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cina-full-moon-xanadium · 2 years

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I don’t entirely know how I feel about Cosmos yet.

That’s okay, right? I did just finish it and all? I’ve even still got two post-series movies to go, both of which encompass two major elements of Cosmos that are very well-remembered. One of them is like half the reason I decided to watch this show, in fact! I’ll get to that.

But like... boy, I don’t know. It wasn’t more than a week ago I think where I’d figured out how I felt about this show. I made a whole post about it, even -- very early on. This feeling that... Cosmos has a fantastic concept, one that draws you in and makes you wanna check him out from his post-series appearances; but about ten episodes in you find that there’s just not a lot of depth to it, not a lot of meat on the bone. A lovely promise in the first episode that feels broken when you get into the majority of it just being the typical Ultraman shtick, and not even good Ultraman; so many fucking episodes that explore a variety of wacky sci-fi concepts in that usual anthology style, but unfortunately few of which really stood out to me as anything interesting or entertaining. Between that, the very long episode count, the extremely lackluster subs we have now and the godawful CGI - which threatens to supplant the usual good physical effects and props Ultra has to offer! - Cosmos is an extremely hard series to recommend, and you may be starting to understand why it took me over 4 months to complete.

But I’m glad I stuck with it, because this was the ending I needed and more.

Final Ultra episodes have a way of doing that, I suppose. My favourite Tiga was one that wasn’t near that #1 spot until its ending rewired my brain chemistry, and others like the original and R/B really do a good job of bringing together everything great about their themes. And Cosmos really does end up doing everything you need from it in the final episode and in ways you might not have realised you needed?

Throughout the show Chaos Header is presented as this... force, I suppose. An enigmatic energy, this symbol more than anything that represents everything bad that could happen. It’s in the name really -- it’s chaos, it’s what’s behind all these bad things that happen with monsters and prevents Musashi from being able to protect them, it’s what escalates violence and goads the defence forces into action. It’s not really a character, right? It’s a thing, it’s a storytelling mechanic. But then something really clicks with Musashi in the last 5 episodes in their final assault against Chaos Header, something happens where we learn more about Chaos Header and suddenly it becomes tangible. It is a character. It is a life form, it has intelligent thought and... and it’s something that’s possible to reach out to. It becomes another monster Musashi wants, and succeeds, in saving. Everything has an origin and everything has a heart, is what’s being said in this ending. Everyone you fight against is someone and has a motivation you can understand.

There’s just a lot of feelings, I think, that come to me in this ending? I think for instance about how it aired in 2001 and 2002, and how that was a peaceful time for most compared to what had come before and what we’d have now. It’s a time for reflection and reconsidering what we thought we knew before... it’s what sticks out to me about what’s so good about Kuuga, for instance, and it’s making me come to a realisation about Cosmos as well. So many things that bothered me about this show - the simple evil and “all bad things come from it” nature of Chaos Header dulling what could be a more complex series dealing with kaiju protection; Cosmos himself being a lot more violent in most of his fights than you’d be drawn to believe - they all came together in this last episode. It’s not Cosmos that was this ultimate being of kindness... it’s Musashi, and that impacted who Cosmos was and led him to accepting even that which seemed ultimately evil. It is this full transformation of Ultraman -- it had maybe dabbled in the idea of how we approach monsters before, but this series really dared to get right to the bottom of it and ask what it is we’re doing when we see what are just other creatures like this and if we really should see those who mercilessly strike them down as heroes. At many points Cosmos is good as a launchboard for these questions that I feel other series like X and Z would later find better answers for, but the final episode showed me just how much of a paradigm change that was. Cosmos in my mind is now one of the most important Ultraman series for truly changing how the franchise would operate from this point on and it’s all down to that change from violence to kindness, expertly done through the nature of the ending representing that idea of finding goodness in what we previously thought to be evil. It’s like... it’s not just that Cosmos and Chaos Header are different to Jack and Seven and Taro and Yapool and Zetton and Bat, right? It’s that they’re ultimately the same, and they are being fundamentally changed here.

My feelings really are all over the place here. I hope it comes across just how much I loved this ending and how it absolutely changed my perception of not just Cosmos but of Ultraman as a whole at this point in time. I still don’t know if I can say I loved Cosmos or if this really forgives the many many flaws of the bulk of the series itself, but I definitely can’t say it was a waste of time or that it didn’t leave me with a lot to think about. In the end I’m very glad I watched this show

#Spirit of Kindness

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