Teen Titans S02E08 Review: Raven vs Terra

Teen Titans, Season 2, Episode 8: Titan Rising

The episode's honestly a bit predictable, other than the fact that Terra shows up again, apparently having controlled her powers and having forgiven the Titans after their past altercation. Everyone is welcoming except for Raven, who butts heads with Terra because she doesn't trust her. Slade happens to attack the city with giant robot sandworms, a battle that ends up in the almost-destruction of the Titans' Tower, and a short rematch between Robin and Slade. Raven and Terra end up working together to save the day, and Terra earns the trust of Raven and Robin, the two most cerebral and suspicious of the Titans. Of course, this all turns out to be an elaborate double agent ploy, because Terra... is actually working for Slade.

Cue hair dropping to cover one side of her face.

It's honestly a bit predictable, especially to those who are familiar with the source material -- but back when I first watched this, it came as a huge shock. Raven being suspicious of Terra is totally believable, and even Terra's memories of Slade might just be from her fighting Slade in her first appearance. And, yeah, if I hadn't known what would happen in the following episodes, I would totally buy Terra just wanting to prove herself to the Titans as a valuable ally. 

The show's strength is definitely on its characters, with Raven, Terra and Robin all getting some really great moments, and there's a nice contrast between Robin and Raven. The two note how convenient Terra's sudden ability to control her powers are, but Raven -- though her little vision glimpses is a factor -- is outright hostile and refuses to let Terra do anything that might endanger them. Robin is suspicious but allows Terra to do some things (under observation) and is happy to play the 'good cop' while he tries to get a bearing on this new Terra. Robin's experiences in previous episodes, being accidentally responsible for driving Terra away, and Robin himself having to deal with redemption and whatnot over his time as Red X and later as Slade's Apprentice, probably have coloured his worldview somewhat.

Terra herself is pretty awesome, and while it is a huge shocker that after the whole act she did to convince Raven and the audience that she truly is on the side of angels, she's apparently a double agent for Slade all this long. Slade himself is an absolute winner, being a constant presence throughout the episode and just delivering that smooth, smooth Ron Perlman voice. He doesn't tip his hand at all regarding Terra or his plans to presumably bring the Titans down from the inside, and having it all just being yet another attack on the Titans is absolutely brilliant.

Yeah, I'm a big Terra fan. I honestly wished we moved one or two of the filler episodes between this one and the finale two-parter, starring Terra as a member of the team, but apparently the funds of this show can only support so many guest voice actors. So yeah. What could have been, etc.

One Piece 850 Review: To Save One's Family

One Piece, Chapter 850: Ray of Hope

PLOT TWIST WOOP WOOP WOOP

The chapter starts off relatively just like most other One Piece chapters so far. We get a series of pages showing Chopper and Carrot running around various mirrors in Whole Cake Island, apparently able to move around the mirror world but not to navigate properly with Brulee knocked out. Meanwhile, Sanji's all lovey-dovey and making bentos for her beloved Pudding-chan. Meanwhile, Luffy and Nami are struggling, with Luffy being very desperate and very ready to rip out his own hands to get free from the chains. Can he do that, though? I mean, his arms are rubber. The audience is led to think that Pudding is planning to, like, run away on her own or something like that to leave Big Mom or whatever, and Luffy is the kind of person to really go wild to just save anyone he considers a friend.

We then cut away to Pedro fighting against Baron Tamago, with bounties of 382 million and 429 million respectively, which are both very, very respectable, coming just shy of Luffy's own bounty of 500 million, last I remember. Pedro is just using electro powers and just using some weird floating technique, while Tamago is trying his best to pull a Sanji and using kick-based fighting. 

We get brief flashbacks to Pedro's time as a pirate, where he hangs out with... Zepo! Who I assume is Bepo's father or something like that. Interweaved between Pedro and Tamago clashing in the present day is Pedro's brief and fateful encounter with Big Mom and her wheel of fate. Apparently they spun the '100 years of life' punishment, and Zepo gets killed because his remaining 30 years are taken from him. Big Mom is about to take 70 years from Pedro's life, but Pekoms cries and begs for Pedro to be spared, but still wants to take a whole ton of years because Pedro robbed Tamago of an eye. Pedro then rips his own eye out as compensation since he wants to witness the 'dawn of this world', impressing Big Mom enough to let him off the hook with living. Pedro is hardcore!

In the present day Tamago is fully ready for Pedro, though, noting that he wears electric-resistant clothing and has a longer reach than Pedro thanks to his legs. Pedro then gives a bit of a speech about how the Straw Hats saved his hometown, and will be the crux that will cause the world to reach its dawn and surpass all present. It's a bit of an irritating thing, friendship speeches... then Pedro zooms in and bisects Tamago. Like, straight up cuts him into two and apparently he's an egg-man or something, because yolk comes spluttering out of the dude. 

Meanwhile, big revelations are happening! Sanji tries to bring food to Pudding, and then when the big Alice in Wonderland door bars him from entering, Sanji tries to sneak in through the window. And apparently Pudding is talking to... Reiju! And she is the three-eyed girl all the way back from Punk Hazard's brief glimpse of Big Mom, and Pudding is psycho! Pudding straight-up talks shit about Sanji, about how she's one of Big Mom's favourites, how good she is at acting, how she has tricked Sanji and the Straw-Hats with her fake-good-nature, and how only the Big Mom family is aware of her true nature.

No wonder the other Big Mom children allowed Pudding to talk to Luffy and Nami last chapter, which was the one thing I find odd. Apparently, last chapter wasn't the revelation of a reckless plan, but rather villainous gloating, where Pudding reveals that she will shoot Sanji dead in the wedding ceremony, which is the reason Luffy is so fucking furious.

On the other, other hand, playing reverse-devil's advocate or whatever you want to call it, why, if Pudding is actually working for Big Mom, is she blabbing about this to Reiju, Luffy and Nami? Why not just keep mum (heh, mum) until the wedding, then shoot Sanji and be done with it? What's there to gain by telling people? Either she's an ultra-bitch, or she's actually trying to set herself as the fall woman so Sanji will return to the Straw Hats, if you believe that Pudding is actually doing this all for love. 

Reiju is bleeding and held captive by Pudding's jell-o friend, and Pudding notes how their aim is to get their hands on Germa's clone army, as well as all the science they are in possession of. She notes how their big plan is to massacre the entirety of the Vinsmoke family.

Outside her window, Sanji's expression has gone dark, with the titular 'ray of hope', the fictional personality created by Pudding, having been extinguished. Of course, Sanji doesn't really care for his family, barring Reiju, so I don't think Sanji will give two shits if Judge, Ichiji, Niji and Yonji bite the bullet, but his Straw Hat buddies? Or Reiju (how did Pudding catch her anyway?)? Yeah.

Excellent plot twist, and one that's not without foreshadowing either. Really like this chapter. Pedro vs Tamago was badass. The revelation was well done, being a shock yet not being completely un-foreshadowed. Good stuff, all around. 

Arrow S05E04 Review: Side Quest

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 4: Penance

It's been some time since I last saw an episode of Arrow, and holy shit, what a good one that I find myself in. Arrow has had a fair bit of stigma over the four seasons it's been on the air. The first one was... very shaky, and portrayed Green Arrow as basically the polar opposite of what his comic-book counterpart was. It would've been a decent show if it starred someone like, oh, Vigilante or Batman or whoever, but as a Green Arrow adaptation it's pretty far off the mark. The second season was pretty solid, though I may be misremembering due to my unabashed fangasm over Slade being the main villain. The third season, on the other hand, was a hot piping mess, and the fourth had a very good buildup only to lose it all in a very underwhelming finale.

The fifth season, though, despite the unsure beginnings and the 'been here done that' feel with some of the plot threads, has been mostly on the good side of things. And as much as I love the flashier side of superhero shows, there's just something thrilling about a more grounded story about just fighting crime in a city, and Arrow's season five juggled the 'train a bunch of rookies' and the 'juggle a dual life' plotlines -- things that have been touched upon in previous seasons of Arrow -- and made something really fresh out of it.

This episode in particular really allowed the side-team, who has been growing more and more distinct over the first three episodes but never really given a chance to shine, to flex their figurative muscles. Oliver has to leave town to help Lyla out on a private mission to break John Diggle out of his weird self-imposed masochistic penance in prison. On the other hand, though, the rest of the New Team Arrow had to deal with the return of Tobias Church, assaulting the Anti-Crime Unit base with a pretty simple yet clever sting operation. There was a couple of sideplots involving Felicity and Ragman, plus Adrian Chase and Quentin Lance, but the latter was interwoven to the Church plotline so well and the Felicity bit wasn't very distracting.

The John Diggle plot was relatively simple, as is the rescue mission. It's nothing we haven't seen dozens of times already in Arrow, and while Oliver was a bit too quick in suggesting Diggle return to superheroing duty as Spartan, the guilt-tripping about leaving his wife and daughter to do penance for a crime he was framed for ended up shaking Diggle out of his funk... and while Diggle was adamant that he didn't want to be rescued, the scenes at the end with them bro-ing in the base ends up noting that, yeah, this is Oliver rescuing Diggle from a decision he would've regretted, similar to what Diggle has done to Oliver so many times before. Lyla is also pretty awesome in this episode in the relatively brief scenes she was given.

More awesome, though, was the demonstration that Green Arrow is someone who, in direct combat, has bested the likes of a super-steroid-empowered Deathstroke and Ra's al Ghul, and even gave metahumans like Flash and Hawkman, as well as magic-users like Damien Darrhk a run for their money. The assembled force of Wild Dog, Mister Terrific and the newly-minted Artemis (not Starling or a new Black Canary as I previously thought) barely lasted half a minute against Green Arrow, who quite thoroughly whupped all their asses in a curb-stomp fight.

Also I definitely let out a squee when I saw Curtis decked up in all his Mister Terrific glory, with the hair done right and the T-face-sticker thing and the Fair Play jacket... holy shit, that right there is just so, so awesomely done.

The focus was definitely on Team Arrow, though. The only real old face that's left there are Felicity and Curtis, and even then Curtis is very new on this Mister Terrific thing. Wild Dog, Artemis and Ragman are all newcomers to us, and among the three only Wild Dog really has much of a chance to show off his personality, and even then that's more of an angry ass. Ragman sits out a good chunk of the episode's conflict due to his own personal conflict with Felicity destroying Havenrock. It's a conflict that thankfully wasn't allowed to fester and be cancerous like Arrow likes to do, and while Ragman does take some time off the team, Felicity confronting Ragman and talking to him and telling him to channel that rage and grief and penance towards something productive, similar to what's going on with Oliver and Diggle, is pretty decent.

Plus, Ragman is awesome. The rag-tendril things aren't a thing that the comic-book Ragman was able to do, I don't think, but him just waltzing into the ACU compound, putting an explosive on a wall and just spreading his arms wide, ignoring everyone's warnings that the blast will kill them all and just go "I'm in position, blow it" and just have his invulnerability and tendrils eat up all the explosion... holy shit, Ragman is awesome.

Honestly, a lot of the conflict in this episode really could've been solved by throwing Ragman at it. Oliver definitely couldn't curb-stomp Ragman the way he did the other three normals, and really, instead of leaving Wild Dog to fight Tobias Church alone, leaving the indestructible, magical Ragman behind instead would've probably ended the Church plotline then and there.

The action scenes in this episode is pretty awesome, interestingly enough not on the Green Arrow side but also on the supporting cast as well. The Wild Dog and Tobias Church fight was short but pretty brutal, and while New Team Arrow succeeded in rescuing Adrian Chase and the rest of the ACU, they took some pretty hard hits. Curtis gets a throwing knife through the back and I was genuinely worried he would be crippled or taken out of commission for the rest of the season. Wild Dog's recklessness finally gets him in a fight he can't win without Oliver to bail him out. After several episodes' worth of him being insubordinate (despite him definitely meaning well) he finally picks a fight that he straight-up loses, showing that, yeah, Oliver does have a point. He's been doing this vigilante thing for close to five years now, and despite him being a control freak... he does have a point.

Church also proves as a very interesting villain. He's just... a tough gangster boss. He's not immortal or the leader of a huge secret organization the way Darrhk, Merlyn or Ra's al Ghul were. He's not even have a gimmick like Brick's super-toughness. He's just... tough. And he's not even based on anyone important from the comic books. It's a very down-to-earth villain that actually feels different and refreshing to be a main antagonist. There's no doubt that Green Arrow would absolutely trounce this fucker in single combat, but the fact that he's got a small army with him, he keeps mobile and hiding and he's up against the relatively unstable New Team Arrow... well.

My one critique is that Artemis still feels like a prop. Wild Dog cannot be accused of being a well-developed character, but at least he has some semblance of a personality. Ditto for Ragman, who, in addition to being pretty fucking cool-looking, also has that Havenrock scene with Felicity.

The subplot with Quentin shadowing Adrian Chase allows us a look at what to non-comic-book-readers would shrug off as just a random named character. Adrian is established to be the head of the ACU, but also has an odd fixation with vigilantes. Eh? Vigilantes? It's actually quite nice how they're building Adrian Chase up slowly and gradually, and really makes me wish that they did the same thing to Artemis, Wild Dog and Ragman. Of course, we've seen how irritating the 'take a whole season to be a hero' thing was with various other CW characters, and I'd rather have my Ragman sooner than later. So yeah.

Oh, and one thing I really love about season five? After the past two seasons' dragged-out, why-are-we-doing-this flashbacks, the Bratva stuff is actually pretty freaking good, serving as a nice bridge to the more heroic Flashback!Oliver of season four and into the cold, heartless killer that he is in present-day season one. It contrasts really well to the kill-when-necessary policy that Oliver has adopted in this season, actually, and the fact that the script isn't as bad as before at trying to go 'look at this thing in the past that coincidentally is very similar to the situation in the present' and is just focused on telling the Bratva story as it is... I like it. In fact, this episode's flashback story only has the 'infiltrate a prison' plot as the only thing in common. Oliver infiltrates a prison to interrogate a gangster about Constantine Kovar's location, being very calm and threatening the prisoner's wife and daughter to get him to spill his beans, before killing the dude with a heartless neck snap. And all this without any real inkling as to what's going on.

And the fact that, short of Sara and Slade in season two, Anatoly Knyazev is easily the best supporting character in Oliver's flashback, flip-flopping between heartless mentor and jolly Russian friend very effortlessly. It's a very chilling way to see that the upbeat, hammy Anatoly can just shrug off and condone brutal murder of someone who is established as a father of a young girl.

Overall? A very solid and explosive return for me into the world of Star City and its vigilante warfare.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• A more fourth-wally Easter Egg, but the IP address that the Russian criminal gives to Oliver as the dark web dropsite run by Kovar's organization actually redirects to the CW's home page.
• Another mention of Kord Industries, which has been appearing all throughout Arrow since season two. Kord is in reference to Ted Kord, otherwise known as the superhero Blue Beetle.
• Can't remember if Evelyn was ever called 'Artemis' in any of the previous episodes, but the DC character Artemis who's also a female archer sidekick of Green Arrow... wasn't actually called Artemis in the comics, but rather went by the codename Tigress. Artemis was actually her real name, Artemis Crock, and she was the daughter of the villains Sportsmaster and the first Tigress. The comic-book counterpart actually used a tigress-based costume, but the cartoon adaptation Young Justice revamped her character radically as a female sidekick to Green Arrow with her background as being the child of two supervillains being a mystery to the rest of the Young Justice team. I won't spoil too much of her backstory here because, well, next year Young Justice is going to be on the short list of cartoons I review once I'm done with Teen Titans and Justice League.

Pokemon Sun LP, Part 8: Aether Conspiracy

Last we left off, we showed up in Team Skull Town, beat the crap out of the lowlifes, fought Guzma's piddly party of two big bugs, and returned to Aether House to deliver the kidnapped Yungoos back to the orphans... to which I find that, well, now it's Lillie that's kidnapped. I can excuse the kids, and maybe that Oranguru that's always in the back room just can't fit through the door, but Hau? Dude, you've got a psychic-electric surfing rat! Plumeria fights with a Golbat! How did they beat you up? Actually, from the sound of it, Hau actually seems to pussy out of the fight entirely. Man, Hau, you're honestly just kind of shit, aren't you? If not for the scenes that followed after this, I would've pegged him as one of the most useless characters in Pokemon lore.

In any case, Gladion randomly barges in and rants about how they've gotten their hands on Cosmog and that's pretty fucking bad, and he just attacks me. Honestly, Gladion feels like a more traditional rival character, and despite the over-the-top 'cool anime guy' mannerisms and dialogue from Gladion, I like him a fair bit better than Hau. Gladion's got a Golbat and a Sneasel to back his signature Type: Null up. I, on the other hand, have a party with a recently beefed-up movepool with TM's and some newly-learnt moves. So yeah. Gladion stood no chance.

Apparently Gladion knows that Team Skull has brought Lillie and Nebby to Aether Paradise, because of course. It's already built up to be so squeaky-clean, yet just wrong at the same time. Especially Lusamine-who-is-totally-obviously-Lillie's-mom. I meet up with Gladion at the harbor of Ula'ula Island, and lo and behold, Nanu shows up. The weird deadbeat police dude. He introduces himself as the island Kahuna... so maybe Molayne is allowed to pick trial captains simply because Nanu's just a deadbeat cop?

Nanu is the Dark-type kahuna, and holy shit, his party is actually pretty fucking good. A Sableye with an unexpected Power Gem, a monstrous Alolan Persian that goes around Black Hole Eclipsing people and just spamming Dark Pulse and Power Gem, and... uh.... a Krokorok, I think? The third Pokemon just died very quickly. But it so happens that Dark and Rock actually is just perfect coverage that wipes out almost the entirety of my team. Ribombee, Golisopod and Decidueye barely got hits off before they get taken out, Lycanroc got taken out by the Z-move, Mimikyu can't do anything to them since he doesn't have a Fairy type move, and my Magneton barely made it out of the battle after tanking so many Dark Pulses.

But Nanu got beat down, and so I've cleared everything trial-related in Ula'ula Island. It's a bit of a weird and honestly semi-anticlimactic kahuna battle considering how Hala and Olivia are relatively built up in their respective islands, but different is good. Nanu gives me the Darkinium Z, and Hau later shows up and is all like 'hey, I got to man up and save Lillie'. Good on you, Hau. I mean, you're mostly useless and I do all the legwork, but at least you have some balls.

Gladion brings the three of us onto the docks of Aether Paradise, and the Aether employees are just patrolling around, attacking me just like old-fashioned evil team grunts. I really, really love how no two Aether grunt has the same Pokemon, though, and they pull out relatively exotic shit like Drifblim and Shelgon. It also appears that some of them are actual asshole grunts, but most of them are just dudes who're working security for what they believe is a nice organization helping Pokemon.

Cutest dragonslayer ever.

Also, my Ribombee Tatl is just a monster. She stays in the lead and just murders everything in her path with a combination of Dazzling Gleam, Pollen Puff and Psychic. She's going around one-shotting stage 1 pseudo-legendaries and shit, and she's not even over-leveled! I turned off Exp Share somewhere around Acerola so my team isn't stupidly overleveled and make the game a non-challenge like Pokemon Y was, and Ribombee is still murdering people, all the while being a cheery little bug-fairy.

After a bit of exploring around to get Zygarde cells and whatnot (that has got to pay off sometime, right? Where is Dexio anyway?) I bugger up to the top floor and is challenged by Faba and his stupid neon-green mega-goggles. He brags about how he's an a-dult and he's the last line of defense of the Aether Foundation and his Pokemon is... a lone Hypno. Like, I was expecting, I don't know... a Salamence or an Alakazam or a Conkeldurr or something that's remotely threatening when I saw that he has a single Pokemon. But it's a Hypno. Faba, you suck.

Faba also drops very strong hints that Gladion ran away from Aether Foundation, though, and, well, Type: Null had to come from somewhere, right? There's also talk about how Team Skull is actually working for Aether Foundation and all that.

Faba is all cooperative and shit suddenly, and lets us down to the basement. It's a bit of an idiot villain ball until I realize it's supposed to be a trap. I'm confronted by these three dudes with weird masks that make them look like, oh, Iminata or whoever her name was from XY. Afterwards I go around fighting more Aether grunts, find out that Cosmog was experimented in the basement... was being the operative keyword. There are lots and lots of backstory in the science logs, including references to Professor Mohn (who the what now?) discovering an alternate dimension beyond the Ultra Wormholes, and apparently Cosmog is the key to opening these Wormholes. If stressed enough, Cosmog will cause the wormholes to break open and, well, Aether seems to really want to hurt Cosmog in their desire to summon Cthulhu into this world. I mean Ultra Beasts.

A crime to fashion

There's also a bunch of records about Type: Null's creation, about how it's created by Aether Foundation as a weapon against Ultra Beasts, and it's actually originally called Type: Full, but the three Type: Fulls went berserk, and the masks are placed onto their heads to suppress their powers, but this kind of disables their RKS system powers or whatever, causing them to become relatively underwhelming Type: Nulls. They're supposed to be cryogenically frozen and whatnot, but apparently Gladion stole one. There's also a weird series of blog posts by Faba talking about how to succeed in office work without actually telling about the details in Aether Foundation, but ends up ranting about how his boss's family stole something whose credit belongs to him. Huh.

Wicke then shows up shortly after that, addressing Gladion as 'young master' and it's at this point that I realize that, oh my god, Gladion's actually just like Lillie -- a child of crazy Lusamine who stole something belonging to Aether Foundation and escaped. It's a plot twist that I didn't actually see coming, and kudos for Pokemon for keeping a relatively anime-tropey twist like this hidden until a sufficient point.

There is a gauntlet of battles against Aether grunts, and finally a double battle against Faba again, where he's packing three Pokemon... but when your ace is a Hypno, you're no threat to someone who hangs out with a ghost owl archer. Faba sucks, man.

Gladion, Hau and I go to another clearing where Team Skull grunts are lounging about, and after taking down several grunts, the last few grunts are just like, man, we don't wanna get beaten up. Guzma apparently has totalled Gladion off-screen, and he introduces himself as the big bad Guzma who destroys all things. He's actually somewhat scary this time around, with four Pokemon. Pinsir and Golisopod are the heavy hitters, and Masquerain actually got a couple scary Air Slashes against my poor Decidueye. The Ariados... I'm not sure what it's trying to do. It's actually a decent challenge with Guzma knocking out my Decidueye and my Ribombee and putting a couple others in yellow. But fall he does, and that's another villain vanquished.

I'm... not that big of a fan how Team Skull just gets folded into basically being Aether Foundation's cronies. They have such an insane personality going on about them, and while the grunts are mostly pawns, Guzma himself seems to be an interesting character who ends up getting mostly reduced as Lusamine's big thug, and that plus Lillie's passivity are my two complaints about this whole big plotline.

How does she
even do that hair?

After an army of Aether grunts, Aether masked scientist things, Skull thugs, the branch chief of Aether Foundation and the big bad leader of Team Skull, I think this might actually be the most epic raid on an evil team's headquarters I've ever had. Team Plasma Frigate in B2W2 would kind of be cool if it isn't 80% annoying puzzles, and neither Silph Co. in RBW or the Team Aqua/Magma Hideouts in RSE really felt threatening due to everyone mostly having the same couple of Pokemon and only the bosses being any kind of challenge. This was very awesome. The combined usage of characters we've met through the journey, very different Pokemon used by the grunts, the backstory about Gladion, Type: Null and Cosmog, and the general urgent feel of rescuing Lillie and Nebby...

I barge in on Lusamine and Lillie having a mother-daughter moment, and Lillie kind of just get shot down by her mother, who's intent on using Cosmog to summon the Ultra Beasts for her to save. And, well, Lillie isn't going to do anything without a Pokemon of her own, so I head into the deepest part of the Aether Foundation after Lusamine, where she... has a very, very morbid collection of flash-frozen Pokemon as her collection. Holy fuck and I thought putting 700+ Pokemon in my box is heartless collecting.

Lusamine wants to let the Ultra Beasts run amuck in Alola because... reasons? I don't quite get her motivations, but it's clear that she's crazy and determined, and neither Lillie nor Gladion can really talk her down, as Lusamine sees both of them as useless shits that can't do anything and disappoint her by running away from home. So she's got the crazy-agenda thing and the shitty-parent angle going on for her as a very interesting villain. Lusamine has Nebby stuck inside a weird casket thing, and apparently the UB-01 jellyfish that I fought earlier in the game was summoned with part of the leftover dust.

Now Lusamine focuses all the power and aims it into the sky, and wormholes just start tearing Alola apart. UB-01 shows up again, and I thought it's just going to be a simple local fight... but then the cutscene continues to show black clouds covering the skies of all the other towns in Alola, and it briefly cuts back to the show going on in Aether Paradise. I thought it's going to be an implied global incident that we only really see a part of, just like in XY, BW and DPP where there are implied chaos going around elsewhere in the region but since we're stuck in the bad guy base we only get to see the things before us.

-insert badass background music-

But we then get a full-blown cutscene where Hala is taking a stroll and is straight up attacked by UB-02, the giant muscle mosquito robot who probably has a name that I haven't looked up yet. Hala doesn't give a shit, and straight up gets ready to fight with UB-02, who looks awesome and I want one. Like, I don't think your Makuhita and Crabrawler can really do much, but then a lightning blast slams down between them and TAPU KOKO! It's like a part of the epic legendary battles in the Pokemon Adventures comics where the legendaries actually fight each other, and, man, Tapu Koko just looks badass in that pose, and the tiki guardians are actually earning their keep as guardians of their respective islands.

Also, the music that goes throughout all of this is just... holy shit. They really outdid themselves, and music was never Nintendo's weak suit.

And then apparently Gladion fights UB-01 and Hau has to handle Guzma off-screen (good on you, Hau!), while I fight Aether President Lusamine. She's a bit tougher than Guzma, but since I happen to have a fair amount of type effectiveness against her team (I don't have Fire or Flying to really deal with Guzma's bugs) she felt like less of a challenge. After the battle there's a bit of a trippy fade-in-fade-out where UB-01 apparently fades back into the Ultra Wormhole, Lusamine rants about catching the beasts with a certain special pokeball, and Lusamine just... disappears. Guzma is all like swaggering and shit as he follows Lusamine into the wormhole, before he too fades in and out and disappears into nothing.

Nebby isn't dead, though, and apparently has transformed into a new form, which I know is Cosmoem. Gladion talks about going off to the other dimension to rescue Lusamine (why? She's psycho and just disowned you) and all that

The next day, Lillie shows up with new clothes and a ponytail, swapping out the Nebby-prison bag for a backpack, talking about how she's going to get stronger too and whatnot. Good for you, girl. I mean, you probably should get that lonely Litten from Professor Kukui, because your Cosmoem is kind of in a coma or whatever, but hey. Gladion gave me a Master Ball, and we exchange words for a while before he drives me to the final island, Poni Island. Hau apparently wants to split off to train and be stronger, which is good. Shoo, Hau.

The first town in Poni Island is Seafolk Village, which is a small, little coastal town with lots of docks and apparently people live in houses shaped like Magikarp, Whiscash and Gyarados. That's a bit funny. Apparently Seafolk Village is the only real populated place in the entirety of Poni Island according to our edgy-emo buddy Gladion, so it's going to feel different to the first three islands.

I head back to Melemele to see if I can catch that muscular mosquito Ultra Beast, though, and somehow I stumbled into Ilima's house, upon which he's all like happy to make a friend and challenges me to a battle. My team is... hopelessly over-leveled for his weak level 18 Gumshoos and Smeargle to even do anything against... so does that mean the Trial Captains are all battle-able? Ilima gives me an Everstone, kind of a crappy reward, but he's nice. I mean, his father builds him up as this super-dedicated battling genius, and he's honestly not that good if he's fighting with a Gumshoos, but he's nice. I think I'll take a break from Poni Island and just go around re-fighting the other trial captains.

So yeah, we're cooling down a bit from the whole Aether Foundation/Lusamine/Team Skull mega-plot, but there seems to be some ways to go and it's not quite the climax of the game yet. It's very cool. This might actually be my faovurite plotline of all the Pokemon games so far, with maaaybe only Black/White's story matching up to this and I wasn't actually all that keen on the whole Ultra Beasts and very rookie-esque trial thing. But man, this is a very fun storyline.

Legends of Tomorrow S02E06 Review: Jonah Hex Returns

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 6: Outlaw Country

I've gone on record on saying that the Jonah Hex episode in Legends of Tomorrow's first season might be my favourite time-travel locale ever, and that's from someone who doesn't even like cowboys. I was excited when I saw the title of this episode... but well, it ended up being somewhat disappointing. It's not that it's a bad episode -- Jonah Hex is still as fun as ever, but it really felt filler-y. All the character strokes felt like things we've seen before, and overall it just felt like more filler-y than everything else we've seen before.

In a sense we did get to explore Jonah Hex's lore a little bit more, peering back into his rivalry with Quentin Turnbull, and the origin of Hex's trademark disfigurement. It's a bit of a shame that other than some 'don't let revenge consume you' speech from Sara, and some 'but you're a girl captain!' lines, Jonah Hex didn't get to do much beyond that. I felt that he had some more substance in the season one episode, and here it just feels like a glorified cameo, something like Obsidian from last episode, and that's a bit worrying for future guest stars if this is going to be the fate. There just weren't... that much story being told beyond catching Turnbul and stopping him from using the white matter to make his own country, and, well, I dunno. I just felt like this is a bit underwhelming.

There's a couple of interesting character team-ups, but honestly it's nothing we've not seen before. Mick finally is allowed to embrace his inner animal and unleash fiery rage, but the pair-up scenes with Amaya talking about controlling the beast within all kind of felt flat. Nate and Ray have a repeat of their discussion in 'Shogun', albeit this time Nate's the one feeling unsure about himself after the bulletproof man gets hit by a white star bullet. Again, none of these are bad, but they're things we've seen before and added to the fact that the Jonah Hex setting didn't exactly bring anything new to the table, a lot of this suffers from sequelitis.

Ray does get to make a fancy new suit for Nate at the end of the episode, and it's gearing towards him finally making a new suit for himself, so after a brief stint playing just Ray Palmer and going on a journey of self-discovery, he can probably put on the Atom suit again and be a superhero.

Oh, and very interesting in this episode was the very minor Stein/Jax subplot. Stein sits out a good chunk of the episode while Jax just hangs out with Ray and Nate, because apparently Stein's past is rewriting itself. Interesting that Gideon's not detecting any changes, but Stein and Jax theorize that it's because of their interaction last episode with Young Stein... or is it Flashpoint? Whatever it is, it apparently involves a girl that Stein doesn't recognize... but knows he loves. 

Overall, though, a bit of an unimpressive effort. It's not bad, but it really had so much potential to be good and it just kind of... is there. With this, the Legends of Tomorrow portion is over for the pre-Invasion crossover, which Sara mentions with the 2016 call, so let's get caught up with Arrow. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jonah Hex first appeared in the Legends of Tomorrow episode The Magnificent Eight. Quentin Turnbull was briefly mentioned in that episode, as is his role in destroying the town of Calvert, but this is his first speaking appearance. In the comics, Turnbull is Jonah Hex's primary arch-nemesis.  
• Nate makes references to Superman, both with his 'man of steel' comment and, y'know, stopping a locomotive.

Teen Titans S02E07 Review: Alien Puberty

Teen Titans, Season 2, Episode 7: Transformation

Well, Spider-Man is a metaphor for a boy learning about how his body is changing as he goes through puberty. We get one for Starfire this episode as apparently some Tamaraneans go through a phase that involves them developing horns, hairy feet, zebra nails and all sorts of weird body horror before turning into a chrysalis, and then emerging, exactly the same as they were before but with the power to shoot eye beams. Also apparently it's a rare occurrence, because Blackfire's puberty only had her turn purple for a day.

There's a bit of a Twilight Zone-style narration throughout the episode in the montages as we're "introduced" to Starfire, and the little montage as she flies to different planets looking for a place to belong, and this snarky narration helps to give the episode a kind of stylistic coherence. It's basically just a big puberty metaphor, with Starfire flying away from Earth and the Titans modifying the submarine to go to spaaaace and save Starfire from an Acklay a random alien who eats Tamaraneans in chrysalis form. 

We get a welcome return for Plasmus as we get some cool action sequences between him and the Titans, and we get some hilarious visual moments as Starfire tries to muck around wrapped up in thick clothes. And, yeah, technically Starfire has shot eyebeams out of her eyes before, like literally the previous episode. That's a goof-up. Maybe this episode was meant to be aired before the previous one? 

It's an average puberty episode, ending with the first death of this series -- the Chrysalis Eater alien gets eaten by the giant deku baba Starfire fought earlier -- and it's entertaining enough to watch. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• From this episode onwards, keep an eye out for Silkie, one of the moth grubs that the Titans decided to keep from the previous episode. The show doesn't acknowledge her existence until her own episode, but Silkie shows up in the background of nearly every single episode ever.

Pokemon Sun LP, Part 7: Mimikyu is Creepy as Fuck

Last we left off, we were hanging out Route 12, walking through sharp stone on Mudsdale. I caught a couple of Pokemon, and apparently Torkoal has Drought now? I never knew that any other Pokemon other than Groudon and Ninetales have Drought, and the latter only as a hidden ability. With Torkoal it just seems like its second ability has been changed into Drought. Interesting. I don't think we've ever had Abilities be changed from generation to generation.

There's this Treasure Beach-esque area, the Secluded Shore. Lots of Pearls and Pearls and Pearls and more Pearls for Stoutland to dig up.

I continue West until I reach Tapu Village... which, holy shit, is not what I expected. It's perpetually raining, and there are the ruins of houses immediately near where I enter the city. There is a pathway leading up north to Mt. Lanakila, but it's cordoned off until the Pokemon League is finished being constructed. Well, I guess Kukui's plan will come to fruition sooner rather than later.

What's striking, though, is the beach on the south side of Tapu Village, which is Route 14. Holy fuck, it looks like a devastated post-apocalyptic world down there. The street into the area is cordoned off with fences, with people telling me that someone tried to build a Thrifty Megamart on a sacred land, and this pissed off Tapu Bulu so much that it descended down with the wrath of an angry tiki bull god, and just laid waste to everything. I go down to the beach and it's freaking black sand everywhere, with even the sea waves crashing onto the shore being black. The highway is visibly crushed and torn apart, with the ruins becoming ledges, and it's just ruins both in the water and the land. Holy shit, respect to Tapu Bulu. This is amazing, a very, very effective usage of atmosphere to really tell a story.

The actual Megamart is blocked to me by a trial gate, though, so upwards I go to Route 15. There's a huge portion of Route 15 that's cordoned off by large rocks in the ocean, and Tauros can't swim, and Lapras is apparently not strong enough to break them. So after fighting a bunch of trainers, I walk up to the Aether House... upon which Hau and myself get accosted by the guardians of the facility... two kids. I beat up a kid's Pokemon with my monstrous Golisopod. Hau gets his ankle gnawed by a Yungoos. Better get that looked at, Hau, rodent bites aren't anything to scoff at.

Acerola and Lillie show up, and apparently Aether House is some kind of orphanage, showing that, yeah, at the very least, as shifty as they are, Aether Foundation is actually doing some good to the world. Acerola reveals herself to be the Ghost-type trial captain, which is not something I actually expected, and we head off to the trial site, the abandoned megamart.

Let me take the time to stop and point out how fucking creepy the abandoned mart is. Having seen the actual megamart in its glory back in... well, wherever the non-abandoned megamart is... seeing the shelves and items all torn apart and dilapidated is kinda sad but not scary. What really gets me is the background music, though. I was playing with earphones, and holy fuck, this is some Lavender-Town-level shit here. Other ghost-area music post Generation I (Giratina's Theme in Platinum aside) tend to be more on the melancholy and mysterious side of things, but this? This is just creepy as fuck, with the music breaking up into scratching noises at times and just gives me goosebumps.

The actual trial itself isn't that scary, just walk around until poltergeist activity happens, like checkout counters moving by its own, or dolls that float above the table. It's all just Gastlies and Haunters and Gengars causing mischief, and I can find them with my Rotom Poke-Finder Pokemon Snap thing, upon which they naturally attack. I have a shadow-arrow-shooting ghost owl of my own, though, so none of these dudes stood a chance.

Love meeeeeee

(Hilariously, Rotom was actually scared the fuck out before entering the Megamart, despite being a ghost-type himself)

There's a Pikachu that scampers around at the edge of my vision every time I defeat one of the Generation I ghosts, up until I go into a tiny room at the back of the mart. The Poke Finder fired up on its own, and I just see a wall with crude drawings of Pikachu having fun with children and Pikachu being loved and shit, and I keep wondering where the ghost will turn out. I didn't think to really look back for a good minute or so, but when I do. Mimikyu! With his... pretty creepy cry and the dialogue "SEE ME!" and the very creepy ghost-shifting between his true Mimikyu form and a Pikachu...

Holy shit, of all the Pokemon in the game to pull off anime human speech (Rotom has a speaker in the Pokedex, he doesn't count), this... this creepy shit was not what I expected. Mimikyu has always been portrayed as this sad little thing that just needs a hug and is sad that it's not popular, but promotional material really downplayed the creepy aspect of the thing.

I mean, I know Mimikyu exists and half-expected him to be the Totem Pokemon here, but I've always found the dude freaking adorable when taken out of context. But he's still a Ghost-type at the end of the day, and apparently he's the Totem of the place. He hits hard and fast and actually KO'd my Decidueye with a critical Shadow Claw. Mimikyu and his Gengar buddy (holy shit, that's easily the most powerful Totem buddy I've seen this whole playthrough) just tore through half my party with ease until I revived Decidueye and ended Mimikyu's rampage with the power of my Ghost-type Z-move, Sinister Arrow Raid.

Acerola was all, 'what, what back room? What are you talking about?' in an attempt to creep me out, before giving me the Ghostium Z. I don't exactly need it -- Sinister Arrow Raid is so much cooler and more unique -- but hey.

Also, I want a Mimikyu of my own. My party has been sitting at five members that I like (Decidueye, Golisopod, Ribombee, Magneton, Lycanroc) but the sixth has been rotating around between Wishiwashi, Charjabug (who's useless until the fourth island) and whatever I'm trying to level up to evolve and fill the dex. So I went back into the megamart. Sure enough, though, the back room is gone. Mimikyu's the rare encounter, with the rest of the population being Gastlies, Haunters and freaking Klefkis. But I caught one relatively painlessly, and I named him Boo.

Yeah, he's got typing overlaps with Decidueye and Ribombee, but I don't care. He's going to hold the fort as the sixth member and probably swap in and out with Vikavolt when we finally get to evolve one.

What a fun, creepy little shit Mimikyu is. Luring us in with all his helplessness and all... and he is cute, don't get me wrong, but he is also a creepy ghost-type with a very suitably creepy dex entry. Apparently if you peek at its real form under the sheet you die out of shock. Yeah. It wants a friend and all, but there's a reason it's avoided. I don't care, though. He's on the team. His moveset is a bit shitty, though, so other than the Shadow Claw I taught him via TM he's going to rely on, well, Slashes to get by until he learns better moves.

Definitely not who I was expecting
to meet in Alola, that's for sure

I return to Aether House and apparently Plumeria has raided the place and kidnapped a couple of the Pokemon. We fight for a bit, but they just kind of walk away despite... y'know, me having a full party ready to stop them. I don't think three humans can just waltz by an angry Golisopod and Lycanroc. But okay, we need plot progression. Lillie and surprisingly Cosmog are unharmed, though. I half-expect Nebby the Cosmog to be kidnapped by Team Skull, but apparently not. Team Skull challenges me and tells me to come alone to some place that's apparently their hideout, so it's showdown time. Acerola tells me to go seek the man in the kimono.

I was expecting... well, I don't know who I was expecting, but it certainly isn't motherfucking Grimsley, still doing his coin game thing. Grimsley is no doubt the coolest and my favourite member of Unova's Elite Four group by a huge margin, and he's decked out in a fancy white suit. I had absolutely no idea Grimsley was going to make an appearance, and the love that the games are giving the fifth generation -- human characters if not exactly the Pokemon -- warms my heart. Grimsley gives me the Sharpedo Poke-ride, and holy shit, Sharpedo is just so fast and fun to ride around. He's like a jet-ski, but also a shark that slams through boulders. I love Sharpedo, so that's a huge factor in me liking this new feature.

Speaking of new features, a while back I met some lady from one of the older regions that gave me the TM for Fly, noting that in her region it's a HM, a far more sought-after commodity, where here it's just another move. Cool stuff, getting rid of HM's.

Whatever the case, I work my way through the relatively long water route, with Magneton and Decidueye tearing through the hordes of Finneons and Tentacools in the water before reaching Route 16, then go through the misty Ula'ula Meadow. There's a side path leading into this weird lakebed temple called the Temple of the Moone, complete with Pokemon Moon insignias all over the place, but there's absolutely nothing but a huge ruined hall, a long corridor and the TM for Psyshock. It's a bit weird, but I'm assuming that it's either a version exclusive thing or a future legendary Pokemon encounter.

I head up Route 17, which is starting to be infested with Team Skull Grunts skulking about. It's really nice how far from Tapu Town the Team Skull base is. Normally in Sun everything is just so linear and close by each other that there's minimal exploration and legwork involved, but this is some old-timey Generation III/IV-level meandering around. Route 17 leads into Po Town, which is... this abandoned town covered all over with graffiti, old trial barricades and a lot of Team Skull Grunts. One random dude whose face looks like he came from Attack on Titan shows up, warns me about Team Skull, and gives me a very awesome line: "I'll make sure your remains get home." Jeez, Pokemon, you just got dark!

It's really a very cool atmospheric place, with the graffiti'd up Pokemon Center being my favourite of the bunch. There's a small minimal-effort sneaking-around puzzle involved, and as with everything involving Team Skull the gangster wannabe dialogue is just hilarious. The best part has to be the thugs that took over the Pokemon Center, and are apparently so poor they can't afford the rent and had to charge a measly $10 to heal my dudes so they can pay rent.

It's a very cool, thuggy place, with Skull members just loitering around, standing on top of trucks, and I enter the Shady House, which is an old mansion, and begin just pummeling every single Skull grunt in my way. There are some hilarious dialogue, like one who is angry that I'm barging into people's rooms without permission, a pair of female grunts arguing about Skull tanks, and there's an obligatory password puzzle. After a cool walk atop the building's roof, I confront Guzma, who threatens to beat me up, and all that jazz, and everyone's afraid of him but he's honestly... not much tougher than before.

He's super-angry and has to return the Aether House's Yungoos to me, but not before causing his grunts to run away, making some angry threats, and buggering off. Jeez, Guzma, back your words up with some actual power, man. I mean, you definitely look like a thug, but you don't act like one. That Golisopod is cool, but if that and the weak Ariados are the only two things in your party, you're not going to get anything done. No Z-moves, no mega evolution, not even a full party! I did get the Buginium Z, which my own Golisopod will be putting to great work, thank you very much.

That dude with the creases on his face show up again, and is all like dismissive about everything. Acerola shows up, identifies him as Uncle Nanu, one of the policemen in the area. Nanu's all like 'eh, rent is cheap'. Nanu seems like he's going to be like the kahuna or trial captain or something, his model is too unique for just a random character. Whatever the case, I've cleared Team Skull for the time being, rescued an orphan's Pokemon... so it's time to get back to more trial and maybe Ultra Beast goodness?