Hello and welcome, Ultraman Connection readers! This week, we’re taking an up-close and personal look at Ultraman Omega along with the eager journalist, Maki Arakawa. She doesn’t show up at the Taiyo Warehouse looking for Omega specifically, though. Instead, she’s interested in the two guys who strangely seem to know a lot about the various kaiju which have appeared around Japan recently.
Unlike the YouTuber, Wolfey, from a previous episode, Maki isn’t here to stir up rumors or to gawk. She genuinely wants to share their story with people around the country. That seemed strange to me at first, one would think that just the appearance of Kaiju and a giant silver alien fighting them would be enough to make people sit up and take notice. But according to Maki, people in the surrounding regions are complacent about the threats of Kaiju, and think of it as a problem for someone else to worry about.
And you know what, that’s probably the most depressingly realistic part of this whole episode. How often do we see people brush off stories of natural disasters or hardships happening, even in our own countries? It’s all too easy to bury ourselves in our own familiar surroundings and ignore problems that seem to be someone else’s problem – until, of course, they become our problem too, and we’re forced to suffer the consequences.
Maki hopes that this feature on Kosei and Sorato, two seemingly-ordinary civilians who have stepped up and taken an active role to investigate the kaiju, will inspire others to take on more responsibility as well. Of course, there’s just one problem with her plans for this program… Kosei and Sorato are actually anything but ordinary.
On one hand, you have an amnesiac giant alien who only learned how to speak Japanese a few months ago. On the other hand, you have his roommate who telepathically adopted two extraterrestrial kaiju by accident, and now leads them into battle to help out the other aforementioned alien. When Maki suggests following them around for the day, Kosei objects, obviously pointing out it’ll be impossible for them to keep their cover!
But Sorato never really wanted to keep his identity secret in the first place, and I get the impression he only tries to maintain a (somewhat) low profile now because Kosei won’t buy him instant yakisoba noodles if he gets kicked out. It’s no surprise he wants to come clean about his identity to Maki.
It is surprising that Kosei eventually relents and decides that Sorato should be able to be honest with the other people of Earth. Before he can make the big reveal, however, they’re interrupted by another Kaiju attack. Those monsters just have the worst sense of timing, don’t they?
Anyways, this is far from the first time news cameras have been focused on the main characters in an Ultraman series. Many of the shows put a particular emphasis on the press investigating strange events around Kaiju and aliens – even if the press isn’t exactly favorable towards Ultraman or the defense teams.
One of my favorite episodes from Return of Ultraman, episode #21, “Monster Channel”, even puts a hilarious spin on the threat of bad publicity for the defense team. During this episode, all of Tokyo gets to watch the MAT team members fail to take down a Kaiju. The twist is that the fight is broadcasted to every TV antenna in the city, directly from the Kaiju Beacon itself! MAT has to figure out how to stop the Kaiju, when every household has a front-row seat to the action thanks to the radio signals that the Kaiju sends out.
Now, it’s not a bad thing to want to hold defense teams accountable for their actions. Several of the Ultraman series of the 1990’s and 2000’s focus on the thin line these teams walk between “defense” and “militarism”, and journalists often press that detail in a specific manner. That pressure turns out to be for the best in Ultraman Gaia. The KCB reporters’ unflinching commitment to the truth behind the apocalyptic events of the show’s finale play an instrumental role alongside our Ultraman heroes and the rest of the defense team.
Not all journalists act with such idealistic integrity, however. In episode 28 of Ultraman Mebius, a scummy tabloid writer tries to take advantage of the kindhearted Konomi, a member of the GUYS Japan team. His goal? To stir up rumors of a scandal to discredit the team, and to make money from selling the story in a magazine. The tabloid journalist, Mitsuhiko Hirukawa, shows up in a few later episodes of the show too. His character almost makes for a contrast to the KCB reporters from Gaia, in the sense that his own grimy cynicism almost brings doom on humanity when some of the greatest threats of the franchise make their appearance.
At the end of the day, these members of the press are eager for a story, and the goings-on of the defense teams certainly make for good material. Another one of my favorite episodes, from Ultraman X this time, is “24 Hours Inside XIO”, featuring the framing device of a TV documentary across almost the entire episode’s runtime. Rather than showing an idealized version of the defense team as humanity’s greatest protectors, or trying to discredit them with scandalous lies, this TV program just shows the team as professionals who have a specific job to fill. Ironically, I think it makes the members of XIO seem even more heroic, acting as any other ordinary public servants, even when facing down terrifying extraterrestrial weapons and conspiracies.
In our present-day show with Ultraman Omega, Maki must have seen something similar with Kosei and Sorato. At first glance, they just seem like two ordinary guys working in a warehouse, but they’re still willing to step out of that ordinary life and put themselves in danger when a Kaiju appears.
Sadly, we never see her reaction upon learning Sorato’s true identity… because they never get a chance to tell her. Turns out, after seeing Ultraman Omega himself in action – up close and personal – she has a new idea for a better documentary. One that features the Giant of Light himself. She’ll probably be pretty disappointed when she eventually realizes she’s missed the chance for the interview of a lifetime, but at least she can claim she was a fan of Omega before he got big.
In the meantime, stay tuned right here at Ultraman Connection for more up-close and exclusive content.
