Toriko 333 Review: Badass Yuda vs Megaton

Toriko, Chapter 333: First Round Battle

Not much in lieu of answering the dark secrets of Blue Grill, mostly because we don't see anything from Komatsu or Team Chiyo at all. Most of this chapter is just focusing on the whole chef competition battle thing, and it starts off with the Ten-Shells just commenting on how shitty the human world chefs seem to be. Asarudy, who apparently is super-smart because of reading so many books and reading them super-quickly (and, y'know, being a thousands-year-old spirit) is apparently able to "read" people... and what he read from the human world chefs is a pants-shittingly horrifying vision of him being dragged down into the bowels of hell by horrifying screaming demonic things. 

Asarudy tries to warn the other chefs, but they're just kind of confident, especially this dude with the super-funky hair, Condor. Asarudy also mentions something about them ending up in the Soul Furnace, which is later revealed to be this stove for spirit food cooking that's powered by the hunger of dead spirits or something along those lines, so, um, is there a punishment for the ones that lost? That kind of seems horrifying. 

This giant creature called a Casket Crab shows up, and it's, well, a coffin with crab appendages. Apparently Casket Crabs are able to preserve long-extinct ingredients, and this seems to be an effort to make it an even playing field for the chefs of Blue Grill and the human world so they both face a similarly unknown ingredient. Though considering how super-old some of the Blue Grill chefs are...

The Ten-Shell chefs talk about how they're going to win because they can 'hear the voices of the food spirits' and whatnot, while the Soul Furnace -- a gigantic furnace with flames shaped like the wailing banshees of souls from the other side -- is activated. The Casket Crab then spits out this giant floating bubble of... something, and opens its coffin refrigerator chest, sending out two fish into the bubble. Only one of the judges knows what the fish even is, and identifies it as a Leafish, an extinct species which once lived in the Multi Gravity Valley area of Area 5, and is a super-special preparation ingredient even just to catch. 

Yuda takes on the challenge, after noting that the bubble isn't quite water, air or normal space. Yuda brings out a knife that Melk Sr had made for him, the All Purpose Blade... Condor, likewise, pulls out two katanas from his fucking hair and beings drooling from under his mask, talking about how the fish seemed to have a megaton of flavour and megaton this and megaton that. He's basically like Yuda, actually, only that he inserts 'megaton' into everything instead of 'millimeter'. 

Condor is completely fucked up by the bubble, and Don Slime tells us that the 'Soul World' doesn't even have the concept of gravity, and it will pull you around in all sorts of directions at once. The Leafish is apparently bigger than it seemed, and tries to eat Condor... who creates this bubble in his hand, before extending it out into this space-thing that engulfs the Leafish's head, before doing knocking on it. Condor talks about how he's not really that young, and how he's got a megaton of experience and whatnot...

And we are greeted with Yuda just delivering badass lines about how he's only 124 years old, and he hasn't competed with anyone older than him with the exception of Setsuno, Zaus and Chiyo. And he's already completed knocking on the Leafish before Condor did, with this motherfucking All Purpose Blade which would be oversized for a sword, let alone for a kitchen knife. 

Condor goes all 'oh, you're so young! You're just a brat!', and he's apparently 3000 years though he doesn't remember his exact age... and Yuda immediately turns that little throwaway line into an insult. 'You'd best remember it. Just one millimeter of a lapse in memory will be the cause of defeat to this brat.' Well, they made motherfucking Yuda badass. And I do like it -- I like Yuda the best out of all the human world chefs competing and it's awesome to see him do badass stuff like this. 

One Pice 795 Review: Team Sanji Returns! Also, KAIDO!

One Piece, Chapter 795: Suicide

Oh, sure, lots of things happen in this chapter -- it's not paced quite as well as the previous two, but it's still got its share of content -- but the big appeal for me is the return of Sanji, Nami, Chopper and Brook after close to a year of them disappearing! And I honestly thought we'd cut away to them already captured by Big Mom's crew, and would be the impetus for a rescue arc, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Alas this also means that twat Momonosuke's showed up as well, but hey. The other big thing, is, of course, Kaido's reveal and backstory, which I'll talk about in more detail later on.

But we first start of the chapter with a couple of short follow-ups to some characters. We've got Fujitora's team, where he's using excuses like "oh the die showed a 1 today" to justify not hunting down Luffy. So he's not going to outright disobey Akainu's order to bring back Luffy's head, but neither is he in a big hurry to do it, and is actually obstructing his subordinates like Maynard who actually do want to hunt Luffy down. Or maybe he's literally just basing it on the dice roll. Either way, Fujitora's cool. 

We've see the interior of Dressrosa Palace, and apparently the troops and whatnot, all bandaged up (because in mangaland bandages can cure any kind of wound) and talking about how no one saw where Luffy's men went after the whole debacle. We see the allied pirates like Don Chinjao, Bartolomeo, a chained-up Cavendish-Hakuba and Baby 5 all hanging out and just kind of sleeping. Riku tells Rebecca that she will be a princess. So I guess Rebecca as next straw-hat is not going to be a thing? I don't care for Rebecca enough either way, although having her join the straw hats will be kind of a neat difference to the ending of Alabasta.

We then cut away to Team Sanji, who are on the Thousand Sunny and seem to have eluded Big Mom after a year's worth of offscreen running around. Sanji and Chopper are arguing with Caesar Clown, who's being an ass like usual. They've apparently been separated from Nami, Brook and that twat Momonosuke, who are being chased by these two weird dudes -- a burly dude with goggles and horns riding an elephant, and a woman who somehow is more skimpily dressed than Rebecca, which is not an easy feat. 

Nami has notably traded her bikini-top-and-jeans for something less obviously fanservicey.

There's a gigantic eruption of, um, water, because One Piece islands are weird, which knocks everyone out for a spin. Nami saves Brook and Momonosuke from drowning, and the man attacks them with "Sheep's Bone", his hands apparently, um, transforming into a goat's horns? Or something? Is he a goat Zoan? Brook does comment on his power while blocking with a new, if unremarkable attack, "Soul Parade". It's enough to block the dude, who's apparently called Master Sheep's Head, before Sanji delivers a Diable Jambe: Mutton Shot finisher. Y'know, because mutton? Sheep? Heh.

Sanji's lecherous behavior drives creeps the shit out of skimpy-armour girl, who retreats with Sheep's Head... they're apparently hunting the samurai, presumably Kinemon, and the girl apparently doesn't want to deal with Sanji so much that she's willing to just say that they found nothing. Team Sanji briefly talk about a mysterious girl who got away, who is watching them from the bushes. Chopper found something. And Master Sheep's Head is apparently a member of... -dun dun dunnn- the Kaidou Pirates!

Meanwhile, in the Kid-Alliance Pirate Base, a gigantic explosion sends some of the lesser members (including Heat, who IIRC is the only other named member of Kid's crew other than Killer). Everyone, even the captains, are confused as to what is going on. Is Shanks making a pre-emptive attack? They found a hole the shape of a man, and then there's this background dialogue going on, about how the strong live and the weak die.

Apparently the Kid-Alliance base is located under a Sky Island, and while Hawkins and Apoo don't put much stock in the myth, the fact that, y'know, a dude fell down from the sky, followed by a gigantic ship, kind of puts that doubt into question. 

We then get a mini-flashback to a few minutes before, of Urouge, who walks up to the mysterious figure despite the protests of his crew that the man is trouble. The narration starts again about how this man had wanted to die, how nothing his enemies did -- even when he was sent for execution -- had been able to kill him. As Urouge says a prayer, the man jumps like ten thousand feet down from the sky island to die, which was why he crashed down onto the Kid Alliance base.

(I guess Urouge just sorta meets the dude randomly on the Sky Islands then)

And as the narration delivers in excruciating detail how all kinds of torture and killing methods simply doesn't work on him, how he's captured by the Marines and Yonkou but they failed to kill him, how spears and hanging ropes mysteriously break and torture doesn't work on him... and he actually finds it a hobby. And as the man in question pulls himself out of the hole in the ground, the narration tells us his identity -- KAIDO -- the unseen, the monsterous power behind Doflamingo and everything, and he finds all these death attempts so amusing that it's a hobby. He's this gigantic dude that towers over Kid, Hawkins and Apoo -- I don't think the three of them really stand much of a chance if Kaido decides on a whim to end them then and there -- and seems to be some kind of a hybrid between the Vikingiest of the Vikings with a Genghis Khan mustache. He's got giant horns as well. 

Kaido talks about how Whitebeard did a number on him, what the hell that's about? He doesn't seem to care about Team Kid, and just rants to himself about how Joker needs to prepare for the 'last battle he'll have', and how he's going to unleash a gigantic war because the world's too freaking mundane and boring and he's going to burn everything down. "Time to light the match to the biggest war in history" or something along those lines.

(Does he not know Whitebeard's dead? Is he picking a fight with Whitebeard? I think that's going to be a disappointment in goofiness even for One Piece)

Well, holy shit! I certainly didn't expect Kaido to show up here and now of all times, and for him to show up in Kid's base. And I do like how the chapter seems to lead into something that's, well... not quite exactly, y'know, fucking Kaido. I was honestly kind of confused that the chapter seems to be focusing on some random dude that's involved with Kid and Urouge and whatnot. So cool for that. And I certainly didn't expect him to look so... human. I mean, he's got horns and is gigantic as fuck, but he's not, like a monstrous creature or a demon or whatever like the whole 'strongest creature' moniker seemed to suggest. But still considering he's an unkillable immortal thing he might as well as not be a human, I guess? Also I guess the big thing we saw a couple chapters back when Drake and whanot isn't... Kaido? Or are they just on the Sky Island? Eh, not quite important.

Despite the rather 'what the fuck is going on why are we here' moment at the beginning of the segue into Team Sanji, it's certainly an awesome chapter. It's extremely exciting, and an absolute treat to read and just go 'whaaat' at every single page.

So yeah, fuck Wano and the Samurai country and whatever, we've got fucking Kaido and Akainu and the Revolutionary Army and whatnot to contend with. Kinemon and Momonosuke can just kind of disappear and never show up again because holy shit Kaido

Movie Review: Ant-Man

Ant-Man

It's an awesome movie! I don't really have much to say about it, but it's absolutely fun. And despite liking parts of Age of Ultron and having problems with other parts of it, Ant-Man was an absolutely solid movie, having a really great and catchy script, great leads, impressive visual effects, pretty awesome pacing and generally being awesome. And it's absolutely impressive that Ant-Man is as solid and fun a movie as Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain America: Winter Soldier considering it's absolutely fucked-up and troubled production.

I'm frankly impressed that they managed to make Ant-Man not only work on the big screen, but also make him absolutely awesome. I've only been familiar with the Hank Pym version of Ant-Man from the little cartoons and video games and comic books I've seen him in, and he's usually a slightly-jerkass scientist dude with powers that can be one of the following: shrinking, expanding into a giant, or control over ants. Despite being a founding member of the Avengers alongside his wife Wasp (Janet Van Dyne), and being notable for creating Ultron, Ant-Man is really most often remembered for his never-live-it-down moment where he's shown as a short-tempered wife-beater. And the fact that he goes through a lot of code-names. As the Wikipedia tells me, he's gone through 'Ant-Man', 'Giant-Man', 'Yellowjacket', 'Wasp', 'Gigantus', 'Ultron' and 'Goliath', as well as some odd ones like 'Scientific Adventurer'.

But they made both versions of Ant-Man, both Hank Pym and Scott Lang, pretty awesome! There are definitely some similarities between Scott Lang and Star-Lord, and that's not because they both have full-head robotic helmets while wearing predominantly red and black. They're both quip-happy people who's made several wrong choices in their life, but is really good at heart. Though Scott is definitely more on the side of angels than Star-Lord is initially is at the beginning of the movie, because apparently he got into jail because he did some kind of Robin Hood style robbery to get back at an evil insurance company or whatever, and we see that he's just trying to be a good father to his (adorable!) daughter, who's living with his divorced wife, who's dating a cop.

And that motivation -- to get money to pay for child support -- and the all-too-real problem that faces ex-convicts that not even Baskin-Robbins will hire you,is what drove Scott's initial heist attempts with the hilarious trio of ethnic buddies Luis, Dave and Kurt. It's clear that Scott was trying to quit, but his desperation and motivation is well shown.

Luis, by the way, is awesome and is definitely an unexpected character I really liked. I'm not sure if he's based on an actual comic character, but he definitely is hilarious and the way you handle comic relief properly.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, who has been manipulating Scott Lang and scouted him out to help him put a stop to his insane protege, Darren Cross. Hank Pym and his wife, Janet (Wasp from the comics) has discovered these Pym Particles that allows atoms to shrink down whilst still keeping their density. And apparently Ant-Man and Wasp have been superheroes before the events of the MCU, fighting during the Cold Wars with actual superpowers and shit, which is awesome. We get a couple of short little sequences showing Hank Pym dealing with SHIELD -- which features nice cameos from Howard Stark and Peggy Carter -- as well as some Cold War footage showing how Ant-Man has been operating even before.

We also have Hank Pym having a estranged relationship with his daughter, Hope, and while we are denied seeing her adopt the mantle of Wasp up until the mid-credits scene, both the warming relationship between Hank and Hope, and the reason between the rift -- was well done. Hope herself is a solid character, not only proving herself a badass in fighting and hacking, but also developing throughout the movie on her own.

The movie does make Ant-Man's two powers pretty cool... and most of all, I didn't expect them to adapt the ant-controlling powers! The shrinking powers is already cool by itself, and the show makes it really evident that it's nowhere as stupid as the comics sometimes makes it look like, showing just how lethal a tiny ant-sized human with the strength of a real human would be. But the ants are the clincher. Not only do the CGI ants look wonderful (and the biology geek in me is happy that they included some obscure yet insane ants like the Paraponera/Bullet Ants and whatnot) we also get to see them actually doing practical stuff like covering the camera, or counting down, or simply acting as a raft and whatnot. Those grenades that allow Scott to shrink and enlarge stuff is also pretty cool, too, and kind of serves as a nice little foreshadowing for the eventual inclusion of Giant Man. 

Yellowjacket is... an original villain, taking his real name (Darren Cross) from a throwaway non-powered Ant-Man villain and his codename (Yellowjacket) from one of Hank Pym's aliases, but at the same time one who finds his roots in the comics. On the surface he seems to be just an expy of Iron Man's Obadiah Stane, albeit as Hank's protege compared to Tony's mentor. But he is a pretty complex villain and it's not hard to see comparisons between Movie!Yellowjacket and Comics!Ultron, with Yellowjacket constantly asking Hank Pym, who he considers a father figure, just why did Hank abandon him. Which is cool, since the Ultron from Age of Ultron, while having some scenes where he's ranting about Daddy Stark, is more concerned about his insane ideas of evolution and wiping out humanity, which, in addition with his association with the Maximoff twins, makes Movie!Ultron feel more like a loose adaptation of Magneto. But let's not go on a tangent here... Yellowjacket is somewhat one-dimensional, but he is an awesome villain nonetheless, having more personality than some other sub-par Marvel villains like Ronan or Malekith, and looking absolutely boss with that armour of his. 

And you know what else I liked most about this movie? Unlike Age of Ultron, which tries its damnadest to foreshadow every single Marvel film coming up after it and do a shit-ton of callbacks while not adequately developing the characters introduced in the movie, Ant-Man is as tied-in to the MCU and features not only cameos from MCU regulars like Peggy Carter, Howard Stark and an unexpected fight scene between Ant-Man and the motherfucking Falcon of all people, as well as a fair amount of references to events in Age of Ultron and Winter Soldier, we don't really get oversaturated with references and Falcon aside, you can just go into the movie blind and it doesn't really take away much if you haven't seen any of the previous movies.

I am also rather surprised at the unexpected inclusion of the aforementioned Wasp and Falcon. Most solicitations for the movie just state that Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, has died prior to the events of the movie. Not really having that much of an attachment to Wasp, I just shrug and go 'the fans will probably be mad about it' but not really bothered by it myself. But she does make an appearance in the flashback, in full costume and showing powers no less, and the movie leaves enough room to make her return a feasible option for any future installments -- the fact that Scott managed to get out of that subspace universe where apparently 'time and space meant nothing' seems to be an obvious getaway card should any future writer decide to bring Janet back... though with Hope adapting the Wasp moniker by the end of the movie I dunno.

The Avenger facility from Age of Ultron being used as the site of battle between Ant-Man and Falcon is awesome, and Falcon is just a treat to see, considering how he missed all the action during Age of Ultron. It was a brilliant and hilarious actions scene, and while Ant-Man does manage to not only survive but fucking win against the Falcon, dude manages to make it a good fight. Not only does he very easily adapt to Ant-Man's shrinking abilities, he also put up a fairly good fight before being taken out by a technicality. And having Ant-Man meet Falcon is a nice way to segue in the ending of the movie, with Falcon contacting people to recruit Scott into the Avengers.

The final post-credits scene is one of Falcon and Captain America talking with a rather crazy-looking Bucky, and how Iron Man can't help them because of some 'Accords', so this scene seems to take place during the events of Civil War. Falcon seems intent on bringing in 'a guy' who I'm assuming is Ant-Man. Civil War yay!

I could go on and on and talk about all the scenes that are just awesome in the movie -- the tank scene and the battle in Scott's daughter's room comes to mind -- but we would be here all day. So let's close this by talking about the little Spider-Man reference that's easily missed when Luis is doing that little he-tells-him-who-tells-her story near the end, where the pretty intelligence agent tells Falcon that there's someone who 'swings' and 'climbs walls' while rattling off in Luis' particular accent. That was a nice, sneaky way to foreshadow Spider-Man, who, for anyone who isn't already aware, is going to show up in MCU's Civil War.

So yeah, Ant-Man? it's an awesome movie.

Agents of SHIELD S2E21-22 Review: Season Finale!

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episodes 21-22: S.O.S.

It took me quite a while betwen my review of the other superhero shows season finales and Agents of SHIELD... mostly because my laptop ate the mammoth review I wrote for the two-part finale and I got so pissed off at losing it that I just kind of didn't do it for a while.

Anyway, I guess this will be fairly shorter than my normal TV episode reviews, mostly because I'll be a lot more concise compared to my normal self. So overall? This two-parter? It's basically an epic movie. And I love it. Agents of SHIELD arguably has one of the worst series of episodes around the first half of the second season, but it has slowly getting better and better after the season break, and its finale actually feels like something on par with some of the better Marvel Studios movies, and arguably a far more solid and satisfying watch compared to the messy Age of Ultron. It has a lot of interesting powers and action scenes, some really great character moments, and a lot of great lines.

The action is split up into two locations. A majority of the cast is involved in the Inhuman War aboard the Illiad and Lianshi, whereas a small cast -- May, Bobbi, Hunter, Ward and 33 -- are doing their own thing and dealing with Ward's insane machinations. And while I frowned at doing that last episode, the payoff for the Bobbi-Hunter and Ward-33 pair is absolutely well done and it keeps their outstanding character relationships from kind of bogging down the big Inhuman thing going on.

And it's wrapped up pretty well with a neat little bow, and had it not been for the final, assholish scene, it would even be a pretty good series finale. Season three is already confirmed, but this episode does wrap up most of the plot threads and character moments.

Skye finally gains full control of her powers, gets to resolve her conflict between her loyalty to SHIELD and the Inhumans, gets to meet and have absolutely meaningful moments with her parents and have a closure, especially that face-off with the clearly fanatical and insane Jiaying. Cal finally transforms into Mr. Hyde, shows that his love for Skye is indeed his defining quality, does a heel-face-turn to do the dirty deed and kill Jiaying -- a heartbreaking scene as Cal clearly doesn't want to kill his wife, but knows that she's gone off the deep end and he needs to be the one to do it instead of Skye -- before getting mindwiped courtesy of TAHITI. It's a bittersweet ending for Cal, who, despite being someone tolerable at best earlier this season, has developed into a complex character that's equal bits tragic and fun. He's taken out of the picture, but not killed off and that's pretty well done. I also appreciate bringing back TAHITI as a way to neutralize Cal.

Coulson regains control of SHIELD despite all the setbacks, and loses an arm. Fitz finally finds himself competent again, even managing to kill arguably the most dangerous Inhuman that's fighting against them -- Gordon -- and rekindles his old friendship with Simmons that got torn apart (badly) in this second season, with hints that it's blossoming into something sweeter. Simmons also remembers that she's a nice person and kind of forgets all those 'I'm turning xenophobic and evil' scenes from before. Mack decides that despite his hatred of the aliens, he is still loyal to his friends and helps out in the final battle, and gets instated in that 'the guy who distrusts the leader and thus will keep the leader in check' role.

Throughout this season the reason for May's robotic detachment is revealed and she finally gets to actually deal with it in this episode, and the end shows her rekindling her old relationship with her ex-husband and actually smiling genuinely. She also manages to end the little rivalry with Agent 33... who turned out to be a relatively more complex character than I thought she would be, being put into the role as Ward's protege, and Ward actually does see himself 'helping' 33 find her roots after she is freed from those controlling her.

Except, y'know, Ward's plans involve brutally murdering and psychologically torturing the one he blames for 33's condition. We saw Ward doing a similar thing with his brother back then, and now he does it to Bobbi for 33's sake... and because of that, during the ensuing battle Ward accidentally kills Agent 33, adding a layer of depth and tragicness to Ward, which leads him to go from Anti-Villain wild card into fully embracing the villain mantle as he takes over leadership of Hydra. 33 getting her end is pretty nice too... she's been kind of the weak link in most of the recent episodes, but she does manage to serve her purpose as Ward's insane motivation and twisted love interest, and the way she's taken out is pretty well done too.

Raina, a complex and fluctuating character throughout both seasons, who's struggling with identity in the past couple of episodes, finally finds out that she does belong with the angels, and manages to make Skye see the truth about Jiaying's evil, albeit at the cost of her life. Raina's weird and I could probably write an entire post dissecting her soul-searching character but let's just say she got a good exit and leave it at that. Lincoln is... well, no one is surprised to see him join the good guys.

Bobbi and Hunter's relationship has not been explored well throughout the season, though it's always a source of snarky humour. Bobbi's past of sacrificing things for the greater good comes back to bite her in the ass, which is nice. There's a distinct problem of 'you're keeping secrets from me but I can't help but love you' on Hunter's side, and this episode finally shows that Bobbi actually does love Hunter back, having her take a bullet for Hunter and that scene was wonderfully shot. Overall it ends in good stuff and neat conclusions for most of the main cast, with several foreshadowings -- Skye name-drops the Secret Avengers, and the Terrigen crystals have apparently found their way into fish oil, allowing a neat way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (well, Agents of SHIELD since the movies try their best to ignore the show due to conflicting creators) to introduce new metahumans whenever they want to.

If that god damned Kree monolith didn't just break out of its case and gloop up poor Simmons, because god damn it can Fitz-Simmons not be happy

Also, shame that despite giving Mack an opportunity to give Skye the nickname 'Tremors', he didn't actually use Skye/Daisy's comic book codename 'Quake'. Boo.

But overall it's a great episode, showcasing this big war between the Inhumans and SHIELD pretty well as the Inhumans take over the Illiad and the Kree weapon and wanting to use it against the humans and whatnot. We get some cool powers too... as mentioned before, Cal finally assumes his Mr. Hyde form, which is kind of disappointing though making it any more drastic would go on Hulk territory. We've got Gordon and Lincoln with their teleporty and electricity powers, and this new Inhuman hot chick (named Alisha, apparently. And less nicely, nicknamed 'Ginger Ninja' by Mack) who has Multiple Man powers. And Jiaying shows that her regeneration powers? Well, they're not just regeneration. It's full-on vampiric draining and she will drain the life of other people to heal herself, which was the reason that Cal and Jiaying massacred a village in the backstory.

We've got a lot of action scenes, of course, and I'm just sad that poor Deathlok missed all of the action this episode. May and Skye in particular got some pretty awesome fighting scenes. We've got Fitz and Skye remembering that they also have science and computer skills respectively, May caused Ward to take out his own ally with some smarts, and Fitz was absolutely instrumental in taking out Gordon -- both by creating the forcefield, and by stabbing him through the chest. The show almost makes it look like Fitz was the one that got stabbed, which I won't put it over the show-writers to do considering Triplett's sudden death. But no, Fitz survives, so yay.

But it's not just all the action... even throughout it all, we get some pretty cool character moments. We've got Coulson using his 'I just want to help you' schtick to befriend Cal, who has formed kind of a grudging respect over their mutual care over Skye, to convince Cal that he is just a pawn in Jiaying's games and finally use him to take out Jiaying. Hunter was snarking throughout his rampage in hunting down Bobbi, and the desperation in his voice as he searches for her is well done -- as is Bobbi, equally desperate, puts herself in the way of the crossbow meant for Hunter. That was a tense sequence.

It's not a perfect episode, of course, with several parts beying rather odd -- why would Coulson get Fitz and Simmons to revive Cal when he knows that Cal is sent into the SHIELD base as a trojan horse? I get that Coulson is nice and probably is banking on converting the crazy dude, but look at the amount of damage that Cal did! It's a miracle no one got killed. The torture scene with Bobbi went on a bit too long for my liking too. And as much as I enjoy Evil!Jiaying, Redeemed!Raina and Nice!Simmons, the sudden change seemed a bit jarring. Jiaying isn't quite that bad, since we actually got hints that she's not quite that nice thanks to her association with Gordon, we just don't know how far she is willing to go. Raina, too, is easy to look over, though her death kind of leaves a bit of a bad taste in the whole 'this is about Skye' thing. Simmons' sudden change of heart from being evil (trying to kill Ward in particular) and xenophobic into Nice!Simmons from season one was also abrupt, though a welcome one. I guess when she comes out of the Kree monolith we'll see what's up?

I've been rambling for a while, and overall it's an absolutely solid finale. Bring on season three! I could probably make this review longer, talk a bit more, but I need to review Ant-Man.

Toriko 332 Review: King Don

Toriko, Chapter 332: Chako's Situation

I honestly kind of forgot about Toriko last week! It's an okay-ish chapter. I am an absolute big fan of how Dressrosa-y this whole Blue Grill area feels, this seemingly prosperous, if wacky, country with a dark secret thanks to all the secret dealings and people abductions done from the shadows. Except, y'know, with food spirits and soul stealing and whatnot. There's also a fair bit of quirky villain introduction going on at the beginning, and some over-the-top cooking competition stuff at the end. 

We start off with one of the Ten-Shells, who is this sorta posh-looking dude (girl?) with round glasses flipping very quickly through a book in a room. He doesn't look like any of the dudes from before, mostly because he's not wearing a mask, but the other characters call him Asarudy, the monkey-masked fellow from before that spied the Human World chefs. The other Ten-Shells show up, with, uh, -looks up- Condor Window being just all crazy with his crazy swirling hair and shit, and he gets into an argument with Maymay, who is apparently an old man and remembers how many times he tells Condor to shut windows. Kakino Kish, the girl, talks about how Maymay is weird. Condor walks up to Asarudy, who is crying... and Asarudy's buddy, the awesomely-named Picnic Bomber tells him that Asarudy just gets super-engrossed in whatever book he's reading. Apparently that book is brought to Blue Grill by motherfucking Ichiryu, who is apparently stronger than the Don.

So Don Slime is pretty fucking strong, all right.

Condor and Asarudy get into a bit of an argument about whether the humans are exciting or not, and apparently death isn't that much of a convenience to them, since Condor apparently has came back to life before. Sucks to be the original host of the body he inhabits, though...

Meanwhile, we get the cooking tournament started, and everyone shows up with bowls of rice because apparently watching the tournament with the Ten-Shells is enough to make plain rice taste so good. Blue Grill's judges, the ST10, apparently summoned by Asarudy, can taste Spirit Food and will be judging the competition. I guess they are Blue Grill's version of G7.

And Don Slime is apparently fucking KING of Blue Grill, despite being a food spirit. Well.

And considering all the evil shit going on in the country, is Don Slime secretly evil? Or are the things they are doing secretly good? Fucking weird. 

But without Komatsu (who's off being distracted) and Team Chiyo (who's with Tack), it is up to Yuda to compete. Yuda lists off the contestants as Wabutora, Chiru, Damala Sky and Nono. Out of them only Yuda and Chiru really has done anything significant, with Yuda being a constant recurring character since the Four Beasts arc, while Chiru was sorta important in the whole food discipline arc thing in the secret forest. Nono's only really notable for her crush for Komatsu, and neither Wabutora and Damala Sky ever did anything beyond having memorable designs. 

Komatsu, meanwhile, is talking to the masked beggar outside Chako's house, and apparently there's a Soul Trade thing going on in Blue Grill, where good-for-nothings are ostracized and their souls are replaced with superior ones. Also, like all the other civilizations, their ancestors were originally slaves of the Nitro, and were subject to Gourmet Cell injection. Though the ones who didn't adapt well to Gourmet Cell injection apparently had descendants with these defects like bad eyes (Chako's mother) or bad taste buds (Chako). And apparently Blue Grill doesn't give a shit and sees that it's a waste of time spending time and effort on these failures, so they'll just switch out their souls for a superior one.

Even though, uh, the defect of eyes and taste buds and whatnot lie in one's body, you'd think, and switching out souls won't do anything significant. But I guess we'll get an explanation? Maybe the soul can alter the body it inhabits?

Also, apparently those who have had their souls switched out are now participating in the country's project, and there's a random health examination to weed out these 'failures' to participate in the mysterious project. Damn, Don Slime, you are like a dictator or some shit.

I do like it that Chako's lack of taste has been foreshadowed by him calling Komatsu's food bad, which is kind of a clever thing to do... though I still would prefer that we didn't get too much scenes focusing on Chako. He is irritating. Komatsu heads off to the "Kitchen of Eternity", where apparently souls are drowning in eternity or some shit that didn't get explained because this is manga and explanations must be dragged out.

All kind of creepy, and the chapter closes with the announcer of the competition introducing the five chefs from Blue Grill and the human world while Don Slime watches. Overall good stuff. I didn't expect we would get another cooking competition, nor did I expect the whole dark secrets of a prosperous city thing to be in play when all indications before this seemed to show that the main thing are just going to be Food Spirits and the motherfucking Black Hole Whale and the seven mini-kings of the sea and whatnot. But this is cool too.

Nanatsu no Taizai 134 Review: King's Disaster

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 134: To You, Who Are No Longer My Captain

Overall it continues from last chapter's cliffhanger. We get a short fight between King and Meliodas, with King controlling the stick from afar while Meliodas just bats it around all awesome like.The people outside are all confused, while Meliodas just dodges King's question and is all like "I'm only your enemy if you attack Elizabeth and the others". King's stick is fast enough to cut Meliodas a bit, and while Meliodas catches King's stick, he uses an ability called 'Status Promotion' which makes the small cut on Meliodas' shoulder just splurts apart with blood and stuff. King has a bit of a rant about how he can't really figure out Meliodas' agenda, whatever the fuck it is, and just confronts Meliodas about whether he has any intentions of fighting the Ten Commandments.

Merlin explains to the spectators that the 'Status Promotion' is King's innate power, 'Disaster', which has been woefully under-explained beyond the fact that it allows King to levitate Chastiefol and turn it into multiple forms. Merlin notes that Disaster allows King control over life and death, allowing him to turn tiny scratches into large wounds, harmless poisons into lethal ones, and grow tumours into massive sizes and whatnot, allowing King to control the plants in the Fairy Forest.

So, um, there have been many times where King could've used that to, y'know, regrow the Fairy King Tree or whatever. Or make tiny wounds into fatal. King, god damn it, you get even more and more overpowered, don't you? First the Bankai, now this...

King uses Status Promotion again, which is Full Countered by Meliodas, but it doesn't show anything significant to King other than a backache in a latter page, which is curious. Meliodas then pushes King's own buttons by asking King about his lack of wings, a sore point for King himself. King uses 'Condense Power' to pull out a tiny water droplet from his stick of wood, and starts manipulating the droplet, apparently drawing out the tiny water within the tree, and compressing the water into a small space, giving it enough strength as an iron ball.

Guess someone just watched Ant-Man and got some inspiration, eh?

(Ant-Man was awesome. I haven't done movie reviews for a long, long time, but take it from me -- Jurassic World, Terminator: Genisys and Ant-Man were absolutely awesome.)

Meliodas, meanwhile, pulls a Hauser-Gilthunder and learns from King, concentrating his own demonic power into a single glowing dark ball. But before he can attack King, the druids demand they exit. King tells Meliodas that Ban and Diane trust Meliodas from the bottom of their hearts, and he won't forgive Meliodas if he betrays that trust. Meliodas admits that he can't tell King everything, and he won't believe him anyway. King accepts this answer, but tells Meliodas that he'll still be keeping an eye.

Overall good stuff. Unnecessary and kind of just padding, but it's good for what it does.

King brings up something Meliodas says to him when they first met, but then brushes it off again. Meliodas, meanwhile, makes up a cover story of the two of them getting into an argument over which is better, tits or asses. Oh, Meliodas.

The rest of the chapter is just Jenna summoning this gigantic Goddess Amber containing Meliodas' power, and it is just gigantic. Jenna does an incantation that unleashes Meliodas' power, which just turns the whole nearby area into darkness, which showcases just how fucking powerful Meliodas is. It all gets sucked into Meliodas and does some big explody stuff that blows water and whatnot away. The Ten Commandments are all aware of what is happening, but Meliodas is now at full power.

Good stuff! Now get to the war with the Commandments. Please! Enough with the training.

Boku no Hero Academia 52 Review: Stain Acknowledges Midoriya

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 52: Hero Killer Stain vs. the Students of Yuuei

We get a mini-flashback as we see Midoriya's thought process putting Noumu, Iida and the Hero Killer's appearance together and basically has been just scouring dark alleys, which is Stain's M.O. for killing people. Midoriya's first instinct is thankfully to run, but Iida can't move. Midoriya really wants to get away but there's that other hero dude slumped against the wall. Iida is just being all stupid and angry and Sasuke and shit going all "get the fuck away this does not concern you" which is... just stupid. Vengeance for brother and all, but you can't even move and you were two panels of monologue away from getting your head sliced off. 

Fuck off, Iida.

Stain, however, continues to look awesome as he proves to not just be anotehr psychopath and actually "tests" Midoriya, sort of, by telling Midoriya that while coming in to save his friend is a nice sentiment, he asks Midoriya just what he is planning to do if it means coming up against him in combat. Punctuated with a horrifying artwork of his face, while he says his "weak shall be culled" line.

At this point Midoriya is kind of panicking and we are shown him fiddling with a phone behind his back... and I really assumed he called All Might or Gran Tourino. The manga would prove otherwise, though it's a nice little foreshadowing. Iida continues to be bull-headed, but Midoriya, while visibly afraid, tells Iida that butting one's nose into other people's business is a hero's principal quality.

Stain delivers a smile worthy of the Joker at this remark, although possibly because Midoriya brings up All Might as well. Midoriya does his Full Cowl trick again as Stain goes in for a slash. Iida, for his credit, tries to warn Midoriya against getting slashed, but Midoriya uses the trick he did against Gran Tourino and zips between Stain's legs. And I do love how Stain is already making a backwards-facing counter-attack while Midoriya is bouncing off the walls of the alley, delivering a glorious 5% Detroit Smash right into Stain's head.

The art makes it look like Midoriya bashed Stain's head apart into a splatter of blood for a moment, but that's just Stain's hair. And Stain looks gloriously and creepily happy at this reaction. Iida notes that this is just like Bakugou... I don't remember Bakugou doing this specific move, but all righty then good job there Midoriya. Stain licks Midoriya's blood from his blade, though I'm not quite sure just how he managed to get Midoriya's blood on it, all Hidan-like. Maybe it's Stain's blood that matters? Eh, whatever the case, Stain manages to disable Midoriya.

Stain then shows an unexpected side of himself, telling Midoriya that while his power doesn't quite cut it, he has enough potential to continue living while he goes off to kill Iida and Native-American-Man because they're worthless. So Stain isn't just a psychopath -- he actually has some kind of... well, extremist, I guess. But he has some kind of insane viewpoints.

And a blast of fire and ice zooms in and forces Stain to hop away before killing Iida, and it's revealed that Midoriya contacted Todoroki... who's badass. Maybe the three of them can be enough to drive away Stain? And presumably Todoroki is hanging out with Endeavour, which is why he's around... which brings something interesting regarding Todoroki's character, considering all his daddy issues. Maybe if Endeavour (and Gran Tourino, who's last seen with Endeavour) shows up, it'll be enough to drive Stain to retreat?

Overall great stuff. Iida's an idiot, but both Midoriya and Stain are just a treat to read about.

Fairy Tail 446 Review: So Much for Spriggan

Fairy Tail, Chapter 446: The God-Forsaken Land

Sorry about that -- I was sick, but now I'm better. Watched a shit-ton of Game of Thrones and got caught up all the way to season five. Good stuff. Reviews for My Hero Academia, Akame Ga Kill, Nanatsu no Taizai and a brand new chapter of Berserk of all things will hopefully follow up later this evening.

But let's talk about this chapter of Fairy Tail, and how once again how utterly stupid my hopes for an arc that isn't exactly the fucking same as all the others before it. Picture it: a big organization dark-guild thing with a group of elite warriors. One of these warriors shows up and oh my god he's so powerful none of our wizards can stand against him! Oh, wait, in three chapter's time Natsu just one-shots that person or a person of the same caliber with a single punch to the face.

Yeah, that was Tartaros. And Grimoire Heart. And Sabretooth. And Oracion Seis. And, as it seems, the Spriggan Twelve.

The first half of the chapter was eyeball-rolling inducing but mostly harmless, just Makarov admitting what I've been saying since the timeskip began: that he's a motherfucking idiot. Erza says some bullshit about how heart is awesome and all that bullshit, and we are intercepted by Ajeel, the dude with the exploding hairdo. His powers are apparently sand, because he was talking about sandstorms last chapter (how droll) and it's basically... well, just like Gaara or Crocodile. Not that it's not impressive -- Gaara and Crocodile are among my favourite villains from their respective series -- Ajeel makes good threat about his power levels by turning Erza's sword into sand and creating some giant sand monster-things.

I also did like the little explanation that Doranbolt's teleportation can only be done a number of times in a day and has a specific range, thus kind of limiting what he can do and not make him ultra-overpowered.

For a moment I thought we were going to have a relatively balanced-out fight, with Gray and Lucy showing off their new powers which, while effective in stopping Ajeel's attacks, didn't seem to trouble the guy beyond him going all "oh, that's kinda neat!" before charging in with a different attack. We see a few tricks courtesy of Gray's Demon Slayer tats covering half his body, while Lucy equips Sagittarius as an armour. Gray's totally creatively-named Ice Make: Silver is just him doing the freezing thing on a wide scale which is boring but at least that's something. Lucy can shoot arrows and whatnot and doesn't get immediately humiliated which is a gigantic improvement considering her recent track record.

Ajeel does this big Antlion Pit attack thing, and monologues about how he eats wizards like them for breakfast -- and if he is as strong as Brandish as one of the Fairy Tail dudes notes, that would be appropriate. But Natsu just... evaporates the sand away without harming the rest of his teammates, does some "we are fairies" two-page spread with each of their guild marks glowing because friendship, before delivering a good, solid punch to Ajeel's face.

Next chapter is called 'Escape Battle' so hopefully this punch won't do much against Ajeel and he won't just be defeated really quickly and effortlessly and they still have to escape, but this just kind of soured the whole threat of Alvares or however the hell you spell that country for me. Overall it starts off slow and stupid, ends up being pretty cool in the middle, and ends off with an eye-roll inducing sequence. Eh, I've seen worse in Fairy Tail itself, so I guess... m'eh.

Boku no Hero Academia 51 Review: Noumus and Stain

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 51: Stop, Iida

Picking up straight from where we left off, we have Gran Tourino zipping around and fighting the white, lanky Noumu. Gran Tourino makes note that the Noumu doesn't make much distinction between superheroes and civilians and is just being all rampagy and rawr kill humans. Suddenly a blast of flame eats up the Noumu, which heralds the arrival of Endeavour... who's apparently hunting the Hero-Killer. And Endevaour reminds us that as big of a fuckwad father as he is, he is still a hero. Well, Endeavour, I guess I'm rooting for you and your weird flame beard now.

Meanwhile, Midoriya runs around trying to make sense of things regarding Iida and Noumu and whatnot in his head and is basically just catching up with us readers about what's going on with Iida. He comes across the other two Noumus just laying waste to other generic superheroes (lanky Noumu took out one last chapter) -- one of the Noumus has bat wings and the other is a horrific-looking thing whose face is just a lower jaw and a brain and it looks gross and awesome at the same time.

Midoriya sees the normal hero that Iida is interning with and confirms that Iida has ran off somewhere. Midoriya goes off to hunt Iida while these nameless superhero cannon fodder try and fail to hold back the Noumus. 

Shigaraki and Black Mist survey the destruction, and while Black Mist does a little lampshade that Shigaraki isn't entering the fray himself, Shigaraki retorts that he's injured. I like these two. Shigaraki gets a flashback when he talks with his benefactor, Mr. Mysterious TeeVee Man, and demands the six Noumus that are ready, and he wants to smash stuff he doesn't like. So I guess Shigaraki's not into the alliance at all.

Stain, meanwhile, is fighting Iida. Though "fighting" really implies some sort of resistance. Stain is just brutalizing the poor kid, stabbing his arm with spiked shoes and stabbing the other with his sword. Iida goes on a rant about how Stain has totally fucked his brother up despite his brother being a totally awesome and inspirational dude, but Stain just tells Iida to save the Native-American-themed superhero and tells Iida that if he wants to be a proper hero, he needs to save others, while being consumed by personal desire is the furthest thing away from being a hero.

Stain licks the blood off his blade, and Iida suddenly can't move -- so Stain does appear to need to either cut or lick the blood from his victims to disable their movement. Stain is all ready to kill Iida, but Midoriya suddenly zooms in, all ready from his speed training, all crackling with energy, and delivers a righteous SMASH into Stain's face.

I don't really see Midoriya really standing up against Stain for any long. Maybe Endeavour or Gran Tourino or one of the Noumus will need to interfere, but hand it to the kid -- he's got balls. Iida's being kind of all dumb thanks to his vendetta and I hope he outgrows it. Overall great stuff. 

Nanatsu no Taizai 133 Review: King vs Meliodas

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 133: Impatience & Anxiety

We basically have more training moments. We see Gilthunder and Hauser just adapting and improving while fighting the clay dragon. Hauser uses the posh sword techniques to deal the most efficient attacks and save stamina, then focuses his whirlwinds at the tip of his stick and launches an attack he calls "Breakthrough" which draws blood from the clay dragon. Gilthunder, meanwhile, does the reverse and allows his lightning to spread out and form an armour he calls "Heavy Armour of the Thunder Emperor", blocking the clay dragon's attacks and launches an "Embrace of the Thunder Emperor" that knocks the dragon back. It's great that this is basically a friendship power-up, but unlike normal friendship power-ups we actually get an explanatino that makes absolute fucking sense.

However, we cut away to them waking up, apparently having been defeated by the clay dragon again. It's cool that despite their power up they don't suddenly become excellent fighters -- they've certainly gotten better though, since they're fighting with sticks and shirtless, and the point is to increase their innate tactics so they can be absolutely better when the charge in with weapons and armour.

(Griamor is apparently just left out because I dunno.)

We get a short moment where Hendricksen notes how they have grown, and Meliodas thanking Hendricksen for saving the three of them.

Arthur and Gowther are fighting this suit of armour that can split apart into pieces. Gowther's attempts to hijack what he assumes to be a golem is rewarded with the suit of armour slicing off Gowther's head, and it's apparently just controlled by a caster or something. Arthur is just freaking out. Nothing really interesting beyond the funny 'Gowther loses his head' moment.

Meanwhile, King is about to enter the Cave of Training, having changed his mind. Jenna pairs him with Hendricksen, which was what I expected was going to happen last chapter... but nope, Meliodas volunteers to go in with him. Apparently Meliodas hasn't gotten his powers back yet, and wants to train before he does so... and then when they're in the Cave, Meliodas tries to get King to be more open-minded about Hendricksen because he's, y'know, all mind-controlled and shit and brings up the Ten Commandments and whatnot... and then their conversation takes a heated turn as King attacks Meliodas with a floating stick

Fairy Tail 445 Review: Wind Metaphors

Fairy Tail, Chapter 445: Filthy Fairies

So, yeah. It's mostly an uneventful chapter with Zeref just monologuing about his master plan the totally-retconned plot for this arc. But first we see four members of the Spriggan Twelve -- first up is the "Winter General" Imber, who is your generic bishonen smart-looking handsome character with an odd looking pattern on his cloak. Zeref and Imber talk a while about reassembling all the Spriggan Twelve, and they kind of do a little comparison of Zeref and winds, like a breeze or whatever...

And then these two tools show up and start randomly talking about storms and spring breezes and sandstorms and whatnot and bsaically drives the whole wind metaphor straight into the ground. These two dudes are the "War Princess" Dimaria Goesta and "Desert King" Azir Lamur. Azir is shirtless, has a sorta-generically-Middle-Eastern theme going on and a ridiculous explosion of hair. Dimaria is a generic looking stripperiffic lady with big boobs. Then there is this old dude, "Magic King" August, with a spiky cape, a giant staff and looks like Hades's twin brother or some shit. He talks about Ragnarok, which is apparently the same thing as the Dragon King Festival.

The weird long-necked old dude from last chapter is apparently not a member of Spriggan Twelve, and his name is Yajeel... is he related to Gajeel? What a freaking weird name. Yajeel. He is just the minister, and he introduces Makarov to Zeref. 

Zeref tells his people to leave the two of them alone, and Makarov goes all "are you Spriggan or are you Zeref" which is kind of a stupid question because what the fuck Makarov have you gone senile? Zeref answers "I am both", possibly trying to hold down his incredulous laughter because what kind of a question is that. 

Apparently, Zeref has planned for the Dragon King Festival for centuries (despite being all emo and just hanging out in Tenrou Island and only awakened by the Fairy Tail/Grimoire Heart war) and has founded Albaress for that purpose, and it's just grown on its own -- apparently Zeref just wants to battle Acnologia (despite not caring about humans or anything at all, before, y'know, the Tenrou Island business) and the Spriggan Twelve attempted to invade Ishgar on their won. And apparently Lumen Histoire is the greatest of the Fairy Tail magics, known as Fairy Heart. I mean, it's not like anyone ever uses Fairy Law or Fairy Glitter at all after their introduction, so whatever.

Zeref does a monologue on how he intends to exterminate mankind in the Dragon King Festival, basically having them be destroyed in the ensuing battle between Albaress and Acnologia.

Isn't Zeref's goal is to have himself, y'know, killed? Why bother creating all these elaborate plans to combat Acnologia and whatnot if all he wants to do is to die? What's the point of END then? Eh, whatever.

Makarov spouts off some lame comebacks like "I won't let you do it" or some shit. Zeref force-pushes Makarov away, thanks him for raising Natsu, says that Spriggan isn't a demon but a fairy and is about to straight-up murder Makarov when Doranbolt teleports in and grabs Makarov and escapes. How the fuck did Doranbolt get all the way to the middle of Zeref's castle without anyone noticing, and why did he know just when to hop in and rescue Makarov? Kind of poorly written, this sequence. Makarov gets greeted by everyone, while Zeref just knows that Natsu has arrived. 

But yeah, Makarov's just being kind of stupid all throughout this sequence. None of the Spriggan Twelve members introduced here really feels like they're going to be interesting, no hint of a personality beyond Azir and Dimaria kind of being like tools and the other two being relatively competent no-nonsense dudes.

I guess I'm excited that we seem to be heading up to the finale -- it would certainly have more impact, again, if I read it straight after the Tartaros arc or straight after the timeskip instead of having the whole "let's re-recruit every single god damn person" bullshit. But eh, I've bitched about that particular mess enough.

One Piece 794 Review: Sabo Origins

One Piece, Chapter 794: Sabo's Adventure

Well, we didn't pick up at all on the freaking cliffhanger with Fujitora and Akainu's conversation from last chapter, because god damn it One Piece. But what we did get in this chapter is relatively interesting, so it can be partially forgiven for that.

Also last chapter I didn't quite catch that apparently Capone Bege is on a Big Mom ship. The flag was kinda small, but I guess Capone's just helping them out in hunting down Team Sanji and Caesar Clown.

Apparently the Straw Hats, Kyros, Law and Bellamy have gathered in Kyros' house, and Sabo has shown up to look at a sleeping Luffy before going off. Sabo and Robin apparently know each other, though it isn't quite clear whether Robin is keeping this information a secret from Luffy or she just doesn't know Sabo all that well.

Franky is doing some self-repair on his face which looks hella uncomfortable.

Sabo, then, does a bit of an exposition to Zoro and Robin about how he's been "dead this whole time" and a short recap of their childhood adventures and the unfortunate incident with the ship. Apparently Monkey D. Dragon found Sabo right after he got shot to hell by the Tenryubito ship. Apparently the shock of the explosion gave Sabo amnesia! And memory loss is kind of lazy writing when it comes to explaining character motivations, but it kind of makes some sort of sense because it's in the past -- a lot more stomachable than random amnesia in the present (RE: Nanatsu no Taizai). They know he's called Sabo because of the name on his belongings, and the only thing Sabo remembers is to run away from that city, so yeah, the dickishness Sabo's parents transcend amnesia.

We also get a couple of speaking lines from Ivankov, a cameo from Imazuma, and a couple of interesting-looking Revolutionaries who I bet will get names and whatnot in databooks and stuff. 

We also get a bit of a little 'I'm trapped in a birdcage' moment from Sabo. Get it, birdcage? Yeah, it's kind of weak.

Apparently Ace "filled him in", but in a tragic way -- Sabo's memory of everything was jogged after Ace's death was broadcasted in the news all over the world, which neatly explains why Sabo wasn't around kicking ass during the Whitebeard War. It truly is sad and the art and mini-flashback panels really capture Sabo's state of mind as it pieces together just what is happening. Apparently the shock put him in a fever for three days, because manga logic.

And apparently Sabo targeted the Dressrosa Coliseum for the express purpose of obtaining the Mera Mera no Mi. We get a recap of Luffy's meeting with Sabo, but instead of seeing it from Bartolomeo's point of view with Sabo and Luffy's side of the conversation being left unspoken, we now see it from the brother's side of the conversation and Luffy basically freaks out in a really cliched but still heartwarming moment .Nothing much to say here... it's a good scene, let's leave it at that. 

Present-day-Sabo talks about how CP0 is probably returning to Dressrosa so we are going to get them, which is good. He leaves a Vivre Card with Zoro, and despite the similarity with their last meeting with Ace, Zoro actually lampshades this which makes me think that they're not going to pull the same thing and make this be a bad omen for Sabo or anything.

Sabo heads off and after a quick report to Hack and a unfunny running gag with either Hack or Koala getting angry at the person holding the snail phone thing when Sabo hangs up, apparently Sabo is sitting on an army of flying crows... and the lead crows tells Sabo that he can bring out these crows whenever. So a Devil Fruit user... but what? A Zoan? An Awakened Zoan who can create more crows? Or just a weird Paramecia?

Either way Sabo is hurrying off somewhere, maybe to fight CP0? Please don't let Sabo's fight be interrupted like his fight against Fujitora. And his fight against Jesus Burgess.

And One Piece is on break next week whyyyy

Overall it's pretty interesting. We could've done with some trimming, but I personally felt that those scenes were pretty emotional, even if the amnesia thing is still a bit iffy. But oh well. 

Nanatsu no Taizai 132 Review: Gilthunder and Hauser

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 132: What We Lack

Overall not much of a progress chapter and just more training, but this time we focus on the other dudes. Nothing much to say, really... the druids bring everyone (including Hawk) and tells them to strip down, and carry a branch instead of their normal weapons so they can train their body instead of having to rely on weapons in this other cave of dark side ordeals or whatever. 

We get a bit of confrontation between King and Hendricksen, where King is absolutely angry abotu Hellbram in particular, and Hendricksen basically doesn't deny anything he's done, but implores that they wait until they save Dreyfus from the demons. Oslo shows up and gets a bit of a hilarious bit with Hawk. Everyone -- King, Gowther, Arthur, Threader, Hendricksen, the three Knights and even Hawk -- go in again, and apparently the cave separates everyone into groups as Hawk immediately finds himself alone in darkness.

Gilthunder and Hauser finds themselves together in this room with floating crystals, and apparently they can choose challenges for training, and they choose the same monster that defeated them before -- a clay dragon, which resists Gilthunder's lightning attacks and is too heavy for Hauser to lift with his tornadoes... especially when they can't use the full extent of their powers without their normal weapons.

(I bet King and Hendricksen get paired together for maximum hilatiry and uncomfortableness)

We then get individual flashbacks for both Gilthunder and Hauser while they argue -- nothing really too interesting about it, really. We've got Gilthunder practicing with Meliodas, and Meliodas telling Gilthunder that he's too rigid and shouldn't depend too much on formal sword techniques because in real battle all sorts of shit will go down. Which totally makes sense! On the other hand, little Hauser is on the other end of the spectrum, where Dreyfus admonishes Hauser for his lack of discipline and lack of practice, about how the only way to defeat opponents that are straight-up stronger than him is through constant practice and the correct form and discipline and whatnot.

They then adopt different stances -- Hauser a formal two-handed pose and Gilthunder a more fluid pose, and manage to knock back the clay dragon. Who looks more like a giant toad than a dragon, but whatever. Merlin (who's watching through her crystal ball) observes that this might be when the two of them get a power upgrade. 

Overall nothing really groundbreaking. It's good stuff, good training stuff, but then again while interesting to see their personalities fleshed out training stuff doesn't really make for much in lieu of plot development and whatnot. Don't really have much to say beyond the fact that I like this chapter.

Fairy Tail 444 Review: Surprise reappearances and bad dialogue sequences

Fairy Tail, Chapter 444: Emperor Spriggan

Mostly an uneventful chapter which alternates with moments of 'hey look an unexpected reappearance of an old character' and 'boobs and bikini-clad boobs'. The big moment is, undoubtedly, the big reveal at the end of the chapter that Emperor Spriggan is Zeref -- which I am of two minds of, but I'm going to talk about the rest of the chapter first.

The first few scenes centered on the Fairy Tail members helping the rescue of the islanders onto a fishing fleet that coincidentally happen to just be hanging around. What, they can't rescue these people with their own magic power? Gray can make some icebergs or some shit. But whatever. Erza analyses Brandish's magic from last chapter, and surmises that it is actually the magic to shrink stuff, with the entire island shrinking to the size of a chicken instead of Brandish using super-powerful earth magic or space magic or whatever. So, yeah, that minion who Brandish turned all 'poof' and shit? Probably just running around all tiny. 

We get some totally (un)funny jokes about transportation sickness with Natsu and Wendy subject to it all the time as Doranbolt teleports them to an underwater temple which transforms into an underwater submarine-thing. Apparently their contact is there, and it's Angel! Or Sorano. Or Redeemed Female Villain #3. Who is dressed in a feather bikini for absolutely no fucking reason other than fanservice -- Gray even lampshades it (while stripping himself). 

Erza randomly asks Doranbolt why they didn't use Cobra, which doesn't... really make sense. Why Cobra of all people? I guess Erza just knows Crime Sorciere is helping out? I dunno, the question totally came out of nowhere. But apparently Angel had been undercover in the Albaress Empire and broke her cover.

And then she pulls on Lucy's bikini because fanservice and randomly rubs in her face that 'I killed Karen'. Does Lucy even know who Karen is? Again, that coment totally came out of nowhere and if Angel wanted to antagonize Lucy, she really should've brought up how she beat her up before, or how she used to own Aries and Scorpio, or something. Bah.

Angel apparently found out where Makarov is, and he is apparently in the capital of Albaress Empire, the city Vistarion, and he's grown one hell of a beard. And he apparently has been spending the last year... playing cards, simply waiting for the Emperor to return. And not a word to his 'children' he loves so much. Makarov, your motivationsare weird. He is playing some trading card game about magic and whatnot with this creepy old dude called Yazir, and their conversation starts off in yet another example of an awkward dialogue sequence as Yazir goes 'did you hear the news about Fairy Tail?' 'I am surprised.' 'Why are you surprised?' 'I wasn't talking about Fairy Tail, but about the Emperor.' Seriously what? Is there some context that went missing with the translation from Japanese to English?

Makarov talks about how the Emperor surprises him by agreeing to diplomacy (even though he hasn't shown up for a year) and how there's another side that unites all the guilds with an iron fist. Apparently Emperor Spriggan returns, however, after disappearing for a year... and it's Zeref! We get a two page spread just to show us Zeref.

Well, I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, this makes the Albaress Empire relevant again and after all the dicking around with filler villains and the one-year timeskip, I'm hungry for a return to the main plot with Zeref and Acnologia, especially after how it seemed that we weren't going to get them with the introduction of Albaress. It does make the timeline kind of weird, though -- Zeref got out of his depression during the Grand Magic Games with that talk with Mavis, and it's only been a year since then and there was the whole Tartaros arc and that's just weird, unless Zeref had replaced the original Spriggan or... I dunno. It's just odd. 

I can't say I'm entirely that excited abotu Zeref's inlcusion as this big mastermind, because he's always been more effective as this wildcard who just shows up and kills people and says cryptic things before disappearing... but on the other hand I'm interested to see where we go with this.

So overall, between the poor segues and even more fanservice, we get some nice little build-up that makes this whole Albaress Empire thing even more relevant to the main plot. Yeah. Okay. It's kinda interesting I guess.

Toriko 330 Review: Terrifying Food Spirits

Toriko, Chapter 330: Confrontation

We get a bit of a information dump about Blue Grill, about how they rank the restaurants with 'Shells' the way humans rank restaurants with 'Stars'. And apparently it's got a population of 500 million, entire ecosystems to breed dinosaur-looking animals, and thanks to the planktons on the giant clam, there's even day and night. Jiji explains about how everything is thanks to the Food Spirits, and how when the night falls, everyone will understand what it means. Jiji has been cryptic about how Blue Grill isn't an entirely fun-fun-happy-fun place, and this is exactly why...

At night, horrifying Food Spirits come out. And mother fucker do they look disgusting.

But before that, we get some bullshit about Komatsu, this random kid Chako, autographs and toilets and I honestly don't think we need a kiddy tagalong kid at this point. We did get some nice information, though... there are five 'Ten-Shell' chefs that are like the best dudes in town. And apparently Blue Grill residents ward off ghosts or food spirits with 'Urchive', some kind of talisman...

And this disgusting bulbous snake-like thing with a giant nose and eyes and a giant maw and a beard just shows up and it's got a couple of buddies too. It's like your traditional gonk Japanese demon-ghost-spirit thing, and it looks fucking disgusting.

We cut away to Chin Chin Chin, Chiyo and Kuribou meeting up with Warden Love... who turns around and shows that she's wearing a horrifying kabuki mask and the face underneath it looks all cracked and shit. They are then confronted by Tack, who is one of the Zero Biotope people who came with Love to Area 6. Presumably Love was either killed and possessed by the food spirits, or they did it while she was unconscious or something? What do the masks symbolize?

We cut back to the main group and despite the Urchives around the restaurant they are in, they are besieged by a large amount of food spirits all of which look disgusting as all sorts of hell. They don't really do anything, though, as the Seven-Shell chef Mari (who also wears a kabuki mask) of that restaurant explains. Apparently, food spirits cannot possess the healthy and alive, but 'unless you are prepared to lose your souls, you cannot access the Back World'. The fuck does that mean? The food spirits will take over their bodies when they want to go to the Back World?

And apparently it will be a problem for the Blue Grill residents if they transferred to the Back World improperly, and they need an adequate cooking skill to get to the Back World. There need to be a competition between the human world chefs and the five Ten-Stars, who have ridiculous names. We are treated to 'Condor Window', whose hair is curled around in his hair in the most ridiculous-looking hairdo ever, and wields a french bread sword thing. We've got 'Picnic Bomber', one of the two chefs we saw last chapter, and I honestly hope he doesn't bomb actual picnics. That's mean. Then 'Kamino Kish', who at least has a normal-ish name, who's a girl with a santa hat. Then 'Asarudy', who is monkey-mask from last chapter, and finally 'May May', who looks like a robot.

Well, not an entirely eventful chapter, but Toriko has finally lapsed back into its "let's make every chapter elicit a bigger WTF-is-going-on reaction from the audience". Glorious.

One Piece 793 Review: Akainu VS Fujitora! Team Kidd VS Shanks! Kaido! Aokiji-Blackbeard Alliance(?)!

One Piece, Chapter 793: The Tiger and the Dog

This chapter picks up right where we left off last time, and it injects a healthy dose of Holy Shit into the series, which is extremely welcome since One Piece has been kind of... m'eh near the end of the Doflamingo arc.

We start off with Fujitora telling Riku that he had gambled that the pirates will take care of Doflamingo themselves, which was why he did jack shit against either side after the whole soul-searching bit. "With what face could a man of the very system that allowed (Doflamingo) to run amok attempt to point a finger at him and speak about justice?" Fujitora, you're one cool cookie. We get a bit of Kyros dismissing the Tontatta and Riku telling his people to shelter the pirates in the castle. 

And then we finally get to the good parts as we get to Mariejois, the Holy Land. Akainu is talking to the Gorosei! I have been eagerly anticipating when we see Akainu again after the timeskip, ad I honestly forgot all about the Gorosei. And they're arguing -- the news about Doflamingo's fall haven't reached them yet. Akainu is absolutely pissed the fuck off about the false information regarding Doflamingo's abdication from the throne and from the Shichibukai, talking about how for someone of the likes of Doflamingo the marines lost face and caused chaos in the world. 

The Gorosei people are just pulling your general 'apathic scheming rulers' card and just talking about how Akainu is being insolent, how the worth of the marines' face is less than zero, and how the marines are just the outward face of the World Government. Apparently the whole matter was entrusted to the Cipher Pol... finally, someone remembers CP0 is around! Akainu basically tells them that they got fucked over by the 'Puppets of the Tenryubito' and they're just pretending that it was all part of the plan.

So I guess the Gorosei are less in rank compared to the Tenryubito? I dunno, things aren't exactly that clear.

One of the Gorosei who has a Whitebeard-esque beard demands Akainu to explain about Aokiji's behaviours, especially since an enormous power like Aokiji has... apparently... joined forces with Blackbeard of all people. What in the actual fuck? Is this a bad translation? Is the line supposed to read something like 'Aokiji is a power comparable to Blackbeard' or 'you let Aokiji loose like you did Blackbeard' or something? But the couple of translations I can find on the internet are variations of Aokiji joining forces with Blackbeard because what the fuck? He did say something about having a connection to the underworld back when we last saw him in Punk Hazard, but still, holy shit.

EDIT: As a friend of mine informed me after I wrote this review, apparently Aokiji joining up with Blackbeard has been mentioned in passing by Burgess all the way back in chapter 720. Well, shit, okay then.

And then someone tells them about the whole 'Doflamingo has been defeated thing', and as the Gorosei and Akainu basically react like we did to the Aokiji-Blackbeard alliance (i.e. "holy shit") we get a montage of all the people in the world reacting, how some wars are ended because weapons and SMILE are unable to be delivered. 

We then get a montage of all the more important characters. First, a big marine ship with someone that's either Sengoku or Garp talking with Tsuru and... honestly just doesn't seem too bothered. Bonney is walking around, reading a newspaper while stealing a pizza and in her little-girl form, noting about how Luffy and Law has balls. Maybe Bonney can join up with Luffy's ever-growing army-alliance thing? That would be interesting. I like Bonney. She's got all sorts of mystery around her regarding just why Akainu wanted to capture her so much back before the timeskip.

Urouge is on some random sky island resting from a wounds, and someone else apparently arrived. Capone is on his own ship, noting about how Luffy and Law are doing well... and they're apparently gunning for Caesar Clown! Who, last we saw a full year ago, is being chased down by fucking Big Mom. We need follow-up on that god damn it... maybe Capone can help out Team Sanji to escape Big Mom? Dunno if they stand much of a chance either way, though.

Kidd, Apoo and Hawkins are just eating together talking about how Luffy and Law must be targetting Kaido in the end, and note that they are targetting a different Yonko... Shanks. I don't know how this will go. Will Shanks just take down this alliance without breaking a sweat because he is Shanks? Or will the three of them take down Shanks and be a more personal villain for Luffy? Kidd certainly has been built up to be quite a villain of sorts since his first appearance...

Also Killer is eating noodles through the holes in his mask which is hilarious.

We then cut to X-Drake, who noted that Doflamingo killed his father a long time ago -- so yeah, that kid in the flashback is indeed Drake, and he wasn't a member of the crew -- he was the son of the captain. And apparently Drake has joined up with Kaido! It was implied when he showed up to save Scotch from Caribou in one of the cover stories, but we have direct confirmation that Drake has indeed joined up with Kaido... who finally makes his first silhouetted appearance and he's this weird giant mountain with two slug horns or some shit. 

Dunno what I expected, but it certainly isn't that.

And finally, as if everything else wasn't enough, we get the titular confrontation between Akainu and Fujitora. Akainu's pissed that Fujitora didn't report to HQ first, while Fujitora just flat-out states that he didn't want HQ to create a cover story that'll stop the truth from spreading out. We get a short flashback of Smoker telling Fujitora about how the World Government covered up the whole Alabasta incident with Crocodile -- good that the similarities between the two arcs are noted -- and we get a short present-day moment with Smoker, Tashigi and the Punk Hazard kids going to Vegapunk's lab.

Back to the Akainu-Fujitora conversation, Akainu is still freaking pissed off that they could've covered it up without losing the face of the Marines, while Fujitora tells him to fuck off for considering lying and how the World Government is the ones who fucked up by creating the Shichibukai in the first place. Akainu is all like "your actions have fucked up the Marines' credibility" while Fujitora is all like "if the Marines' credibility is broken as easily as admitting a single mistake, then it never was credible in the first place".

Akainu tells Fujitora that until he brings the heads of Luffy and Law, the doors of every Marine door in the world will be closed to him... and Fujitora cryptically says that "that's the way I want it". Which means... what? Is he defecting from the Marines? Does he want an excuse to butt heads with Akainu? I would totally like to see that.

Looking forward to the next chapter, definitely. 

Agents of SHIELD S2E20: Plot Twist

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 20: Scars

Let’s get to cracking the last of the superhero TV season finales that I have outstanding! Out of all the four shows I review, the Flash was awesome as I expected it would, Gotham was a flop as I expected it would, and Arrow was…. simply messy. But while I expected Agents of SHIELD to be somewhere in between Arrow and Gotham in terms of quality, since the introduction of the Inhumans (who are finally referred to by name in this episode), it has continued to regain a second wind that more than makes up for the crappy first half of the second season. The last few episodes to close out season two of Agents of SHIELD has been a string of absolutely well-written and solid stories, and the writers clearly made use of their mid-season break to sort things out. And this one was no exception.

This episode, of course, takes place after Age of Ultron, and surprise, surprise, Coulson was the one who provided Nick Fury with the Helicarrier, which was the mysterious Theta Protocol. It’s heroic, definitely, but there really is no real reason for Coulson to keep it a secret from May beyond helping to string along the ‘Coulson keeps secrets’ plot. It’s another weak part in this episode, but honestly it’s a rather minor complaint.  Though I do like the nice and absolutely appropriate stealth tie-in to the wider Marvel Universe when Gonzales compares Coulson to Tony Stark, in which a single man does secret projects that are not shared to the rest of the team. It’s an absolutely fitting comparison for Gonzales to make in light of recent events, and the timing for the conversation – right after Age of Ultron – is impeccable. I almost wonder if they planned out Coulson’s weird little secret-keeping agenda just to make this comparison.

Coulson himself doesn’t really have that much justification for keeping such a big secret from May and the others, which leads to May and Coulson going into a bit of a conflict when it comes to choosing who should represent SHIELD to talk to the Inhumans. I do like the little cold war thing going on as the three main powers in SHIELD – Coulson, Gonzales and May – are trying to be passive-aggressive yet still work towards the greater SHIELD goal. The little SHIELD Civil War thing is rather quietly folded up as they just basically work together against this greater threat. Also presumably Coulson and Fury’s big display just kind of shut everyone else up because, dude, they’ve got Thor and Hulk on their side.

May gets a nice little angry moment when she rants to Coulson about what really happened in Bahrain – her killing the little girl instead of her being just a casualty.

Skye is the main lynchpin to finally bring together both SHIELD and the Inhumans, with her presence (and SHIELD “acquiring” Lincoln) being a way to get both sides in a room, on a meeting table. And considering Gonzales’s season-long xenophobia towards powered people, and his insistence to go into the meeting with the leader of the Inhumans, as well as Raina’s constant prophetic dreams about SHIELD attacking Lai Xi, it seems like the obvious option that Gonzales is going to cause the war between SHIELD and the Inhumans, either by attacking the Inhuman leader or simply by being an ass.

So of course the show chooses to surprise us by showing a far more human side to Gonzales, and I think the show’s handling of Gonzales, pig-headedness aside, has been pretty excellent in developing into a pretty three-dimensional character. Yes, he doesn’t trust powered people and thinks of them more as assets than people, but he still recognizes that, yes, they are people. He just wants to index them and keep tabs on them to control them so they don’t hurt everyone else. And the fact that the mysterious item Weaver hands to Gonzales turns out to be a precious personal trinket that Gonzales is handing off to Jiaying as a gesture of peace.

Granted it is relatively stupid for him to bring the gun to the meeting, but you can’t blame him for being paranoid. It’s also odd that they didn’t send Bobbi or Weaver or whoever else to go to the meeting because everyone knows that Gonzales is a power-hating bigot, which is just as subjective as Coulson’s fatherly feelings… though Gonzales does make good on trying to be a peaceful negotiator. But still, the argument could’ve been worded better.

In retrospect Jiaying has been doing some rather questionable things throughout all her appearances when she’s not interacting with her daughter, but still, we chalk it up to ‘oh those wacky Inhumans and their rigid societies’ instead of ‘Jiaying secretly wants war because…’ which, I suppose, will be explained in the actual finale. It’s a sudden plot twist that was handled really well as Jiaying suddenly goes absolutely apeshit when an outsider compares being crippled to Whitehall’s vivisection (though honestly Gonzales wasn’t being an ass about it) and cracks open one of the Terrigen mist things which apparently kills Gonzales off, then uses Gonzales’ gun to shoot her shoulder and paint herself as the victim. So Raina’s fears actually came to life – not because Gonzales is evil or Gonzales panicked, but because Jiaying was pulling everyone’s strings. And it really looks like Jiaying just went angry because Gonzales tried to Index the Inhumans all Nazi-like, so up until she goes on her little rant she doesn’t really seem evil, just angry.

So, yeah, Jiaying for final big bad, while Gonzales's last act is one of relative peacefulness. Nice twist. 

And it puts Jiaying’s actions throughout the episode in a far more sinister light. Jiaying’s second-in-command Gordon, who is always shown as somewhat stern if not outright evil, seems to be just following orders when he infiltrated the Iliad. Raina being ignored seemed to be just the story slapping her with a healthy dose of the boy who cried wolf, but it turns out that she was telling the truth and Jiaying was manipulating events to her designs. Can’t blame them for distrusting Raina, though. Good job, Gordon, for sticking to your loyalties.

And the tender moment between Jiaying and Cal as they warm up to each other and decide to hand Cal over for the good of their daughter? By the end of this episode I’m not quite sure how much of it is just the two of them working together as this Evil Couple™ or Jiaying just manipulating Cal emotionally to make him into a pawn. Regardless of the case, Cal’s inside a SHIELD Quinjet, having ingested his chemicals so we’ll be seeing Mr. Hyde soon instead of just season-long teases of his actual power.

There’s also some nice little well-done continuity excuses regarding the big question to why the Kree never bothered to look for the Inhumans before. Skye and Raina’s Terrigenesis uses a Diviner and a Kree Temple, which Lincoln notes as the ‘old-fashioned’ way, whereas Jiaying explains here that Lai Xi uses Terrigenesis crystals from a melted-down Diviner instead of the normal Diviner-in-a-Kree-Temple way, which was why the Kree didn’t bother to investigate before. And having been made from melted Diviner metal, the mist is absolutely lethal to normal humans.

Skye’s found herself trapped in between the Inhumans and her real, biological parents who definitely love her, as well as SHIELD, who are far more rough but also contains her adoptive family. And it comes to a head when the two butt heads, and she defends the Inhumans against May by bringing up the Bahrain incident which is honestly a bit of a low brow, especially since it’s the fact that the Inhumans lost control of one of their own that the Bahrain incident happened.

I don’t think that other than that Skye really got that much to do this time around, and neither did Fitz, Simmons or Hunter – Hunter did a fun little doodle of Raina while in a meeting, though, which was funny. The Koenigs return, apparently having been preparing Theta Protocol which accounts for their absence. Deathlok seems to have been written out of the finale thanks to his injuries, while Lincoln is just brooding and being all ‘we Inhumans need secrecy!’ The main point for the second-stringers this time around is Agent 33 making use of her May-face (which someone really should’ve remembered to remove between this episode and the last) to trick Bobbi and kidnap her… for some unspecified machinations that she has cooked up with Ward involving the proper way to exact revenge. Which really felt a bit shoehorned in, though its eventual payoff in the finale actually works rather well.

Also, Mack quits because, uh, he really hates aliens all that much and is a bit of a whiny bitch, but I’m sure he’ll show up in the finale when our heroes need him in a gallant manner.

There’s also a pretty cool racism theme throughout the episode, not just from SHIELD, but from the Inhumans as well. Team Gonzales, of course, are giant racists as established before and Mack quits simply because he hates aliens. And May goes on the warpath when he realizes the Inhumans are related to Bahrain. But the Inhumans are racists too, with Gordon verbally abusing Cal over the fact that his powers aren’t real, while the thing that made Jiaying snap seems to be the fact that a human deigned to take pity on her.

There’s also the whole mysterious thing on the Iliad, which has been foreshadowed but never shown until now, which is this weird monolith that keeps turning into liquid and back again – and is apparently a Kree weapon of mass destruction that can wipe out the Inhumans. Or something. So that means it will definitely not be set off since we have an Inhumans movie coming up, but will be a big plot device in the upcoming war.

Overall, a pretty awesome penultimate episode that shakes things up by switching Jiaying and Gonzales’s primary antagonist and reasonable authority figure roles in an absolutely organic and believable way that still comes off as a twist. It sets up a SHIELD-vs-Inhumans war, pitting two ‘good’ organizations with valid goals, with Skye trapped in the thick of it all, and builds up the two other outstanding villains – Cal and Ward – who all have their own agendas. Definitely well-done, this.

Boku no Hero Academia 49 Review: Stain is awesome

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 49: Midoriya & Shigaraki

Midoriya and Gran Tourino go on with their training and it's honestly pretty standard as Gran Tourino just outclasses Midoriya just like last chapter, with some near-identical scenes, but Midoriya learns and adapts and whatnot and actually manages to land a scratch that causes Gran Tourino to bleed. And while Midoriya can only maintain that full-body usage of All For One and all electrified and shit for three minutes, it's still pretty great.

Meanwhile, in the villains end of the story, Stain the Hero Killer has held Shigaraki McHands with his two serrated blades, while somehow causing Black Mist to be unable to move with his quirk. Stain keeps talking about how to accomplish anything, one needs a creed and the weak will be culled, how in this society the word 'hero' has lost all power and he'll purge everything. So I guess he's basically reverse-Syndrome from the Incredibles. Also far more brutal.

Shigaraki blocks Stain's knife with his hand because he doesn't want Stain to cut the hand on his face, then completely shatters the blade with his real hand, claiming that he doesn't have anything quite as noble as a creed, but he wants to destroy a society that holds 'that trash All Might' set up so high and mighty. The art for that panel, though, holy shit, Shigaraki is fucking creepy.

Shigaraki is ready to rumble after spouting off some game-themed words like not having a healer in his party, but Stain seems satisfied. Stain notes that their goal lie at polar opposites -- Stain wants to purge all the pretender heroes, while Shigaraki wants to wipe out the hero -- but Stain notes that they have a common ground in destroying society. So Stain most likely isn't too worried if Shigaraki kills All Might, I guess?

Shigaraki goes all 'fuck off and die, you tried to kill me', but Stain says that it's this secret test of character at death's door or whatever, and Shigaraki passed... Shigaraki has the roots of a 'creed' inside his mind, though Stain might leave culling him for later. Their alliance settled, Stain, showing off his gross-ass tongue, demands to be returned to Hosu.

Meanwhile, we cut over to Iida, who has been investigating the Hero-Killer Stain because this is manga world where any high school kid with enough motivation can investigate better than trained P.I.'s. But hey, whatever. Iida's found out that in every location that Stain struck, he's killed at least four heroes because four means death I guess. Apparently in Hosu only Ingenium's been attacked... wasn't there reports that Ingenium is one of several heroes taken down by Stain? Eh, might be misremembering.

Iida vows to completely destroy Stain with this absolutely insane face, so I guess he's turning to Uchiha Sasuke? He does seem to be a lot more mature than Sasuke, though, and far less prone to overachieving or jealousy, so I don't really see him suddenly going off the deep and and turning evil, but he does fill the 'lancer-type character consumed by revenge' role found in many mangas. Though I'm pretty sure Iida will get wiped the fuck out by Stain if he goes up against it alone, considering Stain gave Shigaraki and Blackmist combined a run for their money, and the two of them easily took on Iida's entire class. With help, granted, but still.

I dunno. We might get a normal shonen thing with Iida going all avenger on Stain and being beaten to an inch of his life, but reveal that he's actually called backup? We'll see. Don't disappoint me, Boku no Hero Academia... don't just be dumbed down to just another cliche-ridden shonen manga.