The next show on the Ultra kick is Ultraman X. Like Orb, this was a show I originally decided to check out earlier this year because some friends of mine kept raving about it. I had a lot of fun with it. Yeah I don't really have much to say beyond that. Lets get down to it, but first...Unite!
Premise: 15 years ago, a strange solar flare (dubbed the Ultra Flare) covered the earth and caused objects called Spark Dolls to come to life resulting in the appearance of giant monsters. At the same time, a young boy lost his parents in a freak accident caused by the flare. The organization Xio was created to deal with them the rising threat of monsters. During a monster attack, Xio officer Daichi Ozora gets caught in the path of a fireball and gains the power to turn into a being known as Ultraman X in order to combat the monsters.
Characters:
Daichi is a cool protagonist. He strives to actually understand the monsters and wonders if humanity can coexist with them. It was that drive for coexistence that caused him to dedicate himself to studying spark dolls. He also does this in order to make cyber monsters as a way of completing his father's work. He got kinda overzealous with studying them at one point and he not only fell into an aliens trap in one episode but he also ignored his own health in the process during another episode. He is so dedicated to understanding monsters that its revealed in episode 16 that he recreated their natural habitats as model sets for the Spark Dolls to live in so that they'd be happier. Thats a small detail and it only shows up in that episode but it really says a lot about Daichi.
Xio is a pretty neat team. I quite like the Three Musketeers angle with Asuna, Hayato, and Wataru. Those three get some pretty cool teamwork episodes together, usually when there are multiple enemies involved or X is out of commission. Episode 15 is a really good episode for Captain Kamiki because we see just how much his job has strained his relationship with his family due to it requiring him to put his duties at Xio before anything else. Lieutenant Tachibana gets an episode to herself and its pretty good. Like Kamiki she wrestles with her duties at Xio and worrying about her daughters. Its makes for a pretty cool parallel with Kamiki's episode due to how each of them ends up being able to handle the situation. I quite like how the vehicles are handled in this show. They basically just plug into one set of jet wings for different 3 configurations: The Sky Musketty (a jet formed by combing with a car called Athos), Land Musketty (a tank formed by combining with a truck called Porthos), and Space Musketty (a spaceship formed by combining with a van called Aramis). Its a really neat way to handle it because even tho only one vehicle can be plugged in at a time, it still gives their arsenal a nice variety of options. Plus it continues the Three Musketeers allusion since Hayato (Athos), Asuna (Porthos), and Wataru (Aramis) pilot them. The science team of Dr Gourmand, Rui, and Mamoru are fun and they provide a nice bit of comic relief. Rui's episode is pretty good since Alien Knackle praises her on her ability to build weapons but Rui immediately shuts him down by telling that she joined Xio to help people with her inventions. I would've liked to learn more about Mamoru and Gourmand but ah well, its to expected with a 22 episode show. Hayato also didn't really get an episode to himself so it feels a little odd to me since Asuna and Wataru got one (though you could argue that Wataru's episode sort of doubled as one for Hayato). I just would've like to learn more about him.
Effects: This section is probably gonna be shorter than my past reviews, mostly because I'm starting to sound like a broken record after covering R/B and Orb's effects. As usual the effects are good and everything is nicely detailed and the city destruction looks great during the fights. With that being said, unlike R/B and Orb there wasn't a simple effect that blew me away.
Action: The action is fantastic as usual. The fights have a lot of weight to them and they always manage to be interesting. The MonsArmor is a pretty cool touch and it makes X's action feel totally different compared to the other Ultra shows I've seen. Each armor changes how X has to fight and they give him a nice variety in regards to what he can do. If I had to pick my favorite MonsArmor, it'd either be Bemstar or Zetton since I tend to love defensive powers. The action gets even better when they eventually succeed in realizing Cyber Gomora so we get some sweet two-on-one and even some two-on-two fights. The Ultra cameos also add to this and there is a stellar three-on-one fight in episode14 that shows off Ginga and Victory really well.
Favorite Episode:
Its a really tough call since I'm torn between the Gargoron episodes (episodes 6 and 7) and episode 16 (as usual, I'm not counting the show's finale for this section because it would require spoilers). The Gargorgon episodes are a pretty intense two parter and they're a good example of the show's theme of coexistence and understanding. It was also the first time the show put this theme in the fore-front imo and it just kept emphasizing it from then on to the finale. Gargorgon in general is just really cool concept for a monster. This thing looks and feels like a force to be reckoned with. Basically the plot is that an amnesiac refugee from Planet Gold fled to Earth looking for a Spark Doll with enough power to stop Gargorgon. Everyone is afraid and suspicious of him because they think he is initially trying to invade Earth. Gargorgon finds its way to Earth and the refugee has to team up with X and Xio in order to stop it.
Episode 16 is one of the most unique episodes I've seen in toku in general and its one I'd absolutely love to see something like it happen again. The whole thing feels like an episode of Cops. Its basically a tv crew getting permission to follow Xio around for a day, get interviews, and giving civilians a look inside their day-to-day operations. The whole on-the-ground feel works fantastically. On top of that, it manages to be plot relevant too. I've never seen an episode of toku that feels quite like this one.
Final Thoughts: It handles its theme of trying to coexist and understand each other rather well. Its got some pretty meaty episodes with some punch to them that encapsulate that theme perfectly. I legitimately felt sad in episode 19 when it looked like they might actually have to kill Gomora. I find it funny that even though Exceed X gets its power from a rainbow, it somehow has the darkest color palette of any Ultra I've seen so far, barring Belial of course. The defense team and dogfighting kind of threw me off briefly because the most recent Ultras I had binged prior were R/B and Orb. I had gotten used to a smaller cast and a more personal style of Ultraman story. I didn't expect to see so many Ultra cameos in this show but they were welcome additions. My personal favorite cameo was the Nexus episode because I'm a big fan of Ultraman Nexus in general. I geeked out when that good ol' Nexus bgm played and the music started swelling during the fight. It was also good seeing Komon's actor so long after seeing Nexus itself. Overall, its a solid show even if it doesn't quite hit R/B or Orb levels for me.
