Say, kids! Do you like brownface? No? Shit.
This episode takes place in “Arabia”, the land of oil wells, pyramids and Sikh turbans. I’m not sure whether that bit of embarrassing ignorance is to be blamed on the Japanese original or the American localizers, but I suspect it’s the latter. After all, tokusatsu has a long tradition of making up goofy store-brand nations to avoid offending (or maybe doing research on) actual countries: Rolisica was a stand-in for both the U.S. and the USSR, albeit located somewhere in Oceania; Selgina was a pastiche of late-monarchy Nepal, populated by saboteurs in Shakespearean ruffle collars; and an episode of Ultraman – suspiciously similar to this one – featured a Middle Eastern OPEC nation called Baradhi. But nope: Johnny Sokko has decided that Arabia has pyramids and Sikhs. All things considered, we’re probably lucky they don’t also have roving bandidos and haunted tiki idols because, you know, brown people.
Which is not to say that this episode deals in wholesale cultural misappropriation. One important way that Arabian pyramids differ from Egyptian ones, for example, is that they have huge rollup doors that you can drive a truck through. Also, instead of being treasure-filled tombs for inbred mutant-kings, they’re used to store this thing:
Ligon-Tyrox is my favorite kaiju of the entire series. He’s some giant patchwork dog unicorn thing with dreadlocks. It’s like someone let Tim Burton design Godzilla, and it’s bonkers. He just traipses across the desert, kicking over oil refineries. Doctor Botanus is in charge again this week, and his plan is to put pressure on the industrialized powers by limiting oil production. On one hand, that’s a little more thought-out than the usual “send a monster to wreck shit up”, but when apocalypse monsters are at your disposal, trying to bottleneck fuel resources seems petty. Maybe Giant Robot will fire back with SANCTIONS.
Hilariously enough, Unicorn learns about the depredations of Ligon-Tyrox by reading it in the newspaper. Apparently Unicorn Arabia has ceased communication following the most recent refinery attack, so Jerry Mano and is assigned to check it out. A female Unicorn agent pipes up and says her brother worked at the Arabian branch and offers to go with Jerry. The chief agrees, and Jerry is thrilled to be hanging out with an Actual Female Lady until Johnny also asks to go. He says he’s always wanted to see the desert, but I suspect what he means is that the hatred and violence endemic to the Middle East is the song of his heart. With a woman of marriageable age in the cards, though, Jerry laughs it off and says Johnny has homework to do. Undeterred, Johnny hitches a ride on Giant Robot, and even finds the time to reference the William Shatner episode of the Twilight Zone. Silly Jerry. When Johnny Sokko thirsts for blood, no force on Earth can stop him. What hope did your clumsy attempt at seduction stand against his singleminded drive to kill?
Before Johnny has time to work up to his Burgess Meredith impression, the plane explodes because Gargoyle agents are occasionally – and without warning – super competent, and the gang has to make the rest of the trip squatting on Robot’s palms. I really hope that eventually they have a scene where someone that took a palmride lands, immediately vomits, and then spends the next 20 minutes wiping splattered bugs off of their body. Instead, we cut directly to our heroes driving through the desert, stopping near the pyramid we saw earlier. Jerry complains that they’ve been at this for three days (!) and haven’t seen anything suspicious, except, you know, MYSTERY ARABIAN PYRAMID. They go inside to “rest,” because Johnny Sokko can’t sleep soundly unless he’s surrounded by corpses.
The pyramid is full of garish Egyptian-style wall reliefs and all manner of apparently priceless artifacts just sitting out in the open, including Ligon-Tyrox. This must be like a recently-built replica pyramid, because grave robbers had mostly stripped the Egyptian tombs of their treasures by the time the Romans got there, and those chambers didn’t have 9’x24’ doors.’ I’d like to imagine Emperor Guillotine airlifted this thing from a children’s museum somewhere, and next to the monster storage room there’s a gift shop where a fat Minnesotan family is trying to buy commemorative coasters. Anyway, Johnny is fascinated by the beast and pistol-whips it, but nothing happens. Before he can produce a rocket launcher or whatever, Jerry literally trips over a pendant that belonged to Agent Lady’s brother. Rather than utilizing this amazing opportunity to kill an enemy kaiju while it hibernates, our heroes instead decide to retire to their hotel to, I don’t know, reconnoiter?
Oops. Sorry, American localizers. At the hotel, our heroes meet their contact, Kassim, and encounter a Gargoyle suicide bomber before deciding to turn in for the night. While Johnny and Jerry snore away, Lady Character sneaks out and ventures back into the pyramid alone. No sooner does she arrive than does a sarcophagus open up to reveal a mummy with wayyyyy too much liquid latex on his face. He looks like he’s made of 95% gauze and 5% Beefaroni, but that’s not all! Also inside his sarcophagus: a manhole, out of which climbs Dr. Botanus and Agent Dead Brother, the latter in handcuffs. The pair proceed to enter the body of Ligon-Tyrox (!) through a hinged door in the heel (!!) where there is an office suite and command center with brick-paneled corridors (!!!). As Lady looks on in vague interest/terror, she is gently pistol-whipped and taken inside the monster, where she is placed in a holding cell filled with shirtless Unicorn Arabia agents (!!!!). Just then, Ligon-Tyrox shakes to life, and the captive agents are forced to watch the rampage begin from a porthole apparently located somewhere near the monster’s armpit (!!!!!). Luckily, Johnny Sokko has stowed away disguised as Aladdin, complete with a crude spray tan, and he’s able to subdue a guard with a jet of sleeping gas from his elbow and free the captives.
Having apparently slept in, Jerry is horrified to discover Johnny missing from their bed – gross – and before long Kassim bursts in to report that a monster just erupted out of the local pyramid, which is somehow another shock to him, even though he was standing next to said monster just before lunch. He advises Jerry to focus on finding his pederastic pal, noting that, “I know this area like a book. Only I can look out for the monster.” Yes, it really takes a native eye to spot something as subtly out of place as a two hundred foot dreadlock unicorn in a vast expanse of sand dunes. Meanwhile, Johnny plants a time bomb that he apparently had hidden in his turban and evacuates his agents before summoning Giant Robot for the customary battle. Ligon-Tyrox winds up being a pretty tough obstacle for Robot, mostly because he is the only kaiju I’m aware of that practices traditional Irish grappling.
Seriously, he grabs Robot in a collar-and-elbow and starts kicking his shins. When that doesn’t work, he mysteriously produces a Master Betty chain and starts swingin’ it, tangling Robot up and, uh, penetrating him with his horn. As the shin-kicking intensifies, Johnny’s bomb goes off and cripples the kaiju, complete with a shot of monster chunks raining on the heads of DocBot and his men. Smelling blood, Johnny calls for Robot’s “Radion Eye Beams”, which cause Ligon-Tyrox to crash to the ground and start twitching, and presumably dash all the Gargoyles to pieces in the process.
Several questions:
-Why did Johnny not press his attack and have Robot pump missiles into the monster’s carcass, per usual? That’s actually not unreasonable in this case, since this monster was filled with Gargoyles, including a guy who builds monsters for them.
-What is the deal with Unicorn Arabia’s dress code? Agent Dead Brother gets to wear a Safari Playset getup, but all the other guys are dressed as goddamn Gunga Din.
-Why did we need Chef Boy-Ard-Imhotep? All we saw him do was stand up and shuffle out of the way while some guys climbed out of a hole in the floor of his sarcophagus. YOU DID NOT NEED TO WRITE IN AN ACTUAL UNDEAD MUMMY IF HIS TOMB IS JUST A COVER FOR A SECRET PASSAGEWAY. What, was he the last line of defense in case Unicorn agents Abbott and Costello showed up?
This show has so many problems and they are all delightful.
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