Kaiji S02E15 Review: Gratuitous Fingorn

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 15:  All An Act

This episode has Kaiji and his team basically put up the first stage of their plan, and at no point in the episode did I believe that Kaiji's screwed up. Mind you, the episode title does help to telegraph the whole "it's an act" thing. We first get to see Sakazaki show up in a Buddhist monk regalia (like we saw in the anime opening) and just look desperate as he seemingly sinks his last funds into the Bog, losing horribly and using the prayer figurine to quite literally smash the Bog Pachinko machine apart. but Ichijou quickly sees through the act, even when Sakazaki pulls out a fake dynamite.

Ichijou quickly realizes that something is wrong, and returns back to the staff room to find Kaiji snooping around. And to Ichijou's credit,  at least he realizes that there's something wrong even though he isn't 100% just what is wrong. He thinks Kaiji is looking for the safe of the huge amount of funds the casino has, and then obliges, showing the huge amount of money, and then, to make it clear to the audience that Ichijou is someone we must hate and not just some dude running a casino, he has Sakazaki beaten, and we have this uncomfortably long scene of Kaiji's  fingers being tortured with this "bloody manicure" thing that injects a needle through the flesh between the fingernails. God damn, that's brutal.

Kaiji and Sakazaki are thrown out and they're weeping in defeat,  but it's clear from the way the episode is set up that this is all part of their plan.

And then we have a brief time-skip to the Bog being fixed, and to the final day that Kaiji is free, and Ichijou thinks about how Kaiji's going to try and buy his freedom by playing baccarat or something. After a brief face-off, Kaiji declares that, of course, he's going to challenge the Bog. It is interesting to think just where and how Kaiji's plans are taking place, and how all the foreshadowings to Kaiji's methods to cheat the Bog is going to take place. Overall, not the most exciting episode, but a fun in-between one to show the events happening and to build Ichijou up as a villain. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E22 Review: No Strings On Me

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 21: Ultron-5

One of the bigger complaints I hear people have against Age of Ultron is that they changed Ultron's creator from Hank Pym (which, by then, wasn't introduced in the MCU yet) to Tony Stark, thereby robbing Pym of one of his more signature character moments. Again, as someone who's only marginally familiar with the source material, for me it's an "okay, nice to know" moment. But the execution of Hank Pym's character in this episode is definitely awesome, putting him squarely in the spotlight since, well, ever. I don't think it's hard to argue that Ant-Man is perhaps one of the more forgettable characters in this particular series. It's no fault of the performance, but perhaps it's deliberate. He did get a couple of spotlight episodes in the past, for sure, but at the same time storylines tended to revolve around other characters and their comparatively more exciting mythologies, while Ant-Man's biggest character moment was, other than generic lover's spats with Janet and his original introduction, the moment when he decides to turn Ultron from a bunch of robotic wardens into a robot army. Granted it's for the best of reasons -- to protect earth from Kang's time-travelling robot army -- but the perversion of what he had intended them to be versus what the Ultron robots are now is definitely felt. 

And throughout the series, Ant-Man has been front and center in grumbling about finding a different way. For the most part, we sort of take it as fluff -- kind of like when Iron Man throws a snarky comment, or when Hulk says something along the lines of punching people, or when Thor says "nay!". It's just something that Ant-Man does. But we've got an increased bit of these during the Kang saga, which are easily overlooked in favour of all the bigger things happening. But we've got several moments when Giant-Man and Hulk are fighting robots and both Hulk and Hawkeye are just bro-ing out about how fighting is fun, and another moment where Ant-Man expresses disappointment that their first course of action against Kang is violence.

In a very well-scripted and well-animated battle against a group of snake-themed villains called the Serpent Society, Hank is way, way more interested in trying to talk down the Society's leader, King Cobra -- a former inmate of his back in the Big House during the show's premiere. It is a neat callback to Hank's earlier lines in this series about how SHIELD doesn't really care about rehabilitating criminals and only imprisoning and/or dissecting their powers, and Hank's viewpoints certainly have merit. But maybe not do it when a giant cyborg snake-person is trying to eat Captain America whole.

And, again, just like the whole Ultron business, Ant-Man's attempts to stay true to himself and advocate peace clashes heavily when both Avengers and Serpent Society just want to smash each other up. Add that to Ant-Man's confusion and bumbling around causing other Avengers to miss their mark or cause property damage. The Avengers rightfully call Ant-Man out for easily causing poor Hawkeye to get killed, and Ant-Man quits in a moment of defeat when he realizes that his personal beliefs of trying to talk things through isn't going to work with the Avengers when they're a fighting team first and foremost. 

That argument is done pretty well, and Wasp, as the ever-bubbly and ever-excited girlfriend, tries to talk to Hank but because Hank's just a splendid dude, he basically ignores her. Yeah, Hank's viewpoints do have merit, but he's kind of making a bit of an ass of himself, isn't he? Meanwhile, the rest of the team have apparently caught a supervillain team called the Super-Apes off-screen (!), basically acknowledging that, yeah, the whole "dozens of supervillains have broken out of SHIELD's prisons" storyline is sort of wrapped up off-screen. We also get a neat little downtime acknowledgement of Tony swearing to Thor to do everything in his power to get him back to Asgard, a neat little character development from the previous episode. Tony also ends up figuring out that the Super-Apes, the Serpent Society and Radioactive Man's attack in the previous episode all follow the orders of some mysterious benefactor... from within the mansion itself.

Which, of course, is Ultron, if the title hasn't already clued you in. Ultron finally lights up with his creepy red eyes, beats up Ant-Man and Wasp, and we get a pretty scary bit when all the familiar technology our heroes have been using for the past season fight against them. The Hulk, riding a quinjet with his monkey prisoners, gets caught on autopilot as the quinjets shoots straight into space. Iron Man and Thor, having a nice conversation, ends up fighting each other when the armour moves by itself. The uber-dangerous training room also begins to try to kill everyone inside (including a welcome minor reappearance by Jane Foster). It all feels more like a distraction before the third act, but, of course, it's meant to distract the Avengers because Ultron doesn't want to engage them personally. We do get a pretty badass Iron Man/Thor fight, and I do appreciate that Thor quickly figures out that Tony is not in control of his suit, and it becomes a matter of taking the suit down without killing Stark. 

Ultron, meanwhile, has Wasp trapped in a bubble. And while we could brush this off as a simple "damsel in distress situation", Ultron actually delivers a very compelling argument as to why he's testing this on Wasp. He gives a pretty creepy (although not quite James-Spader-esque creepy, and the huge gaping mouth is distracting) speech about how humanity is inherently chaotic and flawed, and to bring peace to Earth as is Ultron's primary directive, he must eliminate humans. Oh, and by the way, because he was programmed to never hurt Wasp by Ant-Man, he is trying to actively seek a way to circumvent that. 

The beginning of the third act when Ultron apparently straight-up vaporizes Thor with a mouth beam? That was definitely a lot harder to swallow or buy that it's played straight, especially when Ultron's attacks later on in this episode clearly weren't that effective. We also get the sudden gigantification powers from Wasp, who have never really displayed that ability. But, of course, Ultron ends up trouncing the entire Avengers, and eventually comes face-to-face with his maker, with a pretty badass shot of Hank reflected in Ultron's metal forehead. Ultron, born out of Hank's own mental patterns, is more of Hank's dark reflection than his 'son' as the fandom likes to call him, albeit removed of all of the restraint and moral codes that make Hank Pym a flawed -- but still ultimately good -- human. 

The moral debates will have to wait until the second part of this two-parter, though, because all Hank Pym ends up realizing in this episode is that he's fucked up (and maybe a little lesson about how you shouldn't deal in absolutes, or it'll lead to fanaticism?) because the episode ends up going into a pretty goddamn badass action scene as Iron Man shows up in his Mark I "hunk a' junk" armour that he probably built in a cave with a box of scraps. Iron Man's old armour, combined with Ant-Man going into giant mode, and a very angry Hulk arriving on Earth, ends with Hank ripping the heart out of Ultron quite literally. It's a time for action, and Hank learned the hard way earlier this episode that talking things out in the middle of a life-and-death situation isn't good, and for all he knows, Thor's dead because of his creation. Tony's cold "destroy everything" is an order, something Hank would've likely bristled at in any other circumstance, but the defeated way he just acknowledges his monumental fuck-up, as well as the fact that Ultron was born out of his own psyche in a way, is definitely a neat, melancholic way to end this episode. 

(Of course, Ultron's not dead yet and just uploads himself into a new body. Oh, and Thor is randomly amnesiac on the laps of the Enchantress? Eh.)

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E06 Review: Swampwalking

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 6: Funhouse Mirrors

An okay episode, even if it still reeks of just throwing in a bunch of random encounters and steps to get to the final goal without really telling much of a story. It's like side-quests in a video game -- it's a great sense of accomplishment when you do it, and it is a great feeling to experience it. But for everyone not involved, it's pretty dang boring. And this episode basically tries to set up a similar concept. Both Tandy and Tyrone become interns in two different places -- Tandy interns for the daughter of one of her father's friends, while Tyrone interns as a drug-dealer courier for Duane. Both trying to find information or 'get close' to their respective targets. 

The actual performances done by the actors involved are great, and I'm not so emotionless that I can't appreciate Tandy bonding and geeking out with fellow geek girl Mina Hess, especially when they got to talking about their father, but the only real thing that happens there is just "Tandy gets slightly closer to the Roxxon higher-ups". It's certainly miles more interesting than merely interviewing to be an intern like we saw last episode, for sure, even if some of the speech that hammers in "New Orleans is a survivor" is pretty eyeroll-inducing.

Also, I guess the oil rig that Mina is trying to build safely and the cartoonishly jackass and misogynistic superior with the Rolls Royce is trying to stop it? Not a bad villain plotline, but not one that I think is interesting enough to dragged on for more than a single episode. 

Tyrone's whole deal about trying to infiltrate Duane's drug-dealing business honestly felt convoluted, though, and I really thinks that it kind of lacks the better moments of the Tandy/Mina bonding moments. I guess a huge chunk of why Duane's attempts at being brotherly to Tyrone is kind of spoiled by the knowledge that Duane is involved in causing Billy's death, and Tyrone knows this. That leasds to a genuinely slow story that kinda-sorta intersects with Connors and O'Reilly's story, which is a genuinely dull, by-the-books cop story. At least the confrontation between Tyrone and Duane about how Duane genuinely doesn't trust the corrupt police system to do anything, hence keeping quiet, is something?

The episode ends with Tyrone warning O'Reilly about the ambush that Connors has forced Duane to do, and in the proceeding shootout, Duane gets shot and killed just as he starts becoming sympathetic to Tyrone. Tyrone ends up teleporting into their shared church-base, utterly broken as Tandy comes back in with hopes that she has finally found a lead to the Roxxon conspiracy. That ending scene definitely salvaged what's an otherwise pretty snail-paced episode.

I do like the usage of Cloak and Dagger's emotional powers, if nothing else. Tyrone touching that one random drug runner and trapping him in a vague scary room with the lighting that goes on and off is pretty scary without going too overboard, and Tandy's very peaceful look into Ivan Hess's vine-grown mess of a mind is a pretty great visual, and both are far, far better usages of their powers than the convenient mind-reading they've been in the previous couple of episode. Also love how Tandy decided to wordlessly not violate Ivan's mind's privacy presumably out of respect to Mina, which I do like. 

Also, we've got the framing story of Tyrone's girlfriend Evita and her voodoo-practicing aunt talking about a magical pair that keeps showing up in times of distress and destruction and stuff, and that most of the times, one of this mystical magical pairing dies, which... which kinda-sorta-but-not-really adds an air of tension to this whole thing? Okay? I don't mind mysticism since this is still the MCU, but this one is genuinely off compared to the tone of the rest of the series, like a draft for a video game's information-dump sequence. Not a big fan of this particular episode, honestly. 

Kaiji S02E13 Review: Gather Your Party [also, episode 14]

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 13: Clue [also, episode 14: All-in Bluff]

Bit of a simpler episode,  this time around. We basically have Kaiji gathering his party for his mission to defeat the Bog. We get this whole scene of Sakazaki 'risking' everything to be reborn, which is nearly betting his entire stolen fortune on a horse-race just because the horse has the same name as his daughter. We get a whole scene of Kaiji breaking Sakazaki out from his clear desperate funk, and then utters a plan that we, the audience, don't get to hear. Apparently, last episode's look at an apartment door allows Kaiji to bypass the first obstacle, the pins, and seeing the smashed-up Bog replica in Sakazaki's house allows Kaiji to get an idea to bypass the bumpers.

It's interesting, but the rest of the episode basically has Kaiji thinking of how to re-obtain funds, and this time around he recruits a former antagonist, Endou,  who himself is in debt to the Teiai company. Endou isn't going to work with Kaiji without a huge conversation, though, and while there's really nothing too groundbreaking here, it's also pretty neat to see the two of them trade barbs, and Endou himself charging a pretty extraorbitant sum for his services (he rescinds it to a huge but still reasonable sum).

Overall, an okay episode, although not one that leaves me much to talk about. The final episode has Sakazaki's first big role, which apparently has him wander around in a monk outfit? Okay...?

(I'd review episode 14, but it's just a whole-sale recap episode. Just pretend I talked a bit about how this is entirely unnecessary and the anime industry is worse for having recap episodes, and move on.)

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E05 Review: Take Me Out To A Ball Game

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 5: Princeton Quest

And sadly we're back in another blasé episode of Cloak and Dagger. The previous episode was actually pretty great at exploring the emotional problems gripping the titular characters, as well as their own struggles, guilt and whatnot. This episode, though? It just runs around in circles, honestly. The huge fight between Tandy and Tyrone are swept under the rug with an awkward apology and the two are weird frenemies again, and for a significant amount of the episode it's just Tyrone playing basketball... and my god, I know this is technically the teen school drama version of a superhero show, but damn it, moreso than any of the cheesy relationship drama, I really, really dislike and don't understand why teen dramas seem to think that anyone would want to watch a fake basketball game for nearly half of this episode's screentime. I get it, it's a huge moment in Tyrone's life because of all the Billy angst, but the bit where Tyrone teleports to the garage now run by Billy's old basketball friend is so much more emotional than "oh no is he going to play in the game, tension wah wah."

And yeah, there's the slight bit of classism bit going on where Tyrone realizes that the referee prefers his more prestigious school compared to the one that he's fighting against (a school from the neighbourhood he used to grow up in), and I'm not sure if Tyrone flubs the final shot or not, or if Tyrone is even conflicted at all, because the basketball scenes are so freaking boring that I genuinely cannot be bothered to pay much attention. At least he gets Evita's respect and love? Eh. 

Oh, and thanks to plot-convenience dreams, Tyrone learns that apparently Duane is one of the players in the whole drug story in New Orleans, and is working with Officer Connors, and knows that Connors is the one that shot Billy. Dun dun dunnn drama! Oh, and Tyrone is working alongside Officer O'Reilly to bust Connors, and O'Reilly has taken to sniffing drugs to get closer to Connors? S'cool. I don't mind these storylines, as haphazardly as they are showcased here.

Tandy, meanwhile, continues to go on her little investigation mission to get to the bottom of Roxxon, and while it's nowhere as mind-numbingly boring as whether Tyrone will make the shot that will make St. Petersburg win, it's still pretty much just a single step in bringing down Roxxon. She has basically appropriated the abandoned cathedral as her own gigantic little conspiracy board playmat, which I thought is kinda ridiculous, but fun. 

And then, in a subplot that makes me roll my eyes as much as the length of the basketball game, Tandy impersonates a fake identity in a short while, gets a job at a fancy Roxxon party in order to find out the Roxxon Head Honcho, Peter Scarborough, and then pretends to break down and very nearly stabs him in the back all Assassin's Creed style before she touches him and sees that he's super evil, like "wants to drown his own employees and profit" evil. She then... decides to let him go (???), and return back to her huge conspiracy map and, oh, apparently she missed a couple of names? I seriously don't get this part of the episode. I mean, I kinda do, but the way it's told is genuinely baffling. 

There's also the unfortunate implication that Tandy did really awaken her powers with a suicide or a life-defying attempt, which causes her to push Tyrone off of a ledge into a water when Tyrone accidentally teleports to her. Just to get him back to a goddamn high school ball game. And nobody noticed that Tandy threw another person off from a second story? Yeah, overall, I kinda understand what they were trying to go for in this episode, but the way it was delivered was pretty dang boring. 

One Piece 916 Review: Sumo Slap

One Piece, Chapter 916: The Great Sumo Match in Wano Country

Well, so much for Kiku being a strong female character that didn't need to get rescued,  because the moment Urashima gets angry for his topknot being cut off, Kiku ends up just freezing in place and just going 'kyaa kyaa what should I do.' Honestly, I really wished it was her that got to cut up Urashima. Definitely a bit of a missed opportunity there. 

The chapter's basically amounts to Luffy and Urashima having a sumo match, with Luffy dodging everything Urashima throws at him and then using a long Gigant Tsuppari to completely knock that jackass Urashima flying. It's not the most interesting thing, honestly, and I just sort of shrug this off. But Luffy blowing Urashima away while announcing that he wants to be pirate king has, naturally,  caused everyone to go OMG WHAT, and they also realize that "Zorojuro", the magistrate murderer, is hanging out with Luffy and Kiku, and they forego any sort of subtlety and just yell for the 'boss'  of the town to show up so they can get Tama back. 

The gifters show up and Luffy, Zoro and Kiku cut their way through them. Among the gifters is a dude whose entire beard is a bunny's face,  with bunny ears coming out of his shoulders. Bunnybeard might be my absolute favourite background One Piece character.

Holdem shows up, holding Tama in his crotch-lion, holding her as a hostage, and we have a bit of a standoff. Meanwhile, other pirates are coming -- Bassil Hawkins are arriving, telling none of his subordinates to interfere because they're no match for Straw Hat, while Law is just flabbergasted at just how quickly things just spiraled out of his control. (Beppo drinks  poisoned water randomly for one panel, too... okay?) We also get a name, the thief Shutenmaru, name-dropped by Holdem, so maybe another potential ally? Eh. 

Overall, honestly an okay chapter, but not one that I felt was particularly special. Again, I mostly feel like the Wano arc is pretty lukewarm. It's serviceable and feels as fun as any other given exploration arc of One Piece, and it's okay when taken in that aspect. 

Kaiji S02E11-12 Review: Brass Balls

Kaiji, Season 2, Episodes 11: Last Gamble; Episode 12: Sigh With Delight

So the pachinko machine is the next thing Kaiji has to face, except this time around he's not facing it on his own. Interestingly, in these two episodes Kaiji's more of an assistant to Sakazaki's attempt to cheat the system and not gambling himself, which honestly just kind of makes certain that Sakazaki's going to lose. And lose badly. And lose badly he does.

It does help to demonstrate this particularly unique pachinko machine, though, and the chance to get a ball into the final hole is around 1 in... 5400 or some shit? There are three ordeals the balls must face, in any case -- a forest of pins (which are loose thanks to the maintenance), swinging flippers, and finally the spinning plates with holes, which Sakazaki knows is rigged so that the ball can never get past the third plate due to the centrifugal physics and stuff. With the maintenance, Sakazaki gets around one in every 30 balls to the third plate, far higher odds than what people normally get.

And Sakazaki pretends to be frustrated, demanding for a beer and then handing said beer to Kaiji, masquerading as just any other interested patron of the casino. It's a simple but ingenuous plan, in any case, hiding ball magnets under Kaiji's own beer bottle that he hands off to Sakazaki, which he uses to attempt to pull the balls into the hole. But as Kaiji snoops around the place he realizes that the 'suits' running the casino are actually far more informed than they let on, noting that Sakazaki has more money than he should, and that they're planning to bleed him dry before activating the 'block'. Kaiji quickly notes to Sakazaki during their break after Sakazaki loses his 20 million that, hey, maybe his 'inside man' is a traitor after all, and that they should probably call it quits.

But Sakazaki then goes into this huge sobbing rant about how the 20 million he has is basically all the money he had, and this is the only way for him to recoup his losses in any meaningful way, and... yeah, Kaiji's not hypocritical enough to deny the old man the chance to gamble and win big. Episode 12 starts off with Sakazuki's continued spiral as Kaiji cheers him on, and the NARRATOR! KEEPS! HAMMING! THINGS! UP! It's pretty glorious, and the 'block' is apparently a sensor placed within part of the Bog that automatically makes the flippers swing shut immediately whenever a ball comes near. But, of course, Sakazuki absolutely fails even with the final 20 million he stole from his boss, and the magnet plan doesn't work.

And as Sakazuki faints and falls backwards, the casino manager Ichijou (who we briefly see recognizing Kaiji from a recording) comes up to very subtly mock Sakazaki's valiant efforts, while also noting that, hey, sometimes the casino uses non-magnetic brass balls like today!

Actually, I'm not even mad. It's hard to be mad when someone who tries to cheat really fails, honestly, and the way that Sakazaki fails is just so bizarrely hilarious -- the casino uses two types of balls, nullifying his whole magnet scheme! Man, poor Sakazaki. Sakazaki's just broken, while Kaiji is intent on finding a way to win the game.

Yoshishiro meets up with Ichijou and actually ends up fanning the flames from Ichijou's side, leading to a meeting between the two as Kaiji walks up to the casino and just stares at the Bog and has a brief conversation with Ichijou in front of the Bog, and later on in the staff room where Ichijou proves to be more than knowledgeable about Kaiji's current plight and attempt to win big, suggesting that, hey, maybe try and struggle elsewhere that isn't guaranteed to fail? Kaiji rips up Ichijou's card while apparently doing so in order to look for something, and the final shot has Kaiji walking up to an apartment, intent on 'breaking the first hurdle, the forest of pins'. Just what does an apartment has to do with cheating on a pachinko machine? And is it folly for Kaiji to spend his precious time outside of the prison trying to beat an unwinnable machine? Interesting stuff, even if this arc admittedly feels a lot more mellow. Maybe because it's not Kaiji himself on the line for the past couple of episodes.