Pokemon S01E105-108 Review: Charizard's Character Development

Pokemon, Episodes 105-108

Episode 105: Charizard Chills

Okay, this episode is one of the more significant episodes in the Orange Island episodes, for the simple reason that... -gasp- Charizard finally listens to Ash! Charizard being insubordinate is one of the biggest parts of the early seasons of the anime, particularly the late Indigo League season and almost the entirety of Orange Islands. It's an interesting quirk, and it's a neat show of how Ash's basically winging it through his Pokemon career and is nowhere as badass as he thinks he is. And this episode, "Charizard Chills", is... an interesting one. And certainly nowhere as badass or sad as I had remembered watching it in my childhood. 

Anyway, Ash fights Tad, who is some dude with a Poliwrath (the championship belt and title is a nice touch), and as with any time Ash gets frustrated in a battle, tosses out the big guns in Charizard. And Charizard naturally immediately disobeys Ash. Tad, pissed off at being made fun off, surprisingly goes in a particularly brutal (for this part of the anime) series of attacks and freezes Charizard solid with an Ice Beam, leaving Charizard freezing and shivering. The episode probably doesn't want to portray Tad as particularly unlikable... but he's kind of a twat for freezing someone else's pet dragon and leaving him to essentially freeze to death, yeah? 

And Ash ends up re-earning Charizard's respect by essentially giving it his all in trying to warm Charizard back up, and getting that tail-flame flared up again. It honestly doesn't quite reach the same emotional impact as the original Charmander episode, or, honestly, even the earlier Scyther episode in this season, but like Charizard, I did appreciate the effort. Ash gives a monologue about how he admits he's not the best trainer but he will keep trying, and both the speech and the gesture of trying to keep him alive all night ends up getting through. 

Then we get the requisite action scenes. Charizard lets Ash ride him when Team Rocket attacks, and learns Dragon Rage to blow up Team Rocket's mecha and save Pikachu. And... it's nowhere quite as spectacular as Charizard's Seismic Toss, but it's still pretty cool! We get the rematch with Tad, where Charizard ultimately follows Ash's orders (mostly in dodging) and ends up taking down Poliwrath with a Seismic Toss. And... and honestly, I did kind of like this episode a bit. The fact that the thing that humbles Charizard is quite literally a more powerful Pokemon is a nice touch, and of course it's Ash's commitment to caring for his friends that comes through. It's a nice showcase of what our dumb protagonist is all about, and the episode overall is nice even if it's not quite as super-dramatic as I half-remembered it to be. 

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Episode 106: The Pokemon Water War

A pretty generic episode-of-the-week... and honestly, one of the reasons why reviewing through Orange Islands episodes is a bit slow for me. If we ever do Johto (don't look forward to it) I honestly could do ten to fifteen episodes in a single page, I wager. 

Anyway, the Pokemon-of-the-week is the Squirtle evolutionary line, with Ash and company arriving and helping out the local firefighters, who use an army of Blastoises, Wartortles and Squirtles to put out fires. Ash's Squirtle gets into a rivalry with a scarfed Wartortle, and, naturally, Ash and company get roped into firefighting training. It's mostly pretty fun fluff as Squirtle tries to compete with the Wartortles. There are a lot of fun visuals in the training. 

The conflict of the episode happens when a successful Team Rocket raid has them abscond with Pikachu, Squirtle and the Wartortle squad, but Squirtle and Wartortle ends up working together to vomit up more water than they could possibly store inside their body (physicslul) and free themselves. I did like the fact that the heroes end up having to also deal with a fire at the same time, forcing the humans to split up their forces. Squirtle and Wartortle arrive in time, get Blastoise-shotted into the building and work together and earn each other's manly respect. Ultimately, not the most super-relevant episode, but not a bad one. 

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Episode 107: Pokemon Food Fight

This one, though, is kind of unmemorable. I just watched it and I don't even remember much about it. Basically, our heroes come across Gulzar, a bratty kid who is angry that they mistook his flower-headband (made of real flowers) as free-range flowers. He fights Ash with his Gloom, and after a bit of Poke-Ball mix-up, Ash ends up tossing out Snorlax to fight Gloom. Snorlax being Snorlax, he is unbothered by a Solar Beam, tries to eat Gloom, then does eat Gulzar's lunch. In the process, though, Snorlax's Pokeball is damaged, and our heroes have to push him up to the Pokemon Center. It's not the first time we get a 'ha ha Snorlax fat, get it moving' plot, and this one isn't even funny like the first two times. 

There's a conflict plot with Team Rocket, who holds the food hostage and sort of tries to get the other trainers to hand over Ash's Pikachu, but the annoying brat-of-the-week somehow warmed up to our heroes and speaks up for them. Meowth gets to fight in some sort of funky armour, but of course, Snorlax wakes up. Meowth's attacks literally bounce off his body, then Snorlax unleashes Hyper Beam and blows up Team Rocket... then eats all the food. No real conclusion there, just... Snorlax eats, then cut away to his ball being repaired. It's honestly boring, and the fact that we've had better Snorlax episodes before makes this kind of bland. 

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Episode 108: Pokemon Double Trouble

Oh, hey, a gym battle! The final Orange Crew gym leader in Kumquat Island, and, uh... the gym leader is a bizarre one. Luana is a lady with some issues. She hugs Ash and mistakes him for her missing son Travis. It'd be just eye-rolling if this was part of the plot, but the resemblance to the gym leader's missing son is a plot point that goes nowhere. So I dunno. Team Rocket attacks with a Mecha-Rhydon, but gets blown away by a Charizard/Alakazam team-up. 

Most of the episode is otherwise just the gym battle, which is... a double battle! Two full generations before it debuts in the games! It's a neat little 'variant' that's actually pretty fun, and the fact that the fighters need to pick Pokemon with good synergy is kind of displayed pretty well in the battle, even if it's a bit too on-the-nose. I do definitely believe that Ash will just toss Pikachu and Charizard (he listens to orders now!) into the ring without thinking about it... not realizing that Charizard's kind of a solo act, and Pikachu is a catty little bitch who gets angry when Charizard accidentally knocks it over early in the fight. 

Luana's Marowak and Alakazam has some really neat moves even if, again, they are honestly kind of overly-situational. We get some fun reactions from Pikachu (his shrug!) and some neat tricks like Alakazam psychic-moving Charizard into the way of Pikachu's Thundershock. But ultimately, seeing Charizard take a whole lot of hits, Pikachu helps out, and the two team up (mostly they just trick Marowak into bonemeranging his buddy)

Honestly maybe it's just because I'm slowly getting burned out by Orange Island episodes, but this one felt kind of perfunctory. The animation's kinda nice, at least, and it's nice to see Charizard being a friend with Pikachu.

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Featured Characters:

• Episode 105: Charizard Chills
• Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Poliwrath, Charizard, Meowth
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, James, Jessie  
• Episode 106: Pokemon Water War
• Pokemon: Togepi, Lapras, Pikachu, Staryu, Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, Meowth, Weezing, Scyther, Venonat, Marill, Arbok
  
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Tracey, Officer Jenny, Jessie, James
  
• Episode 107: Pokemon Food Fight
• Pokemon: Togepi, Pikachu, Gloom, Squirtle, Snorlax, Chansey, Meowth
• Humans: Tracey, Ash, Misty, Nurse Joy, Jessie, James
• Episode 108: Pokemon Double Trouble
• Pokemon:  Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Lickitung, Arbok, Weezing, Alakazam, Charizard, Raichu, Wartortle, Machop, Sandslash, Electabuzz, Poliwhirl, Marowak
• Humans: Ash, Tracey, Misty, James, Jessie, Luana

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Random Notes:

• Thanks to episode 105 showing that Charizard obeys Ash, this places the second Pokemon movie to take place after 105. 
• Whether it's just a reuse of an available model, Tad's Poliwrath does wear the same P1 Grand Prix belt that was showcased heavily in the Ash's Primeape episodes. 
• In the English dub, apparently the Pokemon world's version of "eenie meenie miney moe" is "Eevee Mankey Hitmonlee".
• I did like the continuity nod between 106 and 107, and the reason our heroes are stuck there is because a lot of damage has been done to Ascorbia Island by the fires. 
• Episode 108 actually shows off Double Battles a full three years before it became an official part of the games in Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire. It's not particularly revolutionary or anything, and we've had full-on rumbles between Team Rocket and Ash's squad before, but it is the first formal battle with two-on-two. Notably, Orange Island's double battles end when one Pokemon faints. 
• James yelling at Weezing to use Hyper Beam, knowing full well that his Weezing isn't trained to do it, is kinda funny. 
• Bonemerang shouldn't hurt Charizard! He's flying type! But I guess Pikachu's thunderbolt can zap Marowak, so clearly type immunities simply don't exist at all in this episode. 
• Dub Edits:
• Episode 106 cuts out a scene of Meowth scratching Jessie and James's faces and drawing blood, swapping it for still shots of stars on a black background. (Oh, and of course, the obligatory removal of all Japanese katakana from the flags that the Squirtles and Wartortles carry). 
• The international shot of episode 108 cuts a segment of the training montage, specifically a group of Pokemon at a fitness gym, because it shows Jynx in its original black-skinned design. 
• One of Marowak's attacks is mis-translated from Double Edge into Body Slam in the English dub, not that you can really tell. 

Pokemon S01E101-104 Review: Lightning Farmer

Pokemon, Episodes 101-104

Episode 101: Get Along, Little Pokemon

Yeah, I'm just watching these Pokemon episodes on and off. Sometimes I get enough material to do a bunch of these 'batch' episodes, but... but the Orange Islands episodes just aren't all that interesting, y'know? 100 episodes down the road and they're all very samey, and unlike some of the newer seasons, they don't even have the excuse of having fancy visuals -- there is a distinct sense of 'well, we don't have that huge of an animation budget' with these episodes. 

"Get Along, Little Pokemon" is... it's a very, very interesting concept, actually, for a Pokemon world, and I'm frankly surprised this didn't show up more what with the first generation already having a Power Plant area and whatnot. But basically, Ash and company meet up with a goddamn lightning farmer-cowboy, who rides around a Tauros and leads a small swarm of Magnemite (who he doesn't keep in Pokeballs for no real reason beyond he likes it that way). The idea of farming lightning from thunderstorms, storing them on Magnemite and selling them to supply cities and towns is a bit of a bizarre idea... but we really don't get to explore it much after the exposition. Cowboy man gets his leg injured, Ash gets to go on a "heroic" run to bring the Magnemites to the city waiting for them, one of them is a bit of a goofball and gets separated from its pack. They fight Team Rocket, and the goofball Magnemite gets brave enough to fight back and evolves into a Magneton. 

Again, the concept is nice but it feels like it's the content of around half an episode or something. None of the action scenes are particularly noteworthy and it's not like the plot is anything particularly novel or honestly even fitting with the idea of spotlighting Magnemite and Magneton. 

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Episode 102: The Mystery Menace

This is another one that feels all right in a vacuum, but also feels like it has the sense of 'been here, done that'. Doesn't help that we've already done a fair amount of 'abandoned Pokemon' stories far, far more effectively in this series' first dozen or so episodes. The fact that Ash's Bulbasaur is prominently featured in this episode makes it feel like there was going to be some payoff... but nope, Bulbasaur literally just shows up because the other Pokemon is also a Bulbasaur. There's a huge missed opportunity here and I feel like they don't quite capitalize on it at all. 

The plot's pretty simple, a take on the 'alligators in sewers' trope, turns out that -gasp- the 'monster' in Trovitopolis is actually an abandoned Bulbasaur! And the abandoned Bulbasaur once belonged to the mayor, who grew up to be an asshole! The mayor himself alternates between being cartoonishly dumb, or being surprisingly dark (by this show's very tame standards), at one point wanting to send a SWAT team to block up the sewers with concrete, and if three kids should starve to death beneath it, well sucks to be them. I mean, it all worked out fine (and even then if it didn't Ash could just Charizard his way out) but still, that was surprisingly a different tone compared to most of the series. At least the mayor's ex-Bulbasaur absolutely loathes its previous trainer, though, which is clearly the best conclusion here. 

Overall, a huge missed opportunity, and the fact that we spend so much time dicking around the 'mystery' on what the sewer monster is (it's a Pokemon show, so of course it's a Pokemon) makes this one feel like it dragged on longer than it should. 

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Episode 103: Misty Meets Her Match

A gym battle! Which means we're around eight or ten episodes before the Orange Islands season ends! Whether I ever do Johto or not (random Elekid cameo in this episode, BTW) is going to be another matter entirely, but I'm definitely going to try to finish Orange Islands. I know Johto gets real repetitive, though, and I'm barely keeping up with Orange Islands even with this 'two or three paragraphs per episode' deal. 

"Misty Meets Her Match" is one of those 'big' episodes that everyone talked about as a kid because shipping. And... and honestly, in this show? It's clearly not meant to be much. Every bit of attempted Ash/Misty shipping goes straight over Ash's head, Misty herself is a bit flustered (what girl her age wouldn't be?) and the supposed love rival, Rudy? He's a complete lunatic, the sort of over-the-top "my eternal love!" sort of trope you'd see a lot in anime. And... and that's really about it to be said. There sure was an attempt, though, for Rudy to offer Misty the chance to stay around Trovita Island, and Rudy's little sister was putting on the wingman charm real strong... but... eh, y'know what? Considering how much it shook the fandom at the time, I'm going to say that it probably qualifies as a success in that regard, but I really don't care about the shipping side all that much. 

That aside, compared to the other episodes I'm reviewing today, "Misty Meets Her Match" does have a fair amount of obvious animation budget allocated to it. From the rescue mission in the beginning to the surprisingly large amount of Pokemon Rudy has in his gym, and the battle scene... it's pretty neat, and probably one of the better action sequences in Orange Islands... although that's speaking more about the general quality of the rest of Orange Islands in general than this battle.

That aside, it's a typical gym battle episode. There's the obligatory Island Trial style non-battle element, which... which feels more like an obligatory thing and a vehicle for the writers to show Rudy's hilariously blatant attempts to flirt. The dancing thing doesn't really go anywhere, and ultimately it just ends in a regular battle. It's been a while since we had one of those, though, and we really haven't seen Electabuzz and Exeggutor a whole ton. The episode ends with an interesting (albeit nonsensical, in video-game logic) of Squirtle learning Skull Bash like some sort of secret art, which is pretty cool. It also features a rare case of an anime Pokemon being explicitly highlighted for an unusual TM movepool. 

Ultimately... it's not my thing, but I did definitely appreciate them highlighting Rudy's antics in this 'love triangle' . It sure fits some grade school tomfoolery if these characters are supposed to be in their early teens! I didn't love this episode, but it was definitely a decent one. 

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Episode 104: Bound for Trouble

Yeah, throughout this episode there was definitely a huge sense of "Island of Giant Pokemon did it better", and so did some equivalent Pokemon-only or Pikachu/Meowth episodes either in the mini-movie OVA's or in like the later seasons. "Bound for Trouble" is reasonably solid, though, anything with Meowth in the spotlight -- particularly one where he interacts with Pikachu -- is definitely neat to watch. It's just that... well, it's sort of what we expect. After the two of them get bound together with some bizarre waist-to-waist cuffs, Meowth gets absolutely bullied and is the butt-monkey of the show. Pikachu acts like a bit of a dick (which is something that's definitely rare after the first dozen or so episodes) but we laugh because we're supposed to root for Pikachu and jeer at Meowth. Then there's that brief moment of Meowth being all melancholic and thinking about how different things could be if they weren't on opposing sides or whatever. Again, this honestly won't ever go anywhere since this is a static show, but it does make it feel just that much more special. 

The setting of this episode isn't terrible, either. Fairchild Island's gimmick are larger-than-normal Pokemon (well, specifically just Rhydon and Pidgeot, according to Tracey). No reason why they're all dicks to Pikachu and Meowth, but we do get some neutral antagonists here. The English dub that I watched did have a fair bit of fun with the dialogue, too, particularly everything surrounding the fake fruits and pitfalls early on in the episode. Ash's acting at being separated from Pikachu and with his companion possibly in mortal danger isn't quite that distraught (probably because of that out-of-place background music) as it would have to really tug at the heartstrings, though. 

So this time around we've got two decent solid episodes and two forgettable ones. We have less than ten episodes before Orange Island concludes, so we'll see just how it really ends. 

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Featured Characters:

• Episode 101:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Magnemite, Jolteon, Tauros, Meowth, Chansey, Arbok
• Humans: Tracey, Ash, Misty, James, Jessie, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy
• Episode 102:
• Pokemon: Togepi, Pikachu, Meowth, Bulbasaur, Weezing, Muk
  
• Humans: Tracey, Misty, Ash, James, Jessie, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy, Professor Oak
  
• Episode 103: 
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Seel, Staryu, Lapras, Meowth, Charizard, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Elekid (image), Exeggutor, Electabuzz, Starmie, Hitmonchan, Golem, Alakazam, Venomoth, Rhydon, Pidgeot, Ninetales
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, Rudy, Jessie, James
• Episode 104:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Arbok, Weezing, Pidgeot, Bulbasaur, Staryu, Marill, Persian (vision), Rhydon, Snorlax, Victreebel, Psyduck
• Humans: Misty, Tracey, Ash, Jessie, James, Giovanni (vision)

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Random Notes:

• Episode 101 has Team Rocket show up with anti-electric-attack gimmicks. I think this is one of the more blatant ones among the ones they showed up with. 
• So yeah, the anime and games are pretty consistent at having a single Magnemite become a single Magneton, despite what pokedex entries say. 
• I feel like this batch of episodes features a fair amount of the Game Boy games' music, like the cave theme. 
• Muk! It's nice to see Muk show up, even if he shows up for like ten seconds and could definitely have been utilized more. 
• Apparently there was a lot of talk about how episode 103 added more romantic subtext to the dialogue, but really, from what I can glean it's like extremely minor stuff and mostly on Rudy's part, but it's overblown by shippers. 
• Rudy's Starmie being able to use random TM shit like Thunderbolt reaaaaally is something that I wish that the video games actually did more of. 
• More regional variants on the Orange Islands, although these are just bigger variants than usual. Pokemon Go, anyone? 
• In Japan, the second movie debuted after "Bound for Trouble". Which... reminds me that I really need to review the first movie. 
• At this point Elekid would've definitely been finalized since he's going to show up in the little 'bundled' mini-movie in Pokemon 2000, so he gets a brief cameo in episode 103 as a silhouette of a mysterious Pokemon not in the original 151 that Tracey glimpses. 
• Good lord, though, Rudy's gym seems to be utterly dangerous. Not just for Ash's Pokemon, but for Rudy's as well. If Bulbasaur hadn't vine whipped it, that poor Exeggutor probably would've been smashed. It's not even like Blaine's volcano or whatever where Blaine's Pokemon would be fine if they fell into lava. 
• It's never said out loud but there was definitely the heavy implication that Pidgeot's bringing Meowth and Pikachu to feed to its chicks.
• Jessie really just sent Arbok to bonk onto Pidgeot mid-air. Somehow Arbok is absolutely fine after landing to the ground off-screen. 

Kamen Rider Saber E27-29 Review: Dream Dragon Boy

Kamen Rider Saber, Episodes 27-29

I'm still doing these! Sort of. I'm pretty behind on the show. 

Episode 27: Sorrow, I'll Turn it Into A Smile

So... I don't know. Kento being this dark anti-hero trying to stop the world from ending is a neat little wrench to be tossed into the status quo, but the next couple of episodes has basically been pretty much made obvious. He's going to seal the blades of all the tertiary riders and we also still have the Meggido trio and Master Logos to deal with, who I assume will be the final big bad of the show. 

This episode deals with Touma trying to connect with the mysterious little boy he sees every time he transforms into Primitive Dragon, because he's 100% convinced (for no real reason other than 'he looks sad') that he can befriend this dragon. Okay? It's mostly a montage of Touma getting blasted with imaginary fire all throughout the first half of the episode. 

Legiel, meanwhile, has gotten a massive power-up, turning him into a golden form of himself. He beats up Buster and Saikou pretty handily, before Touma shows up and transforms into Dragonic Knight... and, of course, naturally gets taken over. Then Touma sort of goes into a coma and essentially gives the CGI dragon a hug because he's sad? I can't say that this doesn't come out of nowhere because Ogami's kid read that story about a lonely dragon last episode or something, but the Primitive Dragon story has honestly been kind of one-note and the conclusion is pretty lackluster. Touma gets to become yet another new form, Elemental Dragon, and he absolutely blows Legiel up. I think he's actually dead now!

We get a brief flashback before Legiel dies where he regains his sanity enough to remember when the three Meggido boys, Tassel and Master Logos the first originally arrived in the storybook land. Touma also gets a brief vision of Tassel and the little dragon boy meeting him in the vision land, and I think this is the first time Tassel's actually interacted with the main cast other than Yuri? 

I don't know. It's all right, but I really had wished that the Primitive Dragon talk-stuff was either expanded upon more or quickly resolved within a single episode or something. Dragging it out like this for a pretty muted conclusion... it could be done better. 

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Episode 28: Writing the Past, Drawing the Future

And then there's this episode. It's partially a clip show, partially a recap show. I wonder if there's something that went on in the background? It's not as terrible as anime clip shows, and I enjoy the chance to stop down and take a breather, but it also means that there's honestly barely any content in the 22 minutes. This feels like one of those .5 episodes earlier in the show, except it's stretched out to double the length that it should. We get recaps and some internal speculation about the truth about what Kamijou and Kento saw as the way to 'save the world'; Touma gives a recap about his old background with Luna; Storius and Zooius do a bad guy motivation monologue. 

Outside of the recap segments, the episode basically reaffirms that hey, Kento is very much resolute in sealing all the sacred blades. And also Master Logos is a lunatic and probably going to be the final antagonist of the show. The big event that happens here is Ren leaving Sword of Logos and getting his wind sword sealed by Kento after a brief scuffle. You gotta feel sorry for the guy, compared to how Daishinji and Ogami leaving the organization was portrayed, Ren's decision is basically slowly built up in the background... and he just does that and gets his ass kicked within fifteen seconds of meeting Kento. It's like the writers had to check Ren off the list of 'he needs to leave Logos' and 'he needs to get his sword sealed'. 

Oh, and also, Master Logos does the typical anime villain 'I want to observe the hero, that's why I've allowed him to roam free like this' spiel. This one, I don't mind so much, Logos is pretty unhinged. We also get the brief and understated debut of Shindai Ryoga, another swordsman and a future Kamen Rider, who is Logos's right-hand man and Reika's big brother. 

There's sort of a framing plot of Mei being told to get Touma to write a sequel to his novel about friendship and stuff, and he resolves to do it since he now has a bunch of friends. That's honestly kind of whatever. What else? Desast shows up and gets mentioned so the audience remembers he exists, and Mei gets to see the storybook world, so she's probably going to be the next target. 

Kind of a whatever episode. It's good that they at least tossed in enough content so that the episode isn't entirely a clip show, but it also feels honestly kind of bland all around. 

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Episode 29: At that Moment, the Swordsman Made His Move
So after more or less hanging out in the background for the past couple of episodes, Rintarou has basically been observing and wrestling with his doubts regarding the organization. There's nothing ultimately super-complex about this since the show's honestly pretty blatant at who to root for, but I actually do find Rintarou's story pretty interesting as someone who wants so badly to believe that the organization he was raised in all his life to be right. And I like the little scene at the beginning where it's Mei that basically talks to Rintarou and gets him to objectively see all the evidence. 

Rintarou also decides to 'clean up' the traitor within the organization, something that the other swordsmen pick up immediately. This causes Touma and Yuri to teleport to Southern Base with some 'way of light' in order to help out Rintarou. Meanwhile, in Southern Base, we kind of get a repeat of Shindai Ryoga's introduction, making episode 28 feel a bit more redundant, honestly.

Rintarou's investigation gets him to overhear Reika interrogating Sophia, and he decides to report it to Master Logos. Which is honestly kind of the smart thing to do... if the corruption hasn't gone all the way to the top. I honestly wished that we had just a bit more conflict, that Master Logos was actually smart in trying to manipulate Rintarou. What we got -- a card-carrying hammy villain -- was still entertaining, but I honestly wished that we had something more? Logos just rants about how he got rid of the Divine Sages, mocks Rintarou's devotion to the creed, and basically all that's missing is a huge neon sign yelling "I am a crazy main villain!"

Rintarou transforms into Blades, but gets stopped by Ryoga, who has probably one of the coolest toys ever -- his sword's blade can be detached and he switches the handle and the blade to form a trident. Obviously the actual tokusatsu suit is wielding a practical trident for stunts, but hey, I actually like Kamen Rider Durendal's form a lot. I think it's the helmet, though I've always had a thing for aquatic Rider suits. They might be the villains, but man, the Shindai siblings have two of the best-looking suits in the entire show. (And one of his jingle is 'ocean splash splash', which is funny)

The rest of the episode is basically a protracted ten-minute fight against Durendal, which is actually pretty neat! Durendal wields the time blade... and his ability allows him to... uh... teleport Rintarou around? He gets teleported with some pretty neat water effects to another part of the base while Durendal just appears in and out of him. I guess we've got some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure King Crimosn time manipulation going on? The name of the ability is 'Kaiji Erasure', and I think that's what is going on. Durendal fights with Blades a bit, and then with Saber in his fancy new Elemental Dragon form... but then Durendal holds Rintarou at sword-point, forcing Touma to hand over his belt and transformation books. 

There's actually some really great acting on Rintarou's part, as he begs and cries about how the organization he believes in is rotten, how he wants Touma to destroy the whole organization... but Touma knows Rintarou enough to know that Rintarou doesn't mean that and what they need to do is that they need to fix the organization. Durendal's nice enough to wait! Yuri uses the time to distract Durendal, and Rintarou uses Elemental Dragon (I think?) to create a huge CGI tidal wave that sweeps all the good guys back to Northern Base. Touma actually straight-up gets a trident through his back, which is surprising! Yuri heals him almost immediately, though. Oh, and while all of this is going on, Kento shows up to free Sophia, allowing her to meet up with the rest of the Team Touma group. 

And... okay, as far as episodes go, this one is all right. It's mostly great on the part of Rintarou's acting and Durendal as a badass new baddie, though -- and, as I mentioned above, I kind of hoped that Master Logos had at least tried to keep up the deception a bit more? Honestly, these episodes are kind of clunky, but 29 here might be the most solid out of the three I review today.  

Pokemon S01E97-100: Alpha of the Group

Pokemon, Episodes 97-100

Back to Pokemon reviews!

Episode 97: Tracey Gets Bugged

It's been a while since I did one of these, huh? I do want to get at least the Orange Island adventures done before going into a far, far shorter version if/when I ever watch the Johto seasons... and that is if I don't just jump off to the newest season of Pokemon to review instead. Anyway, these are actually not particularly terrible episodes as far as Orange Island episodes go. "Tracey Gets Bugged" ends up focusing more on Tracey, because after his debut episode... he kind of gets reduced into a literal background presence, even moreso than Brock. I actually wonder why they didn't capitalize more on this and give Tracey a lot more to do in the Orange Islands... but oh well. 

Arriving on Murcott Island where it's famous for Bug-type Pokemon (and I do like that the writers remembered Misty's distaste for bugs) our heroes end up finding a badly injured Scyther. And, again, the story is simple and it's a variation that'll be repeated several times down the line (the one I can think on top of my head is Ash's Treecko) where our heroes comes across a member of a local group of Pokemon that gets injured, our heroes help it out, and it joins our heroes. Scyther's story is a bit different, though. It's an older specimen, the former alpha male of its pack, and like many other wild Pokemon it's distrustful of humans. Tracey ends up putting Scyther to sleep with his Venonat and catching Scyther in order to get it some help in a Pokemon Center. It's a classic case of a Pokemon not trusting humans and Scyther is not trustful of Tracey at all, and a good chunk of the plot ends up being them trying to figure out ways for Scyther to regain his confidence. 

Our old Scyther's tribe, meanwhile, ends up running afoul of Team Rocket (who crash-lands thanks to a swarm of good ol' Beedrill). Its new alpha, who has two scars on its face, ends up really pissing off Jessie by cutting off her hair -- a hilarious gag that rightfully drives Jessie angry and actually got Team Rocket whipped into competence as a result. A glue bazooka later, and they actually manage to capture the entire Scyther swarm in one go. The cries of his tribe ends up attracting Tracey's old Scyther, and between the animation and the voice-acting, they actually do a decent job at illustrating just how wounded and tired Tracey's Scyther is. 

We also get a pretty cool scene of Team Rocket actually bringing out all their manpower. The lesser-seen Lickitung and Victreebel joins in on Arbok and Weezing, and even Meowth joins in on the fight. Despite being outnumbered five-to-two, Old Scyther has something to prove -- not just to its tribe, but to itself. To this end, Old Scyther ends up shooing Pikachu away from the battlefield... and while this is an Orange Islands episode so the animation isn't anything particularly special, I did enjoy this a lot. Ultimately it's just Sychter doing a lot of speed-blitzing and slashing, but seeing it take down five enemies after spending the entire episode being weak and struggling is certainly nice to see. I do like that the anime doesn't quite go over the top. Scyther takes out like four out of the five Pokemon before he gains the respect of the new alpha of his tribe, the scar-faced Scyther, and together with Pikachu they send Team Rocket blasting off again. And the episode closes off with Tracey's Scyther making peace with Scar-face and leaving the tribe to him. Again, the plot is pretty basic, but honestly it's a lot more than we receive for a Pokemon captured by someone that's not Ash, and I'm a huge fan of this episode. 

Episode 98: A Way Off, Day Off

The follow-up, "A Way Off, Day Off", is a pretty interesting one as well. It's an episode that I don't think is the sort of thing you'd see in the seasons post-Johto, but ultimately the entire episode is sort of our characters decompressing and having lunch together. I don't think it works particularly well since the Pokemon anime isn't like anything super-tense, but it sure is thematic! There's some sort of vague plot about the Farfetch'd migration, a bunch of fruit on the island, a Jigglypuff cameo and an obligatory Team Rocket fight, but ultimately it's just a nice way to see the full parties of Ash, Misty and Tracey out and interacting with each other. 

The highlight of this, of course, has to be the meeting between Charizard and Scyther. Charizard is ill-mannered and a big asshole, but Scyther is an old dinosaur-lizard that's the leader of its own pack. I do like that the two of them would glare at each other and basically try to size each other up as the 'alphas' of the group, but they don't actually end up fighting and basically sort of ignore each other with a huff... and when the two of them work together to fend off Team Rocket, they have a manly mutual eye-contact-nod. Also, between Charizard's assholishness and Snorlax eating everyone's food, yeah, Ash isn't a particularly good trainer, huh? 

Not a whole ton takes place, again. We do have Ash reminding the audience about the GS ball and how he's totally wondering what's in it, but the foreknowledge that it's going to be a plot point that's ultimately dropped does make this feel even more pointless in an already filler episode. 

Episode 99: The Mandarin Island Miss Match

This one has Lorelei on it (renamed Prima by the dub), in an episode that was kind of famous for, uh, some cleavage-y fanservice. Honestly? It isn't really that bad. It's sort of a bland episode, though, another one of "Ash learns to be humble, sort of, but he's also a dunderhead so it passes over his head" episode. After a string of victories in Mandarin Island, Ash and company ends up coming up on battle extraordinaire Prima, who happens to be Misty's idol. 

And the episode basically has our hero interact a lot with Prima, whose personality is... kind of an airhead? Sort of a zen-spouting character, but also an easily-distracted airhead. She's unfazed by Ash's excitement and battle-battle-battle mentality, but when Ash tries to show off his battle skills to the super-perfect Prima, an attempt to pull out the big guns and toss out Charizard ends predictably when Charizard ends up rampaging, beating the Tauros... and also burning everything in sight until Prima and her Slowbro disables Charizard and takes it down. Ever since the championship, there's this vague bit of 'oh no, Ash, you can't control Charizard, when will you learn?' storyline sort of going on in the background... but, again, that isn't actually resolved here. 

The episode sort of goes around to show that Prima is, of course, an elite trainer that defeats everyone she meets, and there's an attempt where Ash thinks Prima is doing some reverse psychology on him... but Prima's personality is just really very easygoing. Prima beats up Pikachu with her Cloyster, before one-shotting Team Rocket with her Jynx. And... and again, there is a setup in this episode for something, and I don't know if it's just something that got lost in translation or what, but ultimately the meeting with Prima ends up being kind of a dud episode that ends up with "oh hey look at Prima, she's badass" and the moral of the episode being... uh... be like water my friend, I guess? A Bruce Lee quote?I dunno. Kind of disappointing. 

Episode 100: Wherefore Art Thou, Pokemon?

One that is a guest-star-of-the-week episode and perhaps one that isn't particularly memorable. It's a Romeo and Juliet spiel, but instead of Romeo and Juliet it's a pair of Nidorans owned by a young rich boy and a young rich girl who also happen to be neighbours and very, very competitive. Except the Nidorans love each other, because they're cute baby rabbit-porcupines who really couldn't care less about their owners' feud and they just want to frolic and make Nidobabies. The Nidorans being treated as basically prized show-dogs or show-cats are pretty neat, and the vibe of the episode is pretty interesting for one of these filler, guest-of-the-week episodes. 

The episode doesn't actually do much, but it's pretty sweet. It flows basically how you expect it to -- Misty is the one that catches on the quickest on the Nidorans and the one that's the biggest shipper; the two owners realize their Pokemon's feelings are more important and end up building a house for the Nidos between the two big houses and stuff. We do have a bunch of fun moments here and there, too, like Meowth convincing the two Nidorans to elope (when they wanted to capture the Nidos) or Misty trying to play matchmaker with letters and gifts and making things worse. Oh, and Team Rocket also cosplays as a bride and groom at one point, which is fun. Ultimately, of course, the two trainers learn to work together with their Nidorans, who end up fighting to protect each other and later fighting together to beat up Arbok and Victreebel. Nothing super exciting or notable, but not a terrible episode. 

________________________________

Featured Characters:

• Episode 97:
• Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Marill, Venonat, Beedrill, Caterpie, Pinsir, Scyther, Meowth, Weedle, Venomoth, Paras, Metapod, Chansey, Arbok, Weezing, Lickitung, Victreebel
• Humans: Tracey, Misty, Ash, Jessie, James, Nurse Joy, Professor Oak
• Episode 98:
• Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Jigglypuff, Staryu, Goldeen, Farfetch'd, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Snorlax, Charizard, Marill, Venonat, Scyther, Psyduck, Meowth, Arbok, Victreebel, Weezing, Lickitung, Seadra (flashback), Blastoise (flashback),  Nidoqueen (flashback), Electrode (flashback), Geodude (flashback)
  
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, James, Jessie, Cissy (flashback), Danny (flashback)
  
• Episode 99: 
• Pokemon: Bulbasaur, Butterfree, Togepi, Pikachu, Meowth, Squirtle, Persian, Tauros, Charizard, Slowbro, Machamp, Marowak, Dewgong, Alakazam, Cloyster, Jynx
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, Prima/Lorelei, Jessie, James
• Episode 100:
• Pokemon: Togepi, Pikachu, Nidoran F, Nidoran M, Marill, Pidgey, Vulpix, Caterpie, Raticate, Oddish, Meowth, Arbok, Victreebel, Staryu, Nidorino, Nidorina
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Tracey, James, Jessie

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Random Notes:

• Tracey's Scyther is one of the few members of a member of a main character's team in the anime that has a non-standard design; with the little side-burns that denote its age.
• Lost in the dub is the joke at the end of episode 97. The very non-catchphrase-y "I caught <insert name here>" pose that Ash does is actually a catchphrase in the Japanese version, where whenever Ash catches a Pokemon he goes "<insert name here> getto da ze!", basically going "Pidgeotto GET!" Tracey is attempting to basically copy Ash's quirky pose and catchphrase, which is why Ash looks so snotty in teaching Tracey how to properly do it. 
• Dub Changes:
• A big one! In order to fit with the lip flaps of the episode, Lorelei gets given a brand-new English dub name as 'Prima'. Lorelei's Japanese name is 'Kanna', which has two syllables instead of Lorelei's three. Also, all references to the Elite Four is removed in the dub. 
• A dub error related change in episode 97 is "Poison Sting" being dubbed as "Poison Needle", which is the literal meaning of Poison Sting's Japanese name.
• Episode 99's English dub ends up giving a Kadabra the cry of an Alakazam. The dub also mis-dubs Jynx's Ice Punch as Ice Beam. 
• Episode 100 has a fair amount of dub changes where Misty is angry at Ash who keeps pointing out that she's "a kid" too in regards to romance, whereas the dub changes this to Ash just completely missing any sort of romance from anything going on and making him a battle-obsessed kid.
• It's really, really interesting that Swords Dance, in anime-land, can be used to clear smoke. 
• Based on Generation 4's gender differences, Tracey's Scyther (and all the pre-Gen-4 models) actually has the larger abdomen of a female. 
• In episode 97, Ash references his Caterpie by noting that he hasn't captured a Caterpie 'in a long time'. 
• In a bit of an error, Misty is happy that Marill and Venonat aren't gross Bug-types... despite Venonat, y'know, being one. 
• Persian can learn Thunderbolt and Thunder via TM even from Generation I. 
• The Who's That Pokemon segment for Episode 98 features Porygon, in the single time in the entire run of the English Pokemon dub that Porygon's English dub has been heard. 
• Episode 99 has since been removed from active rotation due to its featuring of Jynx's original design. A scene zooming in on Prima's breasts is also removed from some versions of the international dub. 
• There is a joke regarding CD's and $18.95 cassette tapes in the Prima episode that I actually found pretty funny. 
• The real-life country, England, is mentioned by Misty early in episode 100. 
• Episode 100 refers to "Pokemon Contests", although it's a fairly long time before the genesis of Pokemon Contests as an actual part of the Pokemon lore in Ruby & Sapphire. I guess it's just them adapting pet contests? 

One Piece 1010 Review: The Hype!

One Piece, Chapter 1010: Colour of the Supreme King

I've been taking to reviewing One Piece on a basically monthly basis, talking about anywhere from 3 to 5 chapters all at once. Particularly during the early days of the Wano arc, I felt like it's the best way to enjoy this manga -- I reread Dressrosa and Whole Cake Island's arcs after they were published week-by-week, and they all felt much better read and talked about in batches of multiple chapters at once. (It also avoids pitfalls like getting overly excited for rather obvious 'nah, it's just a trolling cliffhanger' like the Kanjuro Oden thing recently)

But then sometimes you get bombshells like this one. 

Boy, and I thought last chapter was the huge Zoro chapter. And, sure, Big Mom being dropped off of Onigashima with a rock is very anticlimactic and a bit too silly for one of the Yonkou, so I wasn't surprised when turns out that Prometheus managed to get away from Zoro and grab Big Mom. Nothing too surprising -- although the events that led to this sequence is pretty interesting. Turns out blocking that Ocean Sovereignty attack is too hard on Zoro and he's stumbling, and Law elects to save Zoro from an onrushing Kaido instead of allowing him to continue dicing Prometheus up. 

Also interestingly, I think throughout the Wano arc, the manga has been pretty much hammering home that the Big Mom pirates... aren't in their A-game. Sure, the amnesia subplot was still kind of terrible all around, but with how disorganized the entire organization was (other than Katakuri) back in Whole Cake Island, how the Big Mom Pirates got kicked off a waterfall twice and Big Mom's children seem content to be sitting around doing nothing, and Big Mom herself held off at various points of the arc by characters like Queen or Franky or Jinbe or Robin? As Kaido himself notes in this chapter, "that was pathetic, Linlin." Are we getting a Gekko Moriah style story where we get a badass who's essentially let himself get rusty? An interesting direction to take Big Mom, and honestly, considering how she's honestly more destructive to her own family compared to the Straw Hats back in Whole Cake Island, I actually find this kind of intriguing.  

Anyway, Law can't Shambles or personality-swap these Yonkou characters, but apparently he can stab Kaido with an Injection Shot. He also tanks a full-on swipe from Kaido with an ability called 'Curtain', whose kanji reads 'antibacterial armament'... I mean, I guess it's something defensive, but the panel is so small that it's kind of hard to tell what's going on. Also interestingly, Law tells Zoro that 'the plan isn't worth one of us dying', which is surprising! I guess Law has became soft and is growing to really treat the Straw Hats as his true companions or some such. That's a nice reminder that despite all of his bluster and his insistence that "if you get tortured, die before you reveal information!" earlier this arc, he cares for some of his newfound friends. 

Kid and Killer exit stage left to deal with Big Mom. And... okay, sure. Also, speaking of Big Mom herself being treated as useless, Big Mom rants about how Zeus has been a burden to them (this one isn't even Zeus's fault!), and Prometheus actually seems to be egging Mama on. He asks Big Mom for 'something', which... honestly seems to lead to Big Mom making a new Zeus. Is Nami really going to permanently gain Zeus?

And then we get Zoro getting up from all the injuries, pulling out his blade, and, for the first time in forever (500 chapters, to be exact), Zoro busts out Kiki Kyutoryu: Asura. How is he standing after the previous chapter? Sheer guts, I guess -- we all know Zoro's got massive pain tolerance and stuff. It's still one of the weirdest things the Straw Hats had done, and Zoro has done it only twice throughout the story! And it's something everyone's been anticipating because, well, up until Wano, I don't think post-timeskip Zoro has really ever been in a fight where he's seriously challenged. We get the very cool "Blades Drawn: Dead Man's Game" attack, which draws blood from Kaido and is confirmed that it will be leaving a scar, just like Oden's blow. 

Asura's such a huge moment for me personally, because it's actually one of the things I was spoiled about for Zoro because I saw him bust it out in a fighting game back when I was just first starting to get into One Piece. And with how the form gets marketed and hyped up by the video games and movies and most other marketing material, it's worth remembering that unlike the other Enies' Lobby power-ups (Gear Second, Gear Third, Diable Jambe, Monster Point) Zoro only ever uses Asura twice. Once to take out Kaku, and a second time in an ineffective, easy-to-miss effort against the Sabaody Pacifista. With so many things going on, I honestly sometimes forget that Zoro has this ability...

But that's not all. That's not the most hype thing about this chapter. Yes, not Zoro slashing Kaido in a massive gash across his chest. 

Kaido's first reaction? "You can use Conqueror's Haki too?"

Holy shit, guys.

I've never subscribed to the 'Rayleigh has Conqueror's Haki and he's the first mate, ergo Zoro must have it too', for the simple fact that I've never really liked the explanation that 'the previous generation did X, so the main characters must do X too'... but if we're being completely honest, when Brook joked about it a couple chapters ago, I really didn't think that it was too far off that Zoro (and Sanji, but mostly Zoro) is going to be able to unlock Conqueror's Haki.

I love that Zoro doesn't even know he has this power, and he's even surprised -- all he intended to do is to knock Kaido down. And that's what makes the Zoro/Brook exchange in 998 or whatever so much more clever, I think. Sure, it's played off as a joke there, where Brook thinks Zoro's shaking the room with Conqueror's Haki... but while we could easily brush it off as a joke then, with this chapter? It becomes a neat little way for the author to insert the idea that 'hey, wouldn't it be cool if Zoro has Conqueror's Haki?' into our heads. And, hey, turns out that he has! It's very cool.

Kaido uses a Thunder Bagua to blast Zoro and Law down, and they're still alive... but I don't think they'll be getting up any time soon. The one that gets up, though? One Monkey D. Luffy, who spends the first half of this chapter with whited-out eyes after taking that Ragnaraku attack last chapter. Apparently, Luffy figures out that Conqueror's Haki isn't just an ability to blast down random weaklings, but it's something that can be infused to objects and weapons. 

The layout of the panels is slightly confusing and almost implies that Ryuo is Conqueror's Haki, but I think it's less that Ryuo is Conqueror's Haki; but more that the principle of Ryuo channeling Haki is what Luffy is going to do with Conqueror's Haki. And Luffy displays this by kicking towards Kaido's kanabo... and we get the clash of the leg and the club hovering inches from each other... the exact very cool effect that we had in the Oden flashback between Roger and Whitebeard! That is still one of the best-looking effects that truly demonstrated the clash well, and was recently animated spectacularly in anime form. I really need to sit down and watch the Wano arc of the anime, really. 

The rest of the chapter is a 'Luffy finally draws blood' chapter. We had an equivalent of this for most of Luffy's major drawn-out fights. And he just zips around, and starts to strike Kaido with his fists unleashing black Conqueror's Haki lightning and causing impacts without coming into contact. Some very cool panels here, and Luffy does a pretty badass boast saying he's going to beat Kaido. End chapter. 

And... and it's very, very interesting. It's been a while since we've gotten Luffy seriously beating down the main antagonist of an arc. The last one we got was Doflamingo, and that was after a series of three story arcs where the previous two major antagonists (Caesar Clown and Hody Jones) are more threats because of what they would do to the civilians as opposed to 'oh man, they are insurmountable threats'. With Whole Cake Island, the Straw Hats barely manage to escape Big Mom, and Luffy's victory over Katakuri has the underlying factor that Katakuri sort of let Luffy escape after a 'worthy opponent' deal. And Zou doesn't even have Luffy face off against Jack. 

And so the story has been going on with the assumption that, hey, Luffy might have very well bitten off more than he could chew. Taking on the Yonkou basically almost immediately into the new world, and dragging in a second one after his arguably selfish whim to save Sanji? Which... honestly, I can really see this going either way. I could see this leading to Luffy actually fighting Kaido -- if not beating him, then at least matching him the same way he matched Katakuri. After all, the other Supernovas note that Big Mom has been separated from Kaido. But on the other hand, with so many things still left unresolved all around Onigashima, and the whole five-act Kabuki play thing, I'm unconvinced that this will definitely end well. We're still in act three, after all, the one that ostensibly will end in tragedy... and I do kind of feel like whichever direction we're going, it's definitely going to be interesting!

Movie Review: The Avengers

The Avengers (2012)

And here we are, finally, with the final movie that capped off the first phase of the media juggernaut that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie that made everyone around the world collectively gasp and realize that you can build up a semblance of the complex comic-book universe and sell it to the audience as a series of seemingly non-connected movies that each build up the mythos of these different characters, and then have them fight each other in a huge crossover movie that still more or less made sense to those that watch it without too much of a background. 2012 was a wild year, ladies and gentlemen, and when I rewatched The Avengers to prepare for this review, I was genuinely stoked. I have mostly been a DC comic reader prior to this, and most of what I know about the Marvel universe were Spider-Man and X-Men stuff. I know vaguely of the rest of the universe, of course, because I played through Marvel: Ultimate Alliance a lot, but that game, if we're being honest, was more of a X-Men simulator for me. I ignored most of the Avengers except for Thor (I was mythology geek as a kid), so the MCU movies were my first huge forays into the Marvel universe.

And honestly? Honestly, looking at just how successful the movie franchise has been? I'd say they nailed it. Sure, many people complain that the MCU, especially from Avengers onwards, has a bit too many jokes. But these are superheroes... they're never meant to be uber-realistic in the first place, and I feel like this tone of adrenaline straight into cool explosions and then into snarky dialogue works well for this movie. 

That's not to say that The Avengers is anything particularly revolutionary as far as superhero movies go, mind you. In fact, it's actually ridiculously simple. Hell, a year before this movie was released, I remembered that Transformers: Dark of the Moon had basically the same premise and more or less the same climax. Something something something, the superheroes fight over a plot device, then we have a huge rumble that takes our heroes through the streets of a city while a massive beamy portal of doom looms in the sky. The difference, of course, is that we're invested with these characters. Four of them have their own solo movies, Loki was the big bad in Thor, Black Widow and Nick Fury's got a major supporting role in Iron Man 2, and Hawkeye...  okay, yeah, he showed up in Thor but let's be honest, poor Clint got the short end of the stick there. 

And I have re-watched that final battle so, so many times that I keep forgetting that there's nearly an hour of movie before it. And honestly, the first half of the movie do a pretty good job at tying in the plot threads together. It's been a while and it's almost seared into my memory at this point, but back in the day, I actually really liked just how relatively smoothly the plot was crafted. The Tesseract from Captain America: The First Avenger was discovered and experimented upon by SHIELD? Fair enough, we kinda know SHIELD are the good guys but are kinda shady. Loki falling down and tumbling into the depths of space at the end of Thor, eventually getting a snazzy new scepter-weapon granted to him by a mysterious benefactor? Okay, a nice way to bring in a familiar face to herald a bigger threat. And the new mind-control staff gives him kind of a power-up!

And a bigger threat Loki is. It's been so long since Phase I that I actually forgot that the movie opens with Loki utterly and absolutely manhandling a SHIELD facility basically single-handedly. Thanos (well, we don't know it's him) basically just teleports him into where the Tesseract is kept, and Loki just actually shows off that he might be puny compared to the likes of Thor and Odin, but he's still a god that tosses around the Midgardians like dolls, and that's before he puts Dr. Erik Selvig and Hawkeye under his mind-control. The SHIELD agents Nick Fury, Phil Coulson and Maria Hill (newly introduced in this movie, and basically the loyal SHIELD second-in-command) barely manage to get their way out with their lives. 

It's just kind of a shame that the end product actually cuts out the subtlety here that Loki's actually being partially mind-controlled or blackmailed by Thanos via the scepter. It does make a lot of the scenes in this movie read differently, and makes Loki's surprisingly flat characterization as world-conqueror-god-complex here feel less of an anomaly compared to him in the other MCU movies. Still, it works just as fine as this being Loki's huge attempt at world domination. 

Also, having watched most superhero movies with the directors having a 50/50 respect for the comics, I actually half-expected Nick Fury to just get killed off right then and there for drama. Which, I think, is what sets the MCU apart from most prior superhero franchises. They actually take care of their characters reasonably well that most of the time (there are exceptions for sure) we don't get the cheap unnecessary death of established characters from the comics for drama. Coulson, honestly, I felt was invented and built up specifically in order to set up his death in this movie. 

And, well, this 'threat we could not deal with' causes Fury to activate the Avengers Initiative while Loki spends the first act in the background being cool as he tries to get all the plot devices that he needs. And this is where we get a series of cool introductions to four more of our main cast. Three we kind of already know of, and it's more or less what we expected. Steve Rogers is alone in a world he doesn't belong in, doing the only thing he knows best -- prepare for a next battle. Nick Fury quite literally picks him up in a gym. Tony Stark is also doing what he does best, doing some huge grandiose gesture and setting up a big-ass Stark Tower and living the best life with Pepper, and while he's snarky about it, he also sort-of answers the call when Coulson comes in to collect. 

Black Widow gets her biggest role in this movie and we see her seemingly in distress before effortlessly flipping it around when they need her for more important work, beating down the Russian gangsters while tied to a chair. She goes off to recruit Bruce Banner, playing the "I'm a friend with you, and I am so earnest about it, but I have a gun taped to the bottom of the table I can flick out in two seconds" card that she plays so smoothly here. Oh, and Bruce Banner is recasted as Mark Ruffalo in this movie. And... and not to knock Norton or anything, who I felt was a pretty fun actor for the one movie we got him in, but Ruffalo's Banner... let's just say that the Hulk continues to be popular despite never getting a solo movie, yeah? Ruffalo's acting really channels a nervous geekiness that make him great foils particularly against hammy characters like Tony Stark, but he also has an underlying fury that also makes him feel somewhat like a wounded animal. Like how Black Widow and SHIELD are just not certain how Banner's going to react. Which many people point out why Banner ended up feeling so much at home with the Avengers -- Captain America and Black Widow are kind to him (more of an artificial thing for the latter, at least at this stage of the story); Thor essentially treats Hulk as a warrior of equal measure; and Tony Stark treats Banner as a fellow scientist and isn't afraid of his other side. He feels like a person again. 

Oh, and we get the Helicarrier scene. Which is something that I was wondering if it's something that will ever get adapted in live-action, because I actually know about the Helicarrier, and I wonder that if it's something that'll survive the transition to live-action. Because other live-action adaptations so far have decided that muscle-enhancing steroids pumped through cables, a pool that grants immortality to the leader of a league of assassins, giant humanoid mutant-hunting robots or hulking fanged symbiote musclemen as being 'too silly'. But no, not only did they faithfully replicate the Helicarrier from the comics, they also make it look mother fucking cool. I mean, the movie has been pretty good so far, but I remembered back in 2012 in a cramped theater that when the Avengers land on that aircraft carrier and Black Widow makes a smirking jab at Captain America about seeing something cooler than a submarine... honestly, coupled with the close-ups and the music? Yeah, that was certainly money that Cap spent well on that bet. 

Phil Coulson also shows up, reveals that he's a huge Captain America fandork (very quickly tying him into yet another Avenger) and honestly provides a series of neat exposition for SHIELD and Cap. This series of scenes really is a nice way for the movie to at least trickle-drop some backstory on these characters to the unfortunate newcomers that are dragged by their friends into this movie as their first MCU movie, while also serving as nice character beats, too.

While all of this is going on, we get a couple of, again, pretty cool scenes of mind-controlled Hawkeye and Loki as they go on what can be best described as a heist. It involves ripping out some poor guy's eyeball while operatic music plays in the background, and then Loki just strolls into a public square in Stuttgart to cause a distraction. It's a small scene, but Loki just blasting the cars as he crosses the street while his fancy suit-and-tie shimmers into his Asgardian horned armour? Probably low-key one of my favourite scenes in this movie. 

Loki does a 'kneel before your god' sequence which gives us a dramatic entry for good ol' Captain America, and we get one of the first couple of Loki beatdowns that this movie hands the poor god of mischief. And you'd think it would cheapen Loki's threat a little, but the movie honestly does a pretty good job of making Loki not an enemy that's hard to take down because he's so damn tough -- the way that Thanos would be -- but none of the good guys have any idea what Loki's full plan or his knowledge are. Regardless, after Captain America and Loki fight a bit, Iron Man swoops in with AC/DC blaring, and the three of them arrest Loki.

...only for Loki to be kidnapped right under their noses from the Quinjet. And honestly, again, despite us knowing that it'll happen, I really do like that this is most of the cast's first meeting with the god of thunder. With a thunderstorm appearing and Loki making a quip that he knows what's going to come, then Thor just lands on a jet, flies in and takes Loki away.

Then we get probably the third-most-memorable action scene short of the final climactic New York battle. Thor and Iron Man fights, and then Captain America jumps in to stop the battle. Lots of great moments here -- Iron Man mocking Thor's speech (which he doesn't even do in the MCU), Cap blocking Mjolnir with his shield, Thor accidentally supercharging Iron Man's armour (surprisingly not foreshadowing)... it's very cool stuff, and after the boys calm down, we cut away to the Helicarrier. Thor being, again, on friendly terms with the 'Son of Coul', makes it believable in this movie that he would even entertain working with them. A little nice detail is the off-handed dialogue that SHIELD made sure Jane Foster is protected and fine, which is neat!

The next series of scenes, basically Act Two of the movie, show the Avengers divided. And... and it's a couple of great scenes, but we don't really get too much of a payoff beyond 'they rally together around Coulson's death and decide to work together as heroes'. Although I suppose Civil War would be its own payoff in a way? The best-acted and probably best-built-up conflict is between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, and there's a lot of great analysis to both the acting and the lines specifically being thrown around by these two characters. The two of them are heroes, make no mistake, but the two of them are also exactly the type to rub off wrongly on each other. Tony intrinsically hates Steve for how much his dad keeps praising Steve and for his optimistic, buddy-boy attitude. Steve hates Tony for being a grandiose jackass with a smart-aleck answer for everything, and for not seemingly taking anything seriously. The 'genius billionaire playboy philanthropist' line and the 'cut the wire' argument are well-written lines, but the seething anger between Tony and Steve are really what sells it. 

I could talk a lot more about this, but between Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame and even on the course of this movie, both Steve and Tony basically disprove the other one's criticism of their character, or grow out of it. Which I really like. 

The other characters get a lot of interactions here, too -- which is what makes Hawkeye's lack of inclusion in any of these all the more tragic. Black Widow hints at her own motivation during her talk with Loki, talking about clearing the 'red from her ledger', and Tom Hiddleston's amazingly rage-filled performance as he snarls at Black Widow, seemingly shocking her... only for Natasha to just deadpan back into 'we figured out Loki's plan' is amazing. The conflict mostly centers around Steve-vs-Tony at this point, but when Steve and Tony both independently figure out that SHIELD is keeping many secrets around them, and when other voices get thrown into the mix? Black Widow and Nick Fury champion that 'it's for the greater good', Thor just puts his nose up at all the petty mortals, and Banner? Banner gets so angry at everything, and the compounding aggravation of learning that SHIELD has a special cell for him (that they're storing Loki in) and that SHIELD is lying to them gets him pissed off. And, well, there's also the scepter, which they are analyzing and they don't even realize is corrupting their mind. 

It's honestly kind of a shame that SHIELD harnessing the Tesseract and Loki's scepter to make weapons as a deterrent against hostile forces doesn't actually go anywhere. Some deleted scenes indicate that Maria Hill was originally written less as an Avengers/Nick Fury yes-woman and she's actually trying to be a much more stern 'for the greater good' SHIELD leader, in the extremist way that she was written in the comic-books' version of Civil War, but all of that got exorcised. And it just means that the shady things SHIELD is doing just... just peters out at the end, and Winter Soldier reveals that everything is kind of a Hydra plan. And that's all well and good, but I feel like having the heroes confront Nick Fury for not being on the up-and-up would be interesting as well. 

Anyway, Hawkeye and a group of evil agents attack the Helicarrier (with a USB arrow!) and we get an action scene! Banner Hulks out and chases down Black Widow a bit before we get another fan-favourite fight, Hulk versus Thor. Otherwise known as the second-most-memorable action scene in the movie. It's surprisingly shorter than I thought, though I really like the scenes here particularly with the slow-motion when Thor clobbers Hulk. As someone who didn't care for these characters before this movie, I found myself cheering with the audience when Hulk and Thor clash with each other and that, I feel, is a sign of the movie doing what it needs to do. Also, yeah, bigger budget does mean better CGI for Hulk. 

Iron Man and Captain America, in a pretty cool scene, show that they immediately drop the conflict and jump straight into superheroing when the world needs them to be, and it's kind of undercut by everything else happening around them but I did like this brief scene of them fixing the Helicarrier. Black Widow whacks Hawkeye down and beats the mind-control out of him... and Loki tricks Thor into being jettisoned out of the Helicarrier before shishkebabing poor Agent Coulson. (Don't worry, he gets better.) And Coulson went out like a champ, shooting Loki with a giant Destroyer cannon and trying his darndest to do his duty. Shame it just isn't enough. 

And this is the darkest hour in the movie, so to speak. Hulk was dropped out of the sky after destroying the F35; Thor was shot out of the Helicarrier by Loki; Loki himself has escaped... and everyone is down in spirits. But then Fury spins it so that Coulson's sacrifice should mean something to them. And I do like that it's Tony and Steve, again, that ends up being galvanized for this, because we can see throughout the movie that Tony's got a friendly relationship with Coulson despite all the bluster, while Steve clearly sees this guy who idolizes him. Fury, of course, gives them an extra push by staining the mint Captain America trading cards with some fake blood... a less scrupulous way of showing his shadiness, I suppose. I approve. 

Then the Avengers assemble! Sort of. The three 'normals' -- Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye -- suit up and deploy on the Quinjet. Thor summons the rest of his armour from where he crashlanded. And Iron Man flies all the way to Avengers tower where he figures out Loki is at, and the snark-to-snark combat between Tony and Loki was pretty fun to listen to. Neither of them really manage to intimidate the other, and Loki's scepter doesn't work through Tony's arc reactor, so Loki falls back to the ol' Asgardian strength and tosses Tony out of the window. In comes the Mark VII Armour, a big-ass missile that transforms mid-air to wrap around Iron Man. So fucking cool, and seeing how Iron Man's armour would escalate over the next couple of movies, yeah. Tony does a neat "his name was Phil" badass one-liner, before realizing that, hey, Loki succeeded in opening that dang portal and he summons a giant alien army! And I really do like Iron Man's short and brief one-man standoff against the first wave of Chitauri goons. 

All the Avengers arrive, including Bruce Banner (on a random motorbike!) and I do like that Tony has a good enough read on Banner that he's confident Banner will make it there. Banner shows off that he's 'always angry' and one-shot-punches the first Leviathan that gave Tony a lot of trouble. That's honestly pretty damn fucking awesome, and we get the ever-iconic 360 degree rotation of all the six original cinematic Avengers. Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye. You know the shot. And, again, going back to me in the cinema in 2012? That was the best feeling ever. Rewatching the movie for like the twelfth time or whatever last night? Still pretty awesome. 

And what happens next is a long drawn-out action scene, and short of describing each and every awesome scene that happens there, I really don't have much to say about these things. And that's not to undercut the awesomeness of this action scene, though. We've waited multiple movies and an hour of buildup for this, for the Avengers to fight as a team, and the movie delivers. Poor Hawkeye and Black Widow still get the short end of the stick because, well, compared to Thor and Iron Man their power-sets probably don't really make for the most dynamic action scenes. Black Widow at least gets a couple of neat sequences involving her hitching a ride on a random Chitauri flier, though. There's a pretty cool tracking shot following all the Avengers through the city at one point, ending in Hulk jabbing a giant chunk of metal through a Leviathan's head and Thor slamming it down with Mjolnir. And the subsequent Hulk Punch afterwards. There's the brief combo move between Iron Man and Captain America. There is Captain America calling the shots both for the Avengers and for the random policemen in New York City. Again, lots of very, very cool action scenes happen here... honestly, all the CGI is on-point, the action scenes are easy to follow, and honestly, isn't this like what we're here to watch in the first place? 

And poor, poor Loki is just not having a good day, huh? Iron Man zapped him with a repulsor beam at the beginning of the invasion, Thor beats him up as they yell in each other's faces, Hawkeye shot an exploding arrow that ruined that smug smile, Hulk shows up and bashes him around like a ragdoll and snorts at him being a 'puny god'... yeah, at this point the threat is more of the invasion and less of Loki. I'm pretty sure that after Hulk's puny-god moment, the audience basically realized that Loki's done for. 

We get the World Security Council sending a nuke at New York, and while Nick Fury manages to bazooka one of the planes carrying the bombs, a second one is successfully launched. Tony ends up carrying the nuke through the portal in a defiant act of self-sacrifice. A really cool scene, and in a nice callback to Iron Man 2, he even makes a point to try and get Jarvis to call Pepper for him. He blows up the Chitauri mothership which coincidentally shuts down all the drones on Earth, and he plummets back through the Earth portal just in time (and Hulk resurrects him by screaming really loudly) but I kinda like this little 'wait, is he really dead?' moment. 

And then we get a series of epilogue scenes. Thor carries the Tesseract and Loki back to Asgard for judgement, which is a way for the Avengers and Fury to give middle fingers to the World Security Council for what they did. And I guess that's Fury's decision regarding the Tesseract weapons? That Earth has Avengers now, and the Avengers are their contingency? Okay, sure, I could live with that. Tony gets shown basically finding a new purpose with creating a new Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner has friends now... and somewhere deep in space, Loki's sponsor, the Other, talks to his enigmatic master... who's revealed to be Thanos! (I didn't know who Thanos was at this point, so I was like, 'oh, okay, another comic villain, cool?')

So, yeah, pretty basic movie, honestly, as far as superhero movies go. Especially since I looked up the deleted scenes and realized just how much they left at the cutting room table in terms of subplots for Loki, Fury and Maria. And poor Hawkeye didn't even get a 'they were planning to do something with him', because he really felt almost as an afterthought to the team. Like, sure, he gets a couple of cool lines and action scenes near the end, but as a character it's not a surprise that he was kind of treated as the black sheep of the team for a while. And Black Widow, if we're being honest, also doesn't really do a whole ton in this movie. 

And... and, yes, I'd have preferred, perhaps, a more cerebral version with more discussion of using the Tesseract weapons in case of contingency reasons. Or to have a Nick Fury vs Maria Hill subplot throughout the MCU, or to have a full one-hour subplot starring Hawkeye and Black Widow, or to have Loki's machinations at the hands of Thanos be more explicit to the audience, or to have War Machine show up or something. There's always things that could be done and didn't, and ultimately, honestly, these are nitpicking that I certainly didn't care about when I first watched this movie. Or when I watched it for a second, or a third time. 

But all in all? All in all, I think they still did a great job at communicating who these characters are and balancing so many characters so well. One of the biggest strengths of the MCU is continuity, and that's not just in the specific events that occur, but also that the writers remember character interactions and personality, which is what makes moments like Tony and Steve's or interactions so interesting, for example. Or why Tony is so untrusting of the government-types,  r why Steve's soldier nature is to basically go 'give 110% to the fight, question orders later', or why Thor is initially so insistent on bringing Loki home, or why Bruce and Tony ended up being buddies. 

Again, Iron Man was where it begun, but The Avengers was where the MCU truly cemented itself that, hey maybe they can really do it. Maybe the franchise is in good enough hands and can consistently make solid, profitable movies. And hoo boy, the sheer amount of superhero movies that was born from this movie alone? Yeah. This is a very solid movie that I honestly go back to and rewatched a lot of times. It's just pretty fun in general! Very awesome debut for the Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

(Phase II reviews are upcoming... maybe next month. I've finished writing maybe half of it, and I kind of want to do what I did here and release like five or six reviews all at once.)

• Post-Credits Scene: The mid-credits scene shows the Other talking to his dread master, Thanos, setting him up for future movies. The post-credits scene is just the Avengers hanging out eating Shwarma. 
• Stan the Man: Stan Lee shows up in the montage of NYC citizens being interviewed, playing chess and deriding the idea of 'aliens in New York? Give me a break!'
• Future Movies Foreshadowing: Thanos shows up in the post-credits scene, and he'll be revealed to be behind many of the subsequent Avengers movies. Otherwise, there's not much!
• Past Movie Continuity: Basically all the events of all prior five movies get referenced in one way or another, though between Loki and the Tesseract, the two movies that built into the plotline of this one the most are Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. Nick Fury and SHIELD shows up in some degree in both Iron Man movies, Thor and Captain America; while Tony Stark's involvement in 'keeping certain parties' off of Hulk's scent explains his otherwise odd cameo in Incredible Hulk. Coulson made the huge cannon from the remains of the Destroyer in Thor; and the destruction of the Bifrost Bridge in Thor is also referenced. In a smaller scale, Tony immediately calling Pepper when he thinks he's about to die is the reversal of how he kept his sickness quiet from her in Iron Man 2. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames:
  
• Iron Man gets called by Iron Man or Tony Stark interchangeably.
• Captain America's superhero name is basically a legendary title at this point, so he also gets called by it a couple of times in the movie, though his real name or 'Captain'/'Cap' tends to be what most characters call him as. 
• Bruce Banner very notably tries his best not to refer to his alter ego as the Hulk, calling him 'the big guy' or 'the other guy', but everyone else has no problems calling to Hulk as Hulk.
• Hawkeye gets called 'the Hawk' by Selvig, and 'Hawkeye' once by Natasha, but otherwise is just 'Barton' most of the time. 
• Natasha Romanoff gets called by her name almost in the entire movie, except during the first scene where she's with the Russian gangsters. One of the Russian gangsters call her 'Black Widow' in Russian.
• Thor and Loki's codenames are, well, just their real names, so they get called that all the time. 
• Favourite Action Scene: I mean, can it be anything other than the massive battle against the Chitauri in New York City? There's this one long tracking shot that ends with Hulk and Thor beating up one of the leviathans, that's probably my favourite one. 
• Funniest Line: A lot to pick here, but it's honestly "puny god" for me. 
• Tony Stark name-drops the term 'life model decoy' as a snarky joke to Coulson at one point. LMD's are a major part of the Marvel comic book universe, being robots that are indistinguishable from real humans. In the broader MCU context, later seasons of Agents of SHIELD would feature them. 
• The Tesseract site at the beginning of the movie is called Project PEGASUS, a SHIELD site from the comics.
• Tony at one point handwaves the Avengers as 'Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes', which is a term that the group is well known for. (Speaking of which, the very first enemy that the comic-book Avengers fight is Loki!)
• The state of the Stark Tower with its destroyed letters leaves behind just a single 'A', making it resemble the Avengers Tower in the comics. 
• When Thor and Loki have a conversation on the cliff, two ravens are shown prominently. Odin in both the mythology and the comics have two ravens that act as his eyes and ears. 
• Captain America orders Hulk to "Hulk? Smash." which is one of Hulk's iconic battlecries in the comics. "Puny god" is a riff on how Hulk usually describes his alter-ego or humans as "puny Banner" or "puny humans".
• The Other telling Thanos that fighting Earth is to 'court death'. In comics, Thanos's biggest motivation is to literally court Death herself.