Ultraman Teo 08

Watch my analysis

The video and audio above contain the full unfiltered analysis. What follows is the razor focused version of the strongest point I had to make.

Pucchi Gets to Be the Hero

The emotional story with Rintaro seems like it’s supposed to be a big part of Ultraman Teo 08, but it didn’t land especially well for me. I like Rintaro as a character, and I feel like there’s something potentially profound about what he’s going through, but the full story hasn’t been told yet. Right now, it’s just not really drawing me in.

I did like how directly the episode addresses the obvious question about him: why are you pursuing veterinary education when you’re afraid of animals? Rintaro basically asks Ibuki, “You want to know why?” and Ibuki’s innocent response is basically, “Well, yeah.” That was a lot of fun for me. It’s supposed to be a dramatic moment, but there’s a funny beat in there, too.

My bigger concern is what happens when Rintaro gets to the other side of this funk he’s in. I like the rough edges of his character, and I hope his development doesn’t just sand all of those away. I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen. I’m not really speculating about it yet. I just think it could become an issue if they turn it into one.

For now, I’m putting the Rintaro stuff on the back burner.

The thing I really want to talk about is Pucchi.

Ultraman Teo Doesn’t Get to Save the Day

I find it really enjoyable, and kind of refreshing and remarkable, that Teo is absent from the climactic fight.

Ultraman can already be a little weird with its structure. Sometimes the Ultra fight isn’t where you expect it to be. Sometimes there’s all this strange sci-fi stuff going on beforehand. That’s part of what makes Ultraman interesting.

But here, Teo just doesn’t get to be the guy.

Ibuki doesn’t transform to deal with Volthog at the climax of the episode.

Pucchi does.

I really like that.

It’s especially interesting because there isn’t a defense team here with an Earth Garon or some other huge weapon they can use to deal with a kaiju threat. People haven’t really had much choice but to rely on the Blue Giant.

Then Volthog attacks, the Blue Giant doesn’t appear, and Pucchi does instead.

That’s novel. It’s interesting. And I really enjoyed seeing it.

Giant Pucchi Is More Than a Mascot

Obviously, Pucchi works as a mascot character for Teo. He’s cute in his little Pucchi form. He’s good merchandising.

But then Giant Pucchi is awesome.

It’s a very cool monster design. It’s bold and aggressive looking, but there’s also something heroic about it. Giant Pucchi has the kind of design that immediately makes me want to see this thing fight.

And here he actually gets to fight by himself.

This isn’t just Pucchi helping Teo against Vermilios. He gets a solo fight against Volthog. He’s not handily defeating Volthog or anything, but he’s doing a pretty good job. I really enjoy his ferocity, his range of weapons, the fact that he can fly. The whole thing is just cool.

But there’s something else about that design that really interests me.

Giant Pucchi looks like he’s designed to be a weapon.

Was Pucchi Designed to Be a Weapon?

That’s where I start wondering what Pucchi actually is, not just in the story, but in this world.

It seems pretty clear to me from the episode that Pucchi was able to grow giant because he linked with Ibuki. So now we have this creature from another world who can apparently link with Ibuki under certain circumstances and turn into this giant, heavily armed monster.

That makes me wonder if Pucchi is some sort of bioengineered anti-kaiju weapon.

I don’t know that. The show hasn’t told us that. But looking at Giant Pucchi, that’s where my mind goes.

And if that’s true, or even if it’s something in that general direction, then there are a bunch of other questions. Is there a reason Pucchi is on Earth? Was he made for something? Is there some larger connection between him, Ibuki, H12 and Vialoga?

I would think there has to be some reason Pucchi is here and some larger role for him beyond being the cute mascot character, especially now that we’ve seen what he can become.

I’ve wanted to see something like a bioengineered anti-kaiju kaiju weapon in Ultraman for a while. Pucchi potentially gives Teo a really fun way to do that because he doesn’t have to be something created by an incredibly advanced Earth defense organization. He’s already something from another world.

Maybe that’s not what Pucchi is at all. I don’t know if the show is actually going to develop this idea.

But the potential is there.

And even if none of that speculation goes anywhere, I still really enjoyed seeing Pucchi fight. Teo doesn’t transform for the climax, Pucchi gets the solo fight instead, and Giant Pucchi is just a very cool thing all around.

For an episode where the apparent A-story with Rintaro didn’t really match my taste, the Pucchi material absolutely worked for me.

All Zeztz Analysis | All Omega Analysis

Drop a comment below or tag me @MJ_Scribe on Twitter. Let’s have some fun talking about this.

If you enjoy thoughtful stories for kids and families, check out my book Mockwing Mayhem. Its a heartfelt adventure about magical bugs battling monsters and protecting children.

You can find more of my reviews, reflections, and stories with spine at mjmunoz.com, and join the mailing list there for behind the scenes updates and new releases.

Inspector’s Notes

Pucchi Is a Gentle Giant Until He Goes Giant

I really love the rage of Giant Pucchi on display in Ultraman Teo 08.

Pucchi is such a cute little kaiju in his normal form. He’s soft, calm, quiet and basically designed to be adorable. But when he links with one of the people he’s close to and becomes Giant Pucchi, he turns into this fierce and fearsome creature.

It’s not just that his design changes. His whole attitude changes.

Giant Pucchi is aggressive. He gets in there and fights. There’s a ferocity to him that feels completely different from this little creature who normally hangs around with his friends being cute.

I guess Pucchi is kind of a gentle giant, except when he actually goes giant, he’s no longer gentle.

But I think that makes sense because when Pucchi goes giant, it’s for a purpose. He’s doing it to save people and help his friends. In order to do that, he has to set aside the softness, take up some steel within himself and thrash the enemy.

I think there’s a nice parallel there with Ibuki.

Ibuki is a gentle person. He doesn’t like confrontation, fighting or conflict. But when he has to act, he delivers. Pucchi seems to work the same way, except I see a lot less hesitation in Pucchi when it’s time to deliver the violence.

He’s almost like the sheepdog fighting off the wolves. Being gentle with the people you care about doesn’t mean being gentle with the thing that’s trying to hurt them.

That contrast is part of what makes Pucchi so much fun for me. He can be the adorable little mascot character, but then Giant Pucchi has this completely different wow factor. He looks awesome, he acts awesome, and he brings something to Ultraman Teo that feels different from the other Ultra series I’ve seen.

I like his look, but I think I like his attitude even more.

Loose Threads

Ultraman Teo 08 – What Does UTTF Already Know About Kaiju?

There’s something strange going on with UTTF in Ultraman Teo 08, and I’m increasingly curious about what this organization actually knows.

UTTF is after Teo for some reason. They call him the Blue Giant, and they want to capture him. But what really caught my attention this episode is how differently they seem to think about Teo compared to the kaiju.

When Shiga brings up Giant Pucchi, who has now appeared fighting both Vermilios and Volthog, the response is basically that they don’t need him. Their focus is the Blue Giant. There’s this attitude of, essentially, “a kaiju is just a kaiju.”

That seems like a really weird attitude to have in this world.

Kaiju are supposedly a new phenomenon, so why is UTTF already so blasé about them? Why isn’t Giant Pucchi incredibly interesting? Here’s this strange giant creature who has appeared multiple times, fights other kaiju and apparently protects people, and UTTF is basically saying, “Nah. We want that other guy.”

Volthog makes me wonder about this even more. He was discovered frozen in ice, which at least raises the possibility that kaiju aren’t actually new to Earth. Maybe Volthog has been here for a very long time. I’m a little fuzzy on exactly how the sequence of his discovery and revival worked, so I don’t want to build too much on that. But it adds another little question mark for me.

I’m starting to wonder if UTTF might be a little bit like NERV or SEELE in Evangelion, where there’s a much deeper and darker history behind the organization than we initially understand.

What if kaiju have actually been around for a long time, and UTTF already knows about them? Maybe they’ve captured them, contained them, experimented on them or manipulated them before. If that’s the case, their attitude suddenly makes more sense. A kaiju really might be “just a kaiju” to these people because they already understand the category.

But Teo is different.

We know Teo is intelligent, but I wonder how obvious that is to UTTF. His behavior certainly communicates something. At the beginning of the fight with Volthog, he very clearly seems concerned about protecting the city. You can look at what he does and reasonably conclude that the Blue Giant isn’t simply another giant creature rampaging around. He’s making choices. He’s deliberately protecting people.

So maybe that’s what makes him special to UTTF. Maybe they already know what kaiju are, but they don’t know what an Ultra is.

And if that’s true, why do they immediately want to capture him?

There’s also that conspiracy theorist we saw earlier who claimed UTTF makes people disappear. I don’t know how much credence we’re supposed to give that guy, so I’m definitely not taking his accusation as fact. But it’s another little thing sitting in the back of my mind while UTTF continues to feel increasingly secretive and sinister.

It makes me wonder whether Ultraman Teo secretly does have something resembling the traditional Ultraman defense organization. Maybe it’s just a completely different version of one. Instead of the public-facing team with uniforms, jets and giant anti-kaiju weapons, maybe we have this clandestine, black-ops organization operating in the background.

I don’t know if Ultraman has done something quite like that before. I haven’t seen enough of the franchise to make that declaration. But I would find it really interesting if that’s what Teo is doing.

There’s also a completely different little thing I noticed while looking at the UTTF meeting, and this is exactly the kind of production detail I love noticing in tokusatsu.

We’re shown four different UTTF people apparently communicating from different places, but look at the shots. They all seem to be sitting in basically the same black chair against basically the same concrete wall. Even the little holes in the wall seem to match. Some of the compositions look like they may simply have been flipped or mirrored.

I obviously wasn’t there when they shot this, so I can’t say that’s definitely what happened. But it really looks to me like they may have used the same little setup to shoot all four people separately, changed or mirrored the compositions enough to create some visual variety, and turned it into a four-way video conference.

And why not? You don’t actually need four actors sitting in four different locations to sell this idea. You need four images on a screen.

It’s a tiny thing, and probably something most kids watching the show would never think twice about, but I love seeing how these things are put together. It’s part of the fun of watching tokusatsu for me.

The filmmaking trick is interesting, but the people sitting in those chairs are even more interesting. UTTF feels like it has something going on beneath the surface. I don’t know whether that something is a secret history with kaiju, a clandestine defense organization, something much stranger, or none of the above.

But the more casually they treat kaiju while obsessing over the Blue Giant, the more I want to know what these people already know.

Ultraman Teo 08 – Giant Pucchi Is Giving Me Guyver Vibes

I’ve been thinking about Giant Pucchi’s design and how much it keeps reminding me of Bio-Booster Armor Guyver.

I didn’t notice everything about his design at first. I noticed the big, puffy shoulders and wondered what they were about. Then he has these weird jet things on his back that kind of look like wings, but kind of don’t. They’re obviously some sort of flying mechanism.

It made me think, man, Pucchi almost looks like some kind of Guyver thing.

And that gets back to this question I already have about what Pucchi actually is. I keep wondering if he’s some sort of bio-weapon or kaiju weapon. I mean a kaiju specifically designed to be a weapon.

He comes to Earth in this little pod. He’s about the size of a person. He’s soft and cuddly and cute, and then he can turn into this giant monster that is able to fight and potentially kill other giant monsters. There’s something mysterious going on with him, and the idea that he could be some sort of biological weapon already had me thinking about Guyver.

Then in Teo 08, when Giant Pucchi gets to fight in a much more meaningful way, we finally see what those big shoulders can do.

He shoots these missile-like weapons out of them, and the really cool thing is that after they shoot out, you can see new ones load into the places where the previous ones had been.

That immediately made me think of Gaster.

Gaster is one of the Hyper-Zoanoid Team Five in Guyver, and he has these big bulbous things on his shoulders that contain bio-missiles. Apparently they’re telepathically controlled, and I’m pretty sure in the anime you can see them replenishing after he fires them too.

That’s exactly the kind of thing Pucchi has going on here. I’m not saying Giant Pucchi is actually a Gaster reference because I have no evidence of that. It just made me go, “Oh, this is so cool. This is like a Guyver thing.”

And I’ve already talked about Guyver while covering Ultraman Teo. When they found Pucchi’s pod and Kanna was researching it, even going into the pod and some of the imagery around that felt very Guyver 2: Dark Hero to me.

I just think there’s something really interesting about that connection because Guyver itself has always felt so much like tokusatsu to me. It feels like, what if you combined something like Ultraman and Kamen Rider and turned it into its own unique hero, its own story and its own world?

So it’s cool when I see things in modern Ultra productions that remind me of Guyver. It feels like there could be a little cultural playback going back and forth. Guyver comes out of this larger tokusatsu tradition, then it runs for decades and becomes its own thing, and now maybe some of those ideas and images can work their way back around again.

I’ve seen other things that made me think about that relationship too. There was something in Ultraman: Rising that reminded me so much of Guyver 2: Dark Hero that I made a Short where I put the shots back to back. You could see this thing from a movie made around 30 years earlier showing up again in a way that felt really familiar to me.

Again, that doesn’t prove anything. I just think it’s cool.

And while I’m thinking about Guyver, I also want to stop for a minute and show some appreciation for Yoshiki Takaya.

We recently learned from an interview with Takaya included with the Guyver 2: Dark Hero Blu-ray from Toy Robot Video that he suffered a cerebral infarction. He’s dealing with paralysis on the right side of his body along with other lasting effects, and he said he doesn’t think he’ll be able to draw manga again.

That’s really sad.

I’ve known somebody who had a stroke, and I saw how much work it took for him to come back from it. For a while we didn’t think he would, but he fought and he did. He was never quite the same afterward, though, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for an artist to have this skill and these abilities and then lose the ability to properly control part of his body.

The Guyver manga has already been on hiatus for a long time, and from what Takaya has said, it doesn’t sound like he expects to be able to return to drawing it. I hope somehow we can at least get an English release of the manga someday, even if it remains unfinished.

Because there’s still so much there to appreciate.

Takaya created Guyver I, Guyver II, Guyver III and all of these cool Zoanoids and biological weapons and monsters. I love that work. And I genuinely feel like designs like those could have influenced something like Giant Pucchi, even though I have no idea whether they actually did.

That’s really what made me want to talk about this. I’m watching Ultraman Teo, I see Giant Pucchi shoot these crazy bio-missiles out of his giant puffy shoulders, and suddenly I’m thinking about Gaster and Guyver and all this beautiful design work Takaya has given us.

Maybe there’s a connection. Maybe there isn’t.

Either way, Giant Pucchi is an amazing design, and I like that looking at him gave me a reason to think about and appreciate Guyver again.