noveltune Chapter 288 Ukbar, an Ideal Land
Chapter 288 Ukbar, an Ideal Land
Upon receiving the message, Yoshida immediately set off for Mr. Nagata's residence.
Meanwhile, Shoji, filled with worry, also met with Yoshida. He was afraid that his impulsive words yesterday might cause the old man to do something foolish.
"Why are you here?" Yoshida asked, somewhat surprised.
"Uncle Nagata didn't go to work all day today, and he didn't even make a phone call. I was really worried about him, so I came to check on him." Shoji's face was full of anxiety.
The two hurried upstairs and found the door unlocked. Pushing it open, they found the room dark and oppressive, filled with a musty, old smell.
"Mr. Nagata! Mr. Nagata!" Shoji shouted, his eyes searching the cramped room.
Soon, they found Mr. Nagata lying stiffly on the floor, his eyes closed, unconscious.
"Uncle! Uncle, wake up!" Zhuang Si rushed over and shook the old man's shoulders hard, his voice trembling with tears.
Yoshida stepped forward, reached out and checked the old man's breathing, his tense nerves relaxing slightly: "It's alright, he's just asleep. Bring the blanket over."
Zhuang Si hurriedly grabbed a blanket and covered the old man with it.
After a while, Mr. Nagata slowly opened his eyes.
His eyes were still somewhat vacant, as if he had not yet fully emerged from some deep dream.
"I had a dream..." the old man murmured to himself, his voice so faint it seemed as if it might be blown away by the wind at any moment, "I dreamt that Luke came to take me back..."
Shoji sighed, trying to bring the old man back to reality: "Uncle, wake up, this is just a dream."
"That place really exists!"
Old Man Nagata suddenly became agitated. He struggled to sit up, grabbed the old-fashioned landline phone next to him, and handed it to the two of them. "Listen, you can hear the wind blowing through Uqbar!"
Shoji looked at him helplessly, but his gaze inadvertently swept over the end of the phone. His pupils suddenly contracted.
The telephone line that was connected to the wall wasn't plugged in at all!
The broken thread drooped limply on the ground.
The live chat exploded at that moment.
[Holy crap! The wire is broken!]
How can there be sound if there's no power cord? That's ridiculous!
[How did it become terrifying? It's terrifying!]
Watching this late at night is a bit creepy.
Is this really a paranormal event?
Zhuang Si swallowed hard, not daring to reach out and take it.
Yoshida remained unusually calm. He slowly reached out, took the unplugged receiver, and brought it to his ear.
The next second, Yoshida's expression changed.
There was no busy tone in the receiver!
If you listen carefully, you can hear the ethereal, distant sound of a gentle breeze whistling with a strange rhythm.
"Whoosh—whoosh—"
There really is a sound!
"Old man, wake up..." Shoji was still trying to persuade Nagata, but his voice was trembling. "There's no such place in the world."
But when Yoshida handed the receiver to Shoji, Shoji was also confused.
Just then, something unexpected happened!
Suddenly, a strong wind picked up outside the window, which had been quiet.
Immediately afterwards, with a loud crash, the glass window of the room could not withstand some invisible pressure and shattered!
Glass shards were scattered all over the ground.
Not only this room, but the entire city sensed the arrival of some enormous energy at this moment.
The group spotted the enormous creature outside!
The alarm suddenly went off.
"This is Yoshida, this is POINT226 N1, a monster has appeared!" Yoshida immediately reported into the communicator.
In the distance, amidst the city's buildings, the phantom of a giant monster began to solidify.
It has a dreamlike body and moves slowly and quietly.
That was the guardian beast from Old Man Nagata's memories—Ruke.
Upon seeing Luke appear, an unprecedented light shone in Old Man Nagata's eyes.
He shoved Zhuang Si away abruptly and stumbled out of the house like a child who had been reborn.
"Sir! Where are you going?"
The streets were in complete chaos, with people screaming and fleeing frantically in the direction away from the monster.
Only old man Nagata ran against the flow of fleeing people, running with all his might towards the direction of the monster Luke.
Although his steps were unsteady, his eyes were incredibly firm.
[Has this old man gone mad? Everyone else is running for their lives, but he's heading straight for the monster!]
Is he really an alien? Is this monster really here to pick him up?
[This shot of things moving in reverse is so powerful.]
He wasn't afraid at all; he simply felt that it was his hometown.
XIG fighter jets roared across the sky.
A red light shone through the city as Ultraman Gaia crashed to the ground.
However, Gaia's appearance this time was eerily calm. There was no exciting transformation scene as usual, and Gamu's figure did not appear.
There wasn't even a single scene depicting my dream...
Gaia did not assume a fighting stance, nor did it fire any beams of light.
He simply strode forward, using his massive body to try and block Rook's advance.
But Luke ignored Gaia's obstruction. It had no intention of attacking and simply moved forward slowly and stubbornly, as if searching for something.
At this moment, old man Nagata had already run to the top of a tall tower not far from the monster.
He stood on the rooftop, arms outstretched, and shouted at the enormous thing, "Rook—Rook—"
Hearing the call, the monster Luke stopped and slowly turned his head to look in the direction of old man Nagata.
Just then, a melodious, deep whistle, carrying a strong sense of nostalgia, echoed throughout the city's sky.
"Waaah—"
The thick clouds in the sky were parted by a mysterious force.
In the afterglow of the setting sun, a dreamlike city is reflected, quietly suspended in the clouds.
The towering towers and the turning yellow windmills were exactly as Mr. Nagata had described.
Ukbar.
This is Uqbar! My God, it really exists!
This scene is so beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale.
It's like an ideal country, a utopia.
The horn sounded; everyone was heading home.
As the horn sounds gradually faded, the sky city began to become transparent.
Meanwhile, the monster Luke on the ground turned into specks of light and began to dissipate into the air.
As the sun sets, the city returns to its tranquility.
Only a bewildered Shoji and a silent Gaia remained.
a few days later.
Yoshida and I once again visited the abandoned old house where Nagata was born.
Old Man Nagata has disappeared.
They searched carefully through the dusty room, trying to find the final answer to this mystery.
Yoshida opened a worn-out cardboard box deep inside a dusty closet.
Behind the cardboard box was an old calendar that had turned yellow and had curled edges.
Yoshida took out the calendar and gently patted off the dust.
I leaned closer, my gaze falling on the calendar image, and I was immediately stunned.
It was a watercolor painting.
The painting depicts a fantastical city with towers and windmills, almost identical to the Uqbar city that appears in the sky.
In the lower right corner of the calendar, the year is clearly printed—1966.
"Nagata probably considers the scenery on the calendars he saw as a child as his hometown..."
"He's just a slightly odd person..."
"Perhaps there really is a place called Ukbar, and Nagata has finally returned to that place..."
"This man needs Ukbar... his distant homeland buried deep in his heart..."
The camera focuses on this old calendar, then slowly zooms out, and the screen gradually dims.
This episode has ended.
The progress bar reached its limit, and the end credits rolled, but countless viewers remained seated in front of their screens, unable to snap out of their daze for a long time. The live chat paused briefly before erupting into an even more intense discussion.
【Wait, is this episode really that stream-of-consciousness? I don't understand it~】
Wait, what does this mean? A calendar?
[A 1966 calendar? Is this old man an alien?!]
I don't understand at all. Can someone explain it to me?
[An open ending? Gu Laoze, you've dug another hole and aren't filling it!]
With the airing of this episode, major tokusatsu forums and online communities were instantly flooded with discussion posts about "Ukubar".
The buzz even surpassed previous discussions about the premiere of Gaia Season 2.
A post titled "[In-depth analysis of episode 29: Is Uqbar real or a dream?]" was quickly pushed to the front page.
Landlord:
Can any class representative tell me what this episode is trying to express?
After watching this episode, I was completely stunned, but upon reflection, it is definitely the most stream-of-consciousness and most profound episode of Gaia so far.
"Many people are debating whether Mr. Nagata was an alien or whether Ukbar actually existed. But I wonder if it's possible that Ukbar never existed at all, and that it was all just the old man's fantasy?"
He must have been an unhappy child who, by chance, saw that beautiful, carefree city on the calendar and made it his spiritual refuge.
Thinking about it this way, it feels like a very sad story. Old Man Nagata does a monotonous porter's job, and the people around him don't understand him, even mocking him. He can only survive by clinging to his fantasies about Ukubar. When Shoji's words, "It's right there in your head," shatter his illusions, his mental world collapses instantly.
[But if it's just a fantasy, why would there be a wind sound on an unplugged phone? How did the monster Luke appear? Everyone in the city in the sky saw it!]
[This episode didn't even have a scene of Gamu transforming, and the fight background was also illusory, so does Ukubal really exist?]
From a realistic perspective, it's like a person fantasizing about a wonderful world after experiencing a major upheaval, or, in the context of the uniquely humanistic idealism in Ultraman, it's...
Nagata steadfastly fantasized about the existence of such a place, and through his daily fantasies and the constant implantation of Ukubal's information into those around him, he forcibly materialized Ukubal and the monster.
Everyone remembers Gaia and Agul, weren't they the will of Earth? Similarly, Old Man Nagata's 25 years of accumulated, extreme longing for his homeland—this intense, almost obsessive yearning—ultimately became a reality under the catalysis of Earth's abnormal magnetic field.
Luke is not an alien monster; he is the embodiment of the old man's spiritual power. He did not destroy the city because the old man's heart was kind. Luke's appearance was to fulfill the old man's last wish—to take him "home."
Now that you mention it, I suddenly feel like crying. An old man who has spent most of his life alone is ultimately taken away by a monster he imagined. Is this romance or tragedy?
I feel this episode is a reflection of people living alone who need emotional support; they live in their own world. The old man ended his life standing on the high tower.
[In truth, we all have an Ukubar inside us. As children, we always thought we were special, only to realize as adults that we're just ordinary people struggling for a few coins every day. Shoji represents young people defeated by reality, forced to compromise. Nagata, on the other hand, is the one who, even bent over by life's burdens, still desperately protects the last spark of light in his heart.]
At the beginning of the story, Uqbar did not exist; but at the end of the story, Uqbar did exist.
From childhood to adulthood, through youth, middle age, and old age, he searched for Uqbar. Finally, he found it: a place without stairs to climb, where a gentle breeze always blows.
Romantic and imaginative idealists will eventually be etched into romantic realists by the sharp blade of nihilism. But they will still build a fortress of magical realism in the vortex of dreams and reality, using it as their own tomb. And the epitaph will prominently read "The Free Man." In the end, the only moment of freedom in their lives was when they abandoned ideals and imagination.
Some people feel sorry for Nagata, who spent his whole life chasing a vague and illusory dream.
Some people think Nagata was happy because he eventually turned into light and went to that ideal land where there is always a gentle breeze and no pain.
That night, "Ukbar" became a synonym. It was not just a place name in the story, but also a pure and beautiful sanctuary in the hearts of countless adults, a place they could never reach.
Finally, a comment under this post evoked a flood of emotions in countless people:
If we consider it an ideal utopia, perhaps there really is a place called Ukbar.
Perhaps there really is an M78 Nebula, a place called the Land of Light...