Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor S01E09 Review: Starscream

Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, Episode 9: Resurrection

So, yeah, another single-episode review. It's a huge emotional moment for Kaiji, and I really do think that it deserves this relatively longer screentime. We get to see Ando's reasoning and... logically, it's honestly not that hard to understand why Furuhata gets seduced by Ando, even with his prior friendship with Kaiji. Ando talks about how they will still have debts to pay even if they waste their money to save Kaiji, whereas if they sell their stars they'll walk out of Espoir far, far richer and debt-free. And besides, they won't ever see Kaiji ever again, so why does it matter?

And honestly, Ando's a dude that Kaiji met like 2 hours ago, his treachery isn't completely out of the blue, and Kaiji's screaming in despair as Ando and Furuhata starts selling their stars for money is amazingly done and delivered by the voice actor. It's a cruel, cruel moment for Kaiji, because he's been campaigning the standard 'friendship and loyalty!' manga spiel throughout the Espoir arc, and, well, he gets backstabbed by them.

However, it's nice that Kaiji is actually formulating a plan in his desperation, observing Okabayashi and realizing the money he's clutching (and covering his junk with) is far too little to actually count for the risk of his friends not selling their stars. It's a bit odd why the showrunners wouldn't remove the patch on Okabayashi's back, but it's something I can look over. Kaiji assaults Okabayashi and bites and punches him, but it's all a feint in order to rip off the patch and get the jewels hidden inside.

And after a bit, Okabayashi and his allies realize that the patch is missing (I think if Kaiji didn't bite Okabayashi he'd be more inclined to realize that the precious thing taped onto his back is gone) and this ends up causing Okabayashi to have to pay to free Kaiji as well. It's a pretty cool plan, albeit one that has a crapton of contrived coincidence. I buy it, though.

And while Kaiji didn't quite punch Ando hard enough for my tastes, it's a neat bit of great karma as Kaiji rips off Ando and Furuhata's stars and money and uses them to save Ishida, the old man, as a big 'fuck you' to the two of them. It's... it's a bit hard to swallow, although I guess the story arc would be a bit too dark if Ishida just sits there in despair and gets taken away to his presumed torture and/or death after him being far more likable and relatable to the audience. It's... it's still pretty dumb for Kaiji to waste all the money, though (and for Ando to let him just take it without much of a fuss -- Furuhata's too much of a pushover to imagine fighting back) considering he walks away from Espoir with a crapton of debt nonetheless.

And I did like the bit at the end where Kaiji gives out this huge, huge rant about all the sick people taking pleasure in watching their suffering and panic. There's a bit of a meta bit where it seems he's talking about us, the viewers (and I did enjoy the story of Kaiji's despair), but it turns out that Kaiji's far more aware that all of this is designed in-universe by a group of, well, audience who has been watching them. It's a bit of a headscratcher why an organization would do all this, but I guess they just have that much money to throw around, and they just want to be entertained?

Cool stuff, regardless, and this marks the end of the Espoir arc, the first arc in Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor. It's thrilling as all hell, and definitely an anime I'll recommend from these 9 episodes I've reviewed. At this point I've actually finished nearly the entirety of the first season, so while I initially planned a bit of a hiatus in the episodic reviews, I don't think it'd be that long. Expect a break from anime reviews for around a week or two, though. 

The Gifted S01E7 Review: Drug Cartels

The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 7: eXtreme measures

I don't really have much to say about this episode, really. The Gifted started off pretty strong, but it's now in a string of pretty blah episodes, and episode seven, 'eXtreme measures', is not much different. A good chunk of the problem is because of the wooden scripting and dialogue that the actors are forced to say, which feel like they came from a first draft instead of something that they're ready to devote expensive actors and special effects to. Add that to the absolutely uninteresting subplot of Eclipse having to deal with his drug lord ex and that whole plotline for the episode is just amazingly bland and uninteresting.

I don't think the episode really gives us a proper reason why Eclipse immediately jumps through hoops to help Carmen -- I guess he's just afraid that Carmen will tell Sentinel Services about the mutants' base,  but does she really know? And why keep it a secret from Polaris? Beyond the absolutely asinine 'I don't know how to tell you' excuse he gives her at the end. There's still enough content in this episode to keep me watching, but a combination of cliched dialogue and a lack of care about the whole cartel subplot (Carmen's actress is decent, mind you) makes me not really give much of a shit about this episode.

At least we did get to see Polaris do some cool shit with her powers, swing around guns to whack Carmen's mansion guards, and we see her just job bricks at her students. She's a pretty fun actress with a great range, I have to be honest, it's just a shame we haven't actually see her do much on her own -- her storyline is so involved in 'break out of jail' or her romance with Marcos that I really wish there's more to her personality beyond that.

Agent Jace goes through a bit of a subplot where it's revealed that there's apparently some big conspiracy to place brainwashed mutants all over the world, and he gets to see some dude with stroke-causing abilities basically take out some random lady that's trying to investigate Sentinel Services's current warpath on mutantkind, only for the Doctor to show Jace an entire army of brainwashed mutants. Oh, and they're sponsored by X-Men big-name Trask Industries! Will we get Peter Dinklage to show up and have a cameo? Please do. The Gifted name-dropping the X-Men and the Brotherhood and all that stuff has been absolutely great at worldbuilding without being too obvious about it, and I'm definitely a big fan of these little touches.

There's also a B-plot of Thunderbird hunting Blink down, and together they find out that the orphanage that Blink came from has been wiped out and those inside killed or captured by Sentinel Services. It's... okay? It's something to get Blink back into the fold. I'd really appreciate that, if, like Polaris, Blink's character wasn't written to be so reactive... but that's some great emotion shown on Blink's part as she tries desperately to say maybe how the kids got out, or whatever, before crying and sobbing into Thunderbird's shoulder. Shame the dialogue she has to utter at this point is a very dumb-sounding "oh, man".

The Strucker subplot is also particularly weak this episode. Basically it's a long-winded speech about second chances and whatnot, and while I thought we're heading to something interesting with Lauren's boyfriend Wes maybe being one of these sleeper agents, he's just... a kid who made some stupid decisions in the past. The actors go through their roles reasonably well, but I just can't really bring myself to care if Lauren and the undeveloped Wes ends up together or not. Mama Strucker's attempts to force their kids to learn arithmetic or bean plant genetics is also particularly dumb here. Sure, Polaris's brick-throwing isn't particularly elegant, but what're they going to do with those when they're literally on the run every day of their lives? The fact that Wes only, y'know, stole some shit and the Struckers react so insanely when only last episode they actually broke and entered into a government facility and knocked out a couple of guards -- and that's not to count everything else that has happened in the past 6 episodes... yeah. Hypocritical much?

Overall, definitely a pretty weak episode that seem to be more of a bunch of rejected subplots thrown together to be resolved (Blink's leaving, Marcos's drug cartel backstory, Lauren's boyfriend) in addition with some exposition for Sentinel Services. It doesn't make for a particularly thrilling 40 minutes for sure.

Supergirl S03E05 Review: Emotional Problems

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 5: Damage

Okay, I'm not going to be particularly wordy with this episode. It's not terrible, it's just... there. It's an episode that probably is something that many others would appreciate more than me. It's not written terribly, it's just that both of the plotlines of this episode just don't appeal to me at all. I guess part of it is the fact that Maggie's actress has to leave the series, and a graceful exit is far better than abruptly killing her off for shock value, but at the same time I just never quite bought into the fact that "but I wanna have kids' excuse as something to utterly rip the two apart, especially after the past few episodes emphasizes so much to how they're happy and cute together and all that. Still, I guess it's somewhat of a bittersweet note that their breakup isn't anyone's fault, and they're otherwise super-compatible... but eh. I dunno. I've never been one to get super-duper invested in shipping, and while the two actresses have done an amazing job at making Maggie and Alex be likable, I've always thought that their storylines tend to kind of bog down episodes and transform the superhero show into a romance show. And it's a very well-executed one, don't get me wrong, but still, from a narrative standpoint I'm actually glad that it's pushed to the side? When it was Kara and Mon-El last season, at least the superhero plotlines do tend to revolve around those, instead of us having to break away from it specifically. 

The problem is that the A-plot isn't quite that interesting either. Sure, on paper, it's a pretty decent Superman/Supergirl plot. Their ally, Lena Luthor, is being framed for a crapton of sick kids who may or may not be having lead poisoning (lead poisoning does not, in real life, cause random life-threatening seizures, but this is a superhero show. So.) from Lena's detonation of the lead bomb that fucked over the Daxamites at the end of the second season. And Lena's played by a great actress that executes her role as a self-loathing person who's driven by both the guilt that she may be responsible as much as her own hate for her Luthor blood. What kind of didn't work out that well is the fact that Morgan Edge is so obviously behind it all (while at the same time completely being untraceable, all Lex Luthor-style), while Kara and Samantha's searching for the true culprit ends up being a pretty bland detective clue-hunt. I suppose Kara saving the plane and Lena is pretty cool, but honestly a lot of this episode just felt kinda flat to me. Particularly perhaps due to the fact that Lena rushing to Edge's factory, pulling a gun and trying to Luthor-execute Edge feels like such a strange sequence in my head.

There's a sub-sub-sub-plot about James and Lena's office relationship that has James take a bullet for Lena in the mid-episode cliffhanger, but that's honestly just so dry-cut that I have nothing to say about it other than to acknowledge it exists. Though the shooting thing did give us the cool moment with Samantha's invulnerability at the end of the episode, though, so that's cool. 

Of course, though, part of what makes the episode not quite be terrible is particularly strong performances from Lena and Alex's actresses. I also do acknowledge that dipping Supergirl's toes into other genres is definitely a great way to appeal to a larger audience, and while 'chick flicks' have never been my thing, I do know that it appeals to people and I'm fine with that. Overall, though, a combination of multiple factors in this episode that didn't just work quite right make this a pretty sub-par episode. 

Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor S01E08 Review: Kaiji vs Funai

Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, Episode 8: The Iron Hammer

A single-episode review this time around -- not sure how often I'll do these sort of things. I guess when there's a lot to talk in the episode. It's a neat little episode that builds up to a final confrontation between Kaiji and Funai, and it's actually pretty neat in subverting that expectations, because the Kaiji-Funai battle only lasts until around the halfway mark.

But the Kaiji/Funai confrontation is pretty cool. Kaiji knows Funai's card, and Funai doesn't want to risk the 3 stars that Kaiji demands from him, convinced that he can at least get rid of his card and at the worst a star by battling 'X', the unknown quantity that holds the three scissors cards... and it's a pretty tense bit. X has been mentioned throughout the past few episodes, and it's honestly a clever, if slightly anticlimactic, plot twist to reveal to us that 'X' is actually a person we've seen before. The dude that flushed all his cards down the toilet. The destroyed cards are just not tabulated on the screen.

And Funai ends up being forced to agree to play against Kaiji and he ends up losing, which is definitely well-played, and displays Funai's fall from grace pretty amazingly. Funai definitely gets the biggest hate-sink at this moment for general douchebagginess, so it's definitely great to see him be forced to kowtow and give a bunch of stars to Kaiji and his group.

However, X's missing cards does mean that there's an odd number of cards, and part of why Kaiji's so intense is because he knows that there's going to be one card left-over, so even after they get an adequate number of stars one of them still has to be dragged off to the room-of-doom, and Kaiji is very much ready to make the sacrifice. And it's this super-cocky 'well, I'm going to die anyway, I'll drag you with me' mentality that ends up causing Funai to eventually fold, because Kaiji literally has nothing else to lose. He expects that his allies can buy him back at the end of the proceedings, and puts trust in them. After all, hasn't Furuhata and Ando been steadfast allies through this all?

And we get this very humiliating scene as Kaiji is stripped down and thrown into a room with all the others who had been likewise striped. Nothing is erotic of fanservicey about all this, and really highlights their value -- or lack thereof. Kaiji ends up discovering that, yes, the white-suited dude with sunglasses (apparently named Sakai) is indeed cheating, and the one-way mirror that the prison room has allows those inside to basically signal their allies outside. Of course, Sakai, being an obvious douchebag, has fooled his partner, an uncle called Ishida, who ends up being a chump.

Sakai is a repeater, which is why he knows the ins and outs of the Espoir ship's system. And it's pretty cool how the scroundel-looking toothy dude in the room, Okabayashi, basically dissects Ishida and Kaiji's arguments. Okabayashi is a cocky bastard who rains all over Kaiji's confidence that his friends will save him, talking about how loyalty and friendship are pointless.

And, indeed, as Okabayashi and Kaiji expects, there's a buy-back moment at the end of the whole thing, and Sakai, of course, is nowhere to be seen, dooming Ishida to the room. Okabayashi, meanwhile, is bought back by his allies, because he's holding on to a crapton of money and that's his insurance to make sure his friends will get him out. Kaiji, on the other hand, trusts his allies so much that he entrusts them with all his money and stars... and as Furuhata gets ready to buy Kaiji back, it's honestly a bit of a 'eh, of course he will'. I mean, wasn't the whole point of the Kaiji-vs-Kitami fight to show how Kaiji's friendship with Furuhata and Ando is the real deal, and they trust each other?

Except it honestly wasn't. Kaiji hasn't been super-truthful or open with his allies, telling them to 'trust me!' and basically do things while the two of them are complaining and whining behind his backs. Furuhata and Ando has likewise gone and splurged their way through several impulsive moments of panic, and Furuhata himself was the reason Kaiji was in this situation. And thus while Furuhata's doormat tendencies means that I totally buy that he'll want to save Kaiji at first... Ando's betrayal was surprising but not at all something that doesn't make sense. And anyway, he's going to get a lot of money from it all, by selling the extra stars to the random people that need stars to get off the ship. It's definitely very interesting to see what's going to go on, and how Kaiji will get his way out of the pickle he's found himself in. 

Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor S01E06-07 Review: Card Advantage

Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, Episode 6: Rise and Fall; Episode 7: Proclamation

(A brief apology on the slowness of the superhero TV shows -- I've not had a chance to watch any of this week's shows at all due to personal problems)

We continue with a pretty thrilling two episodes of Kaiji, and we continue the game of Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors. These two episodes continue the tension of the anime, and that's definitely the biggest draw of the anime -- the rules of the game is pretty neatly complex and explained, and the combination of great, emotional voice-acting on the part of Kaiji as well as consistently flowery descriptions of scenes and feelings make you really buy into what's going on even when it's something that's indubitably a dumbass decision.

Episode 6 basically has Team Kaiji on a pretty cool winning streak. They decide to double-hoard rock and paper, because that way all their enemies will be likely to have scissors, making them able to win with their rocks, and draw with the papers. They then pay Kitami's buddies for their cards, sending them out, whereas they walk up to Kitami and basically force him to give them money so they'll buy his deck off him. There's an amazing bit where Kaiji just tells Kitami that taking his deal is literally the only way out, because to refuse would be suicide since unlike Team Kaiji, his deck is all paper instead of mostly rock.

It's then the great return of Funai! He's got like 12 stars or some shit, but has no more cards. He wants to buy cards off of Kaiji in exchange for a star and... and honestly, I can understand that Funai has completely fucked over Kaiji in the second episode. But the deal is way too sweet, and Funai was even ready to give a star hands-down. Kaiji's more experienced now, and surely having him double-cross Funai isn't out of the question... but Kaiji just absolutely refuses to make deals with him and help him screw over other people on principle, and gets absolutely angry then Funai tells Kaiji to cut off Furuhata and Ando, because they're trash. I really feel this part could probably make use with some of those flowery imaginary description things, but it's still okay.

There's also a bunch of people introduced that have 2 stars or whatever, and no cards, and are waiting to buy stars from the likes of Funai during a 'buy-back' event at the end. It's yet another monkey wrench thrown into this whole thing.

And Kaiji's decision to hoard cards ends up backfiring twice -- first, when no one refuses to play, because it's so tense and the impulse-gamblers are probably either weeded out or turned paranoid -- and Funai tells everyone to 'reset everything to zero'. He reveals the cards of some of the players on the field, and simply tells them how instead of living in doubt over stalkers, it's better to reset everything to zero. And when the stipulation to only play amongst themselves pops up, Team Kaiji is forced to join.

Episode 7 is basically a huge big introdump about Funai's reshuffling. In addition to showing that Kaiji's team is hoarding 69 cards, Funai gathers all the cards in existence and counts up the amount -- and he notes that there are three missing cards -- held by an unknown 'X' (god, the way Funai's voice actor pronounces the letter X is amazing) that's probably amongst those that have stars and no cards. He divides everything out, and throws Kaiji'a 69 cards into the air because he's a dick. Team Kaiji makes a quick calculation that since all the papers is accounted for, the floor has 2 rocks, 2 scissors, plus 3 cards in X.

Funai quickly crushes two people, and there's a neat bit of Kaiji breaking down and crying in desperation at how fucking horribly bad their condition has became now. And Kaiji's emotional breakdown and actual physical assault of Funai is pretty well-delivered... and then Kaiji apparently has a breakthrough. He opens up Funai's own plans of cheating, describing the many, many little tricks Funai does while under an illusion of fairness. Marking the cards, counting the cards, shuffling the cards on the ground after everyone else has cut the deck, dealing cards to himself before tossing cards to those with only one card... Funai has basically engineered himself to have only rocks, and to deal scissors to those with one card.

And it's pretty damn amazing. It's pretty clever and not too complicated, and seeing Kaiji absolutely crush Funai while still being in a bind himself is amazing. But due to everyone's cards being known, no one wants to play each other... so Kaiji formulates a plan. He puts a card of each type in front of the remaining three people, so they'll have a chance to actually win and actually want to play. Kaiji net-loses a star, I think, and loses 3 cards, but he ends up getting rid of everyone else on the floor, revealing his big plan to set up a huge gamble against Funai -- bet for 5 stars, or Funai can't get rid of his card.

It's pretty fun and great. I really kind of wish that Kaiji and especially Furuhata and Ando get their characters fleshed out a little more, but the tension going on in the manga and the bombastic voice acting by Kaiji, Funai, Kitami and the narrator work in the anime's favour. The tension in the anime is certainly well done and that really sucks me in.

Movie Review: Justice League

Justice League [2017]

So I watched Justice League today. The internet is pretty divided, with some reviews calling it a shit 2/10 movie or whatever, and some people calling it a 8/10 9/10 movie. The thing is... I really do think that people get caught up in the Marvel-vs-DC lambasting war a bit too much for their own good, and I certainly thought that Justice League is a perfectly good and serviceable superhero movie. It's entertaining as hell. Does it do anything particularly new or revolutionary in the ever-diluted superhero genre? No. Is it a good, solid movie regardless, though? I genuinely do think so.

And yes, the bar was set pretty low since Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad are pretty much barely better than disasters, and I don't think it's better than its direct predecessor, Wonder Woman... but it's still a good movie nonetheless. It's certainly not perfect. There are many moments that I thin could've done well with extra editing. But there isn't a huge moment that made me go "come on, this is fucking stupid" like the Martha moment or the random 'Knightmare' sequence in BvS. And the fact that I want them to simply add things to the movie as opposed to removing scenes or subplots really speak to the fact that, yes, it's a good movie. It's definitely flawed, don't get me wrong... but calling it a 'mess', 'stumbling' or worse than its predecessors honestly isn't particularly accurate. I'd accept average or mediocre -- which I personally feel this movie rises above -- but I'll fight anyone who calls this movie outright bad.

Am I slightly biased? Definitely so. I've been a huge, huge DC fanboy since I was a kid. I grew up with Batman and Justice League cartoons. And seeing the League assembled in a live-action movie, all of the main big dudes (and Cyborg) assembled and fighting a huge threat is still worth the price of admission. But I really am very pleased to find out that it's a good movie nonetheless.

Let's talk about the bad parts of the movie first, really, before we go to the good parts, if only so that I can tick them off of my list.

The lack of a huge 'HELL YEAAAAAAAH' Justice-League-all-assembled scene is a bit sad for me. For all its faults BvS had this great moment of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman assembled before Doomsday as the music ratchets up and Diana slowly lowers her hands and we have a slow pan zoom-in of the DC trinity -- and that single moment probably redeems BvS a lot more than it should in my eyes. Avengers has this great scene of turning around the main six Avengers in the New York city -- you know the shot. The Flash's first season finale had that great lineup of Firestorm, Flash and Green Arrow assembled in a team-up as the music and tension builds up. Civil War had that scene of both Team Cap and Team Iron Man assembled, slow-walking towards each other. Sure, we get many scenes of the Justice Leaguers assembled together or in a badass line, but it never quite manages to build up the way that other superhero team-ups have. Small complaint, perhaps, but it's definitely a bit of a shame for me. The big beats of the League forming together or Superman returning back from the dead or Steppenwolf being felled didn't quite have the huge impacts that those scenes deserve, in my opinion.

Steppenwolf is one hell of a flat villain, and the Mother Box plot device is, well, plot device-y as all hell. Cyborg is also more of a plot device than a character in the third act, but it's not as terrible as it seems. Steppenwolf is at least decently acted, and the plotline is easy enough to follow without being a convoluted mess (BvS, Age of Ultron, hello?). But Steppenwolf is threatening enough, Ciaran Hinds' performance is great and gives him an aura of malice, and while he's undoubtedly a flat character I don't think that's a problem that Justice League has alone -- really, any superhero movie villain not named Loki tends to be a one-note hammy villain anyway. If anything, I'm glad he's at least not as dumb as Doomsday was. I did wish he did do a little less 'ooo mother calls' thing, though.

There were some moments that I feel was weird and kind of took me out of the movie for a while. First is the weird super slo-mo scene in the opening of some thug kicking a bunch of oranges, which felt absolutely unnecessary, and the constant cutting back-and-forth to the random family in Russia that are hiding in their house as Steppenwolf's Parademons fly around it... I really felt that that was a huge distraction that could've been better spent doing literally anything else. There were also a couple of scenes that I'll criticize -- Steppenwolf using the random abandoned nuclear plant as a staging ground wasn't really explained that much, and for a moment I thought that was where humanity's Mother Box was. And Aquaman going from being chastised for being a broody antisocial dude by Mera to randomly showing up when Steppenwolf traps the League in a flood is pretty odd.

And I really wished Steppenwolf was built up to be even more ridiculously powerful so the climax is 'oh my god, is the combined League enough to take Steppenwolf down?' and not 'oh my god, can they wake up Superman in time?' but that's not that big of an issue for me, honestly, and considering how poor of a showing Superman has been given in BvS it's really pretty fucking great.

All the other problems that other people have about this movie, I think, is otherwise just nitpicking. Superman's badly-CGI'd mustache removal is barely noticeable, and I was paying attention. The huge 'tone imbalance' between the Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon parts of the movie isn't that jarring. And the fact that Justice League has a generic sci-fi plot is honestly pretty much the plot of half of the superhero movies out there, and when you're introducing a slew of new characters to an audience you don't go for a ridiculously complex philosophical plot.

Oh, and the absolutely cheesy flowers blooming all over the dead town is honestly a bit too cheesy for me... although it certainly didn't ruin the movie.

So yeah. Time for me to praise the movie.

Because I like it. It's not the best work DC has ever done (that award still goes to The Dark Knight and Wonder Woman) but it's still a good movie.

The plot was... fine. It's just basically an alien invasion, with Steppenwolf being nigh-unbeatable and tossing around everyone until the League is properly assembled. It's a simple three-act movie, with the first act being a neat montage of Batman and Wonder Woman collecting heroes all over the world while Steppenwolf arrives, and beats up the Amazons of Themyscira and the Atlanteans to steal the two Mother Boxes that they keep. Four of our heroes manage to team up and fight against Steppenwolf in an absurdly wide sewer-chimney system and didn't defeat him. And the second, shorter act is basically them bringing Superman back to life. It's actually relatively well-paced, and while Superman does go crazy for a bit, bringing Lois Lane back to calm him down is a great emotional beat. And not as stupid as Martha. It's absolutely chilling to see Superman be confused and out of control, without the silliness of having him flip-flop between good and evil (Transformers 5, looking at you). The third act is a simple extended climax which kind of drags on for a bit too long, and both Cyborg and Superman being kind of plot devices hurts it somewhat, but it's otherwise a pretty simple yet satisfying end.

Oh, and the score! Before we go anywhere, the score's just amazing. They even added a lot of tracks that take directly from Christopher Reeve Superman films, and Batman: The Animated Series' main opening theme, and I just shivered when I heard the all-too-familiar DUNNNN DUNNNNNN DAAAA DAAAAAAAAAA DAAAAAHHHHHHH blare out.

And a lot of the action scenes are awesome -- I'm just sad that a lot of the key Aquaman scenes are already shown in the trailer, so sequences like Aquaman's airborne battle against the Parademons and slamming one down onto a building, or his underwater scuffle with Steppenwolf, or his holding a wave of water back with his quindent didn't quite have as big of an impact as they probably should... but it's partially because of me watching the trailers a bit too much than I should.

But the rest of the action scenes are pretty great! Batman with the thug on the rooftops of Gotham City was just amazing and I was instantly enraptured by it. Wonder Woman and the terrorists and just how quickly she deflects everything was a huge, huge 'holy shit!' moment. The Amazons' game of hot potato with the Mother Box as they go through elaborate maneuvers to toss the plot device around as Steppenwolf chases them is one of the best action sequences in the movie. The underwater swirling sea-storm created by Mera is amazing. And that's just the first act. Superman facing off against the League is perhaps my favourite action scene, with a special highlight to Flash running towards Superman while the world around him goes to slo-mo... and then Superman follows Flash's movement and the 'OH CRAP' realization and Superman going wild, keeping pace with Flash, is just great.

Superman pounding Steppenwolf to the ground in the climax? Also amazing. The Batwing swooping in and just missile striking everything? Flash and Superman's team-up in saving the civilians? Wonder Woman and Aquaman holding off Steppenwolf? Superman's arctic breath? Superman holding Batman by his throat? The flashback with a motherfucking Green Lantern and Zeus, the God of Thunder, fighting against Steppenwolf? Batman's Knightcrawler kicking all sorts of ass? All amazing action scenes.

And thankfully, the movie isn't dour. It's not a laff-a-minute moment like Thor: Ragnarok was, and I'm actually thankful for that. It's not forced, because there's still this huge opera-esque dramatic tension behind it... but the heroes are wisecracking and having fun. Most of it is from Aquaman, the bro-iest bro ever in the world of bro, and Flash, who's even goofier and awkward than his TV-series version, but everyone gets their moment. Even Superman, who spent his last movie being a brooding sack of sadness, smiles a lot in this movie and I'm so thankful. He even cracks a joke! This is the Superman we need. The course correction was definitely needed, in my opinion.

I'm going to try and not ramble about too much, and go through each character separately. That, I think, is the beauty of this movie. Each character has their own personal arcs, and it's gradually shown to us. No one gets their origin story displayed a lot -- even the three newcomers -- but we do sort of learn who they are and what they are. Aquaman is mentioned to come from Atlantis, he's the royal son but has some emotional issues. Flash's whole 'trying to clear my dad's name' origin is mentioned and we see Henry Allen in prison talking to Barry a couple of times, but we don't get pointless foreshadowing to Reverse-Flash or whatever that won't be followed up here. Cyborg's backstory is described in greater detail, but only because his father Silas's involvement in obtaining one of the Mother Boxes is crucial to the Steppenwolf-and-Boxes plot. And I like that it makes the movie self-contained, while still building on to the mythos.

Batman's the first Leaguer we see, and after that awesome beat of a one-on-one against a Parademon, we get to see that he's been preparing for the invasion, trying to find out what's going on, and ends up trying to recruit people. Most of all, he's trying to atone for his sins in being a paranoid shit who tries to kill Superman, and tries his best to play well with others. He's patient with the hyperactive Flash, and his whole 'save one person' speech to the Flash is mentoring and well-delivered -- perhaps one of the most effective scenes in the entire movie, to be honest, with the whole "I have never fought, I just run fast and push people over." "Save one person. One. You'll know what to do next."

Batman and Wonder Woman also get a lot of great scenes together, because, of course, they're the only two members of the main five members that actually fought together before this. And Diana's not wrong in pointing out Bruce's obsession with bringing Superman back being perhaps based on a bit of a guilt complex. In conversations with Diana and Alfred, though, we get to see Batman as acknowledging how much of a shit people person he is (Flash joins because he's just more excited about the cause that Batman's own sales pitch, Aquaman refuses outright and later joins on his own whim, Cyborg was brought in by Diana's talk) and he knows that both Wonder Woman and Superman would make for far better leaders than he is. This road of sacrifice and atonement is definitely well-delivered, and this type of Batman that's equal parts broody and equal parts self-sacrificial for his friends, being motivated by making the world a better place and protecting his allies and friends, is far more Batman than the paranoid chessmaster that he was in BvS.

He's borderline suicidal in places here, between his talk with a memory-confused Superman ('do you bleed?') and his one-man charge to draw the Parademons away while his allies take down Steppenwolf, knowing full well that he can't last against the Parademon swarm? Yeah, Bruce's on a bit of a self-destructive, self-sacrificial bit here, and he's eventually reminded that, yes, he has friends. And that absolutely dopey grin he has when Superman shows up to whack Steppenwolf in the climax? That's absolutely great. (Bruce buying the bank is also amazingly hilarious)

Wonder Woman, meanwhile, is basically being groomed by Batman as a leader. She doesn't do quite as much as she does in her solo movie, but she still delivers a pretty great showing here. Between kicking ass (and she does a lot of ass-kicking here, from single-handedly defeating a bomb attack to single-handedly challenging Steppenwolf multiple times to the headbutt-battle with angry evil Superman), Wonder Woman also proves herself to be the most compassionate of the group. She connects with the self-loathing Cyborg very well, she admits her own problems -- Batman brings up Diana shutting herself from the world for hundreds of years when she could've been a symbol of hope like Superman was, and she definitely wants to stop Batman from pulling another Steve Trevor. The final shot we see of her is Wonder Woman once more being a hero in the eyes of a group of children, embracing the fact that like Superman flying in the sky, she, too, is a symbol of hope and courage. Diana is perhaps the most static character out of the main members of the League, but that's okay. She just had a whole movie to herself, and she's definitely still got a lot of great scenes here.

The Flash, a.k.a. Barry Allen, is perhaps the most vocal and most well-developed out of the three newcomers in this movie. And while it's perhaps tempting to go Ezra Miller vs. Grant Gustin... I love both Flashes, and I think both actors are great. Flash here is a lot more inexperienced and scatterbrained, far younger than the other five members of the Justice League, and is honestly just trying to get his shit together. We get to see him geeking out over Batman and trailing off on tangents during their first meeting on the... Flashcave? We get to see a more somber side to the bubbly boy when he meets Henry Allen, trapped in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and while he does fine standing next to Batman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg, when push comes to shove Flash panics, freaks out over the alien army, and as Batman tells him to just 'save one person', Flash ends up realizing what he has to do.

And no, Flash doesn't actually fight a lot, and he's the easiest to point out as the 'support' member of the group. Even Batman kicks more ass than the Flash with a combination of his Knightcrawler, Batmobile, Batwing and the stolen Parademon gun. But I think it's actually pretty appropriate for this incarnation of the Flash, with how he's established to honestly just be a kid. He ends up getting more confidence, more friends, and delivers a whole ton of fun jokes on the way.

Cyborg is perhaps a bit more plot device-y than he should have been, but we actually did get a pretty large mileage out of his story than I expected to. It's perhaps a bit predictable, but it's delivered well and Ray Fisher definitely makes a pretty good Cyborg. Cyborg's origin was always slightly more dark, even in the Teen Titans comics he comes from. Cyborg is still full of loathing -- both at himself for what he's became, and for his father for making him into, well, a machine. Yes, he ends up being kind of a huge walking plot device due to how he's a robot that can access anything. He's crucial to the climax because he's the only one who can hack the united Mother Box, and he's the one that malfunctions and antagonizes confused-Superman. But at the same time, Cyborg does get a couple of great scenes. The first scene he has with Silas is predictable, yes, but definitely touching. His scene with Diana and how he was initially refusing to work with anyone is also neat. At the end, bonding enough with his friends to trade wisecracks with Aquaman or Superman, and fist-bumping the Flash despite refusing to do so earlier, is definitely a neat little character arc for Cyborg. All the moments he interacts with his aloof father is definitely great parts.

I was definitely losing my shit over that 'boo-yah' too.

Aquaman is... really interesting. His character arc was one who went from a loner who physically assaults Bruce when he tries to recruit him, and we learn later on that he's running from all responsibilities. Not wanting to be tied to the land or the sea, he refuses Bruce's call to be a superhero, and he refuses Atlantis's demands that he be a king, feeling rejected by everyone -- especially for the mother who he thinks threw him away and abandoned him. And being played by Jason Momoa makes him badass as all hell, likable even when he's being kind of a dick.

And while the lasso of truth scene was hilarious, it also shows that Aquaman hides a layer of vulnerability beyond his huge bluster and testosterone-laden act. He probably could have stood to have gotten more scenes, really, but while he perhaps could've had more character beats, the character is just so damn badass and charismatic it's practically impossible for me to dislike him.

And lastly, Superman. His death is definitely felt by all. Batman, Lois and Martha mention it at different parts of the story, and after the League bring him back, Superman ends up being confused and after a bit of a weapons mishap by Cyborg, Superman ends up showing his worth as the strongest being on Earth... and that's a spot that I absolutely love. Aquaman and Wonder Woman might match him blow-for-blow, but Superman quickly tosses Aquaman around, shrugs Cyborg's blasts, and is fast enough to keep up with Flash. Wonder Woman gets knocked down when it comes to a one-on-one between them, and Batman is just not at all committed to even raising a hand at Superman. And it's just amazing. Yes, perhaps it sort of kills part of the tension how Superman just ends up being so freakishly powerful, but I feel that after his last two appearances not quite getting Superman right, this is definitely something I prefer compared to his prior DCEU appearances. A Superman that breaks away from the fight to help Flash rescue civilians? Hell yeah. After the DCEU mishandled Superman so badly, this is definitely a direction I support wholeheartedly.

He ends up calming down when he sees Lois, and returns to his old farmhouse. They have a couple of short scenes as Superman remembers who he is, and reiterates why he loves Lois... but those scenes are short, and make sense (unlike Ghost!Jonathan in BvS), and Superman shows up with an appropriately cheesy "I like justice! And freedom!" or some line like that... and I am absolutely fine with cheesy Superman. Hell, Evil!Superman was far more charismatic than the brooding mopey dude we got from BvS! This is how Superman should be. Like Cyborg, he's more plot device than character, with the biggest beats he has is reiterating his friendship with Batman and Wonder Woman, and his little friendly rivalry with Flash. But still, pretty damn great.

The other big player who get a lot of screentime is Steppenwolf, who... other than huge hammy talks about how he is THE END OF WORLDS and a couple of foreshadowing about the world he comes from, isn't particularly that interesting. He's threatening and hammy enough to be a proper comic book villain, and that's fun enough. And, again, Ciaran Hinds gives a pretty great performance.

Alfred acts like the ultimate support role, as Alfred is supposed to. He's just so dry and wisecracking and I'm just a huge fan of it. Lois does Lois stuff -- being a love interest and everything, and while she doesn't get to do much, she's pretty great in the few short scenes she shows up in, and I completely buy the romance between her and Clark. Lois also narrates the final speech for the movie, and that 'up in the sky' is just amazing as hell. Silas ends up being an aloof but well-meaning father, and acts more as a relative-in-distress for the rest of the movie. He's got a couple of great lines too, though.

The Parademons were.. okay. It's kind of compulsory for most team-up movies to have an army of disposable minions anyway, and the Parademons were serviceable. The whole 'feeding on fear' thing and how they turned on Steppenwolf was slightly sudden, but it's not a particularly bad twist.

What else? Mera, Gordon and Hippolyta all have short roles. Gordon's little more than a cameo, and we've seen most of his scenes in the trailers. It's definitely a great Gordon, though. I think Atlantis's introduction ends up being a bit too rushed and underwhelming for my taste, and Mera ends up being simply a tool to introdump Aquaman's backstory... but at least she gets to fight Steppenwolf and gets a few cool action beats because of it. Hippolyta ends up being a badass herself, and while she doesn't really do much beyond the action scenes, her trusting that Diana will stop Steppenwolf when she warns her with the flame is definitely an effective heartwarming moment.


We get Zeus and, unexpectedly, a fucking alien Green Lantern in the little flashback to Steppenwolf's war against the races of Earth in the First Age. I definitely lost my shit when the Green Lantern starts whacking around Parademons with his giant hammer construct. Well, at least the Justice League movie had a Green Lantern in it. Steppenwolf also mentions 'the world I come from', name-drops Darkseid, name-drops the 'New Gods' and hints that the Boom Tubes lead elsewhere, and while Darkseid himself isn't shown -- a decision I'm definitely a big fan of -- it's clear that he serves someone bigger.

We get a couple of post credits. The first is Flash and Superman racing, and the second? The revelation that Luthor (still bald, thank god) has did a little switcheroo by putting some bald dude in prison, and is now on a yacht... with mother fucking Deathstroke! I love Deathstroke, and no amount of Deathstroke can ever be enough, and I was absolutely surprised by this particular part of the post credits. I believe the proper term for my reaction was 'fangasm'.

So... yeah. The movie as a whole definitely was enjoyable. It's definitely a good movie -- although I will freely admit to some DC bias, being a fan of the comics. It's not great, though, and there were many parts of it that it could improve on. So yeah. Definitely a good-but-not-super-great movie for me, but far, far from the 'mess' so many review outlets call this movie. It's just really kind of a shame that the DCEU really has quite literally finished all of the audience goodwill that they might've afforded this movie, since the DCEU really didn't do the build-up properly, and the string of relatively unimpressive movies (Wonder Woman aside) hasn't been impressive in brand-building. Throw it into the fact that Justice League shows up in a time where superhero movies are the norm rather than the exception, and it is really kind of unfortunate that this otherwise average superhero movie ends up having so much going on against it. Throw in, again, the very unfortunate rewrites and the gajillion different directions that the movie's pulled in, and it's no wonder that the movie's budget and earnings didn't match up.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Not gonna do origin posts for all the characters, because it's late -- I've probably done all of them at one point or another in the Justice League or Teen Titans episode reviews, though. 
• Alfred mentions that in the past, all Batman has to worry about are 'exploding wind-up penguins', a reference to the Penguin, one of Batman's most famous enemies.
• Among Flash's many talents is 'sign language... gorilla sign language', which is likely a reference to his own famous enemy, Gorilla Grodd. 
• Danny Elfman, composer of the score, takes a lot of iconic beats from Superman: The Movie, the 1989 Batman movie and Batman: The Animated Series. 
• A red-skinned alien Green Lantern makes a brief appearance before being slain by Steppenwolf in the flashback war. Like Abin Sur's iconic ring, after the alien's death, the power ring flies into the air and zig-zags away to presumably select its successor. The unnamed alien Lantern has a cape, perhaps a nod to the only Green Lantern to have a cape -- the Golden Age Green Lantern, Alan Scott.
• Cyborg's line after they beat Steppenwolf is a 'booyah', a reference to the Teen Titans cartoon's Cyborg, who popularized it as the character's catchphrase.
• The skies turn red around Russia. Popularized by Crisis on Infinite Earths, the skies will turn red whenever a huge world-threatening crisis happens in the DC comics.
• Superman and the Flash racing to see who's faster is a plot repeated several times in the comic books, once in Superman: The Animated Series, and once by Flash and Supergirl in Supergirl.
• Superman calls back on Batman's (in)famous, often-quoted line from Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice when the two stare each other down in their first confrontation: "do you bleed?" 
• One of the buildings in Gotham has 'Janus' written on it. Batman villain Black Mask owns the Janus Cosmetics company. 
• Aquaman off-handedly saying that the Atlanteans and Amazons were once at war might be a little reference to a how the two were at a huge, bloody war in the Flashpoint maxi-series alternate universe. 
• Flash is left baffled when Gordon turns back and talks for a while and every other hero is gone -- Batman's disappearing trick on Gordon is a common trope in Batman stories, and it appears Cyborg and Wonder Woman has picked up on it as well. 
• At the end of the movie, Cyborg is shown to develop new armour plates for his chest and shoulder, making his appearance far more similar to his classic, original comic-book appearance as opposed to the far more streamlined form he has in the movie. 
• The one bit of continuity oddity in the movie -- Cyborg claims that the Mother Box transformed him from human to cyborg the night Superman died... but Batman saw the video of the Mother Box transforming Cyborg during the events of BvS, so... um... yeah. 

Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor S01E04-05 Review: Ladder Metagame

Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, Episode 4: Failure; Episode 5: Deadly Decision

So these two episodes kind of form a little mini-arc in and of itself, which is nice that I had decided to review Kaiji episodes two episodes at once. Basically the big plot running throughout these two episodes is Kaiji and team buying up cards and trying to monopolize the Rock cards. It's a neat little bit of clarification as Kaiji points out how there's a set of hidden rules enforced by the black-shirted guys. Sure, they drag those without stars and cards into the room of doom or whatever, but those with stars remaining and no cards are allowed to mill around.

In addition to that, the fact that they're not bothered at all by the black shirt dudes for essentially moving their stars and cards around means that it's essentially allowed. And Kaiji reaches the conclusion that transfer of cards is okay, but disposal of cards (as noted by someone with 3 stars but too chickenshit to actually use up all his cards, trying to flush them down the toilet) is not. Also, I didn't realize the smaller number counters counted the rock/paper/scissors of the thing. So Kaiji uses his resource -- money -- to buy all the rock cards. There's a clever bit how they basically use the people who're about to leave the floor as their agents to buy the cards to decrease suspicion...

And then disaster! And the way the episode portrays how Kaiji goes from confident to feeling unease to finally realizing shit's going down when he sees that Scissors is going down due to a lot of ties, while Rock and Paper both stay constant... which is because while Team Kaiji is hoarding Rock, someone else is hoarding Paper. And it's a particular problem because even if they do the little tie-off they won't get the stars, they'll just use up the cards. And because Furuhata and Ando are honestly pieces of shit, they panic and gamble away two of the stars they have -- though, again, the episode's flowery description of the 'demon of gambling' urging them on is a pretty great way of showing their irrationality. 

And then episode 4 ends with the Paper Hoarder, one Kitami (his name isn't actually revealed until the narrator says it in the closure section, which is weird), who's a long-haired douchehole with two cronies, and a lot of stars. They are the paper hoarders, and they offer to sell Kaiji some stars (at an over-price) as long as they agree to become their 'last match'.  And Kaiji instead demands a 'death match' -- until they all run out of stars.

Kitami... of course refuses that shit argument, because he's honestly basically almost won anyway, so why bother with taking unnecessary risks? And Kaiji goes between aggressive and begging, pretty intent on having Kitami play him, while the peanuts gallery of Furuhata and Ando are just going 'no Kaiji-san noooo'. And while it's obvious to us, the audience, that Kaiji probably has something up his sleeve to go from the 'wait and see' mentality to 'this is the only moment to JUMP!', it's a bit annoying for them to literally spend half of the episode clueless and bleating about the same thing over and over. 

While it's honestly still a bit of a stretch for me to believe that Kitami would actually give in to Kaiji's taunting and actually bet 3 cards, a combination of greed, Kaiji's insults and peer pressure from his friends -- and the absolutely bombastic way that the show goes through showing Kaiji's goading and boisterous bluster -- it does make it believable that Kitami would give in. And I did like how he realizes at the last minute that, shit, something's wrong for Kaiji to be so persistent despite not really having that much to gain beyond the general desire to gain more cards.

And Kaiji? Kaiji basically reads Kitami's last card accurately through a pretty clever bit of foreshadowing. As Kaiji explains -- the fact that Kitami mentions how Kaiji's team is going to be their 'last game', how Kitami draws out the card from a sleeve without even looking at it, and how he's reminded by Furuhata earlier in episode 4 about 'should we buy more cards', thus alerting Kaiji to the fact that they're going to need to tie off their cards eventually once they have enough cards, Kaiji manages to read Kitami and that's a pretty epic moment as Kaiji goes "OPEN THE CARD, KITAMIIIII!". It's definitely cliched as all hell, but damn if it isn't entertaining. There's a bit of a cheesy bit near the end where 'yeah, our teamwork is built on trust' (even though Kaiji totally duped Furuhata and Ando and not told them of his surefire enemy-reading plan) is better than 'your teamwork is fragile, you're fighting after an argument', which I felt was a wee bit too much... but it's okay. 

So yeah. The tension and all the mind games stuff is definitely really fun to watch, and Kaiji's bombastic voice actor and the pretty amazing art direction and tension direction makes the episode really work, and a thrill to watch. Yes, there may be some... questionable choices made by the characters, but ultimately I find that I don't particularly care that much since the show still manages to deliver on what it's trying to do -- deliver a bombastic story full of tension. And I do like it.