With its final three episodes, Magma Taishi (Ambassador Magma) winds itself up, runs at a furious pace, takes a gigantic flying left turn, and jumps over a Megalodon-sized shark. Tezuka Osamu's shounen hero versus big baddie becomes an environmental fairy tale that ends with a whimper, rather than a bang. I'm no fan of the shounen genre, but the concluding episode left me baffled and more than a bit annoyed.
When we last left the good guys, they had been whisked off somewhere unknown. That turns out to be a "pocket dimension" set in some much earlier era, complete with dinosaurs.
After killing a therapod that was about to devour Mamoru's father, they are confronted by an angry Earth-the-spirit, who asks why they would kill a creature they didn't intend to eat. (Um, self-defense, sir?) He asks what mankind's purpose is, strongly implying they don't have one and are therefore surplus to requirements. After some further Magma versus Udo action, they escape back to Earth-the-planet, only to find that Goa has launched a general offensive.
Earth's defense forces are helpless against Goa's monsters. Magma and Udo also return.
As they grapple, Goa shoots them both with his "beam ray," inflicting fatal damage. Udo is gone, but so is Magma, and nothing seems to stand between Goa and his goal of obliterating humanity.
After some heartfelt (i.e., emo) interactions, Mamoru and Gam decide to make one last attempt at defeating Goa. With help from Mol, they break into Goa's ship, but there they are stymied by his power. Earth-the-spirit teleports in and tells Goa to back down.
Contrary to what Goa believes, Mother Earth created humans; they are necessary for her purposes. When Goa scoffs, Earth tells Mamoru to summon Magma. Mother Earth not only revived Magma but wipes out all of Goa's monsters.
Goa is enraged and decides to rip Magma into little tiny pieces. Mother Earth, realizing that Goa will never relent, now decides to destroy Earth-the-planet and all living creatures by reverting to the planet's primordial state billions of years ago. When Goa sees he won't be able to have his Big Blue Marble, he gets all huffy and decides to go home. After a few more environmental warnings from Earth-the-spirit, the good guys are left to ponder the destruction of civilization, and the anime ends.
There is only one possible reaction to this: WTF? Admittedly, thirty years had passed since Tezuka Osamu's manga (much of which he didn't write) and this show; and in those thirty years, Tezuka's Buddhist reverence for life and his environmentalism had grown much stronger. But the complete lack of payoff for all the travails and perils that Mamoru and crew had been put through is just laughable. Mamoru was irrelevant; Magma was irrelevant; even Earth-the-spirit was irrelevant. Mother Earth was capable of chasing off the bad guys all by her lonesome. The rest was filler.
Now, this show is not, in fact, the Master's work; it's posthumous. Without strong source material, post-Osamu Tezuka Productions had a tendency to lapse into preachiness. But Tezuka himself, even in his most discursive material like some of the Love Will Save the Earth specials, never failed to give the story a conclusion directly related to the protagonists. The ending of Magma Taishi feels like the scriptwriter failed to grasp the fundamentals of storytelling and the audience's need for closure. Enough.
The staff remains unchanged for this final group of episodes. Yume translated. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Paul Geromini and Uchuu QCed. The encoder wishes to remain anonymous. As before, these episodes are dual audio, with a signs-only subtitle track for the dub viewer. I've also included the non-credit OP and ED, just in case you haven't heard those songs enough. I have.
Magma Taishi, like the curate's egg, is good in parts; not just these parts. Still, I'm glad that it's finally subbed. You can get this last set of episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.
There will be a batch torrent in a few days. It will include some changes, so please don't torrent the episodes released to date as an "informal batch."
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