Users’ results may vary: “Inspector 13”
I have to be completely honest here. I am really jaded with the series right now. Yeah, big surprise, right? I’m just not impressed with this season and regardless of what we do or don’t know about the next series, I can’t get excited for it. I’m enjoying my other fandoms much more right now: Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.
But still, a promise is a promise, and I promised myself I would review all of Ultimate Alien and Alien Force. So let’s go.
The story is that one of the Weapons Masters of Techadon, the titular Inspector 13, has finally left his home planet to investigate the source of why their robots keep failing. And that would of course be Ben. After attacking Kevin and leaving him unconscious in the Team Abandoned Warehouse, he goes after Ben, who is cheating at tennis with Julie and still losing. He’s captured and has no less than two bondage scenes in this episode-I’m starting to think the animators have some kind of fetish, particularly when it comes to Bondage Fun Ben, that they’re working out through this episode. Inspector 13 tries to get the Ultimatrix off of him and hacks his way into it, and hacking it breaks it to the point that Gwen and Kevin henshin into his alien forms. With Julie…providing support, I guess, they try to break into the factory, which was retrofitted from Vulkanus’s old one from “Greetings From Techadon.” Fun fact, a map on the Ultimatrix shows that this is in the north-central U.S. If that’s supposed to be where Bellwood is, Bellwood’s geography makes less sense than Angel Grove.
This episode is…okay. Admittedly, that’s my bias showing, but I don’t feel like it’s giving us enough to work with. Sure, there are some fun moments like Gwen as Rath or Kevin as Wildmutt looking at his wrecked car (take a drink) and I like the parts where they have to figure out how to use all the powers Ben’s grown used to. There’s even a part where Ben refuses to use the Ultimatrix because he’s afraid he’s going to transform his friends into something that might get them killed, and Gwen has to convince him to try because he might be able to pull off something amazing. It’s a good moment. It’s just lost in here.
There’s too much focus on Inspector 13 himself for the team’s moments to really shine. And what is Inspector 13 doing? Why, the same as every other villain in the series since the beginning of the original: trying to adapt the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix into a weapon. Even Ben lampshades that he’s been there, done that. So he argues with Ben that the Ultimatrix is a weapon and that Ben should let him rip him apart molecule by molecule so he can take the Ultimatrix and adapt it into his own technology. They spend a good amount of time on this. If you’ve ever seen Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, this is roughly the same amount of time spent on Terry’s brawl with the Joker where the Joker is pointing out how he doesn’t compare to the original before Terry turns the tables on him and shows him just how this Batman is going to take him down. That scene had been pivotal, building up Terry’s character and breaking down the Joker’s. This one…doesn’t cover any territory that hasn’t been covered in the past 6-7 years.
This time really should have been better spent covering Ben’s reluctance to use the Ultimatrix when it comes to his friends. This is a really good moment for his character. Someone who never worried about the effects it had on him, even when it wasn’t working properly, is scared to death of these mistakes he lives with daily hurting the people he cares about. When the entire series of Ultimate Alien shows how much Ben’s loved ones are being affected by his heroics, this is not the kind of thing you should skimp on. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the two-part structure of most Kamen Rider episodes, but I think this is something that really could have used a lot more time to build on, and not just be used as a throwaway moment and a joke at the end that Ben might have been an Anodyte-Osmosian without knowing it.
“Inspector 13” was written by Geoffrey Thorne.
But still, a promise is a promise, and I promised myself I would review all of Ultimate Alien and Alien Force. So let’s go.
The story is that one of the Weapons Masters of Techadon, the titular Inspector 13, has finally left his home planet to investigate the source of why their robots keep failing. And that would of course be Ben. After attacking Kevin and leaving him unconscious in the Team Abandoned Warehouse, he goes after Ben, who is cheating at tennis with Julie and still losing. He’s captured and has no less than two bondage scenes in this episode-I’m starting to think the animators have some kind of fetish, particularly when it comes to Bondage Fun Ben, that they’re working out through this episode. Inspector 13 tries to get the Ultimatrix off of him and hacks his way into it, and hacking it breaks it to the point that Gwen and Kevin henshin into his alien forms. With Julie…providing support, I guess, they try to break into the factory, which was retrofitted from Vulkanus’s old one from “Greetings From Techadon.” Fun fact, a map on the Ultimatrix shows that this is in the north-central U.S. If that’s supposed to be where Bellwood is, Bellwood’s geography makes less sense than Angel Grove.
This episode is…okay. Admittedly, that’s my bias showing, but I don’t feel like it’s giving us enough to work with. Sure, there are some fun moments like Gwen as Rath or Kevin as Wildmutt looking at his wrecked car (take a drink) and I like the parts where they have to figure out how to use all the powers Ben’s grown used to. There’s even a part where Ben refuses to use the Ultimatrix because he’s afraid he’s going to transform his friends into something that might get them killed, and Gwen has to convince him to try because he might be able to pull off something amazing. It’s a good moment. It’s just lost in here.
There’s too much focus on Inspector 13 himself for the team’s moments to really shine. And what is Inspector 13 doing? Why, the same as every other villain in the series since the beginning of the original: trying to adapt the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix into a weapon. Even Ben lampshades that he’s been there, done that. So he argues with Ben that the Ultimatrix is a weapon and that Ben should let him rip him apart molecule by molecule so he can take the Ultimatrix and adapt it into his own technology. They spend a good amount of time on this. If you’ve ever seen Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, this is roughly the same amount of time spent on Terry’s brawl with the Joker where the Joker is pointing out how he doesn’t compare to the original before Terry turns the tables on him and shows him just how this Batman is going to take him down. That scene had been pivotal, building up Terry’s character and breaking down the Joker’s. This one…doesn’t cover any territory that hasn’t been covered in the past 6-7 years.
This time really should have been better spent covering Ben’s reluctance to use the Ultimatrix when it comes to his friends. This is a really good moment for his character. Someone who never worried about the effects it had on him, even when it wasn’t working properly, is scared to death of these mistakes he lives with daily hurting the people he cares about. When the entire series of Ultimate Alien shows how much Ben’s loved ones are being affected by his heroics, this is not the kind of thing you should skimp on. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the two-part structure of most Kamen Rider episodes, but I think this is something that really could have used a lot more time to build on, and not just be used as a throwaway moment and a joke at the end that Ben might have been an Anodyte-Osmosian without knowing it.
“Inspector 13” was written by Geoffrey Thorne.