Did you like our first foray into the strange world of battle-hardened child soldiers and smoldering monster flesh, kids? Good, because there are 25 more of these, and they’re all GREAT. This week’s monster is Nucleon, the Magic Globe. If you shake him, he’ll give you noncommittal answers to trivial questions!
Like last week, the adventure begins with a spacefaring object landing on Earth. Last time it was a gas station toy from Wham-O, and this week it’s the Blob. It crashes out in the woods, and a bunch of japanese villagers run outside to gawk at it in their pajamas. Thanks to Western encroachment, a few of them are wearing 1950’s sitcom pajamas instead of the traditional kimonos. Or maybe the meteor interrupted some kinky I Love Lucy roleplay. You got no splainin’ to do, I don’t judge. Eventually the meteor starts glowing red, and shockingly no old vagrants show up to prod it with a stick.
After the first episode explained the premise of the show in the absolute least explanatory way possible, we’re almost ready to jump straight into cheesy tokusatsu formula goodness, but we have just a few more loose ends to wrap up. Well, dozens, but they’re only wrapping up three and that’s all happening in the first 27 seconds here, so whatever.
The top Unicorn brass have assembled to test the shit out of Giant Robot, but we only get to see the final test, which is blasting him with tesla coils. He’s fine with it, and two Important Officials share a grave look before announcing that this was the final test, and that Robot is completely indestructible. Holy shit, really? I mean so far we’ve seen him shrug off a (tiny) nuclear blast, artificial lightning and being slapped at by a flaccid amphibian. But who am I to second-guess Important Officials? Clearly the footage of them dipping him in liquid nitrogen and wailing on his ankles with baseball bats or whatever wound up on the cutting room floor.
Satisfied that Giant Robot is not going to shit the bed on them, the Important Officials finally put Johnny on payroll. Johnny is now an official member of Unicorn Secret Police, and has been given the ultimate in espionage gear: a khaki jumpsuit, orange motorcycle helmet, baby blue neckerchief, jet pack, and badge complete with code number emblazoned across it. Unicorn was really ahead of their time; even today, very little high-stakes espionage is conducted while rocketing across the sky in broad daylight with one’s ID on one’s lapel. Pioneers, those Unicorns.
Back at Gargoyle HQ, Guillotine shows up on a screen to tell Commander Spider to drive out to the country and activate Nucleon. This will draw Johnny and Robot, and then the Gargoyles are supposed to disable the kid and bring back the robot. That’s … a really pointed and clever plan, especially coming from the guy whose big gambit last week was “wreck a number of pleasure cruises.”
Before Johnny’s jet pack can be fitted with a Blues Brothers amp blaring “Secret Agent Man,” one of the Pajama People calls in to report the weird glowing rock. Jerry and Johnny take off to investigate, using Dracula powers to transform into small rubber models to soar through the sky.
Out in a meadow overlooking the meteorite, Spider and his guys are again getting orders from Guillotine, which is super weird. Earlier, we established that he can Skype them, but this time his guys are standing around in a field and somehow they can hear and see him as he wildly gesticulates alone in his bedroom.
We also get our first really good look at Emperor Guillotone’s digs, which he apparently sublets from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Big Gil orders his men to activate Nucleon, and they heil away at a couple trees before sharing a good evil laugh. It’s nice to see that kind of camaraderie in your evil paramilitary forces.
The meteorite cracks open, and Nucleon makes his initial appearance by peering over a hillside at an assembled throng of onlookers in what feels like a pretty intentional homage to Godzilla’s initial appearance on Odō island. I mean, Jesus, it has stomping sound effects EVEN THOUGH IT IS A BALL.
And so begins the laziest kaiju rampage ever filmed. Nucleon retracts his tentacle-dealies and just starts rolling over buildings. He’s the first kaiju that could have been played by an exercising hamster, and he is on the short list for worst monsters ever. Is the the very worst? Signs point to ‘yes.’
Nucleon is pretty obviously based on the classic Ultraman kaiju Bullton, but like a shittier, clunkier version of him, because every episode of this show is a shittier, clunkier version of an Ultraman episode.
Bullton was a weird-ass living meteor from another dimension with Mr. Mxtyzptlk powers who could teleport dudes around and alter their molecular structure. Nucleon is an aquatic mine that rolls himself at your shins. Or the only English-language tavern in this remote Japanese village:
Incensed at the loss of BAR, Johnny summons Giant Robot and commands him to use Megaton Punch, which causes him to straight up SPIKE Nucleon like a volleyball. Nucleon opens fire at Robot because one of his dealies is apparently also a .50 caliber machine gun, but he’s able to absorb the impact with his armored diaper.
As our heroes watch the alleged battle, Commander Spider sneaks up and knocks out Jerry with some kind of sleep gun. “You must be a member of the Gargoyle Gang,” Johhny deduces. And not terribly impressively, since the guy is in full uniform, and also they got into a close-range gunfight with him in the last episode. Commander Spider gasses Johnny with the Penguin Umbrella Gun and orders the lad taken to the car. When a henchman points out that since Robot has permanently imprinted on Johnny, they should just kill him. I’m with that guy, but Spider chides him, saying, “The boy will go to the laboratory, where he will be brainwashed by the Hypnothon.” Fucking WHAT? I don’t know what a Hypnothon is, a brain eraser, maybe? All I know is I definitely need one for Christmas. All glory to the Hypnothon!
Weirdly, when Johnny passes out, Robot hangs his head and kind of shuts down. But it’s not like Johnny’s consciousness inhabits the Robot’s body; he gives him specific instructions by talking into a watch. Robot should probably stand there shrugging at Nucleon, all sorry bro I don’t know what’s up but I can’t fight back, or maybe keep doing whatever Johnny’s last command was until he gets a new one. Just like going nuts Tae Boing the air.
Nucleon uses two of his dealies to grappling hook Robot and drag him off through the sky like Santa’s sled, and drops him perfectly vertically next to Guillotine’s Paddleship. The Emperor is really psyched about this, even though he literally has no room to reprogram the robot or whatever. There’s no silo, just a giant metal dude standing there next to an Aurora model kit under a blue filter. Maybe there’s 48 frogmen with underwater welding torches just offscreen. Meanwhile, after being out for MAYBE three minutes, Johnny shakes off the effects of the Roofie Rifle and gets Robot back into the fight.
Spider flips out at this point and yells into his controller for Nucleon to finish Robot. Incredibly, the Ultimate Attack turns out to be rolling slowly at Robots shins. He sidesteps, causing the Pernicious Pilates Ball to collide gently with a nearby hillside and violently explode (!).
In a sequence clearly ripped off by Steven Spielberg for Raiders, the Gargoyles flee from the rolling, bombed-out carcass of Nucleon. Rather than trying to run out of its path, though, they allow it to chase them to their vehicle, which it flattens as soon as they’ve clown-carred inside of it. I would speculate that they’ve all been horribly killed, but I’m positive that every single Gargoyle on this mission was also killed by machine guns and then had their corpses vaporized by an atomic bomb in the pilot. If you’re going to reuse henchmen, guys, maybe don’t graphically kill them onscreen, or at least have the actors shave their incredibly distinctive facial hair between episodes.
All in all this was a very definite improvement over the first episode. Giant Robot is a lot more dynamic, and somehow his fight with a big dumb sphere was more fun than two humanoid monsters grappling. This episode was a little light on Jonny Quest-style child gunplay, but we did get to see like twelve henchmen get maybe-crushed into possibly paste.
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