KANEGON
He’s here.
We finally got to him.
We’ve peaked incredibly early as the next monster we’re going to look at is absolutely my all time favorite Ultra Monster ever.
Yeah, you heard me. This clam headed guy is probably my favorite Ultra Monster of all time which will make this section the hardest to put into words, but hell, I’ll try, we have a lot to cover.
Let’s start off looking at just Kanegon’s debut episode itself. It’s a bit of an odd one, focusing on a group of children with none of the main cast anywhere in sight. Kanegon’s origins lie with a greedy boy named Kaneo who falls into a cocoon filled with money and emerges as Kanegon. The boy-turned-monster must consume a certain amount of money each day (dictated by the counter on his chest). Should Kanegon fail, he’ll die! It’s a wonderfully whimsical and strange morality tale for kids and by far one of the best stories of the entire franchise. The writer for the episode, Yamada Mashiro based Kaneo on his young son who was terrible at math, but was quite skilled at counting money and I wonder if the kid ever became aware with his connection to Kanegon. The script also was going to show off Kanegon’s ability to distinguish counterfeit money, but that was sadly not able to be put into the episode in time.
Coupled with such an amazing storyline is the equally magnificent design Kanegon has. Tohl Narita mixed in concepts such as a pregnant woman’s silhouette, frogs, monkfish and most importantly purses to create a truly unique creature. I’m quite fond of how Kanegon’s design elements really compliment the other. His little eyestalks feel very comedic and the overlapping plates on his body (which according to some sources, are made of copper) make him feel more organic. I think overall the coolest attribute though is the zipper teeth.
Kanegon would go onto be one of the most popular Ultra Q monsters and become one of Tsuburaya Productions’ de facto mascots, going to appear on merchandise (how fitting for a money-eating monster) as well as numerous cameos throughout the franchise so numerous, it would take another article to properly catalogue them all.
One notable one though, is 2005’s Ultra Q: Dark Fantasy, the Kanegon story would be remade featuring a a female Kanegon named Kanegoneh. Sadly, I haven’t seen her episode of Dark Fantasy so I can only really talk about the design here. Just from the photos I’ve seen, it seems like it’s a faithful update, although there’s some changes here and there: Pink is now added to the monster’s color scheme, complete with pink bowtie, and the coin meter goes from the chest to the naval. Rather than the horns of the other Kanegons, Kanegoneh now has two pigtails on the back of her head. And it’s a bit hard to tell, but it looks like the head is now shaped in the way that it looks like a heart from above! It’s a fun update and it’s an episode I hope to watch someday.
Kanegon was a monster to immediately catch my eye when I dove into the franchise and even after seeing so many creatures, it’s still one that comes to mind as my absolute favorite. I can’t think of any other creature that truly captures the whimsy and surreal nature of tokusatsu as a whole better than Kanegon, nor can I think of any creature that encapsulates my feelings as a whole on why I love the Ultra Monsters. Kanegon is truly iconic and honestly, even if he wasn’t, he’d still be my number one favorite.
CICADA HUMANS
So if you recall the Garamon writeup from a bit earlier, I mentioned we would be covering the creators of those robots and here they are-the first alien invaders (as opposed to alien monsters we’ve seen earlier) for the franchise. As the first alien invaders in the franchise, they’re not half bad! Cicadas are one of my favorite animals and I think they weren’t a bad choice to base an alien off of. I also dig the Cicada Man’s clear, plastic outfit too since it feels really retro-scifi.
Cicada Man’s suit would later be altered in the following show for the very iconic alien Baltan, but would return in Ultra Q: Dark Fantasy in the second Garagon episode as a tribute to their debut. Following that, the Cicada Humans would appear throughout the various New Generation Ultraman shows as stock alien invaders, goons and crowd fillers, becoming one of the most used alien races in the series. Not a bad legacy for a bunch big bugs.
1/8 HUMANS
Yeah, yeah, these aren’t technically monsters, but every Japanese reference book I have lists them among the Ultra Q monsters and it’s a strange bit of phenomena in general, so I feel it’d be at least appropriate to cover them briefly.
The episode features one of the main characters of Q, Yuriko, being shrunken down to 1/8th her size. She discovers that this is a plot by the Japanese government in order to combat overpopulation and resource spending. While the episode turns out to be a dream, it’s one of the show’s finest. It’s an intriguing plot line and it plays out quite wonderfully. While I definitely love the monsters of course, episodes like this make me want the sort of show that Ultra Q was intended to be at one point.
The episode in question draws inspirations from the novel The Incredible Shrinking Man as well as an incident where a staff member slept next to some of the miniature sets. While the impact on the franchise as a whole isn’t the largest, there’s a moment in Ultraman that I feel is a reference. In the 33rd episode of the show, Fuji, a character played by Hiroko Sakurai, the same actress who played Yuriko in Ultra Q becomes a rampaging giant in a fun little reversal to what happened to her in this episode.
PAGOS
Pagos might seem to be one of the more “generic” looking monsters in the franchise, but while it’s a fairly average giant reptile, the monster here represents all sorts of crazy behind the scenes stories regarding the character.
Pagos is yet another Toho derived monster suit, created from the Baragon costume, borrowed from Toho’s 1965 production of Frankenstein Conquers the World. Originally in his debut episode, Gomess was scheduled to appear, but having returned the Godzilla suit to Toho, they had to make do with doctoring the Baragon suit they had. While Pagos’ body is basically the same as Baragon’s, the monster has a brand new head that I think Tohl Narita did a great job designing. It really hits that cool prehistoric monster vibe quite well and I’m fond of the tusks the creature has, making him look like a some kind of ancient mammal like an Arsinotherium or something along those lines.
Pagos’s legacy after Ultra Q is a strange one. The Baragon costume would later be altered in Ultraman for three other monsters before being returned to Toho for Baragon’s appearance in Destroy All Monsters. Prior to that though, Tsuburaya Productions kept kicking around the idea of bringing ol’ Pagos back, but it would never come to pass. First, the monster was meant to return in a series of new Q episodes with giant monster battles, including a fight with Garamon, but those never made it to screen. Next, the creature was intended to reappear in Ultraman episode 9, but was replaced by another Baragon-derived monster, Gabora. When production on Ultraseven was underway, Pagos was intended to be one of the friendly Capsule Monsters the title hero used alongside Peguila and Red King before all three were replaced by new monsters. The monster was then intended to be used in 2005’s Ultraman Max as the monster in their Q tribute episode, but was then replaced by Geronga, an original monster that homaged all the Baragon kaiju. But, Pagos would finally see a return 53 years after his debut in episode 11 of Ultraman Taiga. It was a long, long road to finally see him in action again, but man, it always warms my heart to see one-shot monsters get another shot at stardom. While I’m not sure Pagos will ever return again, it was nice seeing him at least one more time.
KEMUR MAN
Kemur Man is the second alien invader we see in the show, but there’s quite a bit to unpack with this strange fellow.
The episode Kemur shows up in has people disappearing after touching mysterious puddles of slime. It’s soon uncovered the source of said slime is by the Kemur Man, a being from the year 2020 who is teleporting humans to his time period in order to steal the organs from them in order to heal the deterioration in his body. The alien goes on a rampage through the city and eventually grows to giant size to attack a carnival. So far, we have a fairly eerie story here, but for added creepiness, we have the implication that the Kemur Man might be the future of humanity itself. That little hint of what the Kemur Man truly is makes the alien become truly something out of a nightmare. The fact that humanity’s future in the 2020’s is for us to become organ-stealing, slime spewing monsters is a haunting prospect. And seeing how 2020 is going so far, I’d say becoming Kemur Men would’ve been vastly preferable to how things panned out.
Reportedly, Kemur was Tohl Narita’s favorite alien design of all of the various creatures he had conceived. Narita particularly enjoyed the asymmetrical placement of the eyes, inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs, that gave Kemur his distinct inhuman face. The suit constructed for Kemur is another one of Ultra Q’’s triumphs as it feels like one of the “star” monsters of the show. The final pièce de résistance of Kemur is that of his suit actor-Bin Furuya. Furuya’s performance as the alien is delightfully spooky and really sticks in your mind and the proportions of the actor make Kemur really lanky, helping to sell that alien element to him. Narita himself found himself inspired after seeing Furuya’s proportions that he would use those to help him design Ultraman himself whom fittingly, Furuya would be cast as.
Kemur’s future after his debut episode is another one filled with twists and turns. He would be considered to appear in an episode where he battled Pagos and Garamon, but it was scrapped when Tsuburaya Productions began work on Ultraman. Kemur was then penciled in as an opponent for Ultraman in yet another scrapped episode, but would later only cameo as an illusion created by Mephilas in episode 33 and the head would be turned backwards to create the Zetton Alien while the body would be used to create the space criminal Quraso from Ultraseven. Kemur would at long last return in 2013’s Ultraman Ginga where he would battle an Ultraman for the first time. The alien’s last two sightings would be in 2015’s Ultraman X, where in one of his appearances, he was teamed up with the Zetton Alien mentioned above, which was a great in-joke in a wonderfully comedic episode.
RAGON
Ragon is pretty clearly Ultra Q’’s attempt at a Creature from the Black Lagoon styled Gillman, hell, Ragon’s name derives from the word lagoon. While Ragon isn’t in the same league as Creech himself, I do think it’s a fairly good design for a gill-man. I enjoy the more-primate like face which gives off the vibe these creatures might be closely related to humanity.
I think it also helps that while Ragon is close visually to it’s inspiration, the story is a different matter entirely. In the episode, there’s actually two parent Ragons who are trying to get back their child who was captured by fisherman. It would’ve probably been easy for them to just do a retread of the Universal film, but I’m glad they gave their own story for Ragon instead.
Ragon would be one of the only two Ultra Q monsters to appear in Ultraman, and would later pop up in the 2010’s, almost always in sympathetic roles.
RUPERTS, BOSTANG AND KEEL
Hey, now we’re doing three at a time! I felt like my thoughts regarding these three characters could easily be wrapped in one piece of writing.
What we have in this Q episode is a planetary war between the Ruperts and Keel alien races. One of the Ruperts, Zemi, arrives on Earth to warn humanity that the weapon of the Keel, the monster Bostang, has landed on Earth to conquer the planet.
Ruperts is our first friendly alien of the franchise, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the usual menaces from space. I can’t really comment too much on her design since she looks like a human through the whole episode. I do like how creepy Ruperts is when communicating with the main cast through record players and dolls as it brings about the right amount of suspense for the episode. And her final line about aliens living on Earth amongst humanity is a great moment in the show.
As for Bostang, I hate to say it, but it’s pretty low in my eyes when it comes to Q monsters, which is a shame since I think a manta ray based monster isn’t a bad basis for a kaiju. But Bostang doesn’t really hit the mark as it doesn’t feel like a credible menace, I almost feel sorry for the thing when it’s blown up in the end.
Originally, Bostang was going to be an oil-eating monster named Clapton in a story titled Oil S.OS.. Clapton’s design was the same as Bostang, but with a spiked nose, a feature I wish the final monster kept as it would’ve helped elevate Bostang from just looking like a giant animal and more into the kind of weirdness Q monsters tend to have. I will give Bostang some credit, as there is a fun little tidbit of what it’s name means in the Keel language: Eternal life.
The Keel are absent in this episode of Ultra Q, but we would finally see one make their debut in Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle: Never Ending Odyssey (boy that’s a mouthful!). This Keel, named Grande, served as one of the primary antagonists in the series. Here, we would discover that the Keel look remarkably like humans, which makes me think it’s a bit of a nod to how the Ruperts resemble humans as well
Grande’s armor is alright, although it feels more like a design one would see in something like Kamen Rider more than anything, but it does fit his rival sort of persona I suppose.
Surprisingly, Grande does not have Bostang in his arsenal of creatures, but rather has a spaceship that resembles the manta ray monster in a clear nod.
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