DAY FOUR:
BIZARRE LIFE MOTHER DEENTS

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

In this peculiar episode of Ultraman Gaia, the city is deluged with a mysterious green rain of unknown origin, which fortunately doesn't seem to have any effect on natural living things. By regrettable coincidence however, the phenomenon comes just as a medical company had illegally dumped a supply of artificially cultured human organs that had failed to function properly.

The abnormal kidneys, hearts and livers mutated under the effects of the otherworldly precipitation, and the result was a huge, sluglike monstrosity of fused-together guts, the Mother Deents. What an origin! It doesn't come across TOO explicitly in the design, certainly textured like veiny, slimy organ-meat but so symmetrical and "segmented" that she equally passes for some kind of mutated insect larva or a tardigrade-like alien. I love the gnarly, long, dark eyestalks with their luminous yellow eyes, what appear to be three larger, redder eyes arranged vertically down her sloping, tubular face and that downright horrid set of vertical, chomping teeth and gums! What probably stands out about her the most, however, is how the chest segmentation evokes a big, pregnant stomach and breasts.

You no doubt guessed what it means that she's the "mother" Deents, too. In fact, she isn't actually revealed until nearly the end of the episode, after her many human-sized spawn wreak a little havoc themselves. These have fewer humanlike qualities and even fewer organ-like details, truly looking more like fat, fleshy isopods with eye stalks and big, weird plunger-like cups for feet. Their origins aren't the only body horror here, either...

The main ability of the Deents is to spray living things with a bizarre fluid that melts them down into an organic sludge, which is dreadful enough, but oh yeah, it doesn't kill them. The victims don't even lose any consciousness or memory. They're just trapped in the form of a gelatinous, frothy puddle as the creatures slurp them up and deliver them back to their mother as sustenance. The only reason this hideous fate doesn't make Deents the scariest Ultramonster is that, somehow, some way, the whole process is easily reversible once the creature is destroyed, and I mean even these people's clothes and shoes and hair are reconstituted with them exactly as they previously were.

That makes NO sense, does it? I can buy some wonky kidneys turning into your big tiddy glop girlfriend and dissolving people into sentient lard because the weather was off, but coming back to life with their shoes on and everything?? Their SHOES, ULTRAMAN?? You expect us to believe that story, ULTRAMAN??? SHOES??? EVEN THE SHOES ULTRAMAN??? THE SHOES, ULTRAMAN??? SHOES????????!! ULTRAMAN!?!?

Anyway I like Deents.

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