The story here is fascinating, it just takes a lot of being chased by a giant statue around the Himalayas to get there.
When Yomi’s men prove ineffectual at defeating Babel II (i.e. the ground opens up and swallows them), Yomi sends Gohriki, the stone guardian of the Himalayas after him. This takes up the majority of the episode as Babel II and Rodem run from the creature, before finally burying it under an avalanche. Realising Babel’s power, Yomi blows up his base and escapes via spaceship.
In the rubble Babel II finds what Yomi was trying to hide, the body of a four armed, green skinned creature…
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As I mentioned before, there’s a lot of similarities with what was going on US superhero comics in the same decade. But a few elements in this episode made me think that both those and this story also have some relation with pulp sci-fi. Yomi is very much in that pulp evil recluse scientist role, up to who knows what with an army of devoted followers behind him. And there’s odd little ideas, like Ropross being able to take photos with his eyes. At first I thought that meant Ropross was actually a robot, but we see inside his brain and it looks organic, it just has computer in there too.
The backgrounds are really nice here, very varied and give the mountains a sense of scale. Gohriki reminded me a little of Sunshine from Kinnikuman. Was Sunshine based on him or is there a common ancestor I’m missing knowledge of.
I forgot to mention last time that Babel II is voiced by the great Akira Kamiya.