[GrandComplete]

Episode 8 "The 4 Billion 6 Hundred Million Year-Old Ghost"

Junki Takegami joins the fray as a new writer for Gaia. Having been involved with both Tsuburaya & Toei. He’s a veteran writer by the time Gaia was being produced. Working on the Sukeban Series, Cybercops, as well as Tiga & Dyna like many others.

His works on the Ultra Series often are characterized with strong emotional cores by often singling out one specific character within the episodes how the plots revolved around them & reaching breaking points from stress & despair either in the climax or the midway points of his stories. At his peak in the 90’s & 2000’s Takegami was alternating between Tsuburaya & Toei with each script he was writing subconsciously altering his writing style due to being someone who grew up with Ultraman thus had a strong ideal image of Ultraman burrowed deep within him. His style noticeably pointed out by many of the staff of Tsuburaya was noticeably different with his works in Toei’s Super Sentai due to not growing up with said franchise allowing him to write for Sentai without precaution of what it should be rather what he wants from story to story basis.

The Alchemy Stars have always been a thing in Gaia but getting to know more about one of its members outside of Gamu & Fujimiya is such a treat. You really get to see how similar all of the Alchemy Stars ideology are at one point and how even though Gamu & Fujimiya were so different they both were in the same group. Weaving into the story is the KGB who I still find really compelling and is the underdog grounded normal perspective that this show needs to not lose touch with the people both Ultraman & XIG are protecting.

We have two kaijus in this episode. Being Anemos & Crabgan both kaijus of the Earth, their symbiotic relationship makes this a unique beast that gives trouble separately and even harder when they fuse into one. Anemos is a strange beast with its unconventional design and its guardian Crabgan is a really cool crustacean kaiju both making some fantastic and memorable monsters.



The track for this week is “Suffering” as the name applies this track encapsulates the anguish the choices made by our characters in this specific case Miku and how it must feel for Anemos to be driven to extinction and the dilemma of whether it is right to fight or not.