ROJ Episode 13 Notes

RETURN OF JETMAN

"Ashes To Ashes"
(Episode 13)
Production Notes
by Christopher Elam
© 2011 Christopher Elam

 

Episode 13 - "Ashes To Ashes" wrapped principal writing on May 28, 2003. If you're paying attention, you might notice that this is less than a month after the completion of the previous episode. Episode 13 came together rather quickly when I sat down to write it. The title rather obviously references the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and implies something dire will happen. The word "ashes" also ties in nicely with the origins of Jet Phoenix's name.

 

• The "international scientific team" is composed of scientists who are named for foreign actors who appeared in classic Japanese science-fictions productions of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. There was, for example, a REAL "Franz Gruber"! "Conway" is named for Harold S. Conway, "Hughes" for Andrew Hughes, "Dr. Ito" for Jerry Ito, and "Dr. Yusuf" for Osman Yusuf. Look those names up if you're curious about their many and varied roles, as listing them is beyond the scope of these notes.
  
  
  
• "Nein" is the German word for "no".
  
  
  
• Three months have passed since the end of Episode 12, and a lot has happened in the interim. This is the second such "jump" in the ROJ narrative (the first occurred between Ep. 7 & 8), and it was crucial in getting the darn thing completed in a timely fashion.
  
  
  
• One of the consequences of the jump is that Etsuko and Kei have become fast friends after the events of Episode 12. Making a direct line from "hating each other" to "best friends" made no sense to me, so the gap allows their friendship to develop off-camera. By this point, they are comfortable enough with one another to be playfully teasing.
  
  
  
• Another consequence of the jump was that the Reiko and Gohan relationship that was blossoming at the end of Ep. 12 became much more established while we've been away. I've always disliked fiction that rushes relationships unrealistically, so I wanted to give these two time to solidify their romance.
  
  
  
• "MOROBOSHI DAN NO..." is a snippet of the lyrics to the theme song from ULTRASEVEN.
  
  
  
• Ken's webpage was last discussed in Episode 8. It didn't go over very well with Etsuko.
  
  
  
• Gohan's Tiger Burai excerpts return and reach a conclusion. As before, there was an attempt to tie the Burai story into the happenings in the main plot.
  
  
  
• The crack about Godzilla in relation to Mt. Mihara is quite appropriate, as I utilized that particular volcano specifically because of its key role in THE RETURN OF GODZILLA/GODZILLA 1985. However, what I forgot at the time is that Mihara is located on the island of Oshima. As you may recall, "Oshima" is also the name I attached to Michiru, thereby giving certain events in this story a subtext I hadn't really intended (but will happily embrace).
  
  
  
• African vulcanologist Dr. Roland is named for Chico Roland (Rolando?), yet another foreign performer in Japanese movies. The nation of "Wester Island" is a callback to his role in the 1970 film GAMERA VS. MONSTER X (GAMERA VS. JIGER). Meanwhile, the ambassador Dorsey is my tribute to Willie Dorsey, one more foreign actor in Japan. This character mirrors the real Dorsey's role in 1974's PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS (THE LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH). And finally, the Roland/Dorsey scene drew inspiration from Roland's part in Shochiku's GENOCIDE (WAR OF THE INSECTS).
  
  
  
• The Japan Astro Development Center is a very specific reference to THE X FROM OUTER SPACE, as the notation of the JADC/FAFC complex should clarify. I don't spell out that FAFC is the Fuji Astro-Flying Center seen in that film, but the implication is pretty blatant.
  
  
  
• Amazingly, this episode was Dr. Masaru Komyoji's first speaking role since Episode 1! He gets us up to speed on Jet Phoenix's condition, and maybe lets Green Wyvern off the hook a little. I admit that I did some backpedaling here to lessen her culpability as far as Phoenix's condition.
  
  
  
• "Jiro, Ichiro, Mari - they're all androids and yet they're more 'human' than most people." - In the discussion of Jet Phoenix's identity, and whether he was a "person" or not, it seemed fitting to name check the three best-known androids from the KIKAIDA franchise. In order, they are the alter egos of Kikaida, Kikaida 01, and Bijinda.
  
  
  
• The excuse as to why our heroes aren't in uniform while investigating the volcano is just that - an excuse. I tried to justify why seemingly-intelligent characters would go out into potential danger without their uniforms; it happens too much in authentic sentai to not portray it.
  
  
  
• "I was just going to discuss alien cellular structures with Dr. Ryusaki," - This is a nod and a wink to a possible future for the counterpart to the heroine of Igadevil's "Kamen Rider Sigma" series.
  
  
  
• Jet Hawk being decommissioned after "the Rakushasa affair" in 2001 refers to GAORANGER VS. SUPER SENTAI, a video that gathered together an army of sentai heroes, including Red Hawk (albeit mostly via stock footage).
  
  
  
• And yes, in case you have forgotten or did not know, Aya Odagiri did invent Jet Hawk! In fact, she was the first person shown flying it!
  
  
  
• "Nearly getting killed by my psychotic double Red Kestrel two months ago made my decision that much easier." - No, you didn't miss anything; this is an allusion to one of the untold stories that occurred between Episodes 12 and 13.
  
  
  
• The Skyforce Supreme Council was first mentioned in Ep. 10. They are one level higher in the chain-of-command, and supplied me with a plausible entity to receive Odagiri's resignation. As for the resignation, it and Odagiri's chosen replacement were elements designed to create a dramatic status quo change for Jet Phoenix that would upset his apple cart.
  
  
  
• Chaos Manticore was one of the first ROJ characters invented primarily by me. His debut came in a handwritten proposal for a later sequence in this story (more when we get there!) that I submitted to Lewis during 1996-97. Lewis later designed a character around the name, and this design is what served as the basis for the current interpretation of Chaos Manticore.
  
  
  
• "Anti-Birdonic Wave Ray" is a delicious bit of pseudo-scientific terminology, possibly inspired by the "anti-electric wave paint" mentioned in GAMERA (1965; but not GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE, just to be clear).
  
  
  
• Jet Phoenix referring to Commander Odagiri as "Aya" shortly after he protested that he would "rather not" was originally a continuity error on my part. Upon further consideration, I decided that it demonstrated that Phoenix had let his guard down and lost his cool. I left it in the story.
  
  
  
• Phoenix's angst over Kaori (a residual memory of Gai Yuki) needed to be cast in a different light in this episode, since there was no way any "love" issues could be requited.
  
  
  
• The usage of metal crosses is a homage to their frequent (non-religious) appearances in Japanese superhero shows.
  
  
  
• "So - are you trying to tell us you're in league with a toy company?" Ken inquired sarcastically./"Not Bandai, I hope!" Gohan chimed in, with absolutely no irony. - Bandai, as most folks reading this surely know, is responsible for producing many of the toys associated with the super sentai franchise.
  
  
  
• ""We have them...no, wait." - A callback to a line of Hedes' from Episode 1.
  
  
  
• Daedalus Kenjo, the flying fortress of Kurokaze Sentai Jetman, was not seen previously in Episode 5. It is, as the name implies, the vehicle stage of the giant robot Jet Daedalus. I felt that it would be interesting to change things up and have Jet Daedalus be formed from one giant ship as opposed to a combination of smaller ships (as in Jet Icarus).
  
  
  
• "Osore Formation!" as the command to change Daedalus Kenjo into Jet Daedalus was designed to invoke a sense of villainy even in the subtle details. "Osore" means things like "fear", "horror", and "terror".
  
  
  
• The members of Jetman fighting the villains sans costume is a sentai convention that pops up from time to time whenever the heroes are deprived of their powers. I was specifically inspired by a sequence from the last few episodes of GOSEI SENTAI DAIRANGER.
  
  
  
• It was Gai Tendo who defeated the original Red Kestrel at the end of Episode 5, so it makes sense that Kestrel would be especially bitter towards his brother Ken. And it makes equal sense that Kei, who loved Gai, would not take kindly to his name being invoked by the enemy.
  
  
  
• Chaos Manticore's revelation regarding the true nature of his mission was an effort on my part to give Jet Phoenix a little extra incentive during their battle. The fallout from it carries over to the end, and into the final episode.
  
  
  
• The Final Flare attack evolved from "Phoenix Flare", an energy power that Phoenix exhibited in the original version of ROJ. I elected to dial that sort of thing back, to make it more special when it did happen.
  
  
  
• The destruction of Chaos Manticore returning Jetman powers to them was a nice solution to a potentially difficult problem. It also served to tie together two completely different fight scenes.
  
  
  
• I probably went overboard with all the robot weapons and attacks I piled on during the mecha sequence, but it seemed appropriate. I should single out "Daedalus Tector" for special mention, as I picked up the word "tector" from some of Toei's 1980s sentai shows. I am pretty sure it wasn't a force screen in that context.
  
  
  
• Yes, yes, I had to have Jet Icarus and Victory Icarus fight side-by-side at least once. One of my pet peeves in sentai is that the older mecha gets cast aside when the shiny new one appears. I wanted to give the impression that Jetman now had something of a robot arsenal at their disposal.
  
  
  
• You thought I was going to kill Jet Phoenix, didn't you? Well, oddly enough, that was originally the plan. Hear me out here.
  

  As conceived by Lewis Smith in 1995, Jet Phoenix was always a character meant to die at the end of the story. The intention was to bring Gai Yuki back, and then send him off with a more appropriately "heroic" death than he had been afforded in the JETMAN series. Interestingly, I had a hand in working up the framework that would have finally dispatched him. This was the handwritten proposal mentioned earlier in these Notes, and was part of the same batch of material that yielded the first draft of the meeting scene in Episode 6. In that particular excerpt, it was the as-yet unnamed prototype version of Miira who supervised the scheme which saw Jetman strapped to the life-draining crosses. The main difference was that this operation actually KILLED our heroes, and Jet Phoenix (still an energy being at that point) surrendered his lifeforce to bring them back to life. This echoed a similar sequence with the original Jetman team in the first draft of Episode 2. The end result was Phoenix revealing all and urging his charges to fight on for the sake of the Earth before he winked out of existence.
  

  That was all well and good, but the decision to kill off Gai Tendo earlier in the narrative led me to rethink this strategy. Another mitigating factor was that the concept of Jet Phoenix had changed considerably by the time I had to actually write Episode 13 for real. The issue of whether he was even Gai Yuki at all had become a major sticking point.
  

  (I should point out that I was also uncomfortable with the message I was sending about my Jetman team by essentially having Phoenix save their bacon in the penultimate chapter of their story, with minimal involvement on their end. I wanted to give them an increased role, and that necessitated not killing them off even briefly. Seems obvious, and yet...)
  

  Given the tragedy already heaped upon these characters during Episodes 8-9 and 11-12, I found myself reluctant to pull the trigger. Besides which, I had been foreshadowing Jet Phoenix's "death" since Episode 3. Wouldn't it be a surprise to not have him die after all?
  

  So he didn't. I still needed a strong ending for that scene, and at the eleventh hour hit upon the inclusion of the ghost of the "real" Gai Yuki to exhort Jet Phoenix to hang in there. This seems super-logical in retrospect, but it wasn't part of the original plan. That said, it was a lot of fun to attempt to mimic Yuki's style in prose. I threw in the ghost of Gai Tendo as an afterthought, but it gave the scene a little extra oomph.
  

  Another aspect of the scene that was a late addition was Phoenix's apology to Michiru, seemingly out of nowhere. After being called on the carpet by Commander Odagiri over the Kaori thing, I liked the idea that he had finally realized - maybe too late - that he loved Michiru and could have found happiness with her. This definitely added a new twist to the fact that he survives.
  

  I did want to preserve the notion of Phoenix giving the team a final pep talk, and his sacrifice motivating them. The addition of Chaos' genocide plan gave him something to reveal, and gave them a reason to confront the bad guys on their home turf. All in all, I think the reworked climax did a far more satisfying job in paving the way for the finale.
  

  But wait - did Phoenix really see the ghosts of Gai Yuki and Gai Tendo? Is he really a separate being entirely from Gai Yuki? Or was it all a hallucination?
  

  I don't know the answers. I just tell these stories. I leave it up to you to make up your own mind.
  

 

© Christopher Elam.