where I can see the start of the writing of the New Generation Heroes action playbook — the playbook of the “All Action, All Merchandise, All the Time” episode.
This type of episode can become extremely tedious. There are far worse examples ahead in other shows, but “The Lone Warrior” marks the beginning of this negative trend: minimal character drama, a threadbare story, superficial or non-existent themes, fight scenes that drag on and on, and the relentless pushing of toys that clog up the dynamic of the action.
The “story” of this episode is skeletal. Alien Chibull initiates his next plan to extract Victorium Crystals through the ground, which is essentially the same plan as before. Alien Guts Bolst shows up as the helper seijin, and he summons a pack of Imperializers (robots that first appeared in Ultraman Mebius) for guard duty while he draws up the crystals. Ginga and Victory show up to battle the Imperializers, and then Android One Zero activates the episode’s returning famous kaiju, King Joe, via a Spark Doll to join the fight.
The turning point of the story, if it even qualifies as a “turn,” is when Ultraman Taro pops up to give Hikaru a pep talk. All it amounts to is Taro saying, “You have allies!” and then granting him the new toy that corporate owner Bandai wants to sell: the Strium Brace, a bracelet with a spinner to select other Ultras to grant Hikaru additional abilities. It looks like a cheap plastic toy because that’s exactly what it is. Now we have another transformation device to congest the action scenes. Ultraman Ginga can use this gizmo take on the form of “Ginga Strium,” a marginally different version of Ginga and another toy Bandai can shove onto store shelves.
The reason Hikaru needs a pep talk at all is because of the episode’s only dash of human drama. After suffering an initial defeat against the Imperializers, Hikaru ends up in the hospital. He tries to rejoin the attack even though he’s injured, yelling to Tomoya that no one lets him help his friends. What sense does that make? Hikaru has been helping his friends for many episodes; that’s just what he does. But the story needed a place to insert Taro so he could drop off the Strium Brace.
Otherwise, there’s nothing noteworthy about the characters. Nothing important occurs. Sho remains a sulker who doesn’t need allies, UPG doesn’t advance (except they now have guns they can plug into their single vehicle), and Lepi and Sakuya are still looking for chocolate in the surface world. (Okay, that last bit is sort of cute. Chocolate is an odd running theme in the show.)
“The Lone Warrior” at least looks decent. It shows off the improved budget. The early battle scenes with Ginga and Victory vs. the Imperializers and then King Joe are moderately eye-grabbing and don’t suffer under the weight of excessive transformations or gimmicks. King Joe is a welcome guest kaiju. The VFX have some poor compositing, but at least the effects team was going for something epic.
I’m inclined to be more forgiving of this episode because of King Joe and Alien Guts — good villains, even in lesser outings — as well as the action before the toy-pitching takes over. However, I know there are rough seas ahead with more “All Action, All Toys, All the Time” episodes in the New Generation era, although Ultraman Ginga S thankfully is more restrained.
Rating: Mediocre
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