Accomplishments and Zone Fighter

[davetheanalyzer]

I finally uploaded new chapters of We Will Hold On Forever! I’ve been slowly going through the chapters each weekend and found chapters 23 and 24 were nearly complete, and after some edits, I posted them. I was originally going to have chapter 23 be longer and 24 shorter, but I wanted the chapters to be more or less of even length, so I pushed a few scenes to chapter 24. I don’t remember the exact wording but I remember coming across the advice that a fight scene should only last four pages before ending or something majorly changes, so that led me to keeping each fight scene to around four pages. I think the benefit of that is the action doesn’t overstay its welcome. I’m already getting comments and can’t wait to see more reactions to scenes and plots I’ve had percolating for a while.

In the meantime, I’m sixteen episodes into watching Zone Fighter, Toho’s attempt to do their own Ultraman-like show, best known for having guest appearances with Godzilla, King Ghidorah, and Gigan. My first impression was shock that there was a mother character who wasn’t dead and once in a while contributed to the plot. I’m so used to mothers being absent or dead that it caught me off guard that the mother of these main characters was still around. From what I hear, this show also take cues from Ultraman Ace (Which I’ll watch next year) and the original Kamen Rider in that a group is sending out monsters every week. But having a family team support the hero does make this show stand out and there are points where they really do feel like a family. Interestingly, the titular Zone Fighter doesn’t get much character focus so far, either his fellow superhero siblings (Who don’t have his “growing giant” powers) or the Zone family’s human ally Takeru Jou. Of course, they’d have different standards for characterization in the early 70s but I did find it strange we don’t get to know the titular character much. I do like Takeru as an ordinary human helps the heroes but after a few episodes I realized the Zone family didn’t tell him Hikaru turned into Zone Fighter, which baffled me. Takeru already seems to know they’re heroes and fighting the Garoga, why not tell him Hikaru can become a silver giant?

Speaking of giant, the Zone Fighter monsters are part of the appeal and Garoga does love sending them. Most of them either are created by them or Garoga agents become them as a last ditch sacrifice. The latter method presents an interesting quandary – do the monsters retain their former individual conscious or do they become new beings? There are a few basic monsters like the classic theropod dinosaur here and there but there are some weird and wild designs. Spider Uros is one that first grabbed me, kind of for its bipedal spider design and personality but also the potential with the extra pairs of arms that don’t move. If all of its three pairs of arms could move, think of the fight possibilities with Uros able to punch and grab strike an opponent one after the other. Another monster that grabbed me was Shadorah, a shadow monster is sustained by stealing his unwilling host’s energy and ability to shoot out an acidic mist. If he could work with allies, he could give energy to others to power them up and jump out of their shadows to ambush enemies.

In Shadorah’s debut episode, there’s also an monster called Shipdraw whose octopus-themed design I liked. He fights Zone Fighter earlier in the episode before Shadorah comes to the rescue, the two beating up Zone Fighter before they leave…and Shipdraw is never seen in the series again. That struck me as odd – why wouldn’t they reuse the suit for another episode Zandora is also a wild monster, having a literal drill for a head and shooting steam out from holes at the bottom of the drill. Finally, there’s Moguranda, who shares a very similar name to Moguera and sort of looks like the Mysterians robot too. It would be amusing if Moguera and Moguranda are confused with each other as a joke. I’m glad he has a semi-original roar instead of recycled Ultraman monster roars (Many of which were themselves modified and recycled from Toho monsters). I think these monsters would make fine additions to Godzilla’s ensemble, especially with Uros and Shadorah as Godzilla’s allies, Uros being a sparring partner for Godzilla seen as a worthy opponent who could also shoot thread from its arms. Speaking of Godzilla, I do enjoy his appearances and that in his debut, he was called a “Hero of Justice,” which showed how much things changed for him. He’s also kind of fun to watch bouncing on his feet and hitting his chest, clearly enjoying his fights. Fighting monsters once a year is probably his idea of a happy ending and I’m glad even with all the Showa silliness this version of Godzilla is happy.

 

I guess Toho assumed with Shipdraw they could use the monster for a later episode or they had enough budget to make a lot of monsters. Either way, they probably didn’t expect the 1973 oil crises to make creating monster suits difficult or the low ratings to lead to the show’s cancellation. Still, even if the monster stuff is often left to the end of the episodes, I did enjoy the family dynamic in the show and wouldn’t mind seeing the monsters in other media. Though warning, there is some dubious animal treatment starting in episode 12 where the heroes find an injured or dead baby chick and in episode 14 the heroes test a villain serum on their pet bird. I’m unsure of how well those animals were treated in real life to get those scenes. Looking it up, Japan did have an animal welfare law passed in 1973 but I don’t know if it went into effect before the show aired or how much it applied to film and television. There’s also a strange moment in episode 8 where a gorilla (portrayed by a man in a suit) gets mutated into a monster and the heroes just kill him. They don’t try to save the poor animal. I thought the quick way they dealt with him with barely even a bit of emotional conflict was bizarre. I might be overly paranoid and the animals were treated fine but just to be on the safe side, here’s your warning if that imagery distresses you. There might be more potential incidents in future episodes I haven’t watched yet.

That’s all for now. The end of my fall semester is in two weeks and I can’t wait to take a bit of a break from writing. I’m glad I’m doing well on the rewrite for my Master Project but constantly writing for the same story for months on end is exhausting. Until the end of the year, see you!