The episode to kick off the sci-fi ride of Ultraseven is, fundamentally, a really solid start to the show, but in comparison to most tokusatsu and sci-fi shows, it’s a bit of an oddball in how it utilises its main elements for a starting episode.
For starters, I love how it immediately plunges you into the suspenseful, alien vibes to get to grips with the show’s mood before even revealing any characters. I particularly admire one of the first shots of blurred-out car headlights coming forth through the night traffic, as though to represent alien spaceships flying through the sky. Sort of raising the question of how much different exactly is a human from an alien? This would go on to be a theme widely discussed throughout the show.
Then we witness the first human victim after a passenger vanishes into light, scaring two patrol guards. The eerie contrast between the vanishing victim and the night-setting carves out the impact brilliantly and the uneasy mood conjured with the eerie car lights just builds it up perfectly.
It’s then that we’re introduced to the main organisation of the show: The Terrestrial Defence Force, who specialise in defending earth from hostile threats, with the Ultra Garrison carrying out investigations and the dirty work. First impressions are certainly well done with the stylish cinematography tackling the grand-scale reveal of the Ultra Garrison arsenal and fighter jets.
The five Ultra Garrison members introductions are tight and snappy, showing first-hand what they specialise in and leaving it to fill the rest later, feeling like an actual military briefing to an extent. We have Captain Kiriyama, leader of the team who’s seen getting a briefing from the TDF on the random disappearing of citizens who were reported to emit a strange white light before vanishing.
We then have Soga, the marksman of the band who’s seen killing it at a shooting range, Kishida, the strong, rather short-tempered member who we see in his element at the gym, Amagi, the brilliant tactician and lastly Anne, the nurse and only female member of the Garrison.
All the characters are seen in hard duty throughout the episode’s course, unlike Ultraman which had some mood-breaking moments of character establishment. Here, everything’s flowed down neatly, making things seem more professional like an actual military organisation. The suspenseful music and first-person camera also make things dive straight into the mysterious situation, putting you into the mindset of wondering what these strange creatures are after rather than reflecting on the characters (putting you into their shoes to be a bit more dramatic) rather than dwelling on light-hearted introductions.
After Kishida and Soga get deployed to investigate after 2 patrol members go missing, they end up running into a wanderer called Dan Moroboshi, who’s apparently been waiting for them to save them from an incoming danger. While Dan is presented as a collected, although rather unusual fellow, he does have a couple of light-hearted moments such as when he laughs at the two after appearing on top of their car, giving some diverse first-impressions to warm up to his character.
Apparently, aliens from the planet Kuru have been gathering human specimens for years, testing on them so they can discover their weaknesses and rid the world of them and have been transporting them via an invisible mothership.
However, Dan’s caring protector side is shown almost immediately when two police officers get assaulted and captured by the waiting invisible UFO, giving a deeper immediate taste into this strange man’s character when he suddenly grows desperate when unexpected people who won’t listen suddenly suffer the warning he left for Kishida and Soga. He’s not human but is certainly fond of them. Just who or what is he?
The situation suddenly grows desperate when the Kuru ship assaults the three, leading to a pretty well done use of tension, such as Kishida and Dan desperately lugging the injured Soga to safety while the ship tries to barricade them off with landslides, revealing the extent of the Ultra Garrison’s tech with their magnetic shield and even some of Dan’s hidden side as he secretly detects the ship with an alien vision.
Back at HQ, the mastermind of the Kuru is finally revealed on the comms and demands the TDF abandon defences and surrender earth to them. Okay his reveal is a little jarring. To suddenly cut to the invader with no build-up is a little disappointing but the fact that he’s a puppet and not a suit-actor does sort of make up for it with a unique flavour. And to suddenly shift the tension from a small-scale mystery of people randomly vanishing to a full-scale earth attack panic is cleverly done to show the scale of the show and the TDF’s duties as a first episode’s impression. A few people vanishing? Could look into it. An insane alien race threatening to destroy all of mankind? Just another day in the office.
Kuru then destroys an oil refinery district and broadcasts it to the TDF base, which is really well done with immaculately detailed miniatures and clever use of pyro-technics.
The sense of panic is also nicely influenced by focusing on each individual member’s face of desperation and unease, only to then show them all bunched up at a hopeless end while watching this show of power, inflicting a sense of desperation and near-hopelessness.
However, after Dan puts forth some craftsmanship thinking and comes up with a HVA to remove the ship’s disguise and then using paint to reveal it completely (showing Dan to have true tactical thinking rather than raw courage), we get some more grand cinematography with the upbeat launching of Ultra Hawk 1, inflicting a vibe of hope with the music as we finally get a true sense of what they stand for. After a plainish dogfight with the Kuru ships, things start to get interesting when the clever deception of the Kuru undergoes and deploys smaller ships to take down Ultra Hawk, with the shot of the jet crash-landing being pretty damn intense and impactful, not to mention the impressive mountain-range miniature set adding a sense of isolative identity to their situation.
Now we get a taste of what Dan truly is. Interestingly though, before he reveals his true self, he first deploys one of his capsule monsters! This one being the savage, albeit clumsy robot Windam. His reveal provides a hugely sweet taste as we get the first piece of giant monster action in the show, which Eiji Tsuburaya is renowned for. His clumsy little battle with the Kuru spaceships is pretty amusing yet captivating as he chases the frightened ships around like an excited dog, giving him an immediately memorable personality, not to mention a pretty slick yet surreal-esque design as well as some strange powers, making him an intimidating yet oddly lovable monster.
After getting defeated by the ships, Dan summons Windom back and we finally see his true self, transforming into Ultraseven with his henshin device, the Ultra Eye and flying off to the Kuru mothership. I like how straight-forward his reveal is. There’s no time wasted glossing over his design or anything just because it’s the first episode, the desperate mood is preserved. However, the last few minutes of the episode admittedly feels a bit rushed. The fact that Kuru stands no chance against seven and he straight-up slices his head open is pretty anticlimactic, as brutal as his death is presented and seven finds the hostages and rescues them almost immediately after. I guess this shows how unstoppable seven is in some aspects and I won’t lie, there’s some unique elements here, such as having Ultraseven shrink into human size and the uncomfortable atmosphere generated with exploring a dimly-lit, hostile alien ship, but its certainly far from one of the most memorable episode finales.
Returning to HQ, we see that Dan has been recruited to the Ultra Garrison as the sixth member (therefore making his true self the metaphorical seventh member: Ultraseven. Wink wink. Wink wink.) I’ve always had mixed feelings about this decision, given it seems a little too-forward how they’d straight-up recruit someone who randomly appeared with no training and seems to know things he shouldn’t about the Ultra Garrison, but I do like how it shows the TDF recognise true potential in his creativity and ingenuity and know they will probably never get another man like him, showing their resourcefulness and willingness to expand the Ultra Garrison for new skills.
The Invisible Challenger is a pretty interesting first episode for Ultraseven. I say that because it successfully captures a solid identity with unique sci-fi elements that make it nicely rewatchable rather than being a bare-boned starter that’s only there to get your head around the key things in the show and lay things out, like Ultra Operation No 1. The characters all get solid introductions and the main hero is a little more mysteriously build-up and gets you intrigued to follow him throughout the show.
The top-notch cinematography is at its usual here, as well as some clever effects work such as the triple spaceship fight and the Kuru vanishing effects. I also like how it experiments with tension by swiftly shifting from an eerie detective drama when people start vanishing to a tensioned action thriller when Kuru gets revealed, with an engaging large-scale atmosphere due to the exceptional canyon miniature set for the dogfight and Windam’s battle.
I rate 84/100
And thus, begins the throw of the eye slugger! (that was the best I could think of, okay?!) I’ll see you for the next episode: The Green Terror