Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 8: Aqua Shenanigans

More Alpha Sapphire!

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 7: Fortree, Milotic & Lilycove

More Alpha Sapphire! It's not that I haven't been playing, it's just that there's a lot of routes around Fortree and Lilycove and I'm just taking my time, looking at the sights, grinding up my team and whatnot. Really a lot of what's happened, volume-wise, is just battles and capture attempts.

Gotham S1E5 Review: Venom and Zeus

Gotham, Season 1, Episode 5: Viper

A nice episode that, again, holds itself pretty well together. There are some characters who really only show up for the sake of showing up and showing that they're doing stuff (Bruce, Alfred, Selina, Nygma) and don't really have too much to do with the whole massive gang war plot, but then again not showing them would leave a lot of empty holes that would be padded by other filler-y stuff, so I guess there isn't any real way out of this.

Anyway, there are a couple of plots running down, and I do like how they intersect at multiple points -- the first Gotham episode that does this nicely, in my opinion. On the Gordon/Bullock front, we've got this dude Stan Potolsky who's giving away a crazy drug Viper (proto-Venom) for free to make a point, and they're hunting him down. Young Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, is doing some investigation into Wayne Enterprises and finding out that they're corrupt, and this takes him to the charity targeted by Potolsky. Bruce's leg of the plot takes fairly less screentime, though I do appreciate how the whole Wayne thing ended up mattering in the long run, making Bruce and Alfred's constant presence in the show actually somewhat matter.

The third plot running is Oswald finally coming clean to Maroni about his connections to Falcone, and this ends up leading to a confrontation between Maroni and Gordon to collaborate the Penguin's backstory. And Maroni's sending his troops to hurt Falcone, hit him in his beloved casino. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Fish Mooney is training Liza the seductress to, uh, resemble Falcone's mother or something? Also she's working with another one of Falcone's lieutenants. It's all actually shaping up pretty nicely, with all the pieces moving into place. Pacing's also improved. Gotham is the show that likes to have a lot of wasted scenes that could've been exorcised, and while there are some eye-roll 'why does this have to take so long' moments with Fish's scenes in particular, I thought this particular episode was pretty neat.

I do like the confrontation between Gordon and Maroni... I actually like Maroni's character a lot. He's just this big happy dude unless when he wants something, then he makes it clear that he's not a mob boss for nothing. He treathens to slice Penguin's face off with a meat slicer! That was fun. Maroni's like, your average evil 'if you fail me I'll kill you' bad boss, but he rewards dudes like Penguin if they come through. I like him. Also, he re-establishes that Oswald's nickname of the Penguin is appropriate for him... and I must say, with his suit, it is appropriate for him. I also like Maroni's interactions with Oswald, which are fun. Oh, and they manage to his the Mouth, Falcone's pride and joy casino which they said they were going to do last episode, which is all well and great.

Oswald, meanwhile, tries to worm his way up Maroni's hierarchy though his attempts nearly got his face sliced off for good. It's a good thing Gordon shows up (well, gets kidnapped) to collaborate his backstory. Interesting to see this development that now Gordon, Maroni and his lieutenants all know that Oswald Cobblepot is alive. I'm into Penguin's character as always, and I'm very much interested in all this gang-fighting.

Maroni's not the only one out for Falcone's neck, though, since we get introduced to another one of Falcone's lieutenants, the Russian Nikolai. Falcone calls in a meeting of his lieutenants and whatnot, and he doesn't consider Maroni getting that piece of Arkham a victory -- though I'm sure with Maroni hitting the casino, he'll change his mind. Fish and Nikolai get into some fierce verbal arguments with Nikolai appearing to be an extreme misogynist, but the end of this episode reveals that the two of them are working together to bring down Falcone... and are sleeping together. Well.

Fish is also training the girl from last episode, Liza, to be this sex-trap for Don Falcone... by teaching her to be motherly and liking operas. Which takes up a bit too long, especially early on in the episode. Though it all kind of makes sense, since a couple episodes back Fish arranged an 'accident' for Falcone's mistress. So Don Falcone's type is women that resemble his mother and can sing the songs his mother sings? That's... interesting, all right, but kind of keeping the whole mafia theme. Falcone meets Liza at the end of the episode while feeding pigeons (he doesn't bring bodyguards with him?) and they kind of bond together.

We get a short scene of Selina stealing a wallet and slinking around like a cat and beating up the dude she stole the wallet from, but otherwise she has no bearing to the plot other than to show up and be like, 'hey, guys, Catwoman's in this show!' and general Gotham-is-a-shithole atmosphere building.

Bruce is investigating stuff, and goes to a Wayne Enterprises charity with the express purpose of trying to share his findings about Wayne Enterprises possibly being corrupt to the board, but he finds out from his father's friend Mathis (who's not on the board) that, y'know, the board doesn't give two shits about charity events. Of course, this happens to be the same charity targeted by Stan Potolsky, and Bruce sees first-hand that some things just aren't right about his parents' company now that they're gone. On the same vein, Alfred, who's trying to get Bruce off of his obsession, ends up helping Bruce out with his detective-ing after seeing what's happened.

I'm not sure where this will go, and I don't think I'm a fan of the idea that this ten year old boy, Batman or not, can just waltz up to a company and somehow 'clean' it of corruption.

But for the meantime, it gives Bruce something better to do than, as Alfred puts it, seeing Bruce grilling himself like a bloody pork chop.

Also, as it turns out, both we and Bruce find out that Molly Mathis is involved with WellZyn, the subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises that hires Stan Potolsky and, as we find out, manufacture pharmaceutical weapons, and had cleaned out Warehouse 39 or whatever it is that Potolsky tells Gordon to check out with his dying breath.

Bullock is not, though. He's finally warming up to Gordon and we get some nice moments where he's actually bonding with Gordon over cheeseburgers and trying to figure out his problems (incorrectly guessing a fight with Barbara as opposed to being kidnapped and threatened by Maroni) which is nice. He's still got his lazy streak, and a borderline sociopathic streak about how they should keep all the decent citizens in and allow the bad guys to kill each other off. Also "WHAT'S ALTRUISM?!" is the funniest moment of the episode, how earnestly and angrily Bullock shouts it out. And they actually worked it into the plot on how they managed to figure out where Potolsky's going to hit, which is nice.

Essen gets a fair bit more screentime here, though she ends up being pretty generic, and the only reason I even notice is only because she's a character from the comics. Nygma also shows up, though this time he isn't doing his Riddler schtick, only telling them about all the scientific properties of Viper and showing off his unhealthy fascination with the effects of the disease.

Anyway, I've rambled on for this long and haven't even touched on the main Viper plot! This dude, Stan Potolsky with his mangled ear, is going around handing off ampoules with this drug Viper to random hobos and hookers and whatnot. The first dude that sniffs it robs a convenience store of its milk and has enough strength to rip an ATM machine off, and while we learn later on that his name is Benny or something, there is a moment where he's all 'you're all mortals' and stuff, and the fat shopkeeper calls him "Zeus". For a moment I thought we're getting an origin story for obscure Batman villain Maxie Zeus, which would make sense considering he's a bit of a lunatic and seems old enough to show up at this point in the timeline, but no, he's just some random guy. Funny as hell, though.

And I do like how they're doing this Viper thing! It gives the victims enhanced strength and some crazy-ass shit going on with their skin, but after a while their bones break and they kind of crumble. Nygma says that it activates genes and stuff and whatnot, which I suppose is a good an explanation as any, though it consumes too much calcium, leading to the bones breaking and for the victims to pursue as much milk as they can.

Potolsky is working with a philosopher professor of his to expose the evils of WellZyn and Wayne Enterprises, and the professor namedrops that the second, refined batch is called Venom! Which is another nice plot thread to run alongside the whole mob fight thing. It is nice to see this, really, after TDKR's Bane replaced Venom with some stupid anesthetic mask that makes less sense than sci-fi super-steroids. (I'm never letting that one go) Because, really, you don't make a show about Batman or a Batman-related stuff and just tell all the mob and mafia storylines and whatnot... they have their place, but if things like Venom or laughing gas bothers you so much maybe you shouldn't bet watching a Batman show. Or making it.

Overall, though, it's a pretty decent episode that could've done with some trimming, but still felt pretty good and keeps me interested. Venom! Penguin! Arkham! Mob fight! Wayne corruption!

Gotham S1E4 Review: Hypocritical Bitch

Gotham, Season 1, Episode 4: Arkham

A good bit more focused than the last three episodes, and a lot more intrigue about this whole 'war' thing that's coming. The episode still does this police/detective thing of tracking down a serial murderer as the main thing, which I suppose is still tolerable. There is still a fair amount of cringeworthy moments in this episode, though.

Let's start with Oswald Cobblepot, who is still the most awesome character in the series. He's stringing everyone along, pretending to be Gordon's friend and giving him information, sneaking around and eavesdropping on Maroni... and he apparently hired three hitman to hit the Maroni-affiliated restaurant both to get a promotion within Maroni's ranks as well as to make the Maroni-Falcone war get even more heated up. I do like how Penguin's starting to do some manipulation, how he's starting to rise up in the Gotham underworld, and how he's just fooling the likes of Maroni into thinking he's a harmless fellow. That scene with him just begging not to be shot as he clutches that bag of money was pretty nice, and of course, he kills his partners with poisoned cakes and takes the rest of the money for himself.

Oswald seems to want to plunge the city into a war, except he's telling Gordon that he wants to prevent it. Dude's a bit crazy, and I'm interested what his endgame plans are.

There's a big talk about war, and we get our first good look at Arkham Asylum, and that gate does look like what Arkham Asylum's gate is in my mind, and it makes me happy. Gotham City's been extremely generic (note the lack of gargoyles for a certain man dressed in a bat to lurk upon) and it's nice to see something more faithful to the source material.

There's a big plot about how the Arkham district is being fought over by the Falcone and Maroni factions, with Falcone wanting to have it all as a show of power (and doing what the Waynes want and convert the Asylum into a brand-new thing) whereas Maroni wants to build a waste disposal place as a big 'up yours' to Falcone and show that he's weakening. It's got a pretty nice crime/politics vibe going on.

And to this end, both Falcone and Maroni hired this villain of the week, this black dude who takes up the identity of 'Richard Gladwell' as a cover and kills people with this weird-looking steel spear weapon. I'm not aware of any Batman villain with the same M.O. or name, so I'm going to assume that like the Balloon Man, he's a brand-new character created for the show. The eyeball stabbing thing is a bit gruesome, and his little gimmick does make him kind of stand out, and he ends up going after the mayor and shot all sorts to hell by Bullock and Gordon. He's a serviceable villain, memorable enough with his little gimmick but ultimately not interesting enough to keep around.

And I do like the squeaky-voiced mayor getting turned into a target, because I do like the mayor somewhat. The mayor ends up pulling a compromise, which is kind of an insult to Falcone. Also apparently Arkham Asylum isn't going to be replaced with a high-tech one like the Waynes wanted, but instead refurbished or something like that.

Gordon doesn't really do much in this episode other than his regular shtick of being the only good cop in Gotham that's doing the right thing, though notably he kills another fellow, showing that despite his distaste of violence he's not above riddling someone with bullets if that means saving an innocent live. There is this moment between Gordon and Barbara where they really fight over secrets and whatnot. Thanks to the Montoya jealous-ex-driving-a-stake thing, Barbara finally doubts Gordon enough to confront him about who 'Oswald Cobblepot' is. And Gordon, y'know, he's smart enough to remember the events of a couple episodes ago where the moment he lets slip something about work, Barbara immediately tells it to the freaking news, and thereby not only nearly costing Gordon his job, but also possibly puts them in danger.

And Barbara had the gall to pull the guilt-trip trigger, and the 'choose me or work' trigger, despite past events. And as it turns out, Barbara herself is a hypocrite over the whole secrets thing, since she ended up having to reveal to Gordon about the whole lesbians-with-Montoya thing, which ends up, as predicted, to be another can of worms that adds needless drama. And since she has let out that one relatively harmless secret, she demands Gordon tell her all about his potentially life-damaging secret despite her track record of being this bitch who can't keep secrets.

Man, Barbara is a massive hypocritical bitch.

Bullock, well... he doesn't really do much other than being lazy and pulling off that big damn heroes moment at the end, and he's at least competent enough to be afraid of a gang war. Nothing to hate about him, so there's that.

Fish is the character that receives the most screentime, and she's apparently recruiting some girl who can seduce and sing for a plan, presumably to bring down Falcone. And while that is interesting I guess, the episode spends way too long on the girls just singing and not really doing anything interesting, and do we really need that long to see Fish ask these girls to seduce her? It's weird. The fight-for-the-job was relatively brutal and I liked it, but this whole side-plot feels like a massive waste of time just to have girls in really short skirts kiss each other and whatnot. Still not really liking Fish -- though she's at least supposed to be sort of unlikable as a villain, and she's still better than Barbara. No reason for Fish's agent not to just show up to do her stuff, or for some trimming to be done.

Essen and Nygma show up each for a bit before disappearing again, just to remind us that they exist.

Maroni is quite fun to watch, and I do like his scenes. They aren't anything special, but they're fun to listen to thanks to Maroni's accent. And he does have a couple of nice scenes with Oswald and we get to know that he's at least pretty fair among his men.

We get Alfred and Bruce, who also feel like a bit of a distraction. Sure, we get that whole point where the Wayne legacy is connected to the Arkham Asylum rebuilding or something along those lines, but again do we really need Alfred and Bruce? They're relatively harmless and I don't hate them, but like the scenes of Fish's singers, they feel like nothing but padding... though they're at least talking about stuff instead of just singing and doing nothing.

Also, who's the random bearded dude that Bullock asked information out of? I thought he was interesting. Why couldn't we have a scene with him?

Overall there's still a fair amount of things I don't like in this show, the main offender being that massive bitch Barbara, but it's still building on the good things that I like from the past episodes. The fight scene between Gordon and Gladwell was relatively nicer to look at than the action scenes of past episodes, so at least they're improving. There's the intrigue over who actually hired "Gladwell" and  Hopefully we can get something more interesting than just your regular cop show, though.

Arrow S3E7 Review: The Romance Episode

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 7: Draw Back Your Bow

Yeah, I don't think I really have that much to talk about this episode, so it might be relatively shorter than my normal TV episode reviews. It's an okay episode, but it's decidedly a distraction/filler episode. It does kind of build up on the romantic tension between Oliver and Felicity, as well as Ray Palmer and Felicity, but it's not something that, in my opinion, really deserves an entire episode dedicated to love and romance. It's not that I'm hating on love and romance plotlines, because those can be great if done properly, but I thought this one was a bit on the nose, introducing Cupid the love-obsessed stalker just right when Ray Palmer is being all sweet and a love rival and stuff. I thought that some of these Ray/Felicity and Oliver/Felicity moments could have been done in other episodes, and Cupid is... relatively annoying.

I mean, yes, I do appreciate just how faithful Cupid is to her comic counterpart (which is to say, I've only read her profile in a couple of DC profile books) and her character is the one that lends to being a massive twat -- kudos to the actress for making her work. But Cupid is this hyper-obsessed maniac who really wants the Arrow to love her forever and ever and twists everything that Arrow says into a different thing. And she's basically just going around killing people to attract Arrow's attention, and she's got connections with someone who can pinpoint where the Arrow's lair is and everything.

Also I thought the little addendum to the season two finale just to give Cupid a backstory, while kind of illustrating how interconnected she is, is kind of odd since, y'know, it's been a while in-universe, and Cupid's decidedly persistent, so why didn't she make a move until now?

I do like how Cupid ain't got any archery skills. She obviously knows enough to shoot people, but when compared to Oliver I do like how Oliver can just dodge her arrows and easily break her bow.

Of course, Oliver confronts Cupid and manages to stop her from killing them both in a fit of insanity, before... handing her over to the Suicide Squad? Really? I thought this was a massive dick move on Oliver's part. I mean, yes, she's not quite a criminal and more of an ill person, and I do agree that prison doesn't serve her right... but that means you plunk her into Arkham Asylum or something, not to join the damned Suicide Squad! For one, Cupid already knows Oliver's secret lair. And for two, she's likely to actually die in the Squad, so I don't think Oliver made a really wise call if he was truly pitying Cupid.

We did get a little reference on how 'the last woman they had on the Squad was crazier than her' or something. I laughed out loud so hard at this obvious Harley Quinn reference.

Oliver himself is still dealing with the whole 'I don't have a relationship with Felicity' thing, and he kind of tells Cupid the same thing in Felicity's earshot... despite the whole flirty-flirt moments we had between Oliver and Laurel last episode. (Incidentally, Laurel is completely absent in this one) I do like how he's dealing with Felicity seemingly in a relationship with Ray, and while jealousy is something probably everyone can relate to at some point, and the little anger display Oliver did in the Arrow-Cave is pretty well done, I thought it kind of took a bit too much time and could've been built up better. I do like how Oliver ended up trying to head off and tell Felicity how he's really feeling only to find out he's too late. But other than that, I dunno, I'm not really feeling it. Seems to be too much unnecessary drama.

Whereas Diggle is basically just being a massive Olicity shipper, and trying to convince Oliver to get back with Felicity and vice versa. He does get into the field once here, but otherwise he doesn't do much. Lyla does show up for a second or two, which is cool. I like Lyla.

Roy also gets some minor screentime, and he's called Arsenal several times, which is great. He's still dealing with the police murder thing, but other than a cursory 'you don't have your A-game' dialogues here and there we don't really get much of it beyond him somehow getting taken out offscreen by Cupid. Man, poor Roy. I don't think he ever beat anyone post-Mirakuru other than Wildcat's protege last episode.

Thea gets a couple of scenes where she's auditioning DJs, and this random douchebag cockhole who's just swaggering around like some kind of overconfident dick telling everyone to go home, and he suddenly shows up again like a goddamn stalker to steal the show and semi-forcibly steal a kiss from Thea... this all came really randomly. Thea had absolutely nothing to do with the main Cupid or Felicity plots other than serving Cupid a drink that one time, and this DJ Douchebag thing literally dropped out of the sky and seems to be an extremely cheap way to introduce a love rival to Roy... and it's stupid, considering how well they made Ray Palmer's entrance, they shove in this douchebag for Thea.

Felicity gets some nice moments where she's standing up for Ray Palmer, and I do like how she's still trying to help when shit hits the fan instead of bringing up some angst about how she needs to have her own life and stuff -- girl's got her priorities in order, at least, though how she teleported from the dinner with Palmer to the Arrow-Cave, I don't know. She gets some funny moments, some sweet moments now that Palmer is likable (they kissed and everything and Felicity gave that nice speech and all), and some rather heartbreaking moments. I do like how Palmer's actually being portrayed as sweet and whatnot (despite the extravagant money thrown at Felicity) and Felicity does give us some nice funny moments like her priceless reaction to Palmer doing the Salmon Ladder. But, as I mentioned in the Flash review, she's veering kind of close to Mary Sue territory, and with no less than three love interests (Oliver, Barry and Palmer; four if you count Brother Eye) and her insane hacking skills, we're kind of getting a Felicity overload after several episodes that focus so much on her. And I'm a bit conflicted because I really really like Felicity, but I'm not a big fan of all this angsty romance-drama stuff.

Ray Palmer's changed Queen Consolidated into Palmer Technologies, complete with a revolving electron-atom thing that Palmer and Felicity point out at two separate occasions, and if that isn't enough... Palmer's apparently working on the A.T.O.M. exosuit, powered by a white dwarf star! That's a sure hint that Ray Palmer is going to become the Atom somewhere in the near future. Hell, they even showed the exosuit! This, I think, is what got me the most excited throughout the entire episode. I do like the Atom, and if Arrow takes a veer from the gritty-and-serious into something more comic book-y featuring the Atom, I would certainly be welcoming, as jarring as it is.

The flashback plot is a fair bit of heartwarming family stuff, with the Triads killing a group of ARGUS agents and both Oliver and Tatsu thinking that Maseo died in the firefight, but it's not and stuff like that. It's pretty bland, although there's a couple of funny moments with Oliver and laundry, and Tatsu whipping out a katana and whacking a dozen people into submission (without blood, I might add)... well, I do love me some Katana references, and that scene was awesome if nothing. Shame that Katana's backstory involves a dead family, so things aren't looking good for Maseo and their kid.

And at the end, Captain Boomerang shows up and kills a random dude who has 'something he needs' with a razor-sharp boomerang! He's of reasonable likeness to the original Captain Boomerang except not as colourful or silly. It's another thing that excites me because I love Captain Boomerang, as nutter as he conceptually is, and I'm certainly looking forward to next week's crossover episodes if nothing. Boomerang seems to imply that he's a former member of the Suicide Squad what with him going all 'the thing about our line of work is that it'll always come back to haunt you' line, which will be interesting, or that could just be me reading too much into things.

Overall a pretty m'eh episode that'll probably appeal to shippers -- in which case, good for them -- but is pretty filler-y for me. Cupid's kind of intentionally annoying, DJ Douchebag can fuck off and jump into a pool of acid, and the romance stuff is at least tolerable. It's not bad, but it doesn't fill me with excitement or hype other than the Atom, Katana and Captain Boomerang references.

The Flash S1E7 Review: All the Name-Dropping

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 7: Power Outage

I think this is the first episode of the Flash that doesn't feel like a standard season-one 'villain of the day' and 'moral of the day' thing. I mean, in a sense it still is... this villain Blackout (who's some dude I've never heard of before, and apparently only shows up in Flashpoint, which came out after I don't read comics anymore) shows up, Flash defeats him, end of episode. And in a nice change of pace, the police department has to deal with their own villain, Clock King, who returns from his onetime appearance in Arrow. Both the Flash and Iris learn something in this episode... but in a sense I felt truly tense while watching this episode. I mean, I know it's episode 7 and they're not going to kill off the main character, but several -- Eddie, Wells and Joe -- come pretty close to dying, and I was tense for them if nothing else. And there's a couple of nice little arguments between Barry and Wells.

Let's talk about the police station cast plot, because it's shorter and less people are involved in it. I do like how it's handled, how these secondary characters can actually stand up on their own and carry smaller mini-arcs by themselves and not have to be saved by Barry all the time.

Iris manages to be likable now that she's doing other stuff other than be a friendzoning love interest and BLOG BLOG BLOG, the latter wearing absolutely thin. She's still doing that naive cartoony Lois Lane esque thing where she goes 'the Flash will kick your ass' but, of course, this time that doesn't happen. And while Iris doesn't get a whole ton of screentime, she does manage to take down the Clock King by using the Oliver/Felicity/Slade bait and switch thing. There's also a couple funny moments with her kind of blushing over meeting the Flash, and the mug joke.

William Tockman, the Clock King, shows up again and it's a wholly unexpected return for him! I do like how he's a bit of an amalgamation between the two Clock Kings (Temple Fugate and William Tockman, owing more to the former for the looks). Clock King is wonderfully, deliciously neurotic and posh and everything, and he's easily one of my favourite villains in the CW Arrow-Flash continuity. He's so much fun! And so tragic, too, because as he reveals this time, his sister ended up dying from McGregor's Syndrome and he was denied the opportunity to even say goodbye to her. Man, what a douchebag DA. Almost makes me want to root for him if he's not shooting people left and right. I do really like him just swaggering out and shooting everybody, and I do like the more tender moments when he lets Iris say goodbye to the 'dying' Eddie. There's also a nice moment where he respects Joe enough to apply a tourniquet to Eddie's arm and do this little 'time of shot' thing, which in retrospect is absolutely appropriate for the Clock King.

What more can I say? The Clock King is freaking awesome, even if he doesn't come to blows with the Flash and kind of gets taken out like a bitch, it's still awesome to see him swagger around and do his wacky antics.

Joe has apparently come to support Barry Allen being the Flash and protecting people from the metahumans, and goes 'you need to get your powers back' and all that... though the encounter with the Reverse-Flash last episode might be a major contributing factor to that. Joe gets some nice funny moments with throwing stuff so Barry can (fail to) catch them, and there's the nice little back-and-forth negotiation with the Clock King that shows that Joe isn't just a cop. He's also pretty well-versed in literature, and that little gambit where he lets Iris get the gun... possibly for self-protection, because sending his untrained daughter to shoot a terrorist is kind of dark. But, y'know, Iris did that. I do really like that heartbreaking scene when Joe just struggles to his feet shouting IRIS when we hear a gunshot and we're not sure if it's Iris or Clock King that pulled the trigger. (From the viewer standpoint it's obviously Iris, but still)

Also I do like how Barry tries to call Joe for backup, whereas Joe/Iris is hoping that the Flash will show up. It's a nice little thing.

Eddie is high on pain meds and he's just all high and happy and absolutely hilarious. Before that he gets minimal screentime up until the Clock King shoots him a couple of times, and thanks to the ambiguous nature of Eddie Thawne's role, I was actually expecting him to maybe die or get crippled (a la the comics' Hunter Zolomon) or something. I certainly didn't dismiss his death out of hand, and I thought that was a good way to increase tension. Ever since the last episode Eddie's been relatively likable.

I think that's about it for the secondary cast, so now let's talk about the main Barry plot. I'm saving all the Wells stuff until the end because there's a fair bit to talk about him.

Anyway, the main plot is this new metahuman, Blackout, who initially seems to be this lightning-based villain... like his Marvel namesake, except instead of just shutting off lamps, this Blackout can also do Palpatine force lightning things. That is, until Blackout reveals that he can suck the lightning-speed thing right off of Barry. There's a distinct feel of Speed Force foreshadowing all around this, which is all great. And I do like how Barry looks just so miserable and weak and generally nearly-useless without his speed, and how everyone from Caitlin to Joe to Harrison Wells to some degree is all trying to cheer him up for him to get his speed back. We see just how much helping people means to Barry and how, speed or no speed, Barry keeps trying to help people.

Wells also brings up one of the things I really like about this show, just how much the Flash really enjoys being the Flash. With heroes like Batman or CW's version of Green Arrow, not to mention basically all DC superheroes adapted to the big screen recently, their heroism is really treated as a burden and an obligation, which to a sense it is... and it does work with the more somber and gritty feel of Batman and Green Arrow, but with someone like the Flash? He really really enjoys his work, and I do like how it is a stark contrast with the newest episode of Arrow I just watched, intentional or not.

Wells also brings up how Barry is using his speed for menial tasks like dressing up early or to give people in line fast coffees, or to fuck around with a mugger which was hilarious. It's another aspect of Flash that I like, how he's using his powers for relatively petty and practical things which is totally something that I would do.

And the show treats Barry losing his speed like someone losing a limb or whatever, and to an extend it must be true -- if Barry is forced to live without his speed, it isn't just like taking a thing away from someone, it would be paramount to amputating someone's leg. And I can see why he's so desperate to get his powers back even if it involves electrocuting himself with the Cosmic Treadmill.

Man, that thing is definitely going to be the Cosmic Treadmill. I've been rereading some old Flash comics and Cisco's special treadmill is so obviously designed after the Cosmic Treadmill.

Barry's borderline-naive optimism really shows when he tries to talk down Farooq, and gets shot with electricity for his troubles. I do like how he tries to at least mediate a situation first, how he isn't immediately resorting to murder. And I thought the argument between Barry and Wells about sending Girder to battle Blackout is pretty well scripted as well. Great stuff. Also he seems to have gotten a boost to his speed, which is nice, showing how Barry Allen's powers are still developing. Last episode we had the supersonic mach punch, and now we've got more glowing red blood cells.

I don't think Cisco does anything in this episode that's noteworthy other than to bounce dialogue off of, but Caitlin gets some nice moments, being the one who ended up having to 'believe' and activate the big power generator thing to jumpstart Barry. Considering how she's lost Ronnie and everything, I do think that it's a pretty nice little character growth for her. Even if the 'I believe lightning chose me for a reason' lines are pretty narmy but Barry Allen's face looks kind of, y'know, nerdy? Naive? Earnest? It just works on him, I dunno.

I think there was a Felicity reference, she upgraded their system or something. Yay Felicity, I guess? She's been a wee bit too prominent recently, and I'd prefer they dial it down a bit. As much as I like her, she's veering dangerously close to Sue territory.

Also in the Farooq flashback we see the Mardons' airplane blown off the sky, which is a nice little continuity nod.

The main villain here, Farooq Jabron (otherwise known as Blackout) is a pretty crazy-terrifying dude. It's amazing what a few layers of makeup around the eyes and making those see-through electricity lines fizzle in and out, and some great acting, can make this dude really look like a tragic, hungry psychopath. I do like his backstory, too. We're shown that he's just climbing on this electrical pole and all excited about seeing Wells' machine get activated, and getting electrocuted from there... and his friends apparently died giving him CPR. It's pretty tragic, and he's forced to go around feeding from power plants and whatnot, having to live with the knowledge that he killed his friends... who probably wouldn't be there if he didn't ask for them to accompany him. Farooq looks like the only one out of the group who's really excited about seeing the activation.

And, well, from his appearance to his behaviour it's easy to see just how crazy and deranged he is from his condition, and rightfully so.

Farooq's a pretty threatening villain, too. I'm not sure just how he knows how much electricity a human body gives out, but seeing this random nice dude get transformed into this rage-fueled energy vampire... it really makes him stand out from the evil dudes who get their powers and use them for evil (Mist, Girder, Multiplex, Weather Wizard) or Barry and Plastique, whose powers aren't forcing them to drain energy to keep alive... or being tormented by, y'know, the whole killing-friends thing. And the fact that he's out for blood, out for revenge on Wells, as well as being able to siphon off Barry's powers... I thought the final battle between the two of them were a bit m'eh, though Barry does some nice electrical dodging stuff, but that's okay. Farooq's more of a psychologically impressive villain than being really showy.

Also, Girder makes a surprise appearance! And, well, he dies, poor sod. Granted, this is a world based on DC comics and people never really stay dead for long, but I dunno. Girder gets released by Wells to fight Farooq, and for whatever reason he complies without going off after Barry or whatever. Maybe he just wants to punch things, I dunno. He seems to be able to take a hit from Farooq, blocking that electrical blast with a manly 'ouch', but soon afterwards he gets defeated off-screen and dies in Barry's arms, telling him to 'run', so at least this version of Girder isn't really that evil. I thought it was an odd decision to kill Girder off just like that, especially when Wells and Barry make it clear that Girder didn't buy that much time for them, but I guess it's to illustrate just how much of a chessmaster Wells can be? It's odd, though.

Harrison Wells, on the other hand, is certainly not reduced to a minor character. This episode shows a great deal of focus about him, painting him as a chessmaster. There's the whole Girder thing up above, and I do agree with Wells -- I'd choose the lives of my friends (who also happen to be useful) over the life of this crazy psychopath in my basement that I can manipulate. It's a nice little argument between ideals and pragmatism. And on the flip side we do get some nice moments that make Harrison Wells feel a lot more human and not just this super-evil chessmaster. He reveals that he remembers the names of every single person who died thanks to the explosion, and offers himself to Farooq to let everyone else be sapred, and it's a very poignant and powerful scene. It actually reminds me of a very similar scene from the manga D.Gray-Man, and I think that humanizes Wells pretty well. Also the scenes when he goes 'I care about you, Barry', even if the feeling is probably not just because he thinks that Barry is a swell guy. He's still a massive chessmastering prick, but he's also still human I guess?

Also to note are the names that Wells rattles off! Those are all the names of DC superheroes. Ronnie Raymond is, of course, Firestorm. Ralph Dibny is a relatively major character, the Elongated Man. Bea DaCosta is Fire, Grant Emerson is Damage and Al Rothstein is the Atom Smasher. (Also, Will Everett is the 'Amazing Man', who I've never heard before) It brought a massive smile to my face when these names are rattled off. I doubt any of them will show up other than Firestorm, but still, I do like these DC references that aren't as in-your-face like how Gotham sometimes can be.

Also, we get more scenes about Wells that seems to function to make you be confused as of what his alignment is. We get him talking to Gideon, an AI that apparently can search the future's news records and allow Wells to affirm if the timeline is damaged or not. It's a nice little time-travel gimmick that I like, which reminds me of the Golden Discs from Beast Wars (I'm just comparing everything to a bunch of other things here). And Wells wants to preserve a future in which the Flash exists and manages to make the red skies disappear. I do like how Wells makes these logs and gets quite disappointed with Barry's heroics, and his rage when Gideon fails to return any references to the Flash is pretty well-acted as well.

And the final scene where he talks to Gideon about how Barry's caring for other people is the key to unlock his potential seems to imply that all the sappy talk he had that humanizes him might just all be an act... or, on the same token, his observation might be just that. Wells is an extremely intriguing character, and extracting Farooq's blood... what is he trying to do? Is he trying to take down Barry, which doesn't make sense because he wants Barry to survive... or is he trying to force Barry to grow through tragedy or something along those lines? Or is he not evil at all, and he's been doing all this to take down the Reverse-Flash?

Absolutely intrigued, absolutely interested to find out more. The next episode is the Arrow/Flash crossover. Me excited.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 6: Free Latias! A Wild Feebas Appeared!

More Alpha Sapphire, in which I need to choose which Pokemon to use and whatnot.

One Piece 769 Review: Subverting Cliches

One Piece, Chapter 769: Bellamy, the Pirate

Cover story is still continuing on, and apparently Jinbe is hunting down the perpetrator of... of whatever the fuck is going on. I cannot remember. Man, cover stories used to be nice and short-ish, but ever since Caribou it's just dragged on and on until it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, continuing from last chapter, Law has done the 'Injection Shot' thing on Doflamingo, though apparently it didn't do anything particularly special other than stab Doflamingo. From its name I thought there was going to be poison or something involved. We then get a cool scene as Law slices off a literal chunk of the palace in his Room and just launches it at Doflamingo and Trebol, intending to sandwich them.

However, Doflamingo does this Spider Web thing and just blocks the giant falling piece of architecture. Law launches a bunch of rocks and rubble and whatnot at Doflamingo, but he manages to fly up into the sky (Trebol's apparently just gone). Law reappears behind Doflamingo, making use of the rubble, which is a cool panel.

Law tries to go in with 'Mes', which is the heart-cutting-out attack (I'm assuming Law can't do his normal body-parts-flying-everywhere stuff against Doflamingo because of Haki) but Doflamingo catches Law's hand. He then monologues about how Law is so fired up and whatnot, how if Law really wanted to kill Doflamingo all he needed to do was to pit Doflamingo against Kaido. But instead Law went in personally and let emotions get the better of him.

(Also Birdcage is apparently still up)

They bring up Corazon and the letter and whatnot, and for a moment Doflamingo tries to get into Law's mind by saying 'if you haven't fucked up so badly Dressrosa wouldn't be like this', but Law isn't buying it. Doflamingo then extends his leg, which has a single string running down it, and while trash-talking Law he then proceeds to place the leg-string on Law's arm.

And at this point it's a "will they do it?" moment with Law's arm, because, after all, this isn't Bleach where arms fall off in every battle, and I was really expecting a fake out.

We get a couple of nice dialogue back-and-forth between Law and Doflamingo and all that as they plummet down towards the ground. There was a large explosion, Trebol is clapping... and the next panel is a pretty graphic one as Law screams with his right arm sliced right off.

Good lord, that arm. It was pretty shocking to see something like this happen in One Piece on-screen instead of in a flashback or whatever. And as Law writhes on the ground, Doflamingo continues his monologue, about how the other 'D' had influenced him, and how he'll forgive Law after killing him with a lead bullet for extra irony. Doflamingo's seriously screwed in the head.

Granted, the arm is probably not going to be that big of a deal since Law has the ability to remove hearts and toss them around without killing the person and whatnot, but still.

However, before Doflamingo can put a bullet in Law's head, there's suddenly 'JET GATLING' and what I initially thought as Law's dismembered arm being gatling'd to bits which would be funny. And for this moment I was pretty disappointed because it seems that Luffy's going to come in swinging to save the day and beat down arc villain Doflamingo just because he's the main character, but no. Thankfully, it's nothing like that.

Luffy has apparently blown apart the string clone of Doflamingo that fell down with him (did we really see this happen? I cannot remember) and the string clone disappears. Hopefully for good, since there's a lot of other characters that people can fight. You know, actual villainous characters instead of string clones. This distracts Doflamingo enough for him to look down, and apparently Luffy is still fighting the string-controlled Bellamy, and until very recently, String Doflamingo as well. Luffy is all screaming and telling Doflamingo to release Bellamy from his control or he'll die.

Doflamingo goes "sure, why not" and allows Bellamy to drop to the ground, and for a moment we get a little flashback from Bellamy's point of view, back when he wanted to join Doflamingo's organization, how Doflamingo got rid of him, his old battle with Luffy (as Luffy is going "are you okay? Well of course you're not okay"), his recent meeting with Luffy that's all warm and fuzz, and later on the recent betrayals by Dellinger and Doflamingo. And all this are intercut with Luffy talking to Bellamy as he's pushing himself up, and it is made as if Bellamy is going to change his colours and help Luffy and Law in taking down Doflamingo.

And literally, right until the last page, it looks something like this. Luffy is all 'stay here, I'll help Law to beat Doflamingo for you', and Bellamy seems to go and 'do you remember this skill?', seemingly giving Luffy a boost up with his stupid spring-leg ability...

Even the second-last page with the spread isn't quite clear as Bellamy is just hopping around the massive corridor and slamming into walls and shit, which could be intepreted as him trying to bring down the upper levels and get Doflamingo that way...

But the final page makes it clear that despite everything that Doflamingo had done to him, he's not going to bite back the hand that feeds him, and despite his injuries, he's still going to take down Luffy, declaring it to be his 'last fight'. Pretty interesting subversion of the normal manga cliches.

While I don't doubt somewhere in the future Bellamy might turn good (or he might die here) and Luffy's probably going to play a role in helping Law defeat Doflamingo, if not being the one who does it himself, I for one am very happy how Law doesn't immediately get Worfed and turned into a dude-in-distress for Luffy to come in and pull of a heroic rescue. Especially since, y'know, that whole backstory that makes me really want to see Law punch Doflamingo in the face really hard.

Do like this chapter, and it's nice to see Doflamingo laying down the smackdown both physically and verbally, as well as the several moments where it's subtly evident how Doflamingo's great at controlling people. There's Bellamy, of course, and there's the ways how he's trying to get Law to be a little 'oh no it's all my fault'. Doflamingo's a really well-written villain and I really want to see him get punched in the face. Looking forward to next week's chapter.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 5: Volcanoes, Hot Springs and Daddies

Even more Alpha Sapphire after the break!

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 4: The "New" Old Mauville

More Alpha Sapphire after the break!

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 3: Not just a straight-up remake

So, I continue with Alpha Sapphire... granted, I'm playing at a very slow pace. If I'm not bogged down with work I would've completed the game within a day or two of playing it, but I'm not speed-running.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 2: Petalburg and Rustboro

More Alpha Sapphire! Again, after the break.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Part 1: Hoenn Confirmed

HOENN CONFIRMED

Well, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire have been released, and I am a consummate pokemon fan. Generation 3 was one of the defining generations of pokemon for me, having played generation 3 games the most during my childhood and having replayed the thing several times by heart. So while a remake might not really sound exciting to me on the surface... at the same time, it's Ruby and Sapphire... in 3D! With improved mechanics and graphics! Needless to say, I pre-ordered the shit out of these games, and they're freaking out. So I played it, at least up until I reach Petalburg.

More after the break.

Agents of SHIELD S2E8 Review: Backstories and Gambits

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 8: The Things We Bury

Well, a lot of things happen in this episode. A lot of things. A good chunk of it is backstory -- Grant Ward, Daniel Whitehall and Skye's Father mainly, but also a bit of Mockingbird and Hunter. And a lot of these plot threads intersect each other. So, um, yeah, let's break down this episode.

Let's start with Grant (who I'll be calling that for the moment because of the multiple Wards in this episode). Two episodes ago sees him escaping the bunch of soldiers sent to escort him to execution, and he wastes close to no time in hunting down his brother Christian, which is good. If this was dragged on for any longer it'd kind of exhausting.

Grant just tears through Christian's security and drags him to where the old well where Christian apparently forced Grant to push their third brother, Thomas, down. And throughout this ride I do like how Christian is practically begging for Grant to come to his senses and Grant is all like 'stop using your wife to garner sympathy. Stop pretending to do this to facilitate my escape. Stop tying to play innocent. I know all your tricks' and stuff like that. And I really do love how it's not made really clear up until the end if Christian is even guilty at all and is a great manipulator like Grant claims... or if those are just claims by Grant. It's delicious.

We then get a pretty nice little insane interrogation where more of the same happens which really works at showing just how crazy Grant is and how great of an actor Christian is. Grant forces Christian to dig up the well and later threatens to shove Christian down the well before he finally admits that, yes, he actually did force Grant to do it. I mean, we can already sort of guess since the Ward clan is filled up with fucked up people.

Anyway, Christian thankfully is forthcoming about the details. Their mother were abusive to both Grant and Christian, and Thomas was the only one that she dotes on, and Christian absolutely hates that but was too pussy to do anything about it, so he forced Grant to be the one to do it. It's pretty fucked-up, and after the confession Grant seems to have the fire leave him and basically just gives Christian a hug and goes all 'that's what I want to hear'...

Except, you know, this is Grant Ward we're talking about, who made a career of being a double agent. So of course, while he's all hugs and smiles with Christian earlier, the end of the episode reveals that he finished what he started back before he was thrown into juvie, except he actually succeeded in burning Christian and their parents to death. It's pretty awesome how this is told to the audience after the fact, making it come as a bit of a surprise. Alas, Christian. You're a jerk, but you're leaving behind a wife... no, wait, you were cheating on her. Never mind.

Grant uses the confession, which he apparently records, to frame Christian for a murder-suicide and completely fuck up his reputation. And I do like how a couple of things are left ambiguous, like... did Grant really want to hear the answer from Christian? Is he really struggling with the answer on whether Christian did make him do it or if it's really just something he imagined? Or is he just being a cold-blooded weapon who's doing all that to torture Christian mentally and to mechanically extract a confession? Fun stuff.

Also, that's not all he does, because as this was revealed to us, he's apparently reached out to Daniel Whitehall and rejoins Hydra... except, you know, Grant Ward is a wild card.

On first glance, it seems he's joining Hydra and trying to bring it down from the inside, because we know he's killed a bunch of Hydra troops and delivered Bakshi to SHIELD. Maybe he's getting into Hydra just to get close to Skye's father. But it could've easily been the other way around. He delivers Bakshi to SHIELD to garner their favour since Bakshi is expendable, and he's rejoined with his true masters at Hydra and is going to try and worm information out of SHIELD. Considering what we know of Grant Ward, it could easily be either one... or both. Somehow.

The other big thing about this episode is the reveal of Daniel Whitehall's backstory and how he's looking the same age as he did during World War II. We see him do some experiments on the Obelisk by forcing the Chinese people from the village to touch it... somehow in a facility in Austria (I'm sure I missed a detail or two somewhere) and encounters someone who I assume is Skye's Mother. But news of Red Skull's apparent death reaches him and he's all sad and stuff.

We then get to see Whitehall after his arrest at the hands of Peggy Carter way back in episode 1, who shows up for a couple of scenes in the flashbacks, partly to promote that new Agent Carter show that's supposed to hit the networks sometime soon. Simmons also extremely unsubtly drops some 'omigod I love Agent Carter' lines which really feels like some really in-your-face advertisement. But I digress. Anyway, Whitehall, or known as Werner Reinhardt at that time, tries to bargain his way out of being locked up by promising advancements and all that, but Carter's not having any of that. Carter has seen first-hand what Whitehall/Reinhardt can do, and vows to lock him up and bury him forever. Which is kind of cold, but Reinhardt is kind of a monster, so.

Of course, as we know, that doesn't happen. 44 years later, in 1989, a certain fellow named Pierce arranges for Reinhardt's release on the grounds of budget cuts. Except, you know... Alexander Pierce? That brought a nice smile to my face. It also neatly ties in with the mention in Winter Soldier about Pierce apparently recruiting Hydra scientists. We get a nice little montage where Reinhardt's surroundings change as he ages, and apparently Hydra has discovered... Skye's mother. Again. And Skye's mother has not aged at all through the 44 years. And near the end of the episode we see just what Reinhardt does to her, as we are treated to another horrifying montage as she is dissected. Literally. We get a few gory shots of pretty bloody and relatively realistic open-body shots. Having seen corpses myself I've grown a bit immune to such sights, but the fact that they actually do show skin being ripped out and organs being pulled out is rather horrifyingly surprising. They really are flipping the censor off, aren't they?

Anyway, whatever Reinhardt gained from Skye's Mother, he managed to devise some... magic comic book sci-fi ray that restores his youth, and adapts the identity Daniel Whitehall and loses his funky German aksent in the process. That's the backstory, but the episode is well-crafted enough so that we really wonder, alongside the cast, and gets revelations gradually. It's pretty well done in my opinion.

And then comes the twist near the end that Hydra apparently have the worst cleaning service ever, because when Reinhardt tells his people to dispose of the butchered body of Skye's mother, they just bag her up in a garbage bag, with her head and shoulders still visible, and just dump it in some random jungle for vengeful husbands to find. All this trouble could've been avoided if they burnt the body or did something less moronic than dumping it in the jungle. But hey.

Reinhardt/Whitehall himself gets a few moments of characterization this time around. He's pretty much a FOR SCIENCE guy, basically being entirely uninterested in the Doctor (I'm going to refer to Skye's Father by this alias because it's less awkward to type) and his explanations about 'folklore', though considering he basically regained youth by vivisecting an alien I'm surprised he dismisses the idea of the Diviner being a key. He's extremely giddy when he realizes that Skye's mother is all youthful and stuff, just like a little kid being allowed to dissect a frog for the first time.

We also get a couple of backstory for the Diviner/Obelisk thanks to Reinhardt. Apparently it was brought down by blue-coloured angels coming down from the heavens. So it almost certainly has some relationship with whatever species that the Blue GH Alien was from... though 'angels from the heavens' is almost verbatim the line that Star-Lord's mother describes his alien father's arrival, and Star-Lord is also a half-alien like Skye... coincidence? I don't think so. Especially since between Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy, we've established that aliens have showed up on Earth before.

Reinhardt has also found out some information that these visitors had come to conquer humankind... which the Doctor hurriedly corrects him as it being a mistranslation since the visitors had come to end mankind, other than several chosen ones. Which is an interesting notion, because, again, characters from Thor and Guardians have basically dissed Terra/Midgard as this backwater planet filled with inferior species.

And speaking of the Doctor, he's a pretty interesting character. He isn't afraid to ham things up and generally subvert dramatic moments by making a big pause and goes "really, really, cool." Or just off-handedly revealing that the Diviner contains something within it, and upon seeing Coulson's shocked look, just shrugs and says 'yeah, there is something in it'. Or when Coulson asks if the Diviner is as powerful as a Tesseract, and the Doctor answers straight-away "yes" in all seriousness... before chuckling and going on about how he doesn't even know what that is. So I don't think it's an Infinity Stone, at least. What we know is that the Doctor claims that if the Diviner is brought to this mysterious city by someone compatible, it'll cause something that is 'scientifically speaking, really really cool'.

I did like how the argument between the Doctor and Reinhardt/Whitehall early on was scripted, where the Doctor is just swaggering all around and Whitehall is likewise waving his ego around, dismissing his initial stories as folklore and stuff, and later not really convinced that the Doctor can find where this City is. The Doctor's a really fun, hammy character that feels a bit too much like Garrett in that regard, but hey.

We also get to see that he's a bit of a nihilist, although that might just be a claim to get Whitehall to believe him. As we learn at the end of this episode, he knows Whitehall is the one behind the murder of his wife, since he does that 'look the enemy in the eye' thing while looking at Whitehall. Is he in league with Grant Ward, is that what's going on? The dynamic between the three major villains here is pretty interesting.

The Doctor is later involved in ambushing Team Coulson at this satellite station thing (how did they know about SHIELD's operations?) and apparently arranged this super-elaborate gambit where the Hydra troops would mortally wound Triplett enough so that he gets to operate on Triplett and therefore can talk to Coulson without Coulson arresting him? Well, he does. And it's really a big, massive gambit that hinges on Coulson striking that particular satellite and facility instead of any other alternatives, on a member of Team Coulson to be unlucky enough to be shot in a fatal-but-saveable location, and on Team Coulson not bringing a medic with them.

Yeah, that was a massively stupid plot when you think about it for a second.

But anyway, the Doctor gets his conversation with Coulson, and as always gets pissed off when he calls Skye, y'know, Skye. The Doctor reveals some information to Coulson and is basically just showing that he's stringing everyone along, and basically just acts all cryptic and stuff. I did like their conversation, and how the Doctor is just using Triplett as a hostage and forces Coulson to choose between finishing Triplett's treatment or chasing after him. It's all good fun, and the Doctor seems to have a fair bit of story planned out for him.

Also it's horribly tragic, what his backstory is, and I'm not surprised that he went on a rampage and murdered every single Hydra agent in that facility other than Reinhardt. So how did Raina and Grant Ward get into contact with him? How was Skye born... is Skye's mother pregnant when all that went down, and Reinhardt not only pillaged her organs, but her unborn baby as well? Or something?

Skye's Mother also speaks in a heavily accented Chinese that mangles all the words she's supposed to be saying, but since she's, y'know, an alien who looks like a Chinese lady, that's actually excusable.

All that, and we've just finished dissecting the three villains and we haven't even started on the good guys! Anyway, again, SHIELD is once more divided into two parts. May, Simmons, Hunter, Mockingbird and Mack stay at base and deal with Bakshi and researching Whitehall, whereas Coulson, Fitz, Skye and Triplett go to Hawaii and Australia trying to hack into this super-awesome satellite. No idea why Skye can't just hack into everything like she always does, but I guess it adds... realism? I dunno, I've never hacked before.

Let's start with the 'home' team first. May literally doesn't do shit other than give orders and reveal that SHIELD's current base used to be an old SSR site where Agent Carter operates in, and a lot of those brick walls are hidden panels. Mack, likewise, doesn't do jack shit which is much appreciated. He tries to talk to Hunter, understandably disturbed about what Coulson did last episode, but doesn't get anywhere. So he's the only doubting Thomas in the entire team? That's his role? Well, it's something, at least. He and Simmons are also not fighting in this episode and are actually relatively amicable, so there's that.

Simmons isn't angsting about Fitz again, which is nice -- save the drama when it's going to actually be explored. We get her lampshading about how Hydra could brainwash someone and they wouldn't notice at all... and then stops when she realizes what she just says. I just hope this all pays off, and either or both Bobbi and Simmons have some latent brainwashing inside them, otherwise the whole 'Simmons infiltrates Hydra and leaves Fitz behind for DRAMA' would be completely pointless. It's already inelegantly done as it is, after all. And, of course, she's -sigh- a big Agent Carter fangirl. She and Bobbi gets the most screentime out of the characters left at the base, but otherwise the show still suffers from character overload. This episode juggles everyone relatively well, but that hasn't been the case all the time.

Hunter gets sidelined as well, which is totally welcome, other than the conversations with Bobbi. And Bobbi is truly an awesome character. She's interrogating Bakshi, and is basically playing him along, trying to goad him and lets him think whether he's brainwashed with the whole Compliance thing or not. She's a great talker, and basically reads a shit-ton of stuff out of Bakshi like it's a Sherlock episode. This leads her to surmise a lot of things, basically a psych analyst, and come into a lot of conclusions not only about Bakshi, but also about Whitehall/Reinhardt as well. She's a master with words and kudos to the scriptwriters for making her pretty awesome.

But at the same time, there is one rather damning scene where she's pushing Bakshi with the folder that Hunter seems to spirit away from May and the others, and Bakshi tries to push back, citing all the 'dirty sins' that Bobbi had pulled while she was within Hydra, and she kind of... pushes back, maybe a little too hard, and Bakshi just... slams his head brutally against the table and crushes a cyanide pill hidden in his cheekbone. Well, that's progression from Hydra's old molar-cyanide-thing, at least.

We get a few Hail Hydras in the episode, which is always fun. HAIL HYDRA!

We get some nice moments on Bobbi's end, how she seems to hide some secrets, and Hunter calls her out on it, and we get an actually nice, quasi-serious argument about how Bobbi is a master liar and keeps lying about everything, making it absolutely hard to be in a relationship with her. Bobbi, of course, claims that her line is Hunter and she'd never lie to him, and at this point there's a pretty nice comparison drawn against Grant Ward, who's also a master spy and a consummate liar. Hunter tells Bobbi that he can't ever trust her... but he'll never stop trying to. Which is, granted, pretty smooth-talking, and the two end up stripping their tops and climbing into a vehicle presumably to rekindle their old marriage. It's actually a pretty nice development for these two, and I do like how they don't need to take up an entire episode to do it.

Meanwhile, Coulson makes a bit of a joke about how Fury could see five steps in front of the enemy despite being a one-eyed man, and then sends Skye and Triplett off on seemingly random errands delivering watches, buttons and ties in Hawaii... the button, apparently, would render Triplett sterile if he puts it in his pants which is a hilarious moment. And we get this speech from Triplett to Fits about how he trusts Coulson since he's the team's anchor (a nice contrast, again, to that bastard Mack) and it's always nice to see Triplett actually, y'know, existing after spending the last seven episodes basically in the background. Coulson's big plan apparently hinges on having the button and the watch delivered to two particular people who's going to shake hands and activate the EMP he's planted there, and deactivate the big satellite grid, giving them a window to hijack the satellite from a secondary facility in Australia.

Oh, and the tie is just a present from Audrey that Coulson wants to pick up from the dry-cleaning.

I thought the scene with Coulson handing out wacky errands is well done and absolutely hilarious, and then Coulson tells Fitz to practice installing some technobabble in under six minutes. We get a couple of scenes with Fitz just failing to do so with his one good hand, and it ends up being a bit filler-y. Thankfully, however, Triplett shows up with his speech, and Fitz later tells Coulson that he could do it in seven minutes... with his bad hand. Which is awesome that Fitz can finally contribute to the fieldwork even if it's something relatively tame and simple compared to his past duties and the practice-makes-perfect angle does let it sound credible.

Skye doesn't do much other than be mission control this time around, though she's apparently gotten herself to be the leader of SHIELD's computer hacker team. Triplett, like I mentioned before, fares much better, getting into a firefight and having that speech, though poor bastard sadly got himself shot in the chest and gets taken hostage while the Doctor operates on him.

Coulson and the Doctor get into a tense confrontation where things are revealed to SHIELD, and I'm going to assume that the Doctor knows where the city is (or will know, since it's unlikely that they won't piggyback Fitz's machine or whatever), and has told Whitehall, so it's going to be a race for the city for the foreseeable future. I'm also going to assume Fitz and Coulson tells Skye about their encounter with her less-than-sane father who wants Skye to be in the middle of all the chaos when they unleash the city, because a 'we'll keep this a secret because REASONS' plot has already been done before in this show. Several times.

I do like this episode. The flashbacks and the pieces of information regarding their backstories are pretty nicely woven together, and I do like how a lot of these villains -- Ward and the Doctor in particular -- have their own complex agendas which we aren't totally privy to at the moment. It answers a fair amount of questions and raises a lot more, we get to tie up Ward's little plot line with his crazy senator brother, and it's overall a pretty awesome episode to go with the last one. I mean, gee, answers!

I also do like how this episode is themed on second chances, with Ward getting a second chance in Hydra, the Doctor wanting a second chance to see his doctor, Fitz getting a second chance in the field, and Bobbi and Hunter getting a second chance at their relationship. There's also the subtle comparison between Coulson and the Doctor, how they're both chessmastering everyone present with crazy gambits and all that. It's a nice episode, and I like it.

The Flash S1E6 Review: Superman Homages and Flash Enemies

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 6: The Flash is Born

First up before anything else... Wells has been calling the Flash just that, and Barry's out-of-context opening monologues have been calling himself the Flash, and there's the Arrow's line in the pilot episode with 'saving people like a flash'... and finally, six freaking episodes in, Barry Allen is now officially the Flash.

Granted, like the Streak, it also has the additional meaning of running around showing people your nudity, but the Flash is, you know, the Flash.

Oh, this made me happy. I honestly thought we were going to spend the entire season calling him the Streak, which, while not only a phenomenally stupid name (even the in-universe characters comment on it), I also absolutely hate how Arrow's show call him 'the Vigilante' and 'the Hood' in the first season and a good part of the two. Not only are those names associated with other DC characters in my head and makes it hurt, it's also stupid to, you know, make a show about Green Arrow and not call him Green Arrow.

Between Arsenal and Flash, though, this past few days had been awesome in the name-obtaining department.

Anyway, the show's gotten a fair chunk of screentime devoted to Iris to make her less... hateable. I still dislike her because it doesn't really make sense that she's so adamant at writing her blog despite it putting friction between her and her father, as well as her best-friend-brother-figure. Really strikes me as selfish, especially since at the end of this episode Barry actually acquiesces and lets her do her thing. It's really stupid. And Iris herself is still pretty two-dimensional in my opinion.

We get something out of a Superman movie as the first scene as the Flash zips Iris up on top of a roof and gives her a... well, not an interview, but something. They talk a bit, the Flash tells Iris he doesn't like to be called the Streak, Iris fangirls over Flash... you know, Barry, if you really want Iris to stop blogging, you should probably be more forceful. We get a nice fun moment as Barry zips around and returns Iris to the coffeshop right after zipping off for the first time.

Let's talk Iris first. She obviously misses Barry, and at one point she even ignores Eddie's phone call just to talk to the Flash, which is really worrying. Lady's got a bit of an obsession. But this episode's villain of the week is something out of a Spider-Man movie in that he's Barry's old bully in elementary school, except he's gotten new superpowers now. The bully, based on Girder from the comics, shows up at where Iris works, having tracked her down from her blog (see, the idiot) and shamelessly flirts with her like the massive douchebag that he is. Iris goes all 'I have a boyfriend' and Girder just talks about how he's awesome and he's made the Flash run away and all that, and when Iris tries to warn her father (though she's not a very good liar, going all 'police ball' and everything) Girder just crushes her phone and drops a bundle of money into the tipping box.

You know, it would have been her arm or her neck that's broken if someone else other than an old school bully who wants to get in her pants had showed up at Iris' work.

Of course, like any sensible person, knowing that Girder is aware of her blog... Iris proceeds to ask for the Flash's help... in her blog. The stupidity of this I have no words for.

After a quick conversation with the Flash, she's later escorted home by police officers. That doesn't stop the Girder, though, because he basically blows everything up and abducts Iris and presumably kills those two poor policemen. And, again, it's fortunate Girder is a massive egomaniac who wants Iris to blog about him and maybe get a little comfy with him afterwards instead of some psychopath looking for revenge. You stupid dumbass, Iris.

She's standing up for herself later on, at least, refusing to back down and continues to do absolutely stupid things like sounding the alarm right next to Girder, and it's a miracle the dude hasn't beaten her to a pulp yet. She does manage to land the final punch onto Girder's face, so at least she's got that going for her. And she has enough dignity to apologize to Barry later on when the two meet each other at the end of the episode, so she's not completely hateable... and she's definitely the one responsible for spreading 'the Flash' name to the world, so she's got that going on for her...

But I still really don't like her. She's annoying, her stupidity got quite a few people killed and she isn't really interesting at all.

Barry's theme in this episode is anger management, and possibly a bit of conquering your bullies. There's certainly a bit of an Aesop theme going on in the flash episodes. And I thought it's a nice little contrast with this show's sister title, Arrow, in which Oliver never really visibly loses his temper, having been through the five years in hell and all that. After the little ego-trip with Iris on the roof, Barry heads off to stop this criminal who turns out to be a metahuman... and learns what happens when you punch metal. You break your arm. It's an absolutely painful-looking scene, and when Barry realizes that the criminal is, in fact, the bully from his childhood...

He basically gets even more and more angry. I do like how it's subtle, how he loses his temper only when Girder is involved. He's quite cool and chill when he's doing the investigation thing with Eddie, or when he's training with the robo-girder that Cisco built, but he completely flips off and zips around town when Iris tells him that Girder had confronted her. And that gets him... completely crushed by a rack filled with heavy weights.

And, oh god, that was an absolutely horrifying image of someone crushed by these heavy metal things. It's a miracle he somehow survived without any bones that break too much or whatever. It's a personal thing I cringe about, because every time I see someone weight-lift, I really am afraid of what will happen if the rack full of weights would fall down and crush someone. Now we know.

Barry and Eddie then get some nice bonding scene as Eddie, the very nice guy that he is, gets Barry to train in a little boxing and teaches him how to drive a punch properly and gets him to learn some control. We get a little bit of training before this via Cisco's girder-robot, but all that earned Barry is a dislocated shoulder. Cisco also does some simulation things about just how fast Barry needs to go, and we get a little flashback of adorable little Barry being taught a little about how to fight and knowing when to run by Joe.

Then there's the final battle, where Barry learns to fight smart, applying what Joe and Eddie taught him and just go zip around Girder and use his speed to his advantage. Though why Barry felt the need to hang on to that flagpole instead of letting go and super-speeding elsewhere, I don't know. Barry finally knows 'when to run'... except he's, you know, the Flash, and the Flash beats enemies by running. So Barry does run, zipping straight to Girder and punching him with a supersonic punch that's apparently so powerful it jars him back to normal.

You know, Barry, if you're going to run five miles away from the bad guy, why didn't you zip and bring the girl with you and get her out of harm's way? Jeez.

We get Barry apologizing to Iris at the end, of course, and accommodating her big interest for the Flash, though he suggests the name to Iris himself, which is sort of cool.

Also during their conversation we get references to a man who's on fire, but doesn't feel hot or something like that. Firestorm anyone? Granted there's like a gajillion other DC characters who's visibly on fire, but Firestorm has, y'know, actually shown up in this show.

We get a Keystone City reference somewhere in the episode too, I think.

And then Barry reveals himself and his identity to the Girder just to be petty and gloat a little and I thought that was an absolutely moronic move on his part.

Girder himself is a pretty fun villain, even if his personality is just your average bully. He's a big jerk, but he's certainly able to fend for himself, having the second-best track record amongst the villains so far in beating down the Flash a grand total of three times. I'm extremely bummed, though, that they changed Girder from being this rusty, dreadlocked, bearded giant man made out of rusty girders and has been turned into a Colossus ripoff, though. It's a bit irritating.

Also, Girder never gets called that, not even by resident villain-namer Cisco... which is odd, considering this episode's big thing is Flash getting his comic codename. Cisco instead calls the training robot dummy Girder... maybe somewhere in the future, when the show's got a larger CGI budget, the two Girders will fuse and become the comic version of Girder? I can only hope.

Though we're finally getting another proper Flash villain! It's nice. As much as I like them, none of the other villains that Flash has fought, other than the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold, have been Flash villains. Plastique and Wade Eiling are both antagonists of Captain Atom, Multiplex is Firestorm's enemy, Simon Stagg is an antagonist of Metamorpho and the Mist tussles with obscure superhero Starman. Girder, on the other hand, is very definitely a Flash enemy. So yay for that.

Girder's pretty douchebaggy, especially in his scenes with Iris, and has this narrow-minded big ego where he wants the whole world to know about him... but only tries to compete through a blog. I thought it was rather over-cheesy that Girder brought Iris to their school, right onto the lockers that he fought Barry at, in fact. But while he's not really awesome beyond being a super-tough guy, I do like the Girder. He's apparently fallen into molten metal during the night of the change. Girder ends up being imprisoned, making him the second inmate of STAR Labs after the Mist.

The action scenes have been pretty punchy-punchy despite Girder being a metahuman, though I guess it can't be helped. Girder's powers doesn't really lend to big flashy fight scenes. We get a fun fight scene with Eddie and civilian!Barry apprehending a thug and Barry needs to take a hit. I liked that scene. The scene where Flash just runs several miles away and then zooms towards the school, breaking like every single window in his way (just how much monetary damage did Barry cause?), and doing this Supersonic Mach Punch on Girder's face is equal amounts cheesy and awesome. And you know what? I'm fine with cheesiness and ridiculousness. It's a freaking superhero show, and I love it. It's fun. It's really, really fun to watch.

Eddie gets a bit of a spotlight here as well, finally getting some scenes that turn him out of the 'handsome love interest' role. Eddie helps Barry and is genuinely a nice guy, and actually helps Barry let off some steam. Eddie also reveals how he's bullied as a kid and he used to be short and fat. We also get some Eddie-Barry team up as they take down this dude who runs away... he's becoming relatively likable.

He's also asking questions about metahumans, first during the battle with Girder and seemingly being aware of the oddity of Barry getting where he was so fast. And considering Iris is all blogging about the Flash, I don't think it'll take long before Eddie does his own investigation.

Of course, thanks to his name, Eddie Thawne is one of the two primary suspects for being the Zoom/Reverse-Flash creature, but he's so nice! And he, like, hangs around with Barry and everything! Granted, if he's a time-traveling Zoom getting Iris is certainly in line with his M.O., and if he's the second Zoom (Hunter Zolomon) that's initially a cop in present-time, he has that one's backstory. Or he could just be some guy.

Whatever the case, I'm starting to like Eddie.

Caitlin and Cisco have a bit less screen time, but they're all pretty funny scenes. Freaking Caitlin's actually jealous! She's all pissed off at Barry seeing Iris and giving her not-interviews, and she's stalking Iris' blog like a jealous girlfriend. Man, Caitlin's fun. That scene with the dislocated shoulder, where she deals a world of hurt to Barry... Cisco's a lot less fun this time around, actually coming off as a bit of a shallow ditz, being more 'YAAAAY SUPER SONIC PAWNCH' than actually worried about Barry's wellbeing. And there's the whole idiocy about the girder-robot that dislocated Barry's shoulder, of course. We get some extra fun moments with the whole bully thing and whatnot, and I thought that the team has pretty good chemistry.

The fourth member of the team, Harrison Wells, continues to be cryptic. We get him being absolutely furious at Barry almost getting himself killed, which we know is a big deal for him. And he makes this 'a man of steel' joke with a knowing laugh... and I honestly laughed so hard at that point I had to pause the episode. But that's the extent of Wells' involvement with the main cast.

The big B-plot of this episode is Harrison Wells and Joe West. Joe basically talks up to Wells and just talks to him, seemingly recruiting this entirely-possible-Professor-Zoom-candidate to try and solve the mystery of Nora Allen's murder, asking about him regarding the possibilities of someone with about Barry's powers. Wells acts confused, of course, because the particle accelerator wasn't around back then, but Joe pressures Wells, who happens to be in Central City around the time Nora was murdered. Their conversation turns a bit sour and Wells tells Joe to look up Tess Morgan or something like that?

Well, apparently Wells had a wife who died in a car accident and he moved Central City to try and get away from her memories. Joe shows up and apologizes to Wells. These two characters really play off each other well, I must say. There's a fair bit of dialogue being exchanged, but I guess those are the ones that are the most important...

And for the moment, Wells seems free of suspicion, except, you know, we know he's faking his crippled-ness, he has some knowledge of the future and has this newspaper excerpt and technology from the future, is almost certainly behind the making of Barry... and yet he has a wife who died before, so he's been around ever since the time of Nora's murder and even before that. Granted he could've just been Professor Zoom who showed up earlier in the timestream or something, or making this all up... highly interesting.

After all, isn't it convenient that Nora Allen and Tess Morgan died at around the same time? Might be something more sinister at play.

And at the end, with Joe working on the case and crossing off Harrison Wells from the suspect list... freaking Professor Zoom (or, well, the Reverse-Flash, whichever name this thing is using) just zooms in and runs around the room and just fucking screams with that hollow face and those black eyes and puts the fear of the devil into Joe. I must say, they made Zoom look freaking terrifying here. He's already unsettling in the comics with his trademark black eyes, but here, he literally feels like a damn ghost-monster deal, just zipping into Joe's house and just showing how easily he could murder Joe. Zoom just spirits away nearly all of Joe's evidence and research on the Nora murder, which is certainly a practical way to do it, and threatens Iris' life if Joe doesn't stop digging into this.

Man, poor Joe.

Certainly interested to see a lot more about the whole Zoom situation. Lots of theories. Wells and Eddie are the two main suspects, though there are really some points that kind of strike both of them off the suspect list. Eddie's too nice a guy, for one, and the name seems to be a red herring, or that he'll be the second Zoom, the present-day Hunter Zolomon instead of the Zoom from the future. Wells would be phenomenally stupid to alleviate suspicion on himself and then attack Joe right afterwards, though he could just be banking on Joe having the same logic as I do and cross him right off the suspect list. And there's the story which may or may not have been fabricated and manipulated... and this all is just going off what I know of the comic's Professor Zoom and the other Zoom, which the show might or might not follow strictly.

Though this episode has thrown off my old theory about how the happening in Barry's childhood is caused by Flash and Zoom traveling back in time in the midst of a battle or something along those lines, because Zoom is definitely well and alive in the present time and has his own agenda, it seems.

Regardless, this was a pretty great episode. Certainly looking forward to more Flash villains.

One Piece 768 Review: Recaps and D's

One Piece Chapter 768: The Trigger Back Then

Cover page's still meandering about Jinbei investigating this stupid rain of buildings or whatnot. I cannot honestly say I really give a shit anymore unless there's some huge plot twist and it turns out to be, oh, the third Navy Admiral or Kaido or Shanks or someone doing it just for shits.

Thankfully we don't see more flashbacks. It was a great flashback, but it's high time we get back to the present.

We get a short half-page recap of Corazon's death as we cut back to Law's fight against Doflamingo. Law activates Room and throws a rock behind Doflamingo, using Shambles to switch places right before Doflamingo string-slashes down onto where he is. That's pretty cool. Law trash-talks Doflamingo, who definitely isn't smiling now, going all 'what do you think of the name D?' and 'I just found out you're a Celestial Dragon!' and all that stuff, driving Doflamingo mad, and I thought it was pretty cool how Law is just egging on Doflamingo, who's apparently known to be able to play to other people's emotions and just make them get pissed.

Law tries to stab Doflamingo with his sword, but Doflamingo stops it by arming his hand with that Busoshoku Armament Haki, and just grabs the sword and pulls Law towards him. He tries to slash Law right in the face with these strings and that panel where he suddenly turns looks pretty cool. He's all 'do you think you can take the head of someone descended from the gods' and seems to go in for the kill... but Law activates his own Busoshoku Haki and it's pretty freaking cool! I don't think we've ever seen Law use Haki before, and definitely not Busoshoku Haki, and apparently Doflamingo hasn't either, judging on the surprised expression on his face.

And then Law goes 'I am a D as well', which makes Doflamingo like super-duper pissed.

Though Law guarded against it, the force of Doflamingo's string slash thing is apparently so powerful that it cut a visible chunk of the palace away.

We cut away from the fight and get a few panels of what's going on around the city, with people still fighting and burning stuff. For a moment I thought that Birdcage is being withdrawn, and it might actually be, depending on what that sound effect in Japanese means. I'm confused. That panel could go either way.

We cut to Viola and King Ricky, and Viola's using her Giro Giro Fruit powers to see everything and bring the King (and the audience) up on what's happening. Law is fighting Doflamingo, and apparently Luffy was thrown down to the floor below? I honestly didn't remember this detail happening, nor do I have a clue where Luffy is at the moment. Hopefully we can get a break from the standard main-character-takes-down-arc-villain and have Law get his well-deserved revenge on Doflamingo!

We get a short glimpse of the marines (not Fujitora or Bastille, though) trying to put out the fires, and the two samurai tending over the wounded Usopp. Which is good, because other than Franky-vs-Senor and Zoro-vs-Pica I'm kind of confused as to where everyone else is. Granted it'd be better if we get a little more conventional and actually show some of these other fights, those two in particular, as actual chapters, but I guess it's all been done and we're doing this setup right now? We get this cool two-page spread as Viola describes where the members of the Donquixote family are all located.

Except, you know, Sugar, who's taken out by the power of Usopp's face, and Buffalo who's I guess dead? We haven't seen him ever since Kairos pulls that awesome-looking neck-breaking suplex on him and throws him out of the tower. I hope he doesn't, because he looks funny.

We also get epithets for most of the Donquixote pirates, and what I presume to be the official English spelling of their names. "Free Swimmer" Senor Pink is guarding the facility. "Living Statue" Pica is on top of the giant statue that used to be him, of course. Oh, and it's Pica instead of Peeka or Pika or Pikachu or whatever. Diamante is on the fourth level, Doflamingo and Trebol are on the highest-level floor... what happened to Trebol, anyway? Gladius is on the third level, and Lao G, Machvise, Baby 5 and Dellinger are on the second level. We get a few details about these two, with Lao G apparently being a practitioner of the 'Chicken Technique' which is hilariously ridiculous, and Dellinger... being a half-merman of fighting fish descent, which is not something I expected! I guess all those fighting fish things from before ended up being useful after all.

Viola goes all 'the end of the battle isn't far off', and I am honestly worried that all the things that've been built up to are just going to be montages of Zoro, Franky, Kairos and everyone else taking down their marks. On one hand, I can understand that this arc's been dragged on for a fair bit, and the writer probably regrets introducing so many characters a bit, but on the other hand I'll absolutely welcome if the fights against Gladius, Pica, Senor Pink and all the rest are properly explored.

We get a little two-page montage. First we see Senor Pink protecting a cat from being hit by Franky's punch and giving it this giant thumbs-up, and Franky wipes away those manly tears with the extendable hand from his giant cyborg hand like it's some kind of super-touching scene. Man, I love Franky. He hasn't gotten a lot of screentime. We then get a bit of Zoro and Pica, still swordfighting. Bartolomeo has apparently recovered and has erected a barrier to cover 'Robin-senpai' who's running up the barrier stairs, while Cavendish has made his way through the troops all the way to Gladius... so their fight is just starting? Huh. I had a feeling they already started the fight some time ago, but oh well.

Diamante and Kairos seem relatively well-matched, and Diamante does this 'Army Bantera' thing which seems to do something to the ground, and we don't really get to see the full result. Rebecca comments on the ground... yeah, good job not helping out your crippled father there, woman. Curious about Diamante's crazy ability and he's apparently able to use his rippling flag ability on things other than himself and his sword, so yay. We see the fucking Tontatta doing the Beelzebub style face-in-the-wall on a bunch of randoms and going off to rescue their princess... fuck the Tontatta. I honestly forgot they were in this arc at all. Man, the Tontatta could've been taken out and this arc would've been compressed so much better.

The next page is those characters introduced in the colosseum fighting with the Donquixote officers, which was mis-ordered in the first translation I read. We see King Punch (Elizabello, I think?) just punching. We then see Dellinger avoiding Demolition Cannon Ideo's explosions, and apparently Dellinger is still in the game, not taken out by... by whatever. I have a feeling he was in a bind last time we saw him. Machvise (this chapter confirms this spelling as opposed to Machvyse or whatever) uses his weight-altering powers to take down the giant dude Hajrudin.

We see Baby 5 fighting Sai, while her own hands have turned into sais. I thought this was a nice visual joke. But Baby 5, for some reason, is going 'what did you do', so maybe there's something else going on? Then Don Chinjao gets kicked right in the jaw by Lao G... that's one of the stronger competitors down there seemingly taken out, so these Donquixote pirates don't seem to be really pushovers, which is nice. We haven't really seen much of what Lao G can do, whereas Dellinger and Machvise have mostly been relegated into jokes during their little haphazard battle against Franky.

Freakin' Sabo and Koala are trying to evacuate the civilians, and Sabo! That's another character that needs more screentime. And I feel totally cheated we didn't get to see the full fight between Sabo and Fujitora. We get a bit of Viola talking, and then Fujitora's face.

Thankfully we cut back to the Law-Doflamingo fight, with Trebol apparently having pieces himself together after the events before we went into the flashback. Doflamingo gets completely pissed, trying to trash-talk Law and going all 'that D-is-the-natural-enemy is just superstition!' He's just lashing wildly with his finger-string things and Trebol shouts that Doflamingo's getting into Law's ability's range... and then Law brings his sword right into Doflamingo and does Injection Shot, the attack that Trebol was so scared of earlier.

Injection Shot pierces right through the side of Doflamingo's chest and straight through that silly feather boa thing, so that's definitely the worst hit that Doflamingo's taken all fight long. Pretty awesome. Law brings up some other dude's name, 'Hyaku', which I'm not sure is someone we've heard before. Law himself doesn't believe in all the name superstition, but he's going to kill Doflamingo regardless.

Overall still pretty entertaining. I'm fearful for the pacing of this arc, though. It has so much potential to be awesome, but there's just been so many things left in the sidelines. Kairos, Rebecca and Diamante... Zoro and Pica... Franky and Senor Pink... and whatever happened to Sanji, Brook and Nami, who meets that gigantic Big Mom ship? I think that hasn't been addressed. What about the Tontatta princess, or the Revolutionary Army, or Jesus Burgess being there, or freaking CP-0 who everyone seems to forget with? Hell, there's just too many things going on, and if it's not done right it's going to be hella annoying. But I have faith. Relatively.

For now I'm just enjoying the Law-Doflamingo fight.

Arrow S03E06 Review: Boxing Glove Arrow, Wildcat and Arsenal

Arrow, Season 3 Episode 6: Guilty

It's a bit of a slower episode, but thankfully the Roy-killing-Sara thing wasn't left on the backburner. On the other hand, it is a cop-out, which irritates me a shit-ton. On the other hand, the explanation for the cop-out isn't entirely bullshit and still opens up opportunities for Roy's characterization, so yeah. The episode's pretty well crafted, with all the multiple plot threads running throughout the episode interweaving seamlessly even though it is supposed to be a bit of a filler episode.

Let's talk about the flashback plot first, because there's less of it. Maseo and Oliver are still looking for China White (or Chien Na Wei, as Maseo insists on calling her). Granted it's phenomenally stupid to send the white guy to stealthily take out a dude in the middle of Hong Kong instead of the more oriental-looking Maseo, but these are the super-spies, so what can I say? That, of course, got Wei's courier killed. Anyway, Oliver and Maseo need to find out what the message that was supposed to be delivered, and after a game of memory with Maseo's kid, Katana (who makes it clear multiple times that she hates the gaijin bastard who's causing Amanda Waller to put a target on her family's heads) then shows up and grudgingly trains Oliver in some zen candle shit to get him to focus and wade through his subconscious memories and see what he missed.

The dead drop is a postcard that after some stegosaur steganography (what? Oliver made that joke) leads to some dude named Li Kuan Hui. There's really not much advancement in the plot here.

Of course, Oliver later breaks free from Hong Kong and returns to the island, and we know for certain that China White shows up alive and well in Starling City... they evidently failed, so what happens to Katana and her family? Will we ever see Katana cut people apart with a katana? Food for thought. It's these oddities that make the flashback scenes even worth watching, which is a good thing since all the Slade background stuff has been pretty much easy to pick out around halfway through the season, making a huge chunk of the flashback just showing and not really telling.

Anyway, the present-day sequences of the episode focuses jointly on Roy and Laurel, with Ted Grant being the guest star. With the flashbacks focusing on Oliver, and Oliver himself taking a relatively larger role this time around, it's not quite a spotlight the way Felicity and Thea were in the two previous episodes, but it's all well and good.

Anyway, Roy is still dealing with his PTSD dreams and he keeps thinking about whether he killed Sara because his memories are so vivid. Oliver takes notice of his lack of sleep and tells him to stay put while they investigate a group of murdered Culebra gangsters doing a drug deal and a serial killer that likes to write the word 'GUILTY' in blood. Roy takes advantage of this downtime to ask Felicity to test him for any remnants of Mirakuru, which comes out negative... and it's not brought up anywhere, but considering how afraid Roy is of needles, I thought it was nice that he's so bothered with it that he's willing to submit to a blood test and even pressures Felicity into doing it.

After some time while Oliver is out dealing with Laurel and Wildcat (more on them later) the tests come back negative, but... Felicity brings up this virtual autopsy program which she hooked up for Sara's body, and the angle and force and whatnot of the arrows that went into Sara was completely wrong for arrows shot from a bow... but would be consistent if they were thrown from a superpowered man like Roy. Felicity kind of has figurative balls, or trust, to break the news to Roy so calmly, I must say, because if Roy did still have Mirakuru in his blood he might snap and hurt Felicity. They rationalize it as Roy having one last episode of Mirakuru.

And after a bit of the serial killer plot, Roy immediately confronts Oliver and Laurel (who conveniently is around) and goes "I killed Sara". Granted Felicity claims the blood tests from the arrows are inconclusive, but the angle and whatnot does get explained by Roy doing it, and after the explanation of the dreams and the possible Mirakuru stuff, practically everyone buys it. To her credit Laurel doesn't slap Roy right in the face, but Roy heads off to cool himself before showing up at the climax. I thought it was a rather interesting decision, and it's relatively uncomfortable situation if Roy did kill Sara in a fit of Mirakuru-powered rage. Does he go on trial? Granted Roy does seem ready to stand trial for Sara's murder but it's still not quite fair... to either Laurel or Roy whichever choice is chosen. Of course that turns out not to be the case, sadly.

Roy shortly afterwards shows up in a motorcycle pursuing Isaac Stanzler after Oliver gets knocked down. Presumably either Diggle or Felicity contacts him? Roy comes to the rescue and engages Isaac mano a mano while the others rescue Laurel and Wildcat. Roy finally, finally makes that crazy air flip work after it failed so miserably against Nyssa. And we get some nice hand to hand combat between Roy and Isaac, who himself is also pretty conveniently (but pretty nicely, thematic-wise) a sidekick who was abandoned. Isaac wants to get into Roy's head by saying stuff like how Oliver will abandon him, and how Roy's just a weapon in Oliver's arsenal. But Roy does this awesome judo flip thing, knocks Isaac down for the count and asks Oliver not to abandon him.

All that said, though, Roy is still ready to hang that awesome red costume and turn himself in. As Roy repeats that 'weapon in your arsenal' quote, Oliver suggests that Roy adopt the Arsenal name... which is oh god yes. I'm actually honestly fine with either Speedy, Arsenal or Red Arrow, all three of Roy Harper's comic-book codenames in order of which he adopts them... Red Arrow makes a lot more sense considering the situation, and Speedy sort of does since he could be doing it in honor of Thea... except Thea isn't dead yet, and she's likelier to claim the Speedy mantle. But Arsenal, well, I do like that name as well so I can't really complain.

ARSENAL

Anyway, Oliver tells Roy to do this candle meditation thing, which nicely ties in with the flashback which seems to just be a Chekov's Gun to lead to this thing while slowly slugging on the Hong Kong plot. But I do like how both the flashback had themes about the subconscious, about memories and stuff, which fits nicely with Roy's situation at the moment. Roy finally flashes back to that time when he stabs an arrow through a police officer's chest back when he's still an angry Mirakuru-powered guy, which he doesn't remember... and Sara was present when he did so, and his memory kind of jumbled everything up.

So Roy didn't kill Sara... but he did kill another man. We won't have to deal with the big convoluted situation if Roy was responsible for Sara's murder, sadly, but it seems that our newly-christened Arsenal will need to deal with having murdered someone before, which is a trade-off I'll grudgingly accept.

The Roy stuff interests me a shit-ton more than the others, but there's still the main plot to talk about. Basically Team Arrow is hunting down a serial killer who's framing Ted Grant, and all clues initially lead to Ted Grant. Oliver is also inherently suspicious and possibly a little jealous of Ted Grant, and all signs point to him as the murderer... except any comic-book fan knows Ted Grant as the extremely not-evil superhero Wildcat, so I never believed for a second he's the one behind it.

We get a bunch of these Culebra gangsters hung up like punching bags, and as Oliver tracks down the trail of bodies, he finds one of them in Wildcat's gym and he gets into a bit of a scuffle with Wildcat (who seems to break out a couple of nice moves himself), at which point he sticks an arrow into a boxing glove and does the Boxing Glove Arrow straight into Wildcat's face.

I cannot believe it. I simply cannot believe this show, where two seasons ago it was afraid to even call Oliver Queen 'Green Arrow', would actually show the boxing glove arrow being used on-screen. I would've been happy with them just showing it and dismissing it as a joke or a failed idea. Or, hell, even just mention it in-dialogue. But no, we actually get to see the freaking Boxing Glove Arrow shot at someone's face.

Best episode award goes to this one.

But prior to this, Wildcat has been training with Laurel, and showing that Wildcat isn't just a boxer but knows a bunch of other less orthodox fighting methods as well. Laurel is extremely defensive about Wildcat, though in her defense this time it's for a good reason. She's still a bit annoying, but as she's working off her rage and bitchiness she's... she's actually becoming a bit more like late season-two Thea where her rage comes from an understandable place.

Oliver doesn't think so, though, and confronts Laurel. Oliver doesn't like Wildcat, nor the fact that Laurel is training (or letting off steam, as she justifies it) with this fellow. Oliver, like, really doesn't like him. Especially since later on Diggle and Felicity find out that Ted "Wildcat" Grant, who really has the name Wildcat in-universe which is cool as hell, seems to have been involved with a murder of a drug dealer using a brass knuckle and a left-handed punch, similar to the M.O. of the Culebran drug dealers.

Oliver catches Wildcat in his lair, and apparently Wildcat was Starling's vigilante long before Oliver Queen was. Granted Wildcat's actor doesn't look that much older than Oliver, but hey, I don't really mind. Wildcat is kind of supposed to be quite old and experienced, though this time around he's retired. I do hope he suits up. With an actual cat mask, of course. Wildcat's inclusion in the show has been extremely welcome, mostly because he's one of the last characters I'd expect to be included in Arrow. But he's been pretty fun, and the fact that he's already a vigilante opens up ways that he could show up and kick ass in a future episode.

We get a bit of a fun dialogue where Wildcat assumes that the Arrow has a hideout just like him, and Oliver, already feeling a bit jealous thanks to Laurel sticking with Wildcat, goes 'mine's bigger'. Who says Felicity has a monopoly on these kind of jokes?

Laurel, Oliver and Wildcat decide to work together, but Oliver doesn't want Laurel anywhere near the dangerous stuff. Laurel, being Laurel, of course isn't happy, but seems like the training with Wildcat has burnt away her bitchiness because she isn't that much of one this time around. Laurel gets completely rattled when Roy confesses as apparently the one behind Sara's murder, but to her credit she doesn't, like, try to put a bullet in Roy's head the way she did Komodo. Wildcat eventually gets captured by the police right after they meet the actual murderer, and he kind of just goes with the flow.

Laurel manages to use her DA powers to get the innocent Wildcat out, and they pry the information that the man responsible is Wildcat's once-protege, Isaac Stanzler, who was responsible for the murder attributed to Ted Grant years ago. Wildcat even makes the comparison to Roy extremely clear, calling Isaac 'something like the red dude'. And like Roy, Isaac did a murder at which point Wildcat cut him loose... which certainly didn't bode well for stuff because Isaac's going around killing people and stringing them up like punching bags.

Isaac manages to get Wildcat and Laurel at gunpoint and holds them hostage in a car, and to her credit Laurel manages to stealthily contact Team Arrow... without the villain finding out as is common in these kind of situations. Isaac shares the backstory that the Culebran drug dealers caught up to him and tortured him for years, but before he can put a bullet through Wildcat's head, Diggle, Oliver and Roy show up. Roy beats Isaac as described above.

Oliver tells Wildcat to stay away from Laurel, and Wildcat gives Oliver the advice to retire and not really make the same mistakes with Isaac that he did. Oliver, on the other hand, retorts that Wildcat's mistake was not trusting his own sidekick and abandoning him. Granted the moral sort of frays apart upon closer inspection, since Roy didn't kill Sara, committed the murder on the cop without really knowing what he did, whereas Isaac most certainly doesn't have the excuse of a rage steroid. But the point still stands to not abandon your friends.

Diggle finally gets a bit more screentime, which is awesome since he's been absolutely shafted for the past few episodes. He's involved in the initial raid on the drug deal, he's patrolling with Oliver when Roy's told to stay put, and he totally drove around that van that tried to block the car that Isaac's forcing Laurel to drive. There's also the scene where he talks to Oliver about accountability, about how they can't have two rules, one for the bad guys and one for their team. It's a nice little sentiment, about justice versus abandoning a friend... one that sadly won't get explored since Roy is, y'know, innocent.

Also, Laurel is finally getting less and less irritating. She, of course, refuses to be this thing that's protected which is great, and with an actual trainer like Wildcat training her instead of running around in a ski mask like she did a couple episodes back is certainly a way to do so. We also get a little tender scene where Oliver and Laurel do this hug in the hospital and how Oliver is so 'I care for you and I'll protect you', and added to all the seemingly jealousy-inspired hostility which seems to hint that with Laurel adopting the mantle of Black Canary in the near future, maybe we're finally getting that Season One OTP with Oliver and Laurel? If so, that seems extremely harsh considering Oliver just told Felicity to piss off and that he can't have relationships.

Either way.

Quentin kind of shows up and does police commissioner stuff, I guess. He's becoming a lot less important compared to his season one and two days where he's actually a main character.

And the final scene shows this lady archer with a midriff who shoots Isaac and the two cops dead. She introduces herself as Cupid, who in the comics is a stalker with a huge, huge lady-boner for Green Arrow. This does give her a motivation to kill Sara, who would be easily perceived as a love rival, and she does shoot arrows... but then there's the whole can of worms about the arrows not exactly coming from a bow. Kind of curious to see how they deal with Cupid, since she's not a character I'm inherently familiar with from the comics. I just know she sort of exists.

Also in a nice move which I didn't notice at all, apparently the stalkery Cupid has shown up a couple of times in the backgrounds in this episode, implying that she's been stalking Arrow. Which I thought is a nice touch, even if I'm completely confused by her entrance, thinking that she's Nyssa or Laurel-with-a-wig until the camera really zooms in quite close onto her face.

So I suppose next episode's going to deal with Cupid, and paint her as one of the possible suspects for Sara's murder. It seems that Sara's murder and the whole League of Assassins thing is going to be the big plot for season three, and with more allies showing up for Team Arrow (so far we've got Diggle; Arsenal; Wildcat, who can very well suit up; a future Black Canary in the works; Merlyn and maybe Speedy as grudging allies... ) it seems to be shaping out as quite a large battle. There's going to be Ra's and Nyssa, and maybe we'll get a couple other League of Assassins characters... oh, Talia or Lady Shiva or whatever, and maybe they can spring Slade? I'm certainly quite excited for what's to come in the future.