UFO Robo Grendizer 2.19

Burn, Drill Spazer

or Fire Up! The Drill Spazer

or Des fourmis et des hommes (Of ants and men)

Goro builds a telescope and declares that he is going to stay up all night watching the skies for invaders from Vega. The others laugh at him. Goro sees something in the night sky and tries to tell the others about what he saw. No one believes him until he tries again. This time Professor Umon decides to check the previous night's recordings and sees what Goro was trying to warn them about.

Professor Umon shows Daisuke, Kouji, and Hikaru his latest creation, Drill Spazer. He announces that Kouji will pilot Drill Spazer which is similar to Double Spazer. Kouji is sent on a test run with Drill Spazer. He sees something while he is testing Drill Spazer's capabilities and decides to get a closer look. He lands Drill Spazer next to a mountain where he thought he saw something and enters a cave in the side of the mountain. Kouji finds giant ant eggs that the Vegans placed there. He shoots the eggs and they hatch. Giant ants come after him.

Gandal and Zuril send saucer beast Gudu Gudu to Earth to distract Grendizer while the ants start to wreck havoc. Kouji is left on his own to fight the Giant Vegan Ants. His signal is jammed while he is near the mountain where he finds the ants. He contacts Professor Umon once he is able to do so and tells him about the Giant Vegan Ants.

Professor Umon sends Hikaru in Marine Spazer to help Grendizer, who isn't faring very well against Gudu Gudu. Together, Hikaru and Duke Fleed defeat the saucer beast. They go help Kouji deal with the Giant Vegan Ants. Kouji's solution is to cause a volcano to erupt. The ants are consumed by lava and destroyed.

Thoughts

Danbei is not in this episode. He wasn't in the last one either. He is mentioned in this episode once when one of the employees at the Space Science Center says Goro is just as stubborn as Danbei.

Lady Gandal makes an appearance in this episode. It has been a while since her last appearance. I liked it better when she was a small woman who came out of Gandal's face, as she was in the first season.

Grendizer takes route 2 when he launches from beneath the Space Science Center. I don't recall if this is the first time he has used that route.

Two mountains are mentioned in this episode: Mount Hiyoshi and Mount Ishiyaki. I'm not sure that they are real mountains.

A new piece of gear was introduced. Will it ever be seen again? Was this just an advertisement for another toy?

This was an okay episode. The Goro subplot seems to carry the moral of the story but it didn't feel all that important to the story as a whole. I was amused that the solution to destroying the Giant Vegan Ants was to cause a volcano to erupt.