While flying ships and plant-insect aliens are what might draw you to this episode, other than a few creative writing choices, there isn’t fundamentally that much to give it a beefy identity and ends up lurking as a rather run-of-the-mill hand-wringing alien story. With the alien invasion formulae being more-or-less firmly grasped now, this episode feels more like a breather with a play-it-safe format, feeling sort of like Shoot The Invaders from the original in some aspect. But as far as Ultraseven goes, there’s still quite a bit to love with its new ideas, for as average as the show can sometimes get, there are ALWAYS new and interesting ideas to love.
After finding no weather patterns to explain the disappearance of 2 atomic tankers at a desolate location on the Pacific Ocean, Commander Takenaka (who we finally see in a focused position of order) gives orders to Soga and Amagi to personally investigate this anomaly. It’s not as suicidal as it seems though, given they get to travel via the Max: the Ultra Garrison’s state-of-the-art atomic-powered ship. But of course, as Amagi says: ‘We’re not exactly going on a cruise.’ which proves to be true, unless you consider getting your boat levitated straight out of the sea and out into space to get infested by shape-shifting aliens as your ideal summer’s getaway.
So with the brash, rather obnoxious Godola aliens holding the remaining orbital ship crew hostage after throwing all the others into the vacuum of space (showing they at least aren’t all mouth and have a bit of dastardly spice) Dan, meanwhile, gets his Ultra Eye stolen (yep if you hadn’t already guessed it, this will be a big trend in the show) by a disguised Godola on Earth and winds up at a disadvantage yet again. His situation gets a little grimmer when he catches one of the Godolas disguised as Furuhashi planting a bomb in the UG’s control room who encases him in an unbreakable chamber. Can he stop these villains’ small and long-term plan of destroying the Ultra Garrison’s intelligence and drawing all focus of the earth’s defences away from space, where they’re secretly gathering their invasion, and more towards the sea where they’re causing the obscure disappearance of ships?
As for this episode’s characterisation, did anyone ever tell you that the small things can mean the most? Because that is absolutely entirely NOT true here but the little character moments we get are nonetheless rather uplifting. Takenaka’s shows himself to be a strategist with hard ingenuity when he grows aware of what may be the Godola’s reasoning for keeping them hostage under their blaring ringleader ranting as well as Amagi’s hardened dedication to the demanding Ultra Garrison duties when he opts to take responsibility of the ship’s single-pilot sightseer spacecraft (as hilariously convenient as it is that a ship would have such a thing but oh well, toku) to deliver warning to earth HQ, which is a nice touch given he’s associated mostly with being the computer comms guy.
My favourite bit, though, has to go to when Anne gives Dan a necklace lucky charm after he gets assaulted by the disguised Godola, saying ‘wherever you go, I’ll be with you’, while this may just be a plot convenience, given how Dan later uses it to reflect his laser gun and break his chamber prison, it’s a sweet little moment between these two as Anne seems to grow more affectionate towards him, though Dan doesn’t seem to take notice of it, but by the finale of the show, the true bond between these two characters is fully revealed and it’s nice to have some hints here and there.
One largely admirable character feature of this episode is that it’s the first ever time we actually see an ultra working side-by-side with the defence force members, shown when Seven distracts the hostile Godola while captain Kiriyama disarms the bomb, showing they see him not exactly as a saviour, but as a part of the team. There’s also a rather touching finale as Seven personally escorts the Garrison members from the Max on a lead back to Earth.
As for this week’s aliens, the Godola, while certainly eye-catching, is unfortunately one of the faker looking monsters in the show, mostly due to having a large stalking head but tight trouser-like legs, making him laughably disproportionate. But it just adds nostalgia to it and if you use your imagination (like you should with old toku) he works just fine. Oddly enough, his design was inspired by a plant, despite appearing more like a crustacean, which would’ve been more fitting given the episode’s oceanic theme.
But what ultimately makes the Godolas rather forgettable is that, well, they’re not that bright. Taking the Ultra Garrison members hostage is fine but not even bothering to remove Furuhashi’s weapon and falling for a painfully basic surprise attack shows they’re not exactly one of those ‘vast’ and ‘immense’ universal minds. When a Godola jumps Furuhashi when he’s launching Amagi’s ship, he doesn’t even finish him off and leaves him to complete it! What’s more, they would certainly have won by leaving Dan trapped with the ticking bomb, but the Godola who nicked his Eye decides it’d be a bright idea to come back to taunt him up front, making for a deus-ex-machina-heavy escape tactic for Dan.
Max, Respond’s most defining feature however, minus the plant aliens and flying ships, is having the first ever time we see an alien disguised as the protagonist. When we see the 2 Dan’s stare at each other, a beastly surreal vibe is given and, if anything, it reminds me of the original Star Trek episode called ‘The Enemy Within’ where Captain Kirk comes face to face with his physical other self. There’s also a largely unsettling scene where Anne grows wary of this imposter who isn’t wearing her charm, suggesting he ‘isn’t with her anymore’ with an luminous effect given from the comms’ radiating blue light. While I wish this Dan-disguised plot expanded further, given the amount of potential it had for an amusing identity crisis, the show would go on to put several different spins on this premise so it’s forgivable (we’re only on episode 4, remember!).
In the overall effects department, the episode’s pretty hit-and-miss. The Max ship gets a surprising amount of stylish feel and scale due to its pretty good miniature detail and the occasional shots of its internal gears and mechanism workings. Speaking of which, the sight of a vehicle floating around in space gives an odd feel of dave ja vu from orbital cars in The Forbidden Word from the show’s predecessor. Other miniature sets, such as the one for Amagi’s take-off and the beach duel between Godola and Seven are all up to the show’s standard but nothing really special.
The presumed final battle between Seven and Godola sort of feels short and jarring, with Seven having little challenge and having an anticlimactic finish, but I can forgive this in the sense that he has a notably long transformed time as he goes from facing the human-sized Godola in the control room to hunting down the disguised one and going big to kill him to taking down several more human-sized Godolas in the Max’s cabins to get to the hostages, so his fight can be seen as a continuum rather than one wrap-up fistfight, making for a pretty fast-paced finale. With that in mind, there’s a rather resourceful illusion of using 1 monster suit multiple times in the same episode to give the impression the ship is infested with Godolas, given the scene where Seven beats down several of them in the Max’s cabins, which would be another ongoing trend in the show.
Toru Fuyuki’s classically-directed soundtrack feels as triumphant as ever here, not only adding a bit of extra tension or proud motivation here and there but making the finale where Seven rescues his comrades from the detonating Max all the more engaging. I wish this magnificent composer got more recognition because Ultraseven has some of my all-time favourite orchestrated music pieces to date and flawlessly carves out the suspense in each episode.
Max, Respond is, overall, a rather average hit-and-miss episode of Ultraseven with a few odd and original elements here and there that gives a few smarties to its cake, but apart from a really original and surreal alien plan and some rather amusing foes, there’s not too much juice to boost it from just being an all-round solid entrée.
75/100
