Supergirl S05E04 Review: Bye James Olsen

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 4: In Plain Sight

Well, that was... uneven? There are some decent moments in this episode, but it's mostly sort of rushed. The Ma'alefa'ak storyline is relatively muted, mostly due to the fact that unlike most other emotionally-charged confrontations in Supergirl, we really don't quite have enough screentime between J'onn and Malefic for the conflict to really have the oomph it deserves. Maybe add another five or six episodes down the line and the two might actually develop into believable brothers, but we have had such a lack of proper interaction between the two that all we really have between them is Malefic's seething hatred and J'onn's guilt. It's not terrible, but the combination of the sub-par CGI in the opening fight sequence and the genuinely bland and repetitive "oh no Alex wants to bring out the Martian-killing gun" and "Malefic takes over another one of J'onn's friends" felt rather flat. It's enough of a plot to be stretched out over 40 minutes without being too tiring, but it's also something that I feel we've seen before, and, hell, done better in the show. There's also a wind-controlling metahuman/alien or something, but she's kind of just there, vaguely connected to the plot while not being a proper antagonist.

And Alex's girlfriend being this literal plot device that's able to detect Malefic while also turning Alex into a bit of an extremist in hunting down the bad guy feels a bit eyeball-rolling to me. I dunno. Kelly still feels flat to me as a character, more of a plot device than her actual thing, and I really wished that there was a bit more to her.

Speaking of characters that really could've been better... James Olsen! Easily the character that Supergirl struggled with the most, throughout its four-seasons-and-a-bit-more run, the show has never found anything good to do with James Olsen. Mechad Brooks tries his best for sure, but the character's gone from a bizarrely non-geeky adaptation of Jimmy Olsen to flat love interest to angsty vigilante to Lena's love interest to the People's Hero and... and they really never stuck and never really ended up finding anything good to do with James. I'm not sure if the actor wanted out or if the writers finally decided to shrug him off, but we get this random story about how James returns to Calvintown, find out that it's a town with one of those "everyone is corrupt" government, and then after meeting a poor kid called Simon Kirby whose mom is unjustly imprisoned, James decides to stay behind and be a champion of the people.

And it might've been a bit believable, but everything just happens so quickly through a series of expositions, and James Olsen's character throughout the past couple of seasons have been so inconsistent that when he decides to leave National City and start up a newspaper in Calvintown to champion truth or whatever (as impractical as that is), yeah, why not? I dunno. I never hated James Olsen in the show, at least I don't think I did, but it'd be hard for me to say that I'll miss him. Hell, even that farewell scene at the bar feels particularly muted for the CW superhero show that has been infamous for wearing its heart on its sleeve.

The other B-plot in the episode is Kara's investigation into William Dey, which also crisscrosses with Nia Nal and Brainy's little lover's spat. Brainy and Lena get a couple of neat scenes, and so do Kara and Nia, and I kind of appreciate that this doesn't end up overtaking the entire episode. At the end of the episode Kara sort of discovers that William Dey is involved in some huge conspiracy... but Dey claims that he's a good guy all along, that the douchebag persona is something he's cultivating to get everyone to hate him, that he actually think Kara's writing is the bomb (such an important thing to emphasize in that conversation that I groaned a little) and also he's a secret agent investigating Andrea Rojas. Okay sure whatever. I'm genuinely unenthused about this character or what he thinks about Kara's writing, or if this "actually super nice secret agent guy" is in fact another facade. The William Dey stuff is decently written and acted enough for me to not really complain about it, but like everything revolving around the CatCo takeover storyline, I'm just sort of passively consuming it until the inevitable Leviathan/Lena Luthor tie-in happens.

Speaking of Lena, she shows up to help out the Super Friends to fix the Phantom Zone Projector to beat Ma'alefa'ak in this episode after Alex goes a bit off the rails. Credit where credit's due, at least the mind-controlled-Alex/J'onn scenes are done well by the actors, and J'onn's heartbreak at being called out as a scum faker loser by the woman she loves like a daughter is well-portrayed. But the episode ends with Ma'alefa'ak teleported into Lena Luthor's lab, and it seems that this is where we're going? The slow buildup to whatever the fuck Lena's master plan is has been interesting, but I'm curious to see where Ma'alefa'ak comes into all this, and how Lena's going to get the martian's mind-altering powers into play.

Overall, though, a pretty underwhelming episode. There were some decent moments in it, but I can't say that any of them particularly appealed to me. James Olsen's sendoff was very muted; the Ma'alefa'ak stuff was repetitive; the William Dey stuff earned a shrug; the Lena stuff is toothless buildup and... eh. I'm not sure what direction Supergirl's heading towards now, but it's one where the episodes feel particularly oddly directionless. I'm not quite sure how to put it into words, but I feel like none of the half-dozen ongoing plotlines feel like they're doing anything for me, y'know?

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Simon Kirby's name is taken from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, two comic book authors whose thematic relevance here is that they're the co-creators of DC's first Guardian.
• After being hired as James' photographer, he's quick to call James "Chief", which is what comic-book Jimmy Olsen always calls Perry White. 
• The wind-making alien/metahuman lady is called "Breathtaker", sharing a name and powers with a minor enemy of the Teen Titans, a member of the mercenary supervillain group called the Hangmen.

The Flash S06E04 Review: The Monitor's Secret Sewer Base

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 4: There Will Be Blood

I've actually done a bit of a binge-watch of The Flash and Supergirl over the past couple of days, am halfway through Arrow and Black Lightning's backlog, and hopefully we'll be ready to finally review Crisis on Infinite Earths within the next couple of weeks. I plan to maybe also catch up to Batwoman and Black Lightning by that point? Despite the lack of DC superhero TV reviews on my part over the past couple of months, it's an event that I'm unreasonably excited for. I'm remaining completely unspoiled over the apparently insane amounts of cameo that Crisis on Infinite Earths has, and I do love that at least two of the shows are intrinsically tied into the build-up to Crisis crossover.

The Flash is honestly just buying time until we get to the Crisis crossover in episode 9, by building up Ramsey "Bloodwork" Russo as this arc villain while also giving a bit of a focus on a member of Team Flash in the episodes leading up to it, which is pretty neat thematically even if it doesn't really work as well as it should. Last episode it was Killer Frost, and this episode it's Cisco.

Fresh off the revelation that Barry Allen's going to die and there's nothing they can do to stop it, as much as Barry and Iris have accepted it, none of the others are quite as willing to do so. Ralph spends a good chunk of his minor screentime being kinda somber; Joe manages to hold his own until that amazingly powerful scene at the end (he's Barry's dad, after all), but the focus of the episode is how Cisco is taking it, and that's by trying his damnadest to find a way to save Barry. And, to be fair, this is a team who spent nearly every second of every episode of season four basically saying 'fuck you' to the thought of Iris being destined to die to Savitar in the future. So yeah, you can definitely bet that Cisco's going to do whatever he can to stop his buddy from dying.

While Cisco's all trying to find a way to stop Barry Allen from dying, Barry himself is trying to train Team Flash to be prepared to take over from him when he's gone, and in Cisco's case it's by distracting him and getting him to help save a life -- Ramsey Rosso's, in this case. The audience, of course, knows that it's a fucking bad idea and that Ramsey's an utter psychopath that's being set up to be the main villain of the season (or at least half-season, if we finish dealing with him by episode 9), but there's something that's so Barry Allen in seeing him basically see Ramsey as a sad, frustrated man who he can help. Plus, hey, Barry thinks that this would allow them to cure at least one form of cancer. Which I'm surprised isn't higher in STAR Labs' super-genius scientists' to-do list.


Also while all of this goes on, our new mysterious and suspicious dimension-hopping Nash Wells shows up, and he quickly uses his plot device powers of plot devicing to tell our heroes that McCulloch Technologies has the tissue-replicating serum that can cure every disease by giving people tissue-replicating diseases, apparently lifted from the Dominator homeworld (!) after that whole alien invasion a couple crossovers back. Nash makes a deal with Cisco and Barry, directing them and helping in the heist to take the magic drug, in exchange for Cisco building him some sci-fi cyber-whatsit-plot-device-or-other.

The heist is pretty standard stuff, nothing super exciting, but Cisco ends up pickpocketing the serum because he wants to use it to save Barry instead of giving it to some other dude. Which is selfish as all hell, but you can kinda see where it's coming from. Of course, the fact that the serum needs to be kept at precisely minus fifteen degrees means that it's pretty quick for Barry to figure out that, hey, Cisco randomly has a new freezer set at minus fifteen degrees. It's kinda ridiculous, but at the same time Grant Gustin and Carlos Valdez's acting are pretty great in this scene. Barry's full of disappointment, but Cisco's indignation and defense, and later shame at realizing what he's done, are all done very well.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on (and the Barry/Joe and Ralph/Iris storylines play out in the background), Ramsey Rosso, the random person that Barry's just trying to save because he's a god-dang superhero... is still doing psychotic experimentation with blood, trying to figure out just what made Mitch Romero tick in the previous episode. And in comes Barry with some alien goop and, hey, maybe we can avert this particular crisis, right? Except nope, the cure doesn't work for Ramsey, and he goes batshit insane... until he discovers that his metahuman blood-controlling abilities can cure him, but only if he drains blood from dead or dying people... and best of all, if they're in a state of fear. It's kind of over the top, but I'm not sure how much of it is actually true in the situation and how much of it is just Ramsey being a crazy mofo.

The episode's climax ends up with Ramsey going on a rampage in a hospital, killing a bunch of patients and doctors before finally culminating with him killing the doctor who failed to cure his mother. We get a neat stand-off between Ramsey against Barry and Killer Frost, and it's pretty heartbreaking to see just how much Barry's insistence that saving this random life is going to be worth it end up with Ramsey essentially becoming a supervillain. Some neat visuals in this scene, my favourite being the blood zombies crawling and gnawing behind Killer Frost's wall of ice. Ramsey's gone off the deep end at this point, ranting about how he's going to beat death itself and how his powers will mean everlasting life and whatnot. The episode ends with a bit of a downer with Ramsey revealing his identity as one of the more unhinged metahumans Team Flash has had to deal with, and it's... it's pretty neat buildup for the Ramsey storyline, I suppose, which will continue to run through the next couple of episodes. I think what makes Ramsey so much more effective as a villain is how organic his psychosis is built up, and most importantly, how he interacts with a couple members of our main cast. I didn't care much for him in his first couple of appearances, but his actor's certainly growing on me!

Oh, and speaking of the Crisis tie-in... Nash Wells is apparently on the trail of the Monitor (a Monitor?) and with Cisco's thing-a-ma-gig, it leads him to... a sewer in Central City. Because apparently CW's Monitor has something hidden behind a giant metal wall in the sewers or whatever?

Overall, though, a pretty solid episode. There's a sense of how a lot of these episodes are just biding time until we get to the Crisis, but honestly, I'm enjoying the "Flash has to train his buddies" storyline as well as Ramsey Rosso as a villain. Pretty neat stuff.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Swan Moon, the Dominator's home planet, is mentioned as the source of the plot device. It's a hilariously corny name for the homeworld of a race of alien invaders, and it's actually accurate to the comics!
• Killer Frost briefly talks about life "Post-Crisis", a term used by fans and DC comics itslef to refer to the state of the comics and mythology before and after the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. 
• Ralph dismisses the Sue Dearbon case by off-handedly noting that "it's not like we're going to get married". Sue Dearbon, of course, is Ralph's comic-book wife. 

Reviewing Monsters: Darkest Dungeon - DLC Enemies

A while back, we reviewed all of the monsters in Darkest Dungeon, but that isn't all the game has to offer! Like most newer-generation games, Darkest Dungeon comes with its own downloadable content -- two huge ones that add entire large areas with their own horrid monsters that we can talk about, as well as a couple smaller ones that add individual heroes and stuff.

A little disclaimer is that I've never played the newer ones, because I simply didn't have the time, but I have seen gameplay videos out there. I'm going to talk the most about the Crimson Court DLC, the DLC that I actually played... and one that I genuinely really do love the most out of most of the game's enemies.

CRIMSON COURT

Gatekeeper: I love the Crimson Court. Essentially, with the installation of this DLC, you unlock a brand-new segment of the estate, the titular crimson courtyard... and because it's a posh party and all, you can't enter unless you have an invitation. And you can only get these invitations by randomly meeting these Gatekeepers that spawn in other parts of the game, carrying a little writ you must take. I'm not sure if this is true to any actual vampire myths -- there are so many vampire myths I genuinely can't tell.

And if you can't tell, Crimson Courtyard's main enemies are... mosquito-men! But they aren't just mosquito-men, no. They're mosquito-men vampires, and it's honestly such a genius association that I'm surprised I didn't see more of mosquito-themed vampires. Hematophagic bats are such a small proportion of actual bats, and we don't really associate bats with blood-sucking outside of vampires... but mosquitoes? They suck blood and spread diseases and look so gross. And making them into these wacky aristocratic vampires is honestly just such a hilarious thing to do! Absolutely love the set of very human bloodstained teeth underneath that pointy mosquito stinger-nose, too.


Supplicant: The most basic enemies that's equivalent to the Bone Rabble or the Pelagic Groupers would be the Supplicant. It's a simple enemy, mostly relying on brute attacks and the odd blight effect or two, but otherwise is pretty simple to fight. Whereas a vast majority of the vampire-men in the Crimson Courtyard are mosquito-men, or at least have a better integration with their arthropod halves, the Supplicant is tied to a blood-sucking tick which... yeah, the poor Supplicant looks less like an insect-man monster, and more like a big, giant tick with a vertical mouth just chomped a poor dude's head off and is now piloting the rest of his body, giving a whole new meaning to "parasite". It's not a brand-new trope, and we've seen this in many other sci-fi settings, but I do like it! The idea that these tick monsters are of a lesser caste compared to the other vampires in the courtyard is also an interesting one.

Which, of course, is totally what the Supplicant is, because when it attacks, the massive tick creature opens its mouth and reveals the desiccated skull of its human host-puppet. A pretty cool and creepy monster, and honestly, I do like that they're drawing from other blood-sucking insectoids to help bulk up the vampiric hordes. You got to have your thralls, right?



Manservant: So most enemies in the Crimson Court have a 'super mode'. Most of the mosquito enemies have an attack called "The Thirst", where they stab a member of your party with their blood-thirsty proboscis, and upon doing so, they mutate into a more insectoid "Blood-lust" form. And also going The Thirst has a chance of infecting your party members with the vampiric curse. Sadly, this doesn't mean that you can play as the mosquito-monsters, which is a huge disappointment, but just drives your party members really crazy.

The Manservant is probably another basic showcase of the mosquito vampires, all of whom belong in the new "Bloodsucker" category. It is interesting how the game describes their two forms, noting that everyone in the courtyard has been transformed by the curse, but they go around pretending to be sophisticated attendants and going through the motions of a proper party, but if they get a taste of blood they permanently metamorphosize. In the Manservant's case, his butt-abdomen grows large and engorged, he grows wings and his fangs expand, and his two human legs are replaced with four buggy legs. Pretty spooky!

Also, the Manservant attacks with a butcher knife, and also shows off the lump of human meat under its tray as attacks. The Manservant, in battle, acts like an annoying support character, constantly defending its allies or unleashing stun and bleed effects.



Sycophant: The Sycophants show up everywhere in the Courtyard, and they are... giant mosquitoes that alternate between delivering The Thirst and turning your characters into infected, or launching barbs from its abdomen, which is honestly something that's more associated with tarantula spiders than mosquitoes, but these are giant vampiric mosquitoes, so I can't be too pedantic with this. Like the Manservant, the Sycophant has a "thirsty" and "bloodlust" form. I do like that despite looking like a beast, the Sycophant is as dangerous and as likely to inflict the horrible vampiric Crimson Curse on your troops as the more humanoid vampires.

I do like how it's a neat little subversion that these little non-threatening mosquitoes that honestly look like they belong in the same category as the maggots and spiders and ghoul-dogs in other areas turn out to be a higher class of monster than the humanoid Supplicant. Are the Sycophants just transformed mosquito vampires, then, like a classic vampire in bat form? Or are these larval mosquito-vampires?



Chevalier: Not all of the monsters start off fully humanoid, and the token 'big enemy' of the area, the Chevalier, could honestly serve as one of the area bosses and I doubt anyone would complain. And while it certainly does have the posh suit and the aristocratic wig of its kin, its lower body is that of a massive, multi-legged grub of some sort, like a maggot or a caterpillar, its mouth is a massive fanged affair, and it's got two massive mantis claws. The Chevalier also has the most pronounced antennae of all of the Crimson Court's enemies, too, which is something that I thought really helped in making him feel more beastly.

The lack of a proboscis-nose means that the Chevalier means that it can't spread the Crimson Curse, but it still looks pretty damn impressive nonetheless.



Esquire: Esquires should really be a rank lower than the Chevaliers if we're taking the names at face value, but I've personally found them to be more troublesome enemies than the relatively straightforward Chevaliers. The Esquires start off as pretty tall humanoids that alternate between these long-barreled guns or a rapier, with his attacks being called things like "Skewering Repartee"... but then the Esquire gets a taste of blood and mutates into the blood-thirsty form.

I really, really love just how hideous and mutated the Esquire ends up becoming, but the long, tapering insect-legs and insect proboscis translates pretty well to a more brutal version of his normal form's swordplay. He's also got a pretty awesome-looking scary fanged mouth, and follows the same "huge abdomen, four clackety legs" centaur-esque layout as the other transforming bloodsuckers. He's probably my least favourite out of the transforming ones, but that's just because the Manservant and the Courtesan both have so much more personality to them.


Courtesan: The Courtesan certainly has a massive, fancy dress. Other than her face, like the Esquire, she looks basically like a normal aristocratic lady, and her lack of weaponry certainly belies her resourcefulness. Her skills easily make her the most deadly and threatening of the non-boss enemies. In her more humanoid thirsty form, her skills just break and debuff your entire party, and she does so by essentially either singing or scolding your heroes for not exhibiting proper manners. But perhaps her most dangerous ability is to activate "Damsel in Distress", which forces an ally to 'guard' her and take all damage that would've otherwise gone her way, while also buffing said ally.

Of course, if she does get thirsty, she could very well join in the rampage herself, transforming to perhaps the most bloated mosquito monster whose abdomen is the largest of all the other basic mosquito monsters, tying in pretty well to her human form's massive dress. I'm not quite sure what that weird black-and-red bit in the center of her abdomen is, but honestly, that screeching angry face with an opened-up mouth looks pretty damn horrifying. Honestly, I'm just a pretty huge fan of all of these.


The Fanatic: Boss time! Or, well, mini-boss. You don't actually encounter the Fanatic here in the Courtyard dungeons, but he shows up in other dungeons if you enter with a member of your team infected with the Crimson Curse, ready to murder those that are infected with his gavel and holy light. The game characterizes the Fanatic as, well, someone compeletely consumed with religious fervor, being so single-minded that he'd rather burn a village's entire inhabitants at a stake at the slightest suspicion of dabbling in vampirism.

And, well... while a huge scary fanatical zealot that's ready to burn and crucify everyone in his path is unsettling, I really love the design of this dude. On first glance he looks like just a random priest-paladin-cleric bloke, but look a bit closer and you see he's basically pasted holy scrolls all over his clothes, has a ring of garlic and wooden stakes tied to one arm like a gauntlet... he's kind of uninteresting compared to the other mosquito and crystal monsters on this page, for sure, but he definitely has his charm.


Crocodilian: Apparently it's not just humans that got affected by the Crimson Curse, but the animals in the courtyard as well. One of the first mini-bosses you'll meet, the Crocodilian is a huge, mutated vampire crocodile. Which would be scary enough, but replacing a crocodile's reptilian legs with these unsettlingly tiny and out-of-place insectoid limbs is genuinely chilling. And while it's not as bizarre as the tiny bug limbs on a giant crocodile body, the fact that it sort of scrunches about seemingly like some sort of huge maggot or worm makes the Crocodilian feel extra creepy.  Throw in some additional holes on the crocodile's massive hunchback, which, of course, unleashes small swarms of insects... yeah, the Crocodilian really ends up checking the box for a lot of creep factors for me personally.

And... and honestly, what a bizarre creature this is. I've killed like a couple dozen at this point after going through the Crimson Court a couple of times to kill all of the bosses, and the Crocodilian always creeps me out.


The Baron: The first boss, the Baron, is one of the many aristocratic lords that visited your ancestor, once upon a time, and dined in disgusting revelry in the courtyard before they were all transformed by the curse into vampiric bugmen. And design-wise, while the 'humanoid' part of the Baron isn't too much different from the Esquires and Chevaliers and the like, the insect that the Baron ends up mutating into is this giant... THING. What is that supposed to be? A tick? A louse? Some sort of mite? The fact that the giant bug-abdomen has hollow red eyes on the sides of its abdomen, and a gigantic fanged mouth on the Baron's crotch adds a whole layer of unsettling creepiness to what would otherwise just be another bug-centaur man. Also, what are those arms? They look a bit too... malleable to be regular mantis bug-scythe-claws.

The boss fight isn't particularly difficult, but it can definitely catch players unawares. The Baron, as it seems, is a huge showman, and his fight will consists of "Acts" where he spawns a bunch of gross Pulsating Eggs and hides in one of them... and the eggs disables all healing, and you have to figure out which of the eggs contain the Baron. The other eggs contain extra enemies, and he just moves back and forth and unleashes debuffs, stress and moves around among his minions while waiting for the second and third acts.


The Viscount: The second boss, the Viscount, who is another bug-centaur, this time around seemingly based on another blood-sucking insect, like a thickly-armoured flea. Like the Baron, the Viscount could've been easily been handwaved as another boring bug-centaur vampire like the others if not for his relatively unique boss fight, which has him surrounded by a bunch of bodies in different stages of being eaten strewn all about the field, and you have to decide if destroying the bodies which the Viscount will consume to buff himself is a good decision or not, or if you just forego it and risk the Viscount buffing himself to bring him from full to zero as quickly as possible.


The Viscount honestly looked pretty generic to me initially, just being a fatter bug-centaur with extra armour plates and a bunch of weird grey tumours on his stomach... but then I actually fight him, and turns out that he's got a lot of creepiness with those gray bulbs. His skill "Hungry Eyes" opens these up to reveal a bunch of nasty spherical eyeballs inside, while another skill, "Served Rare", also reveals a screaming human skull on his stomach as well as two extra little mandibles that stab forwards.

It's also pointed out to me, but the biggest body (Bloodstuffed Body, on the rightmost here) is apparently that of an Esquire or a Gatekeeper, and this bit of cannibalism throws in another layer of creepiness to the Viscount.



The Countess: The final boss of the Courtyard, the Countess was the original source of the curse of the Courtyard, being a bona-fide vampire, and not that of the insect kind. And just like many other bosses in the Darkest Dungeon's various levels, she was one of the victims of your psychotic Ancestor... except, this time around, the Coutness herself was a match for your Ancestor, actually having arrived onto the estate grounds to feed herself. The Ancestor killed her, and... the entire party degenerated into... debauchery? I think they ate her body, or something? But the encounter was what ended up altered the Ancestor to the dark blood of the Darkest Dungeon itself, and the act of drinking her blood and being on top of, y'know, the burial ground of an Elder God ended up mutating everyone in the courtyard into mosquito vampires.

The Countess's first form is... she's basically like the Courtesan, except she covers her mouth with a fan and has this massive dress that tapers off into a gigantic insect abdomen that looks like a slug or something. Like any giant queen bug monster, she also injects random parasitic eggs into your party with her "Love Letter" attack. After you deal enough damage, the Countess enters a brief "flushed" state where she gets so angry she flaps her fans and, for whatever reason, becomes insanely vulnerable to your attacks.

And then she enters her final bloodlust form, and... and it's basically the same mutated mosquito centaur form that a lot of her minions have, but it's just so grotesquely hideous with way too many legs for any insect, a giant, malformed abdomen, random eggs popping up here and there, a mouth that just melds into her giant neck-thorax thing, and that cluster of grossness on her hunch-back. It's a pretty damn fitting final boss for this insect vampire queen.




The Garden Guardian: The true final boss of the Crimson Court turns out to be the courtyard itself, because the sheer amount of blood magic that's seeped into the ground has tainted the land itself, and it's animated this broken-down statue, bleeding blood from its non-orifices, and apparently filled with "cosmic hatred". It's a neat little design, for sure, and the idea of a curse that's so foul that it animates everything around it is great (something that's also explored with the fleshy interiors of the Darkest Dungeon, as well as the crystalline monsters of the Farmstead) but it's honestly just sort-of there compared to the rest of the Crimson Court DLC. It's not bad, it's just sort of foreshadowed.

Darkest Dungeon has a couple of smaller DLC's and a bigger one, but this is getting a bit long, and, well... I haven't played through the other DLC's other than Crimson Court because I simply haven't had the time. I did read them up on the wiki and the official websites, though, so at least I'll still cover their designs and what brief glimpses of the story I could gather.

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 9: All Capes Are Off

So finally, we get the champion battle against Leon and... and I dunno, it sort of feels a bit underwhelming? Like this odd cap-off after the huge Dynamax plot that interrupted the original tournament? Leon's still got a pretty kickass battle tune, though, and I do like how he starts off his fight trash-talking us, before tossing his cape away.

Leon has a very respectable level 62-65 party, which... is still a bit lower than mine, but on average it's a bit more of a challenge. I also sort of try and fight him without using dynamax, which actually does make it significantly more difficult. Leon's first Pokemon is an Aegislash, a Pokemon near and dear to my heart since my brief forays into competitive battling in Generation VI. It's sort of a cat-and-mouse game between my Boltund and Aegislash as I sort of try to predict when he's going to use King's Shield, but eventually a Crunch takes the Aegislash down.

Leon's second pokemon is a very respectable Rhyperior, which gets one-shotted by my Inteleon's Snipe Shot. Leon then sends out Haxorus, a mighty dragon... that faces off against my Frosmoth. It's a bit of a gamble, because Frosmoth's fragile as shit, but it somehow survives the Poison Jab (I'm not sure if it's one of those happiness/curry thing) to retaliate with a OHKO Blizzard.

Leon's fourth Pokemon isn't a familiar face -- it's Dragapult, and my god what is this thing, it's glorious! It's a weird floating ghost-newt whose head is tapered off into a stealth bomber and it apparently launches its babies at the enemy. This is our pseudo-legendary, and after looking at its design a bit I figure out that it's Dragon/Ghost thanks to that casper-like tail. Dragapult takes out my Frosmoth with a Flamethrower. My Boltund fails to take the Dragapult out with a Play Rough, and it takes my doggy out with a critical Shadow Ball. Eventually it's my Sirfetch'd that manages to survive a hit from the Dragapult and finish it off with a Steel Wing.

Leon's fifth Pokemon is the predictable type-effective starter, Rilaboom. Who is a leafy hairy gorilla with a drum! That's... that's actually pretty spot-on to what I expected Grookey to evolve into, actually. I have been saving my Corviknight for this, who drill-pecks the monkey to death. Leon's final Pokemon is the gigantamax Charizard. Inteleon comes out to play, outspeeds the Charizard and takes it out with a single Hydro Cannon.

Kind of anticlimactic, but that Dragapult was pretty dang troublesome!

And with that... that's the main story of Pokemon Sword over as everyone sort of hails me as the champion, having captured Eternatus, saved Galar from President Rose's vague plans of vague evilness, and defeated the undefeatable champion Leon! Roll credits! The credits has a neat little sequence of a little music show made by Rilaboom, Obstagoon and a bunch of Toxtricity, and it closes off with a bunch of Wooloos rolling across the screen. It's cute.

Also, I genuinely do find it interesting that the main story ends without us having the chance to even capture the cover legendary Zacian (or Zamazenta, if you play Shield), and the little showcase of the ruins in the Slumbering Weald does hint that the post-game story is going to feature mainly on the cover legendaries.

But... after that whole thing, I ended up going off to take a break and just sort of explore and catch Pokemon. After finishing the main story I also basically decided that my little anti-spoiler bit is over, and I decided to take a little gander throughout Bulbapedia and Serebii about all of the new Pokemon in the generation. My playthrough has basically shown me almost all of these, and I've been spoiled about the existence of some others, so here's my quick thoughts about the new creatures that I haven't met yet (or have missed) in my playthrough:

• I don't remember meeting Greedent at all, but the pokedex says I did. I guess it's just that unmemorable? Unlike previous early-game rodents, Skwovet's line really isn't as ever-present in Galar, huh? 
• I really should've known if I took a closer look through the in-game Pokedex, but it's kind of an odd feeling to get confirmation that, say, Eldegoss and Thievul and Grapploct and whatnot are just two-stage Pokemon. I sort of expected them to be a bit more, but at the same time I'm not like, super-disappointed. 
• Applin has an alternate-game evolution called Appletun and it's d'awww so adorable, this little apple pie sad dragon boy. I still am a bit iffy on the fact that we have apple-dragons, but I am also tickled by the fact that we have apple-dragons. 
• GALARIAN CORSOLA IS A DEAD CORAL! And its evolved form CURSOLA! Cursola is the perfect English name for a dead coral Pokemon. It's amazing. This entire line is Shield exclusive and I need it. It's a pretty great design and has got a neat lore. See what you have wrought, Toxapex. See the fruits of your labour. 
• Mr. Rime is... it exists. I don't hate it. It's got a mustache. 
• I'm surprised Galarian Darmanitan and Galarian Stunfisk didn't have evolutions. I half-expected Stunfisk to, actually. 
• So Galarian Yamask evolves into Runerigus instead of Cofagrigus? It's got some disturbing pokedex lore. The painting takes over the human ghost, what the fuck.
• I also looked up how to turn Yamask into Runerigus and holy fuck yeah there's no way I'm figuring that out, what the hell.
• There are way too many Alcremie forms holy shit. I thought Vivillon was over the top but this is over the top. 
• I completely missed Eiscue. This odd ice cube penguin is apparently Stonjurner's version counterpart, and both earn a solid 'wut' from me. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get used to them. I like a vast majority of the creatures in this generation, but I'm not sure if I'll ever really ever get used to these two. I don't even find them "cool I guess in a way" the same way some of the more iffy past designs do, y'know? 
• I've seen all four fossil combinations and they are truly unholy, and I'm actually surprised we don't get a 'purified' form for any of them. 
• Dreepy and Drakloak are neat! In addition with Dragapult, they're a very solid pseudo-legendary line. 
• No legendary trios, or any other 'bonus' legendaries outside of Eternatus, Zacian and Zamazenta. So I guess we're having a "many legendaries, only three legendaries" thing alternating then? Generation V and VII had a fuck-ton of legendaries and Ultra Beasts respectively, whereas VI and VIII had a minimal amount of them. 

There are also a fair amount of new Gigantamax forms that I haven't seen quite yet:

• No Gigantamax forms for any of the Galarian starters or legendaries, which is surprising!
• Also no Gigantamax form for Frosmoth! I know G-Max Butterfree exists, but you'd think that the Mothra reference would've been an obvious one. 
• Likewise, I'm surprised Hydreigon didn't get a G-Max form. After being one of the few pseudos to be cheated out of a Mega Evolution, you'd think that they'd give ol' three-heads a kaiju form. 
• G-max Kingler is unexpected, glorious, looks like a wacky mutant deep-sea Alaskan King Crab and he's got a glorious mustache and I love him. I didn't quite realize just how much I like Kingler until this moment. 
• I actually saw G-Max Lapras in some publication material, and apparently Gordie's mom uses one in the Shield version. It looks neat. I like the little musical note aura it has around it. 
• Regular Snorlax blocks the route. Gigantamax Snorlax IS THE ROUTE.
• Gigantamax Orbeetle is a fucking ladybug UFO and it's so stupid but so awesome at the same time. Honestly, Orbeetle is low-key starting to become one of my favourites of the region.
• Gigantamax Appletun and Flapple are the exact same thing, and it's basically just, uh, Applin poking its head out. I'm not a fan, and I prefer all three of the non-Giga forms over G-max Appleworm. 
• Gigantamax Melmetal and Toxtricity are still unavailable and no one's got 3D models of them yet, apparently. From the sprites, Toxtricity goes four-legged and looks pretty badass looking as this monstrous giant lizard, while Melmetal, uh... goes super-rigid or something, I dunno. 

I've also been capturing and evolving a bunch of the creatures I have in my box as I go through the Wild Area. My feelings about the raid Pokemon still stands and I still don't really like the raids, particularly how repetitive they've became. The fact that you actually have to grind through them to get some of the best resources in the game (EXP candies; powerful TR's; resetting the dens to spawn gigantamax pokemon) doesn't help my feelings either, but I've simmered down just a little. I do plan to at least obtain a Gigantamax Orbeetle, Kingler, Centiskorch and Butterfree in my collection, but I'm not sure if I'll last that long or if I'll just give up in frustration. 

It's also genuinely interesting seeing the sheer extent of the Pokemon they kept for Galar and the Pokemon that they didn't keep for Galar. I actually do respect the Pokemon Team a bit that they keep a relatively varied cluster of selections, instead of just picking the most marketable ones. I do really like the random encounters with the overworld pokemon in the Wild Area, too -- randomly meeting a Vikavolt, or a Steelix, or a Gardevoir, or a Drednaw, or a Ribombee... all neat stuff.

I tried to do a couple of the G-Max raid battles, but the Drednaw and Butterfree I beat ended up breaking free of their pokeballs after all the effort I put in to sit through all the cutscenes of AI trainers bungling their turns, while the battle goes on and on with the stupid barriers and whatnot. Y'know, I probably wouldn't have minded it if the fights were actually interesting, if there were actual moves or strategy involved. Say what you will about mega evolutions or totem pokemon or whatever, they were a lot more exciting than the raid battles here. I've said my piece in that previous segment, though, so eh.

I've also taken to re-exploring some of the earlier areas and going through Galar Mine 2 and Route 3 with surfing abilities. It doesn't quite unlock a whole slew of inaccessible secret areas in the same way that older GBA/DS era games did, but I did appreciate that they at least programmed in some extra little areas for exploration. I've also been training up my Toxtricity, Orbeetle and Toxapex. Out of the B-team, I think I like those three the most, although Galarian Weezing, Grimmsnarl and Obstagoon do give those a run for their money. Orbeetle's a bit irritating to use due to its defensive stats, but Toxapex's fun and Toxtricity's huge sound-moves-boosting ability allows him to rock out with Boomburst and his signature move (?) Overdrive, allowing me to see awesome animations while also dealing a ton of damage.

Anyway, after that, I ended up going back to the Slumbering Weald, where Hop's just sort of hanging out and looking at the shrine and stuff, thinking about... stuff, recent events, and what he's planning to do in the future. This being Hop, this ends up leading to a battle with his significantly leveled-up team, all of whom are around level 60. It's still the same ol' team of Dubwool, Corviknight, Cramorant, Pincurchin, Snorlax and Cinderace, though, so after my Sirfetch'd Swords Dances twice, it just literally sweeps through the entire team. Yes, even the birds.

It's at that point when Professor Sonia shows up, and apparently she's written a book about our exploits... and asks if we're returning the rusted weapons. We apparently do so, but then surprise random new antagonists out of nowhere! What is this nonsense, Bleach? It's a pair of dapper gentlemen with hairs modeled after a sword and a shield, which, uh... frankly, is pretty dang ridiculous even in Pokemon character design standards. They're called Squidward Swordward Sordward and Shieldbert, and they are apparently the descendants of the ancient Galarian kings and they're oh-so-terribly-miffled that us mere plebians dare claim the glory that's rightfully theirs in defeating Eternatus, quite quite. Absolutely love the random mention of how they totally wrote a scathing, one-star internet review for Sonia's book because of how inaccurate it was in the eyes of royalty. My god, these guys are certainly extra, aren't they?

Shit, y'know what? In like, two or three conversations, these guys end up feeling so much more punchable than any other character in the game except for Bede, and they talk up a game like they're going to plan... something or other. They make for better antagonists than the vague Rose or the toothless Team Yell, as ridiculous as they are. Time will tell if they will last long enough to leave an impression, but after laying down some posh-as-fuck smack talk, they fight! And something that genuinely caught me by surprise considering the tendency of this game? The lack of healing between the Hop and Sword Dude fight! Surprising and very welcome.

Sordward fights me, while Shieldbert apparently beats up Hop off-screen (to be fair, I just beat up his team), and despite only having four Pokemon, Sordward actually poses a decent amount of a challenge, and I do really love that his team is based around 'knightly' Pokemon. His Sirfetch'd actually takes mine out with a new move called "Meteor Assault", which I think is like a Hyper Beam style move? Presumably it's Fighting-type? It takes my Sirfetch'd out in one critical hit, but when it's recharging my Corviknight murders Sordward's Sirfetch'd. Swordward's next Pokemon is a Doublade, which my Centiskorch murders with a Fire Lash, and then my Corviknight deals with his Golisopod. Sordward's final Pokemon is a Bisharp, which survives my Centiskorch's Fire Lash and returns fire with the 4x effective Stone Edge, but gets taken out by... uh... someone else in my team or whatever.

Anyway, Swordbutt and Shieldjerk bugger off from the Slumebring Weald, having stolen the Rusty Shield from Hop and is off to do... some evil scheme or other, presumably involving corrupting Zamazenta. I dunno if I'm just so ready to latch on to any story with better build-up than the silly Chairman Rose one, or if this is just so much better, but regardless, I am excited to experience the post-game story!

Random Notes:

• Apparently, Eternatus's weird spiral-UFO form is called an "Eternamax" form and while it's registered into the Pokedex, as of now there's no way to actually access it in-game. 
• I just recently traveled to the "Lake of Outrage" sub-area of the Wild Area and it's pretty hilariously named. 
• The sheer amount of random larger Pokemon like Mudsdale and Crawdaunt and Bewear that'll simultaneously pop up into existence in Axew's Eye is a great visual treat. 
• There's a G-Max Snorlax event going on at the moment, but I'm not sure if I need the Nintendo Switch online membership stuff to make G-Max Snorlax spawn. Not that I'm super-enthused to hunt it down, mind you. 
• I got a G-Max Charmander from Leon's room, because he leaves one for me. So I guess some Pokemon are just able to Gigantamax since birth, like this Charmander? Bede might not be a hacker, I guess, and his Hattena might just be able to G-max since birth like this little Charmander.
• There's a random dude in Motostoke who tells me to see him after we become champion. Apparently he is a move tutor for a mighty base-140 special Steel-ype move called Steel Beam. This is, like, the fan-made move from a Corocoro magazine or something, I guess? \
• I'll try and get the first "Gotta Review 'Em All" article for Generation VIII somewhere up around early February or thereabouts. I'm still a bit baffled how I'm going to order this since we've got both Galarian forms that are just standalone, as well as Galarian forms that evolve into brand-new Pokemon. It'd feel odd taking pokemon like Runerigus and Cursola and Sirfetch'd out of the numbering system, but at the same time it'd be a bit odd to cover the Galarian forms separately with the knowledge that I'm going to talk about their evolved forms in the next page. 
• And that's not counting Gigantamax forms either! At least unlike Generation VI, a significant amount of native Galar Pokemon gets to show off their Gigantamax forms, but it does make it a bit confusing whether I'm going to cover them all in a single page like I did mega evolutions, or if I'm going to lump G-Max forms with their base forms.
• And I also kind of want to do a once-off revision of all of the previous Gotta Review 'Em All segments -- I feel like I didn't quite get into the groove of actually reviewing the creatures based on their design and concepts until I'm all the way into around Generations IV-V, and I do feel like I might have to take a look back and slowly do a bit of a re-review and rewrite of some of them. In particular I feel like I ended up being a bit of a GEEWUNNER with some of the first-generation Pokemon, and might be a bit unfairly too harsh on some of the Generation II and V creatures (and mega evolution) in particular. I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do so, though, and I think I'll do Generation VIII first. 

The Flash S06E03 Review: Stunted Emotions

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 3: Dead Man Running

We're going to do these a bit faster so that I can get to the gosh-darned Crisis on Infinite Earth episodes, because I'm so so behind on stuff. This one is... this is a bit of a relatively tame episode which doesn't really do a whole ton. The main storyline mostly revolves around the crew trying to deal with the metahuman-of-the-week, dark matter fueled zombie-man Mitch Romero, who the audience knows is brought to life by Dr. Ramsey Rosso's wacky experimentations. The episode also brings Ramsey into contact with Barry Allen for the first time, and... and there's some of Flash's typical heavy-handed theme of "a man who knows he's dead but still continues to move". The main villain's a literal zombie; there's the constant theme of being afraid of a terminal disease in Ramsey's story; there's Barry knowing he's going to have to sacrifice himself in the future; there's Killer Frost's absolute panic at finally accepting that she is allowed to have a life just as she's told that she might die very close in the future.... and it's all well and good, and the acting's great as usual. It just feels sort of muted, and the episode mostly feels like it's just obviously there to buy time until we reach either the inevitable clash with Ramsey Rosso's Bloodwork persona, or with the Crisis, whichever comes first. 

Ramsey's an interesting and well-acted antagonist, at least, skirting the line between understandable desperation and general dickishness, and it does play off pretty well with Barry's more self-sacrificing mentality, but I don't think we explored it enough nor is it strong enough to really last for more than a couple of episodes, and I pray we don't stretch this out the way we did the Cicada or Thinker nonsense over the past couple of seasons. I do like how everyone just thinks that Ramsey's a desperate man trying to steal dark matter, though, when in reality he's experimenting with far, far more dangerous stuff like the dark matter goop reanimating Mitch Romero's corpse. Flash and Killer Frost manage to use a generic "overload the bad guy to take him out" method to take out Romero the zombieman, but clearly Ramsay's learning from this to presumably control his own new metahuman powers. 

The Killer Frost/Barry dynamic is pretty neat, in that Barry's a bit too desperate to get Frost to quickly mature as a superhero and stuff, but it feels so much like a retread of "Barry trains Iris" that we saw so much in the previous season, as well as "look at that crazy Killer Frost" moments we've had so much of in the previous season. None of the scenes are bad by themselves and both Grant Gustin and Danielle Panabaker are great in this episode, but I just had a feeling of "been here, watched that" throughout this episode.

The B-plots in this episode is, again, well-acted but not especially exciting. Ralph's mom Debby shows up out of nowhere, and we get a lot of fun hijinks and Hartley Sawyer is as fun as ever. Pairing him up with Cecile is neat, but ultimately the B-plot randomly explores a facet of Ralph that feels shoehorned in (he has abandonment issues because his daddy left him and his mom has made up the fact that every other boyfriend has 'died' to spare him the grief or whatever?). Which is neat but not especially notable. We also get a new Harrison Wells, and at this point even the characters in-universe knows that we're just going to do this every dang season. Cisco sort of echoes my own opinion on this, and Harrison "Nash" Wells is sort of an interdimensional Indiana Jones expy who's looking for something called Eternium or whatever, and presumably he's going to factor in somehow to the Crisis. He's not especially impressive, I feel.  

Anyway, despite my relatively shorter review, this one's not terrible. It just feels like it's just building up and killing time until we can get through to the huge Crisis story that the CW team really wants to tell. A solid episode, but not a noteworthy one. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Marv Perez, Ralph's mom's boyfriend, is named after Marv Wolfman and George Perez, the writer and primary artist for the comic-book version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. 
• A Marvel comics shout-out as Ralph calls the Monitor as an "Asgardian cosplayer". 
• They've both shown up as cameos a couple of times in previous CW episodes, but Nash Wells appears outside of McCulloch Technologies, a reference to Evan McCulloch (Mirror Master II); whereas Ramsay got his Dark Matter from Ted Kord, a millionaire and the second Blue Beetle in the comics. Kord Industries has been a recurring background presence in both Arrow and Flash.
• It's likely that it's a coincidence, but in the DC comics, Eternium is the shards of the Rock of Eternity, dwelling place of the wizard Shazam, which was spread all over the universe in the 30th Century. A Legion of Super-Heroes arc focuses on them trying to collect Eternium to rebuild the Rock of Eternity. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One E16 Review: Hostile Takeover

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 16: The Dawn of ZAIA

Okay, this episode felt... a bit oddly-paced? That's how I've been feeling the previous two episodes, where the pacing is super-duper fast without giving much breathing room, and while I certainly never believed for a second that Izu was in any mortal danger from the gut-wound that Jin gave her, I felt like the events of the previous two episodes really could've been spread out across three. Because there's a lot of stuff from the previous two episodes that I feel could've had more time to be developed over a bit more time. Jin's growing sentience and growth into a fanatical villain felt so under-utilized beyond that initial confrontation scene with AIMS in episode 15, which is a similar complaint that I had with Assassin-chan. The spaceman bros, the Assault Wolf Key being related to the Ark, Kamen Rider Ikazuchi, and even the Ark itself all ended up feeling like interesting concepts that were quickly shoved aside for the next shiny new toy. I'm not sure if it's a mandate from the toy executives forcing the show to rush through all the new toys at once to get to Thouser quickly, or something else, but I dunno. I'm not the biggest fan of the pacing.

This episode starts off with Izu waking up in a weird 0101010101 binary code purgatory-Valhalla realm, with Satellite Zea assuring her that her central memory core is intact and sort of catching her up on what's going on. Basically, Zero One's reached a fancy new form, Shining Assault Hopper, and he's wrecking some shit. We get a pretty cool sequence of Zero-One fighting Jin with the zippy-zippy multiple-moves teleportation thing that Aruto used as Shining Hopper. We get a pretty cool sequence of Zero-One straight-up chucking his grasshopper axe like a tomahawk onto Jin's shoulder, but the dialogue here felt... felt repetitive. Something something Humagear's future, something something will of the Ark. It just feels particularly bland, y'know? And I really wished we had just a bit more of personality from Jin beyond 'single minded now', which sort of robs most of what's interesting from him. A bunch of Gigers show up to help menace Zero-One, and they prove enough of a distraction for Jin to pull out Horobi's attache bow and use Horobi's scorpion ability to unleash a finisher that blasts Zero-One into the side of the building.

...and Aruto gets sent into the binary code dimension where he has a conversation with Izu, leading to the adorable little simultaneous "Aruto ja nai to" scene with him and Izu, which is cute and all, but ultimately it's just to get Aruto hyped up and activating the Shine System. Which is basically the funnels from Gundam, but as nondescript floating blue CGI shards. This blows the hell out of the Gigers, and... and it's actually kinda cool, seeing these funnels sort of zip around and block Jin's attack and overwhelm him, but it also just feels kind of underwhelming at the same time, since, again, all the conversations that Jin and Aruto have are basically a repeat of what they've been saying, and the only real change is Aruto's brief acknowledgement that Jin would've been great if his learning phase isn't so full of violence. We get both Kamen Riders unleashing their finishers, we get a rider kick clash, and Jin falls, with his final words being how "humanity will be exterminated, it's the will of the Ark." Jin blows up, and Aruto recovers the Flying Falcon key, and it seems that this is the end of Metsubojinrai.net.

I really don't think this is the last we've seen from Jin, because it's honestly a very anticlimactic end for him, yeah? Episode 15 gives us a pretty great buildup (albeit at the cost of Horobi's life) of how Jin's slowly being twisted into a fanatic thanks to his upbringing, but when he actually ends up taking center stage as a villain he's just sort of... generic. Let's hope he comes back, particularly with how Horobi himself is implied to be coming back.

Speaking of which, Amatsu Gai shows up in Mestubojinrai's base, steps on Horobi's corpse, and recovers two Progrise Keys created by the Ark's little 3D printer (which neither AIMS nor Hiden are investigating for some reason?), which are the Hercules and Arsino keys.

We then get a couple of scenes sort of resolves the plot threads that get set up in the past couple of episodes. Izu gets restarted and comes back to life. The emergency board meeting ends up with only Jun voting for Aruto's dismissal and then quickly pretending that he's scratching his back, whereas all of the others (including Yama) basically recognizing that Aruto's actions as Zero-One saved the company and stuff. Yua's going back to Zaia with AIMS' mission mostly done, Fuwa is brooding, and also they've recovered Horobi's corpse.

Gai then gives a monologue to Yua, talking about how Mestubojinrai.net will never be gone as long as the Ark is alive, and he gives us some backstory about the Ark -- he made it the way it is, and apparently Gai fed the Ark sort of news and information about human criminality and shit, basically pulling an Ultron and causing the Ark to become angsty and end up with the point of view that mankind must be destroyed because they're evil. It's kind of over-the-top edginess, but there's also sort of a comic-book-villain feel to Gai's stupid plan that I don't mind it all that much? Gai talks about how he wants to take over the world, how everything from Metsubojinrai to Hiden to AIMS are all basically his pawns, and how Yua's totally going to be his right hand. (Yua's totally having second thoughts about this maniac).

Oh yeah, it's Christmas week, so we get a random Berotha Magia and a random first-version Dodo Magia wrecking havoc and attacking civilians. We get a dual transformation between Aruto and Fuwa, and we get a neat little sequence of Fuwa basically stealing the Assault Grip back and doing another constipated "break open this children's toy" look. Assault Wolf and Shining Hopper take out the Magia very handily, and this is another pretty cool fight.

Of course, while the two random Magias aren't super-threatening, it's the fact that the Magia are still active despite the fact that Metsubojinrai's disbanded, and Aruto genuinely has no idea what to say when pressured by a press conference. And while Aruto tries to give a statement about how they're investigating and stuff, Amatsu Gai shows up in the interview, announcing that he has a solution. He has a T.O.B. -- a Take-Over Bid -- and he wants to purchase enough of Hiden's stock to usurp management and then dispose of all Humagears. The cliffhanger is actually not Kamen Rider or monster related, but something relating to the company? Colour me surprised! Also, Horobi wakes up with blue eyes, while Gai sits around his office posing with a brand-new driver.

I dunno. I feel that whether it's a permanent or temporary dispatching (Horobi's awakening implies more towards temporary) I feel like the current incarnation of Metsubojinrai really deserved a more concrete send-off. This just feels genuinely underwhelming. I'm not sure, I guess it's the speed at which the show's just going "LOOK AT THIS FANCY ASS NEW FORM LOOK AT HOW BADASS IT IS", I guess? I dunno. I'm not as enthused about this particular arc. It's eventful and has some neat action scenes, but I feel like it's pretty underwhelming. Hopefully this week and Kamen Rider Thouser's debut as a villain might change my mind!

Random Notes:

• The Authorize Buster's Axe Form has a cute little grasshopper symbol on the axe, it's adorable. 
• The Gimmick Watch:
• "Progrise Key confirmed: Ready for Buster. Buster Bomber!"
• Sting Scorpion + Attache Arrow: "Sting Kaban Shot!"
• This is the first time we've seen Jin's finisher, Flying Utopia. 
• Shining Assault Hopper's finisher is "Assault Charge: Shining Storm Impact."
• Assault Wolf's finisher is "Assault Charge: Magnetic Shine Blast", while Shining Hopper makes use of the bear key to make "Gun Rise Blizzard: Buster Dust."
• I completely forgot to mention that with Assault Wolf, Fuwa finally has a weird holographic CGI wolf buddy! None of the AIMS keys had animal buddies before. 
• There's a particularly odd cut in the Magia fight in the third act when it suddenly goes from day to night halfway through the fight. 
• I do like that Aruto's just as clueless about what a TOB is as I am, and we get Izu conveniently explaining it to him (and me). 

Pokemon S01 Special Episodes 01-02 Review: Merry Christmas

Pokemon, Season 1, Special Holiday Episodes: Holiday Hi-Jynx & Snow Way Out

Merry Christmas to you all! To celebrate, I am reviewing the two original Christmas episodes of the original Pokemon season. Depending on how you count them, they're either episodes 38.5-38.6, or 65.5-65.6. Basically, these are episodes that are supposed to air during the Christmas season of the original Pokemon broadcast, but when the whole Porygon incident happened, the hiatus and a bit of an episode restructuring caused these two episodes to be cut from episode lists, and later released as "bangaihen", special episodes that aren't counted in the normal episode count. And even moreso than any other 'filler' episodes, these two are clearly meant to just be special, wacky episodes that are non-canon by the series' very, very vague definition of canon.

"Holiday Hi-Jynx" (or Rougela's Christmas in the original Japanese) has Team Rocket hatch a plan to capture Santa Claus, who Jessie is very much convinced is a Jynx due to how a Jynx-Santa apparently stole her doll when she was a kid. To this end, they set up an attempted trap... but ends up abandoning it when they find out that Team Ash actually found that same Jynx holding a Santa boot on a random beach. Befriending the Jynx and making some rather weird kissy-kissy motions, Jynx ends up managing to communicate with our heroes with her hair allowing her to show images from her memories.

Jynx was apparently washing Santa's shoe when a piece of the iceberg broke off with her on it. Ash and company try to use a raft to help bring Jynx to Santa's Island, but the water Pokemon end up getting tired out, and Ash's hare-brained attempt to swim and pull the raft by himself causes him to straight-up fucking drown. He's rescued by... a random telepathic Lapras? Okay, whatever. The Lapras was a genuinely bizarre and random addition to this episode, but, hey, holiday special and all that. The Lapras takes our heroes (and Team Rocket, following in their Gyarados submarine) to Santa's workshop, where the Jynxes are basically taking the role of Santa's elves. So they're based on Zwarte Piet, then? Huh. Did not realize that.

We get a fighty-fight scene as Team Rocket ties up poor Santa and steal all the presents, and we get the revelation that somehow Santa remembers the little girl from ages ago -- Jynx apparently brought the doll for Santa to fix, but she moved away (didn't believe in Santa in the dub). It's... it's honestly pretty silly storyline. Team Rocket continues to be evil, but a combination of Lapras's ice beam, Charmander's fire spin and Santa's small Jynx army using psywave, and Team Rocket's sent blasting off again, while Santa rides away going ho ho ho on his Ponyta-pulled cart.

Overall, this is... it's a very obvious and honestly not particularly remarkable Christmas special episode, yeah? It's one that I think was actually improved a fair bit in the dub which plays up Santa's mystical qualities. Of course, thanks to Jynx having a prominent role, it's probably not one that's ever going to see air for international audiences... but I dunno. Seeing Jynx as being more of a Zwarte Piet inspired character honestly ends up being a bit more... innocent, I guess? The character design is still problematic, of course, but this is probably something that speaks out a bit more towards the original intent of the design.

"Snow Way Out" (Iwark's Bivouac in the original Japanese) isn't quite as off-the-balls crazy as Holiday Hi-Jynx, and ends up being more... more calming, I guess. Whereas Holiday Hi-Jynx is an episode that's all about the festivities and the fantastical myths of Christmas, Snow Way Out is actually a pretty solid, slowly-paced episode about Ash getting lost in a blizzard, ending up in a cave, and was fully prepared to suffer alone to protect his Pokemon, protected in their Pokeballs, but they all choose to instead keep him warm. It's definitely an iconic scene, and one I remember vividly... and I didn't realize how little actual content the episode actually has. Brock and Misty are written out pretty quickly, while Team Rocket has some long skits at the beginning and the end, but the focus is definitely on Ash running around trying to rescue Pikachu in the blizzard, before leading to that scene where he tries to survive and leading to a very heartwarming scene.

The Team Rocket stuff... it's more impactful in the original Japanese -- the English dub plays down Jessie's childhood by making her more aware and bitter about her 'wretched childhood' (the dub version of this episode was where I learned the meaning of the word wretched), but the Japanese version, having her completely oblivious that "snow sushi" is not something that regular people eat, and that her mother is just lying to her that this is a delicacy, adds a huge amount of pretty sad implications to her. Of course, this is Team Rocket and they ham it up with Jessie charging after their missing hot air balloon shouting SHOYUUUUU and the whole little matchstick girl parody... and ends with Team Rocket 'feeling bad' once more. Poor Team Rocket, give them a victory every now and then, please and thank you.

Overall, though... these two episodes are definitely not particularly remarkable. The moment in Snow Way Out was pretty powerful, but the rest of the episode was just pretty much padding. Holiday Hi-Jynx is just bizarre all around, but nowhere as nuts as some other specials would be. Definitely not the best that Pokemon anime has to offer, but, what the hey, it's Christmas. Merry Christmas to you all!

Pokemon Index:

• Holiday Hi-Jynx/Rougela's Christmas:
• Pokemon: Meowth, Jynx, Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Staryu, Starmie, Goldeen, Psyduck, Lapras, Weezing, Ponyta
• Humans: Jessie, James, Ash, Misty, Brock, Santa Claus
• Snow Way Out/Iwark's Bivouac:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Pidgeotto, Meowth, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Onix, Vulpix
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, James, Jessie

Random Notes:

• In addition to the whole rescheduling thing, "Holiday Hi-Jynx" was taken out of international broadcast thanks to it featuring the possibly-a-racist-caricature Jynx prominently. Not going to take any sides on whether Jynx is racist or not, but while Japanese digital copies of this episode have edited Jynx to have her modern (purple skinned, white-armed) appearance, the episode still hasn't been released for international audiences. 
• A huge error in the Jynx episode is, of course, Jessie pulling out Weezing's pokeball and summoning him. 
• A hilarious running gag in the Jynx episode is that the machines in Santa's background are actually making faces. 
• So what's up with Lapras having telepathic powers? I know the pokedex notes that it can "understand human speech", but it's bizarre that the actual Psychic-typed Jynx can only send images, while Lapras can straight-up communicate. 
• The episode was released in Japan after episode 65, but Ash still clearly has his team from earlier in the series -- most egregiously, the presence of an unevolved Charmander. 
• Dub Changes:
• Jessie's doll was originally an "Achaaaa doll" in the original Japanese, which, of course, is a parody of Bruce Lee and his wachaaaa battlecries.
• The English dub adds a lot of traditional random Christmas-themed dialogue. Also, "Santa's Island" is changed to "North Pole" in the dub.
• Santa in the English dub is far more traditionally supernatural, instantly knowing Ash and Jessie's names without introductions, as well as telling Jessie that he was unable to return the doll because Jessie has stopped believing in her. In the original Japanese, Santa just called everyone "children", and told Jessie that when he returned, she had moved to another house. 
• Puns to the similarities of "Iwark" and "bivouac" ends up being cut out in the dub.
• Also cut out are a lot of the jokes about Jessie's family feeding her "snow sushi". In particular, in the original Japanese, Jessie was actually clueless and deluded, thinking that snow sushi is an actual, proper dish. In the dub, she recognizes that it's a symptom of her poverty. 
• Cutting out nearly half a minute's worth of screentime are any scenes where Team Rocket pulls out matches and does a parody of the Little Match Girl, cutting straight from them talking to their hallucinations.
• I usually don't mention "who's that pokemon" segments, but the dub changes both "who's that pokemon" segments... into bizarre ones. Holiday Hi-Jynx changes the featured Pokemon from Jynx (the star of the episode) to... Pidgeotto, who doesn't even show up. Meanwhile, Snow Way Out changes the featured Pokemon from Pidgeotto (who has a relatively prominent role)... into Muk? Okay, what?

Kamen Rider Zero-One E15 Review: Mid-Season Forms Galore

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 15: The End of Each

We're sort of shaking up the two-parter formula again, aren't we? Because this is kinda-sorta a follow-up to the space-bros episode 14, but also kind of its own thing that's a huge cliffhanger to whatever's going to happen in the next episode. I'm a huge fan of this. Not quite such a big fan at how fast everything's paced, but that's not a huge complaint. I'm not that broken up by the fact that, say, Spacebro #2 doesn't get enough screentime or whatever.

We start off the episode with what seems to be an interesting buildup to a climax, with AIMS is mobilizing with Fuwa being angry and single-minded and all angry and shit. Meanwhile, as Jin continues to approach singularity, he ends up making a grave around the Dodo Zetumerize (Progrise?) Key with rocks and stuff, noting that this is to commemorate the deaths of his good buddy Assassin-chan and his big brother Ikazuchi, but Horobi tells him to stop being a fucking filthy human, noting that all he's doing is looking up human behaviours and being a fool. What horrid parenting, and I feel like there's a genuinely well-done unsettling bit of acting as Jin goes straight into cheery jumping and going 'all right!', like this is something inconsequential.

Speaking of gravesites, Aruto and Izu bring Subaru to visit the Hiden family grave, and we get a couple of neat speeches. The Spacebros are genuinely rushed and pushed to the background as far as how memorable they are compared to previous guest stars, but there's a great moment when Subaru rejects his brother for being a filthy traitor, but Aruto tells Subaru to have faith in his family, how all Humagears are his family, and Izu even has a precious little flashback to Wazu, and she confirms that, yeah, big brothers are a special existence and Izu understands what Aruto's getting at, even giving her respects in front of the Hiden family grave. Why the hell is Izu not 'awakened' yet? I feel like every other Humagear that's awakened had done so with far less development than Izu. Case in point, Subaru, who ends up achieving singularity and gaining blue eyes shortly after Aruto and Izu gave their respective speeches.

But that's essentially the extent of Subaru's development in this episode. He does recur as a background character for Aruto to bounce dialogue off of, but he's just sort of in the background as crazy action stuff is going on. AIMS is mobilized and it's a cool shot seeing Fuwa and Yua leading an army of soldiers with assault rifles on the bridge leading to Daybreak Town, facing off against Horobi and Jin. We get a four-way transformation as Jin, Horobi, Valkyrie and Vulcan's shiny new toy form transform and do battle. We get a pretty cool bit as the soldiers try their best to help up, machine-gunning Jin, but since they're boring ol' soldiers and this isn't a Michael Bay movie, Jin just lobs his feather daggers and knocks the entire army down. Only Kamen Riders are allowed to fight here!

The fight moves on a cliffside overlooking a pond. Horobi is overpowering Valkyrie and about to take her out (poor Valkyrie can't catch a break in these episodes, huh?) but Shining Hopper shows up and zips around Horobi, shooting and kicking and punching and stuff before unleashing a finisher with his fancy toy shotgun (it's a grasshopper shaped beam) that knocks Horobi flat on his ass. Speaking of finishers, Fuwa also unleashes his own finisher, although it's clear throughout this fight that he's suffering some of that power-up side effects and he's certainly feeling pain.

It's at this point that time freezes for Horobi, who's contacted by the Ark... and he just shrugs his shoulders and obeys the Ark's orders, pushing Jin out of the way and taking Fuwa's magnetic storm fever spinning chompy-chomp wolf attack head-on. And Horobi explodes! Fuwa collapses and coughs up blood, causing Aruto and Yua to scramble and evacuate him out of the battlefield.

More interestingly, though, is Horobi's sudden 'death'. I put death in quotation marks because throughout this episode it seems like it's not permanent at all? We could be rushing through what was intended to be a more drawn-out act-one finale or whatever, or it could just be a bit of a fake-out. Regardless, though, Horobi's dying and wounded and Jin's panicking. In perhaps one of the more awkward sequence in this episode is Izu showing up and just standing there to give a commentary about how the leader of Mestubojinrai.net has fallen and nothing bad's going to happen... and Jin gets so angry that he launches a tentacle that stabs Izu through the gut, ranting about why Izu would smile at the sight of another Humagear being hurt.

And we get this simultaneous cradle scene of Aruto panicking over Izu, while Jin, still in full Kamen Rider form, carries Horobi's wounded body as he walks into the lake. That's pretty neat. A while later we get to see Jin desperately trying to fix Horobi, but Horobi tells Jin that this is the whole point of what the Ark wants -- for Jin to properly reach singularity, by witnessing the death of his 'father' and having all the hatred fester in him. I'm not quite sure if Jin is explicitly special or what, but apparently all of this is just a gambit to have Jin awaken 'properly', and not in the way that he presumably nearly reached singularity back in the voice actor episode.


Also, more interestingly, is Amatsu Gai. He's just sort of being built up as this master manipulator, talking about how Mestubojinrai.net is done for, how it's destined to fail no matter what, and it's just a matter of how many Kamen Riders they throw at Metsubojinrai. With his 'mythology' talk last episode, it seems to imply that Gai and Zaia Enterprise is just using Metsubojinrai as the threat, as the case-profile, to take the fall so that the Kamen Rider can be proven to be effective as weapons of the new era. It's heavily implied that Gai's likely behind the Ark's creation or something along those lines. It's interesting, though, because we really don't know just how involved Gai and Metsubojinrai are, and if Metsubojinrai are willing accomplices or just pawns.

Juxtaposed with the Jin-tries-to-fix-Horobi scene is Aruto and Subaru trying to fix Izu, and it's some great scripting and acting just to see the normally cheery Aruto be so broken and barely holding his emotions together. When Fukuzoe and his lackeys show up to do their thing of mocking Aruto and demanding how the CEO will answer, Aruto's reply is a barely-restrained angry growl about how this "isn't a good time", and he straight-up loses it when someone mentions that they could just easily replace Izu with another model. Aruto just rants about how Izu just "figured out what family means" and stuff. Fukuzoe leaves the episode for now, but threatens that they'll hold a meeting to kick Aruto out of Hiden Intelligence within a day. Izu, of course, is very likely not dead and Zea is just fixing the hole in her chest.

Jin's awakening activates some weird purple cables to activate, and apparently this ends up causing a bunch of fabrication to begin, creating a small army of Trilobite Magia for Jin? I'm not sure if this is the same thing as the fabricator making the Assault Wolf Key last episode or something completely different. Regardless, though, Jin ends up leading his army to wreak havoc, hacking AIMS' Giger squad off-screen. We get a neat scene of AIMS filled with wounded soldiers, including Fuwa, and despite Yua's warnings Fuwa just does the silly-macho thing of ripping out his IV line and going off to fight.

Likewise, Aruto also goes off to battle, leaving Izu to Subaru, and I really do love Aruto's expressions in this scene, where he's clearly torn about leaving Izu behind be he knows this is his duty and he must see it through.

The gigers attack at night, which is a neat, atmospheric move and also probably a way for the studio to cheat in animating the gigers destroying buildings. Yua and Fuwa show up and do a double-transformation, and Jin is noticeably a bit less... eclectic. He's just sitting like an anime villain, smart enough to sic his trilobites at the AIMS riders and has seemingly stopped seeing everything as a game. The random trilobite mooks end up managing to wound Fuwa so much that Yua is forced to take the Assault Wolf key out of his belt, since it's dangerous to his well-being... but then Jin explicitly sics the gigers on Valkyrie. They don't manage to kill our heroes, but they do manage to smash the AIMS van and knock Valkyrie out of her transformation.

Of course, it's Aruto time. He charges in with Breaking Mammoth, who makes quick work of the gigers, before Aruto calmly walks out of the dust, demanding answers from Jin. Sure, he hates humans, but why did he hurt Izu? After getting the answer that Jin considers Humagears as 'friends', Aruto's absolutely angry as he points out just how much Jin has hurt, twisted and broken others of his kind, not just Izu, and how 'someone who does that cannot be considered a friend!' we get a pretty badass transformation scene as Jin finally transforms into his Kamen Rider form in the night.

Aruto, meanwhile, picks up the Assault Wolf Key that got dropped during the fight, mutters about Satellite Zea anticipating this... and the rips out the little gray dongle at the end of the Assault Wolf Key, attaches his own Shining Hopper Key, and transforms -- the beams that come towards Aruto comes from both Ark and Zea, and it turns him into Shining Assault Hopper, which... looks like the fused form of Assault Wolf and Shining Hopper? The episode ends with the cliffhanger of Shining Assault Hopper charging in to fight Jin.

Ultimately, it's an episode that moves fast. The AIMS/Metsubo confrontation, Horobi's seeming death, Jin's awakening, the revelation of Gai's machinations, and eventually the debut of Zero-One's new power-up form no less than three episodes after his previous power-up form... it's certainly a hectic, fast-paced episode. I'm entertained. Time will tell if this is an abrupt shift in the plot or actually a well-done misdirection. In any case, there's definitely a massive sense of the confrontation and the climax ramping up, and I'm all about that!

Random Notes:

• The opening features the crossover movie with Kamen Rider Zi-O, and we don't quite get that many scenes. We did get to see Woz whack a Magia with his future-bible, which is hilarious, and some giant Kamen Rider whose waist is fused to a giant bike? A bike-taur? I don't follow the news for the lead-up to this movie, and apparently this is Another Ichigo. Okay.
• The Gimmick Watch:
• With Zero-One using the Authorize buster, the finisher is called "Zero One Dust", and as mentioned in the review, the beam turns into a glowing grasshopper. 
• Assault Wolf Vulcan's finisher is "Assault Charge: Magnetic Storm Blast Fever", which turns his legs into like CGI wolf fangs in the same way of Kamen Rider Rogue's finisher two seasons ago. 
• Shining Assault Hopper's transformation jingle is "Hyper jump! Over-rise! Progrise! Warning. Warning. This is not a test. Hybrid rise! Shining Assault Hopper! No chance of surviving this shot."
• Shining Assault Hopper really looks like it was originally conceived to be a fusion form between Assault Wolf and Shining Hopper, like they really fused a la Zi-O Trinity or something. I'm curious if there's going to be some real explanation to why S.A.H. has Assault Wolf parts or if we're just sort of shrugging it off. 
• I swear that pond-cliff that the second act fight takes place in is like, a fight site that's somewhat familiar from Ex-Aid, I want to say? Where they fought Cronus one time? 
• Last episode went all the way noting that Metsubojinrai is comprised of four kanji characters, so it's very, very likely that despite what Gai claims, we haven't seen the last of them just yet. 
• If we don't know Gai's association with Kamen Rider Thouser, his bizarre fixation and hard-on with the number one-thousand is pretty stupid, huh? He quite literally just goes "MY PROGRESS IS 9-9-9-PERCEEEENT COMPLETE!" apropos of nothing. 
• I'm not sure if the subtitles translated it correctly or not, but apparently Jin claims that his ability to hack the Gigers en-masse is because of his 'awakened' ability.