User blog:BigBadSquid/PE Proposal: Demon King Jackal

I've talked about movies, video games, novels, and manga. Let's talk about some anime... from the web. Here's a good one.

What's the Work?
The Ultraman: Jackal vs. Ultraman is a 2015 original net animation that debut at the Japan Animator Expo. You may recognize it as the same expo that made Fallen Hana and the Meme girls. It follows one arc from the 1975 manga The Ultraman. In this 8 minute short ONA, we follow everyone's favorite Japanese superhero Ultraman... who dies. Instead we follow another Ultra named Melos and his battle against the evil alien tyrant Demon King Jackal.

Who is Demon King Jackal? What has he done?
Jackal is an alien tyrant with the goal of conquering the universe. He was sealed away in Hell's Black Hole by the Ultraman King for his numerous crimes against galactic civilization, but somehow found a way to escape in 1975 and goes on a vengeful murder spree of his captors.

As he had the ability to shapeshift into those he sees fit, the first thing Jackal does is battle against Ultraman in the disguise of Zetton, and he actually kills him and tosses his corpse into a star. He then proceeds to kill the other Ultra Brothers: Jack dies on some planet, Taro floats lifelessly in an asteroid field, Ace is crucified, and Jackal in the form of Ziggy kills Astra in front of his brother Leo before killing him as well.

Jackal then arrives on Earth, conquering and enslaving humanity to do his bidding. He has his minions round up and kill innocent citizens just for the remaining Ultras to expose themselves from hiding. Then Astra, an Ultra from the Andromeda Galaxy, arrives and fights off the minions on Earth, rallying the Ultras to aid him in flying to the Jackal planet.

An all out war between the Ultras and Jackal's army breaks out as Melos encounters and battles Jackal. When Melos cuts off one of Jackal's horn, the tyrant king leans over and begs for mercy. But when Melos turns around, Jackal immediately breaks Melos' arm, deactivating his armor, and fires a beam at him, seemingly killing him.

However, Melos (actually Ziggy wearing his armor) reveals himself to be fine, so Jackal fires another beam, completely unfazed that he fired straight towards his men with no concern over their safety. Ziggy breaks from the armor to reveal Melos' distraction allowed him to revive the Ultra Brothers and they blast their beams at Jackal to make him explode once and for all. The Jackals surrender, and peace returns to the galaxy.

Mitigating Factors
Yeah, like an uncaring tyrant solely bent on conquering the universe for power, kills multiple heroes in the first two minutes, enslaves humanity, and fires beams at his own men has any redemption behind his name. That means no.

Heinous Standards
Oh yes. For a long series like Ultraman with PE baddies that plunder, destroy, and murder, nobody does it better than Jackal. First, while some have managed to nearly or succeeded in killing an Ultra, Jackal easily kills all five Ultra Brothers, some of which were in brutal fashions like killing Leo's brother in front of him in the form of Zoffy. Sure they are revived at the end, but he still succeeded regardless.

Enslaving humanity just to kill them to drive out the remaining Ultras also stands out as a very heinous act. He's also willing to put his own soldiers at risk to kill someone who just spared his life.

Sure there's other villains who stand out a little more as absolute monsters like Ultraman Belial, who attempted a mass genocide against all life to claim the universe, but Jackal stills stands out as one of the Ultra's biggest and baddest foes.

Final Verdict
For a short 5 chapter manga and an 8 minute short, Jackal meets every criteria to count.