Oh boy, are you ever in for it NOW! You thought the last thirty days were bone-chilling, but just you wait! Episode 35 of the original Ultraman is entitled THE MONSTER GRAVEYARD, so you'd better not be reading this one in the dark! I'm really warning you!!
It all starts on a routine survey by the Science Patrol into the extradimensional zone known as Ultra Space, where they begin to see the drifting, phantasmal figures of monsters previously killed by Ultraman.
This was the discovery of The Monster Graveyard, a gloomy limbo-state where all things go to rest when destroyed by the powers of an Ultra.
There's just one spirit present that none of them recognize, a skeletal reptilian figure, and they speculate that it must have been destroyed on some other planet sometime long, long ago.
Members of the team feel saddened by the lost souls, thinking about how the monsters only knew violence for their short lives and were attacked no matter where they went. Ultraman especially experiences a rush of guilt for having had to destroy so many living beings, even to protect humanity, and all agree to hold a memorial service in honor of the fallen monsters.
This all goes fairly well...until, it turns out, that something has come back from the Monster Graveyard...
Awakening in a living world for perhaps the first time in countless aeons, the gargantuan, animate bones proceed to wreak havoc on an innocent countryside, the long dead gargantua insidiously hungering for the opportunity to quietly leave because it doesn't want to be there!
Indeed, the monstrosity ominously alternates between sulking and staring up at the sky, at one point climbing a building and uselessly flailing its arms as it leaps off, attempting to return to its eternal rest in outer space. Only at night does the creature calm down, reminded of the comfortable darkness of its eternal slumber.
The monster cannot be allowed to cause collateral damage and potentially threaten human lives, but the team recognizes that it means no harm, and they only want to help it on its way. Having been attacked and killed once before, however, Seabozu fights them the entire way. An attempt is made to tether it to a space rocket to no avail, then Ultraman himself tries to subdue the monster, knock it out, and fly it into space, but runs out of power before he can escape our atmosphere.
Seabozu does end up grasping, vaguely, that Ultraman is trying to send it back to space, and the Science Patrol decides to paint a new rocket in Ultraman's colors in an attempt to communicate. Seabozu is STILL stubborn about this, tantruming almost like a large child, or perhaps a dog that doesn't want to go to the vet. Frustrated, Ultraman is forced to be tough and even menacing until the creature finally understands and holds on tight to its ride, returning to the Monster Graveyard where it can still, and presumably for all time, be seen at rest with the rocket in its arms.
This was the first time an Ultra was ever portrayed sparing the life of a monster, and the first time in general that the monsters were acknowledged with respect and compassion.
Huh? That's not horrifying? Not even scary? Come on, what about when Seabozu was SAD? What about when it didn't know it would ever get home?? What about when it was afraid Ultraman was going to hurt it? Or when Ultraman DID have to hurt it?!
Well...maybe you've just heard enough about people dying right about now, even in fiction. Horror is fun, horrifying things are fun, but the truth is, I'd like every single monster we've seen all the same if they were nice, and people were nice to them back, and all of them were friends. In fact, I know I do, because here's an official legal upload of yesterday's Saucer Beast Nova frolicking with its friends in a cheerful mushroom forest:
If you can't have a good Halloween, I hope you can have a good something or other. And if you're reading this some time in the future, I hope something really nice has happened since I wrote it.
