Kamen Rider Zero-One E11 Review: Assassination Classroom

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 11: Don't Stop the Camera, Stop Him

Part two of the movie two-parter, and we have... a pretty interesting development. Namely, the fact that Assassin-chan, or whatever you refer to him in your head, is surprisingly being pretty well developed as an actual character, more than the two dudes that are supposedly the main characters with all the fancy-schmancy "Kamen Rider" title and stuff. Honestly, if this doesn't lead up to us getting a Kamen Rider Dodo or Kamen Rider Assassin down the line, I would be genuinely surprised. Sure, Jin's got his time in the limelight, but he shared all of his best episodes with the pre-character-development Assassin-chan, and we genuinely see good ol' Assassin-chan actually grow in this episode. Granted, it's in a direction that leads to him being an antagonist, but man, what a pretty fun character -- and it's not me pooh-pooing on the protagonists or anything since they're still pretty likable, but suffice to say that Mr. Dodo is easily my favourite character in this show right now. 

Episode 11 begins with Horobi re-activating Little Assassin, noting that he's learned from the actor in a way or two, and Horobi notes how Assassin-chan is growing far, far more than Jin did, leading to an absolutely adorable pouty reaction from Jin. Of course, in true villain style, Horobi tells Assassin-chan that his new assassination target is... Owada Shinya! If you're grown so much as an assassin, kill your mentor. 

Said mentor, by the way, ends up going through a pretty well-acted scene between himself and Aruto, talking about how acting is two different human personalities clashing against each other, and there is no warmth, no organic chemistry, to be obtained from a machine replicating acting skills -- something that everyone that starred in the Star Wars prequel movies might be able to sympathize with. Aruto ends up delivering a neat little twist on Owada's words, noting about how Humagears grow by interacting with people, drawing from their interactions with humans, and that's not too different from what Owada wants to get out of acting. Eventually, just as the asshole Jun is about to hoise the blame of the fiasco on Aruto's back, Owada ends up re-joining the movie shoot. Good job, Aruto! 

Horobi, of course, ends up putting a kibosh at Sumii Yuya's attempt at bettering himself, and as he goes through a robo-depression in his dressing room, Horobi shows up and makes his day worse by reprogramming him and turning him into a monster, the Arsino Magia, and he proceeds to rhino-rampage his way through the studio. We get our act 2 action sequence as Yua shows up in her hornet form to fight the Arsino Magia, while Aruto in shark form fights against Horobi. In perhaps the fastest and most abrupt Magia destruction ever, Kamen Rider Valkyrie just Thunder-Lightning-Blast-Fever's her way and blows the shit out of the Arsino Magia and flies away with the Zetsumerize Key, while Horobi and Zero-One continue to duke it out. I know there's only so many minutes in an episode, but I kinda really did feel like we probably could've built up Enji just a bit more, because I really didn't care when he blew up other than the fact that now Zaia Enterprise has their hands on the Arsino key, because Yua basically info-dumps that she's actually employed by Zaia, and is essentially just on loan to AIMS as a technical adviser. 

While the finalization of the shooting is taking place on the Ex-Aid rooftop set and everyone is all happy and stuff (Owada's even training a new version of Enji!) Yua brings Aruto to Zaia, and we learn all about Zaia. It's an even bigger company than Hiden, it has access to AI and space tech, it's global, and it can create what's basically some Star Trek holodeck transforming rooms. We get to meet Amatsu Gai, the soft-spoken CEO of Zaia who's giving me some heavy early-season Dan Kuroto vibes. Gai's more outright-evil from the beginning, though, curiously hinting that if Aruto doesn't sell Hiden Intelligence to him, there'll be a 'disaster' that's going to befall his company, and we later learn that Gai even warns him specifically about the movie shoot. Now if this means that he's in straight-up cahoots with Horobi, or if it's something else entirely, or if Gai's actually a more heroic character than he seems here, it's hard to tell at the moment. 

Speaking of said movie shoot, we get a genuinely unsettling and well-shot scene as we cut back and forth between the shooting of a climax shoot-out between Owada's character and the other characters in the movie, while Gai continuously talks about ominous stuff. And as Owada's character seems to get 'shot' in filming, everyone comments about how great the scene and acting is... only for the camera to pan away that while Owada's co-star was shooting a prop gun, Assassin-chan is standing nearby with a fucking real-ass gun and shot Owada through the goddamn chest. Holy shit. 

More than the simple horror of Owada being shot, this is Owada being shot by a blue-eyed Humagear, and while the ramifications aren't quite explored just yet, we already get hints from the terrified movie producer and the snippet of news we hear later at the end of the episode about how this is going to royally fuck up Hiden's reputation. 

And then we get a genuinely cool scene as Fuwa ascends the stairs while Assassin-chan (and his newly pink-skunk-mark dyed hair!) stop and glare at each other from different stairwells, just pull out their little transformation trinkets and transform. And that sequence of them going "Henshin!" and "Ansatsu!" at each other is just so goddamned cool. And the Dodo Magia has clearly gotten a little touch-up, with a brand-new set of shoulder-pads and chest armour with ammo bandoliers and shit wrapped all around it! We've seen the Dodo Magia get an upgrade before in terms of strength and getting those two goofy-ass feather-blades, but man oh man if we get a Kamen Rider Build style build-up of a not-quite-Kamen-Rider monster into them finally becoming Kamen Rider, like what happened to Blood Stalk and Night Rogue... I am all up for it. 

Aruto, meanwhile, arrives onto the scene of the shoot a bit too late and the look of heartbreak to see that everyone's yelling about how Humagears are killing machines is an amazing expression. Not helping matters is Horobi being a dick and walking up and gloating all about how Humagears will evolve into humanity-destroying machines and about revolution and shit. We get a straight-up brief Pokemon battle as both Horobi and Aruto sic their respective giant CGI bugs at each other, before transforming. 

And the bad guys... win! Horobi outclasses Zero One as usual and the fight choreography for both Horobi fights makes it clear that he's dominating the fight with an awesome bit of swagger in his step and his effortless dodging, while Assassin-chan summons bullets from his shoulders and then lobs said bullets towards Vulcan by hitting them with his swords, actually defeating Fuwa. Aruto immediately pulls out the biggest gun in his arsenal and summons Breaking Mammoth, and in a refreshing bit of sequence in Tokusatsu, immediately just goes for the finisher without even really trying to duke it out first. I guess Breaking Mammoth's CGI is just that expensive? It does really fit with Aruto's absolutely frustrated state of mind at the moment, though, and I can believe that he's just so livid at Horobi pissing all over his dreams of human/robot co-existence that all he wants to do is to summon a giant transforming robot that will "crush like a machine" with a giant progrise key. The Breaking Impact doesn't work, though, and Horobi just summons his scorpion buddy to take the hit for him. Horobi and Assassin-chan both do a little cool line before walking off and retreating.

The episode ends with the somber note that both Fuwa and Aruto's gotten their asses handed to them by Metsubojinrai.net; the Dodo Magia's evolving; Owada Shinya was nearly killed and is hospitalized; Hiden Intelligence and the Humagears' reputation are both in the dumpster; Hiden Intelligence's being investigated by the cops and Amatsu Gai seems to be behind at least part of what's going on. 

And... and it's still a pretty solid episode all around! Owada Shinya is a pretty likable guest cast, the storyline leading to both Zaia and the destruction of Hiden's reputation is well-handled, and I'm obviously a massive fan of the character development for Mr. Dodo. Overall, a pretty damn fine episode. 

Random Notes: 

• It's hilarious to note that after his little tantrum, Jin actually sits the entire episode out. Presumably he's just sitting, grumbling while crouched in the corner of their little ramshackle base. 
• Sanzo is a very minor character who I don't think ever really had lines other than being the sidekick to another minor character in Jun, but he gets a lot of great snarky lines in this episode. We did get to see him gain respect for Aruto during the mangaka episodes, and seeing him actually snark at Jun for being the 'executive producer' but quickly shifting blame to Aruto is pretty nice of him. He also gets a bit later on where he tries to hide behind Jun during the police investigation, then tries to hide behind Shester, who fixes him with the most glorious death-glare ever. 
• "I'm the only one that can save you" is apparently something that Owada Shinya's character in the movie says in a climax scene... and the show doesn't make it clear if they re-appropriated Aruto's catchphrase, or if Aruto just stole the line from one of Owada's movies or something. 
• So, uh, do Humagears even need dressing rooms? Not to be crass or anything, but I'm legitimately curious. 
• This isn't the first time Sakimoto Hiromi's played a character that ended up with the same fate that Enji ended up with, let's put it mildly. 
• That scene where Gai hands Aruto that name card and Aruto just bites it on his lip so he can show off his toy phone and shoot over a digital name-card is so hilarious, I love it. 
• I really do love that Assassin-chan has his own henshin code in "ansatsu". It's honestly something that they'll never really do with a real Kamen Rider, I don't think, but it makes him just feel so much more unique.
• Vulcan's Punching Kaban Shot quite literally has him materialize a goddamn replica of his Punching Kong suit's giant chunky gloves, which dissipate after Mr. Dodo slicies it apart. 
• This is the first time that we actually hear the text-to-speech for Breaking Mammoth out loud. 
• I kinda wish that Horobi's exit was a bit more spectacular than him just summoning his whip and hitting the ground to make a cloud of dust. Like, it's not terrible, but it could've been better. 

Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #14 - Exodus

The third expansion in the Rath cycle is Exodus. I had originally wanted to do this alongside Stronghold as a single article, but, well... I decided to split them apart so I can get these out in a relatively timely manner. It also kind of allows me to talk about more cards without feeling the fatigue, and the Rath block in general does give me enough to talk about that I really don't want to rush and blaze through them.

(We will definitely be blazing through the Urza cycle, though, which I do have a lot of problems finding interesting cards of. The question is whether it's going to be one article or two articles)

Anyway, the story of Exodus is sort of the temporary conclusion to the saga of the Weatherlight crew that ran through Weatherlight, Tempest and Stronghold, as the crew's finished their rescue mission and their plot device collection mission, so all that's remain is to escape the plane of Rath and maybe defeat its vile master, Volrath. Again, as another expansion that's part of the years-long Weatherlight saga, a lot of the story is told via tie-in novels, comics and stories, but a lot of the events that happen are depicted in the cards of the expansion. As always, though, we're going to go through the design of the interesting creatures in the cards first.

This is going to be a pretty quick one, because, well, it is a small expansion, which is why I had wanted to wedge it with Stronghold... but turns out I have a lot to talk about in Stronghold. Oh well.

• Click here for the previous part, Stronghold.
• Click here for the next part, Urza's Saga.
• Click here for the index.

________________________________________

I do like that we start off with White first, because I really don't have a whole ton to say about White cards. The Soltari continue to be pretty neat designs, even if three expansions down the line, formless mist-men are starting to lose their charm. Soltari Visionary is still a pretty neat artwork, though, even if he does look pretty miserable. What got you down, Soltari Visionary? Cheer up, tomorrow's a new day.

We've been sort of just lumping most of this block's dragons in the post-break card dump, because... well, none of the dragons and drakes have been super interesting, just being generic dragons. But I really do like the artwork for Exalted Dragon! It just looks so sassy with the way he's posing. It's like he's a JoJo character or something, with very pronounced muscles, and just that pose he's making with the slav squat position, the show-off-my-deltoid pose and the way that hand is posed. And even then, that black-coloured mask-like head is a pretty interesting feature, as is the very blade-like wings. Not the most interesting thing to see on a M:TG card, but definitely a wacky enough looking dragon for me to consider notable.


Oh, hey, another one of the characters introduced all the way back in Weatherlight finally gets represented by a card, and it's Ertai, Wizard Adept. He's honestly sort of forgettable, and he's spent the entire cycle just sort of standing guard over a portal and briefly meeting the Shadow dimension people. If not for the story, he'd be completely unremarkable, since he's just a generic fantasy wizard dude who's apparently great at counterspells. I really don't have much to say here.

Equilibrium has a bunch of Beebles! Click here for M:TG's history on them. They're based on some creatures featured on the cover of a M:TG magazine, and while the design isn't fully finalized here, we do get to see these tiny, pink blob-homonculus creatures that are apparently meant to represent "souls" being traded in Rath. We're going to see these Beebles show up here and there for a while, at least until those in charge of Magic: The Gathering decide that these little flesh-blob gremlins are too goofy for the super-duper-serious-card-game. Boo to that, honestly.


More Thalakos creatures, and the Thalakos Drifters honestly just look like a bunch of generic ghosts as opposed to the more formless-mist-creature thing that the Thalakos have been depicted as in most of the block. I do like the artwork, though, the contorted faces look like something out of Ghostbusters or something, and definitely really showcase the madness of the Thalakos very well. I just kind of wonder why the crazy Thalakos is assigned to Blue... which honestly kind of seem pretty arbitrary. It's not like they're particularly smart or anything, right?

Thalakos Scout is a pretty neat, interesting artwork that really go back to the weird mist-gas-shadow-creature aesthetic of the Thalakos, with that right arm basically gooping all over the tree bark, the face being contorted, and the left arm bending like a vine while holding a spear. It's like this creature can actually just be nothing but formless mist, but is trying so desperately to hold on to a humanoid form, y'know?


Oh man, I really kind of want to know what the story is behind these two creatures. Mirozel and Ephemeron are both considered 'illusions', but both are these floating creatures with tapering, serpent-like tails. What are they? The tribe 'illusion' is even more ambiguous than something like 'spirit' or 'horror', and I'm honestly not sure what it implies for these two. Are they just creatures that Volrath or some other mage creates as fake creatures to populate the plane? Are they born out of the chaotic magic around Rath? Why exactly are they considered illusions?

The Mirozel are these bizarre giant flying Sunfish-like creatures with fangs, six eyes and a long tail that ends in a spiky barbed mace, and apparently are the "stars in Rath's opaque skies". Very bizarre! The Ephemeron is even weirder, with a head that's like a weird mixture between dinosaur, giant brain and slug eye-stalk, and the rest of his body is this weird eel-like figure with two massive mantis-like arms and whatever those weird blue tentacle things are supposed to be. "From nothing came teeth" indeed. It's just such a weird, randomly bizarre creature that we don't get any explanation towards what it really is, and I kinda wished we did, y'know?


More of the monstrous merfolk that live in Rath! Merfolk Looter has a very savage-looking head with all those tentacles and barbels trailing behind him, and the empty-loking eyes and the dude's mouth really look like some sort of hideous jungle river fish. Rootwater Mystic, meanwhile, is far ganglier and straight-up skeletal, with massive, clawed hands and a facial expression that looks far more intelligent than the Looter. It's interesting how these two have basically the same body layout, right up to the position of the head tentacles and whatnot, but really sell the fantasy of one of them being a brute that physically assaults trespassers, while the other is a non-combat being that uses magic to scry on the land-dwellers. Pretty neat art!


Whiptongue Frog. Okay, yeah, sure, why the hell not? I've long since lumped a lot of the "just a giant animal" at the end of these reviews, but man, the Whiptongue Frog's overly long front legs, and the fact that its tongue is used as some sort of crazy lance-like projectile to kill random tribal hunters? That's a fun bit of personality. I like it. For some inexplicable reason, its ability is to gain flying, so imagine this frog with its gangly frog arms and its stab-you-in-the-chest tongue spear somehow inexplicably flying for some reason. Okay!

Nausea features another Beeble, and we get a clearer view on this weird lumpy pink blob with a face and teeny-tiny spindly limbs, and apparently it drives the Moggs nauseous with its cuteness. That's what the flavour text claims, anyway. The artwork kind of makes it pretty clear from the Beeble's position that it's likely to be some sort of Beeble flatulence that's causing those poor Moggs to have such an adverse reaction. It's kind of a juvenile toilet humour, admittedly, but come on, the Beeble farting on some badass musclebound goblins' faces and driving them to vomit and lose stats is kind of such a hilariously bizarre concept. Perhaps not the most mature card, but, eh,  I kinda find it funny.


Okay, the Carnophage is pretty cool. The idea of a zombie that has its skin stripped off and reduced to only musculature above bone should be more gross than cool, but the artwork on the Carnophage with the hollowed-out eyes, the bulging veiny muscles, those creepy long claws, and most of all, those hideous chunky teeth really do lend an element of neat weirdness that really do sell the idea that this Carnophage is a creature worthy of the flavour text of "eating is all it knows".

It's actually quite interesting how superficially this looks to the Dauthi Warlord, another one of the shadowy monstrous Dauthi creatures. It's also got a bunch of chunky chompers, but instead of being made up of muscles, the sinews that cover the Dauthi Warlord's body has a bunch of moaning, screaming faces on them. Of course. It's also got one hell of a massive crown-like structure that extends up from its head, and I do like the absolutely alien-looking eyes it's got. This expansion, by the way, is the last we're going to see of the Dauthi, the Thalakos and the Soldari, because they're all Rath-unique creatures.


I'm not 100% sure what's going on with Dauthi Cutthroat. It just seems to be some dude with shadows leaking out of his shoulders perched on top of a dome. I kind of don't really have much to say here, it's actually one of the more boring Dauthi cards. I'm just sort of obligated to talk about all the Shadow-realm creatures because they're one of the unique features of Rath.

Dauthi Jackal, though, is anything but boring. On a quick glance, it's just a generic skeletal dog, but take a closer look at the positioning of those legs and you realize just how weird the proportions are. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if it's just me, but the way the rear legs are bent makes them feel more at the forefront than the two spindlier front legs. And of course, that massive skeletal jackal-maw is a pretty creepy feature to have.


Okay, Entropic Specter is also pretty dang cool. The artwork's pretty dynamic. I think that massive swirling cloud-vortex is located in the specter's cloak? However the hell that makes sense? We don't actually get any explanation to what the shit this creature is, other than it's a vaguely humanoid-shaped thing with spikes all over, a hooded head, a hand that looks frayed, and a bizarre cloak trailing across her back. And her effect is just so bizarrely weird that I'm genuinely not sure what's going on... but I like it!

And then there's something so mundane like Grollub. Who's an ogre-like beast thing that's just flea-ridden and standing in the foreground of a couple of arguing moggs. Apparently, nasty little mogg children always blame the Grollub for any misdeeds, and the asshole mogg taskmasters will beat the shit out of the Grollub. Poor Grollub, someone give him a hug. For whatever reason, any time the Grollub is damaged, all its opponent gains life. Okay? Y'know, sometimes these card effects really do make me wonder what it's supposed to represent.


Pit Spawn is another beast, and while we don't really get any explanation, it's pretty demonic, yeah? Particularly since our very first demon was, what, Lord of the Pit or something along those lines? Wizards wasn't allowed to use the D-word in this period of time, though, and I'm kind of curious why this thing is called a 'beast' as opposed to a horror or a zombie or something along those lines. A pretty grisly creature, in any case, with a face that looks like some sort of twisted Luchador mask, and the bone shards that fly out of its mouth is a pretty neat little detail.

MIND MAGGOTS! Are you uncomfortable yet? Look at those half-transparent, squirming, wiggling worms squelching and wiggling out of that poor woman's ear, with teeny-tiny little feeder-mouths at the end of each maggot face. It's not even just one, and from its name, it's kind of implied that these things eat either your brain or eat your thoughts, both of which are completely believable in the M:TG world. I don't know about you, but shit, the Mind Maggots are a couple magnitudes creepier than the Pit Spawn.


"Its respiration is your expiration" is such a fun flavour text for the Plaguebearer, one of the grossest and more disgusting looking monsters I've seen in Magic so far, and that's definitely a compliment. Like, holy shit, what a nasty-looking zombie this is! From the inhumanly large mouth to the vomit being belched out (that apparently dissolves that poor human's face straight off!) to the massive toad-like cheek pouches, to the inexplicable cyst-like growths on this thing's back... a genuinely nasty-looking zombie design that wouldn't look out of place in something like Resident Evil or something. Definitely a pretty cool monster!

The only non-Green Spike we see so far is the Spike Cannibal, who apparently is so evil it eats its Spike buddies! And this evilness causes it to be counted as a Black-mana creature. I do really like just how odd the Spike Cannibal looks in comparison to most of the Spikes, which tended to look like a mixture of slugs and arthropods. The Spike Cannibal's colouration brings to mind something more fleshy or even rock-like, and that very smooth sheen it has on its face, with its beady eyes... yeah, if Spikes can talk, this one probably sounds like a goddamn serial killer.


Holy shit, what's even going on with the Thrull Surgeon? There's always been a theme of horrifying surgery and experimentation in the Rath cycle, but man, the Thrull Surgeon is just such a bizarre, fucked-up thing that's doing brain surgery on that poor goblin. And in addition to multiple limbs with way too many joints, it's also got a whole lot of bizarre features like spider-like legs, a squirrel tail, and a buzzsaw made out of flesh. Perhaps the creepiest thing is its head, which... I am not sure how to describe. Its upper jaw is less a jaw and more a chunk of beetle-like armour, while its lower jaw is a massive underbite with a beard of tentacles, and a slug-eye with a tiny eyeball where a tongue should be. Such a fucked-up looking creature! Sadly, this is going to be our last Thrull in a while, although unlike the Shadow-realm creatures, the Thrulls will show up in future Magic expansions. Just give them a decade or two.

I really don't have a whole ton more to say about most of the moggs and goblins in this set, but Mogg Assassin is pretty funny. Apparently, assassination in mogg terms includes a grinning goblin running around with a bag of bombs. I mean, sure, I guess even Ezio Auditore carries around a bunch of explosives from time to time...


Red actually has a bunch of salamanders in this set, and I'm not sure if there's some significance that salamanders have to the plane of Rath, but the Cinder Crawler is a pretty neat creature that apparently lives in burning lava. Which I'll believe. Apparently, it just pushes everything into the burning lava and just waits it to cook. It's not just a lava salamander, it's a lava salamander connoisseur. It's not like any of its other plebeian salamander cousins, it knows that food's meant to be enjoyed when it tastes good.

Furnace Brood is a bunch of elementals, and it's... interesting. They look like little devil-Beeble creatures. Elementals are supposedly beings that are born out of and represent an aspect of the elements, and these things represent... the furnace? A bunch of red creatures with a lightning spark jumping around their heads? Sure, the flavour text attempts to explain it off as furnace air apparently crackling with magnetic cackles, but... eh, I dunno.


Sabertooth Wyvern is a pretty neat looking creature. It's a relatively simple concept, just slap a saber-toothed tiger's teeth onto a wyvern, but sometimes you don't have to go all the way and reinvent the wheel, y'know? Sometimes a familiar creature with just a detail or two changed can be kind of memorable, especially with the Sabertooth Wyvern's pretty cheeky flavour text.

And, hey, it's Mirri! Who's essentially the main female protagonist in the Weatherlight saga, what with Sisay being the object of rescue and everything. She's pretty perfect in green, honestly, and I do like the idea that she's such a fast-attacking character that jumps through the trees. All her abilities from 'first strike' to the fact that she doesn't tap after attacking to forestwalk really do sell the fantasy pretty well, even if I'm not sure if this combination of keywords are actually good. I'm here to talk about the art and flavour. Mirri's pretty cool, I guess, and it's always nice to see more of the actual characters represented as cards. By my count, we're still missing Gerrard, Sisay, Volrath, Tahngarth, Karn and Squee, though. And those are the ones whose names I remember.


The Skyshroud elves keep showing up and I keep finding them to be as boring as ever, but the Skyshroud War Beast is pretty cool. On a quick glance, it looks like a generic raptor-like dinosaur, but look closer and it just looks so weird. Its head is a combination of a ceratopsian dinosaur with a bird's beak, and a pair of random mammoth-like tusks... and it doesn't even have an eye! Its arms also taper off into mantis-like scythes. A pretty cool looking mount!

Plated Rootwalla! I didn't talk too much about the very original Rootwalla, because I thought it's just a generic monitor lizard. Apparently it's going to be a recurring critter. Huh. The Plated Rootwalla looks far more savage, looking like a Thorny Devil Lizard, but far more exaggerated, particularly that massive headplate and those mean-looking claws.


I think this is the last we see of the Spikes as well. I'm not sure how I feel about the constant 'abandoning' of some of these unique creatures. On one hand, it does end up making the individual planes a lot more unique. Like, Rath's going to forever be remembered in my head as "the plane with weird shadow creatures, Spikes, Slivers and Licids", and it does make the creatures we get here end up looking pretty unique. But I kinda wanna see these creatures in other planes, too, y'know? Ah well. Spike Hatcher's kind of a simple looking Spike, honestly, although I do like the visual image of this green Spike gently using its massive fangs to pull out the baby Spikes out of the little pods on its back. I think this is one of the few Spikes whose pods have completely 'hatched'>

Spike Rogue is one hell of a daredevil! I'm not sure what makes her more rogue-like than the other Spikes, but I suspect jumping and biting some random armadillo-like beast all yee-haw cowboy wrangler style isn't something most Spikes do. A pretty interesting and dynamic artwork! I like the more mottled texture on the Rogue, too.


Spike Weaver is easily the most spider-looking Spike. Those two fangs look particularly like pedipalps, and coupled with the massive eyes, it really does look like a spider's head, particularly something like the jumping spider with its prominent large eyes. Throw in those webs around it, and, yeah, the Spike Weaver looks pretty spidery. I'm not sure why the ability to weave webs apparently translates into disabling combat damage, but I guess everyone just gets stuck in the webs.

Jackalope Herd. Jackalopes are honestly always one of the weirdest cryptids ever, and it's nice that the M:TG team acknowledges the sheer bizarreness of a bunch of cute bunnies with deer antlers and orc fangs. And I do love just how intentionally harmless these things are... but they're still a 4/5 creature, which means that it's more than double the raw power of something like the Carnophage or Mirri the Cat Warrior. I would chalk it up to M:TG's story-and-gameplay-mismatch as far as stats go... but y'know what? Maybe jackalopes are that badass. I mean, it's not like I know any better.


We're going into the Artifact creatures, and I do like these two. Mindless Automaton looks hilarious with those clunky murder arms, a massive fanged underbite and a genuinely goofy looking face. It looks like something out of a children's book, except it's doing something brutal by whacking these silly Moggs around.

Workhorse, I suspect, owes its entire existence to a pun. Presumably, Mr. Mage over there gave this otherwise-humanoid-shaped robot a gross-looking horse head just to make the pun. I can appreciate that.


Hey, it's a bunch of Thopters! I love the Thopters, it just sounds like the sort of clattering, possibly-unsafe steampunk/magic-punk helicopters that would exist in a fantasy setting. And this particular Thopter Squadron is apparently piloted by Moggs, and I do kind of like that these things sort of look like they're designed, in some way, after some weird insect. Or maybe after the Mawcor? That's a Rath-plane creature, after all, and the anatomy's similar enough, sans gaping mouth.

Our final Licid as we leave the plane of Rath is the Transmogrifying Licid, which looks particularly weird, like some bizarre tick or crab like creature with a metallic exterrior and two massive whiplike antennae. The fact that it apparently "transmogrifies" you (I love the word transmogrify) apparently means that the Transmogrifying Licid transforms you into a goddamned Artifact. Somehow, whatever this parasitic thing does, the body of the person ends up being counted as essentially a robotic creature. That's creepy, and, man, what an interesting creature to end on.

The Flash S06E02 Review: Barry Fucks With Time

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 2: A Flash of the Lightning

I actually watched this episode like, when it aired a month or so ago, but just didn't have the energy to finish editing the draft of the review. 

This episode was... actually pretty neat, and depending on how it's handled, the build-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths is definitely something that I'm a huge fan of. It's a huge storyline they've been teasing us with for literal years, and while part of it does feel like we've walked down this path before (stop Iris from being killed by Savitar), there's a reverence and a sense of us really building up to something, unlike, say, the terrible Flashpoint adaptation, y'know? We get a lot of great acting from Grant Gustin and Candice Patton, though, in this episode, as they come to terms with the grips of morality, and just how they'll keep fighting tooth and nail to save everyone... and the fact that they just recently lost their child doesn't help their mood either. It's all pretty dramatic, which I am pretty much a big fan of. And I do really like that throughout the episode, Barry sort of flips back and forth between two attitudes -- one where he thinks that this might be basically the reason he was given his powers, and that it's always going to be his life on the line before he allows billions to die. 

Of course, that doesn't mean Barry's going to take it lying down, and this episode has Barry zip over to Earth-3 to get the Flash of that universe, Jay Garrick, to give him a second opinion... particularly after an attempt to zip to the future to take a peek causes him to be repelled with (gasp!) a wall of Anti-Matter. So he goes to get Jay's help. Joan Garrick's also there, too, and, of course, she looks like Barry's mom! It's actually sort of undersold thanks to the huge revelations about the crisis and the existential angst that Barry is going through, but I do really love the interactions between Barry and Joan. 

Also, somewhere in the episode we get Joe West's amazing 'resilience' speech. Joe West is an awesome dad, and this speech was pretty awesome even by Joe West standards. 

While all of this going on, the villain-of-the-week is a pretty interesting one. It's not particularly novel, but the idea of a metahuman troubled teen (tm) who is wrongfully convicted, and all evidence points to her being a murderer, and Cecile is very convinced that she is innocent thanks to her own powers, is well-delivered. Her dynamic with the more cynical Joe is amazingly done, and her eventually wanting to open what's basically Daredevil's law firm but for metahumans, is actually a nice, organic direction to take Cecile into. The actual investigation to Allegra Garcia is pretty simple, and the revelation that she actually has an evil (also metahuman) twin called Ultraviolet is sort of a way to make this episode end with an action scene, but it's serviceable. It's certainly a nice break from the endless stream of generic evil metahumans in the previous season, although there's apparently an organization going around seemingly recruiting metahumans like Ultraviolet to their cause. Okay!

And in the background of this we get... Killer Frost trying to understand this silly civilian 'life', alternating from being a Grade-A Bitch to Kamille (she apologizes, though) and being the most adorable person ever as she tries to do this whole 'express myself' thing and turning in a hilariously adorably inept human drawing. It's adorable. I love stories of robotic/anti-social characters slowly trying to figure out society. 

Oh, and Bloodwork's still being built up in the background. He's still being a dick, and his attempts to get funds or whatever, but this ends up with him killing a gangster called Romero when his blood powers spontaneously activate, and his blood is able to... uh... make zombies or something? It's decent buildup. No real complaints here, I guess. 

Ultimately, a very solid episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Oodles and oodles of Easter Eggs to Crisis on Infinite Earths, of course, since this half-year's season is going to apparently be loosely inspired by that. Highlights among them is the vision of Barry's death being exactly how he died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, running and dissolving into a skeleton that fades away; and the terrifying wall of Anti-matter going from alternate Earth to alternate Earth, dissolving and disintegrating all they touch.
• The title of this episode is the same with the issue in the Crisis on Infinite Earths issue where Barry famously died. 
• Another huge Easter Egg is the Multiverse Map. The ones on the borders are a bit hard to make out because of the filters, but among the obvious ones are most of the alternate Earths we've been through -- including our Earth, Earth-2, Supergirl's world, Earth-X, the Freedom Fighters' origin, the destroyed Flash-1986 universe, Sherloque Wells' Earth, Breacher's Academy, and a couple of other Wells-related Earth.
• Other than the Antimatter stuff, the Easter Egg that jumps out to me is Thaddeus Brown, the first person to bear the mantle 'Mr. Miracle' and trained the far more well-known Mr. Miracle seen in DC material. 
• Joan Garrick is, of course, the long-running spouse to Jay Garrick, and a very cool old woman in the Flash comics. 
• Allegra Garcia is a minor metahuman with electromagnetic powers that appeared in the pages of the 2008-2011 Titans run, the daughter of the supervillain Wavelength. Her story in this episode is pretty much original, though. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One E10 Review: I Really Want Kamen Rider Dodo

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 10: I am an Actor, Owada Shinya

It's been a while since we've had an episode review of Zero-One, not helped by the real-life break due to sporting events between episodes. This one was pretty neat, though -- judging by the next episode preview, it's the first part of a two-parter, but this one doesn't really end on a tense cliffhanger. The job that the Humagears participate in this time is acting, which... arguably, is one of those jobs that is way harder for a robot to participate in. There's a reason why 'wooden' and 'robotic' are adjectives that reviewers use derisively to refer to bad acting. Anyway, the plotline of this episode is pretty simple. Hiden Intelligence, in an effort to essentially do a PR stunt, is collaborating with veteran actor Owada Shinya to produce a cop movie with a Humagear co-star. It's a pretty simple set-up, and it surprisingly gives vice president Fukuoze Jun something to do as he sort of tags along and helps with some of the gag scenes in the episode. Also, Fuwa is there, because Fuwa is slowly becoming softer and a bit more amicable towards Hiden... and, hilariously, Izu just immediately shows the recording of Yua recording Assassin-chan, revealing her as the public leak. 

Speaking of which, Yua is still working with the mysterious Zaia head, and Fuwa's dialogue basically confirms that, at least as far as he knows, AIMS is not working together with Zaia and it's just Yua doing her own thing. Although it's kind of hard to gauge if AIMS truly is in the know, considering how we only ever see Yua and Fuwa and no one else. 

Perhaps the most adorable scenes, though, is the interactions between Jin and Assassin-chan, who act like two brothers teasing each other as they fanboy over some of Owada Shinya's movies, with Assassin-chan giving us the perfect eye-roll expression when Jin teases him for losing all the time, and insists that it's not loss, it's growth, and then they both try and copy Owada Shinya's scary samurai face. It's adorable. 

As we get into hijinks in the movie shoot, AIMS fights against Jin and the Dodo Magia, who plan to infect Enji. While Vulcan and Valkyrie fights against Jin, we get a fun bit of Izu doing the most hilarious game of poker-face charades to inform Aruto about Metsu-boys attacking. I'm not sure why Aruto didn't call for an evacuation then and there, though. It's a fucking robo-terrorist attack. But it allows Izu to do silly charades, so all is forgiven. There's also a fun bit where the actors are filming a shooting scene, and some explosions from the Kamen Rider fight outside causes part of the set to collapse -- and everyone thinks that it's the special effects team that overdid things. Owada Shinya in particular has a hilariously confused look as he briefly glances at the revolver he has on his hand. AIMS drives Jin off when he realizes that Assassin-chan is missing. Yua and Fuwa have a bit of a confrontation, with Yua basically admitting that her main goal is to bring Hiden Intelligence crumbling down. 

Meanwhile, Assassin-chan, still not quite sure about the difference between actors and movie roles, is enamoured with Owada Shinya's talk about being a 'legendary assassin'. Owada, meanwhile, isn't too pleased with the humagear actor, noting that the robot just 'isn't selling the scenes', and isn't particularly happy about having to work with someone who doesn't understand emotions properly and whatnot. Assassin-chan, letting his hair down and dressed up with a massive bandana and a funky jacket, ends up encountering Owada in the parking lot, asking to be taught 'how to be stronger'. Owada is apparently impressed with Assassin-chan remembering his moves from the samurai movie, and they sort of go through the script of the movie together, leading to Assassin-chan doing a cool, improvised ad-lib. Ironically, Owada's meeting with an aspiring young actor who's secretly a robot causes him to get even more disillusioned with his robot co-star, particularly when Enji flubs an attempted ad-lib. This causes Owada to leave the set, talking about how he doesn't want to star in a movie without any humanity. 

Again, Assassin-chan continues to actually grow as a person, seemingly being angered at Enji's failure as an actor that he decides to assassinate him instead of converting him to Metsubojinrai.net's cause. We get a genuinely cool scene as Assassin-chan goes through a pretty cool transformation sequence pose... and frankly, if we don't get a Kamen Rider Dodo by the end of this series, I'll be thoroughly disappointed. It's amazing how this silly robot dude has quickly became one of my favourite supporting characters in Rider. 

Yua transforms into Valkyrie and faces off against Mr. Dodo, and Jin swoops in to help his little buddy. It's kind of a shame that it's like the third story arc in a row that poor Valkyrie got the short end of the stick, because she quickly got beaten up by Jin and Dodo (the latter apparently gets progressively stronger every time he's recreated) before Aruto goes Zero-One. Zero-One basically fights Jin throughout the episode, with a neat sequence where they trade weapons, while the Dodo Magia unleashes a massive 'extinction' attack that defeats poor Yua. Despite their earlier argument, Fuwa shows up to save Yua, noting that he's doing this because he wants to, and they basically sort of bond over fighting for what they believe in. Awww, Fuwa is showing character growth! It's like last week that he's a one-note angry roboracist. Yua ends up believing in Fuwa and tosses the Gatling Hedgehog key she gets from the Zaia dude to Fuwa, allowing him to finish off Dodo for the third time. Jin, half-frozen from his fight with Aruto, flies off with the Dodo Key.

While the Aruto side of things ends with the quasi-cliffhanger of Owada Shinya exiting the movie production (which I honestly don't care about). I do really like the dynamic between Fuwa and Yua, where Fuwa basically all but says that he'll do whatever it takes to be a loyal ally to Yua, despite her stated mission statement of maybe having to betray AIMS in the future... but Fuwa's reply is a pretty cool "I'll defeat you if it comes to that". The episode ends with the shot of the mysterious CEO of Zaia (who likes the number 1000) in full shot for the first time as Yua reports to him about... the movie shooting? Okay?

Overall, a pretty solid episode. Admittedly I'm mostly distracted by just how adorable Assassin-chan and Owada are, and I really, really do want Assassin-chan to properly become a Kamen Rider some time in the future. I do kinda feel like I don't care about the Hiden part of the storyline, honestly, because both the AIMS and Metsubojinrai storylines for this episode felt a lot more interesting. It's okay, though -- we've had a fair amount of Aruto focus recently, and having a lot of focus on Assassin-chan, Yua and Fuwa (and mysterious Zaia man next week) is not something I'll complain about. 

Random Notes:

• There is a lot of times where the dialogue from the cop movie plays over astonishingly appropriate scenes, which is kinda heavy-handed but also a neat little editing choice. 
• I really feel like there's a missing flashy effect any time someone does the 'Charge Up' function of their weapon. Fuwa doing that elaborate 'fold my shotgun to reload it' really felt like it probably should've been accompanied by a visual effect. 
• It took a while for me to realize, but the actor Humagear Enji is played by Sakimoto Hiromi, better known as Yuya from Kamen Rider Gaim -- and since Gaim was the first-ever Kamen Rider material I watched, that means that every single minor character in that show is sort of distinct in my head. 
• The Gimmick Watch:
• "ZETSUMETSU!" That massive sword-slash-beam thing from the Dodo Assassin really looks like a Rider finisher. 
• "REVOLVER! Progrise Key confirmed. Gatling Kaban Shot!" "Charge rise: full charge! Gatling Kaban Buster!" Yep, I would say that Hedgehog is one of the weirdest powers you could give to a Kamen Rider, but Sento Kiryu's already done that with a fire-engine/hedgehog combination. 
• Among the other Progrise keys we see in Zaia are the Crushing Buffalo (ability: blow), Storming Penguin (ability: hurricane), Splashing Whale (ability: wave), Scouting Panda (ability: search), Trapping Spider (ability: territory), Sparking Giraffe (ability: electric) and a purple lion one that I can't make out. 
• Know your Magia: We don't actually see Jin infect anyone yet, but Horobi hands Jin the Arsino Progrise Key, based on the Arsinoitherium, an extinct elephant relative that looks like a two-horned rhinoceros. 
• Vulcan's second transformation in this episode has a very cool sequence where the bullet he shoots basically tries to drill its way through the back of Assassin-chan's neck, and then Fuwa fucking throat-punches Assassin-chan to do the 'bullet punch' thing he does to transform.
• I really love the little jump Jin does after he transforms. I also really love the "EE E E E E EE" panicked hand-waving and screeching when Aruto unleashes a fierce breath as cold as arctic winds straight into his face. 
• So is there a reason that Yua doesn't use Lightning Hornet in her second fight? 

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 24: Please Explain Your Plot

The final entry in my Let's Play of the fan-game Pokemon Uranium! This project honestly ended up taking a bit longer than I thought it would, in no small part due to the... interesting way that the story is spaced out in the game. And it's not that Uranium's story is bad or anything. The main concepts are solid, if pretty much similar to most anime and manga out there, and especially for a fanmade game, it's actually pretty neat to see them strike a neat balance between serious drama and light-heartedness. But on the other hand, it really does come through at some points that chunks of the game are created after some others, because particularly in the Eastern Tandor stuff onwards, so much of the story are just given to us in huge lumps of text that could really be streamlined a lot.

Still, again, for a fanmade effort, it certainly is a pretty awesome effort. Uranium isn't a perfect game. It's buggy, some of the gameplay mechanics are a bit questionable, some of the comedy choices don't exactly end up coming off pretty well and the storytelling is a bit wobbly, but all in all I did have a fair amoutn of fun playing through it.

Anyway, enjoy the last huge story dump for the game! I'll probably post one or two post-game segments after this, maybe if/when I play through Sword or Shield (and apparently the internet's like, set on fire because of those games). But this has certainly been a fun trip!