Zone Fighter Episode 08 – Taose! Kyoufu-no Inbeedaa

aka 倒せ! 恐怖のインベーダー aka Smash the Terrifying Invader! aka Defeat the Invader of Fear!

1973
Written by Satoshi Kurumi
Directed by Akiyasu Kikuchi

Kirk! Is better! Than! Picard!

This episode of Zone Fighter is pretty darn weak, though it has a nice gruesome scene involving two unfortunate fishermen, and a nice fight at the very end in which the outcome is never in doubt. But to get to it we have to follow the Garogas make a bunch of dumb moves and our heroes also make a bunch of dumb moves. And that’s just not fun! If you need a Zone Fighter refresher course, feel free to drop by the Zone Fighter Guide Page. And now on with the show…

Zone Fighter Episode 8 Taose! Kyoufu-no Inbeedaa (Smash the Terrifying Invader! or Defeat the Invader of Fear! depending on who you trust has a better translation) opens with Akira and a pack of his young friends hanging out in Takeru Jou’s model shop. The terrifying realization that we might have FOUR children in short shorts starring instead of just one begins to materialize, luckily it will prove not to be the case. The kids are unimpressed by model trains, but one kid really likes the telescope. So much so that he notices a rocket heading for impact nearby.

Said rocket is one of the Garoga Terror-Beast Rockets, which Takeru recognizes immediately. He and Akira track the course on a map to a lake, then head over there in a car, ditching the young friends. None of the friends seem to be disturbed their young friend is getting into a car with a strange man who hangs out with young boys all day. I predict a Lifetime movie in the future…

Two fishermen are at the lake and having their little argue moment when the missile lands in the water. One of them is actor Senkichi Omura, who played the translator in King Kong vs Godzilla, an escaped convict in Godzilla Raids Again, a villager in Godzilla vs Mothra, a guy who tries to retrieve a hat in Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster, a cameraman in Frankenstein Conquers the World, and a drunk in the first episode of Ultra Q. And all those Akira Kurasawa films he was in. The other fisherman (who isn’t instantly recognizable) drops his food. The horrors of the Garoga terrors will be sung in songs for ages!


Three people claiming to be government scientists drop by to reassure the fishermen that everything is okay so they won’t panic and call the cops. We know they are scientists because they are wearing lab coats while at a lake, like all real scientists do. They should be wearing rubber gloves, because the webbed hands of Garoga are far too apparent and tip off the fishermen!

The Garoga reveal themselves, then one tosses his antenna, which turn into whips that coil around the fishermens’ necks. This particularly gruesome scenario ends with the fishermen getting the life choked out of them by the Garoga and left in the middle in the road, just as Takeru and Akira drive up. Thw two examine the bodies and are then ambushed by the Garoga!

Akira somehow hides in the trunk of the car unnoticed, while Takeru is choked via antenna, and then zapped with a flash from a Garoga’s eyes that somehow incapacitates Takeru, though I don’t recall this power being used before. It seems like a useful power, so maybe they should. They should also use their power of peripheral vision to notice Akira getting into the trunk. Or their power to count to 2, because there were two people and they only captured one. But, nope, these Garogas are dumb as bricks. You know this is true because they don’t kill Takeru right there, just like the fishermen they just killed, and take him in the car (they steal the car) to a building across the lake to kill Takeru there in what will be revealed to be a slow buzzsaw.

All ride over, Akira is free in the trunk to use the robot communicator as a walkie-talkie to call in his family for help. Which he should have done before they started, but whatever. Also the Garoga don’t notice the trunk being opened several times as Akira reports his position, because the Garoga are dumb.

Hotaru flags down Hikaru with a red flag by standing in front of his car in the middle of the racing track. The rest of the Zones coordinate in the control room as the siblings search for their little bro.

The Garogas drag Takeru into a building and tie him up, then fire up the buzzsaw! Yes…kill him! Nevermind he appears in later episodes, kill him anyway! I want BLOOD!!!!

I also enjoy the audio of the female Garoga scientist laughing despite her mouth being closed.

Akira has snuck out of the trunk and inside the building, and finds a loaded Garoga gun just lying around and uses it to fire randomly into the room. One bullet hits a restraint on Takeru and sets him free. Seriously, the kid fired a machine gun into a room of people and managed to only hit a tiny restraint that freed his friend, instead of turning everyone into hamburger. The Garoga just laugh and push a button on the floor and bulletproof glass walls slide down on all sides of Takeru and Akira. Why do they even need to do that with these terrible shots?

Hikaru and Hotaru storm the building, transforming into Zones because that’s what you do when you’re a Zone. The Garoga try their antenna whip cord tricks again, but nothing doing.

The Gargoa begin to set off the terror-beast missile, which has just been sitting underwater instead of doing anything useful. Zone Fighter takes the flying car underwater to try to stop it, but he’s too late (you’d think a race car driver would be fast, but….)

Out pops Gelderah!

Gelderah looks like weird lizard wolf with an amber-encased brain. Zone Fighter strafes and strafes that idiot with his flying car. Gelderah spits some sort of gas that damages the car. So instead Zone Fighter grows big to kick monster butt. The Zone Fighter theme plays triumphantly….

Until Gelderah bites him on the neck! The theme abruptly stops, and the soundtrack now has various Zone Fighter grunts of pain while there is no music. It’s actually sort of funny, but we all know that Zone Fighter will get his mojo back, and he does. The theme song is blaring again and Zone Fighter is beating up the Gelderah, avoiding getting bitten in the neck again.

Zone decapitates Gelderah with his arrow ray attack, and Gelderah’s body explodes.

ZONE! HIS BLOODLUST CANNOT BE SATIATED! This monster wasn’t presented sympathetically, we were only told that he was going to do evil stuff, but Gelderah didn’t live long enough to do evil stuff. So, technically, Zone Fighter murdered an innocent monster once again.

Everyone goes home happy

Until next time…

With both the Garoga and Zone Family members doing dumb things, this episode becomes a comedy of errors that are occasionally broken by highlights, like the horrible fishermen murders and Zone getting bit in the neck. But beyond those spots, things are just weak, and this episode clocks in as a miss instead of a hit. The next episode is even worse, with Zone Fighter killing an innocent gorilla that’s infected by a Garoga spider bite. Can Zone Fighter dig his way out of the terrible hole? We shall see, as March of Godzilla 2014 continues…

Rated 4/10 (rings, flame rocket, bald, ray power!)

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