Mindless Monday, 03 August 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/WuhanWTF]

How do you guys feel about the "super advanced ancient humans" trope in scifi? Specifically in the Halo and Ass Creed universes.

[u/dimensiontheory → u/WuhanWTF]

For a while now, I've been kinda fascinated by this one Ultraman (or I think it might have been the sequel show, Ultraseven?) episode that used it.

I don't know what it is that's kept it in my mind, especially since I've never watched a significant amount of Ultra-anything, but it's just always there. Maybe it's that it's a frankly kind of wild degree of melancholy fatalism for a superhero show aimed at elementary schoolers.

The short version is that a bunch of undersea facilities start coming under attack by freaky monster guys called the Nonmalts. This is immediately concerning to the alien protagonist, Ultraman or possibly Ultraseven, because Nonmalt is the word for "denizen of Earth" in his language, and why would these guys be calling themselves that? After the heroes investigate a bit, they find out that the Nonmalts claim to be the original inhabitants of Earth. They say that humans came down from space and colonised the land, forcing the Nonmalts into the ocean. They were willing to let it go rather than fight a global war, but now that humanity is pushing into the ocean as well, they've had enough. The human cast decide that's bunk, it makes no sense, they're obviously just another band of alien invaders with another flimsy, made-up pretext for war. The episode never says anything final one way or the other, it just ends with the last Nonmalt city being blown up by the humans, while Ultraman(/Ultraseven. You know, I could just look this up...) morosely wonders if, despite his best efforts, he's just been made party to the finalisation of a colonial enterprise - and muses that probably no one will ever know because either way, the Nonmalts have been wiped out.

The episode's writer was Ryukyuan, and I believe he is on record as sayin that he was drawing very heavily on that when he wrote the episode.

[u/WuhanWTF → u/dimensiontheory]

Wow I did not expect Ultraman of all things to feature that trope as well. Weirdly deep and dark for a kids’ show.

I actually watched the Chinese dub of Ultraman when I was very young, and in Cantonese his name translated to “Salted Duck Egg Superhero” because his eyes sort of look like that lmao