Ultraman Arc Episode 15 Review “The Wandering Future”

Ultraman Arc Episode 15 Review “The Wandering Future”

Hello and welcome, Ultraman Connection readers! It’s that time of year again! It’s time for our heroes to get beaten down – but never out of the fight. It’s time for them to face their fears, rise to the occasion, meet their most dire challenges yet and find the strength to overcome them.

That’s right, it’s time for the mid-season powerup!

There’s been a wide variety of challenges each Ultraman hero and their comrades have faced over the franchise’s history. Equally as varied are the forms of these new powers that the heroes gain from their battles. They can be weapons, armors, or even entirely new suits that provide a stylish new look in addition to the tools they need to overcome the threats in their path.

But although this episode is dedicated to showing off Arc’s new upgrade, the Galaxy Armor, there is one major distinction that sets it apart from previous series. This distinction was so shocking that I had to rewind the episode several times to make sure I was seeing it right!

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Before we get there, let’s recap the events that introduce the new armor for Ultraman Arc. First, the episode begins with Yuma still in a coma after the previous fight with Sweed and Zadime. Back at the SKIP base, they’re struggling to fulfill their mission when they don’t know anything about this new kaiju, or what it’s after in the forest outside of Hoshimoto City. It doesn’t help that they’re short a member with Yuma in the hospital, and now even the GDF is stonewalling them, and blocking any information about the incident from the public.

Of course, they all turn to Shu with questions, since he is a member of the GDF. In previous episodes when his mission conflicted with his role on SKIP, he defaulted to the same cliched PR lines to keep that mission a secret. This time is different, however. Shu finally comes clean about the “Onyx,” which now is under attack from the Kaiju Zadime.

The audience already knew that the Onyx was a dangerous object, sealing the remnants of a dying star to prevent them from destroying the Earth. We also knew that the deceptively-small sphere was the result of Ultraman Arc’s fight against another Kaiju, Monogelos, sixteen years ago. From his story in the previous episode, it sounded like he successfully protected the planet from annihilation, but was torn up by his failure to protect Yuma’s parents in the fallout of their battle.

Shockingly, Shu reveals something that Arc – or rather, Rution – didn’t reveal to Yuma in the previous episode. His battle sixteen years ago on “K-Day” wasn’t as successful as we were led to believe.

While the Onyx prevented Earth’s immediate destruction, it seems that the seal only temporarily halted the process. With energy still flowing from the other side, the Onyx is reaching a tipping point, and it’s only a matter of time before its seal breaks entirely.

That seems like bad news, and also raises the question of why Arc didn’t tell Yuma about this in the previous episode. Like Rin says to Shu when he first told them about the Onyx itself, they need all the information they can get in order to fulfill their mission and protect people. Shu pointed out that the GDF had to make an exception because the Onyx was so dangerous that it put the entire world in jeopardy. It would be easy for a panic to break out and make things worse over the globe if this knowledge was public.

So how does Yuma come to know this detail, if he’s in a coma? Well, the GDF aren’t the only ones manipulating information in this episode. Sweed herself shows up to the hospital and yoinks Yuma away for an impromptu out-of-body experience, specifically to show him this conversation. Unlike the GDF, her aim is specifically to cause chaos and panic. She wanted to show Yuma the sheer hopeless despair of the Earth’s fate – and her own fate, since she would also die in the supernova-scale explosion once the Onyx’s seal is broken.

Interestingly, Arc’s reason for keeping this information from Yuma was very similar to the GDF’s stated position. He also worried for Yuma and didn’t want him to lose hope when he discovered the seal was going to break anyways. Sweed tries to claim that his only concern was for his mission, and didn’t want to admit that it had failed… but if the situation was truly this hopeless, then why did Sweed even bother talking to Yuma in the first place? Why did she take the time to come to his hospital room and bring him on a guided tour if there really was no other outcome possible?

Changes in perspective, new shifts in our view of the world around us, have been a key part of Ultraman Arc, and this scene was no different. Although Sweed tried to portray herself as compassionate, mercifully breaking the news to Yuma so he could give up peacefully without suffering more, in reality she was the one most concerned about her mission. Arc had been silent for this entire episode up to this point, stuck behind the reflection of a mirror, until Yuma decides to join him in order to hear his side of the story.

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Every time Arc had wanted to speak to Yuma, he either pulled him into this mirror dimension, or could only silently gesture to get his attention. This is the first time Yuma went to him first instead. Through the looking glass, Arc’s  true compassion for the people of Earth is much clearer than Sweed’s smug self-assurance.

I’ve said before that gratitude is a core part of the Ultaman franchise. When it comes to humanity’s relationship to the Ultra heroes themselves, it exemplifies that gratitude in many ways. We often see the human characters reach for greater accomplishments, find greater strength and fight courageously to follow their example out of gratitude.

It is exceedingly rare that an Ultra hero is the one who finds gratitude for the strength, courage and kindness of humanity itself. And yet, Arc recognizes that the strength he has today was only possible because of Yuma’s optimistic imagination, along with the courage and kindness of all those around him. Earth is no longer just a mission to him. Yuma is not just a random bystander who became entangled in these events.

As Yuma himself says, they are one and the same – and that includes their desire to protect the Earth in whatever way they can.

That desire may not be enough, however. They are able to transform at least, and with the help of Shu and the rest of SKIP they are able to fend off Sweed and Zadime’s attacks to reach the Onyx. But what can they do to stop the flood of energy that is about to be unleashed on the Earth?

Well, it’s simple. All Arc had to do was unleash his own imagination.

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This is the part of the episode that absolutely floored me. All of Arc’s new weapons and armored forms had been the result of Yuma’s childhood drawings up to this point. Arc relied on that imagination not just to provide the power to defeat Kaiju, but to envision the future that they wanted. Sometimes that future involved stopping threats against the Earth, but the wide variety of powers and applications Yuma was able to bring out of the armors weren’t about destruction.

Yuma’s idea of a hero was a figure with limitless power, but also someone who used that power to protect lives, rather than just killing bad guys. That is exactly what Arc did with the Onyx – his new “Galaxy Armor” takes that limitless power and turns it into their new strength.

In addition to looking sick as hell, this new armor represents a unique evolution of the relationship between Yuma and Arc. It came out of both of their imaginations, their shared ideal vision of the future where Earth was protected and where humanity could live peacefully in the universe.

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I sincerely have no idea what will happen next in the story. Arc defeated Zadime soundly with the new Galaxy Armor, but Sweed appeared to escape from the battlefield. This episode established such a radical shift in so many relationships between the characters – between Yuma and Arc, but also between Shu and the rest of SKIP – that I wonder where things will pick up again in the next episode. All I know is that I am thrilled to see where Yuma and Arc’s shared vision of the future will lead next… even if we have to wait an extra week to get there. Next week the show will be looking back on events with a “Special” recap episode. In the meantime, stay tuned right here to Ultraman Connection for more!