Episode 19: Challenge from the Year 2020
(featuring Kemur)
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Lieutenant Colonel Amano orders two fighter jets to be launched when radar picks up a UFO. Both jets are destroyed. The Lieutenant Colonel is called before a group of generals who question his report of the UFO. Later, a man sitting by a swimming pool watches enough man dive off the diving platform and vanish in mid air. The woman beside him didn't see it and thinks he's imaging things. Another man is sitting outside having a drink, a woman talks to him from above and then while she's walking down the steps to him he vanishes in the middle of drinking. A woman riding a gocart vanishes, it fron of the eyes of a novice reporter and experiened reporter Edogawa, Yuriko. Amano and Yuriko both show up at the airport trying to confince Jun and Ippei that their stories are true. At first Jun is skeptical but then Yukriko shows him newspaper accounts of two of the cases. Ironically its Ippei not Jun the science fiction writter who thinks Yuriko should right a science fiction novel in which an alien from a UFO causes people to disappear. Jun decides to take Amano for a flight over the area the UFO had been spotted, telling Ippei he should go read a science fiction book. Ippei tries to over Yuriko a hand in investigating the vanished people but having mocked her she's understandibly annoyed and walks off with him. Ippei is now alone. Jun and Amano don't find anything, like wreckage floating in the ocean so the Lt. Colonel concedes that maybe he was tired and Jun says maybe the radar malfunctioned. Neither notices he black, slimy thing crawling around the airplane and up the back of Jun's seat. Suddenly, Amano find himself alone in the plane. Yuriiko goes looking for the other reporter but cannot find him. The same slimy is climbing the walls of the darkroom. It was probably after Yuriiko next but a pushy male reporter knocks her aside in a hurry to check his developing photoes and he vanishes instead, Yuriko screams.
Later, Yuriko, her boss and Amano are reviewing the photoes she took of the woman on the gocart, projected onto a movie screen, they notice a strange liquid, and Amano says he saw it just after Jun vanished. Yuriko surmises it was after the negatives that prove its existance, her boss says it was probably after her too. Yuriko's boss has perusaded the police to send an experience police detective to act as her bodyguard, but when he gets hit in the nose by the projection room door she isn't impressed with him. Yuriko phones Ippei who is reading "Challenge from the Year 2020" a science fiction book which he says is describing this case perfectly. She isn't taking hims seriously. And then vanishes from the phonebook. No, the black liquid didn't get her, the detective yanked her out just in time. Ippei said the liquid in the book was flameable. And when the detective tossed his cigarette into the liquid it did in fact burn. He then pulled out some kind of electronic scanning device which lead him to the Kemu alien which was telephatically controling the liquid. The alien out ran a police car. The detective it turnes out was a friend of the author of "Challenge from the Year 2020", although he believed his friend was insane and had him commited he realizes now at least some of what he wrote was real. When Yuriko asks what happend to the missing people, is Jun allright, he says if the book is right, they were sent to a planet in the future, the year 2020 of course. Hearing her friend has not only been sent to another planet but 54 years forward in time (remember its 1966 when she's told this) faints. In a car with Amano, Ippei is explaining what he's learned about the Kemur. They've managed to prolong their lives so that Kemur on Earth now is probably over 500 years old but eventaully even their bodies wear out so they are taking humans to take possesion of their bodies. Not knowing about the detective, the two men are hurrying to find the author of the book who has been released from the asylum. The detective wants to take Yuriko home so he can track the Kemur, believing he's made himself a target now too. But when he turns his back on her and turns on his scanner he releases the Kemur is near by and when he turns back towards Yuriko she is gone.
Ippei and Amano have found the book author's lab but he is not there they belive the Kemur got him. He left behind howerver a "K-miniode" a tiny device which generates "X-channel light rays" which are deadly to the Kemur. Yuriko finds herself at an amusement park and sees what appears to be Jun. She starts running towards him, but the detective drives intot he park and shouts a warning to her and Jun is revealed to be the Kemur in disguise. Ippei and Amano are heading for Tokyo Tower but are not sure the convince the people there to use the "K-miniode" They think they should have had a police escort and when Amano spots a police car he intentially speeds to get its attention. At the amusment park the detective says to shoot the Kemur in the head, which he himself does and it falls down and seems to melt but then it not only recovers but giant sizes. The "X-channel light" fired from Tokyo Tower kills the Kemur. Then a white cload comes down and all the missing people reappear. Yuriko and Jun walk towards each other but at the last second she must decide he's another imposter because she runs away. Jun runs after her. The detective laughs. He turns to leave but then turns bacl to look at a black puddle. Instead of dropping matc into it he says "its probably okay" and steps into the puddle. Starting with his feet and working up he begins to fade away and screams "help me!" before completing vanishing. The whole amusment part segment seemed off and the sound had a slight echo too it, I expected someone to wake up from a nightmare. But that didn't happen.
‹THE END›
Yes, that is Kobayashi, Akiji as Lieutenant Colonel Amano, about 2 months before starring in Ultraman as the Science Patrol Captain and 5 years before starting his career as mentor to the first 7 Kamen Riders (1, 2, V3, Riderman, X, Amazon, Stronger).
Note: Kemur is the second and final Ultra Q monster to appear in Ultraman (episode 33). The other monster is Ragon wich although it appears in Ultra Q (episode 20) after Kemur does it appears in Ultraman (episode 4) before Kemur does.
