We bid a fond adieu to Ultra Q as John and Eugene look at the final episode, Open Up! and ask the question: What have they done with Ippei?

Episode Synopsis

After 27 episodes, finally, Yuriko acts on her feelings for Jun, and, indirectly, Ippei.  She entices Jun to ditch Ippei so they can run off together and have some carefree time alone.

Ippei sees a flying train.

Driving, Jun and Yuriko discuss how wonderful going to a place where there are no people and no pressures would be.  Hold that thought, though, there’s a man lying in the middle of the road.  They stop for him, and, thinking he’s a hit-and-run victim, bundle him in the car to take him somewhere.  They soon learn he’s just drunk, so they decide to take him to Prof. Ichinotani’s lab.

Perhaps Ichinotani has a standing order for stray experimental subjects?

They come to a train crossing and the man starts screaming let me off…. It looks like he’s jumped under the train, but next, we see him on a bizarre slightly trippy, and mostly empty train.  

When his lack of ticket is uncovered by the ticket collector, he is taken to another passenger, sci-fi author Kenji Tomono.  He says it’s OK if you want to travel on my train to another world.

He “explains” that this train has overridden space and time and that you can see all of it out of the window.  The drunk man sees his child begging for him to come home or to join him… and suddenly, he’s not on the train anymore and is being hypnotized in Ichinotani’s lab.

They’ve got another woman locked up there, too.  She was found in a train tunnel, so that can’t be a coincidence.

Jun and Yuri visit Tomono’s home, but the housekeeper gives them a manuscript because they arrived from the newspaper at the right time.  Tomono’s been gone for a year and a half and occasionally sends manuscripts or calls with instructions.

The police have called in Ichinotani, and Jun and Yuriko tag along.  It’s about a case from last October where a train car floated off.  The police want everyone in one room to tell them not to tell anybody about this.

Ichinotani sees the obvious connection.

Later, the drunk is picked up by his wife and daughter.  They’re a charming family, and the wife is merciless in her berating of her layabout drunkard husband.  He gets out of the cab and goes to work – at 4 in the afternoon.

His boss rips him a new one, too, so he quits.

Jun’s car breaks a fan belt, and a disembodied voice tells Yuriko it’s OK to read the manuscript.  They read it, and it tells of how Tomono was beaten down after a particularly grueling day surrounded by sci-fi fans.  He wished he could escape like in his books, and he does, by taking the elevator deep underground to a new world.

The drunk is screaming at trains to take him.

The end