Fairy Tail 454: Lesser Members Do Stuff!

Fairy Tail, Chapter 454: Team Flying Dragon & Team Osprey

I did a Taizai review first but my stupid laptop ate it so yeah I don't feel like rewriting it today so that's gonna be up tomorrow. This chapter of Fairy Tail is... okay. Nothing unexpected happened, but we actually see people other than Team Natsu do stuff! So that is definitely nice. It's honestly not epic or tense at all since, well, y'know, but the art's decent enough that I can enjoy some mindless blasty boom boom. And honestly at this point that's the only thing that Fairy Tail has left to offer for me, since I've completely given up on this manga delivering good plot and characterization.

Throughout this chapter we get Mavis trying her hardest to be a strategist, but the fact that she completely forgot about the dragon slayers' motion sickness -- and the dragon slayers themselves forgetting -- yeah, all for the sake of a cheap joke. I mean, I already don't like Mavis because she's basically turned into a plot device, but this makes her look incompetent in addition to being full of only sweet friendship crap. Plus her "strategy" basically involves 'let the gun girl shoot a big gun, let the rune guy make a big shield, Team A go in and smash stuff'. (Even Wakaba and Macao go 'huhh' at Mavis' totally-doesn't-make-sense speeches.)

Ajeel's flying ship army shoot out, uh, magical bullets, I guess, which would probably look a shit-ton more epic in the anime but just kinda look meh here. But Freed blocks everything with his Jutsu Shiki, at least until his magic runs out. And I absolutely love it when Fairy Tail remembers that it has other characters other than Natsu Erza Gray Wendy. And it's absolutely nice to see these characters that normally do nothing but fill the background actually, y'know, do stuff. Granted all they're doing is pushing back faceless mooks but it's a hell lot more refreshing than just seeing Gray Ice Spell #485, Erza Sword Slash #958 and Natsu Fire Punch #8469.

Natsu, Gajeel and Wendy are just flying around dragon-punching the lesser ships with the cats. Honestly can't say much about this. Bisca, meanwhile, is the titular 'Team Osprey' and she's apparently sniping the main commander ship with Jupiter -- Phantom Lord's big mech cannon from way back when, and, again, it's cool that we get some nice little call-backs to earlier arcs. Ajeel blocks it bare-handed, though, since we need to build up the villain of the week, although Alzack does note that the scattered beam took out a fair amount of the villain ships.

We get the stupid motion sickness joke which was stupidity, then Erza cuts off a chunk of the ship and challenges Ajeel to battle. I really do hope that we don't just get a generic Erza fight and maybe we can get something different than just 'Erza struggles a little, then defeats the enemy with one final slash'. Which literally is every single fight Erza has been in. I would say something about hoping that we get some help from all those dudes down below -- but at this point that would be way too optimistic and I'm hoping that Erza won't take up too much space with another friendship bullcrap speech.

But negativity towards the series as a whole aside, I actually liked this chapter simply because it lets some of the secondary characters -- Freed and Bisca, mostly -- do some stuff. And that is pretty neat. And the chapter as a whole is pretty inoffensive action other than that one stupid sequence. Yeah. 

Boku no Hero Academia 60 Review: Tests

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 60: Prepare for the End Term Test

Yeah we're definitely skipping straight back to the school stuff. We get a cover page profile of Kaminari, though no particularly new information since Kaminari's already fairly prominent among the B-listers. We get a short timeskip to one week before the end-of-term test, and we get Kaminari and Ashido kind of panicking and we get a bit of a ranking system -- showing that Kaminari is dead last (ranked 20 out of the 20 students in this class grade-wise) and Ashido's 19th. Tokoyami's on the lower half too, 14th, surprisingly, despite being super-awesome during the sports festival. We get a bit of the others just talking about how the end-of-term is going to be different from the midterms, and Mineta being a smug little asshat going all 'maaaan the practical test's going to be hard, innit?' with the smuggest look on his face while he's apparently 9th grade-wise, which isn't bad.

(In other words, do not underestimate a pervert trying to go on a summer camp with hot springs)

Midoriya (4th), Iida (2nd) and Todoroki (5th) try to cheer the others up, sorta, by Momo (1st) kind of offers to tutor the others -- including Kyouka and other B-listers. Momo seems kinda super-gloomy about the prospect of test exercise or whatever, which is odd... though she's like super-happy about so many people wanting to learn from her. Good for you, Momo. Bakugou is 3rd, so he's not just a raging fucknut and actually has relatively good grades, too. Out of the more main characters, Uraraka is 13th and Tsuyu is 6th. 

We get a fairly long discussion about what the test will be like. The written test is something they can prepare for, but the practical test is something they can't predict, and it's vague beyond "what they learned this semester". We get another encounter with Class B, including a douchebag Monoma, who is an utter douchebag. He basically trash-talks Class A but gets karate-chopped in the neck by another B student, Kendou. I don't remember these two though I'm sure they showed up during the sports festival. Kendou gives some information about how the past tests has been a battle against the same robots from the entrance exam, and we get a bit of a back-and-forth between Monoma and Kendou. 

We get a couple of reactions from Midoriya and some others, Bakugou goes all "I'LL FUCK YOU ALL UP" against Midoriya and just, well, acts like a raging fucknut. Bakugou's fun. Aizawa takes a bit of a note of this, before we get a two-page learning montage. 

And then come the day of the test exercise, and it's always fun to see team 1A decked out in their uniforms. Kyouka and invisible girl counts out that there are 8 teachers, and both Kaminari and Ashido are just going all "robots will be easy"... before the principal, mr Hamster, pops out from Aizawa's bandages and announces that they're changing the test contents. Not because of an information leak or 1B treachery (like I thought when I read that panel) but simply because they need to send higher-quality heroes into the battlefield thanks to the surge of villain attacks, and robots just don't cut it. 

And the test now involves the students forming pairs and battling the instructors -- but there are only nine teachers including the principal. We've got some familiar faces like Midnight, Mr 13, Cementoss, Present Mic, the firefighter masked dude we've seen before and some others, and we see that Todoroki and Momo are paired up against Aizawa... and Midoriya is paired up with Bakugou... against All Might, the tenth teacher. Well that's fun. That's going to be fun to read. And it's definitely something to force Bakugou to play ball with the others. Fun.

Toriko 340 Review: Neo vs NEO. Also Jiro what the fuck

Toriko, Chapter 340: The Blue Nitro's Goal

Well, we don’t see any of the Midora/Joie fight in this chapter, but we spend nearly the entirety of it on the rampaging Acacia-Neo entity. (So Neo, spelled thus, is going to refer to the monstrous appetite demon world eater thing with Acacia’s face. NEO is going to refer to the organization led by Joie and Blue Nitros. Yeah?) Acacia-Neo’s rampaging and has apparently eaten the Blue Nitro known as Air, and, well, that’s one of the main eight Blue Nitros gone, and I’m pretty sure Acacia-Neo killed a couple others in the last chapter too.

Atom, the Nitro with an afro, tells the others to get out of his way, noting that Air is straight-up dead, mostly because he exhausted his stamina cooking the full course. He tells News (muscular dude with a weird spike-hair that got killed by Acacia’s pimple demon last chapter) to go away and recover, while he handle Acacia. Atom transforms, opens his spiky mouth (and within his mouth is another set of eyes what the fuck) and grows a lot of spikes from his body. Atom speaks to Neo, the demon within Acacia – distinguished by having a weird dong-nose and an asshole-mouth, and notes that the cooking of Earth will not take much longer and Neo can really revive itself… and for a moment Neo seems to call Atom its “mama”… before even more of those horrifying pimple wart meatball pacman things sprout out and shoot off into the air.

Neo shoots out six of them, and the Blue Nitro note that Neo’s probably doing this and sending a meatball to each area to eat a part of the full course… while Neo’s main body disappears into the back channel. Well. Another, the Nitro that looks like an old witch lady, notes that they can just let Neo do whatever it wants so long as it reaches its perfect form…

And then motherfucking Jiro, hair all black again, just strolls up and goes all “you guys got a minute?” Another gets ready to fight, but Jiro just nonchalantly stops Another, telling her that he doesn’t mind fighting, but having the earth destroyed in the process is no good for any of the parties involved. The Blue Nitro then talk to Jiro a bit, confirming that Acacia, while not exactly the same with Neo, is also not sane. And all they can do is wait for the Solar Eclipse… which is a couple of days away! So this series is being rushed to a conclusion, which is a shame. Though I guess this is far more exciting than just repeating the full course one by one and just kind of being repetitive.

Jiro notes how the Blue Nitro were the ones who trapped Acacia so many years ago, and he asks the Blue Nitro what they want with such a gigantic powerhouse like Neo… and they reply that they want to kill it. Well, seal it, since gourmet demons will reincarnate unless they are ‘cooked’ and put inside a Golden Can. Because fuck logic, right?

I think we saw the golden can before, but well, I guess the golden cookware that has been foreshadowed all this while is actually the key plot device. Huh. Also, eating parts of Acacia’s full course will revive a different part of a gourmet demon, and they cannot miss a single cell when they seal Neo’s perfect form. We see that Pair corresponds to the right arm, and Air to the left, which was why Toriko and the others had an arm upgrade. Another corresponds to the tongue, which I’m assuming was the reason for Midora’s Hungry Tongue since he likes to drink Another.

Jiro and the Blue Ntiro kind of face off tensely as the Blue Nitro talk about how the ends will justify the means and they will kill Acacia and Jiro just says with this goofy face “’kay, I’ll kill Acacia now!” Jiro doesn’t want Acacia-Neo to, y’know, eat everyone on the world, but the Blue Nitro want Neo to eat God first before killing it. Jiro then stabs himself in the chest and starts to look scary and fuck, noting how they are spelling it wrong (some katakana/kanji wordplay is going on here). Jiro pulls out his hand and starts being scary, noting how the two spellings of “Jiro” correspond to different persona… and he starts to go all crazy and haywire and holy fuck how do you even describe that form.

Jiro notes that he, the ‘Second Wolf’ (normally Jiro is speled with the words for 'Second Son), was once a rampaging beast that used to eat lizards like the Blue Nitro back in the day… so holy shit, Jiro is a werewolf-thing? I mean, we do know he has this Guinness Punch technique and Guinness is the Battle Wolf King… but man, Jiro. He scary.

The chapter ends with one of the pimple wart meatballs landing in Area 7, and Bambina takes notice… ideally, Bambina would team up with Terry, Kiss and Quinn and kick the meatball’s ass, but it might go the other way too oh please fuck don’t kill Bambina off Bambina is funny. Kill one of the kings we don’t care about – like, the Deer King or whatever.

But, yeah, we’re definitely eschewing the ‘one area as an arc’ theme to just go straight for the endgame. Which I guess is far better pacing than the snail’s pace we’ve been going throughout Heracles and Bambina’s arcs, because as enjoyable as those two were… I kinda want something more, y’know? And this is definitely it. 

One Piece 801 Review: Bounties, Throne Wars and motherfucking ROB LUCCI

One Piece, Chapter 801: Opening Declaration

Well this chapter... it doesn't have anything particularly huge, but it's got a shit-ton of bombshells dropped upon us. So let's just go about it scene by scene, yeah?

The first scene shows us CP-0, which has been something that I've been bitching about all throughout Dressrosa -- why did you introduce CP-0 and then have them do absolutely jack shit? We've got a bit of a recap that the Revolutionary Army raided the weapons from the underground port... and we see that CP-0 is actually made up of... Spandam, Rob Lucci and motherfucking Hattori. And Lucci outranks Spandam now, and he was the one behind the cool mask from before. So, yeah, way to make Lucci relevant again! Lucci has always been one of my favourite villains just for sheer cool factor and to see him actually be involved into the story once more is absolutely fantastic.

We get a couple of pages showing the Dressrosa people and the Tontatta tribe living together in harmony blah-di-blah no one cares.

We cut away to the Marines, where Sengoku and Fujitora are eating noodles. Fujitora refuses to return to base because he doesn't have Law and Luffy arrested yet, and is still too proud to beg Akainu for forgiveness. 

But the interesting scene is Tsuru talking to the captive Doflamingo (who's regained his glasses again) and Doflamingo talks about what a fool Fujitora is for not working together with him and take the Straw Hats out. And even captive Doflamingo is still doing his mojo, talking to unsettle people. Tsuru just goes "fuck off, you sore loser" but Doflamingo is just laughing and notes by cutting off the 'hands that fed', the balance of the seas has been completely upset. We then get a little rundown of all the big players in awesomely-inked art -- the Four Emperors (is that supposed to be Big Mom above Blackbeard?), the Shichibukai, the Worst Generation, the Navy or the Revolutionary Army. And Doflamingo just talks about how the family of D will screw things up and who will betray whom and just claims that Mariejois will fall and the nobles will be dragged off their thrones. And Doflamingo talks about how everyone will fight over the throne that Gold Roger left vacant... well, Doffy, that was an awesome speech. Thank you for hyping things up. Also, I do believe you've been watching too much Game of Thrones.

We get a silhouette of the third admiral, Mr. Green Bull, in that panel with the Marines, which is nice. And who the hell was that dude in the Revolutionary Army panel? There was Ivankov, Dragon and Sabo, but who the hell was that? Ah, all the foreshadowings... and is the seventh Shichibukai in there somewhere?

Doflamingo notes how he's being taken to Impel Down and how he wants the newspapers delivered to him so he can be entertained by the chaos going on...

And apparently the four Marine warships can destroy a country, observed by some dude working for a 'Captain Jack'. Who's convinced to attack. Uh... who is that? Jack's got giant tusks on the ship, so maybe he's allied with Kaido, and he seems to have an iron-esque chin. Is he someone we know? Morgan? Who's this fellow? Do we know any Captain Jacks? Jack Sparrow, is that you?

EDIT: Apparently a "Jack" was mentioned waaaaaaaaaay back in chapter 692 after Punk Hazard as one of the underworld people being informed of Caesar Clown's capture. Huh. The hell's this guy going to do against Fujitora, Tsuru and Sengoku? Huh. Either this dude is a really big player (the mysterious seventh Shichibukai? Kaidou's right-hand-man?) or he's going to get his ship sunk way down to the depths of the sea.

Meanwhile, the Team Luffy have assembled on the Barto Club's ship, the "Going Luffy-senpai" which is basically the Going Merry but with Luffy as the figurehead because what else is appropriate. Bartolomeo and Gambia (the only other dude of Barto's crew that is named) is just fangasming over the fact that they have Luffy's Vivre Card, and apparently the rest of the crew are as large fanboys as Bartolomeo and it's just hilarious to have them all gawking over the Straw Hats. Apparently the seven generals or whatever have split up since last chapter, though they all have Luffy's Vivre Card. Bellamy also takes one, though he makes it clear that he won't be Luffy's underling.

Batolomeo then shows the Straw Hats their new bounties, and while he threw away Law's, he has put the Straw Hats' bounties on a gigantic majestic shrine in their ship, alongside their autographs. Here's the breakdown relative to their bounties right after the timeskip:

• Luffy: 400 million to 500 million
• Zoro: 120 million to 320 million
• Usopp: 30 million to 200 million
• Robin: 80 million to 130 million
• Franky: 44 million to 94 million
• Nami: 16 million to 66 million (we're not quite sure if Team Sanji went up because of something they did, or simply by association with the Straw Hats)
• Brook: 33 million to 83 million
• Sanji: 77 million to 177 million
• Chopper: 50 to 100 (poor Chopper)
• Law: 440 million to 500 million

Usopp's in particular has skyrocketed because of all the God Usopp insanity, and some of their poster images have changed. Sanji now finally has his real face, Brook has his Soul King poster and Usopp has his 'god' half-dead face. And Bartolomeo also notes that everyone involved in the Dresrossa incident also had their bounties raised. And one mysterious thing is that Sanji's poster lists that he is wanted "ONLY ALIVE" instead of the normal dead or alive, so it appears that Sanji's been in some shit himself... and I'm absolutely curious what's going on with him. We haven't seen Sanji in like a year dammit. There has always been a theory that Sanji is really a World Noble prince because of all the 'prince' titles he's been giving himself that people have taken as foreshadowing, especially the fact that Sanji's face has always been out of the spotlight (he wasn't made into the Worst Generation when Zoro had, his face was always missing, etc), so now that he is in the spotlight, well... I dunno. We'll see.

Movie Review: Justice League - Gods and Monsters

Justice League: Gods and Monsters

So I watched this last night. For those who aren't aware but interested, DC has been producing a shit-ton of these animated movies based on their most memorable arcs, as well as some original projects. It's sometimes hit-and-miss, and the last couple of movies -- War and Throne of Atlantis -- has been pretty underwhelming. And I absolutely frowned that they chose to create yet another Elseworlds-style alternate-universe with a harsher, evil Punisher-style Justice League... but it's done in the old Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) style! The concept didn't really appeal to me, and Elseworlds stories generally don't, and I'm just flabbergasted that they chose to make up something new instead of adapting well-known stories (we don't see any plans on adaptating Long Halloween or Knightfall, for one) or even well-known Elseworlds stories (Red Son).

But it's actually a solid movie. The reimagination is well-done and not at all tacky, and speaking as someone who's seen so many evil alternate universe versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (DCAU itself already did it twice in Flashpoint and Crisis on Two Earths) it's actually well done in that the new characters actually behave in a sensible way thanks to their relatively well-told backstories and are simply harsher instead of being straight-up evil. It's relatively fresh, even if it's weird.

Superman is now the son of General Zod and Lara (done without mention of sex thanks to some weird Kryptonian fingerprint-DNA-sampler thing), Batman is now dr Kirk Langstorm (Man-Bat from the comics) who has been turned into what's basically a vampire by a bat serum, and Wonder Woman is now Bekka, a minor New God who fled to Earth after being disillusioned of this universe's version of Highfather who actually pulls off a motherfucking Red Wedding on motherfucking Darkseid. Which in itself is a crowning moment of awesome (and monstrosity) for AU!Highfather, but okay.

The opening scene seems to imply that they're just your generic Punisher/AzraelBatman super-violent kill everyone heroes, with some very, very blatant deaths, especially brutal thanks to  Vampire Batman just snapping necks and draining poor Blockbuster to death. But they're not being brutal because they're evil, they just... don't pull their punches. And it's underscored that dude, it's fucked up.

However, the League is then framed for a series of murders by what I initially thought were O.M.A.C. robots (hey, one-eyed black formless robots!). Among those killed are Victor Fries, Ray Palmer and Victor Stone's father, people who comic-book readers will know as Mr. Freeze, the Atom and Cyborg respectively. I honestly thought we were getting another extended Cyborg backstory and as much as I like the dude I was a bit pissed that he gets so much screentime in recent movies while classic JLA characters (J'onn's absence being the one that troubles me the most) being cut out.

And while this all goes on, the movie diverges to flashbacks to give us the backstory and lowdown on these new takes on characters, including an awesome twist on Lex Luthor (who's evolved into a Metron role at the end) and the motherfucking Metal Men of all people -- have the Metal Men been in anything outside of the comic books? Damn. The fact that they were actually heroes in all their comic book appearances only make Will Magnus's treachery all the more surprising. And the big twist about the Metal Men is absolutely well done, without spoiling too much.

The ending comes off as a bit truncated as the heroes bar Batman don't really face any consequences at the end for their violence, especially offputting considering Superman and Wonder Woman actually killed a shit-ton of soldiers during their defense of their Justice Tower. So despite their pretty strong origins, I thought their conclusions were poorly handled. Batman's story was more solidly told, but relatively predictable after the big Metal Men twist.

Overall a movie that I unexpectedly enjoyed more than I thought it would. Not much to say beyond that -- it certainly delivers more than just a basic superhero plot and entertains me a lot more than a lot of the other DC movies thanks to the focus on character instead of a half-baked "plot". Not really perfect, but still rather good.

Nanatsu no Taizai 141: Death and Rebirth

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 141: Father and Son

 We continue right off where we left off last chapter, with Ban and Zhivago just catching up, talking about how Zhivago kept the fact that he was a beastman secret from Ban, and how Ban drank from the fountain of youth. Ban basically dashes any Ban-X-Jericho shipping hopes by calling her his wallet (HA) or his little sister... before mentioning that he actually had a little sister who died when they were young. Huh. 

Some talk about reviving Elaine got Jericho grumpy, though Ban does take the opportunity to fuck around with Jericho and just tease her -- he does admit to Jericho's face that Jericho is the first human he doesn't mind being around... though considering all of his friends aren't humans in any way, well... he also re-establishes that he doesn't like Jericho in that way and considering how the chapter focuses so much on Ban's search for Elaine, it's not hard to tell where the ship will skew. Zhivago also mentions rumours about the dead coming back to life, like this fucking creepy-ass dead woman going back to her home and killing her husband. 

Ban also admits to his father about his internal problem when he chose reviving Elaine over Meliodas, noting what a "fucking piece of shit" he was. Zhivago tries to tell Ban that it's similar to the situation with him choosing Therion over him, but Ban's main point was that he tried to kill Meliodas. Zhivago notes how Ban keeps saying that Meliodas never got angry at him despite the whole killing attempt thing, and notes that Ban has a good friend and all he had to do is apologize... before fucking dying what the hell?

Goddamn touching scene, though, how he himself actually suffered for his whole life from running way from Ban and being tormented all the while despite Ban himself forgiving Zhivago since long ago. Pretty surprising, though since practically everyone expected Zhivago to train Ban and give him the power-up the way the druids were to Meliodas' team and Matrona was to Diane.

Then we cut away to a farmer coming back to life as a zombie, and then to this rain of souls coming down from the sky, while this Ten Commandment girl -- the one with giant shadow-hands -- starts chanting about how souls with regret and anger will be granted a second chance to take revenge on those who wronged them in life. She's apparently hanging out with Galan, who just grabs a random soul and noms on it. 

One soul goes to the Great Fairy Tree... and fucking revives Elaine. Well, how great is it that all the Ban stuff neatly ties into the Great Fairy Tree, the Ten Commandments and his own moving on from his guilt? Absolutely awesome chapter and I really want to see what's going to go on with Elaine and whether she is insane or whatever.

Fairy Tail 453 Review: More of This Crap

Fairy Tail, Chapter 453: A Parent's Duty

Some manga excel at hyping up upcoming battles -- Toriko really comes to mind for this -- and most mangas make good transition from buildup to the actual conflict. Not Fairy Tail... at least not this time. It would've segued in really well if we cut from last chapter's roll call straight to the cliffhanger at the end of this chapter. Hell, if you even need all the bullshit talky-talky scenes they could've been squeezed in last chapter too to replace the absolutely generic "Natsu inspires people around him" which felt forced.

How good would it be for Makarov to do his little speech and listing down the Spriggan Twelve, only for one of them to charge into Magnolia at the end? After all, it's not like the Acnologia cliffhanger did jack shit for this chapter.

We don't really get much this chapter. We've got a long, long Natsu-Happy-Lucy scene that adds nothing much. We've got Erza and Wendy in a hot spring because fanservice, and the single relevant line that Crime Sorcierie will help out (since this is Fairy Tail, Charle's completley understandable dislike of the actually formerly-villainous team is brushed off as her being a stick in the mud). We get some shippy scene for Gray and Juvia. Makarov does a repeat of his 'I am a parent to my children' speech. Magnolia is evacuated. Ajeel comes in with an army of flying ships.

Who will presumably get one-shotted by Laxus next chapter. No tension at all, since we know that Ajeel was nearly killed by Laxus that one point. 

Daredevil S1E5 Review: Kingpin is Awesome

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 5: World on Fire 

Another rather good episode to follow from the heels of the last one, though honestly “World on Fire” implies that something will, y’know, blow the fuck up and it certainly does in this episode. Wilson Fisk executes the “break the city to rebuild it into something new” absolutely far better than Malcolm Merlyn in Arrow’s first season ever did, and it’s certainly far easier to develop the main villain’s motivations when you don’t hide his identity for half the season for a not-too-surprising fake-out.

But enough comparisons with Arrow. This episode’s actually themed more on how the three titular ship pairings interact with each other, while the main plot is about Vladimir seeking revenge for the death of his brother… against Daredevil instead of Wilson Fisk, who framed the vigilante up. It’s a shame that after the absolutely spectacular performance by Wesley duping Vladimir there really isn’t much that they did with the deception. It plays out more as a distraction done by Fisk to get Vladimir agitated and ready for war. It’s not a bad thing per se because what we got was pretty great with Fisk completely having Vladimir dance on his fingertips while getting himself the bonus of Daredevil himself getting arrested by the police.

We get a couple of scenes that will surely drive shippers wild. We’ve got Foggy’s scene with Karen, of course, which is sweet and built up over the past five episodes with some hints of Karen probably having some feelings towards Matt being thrown in. Upcoming love triangle? The two take their plot arc through a relatively well-written “help the little people stop the big company from taking away their homes” plot, though sadly while Foggy seems absolutely confident he can destroy his pencil-dressed ex in court it might be for naught because, well, shit blows up.

We’ve also got Murdock’s scene with Claire, who has graduated to love interest with them kind of saying it on-screen already and while it has the subtlety of a brick… might as well as get it over with, yeah? I don’t think Murdock and Claire’s relationship was developed as well as Karen and Foggy or Wilson and Vanessa, but I honestly don’t particularly care much. Their scenes did show some rather nice insight into what it is like to live in Daredevil’s world where everything looks like it’s “on fire”, as well as Claire’s concerns that Daredevil is becoming closer and closer to what he hates to fight.

Kingpin, again, steals the show this episode… though not quite as much as the previous two. I do love his scenes, from the apologetic-and-slightly-embarrassed way that he dodges the question of why exactly he crushed Anatoly’s head while confronted by his partners… he isn’t afraid to admit that he killed Anatoly, but the reason – that the Russian interrupted his date – well… we also get a fair bit of shrewdness from him, and I do like how he isn’t just a boring “everyone follow me” leader and actually has to convince Gao, Nobu and Leland to agree with him. Leland is a big ham, and I love him. Gao and Nobu both seem to have some kind of history, and Nobu in particular seems to have ties to a larger organization which is blindly obvious to be an adaptation of a Marvel villain organization.

And then there is his date with Vanessa, which played out spectacularly not only for Kingpin, but for Vanessa herself. She isn’t just this woman who the Kingpin falls for, but she is as shrewd, intelligent and ballsy as the Kingpin himself. And I do love how Kingpin and Vanessa both challenge each other and aren’t exactly blinded by love… plus, y’know, there’s the adorkable scene where Kingpin initially seems to be disturbed by the idea of premarital sex only to reveal that he’s just pissed he didn’t use the pickup line. And while Vanessa doesn’t really seem as twisted as Kingpin is, he did make a really great speech about how he truly wished from the bottom of his heart to reform the city… but it is impossible to do it without burning parts of it – citing the child-napping Russians as a factor he wants to stamp out. It does paint his goals in a far more sympathetic light especially when he talks about how he will live with the guilt for the rest of his life and all that… but he will keep Vanessa safe and will not lie to her.

Absolutely love how Kingpin isn’t afraid to just straight-up wear his weaknesses on his sleeve and admit readily how Wesley was the one responsible for choosing the wine, just like he did last episode. He also calls Wesley his friend which is touching.

I do like how this is going and I honestly cannot believe a dinner date between two borderline-sociopaths can be far more interesting than Daredevil running around trying to stop a gigantic gang civil war.

And like Claire herself pointed out, Daredevil truly is biting off more than he can chew. The little scene showing the Russians arming themselves, with Anatoly sending off runners to hunt down first Daredevil and then Fisk himself when he is informed of the duplicity showcases just how outclassed Daredevil is. But, of course, Kingpin himself outmaneuvers Anatoly. First by making the ‘let Madame Gao’s people do their job as always’ throwaway line from the first meeting be actually crucial when one of Gao’s runners suicide-bombs Anatoly’s main army. And then by having Turk – a recurring character from the earlier episodes – actually feed the mal-information that ‘Fisk and the vigilante is working together’ to Anatoly to get him to mass his forces at several bases. (Turk is funny, by the way) And this shows that Kingpin isn’t only strong because he has people following him or because he is powerful enough physically to strongarm Russians and bash their heads in with car doors… he’s a shrewd tactician on top of it all.

Love the little fake-out that seemed to imply that the waiter at Kingpin’s restaurant was calling in the location where Fisk is to Anatoly, and near the end Kingpin seemed to want to draw Vanessa’s gun from his coat – an obvious usage of a Chekov’s Gun – but it’s subverted to Kingpin paying the waiter for a good job.

Also the fact that Madame Gao has blind people happy to blow themselves up to get the job done makes her far more interesting than Leland, Wesley and Nobu in my books.

I also like the little scene at the police station where the Russian gangster Piotr is just framed-executed by the two policemen on Fisk’s payroll, and how despite Murdock being in the same building he moved too slow to do anything.

The framing of Daredevil killing Anatoly would play more into the cliffhanger where the police finds him beating the ever-loving crap out of Vladimir and Sergei, the two remaining leaders of the Russian mob. This certainly feels like a mid-season cliffhanger… except, y’know, the entire series is out at the same time so it’s just the end of the first act, where the heroes are all in trouble and the villain stands absolutely victorious over everything. I’m pretty sure Kingpin won me over with his awesome speeches too, though. All hail he who must not be named!

Daredevil S1E4 Review: Do Not Interrupt the Kingpin's Date

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 4: In The Blood

Well that was a lot better than the previous episode. And by a lot I do mean by a huge margin. This is a relatively villain-centric episode with a good bulk of it focusing on our main villain -- Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the (future) Kingpin, as well as the Russian brothers that are part of Fisk's multi-racial criminal organization. Meanwhile, the good guys' share of screentime is split between Karen and Urich's little team-up in trying to hunt down clues and Daredevil having to rescue Claire from the Russians.

Let's talk about the good guys first, because I do have less to talk about them. I do like the exploration of how utterly stupid Karen's attempts at trying to one-man-show the whole "uncover the gigantic criminal conspiracy" was, and how she nearly got herself killed. Points for balls, though. And as I mentioned before, the idea of Ben Urich's role in this story is pretty well-done, and no one really believed he was going to leave Karen out to dry. The two have teamed up, ready to tackle the expose with Urich's greater experience... and we get some backstories snuck in too rather subtly and marvelously, a short backstory about Urich's tragic love story and how he didn't appreciate his wife enough because he was a workaholic, and some hints to some dirt in Karen's past. We also get some bonus "people who cross the Kingpin are disposed of" information too which is a nice little bonus.

The Daredevil part is honestly a bit more familiar territory to anyone who's watched or read anything from the superhero genre, where Daredevil is confronted with one of his allies, in this case Claire, captured by the bad guys and savagely interrogated to get to him. And having a crisis of whether he is going the right thing, before his allies ensure him that, yes, he is. Claire gets something to do when he bashes the Russian leader's head in, so despite the talk about Daredevil putting people in comas, she's not above some self-defensive violence herself. The whole sequence about the whole 'confronting what he is doing' is done a lot more succinctly and a lot less meandering than, say, Arrow did, so props for that. There really isn't anything particularly special or noteworthy about the Daredevil scenes this time around, but they're definitely well done.

One thing I do like is the ready acknowledgement that the people Daredevil fight actually do get hurt. The dirty cop that Daredevil threw off a roof in episode two is in a coma and him brushing it off kind of builds his darker character a bit, and sets the tone for the grittier setting this takes place in. 

Also Daredevil was totally pulling off a Batman in that scene. And Batman predator scenes impressed me when I was seven, and will probably continue to impress me until I'm seventy.

Kingpin is where it's at, though. I am the first to admit that I'm not that well-versed with Marvel Comics characters, so I'm not quite sure how accurate this portrayal of Kingpin is -- all I knew from the old Spider-Man cartoons I used to watch is that he's basically a mafia version of Lex Luthor... and this episode really delves into just what makes Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, tick. We see that he subverts most of the trope of the super-cultured Blofeld-esque rich mafia-boss type villain that people like Don Corleone or Lex Luthor are. I do love how he acts like a lovesick little boy around the girl from the art museum last episode -- named Vanessa, apparently -- and it is absolutely a powerful and strong performance from D'Onofrio in this episode.

I do love how he just subverts the super-cultured stereotype by straight-up admitting that he doesn't understand a god damned thing about wine, how he gives in to vices like eating that funny dessert he likes... and is so wonderfully adorkable when he tries to interact with Vanessa with some really awesome facial expressions. How a date can be far more interesting than Daredevil trying to rescue an ally being tortured I don't know, but Kingpin makes it work. And then we get a display of power when the sane Russian brother came in, since the whole restaurant stands up in defense of Kingpin. And we get such believably human expressions from Kingpin when Vanessa gives an equally humanly ambiguous reply at the end. Hell, Kingpin really feels human all around, with that unguarded expression of "shit did I say something wrong" and "oh I think I said a cool line" at various points during the dinner. And that's not counting the little speech about his motivations, which in itself is pretty awesomely scripted.

And, of course, we get a stark contrast to his innocently cultured side by having him utterly brutalize the Russian brother than barged in to sue for peace. And this is a scene which is actually made better by the gore, unlike the gratuitous examples from last episode. It underscores just how powerful Kingpin is (and how prepared, considering he went into the fight with body armour) and how utterly brutal he is. I did think the head-smashy scene with the car door did go on for a bit too long, but on the other hand it underscores Kingpin's rage against the Russian brother from interrupting his date, and a stark contrast to the cultured Kingpin from a scene ago, just trying his hardest to talk about wine and paintings and his desire to reform the city with a girl he likes.

It also underscores something more important about Kingpin. It's no stranger to anyone watching fiction for a main villain to kill off lesser villains for disappointing or slighting him/her, but Kingpin beats the Russian guy up -- the Russian brother who wanted peace, by the way, which was what Kingpin wanted -- simply because he fucked up his date. And honestly it wasn't even irreparably ruined either. But it does show that Kingpin is a far more, well, emotion-driven being than what we was initially led to believe, him being just this supreme gangster overlord. And I do love this little direction we're taking.

Wesley, Kingpin's right hand man, has a relatively smaller role this time around but still continues to entertain, especially at the end with his utter indifference of the brutality happening just inches away.

The Russians themselves... well, I do think that we did spend a wee bit too much time on them, and what was the purpose of the first flashback scene, or extending the 'wake up the dude in a coma' scene too long. But since the surviving brother (Vladimir?) seem to be shaping up to play a role in fighting Kingpin in the next two or three episodes, I guess we do need to care about them somewhat. But eh, he ain't gonna stand half a chance against Kingpin, honestly. When Daredevil alone can Batman-style the shit out of their entire forces...

Overall, definitely my favourite Daredevil episode out of the four I watched so far and I do hope the quality stays around the same.

Boku no Hero Academia 59 Review: The Story of All For One & Mineta's Perversions

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 59: Know Your History

Holy shit backstory! But first we get some more school related fun stuff as we skip away from the training and straight to the aftermath with Mineta apparently not having sworn off women after her traumatic experience with Mount Lady. Mineta goes on this hilarious freakout about finding a 'sawshank asshole' (okay, translators, chill...) peephole, and talks about how his "little Mineta" is already a crime, then lists the specific... assets of the girls he wants to see... before getting ear-jacked in the eye by Kyouka.

(Convenient that Kyouka just got a profile in this chapter, eh)

And hilariously, apparently Kyouka is more than a little miffled that Mineta didn't mention her as being desirable to peek at.

What a strange power, those earplug jack things.

But that's not the point of the chapter. The point of this chapter is the conversation that Midoriya has with All Might about the origin of One For All... and its counterpart, All For One. At the beginning, All Might discusses the fact that Stain has licked some of Midoriya's blood and that might be constituted as Stain ingesting Midoriya's DNA... which I never ever considered before. But All Might confirms that One For All cannot be forcibly stolen -- only forcibly passed on. The original owner of One For All must wish for the quirk to be passed down.

All Might then tells Midoriya about the originator of One For All... which is All For One, a quirk that can absorb and steal (permanently) the quirks of other people, but also transfer them to other people. Got a bit of a Juhabach vibe from the latter power, but I do like how rather seldom-seen the permanently-steal-a-power, well, power is. It usually has some form of limitation like a time limit or an amount limit. The granting-powers quirk, however, requiers people with strong bodies, otherwise they lose their mind and bascally become Noumu.

All Might then gives some backstory, and apparently during the beginning of the quirk phenomenon, some big X-Men shit went on where the normal humans strongly opposed the people with quirks and really that situation looked like something straight off an X-Men comic. Apparently it was so bad that civilization's progress was halted considerably by the fighting that happened during that period. And during that time, the original owner of All For One (hereon out termed Anime!Magneto until he has a name, because 'the original owner of All For One' is a handful to type). Anime!Magneto gathered a Brotherhood of Mutants large army by stealing othe people's quirks and stockpiling an army of super-powered people loyal to him. He basically took over Japan as a dictator by that point.

Also apparently this uprising by Anime!Magneto was reduced to urban rumours and is sort of purged from history textbooks.

Anime!Magneto's All For One power has a side effect of causing some quirks to mutate and blend together. Anime!Magneto had an apparently-quirkless younger brother who opposed him, and ended up forcing a quirk that stockpiles power onto his brother. This stockpile-power quirk combined with the brother's hidden quirk -- a meaningless quirk that could grant itself to another. That sounds a bit weird -- so the quirk can just hop around like a harmless parasite that does nothing? In any case, it combines with the stockpile-power quirk and formed One For All.

Anime!Magneto apparently gained some kind of immortality quirk from the many quirks he had absorbed, so I guess he's more Apocalypse than Magneto. The brother entrusted One For All to successors, and over time and wielders One For All accumulated power until All Might himself was apparently able to defeat Anime!Magneto... or so he thought, because naturally Anime!Magneto was the mysterious person on the TV controlling Shigaraki Tomura and the Villain Alliance.

All Might hints on the big final battle between Midoriya and Anime!Magneto, and for a page he kind of fails to say something which he knows he has to say to Midoriya but can't spit it out. Maybe when you pass down One For All completely, you'll die? That seems to be the one, because Midoriya keeps saying how All Might will always be by his side. And this scenario would fit well into why both All Might and Gran Tourino knew they had to tell it to Midoriya but they both find it hard to do so.

Back to class with Eraserhead, who informs that the class is going to a summer break forest lodge if they pass the end-of-term test. Mineta is like "HOLY SHIT OPEN BATHS" and "give it your all, girls!" even until the next page, which I naturally find hilarious. Midoriya's basically just back in class no problem all Harry Potter style even though, y'know, Great Fateful Battle of Mighty Evil.

Meanwhile, we actually cut to Anime!Magneto, who is being all Aizen and notes how everything is going as planned -- even if Stain's capture was not foreseen. He talks a bit about what we learned two chapters ago about using Shigaraki and Stain to gather manpower for the Villain Alliance. Anime!Magneto talks with a bearded doctor (who addresses him as 'sensei') who is of the opinion that Anime!Magneto could've stepped in earlier, but Anime!Magneto notes that the doctor needs to patch him up faster and the quirk Super Regeneration he stole was too late because his wounds have already healed after All Might's battle.

He outright says how Shigaraki is meant to become the new "him", so maybe he has a way to transfer All For One to Shigaraki. And, well, his eyes and nose are all gone and replaced with scarred tissue and he's got all kinds of medical tubes running into his neck.

Well, main villain -- or the first main villain! We all know how the first awesome main villain doesn't always turn out to be the Big Bad in the end, yeah?

Daredevil S1E3 Review: The Courtroom Episode

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 3: Rabbit in a Snowstorm

It’s honestly a big underwhelming episode for me compared to the previous two episodes, though it’s no small part due to the factor of me being the viewer instead of any real fault of the episode’s. I have never, in any way, been interested in fiction within a courtroom setting, so the fact that the bulk of the episode takes place in the courtroom with some subtleties (and likely obvious facets) of trials being absolutely lost on me. So all that stuff going on in the trial? Really kind of boring, for me. Though I still do get the gist of what’s going on and how this relates to the big Kingpin organization… and honestly I don’t think they needed to take up an entire episode just to focus on, well, this topic. On the surface Murdock and Fogey being sort of forced to work for what they know is a hired killer is an interesting concept and Murdock’s speech about good and evil is definitely a well-scripted one, but so much of it is just dragging on and on about paid jury members and whatnot and honestly I just don’t really care at all.

Add to the unnecessary amount of gore and brutality in this episode… the horrific way that Healy dies is excused in my books for the shock value that it creates (as silly as it is for him to whack his head on a jutting piece of sharp metal instead of using something more practical) – both for Daredevil and the audience to showcase just how horrifying the Kingpin is meant to be – but the brutal arm-breaking (twice!) during the initial fight between Healy and the random bowling mafia dude he kills? Did we need that? Did we really need to see the bone jutting out? I’m no stranger to gore, but it really felt like it was thrown in that scene for no reason.

Daredevil rather hammilly channeling Christian Bale's Batman during the interrogation sequence is equal parts embarrassing and awesome, let's leave it at that.

We’ve got some second-stringer plots running along with Karen trying to deal with her old bosses at Union Allies threatening to blackmail her, as well as a new character to the MCU, Spider-Man supporting character Ben Urich – intrepid Daily Bugle (changed here to a different Marvel newspaper, the New York Bulletin) reporter. Ben Urich’s scenes are honestly the most interesting ones to me in this episode mostly due to how humdrum the rest of the scenes are. The lawyer scenes are boring and Karen’s little plotline is just more or less the same as the ones she went through before – just her being confronted by things way too big and Kingpin’s organization reaches everywhere… it’s just blah. Urich’s is at least interesting, and actually changing his newspaper from the big media behemoth that is the Daily Bugle into the smaller, struggling New York Bulletin is a nice move.

This episode also offers us the first glimpse at the big man, Kingpin, himself. Or, well, Wilson Fisk, as he is still calling himself. Throughout this episode and the previous two we’ve seen hints of Kingpin actually making his power play against the other mafia heads – we’ve got Healy taking out one in here, and Urich talks to another one who’s leaving New York to Florida. In a way it is interesting to see all these things going on in the background, how Kingpin is rising up in Hell’s Kitchen as much as Daredevil himself is… but on the other hand I’d actually rather see more of Kingpin’s organization. And while we only saw a little bit of Kingpin admiring art (the titular rabbit in a snowstorm… which doesn’t really make sense to the episode’s main themes but whatever) he does look pretty awesome.

Wesley is as smooth and slimy as ever, and he is another one that’s a delight to watch throughout the episode, providing some form of tension when Murdock starts trailing him – though nothing really comes out of it.

A solid episode, definitely… but a wholly underwhelming one for me. It’s definitely not badly written and in no way can this episode be called bad… but it sure as hell is boring and I really wished there was more that happened in here. Not necessarily action scenes, but some actual world-building or character-building other than established dynamics we’ve already seen in the past two episodes. 

Toriko 339 Review: More Revelations

Toriko, Chapter 339: Midora VS Joie

Good lord that first page with Midora’s angry face though.

Midora’s super-awesome Meteor Spice apparently knocks Zaus back to his senses, which in itself is interesting – so unlike what Toriko thought, Joie’s brainwashing by bacteria can be broken. You just have to Meteor Spice someone to do it. Teppei takes Zaus and runs off from the base before Midora kills everyone, but before he does so he and Zaus wants to steal the golden cookware that Joie is using – something I’m sure we’ve heard about before in both the Bambina and Blue Grill arcs. Plus those golden plates Alfaro used a couple chapters back... are they part of the golden cookware set?

While he’s doing this, Midora is just launching a gigantic hungry tongue in all its disgusting glory at Joie and eats a gigantic chunk of the mountain the NEO base is at… but Joie is faster with her Tokage beast and basically teleports Midora away to this ‘Land Sea Island’ at Area 2, telling Midora that she can’t let him destroy her ship. Midora basically makes the claim that he can do this destruction thing anywhere Joie is on Earth… and Joie doesn’t deny it, knowing that all three of Acacia’s disciples have the ability to destroy the planet – though only Midora, the weakest of the three (SHOTS FIRED) is petty enough to actually go through with it.

Joie uses this Warp Kitchen technique that, uh, Condor or whoever from the cooking competition used, so that's another tie-in to the Blue Grill arc. And apparently Joie’s Warp Kitchen is something brought to life by Pair and Another, a place where time move exceedingly slowly. And the Warp Kitchen is something that is retained by the Gourmet Cells in order to facilitate the cooking of ingredients in Acacia’s full course that would’ve normally taken hundreds or thousands of years… and then Joie’s food appetite demon comes out and basically tells Midora and his short lifespan to fuck off since time is immaterial to the appetite demons.

Midora then gives his own badass boast that while his anger is transient, he will etch such a deep memory of fear into the appetite demon’s cells that will never ever disappear. Midora is awesome. Midora and Joie prepare to fight in that mysterious space of slowed time… but we cut away…

To what appears to be Bob the Tumour grown to a size that rivals the Earth. And holy shit it does look terribly disgusting. But Jiro apparently simply just blasted the Tumour creature into space… at the cost of his own hand. Setsuno heals Jiro’s hand with Cure Water, and Chichi explains that the creature is ‘Neo’, which is apparently written in a different way than NEO the organization… and Neo the creature is something that has existed and revived several times over the course of history, and the Nitro have been cooking for the sake of Neo the creature… and Neo’s main body is the Gourmet Cell Demon within Acacia…

And we cut away to Acacia the hideous monster creature alive and eating the blue nitros. And, well, no cheat life orbs are going to save them now, they’re already in pieces and being eaten by Acacia and his three gross tongues and fourteen abs and holy hell Acacia is up and running!

Is it because of Midora’s Meteor Spice? Eh. Sucks to be the Nitro.

Chichi explains that despite the Solar Eclipse being some time away, the revived Acacia may have been planning to just go to every continent to hunt. Is Toriko being rushed to a conclusion without us seeing the individual continents where the full course ingredients are at? That freaking sucks balls! But this is interesting too, really, as Jiro prepares to undo his knocking, Chichi prepares to consume some drugs… and mentions that the only thing that has a chance of stopping the Acacia Neo is the demon that once lurked within Ichiryu… DON SLIME. Well so that was what Don Slime is all about.

Overall it still really feels like it's being rushed to enter its final or penultimate arc, and while I really would've liked a better, slower pacing I am not exactly complaining so long as we don't skip the deliberations of every single ingredient and Eight King. I mean, this certainly is far more interesting than the Dressrosa clone that is Blue Grill and whatnot, but on the other hand I'm not a fan of rushing this series to its end.

One Piece 800 Review: In Which Luffy Is Forced To Get An Army

One Piece, Chapter 800: Exchanging Sakazukis

This week’s One Piece is honestly a bit underwhelming. For chapter 800 which we seem to have been building up to, it ends up being nothing but a small continuation of 799. No Akainu, no Kaido, no Kidd or anything really like that. It literally just is a continuation of the exchanging sakazuki cups scene from last chapter, drawn out with Luffy being his usual ‘I don’t wanna do this it’s so cramped’ self while the seven captains basically just forcing themselves on Luffy, responding to Luffy’s troll logic with one of their own – basically since Luffy tells them to be free and they’ll be buddies nonetheless, they also want to be free to choose to become Luffy’s subordinates. At the urging of Cavendish, Hajrudin and the others, Bartolomeo gives a speech about how they are ‘free’ to exchange cups with Luffy even if he refuses.

And, y’know, Zoro being hilarious and sneakily drinking the wine by himself probably doesn’t hurt either.

The image of Hajrudin holding a tiny cup and Leo holding a comparatively oversized cup is funny.

They come under attack by the dudes that are upset that Doflamingo is taken down and have ruined their respective agendas, but Orlombus tells his fleet (apparently one of his inferiors is called Colombus?) to handle it… and the Fujitora gives his own farewell gift of launching the rubble onto the ships of the Straw Hats’ enemies and somehow missing all the Straw Hats.

Anyway they’re Luffy’s fleet whether he likes it or not, since they’re gonna be Luffy’s fleet even without his permission, and then Luffy gets distracted by the feast. Bartolomeo can die happy now. Meanwhile we get a short scene of Fujitora thinking that he doesn’t have the right to go after the Straw Hats, and after what they did to clean up the World Government, he does a bow to thank the Straw Hats witnessed by no one but Sengoku, which causes Fujitora to pull off a hilarious face.

We get a short scene with Rebecca and Kyros which is short and sweet and didn’t take up an entire page, and then we get the obligatory party beer drinking time scene, and we close off with ‘the seven oddballs that called themselves Straw Hat Luffy’s subordinates will continue to grow on their own and make their mark on history, leading to a big incident… in a story that is still untold.’

Which is epic and all, but considering it’s in a sense an extension of last chapter not really much happened in the big Eight Hundred beyond just a confirmation and honestly I do find it rather underwhelming. Definitely a good chapter, but for all the buildup, it is underwhelming.

Toriko 338 Review: Midora's Fury & Joie's Origins

Toriko, Chapter 338: Joie vs. Midora

I'm sorry if I'm going to use 'Joie' and 'Joa' interchangeably through my Toriko reviews, I think. The official spelling is Joie, but the word is pronounced as Joa. So depending on how well I remember the official spelling in my head while doing these reviews, it's going to alternate.

But the first half of the chapter has Jiro, Setsuno and Chichi meet up with Acacia's gross tumour pimple Pacman monster frog thing. And for all of two panels it looks like Tumour-chan (that's what I'm calling it for lack of a better name) ate the top half of Jiro, but apparently he just bent down enough to have Tumour-chan simply just eat his shirt. Jiro naturally goes straight for knocking, but realizes that Tumour-chan isn't about to stop since it apparently has a resistance comparable to the rotation of a planet -- though that in particular isn't a problem to motherfucking "World Knocking" Jiro.

Tumour-chan transforms into some disgusting multi-tentacled-rooted thing because it sensed the danger in Jiro, while Jiro himself acknowledges Tumour-chan as a being comparable to the Eight Kings. Jiro bulks up like HOLY SHIT -- the resulting muscular form's fists are larger than Jiro's head. Jiro pulls off some nightmare faces -- Jiro's good at that -- before his super-gigantic muscle arm thins and turns black... Armament Haki? Reverse Gear Third? We're getting some One Piece shit!

Setsuno tells Jiro not to hit the world because apparently it'll break it, and Jiro does this attack called Big Bang. Well, I for one would believe it if Jiro has enough strength to break the world and considering just one of Acacia's pimples is that powerful...

But we cut away to Midora and Joie, and we get another of the '0.01 second was all it took' that Toriko has been so fond of ever since the Bambina fight, where apparently the moment that Midora froze in shock was enough for Joie to use as an opening and attack Midora straight in the chest. Well, Midora's getting worfed, we think?

And indeed Joie does make a badass boast about how human brains cannot comprehend the 0.01 second but appetite demons once preyed on this particular creature that only drops its guard for 0.01 second. She then proceeds to gloat about her face... before Joie realizes that Midora wasn't damaged... and then her Life balls shatter. Apparently Midora tok the moment to assess that Joie was full of openings and was able to launch multiple counter-attacks. Yeah, Midora is still a badass. Apparently the Life orbs contain food spirits that allow themselves to die in place of the owner, so there is that.

Joie/Frohze's appetite demon materializes, and it's clear in this chapter that Joie (the human 'face') and the Frohze's appetite demon are different entities because they argue with each other. Apparently the healing water is Acacia's hors d'oeuvre, Center but instead of bringing Frohze's soul back (she refused to be reincarnated) Acacia brought back the spirit of Joie to presumably hang out with Frohze's appetite demon.

So Joie is a food spirit wearing Frohze's body and holy shit this actually ties in really well with the whole food spirit and back channel things going on for the Bambina and Moon arcs. Frohze is even afraid of the thing (presumably appetite demon?) within Acacia. And Acacia's goal is basically to eat everything to reach some farthest land or whatever. Apparently gourmet energy was created during the Big Bang to eventually create Gourmet Cells, apparently having the genetic memories of foods from an immeasurably long time in the past -- in the world before the Big Bang, presumably. Frohze-Joie's appetite demon then materializes again and does a rant about eating before mocking Frohze... something that Joie-the-spirit realizes is folly.

And Midora has this awesome expression that reflects tranquil fury.

Joie tries to sweet-talk Midora to joining them over their shared goal of eating, but Midora is all awesome and claims that 'you people have long stepped on the tiger's tail' before glowing all wild. Everyone from Alfaro to Teppei to the NEO people are all shocked as Midora glows. Joie tries to hide with her Tokage beast (remember it?) and the final page shows that Midora just activated Meteor Spice within the NEO base. Welp I guess everyone's dead. Midora just killed everyone.

But nah, this is awesome. Great revelations about Joie. Midora is awesome. Midora is fucking awesome. What more can I say?

Boku no Hero Academia 58 Review: Back to Class

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 58: Workplace Experience Wrap-Up

Two more reviews from me today – Tokyo Ghoul’s probably going to have to wait until tomorrow. So, anyway, this chapter of Boku no Hero Academia is a wrap-up/set-up for the next arc, and really not much happens but at the same time we’re given a fair amount of information. We start off with a cover page profile of Ashido – I don’t think I’ve actually realized the ‘Acid’ Engrish pronunciation in her name. Apparently she can use her acid to glide across surfaces and whatnot, though it has the potential to dissolve her clothes because y’know fanservice. Even though she’s like twelve.

We get Midoriya’s farewell with Gran Tourino here, who gives him one last reprimand for being reckless and whatnot. There’s a bit of a mystery going on with Gran Tourino when Midoriya asks him why such a powerful superhero – and a mentor to All Might to boot – is such a no-name in the superhero community. Gran Tourino is slightly cryptic about it, but it basically boils down to the fact that he doesn’t really want to be a superhero, but needed the certification for a certain ‘goal’ that Midoriya needs to ask All Might about.

Gran Tourino then hilariously pulls off the ‘decrepit old man’ shtick going all “hey kid who are you?” though his monologue about how similar Midoriya and All Might are is reflective to how actually lucid he is. He’s basically telling Midoriya to consider ‘Deku’ as his identity which is cool.

We then cut back to Yuuei Academy and we see what’s up with the other students’ workplace internship thing. Bakugou’s super-geeky haircut gets bomb’d back into shape after getting made fun of, Tsuyu captures a stowaway from a neighbouring country, Uraraka is all crazy and battle-hungry and ridiculously hilarious, Grapefruit is apparently mentally broken down by Mount Lady and sees women as scary. Everyone knows what’s going on with Midoriya, Todoroki and Iida… well, the cover story, anyway. Kaminari is sorta-kinda impressed by the videos circulating around about Stain, whereas Iida does some geeky sorta-embarrassing reaffirmation of his hero career.

We then cut away to an All Might class, where he’s apparently wearing his ‘Golden Age costume’. Hee hee comic book in-jokes. There is a training session where they have to move around a gigantic terrain course to reach a certain target without destroying it (All Might pointedly pointing at Bakugou) and we have a little competition between Midoriya, Iida, Ashido, Ojiro (tail-guy) and Sero (tape-guy). We see that Sero is basically Spider-Manning his way across the course, except with tape instead of web, but Midoriya is using his super-awesome training and impresses the shit out of everyone from Sero to All Might to Uraraka to Bakugou. Bakugou even lampshades that Midoriya is copying his moves, in the time that he’s acting like an idiot with the jeans hero.

Of course we can’t have our heroes develop too quickly and Midoriya actually slips up and falls down, coming in dead last.

All Might mentions something about an end-of-term test, though whispers to Midoriya that he wants to have a conversation about him and One For All… so yeah we’re probably going to get some huge backstory next chapter which is cool. With hints all over from Gran Tourino, Shigaraki and the rest I'm going to assume that we're going to get some real backstory-heavy storytelling in the near future.

Nanatsu no Taizai 140 Review: Ban's Foxy Daddy

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 140: The Bandit and the Boy

Yeah these reviews are all a bit shorter than my normal ones. Sorry about that but there’s a lot of chapters I missed last week. Anyway, this week on Nanatsu no Taizai we get a flashback about Ban’s childhood with this Zhivago fellow, and it is done really well when initially it looks like we’re going to get a parallel between Ban and his father-figure Zhivago, as well as this werefox and his two (apparently) deceased children… only for it to become apparent in the last four pages or so that the werefox is Zhivago. It’s pretty well done, and really just feels like the ‘coincidentally similar backstory’ thing that fiction is so prone to using. (*cough*Arrow*cough*)

The flashback about little Ban is fairly interesting and the poor kid really did have a harsh life, getting beaten up by these jackasses and having to eat his own vomit to survive and nearly getting his virgin butthole sold off to some perverted noble. He gets rescued by Zhivago, and learns how to steal – those two panels showing how great Zhivago is at basically daylight-robbery-ing a bunch of people is pretty well done.

We get a little tie-in with the Fairy Fountain of Youth thing (which, as someone told me, name-dropped Zhivago way back during that arc). Anyway, after some bonding moments with Zhivago and how Zhivago considers Ban his second son (his real son is Therion, who is a werefox) there came a moment where Zhivago was cruelly forced to choose either to save his ‘adopted’ son Ban, being brutally beaten up by a bunch of people at the place that Ban was trying to rob by himself, or save his real son Therion, being hunted down by a bunch of dudes, and the art makes it look really, really brutal on Ban’s side and really sad on Zhivago’s side.

Ban obviously survived, but Zhivago came back too late to save Therion, who dies in his arms, but is too ashamed to go back and see Ban… and has been living with this burden that he sacrificed both of his sons until this moment, when Ban drops the bombshell that he survived and he had never held a grudge against Zhivago – quite the opposite, since Ban claims he would’ve lost respect towards Zhivago if he chose him over his own real son. And we get a touching reunion.

Overall, yeah, it’s definitely a distraction from the Ten Commandments thing (and I’m still iffy over the Azure Sky dweebs beating down Dreyfus) but since Ban is my favourite character and this is indeed a great touching backstory, I do quite enjoy myself reading these. Still wonder what the whole point of all this is, other than Ban possibly learning how to become a werefox as his own power-up? I dunno. We’ll see next chapter, I guess.

Fairy Tail 452 Review: Spriggan Roll Call

Fairy Tail, Chapter 452: Prelude to the Final Battle

By and by this chapter is truly another in a series of uneventful chapters, hyping things up but not quite really. After rereading through the flashback as a whole I really, really felt that it could’ve been done shorter with the same amount of emotional impact… and considering we’ve already seen so many of the things that happen in the flashback, I honestly cannot bring myself to care.

Anyway, this chapter plays out like some kind of quasi-artistic ‘let’s go back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys to make an infodump’ which I guess is decent if only it didn’t last so damn long. There literally isn’t anything to talk about on the Fairy Tail side of the conversation beyond ‘Natsu has a secret weapon in his arm he can only use once’ which any idiot with a brain can figure is E.N.D. So yeah and we took so long just to bullshit about that and everyone is turned into a Natsu fanboi as they go all ‘I wanna know I wanna know oh we are so increased in morale durr hurr hurr’.

Of course, the ending with Acnologia is admittedly awesome and the “twist” (no not really) that the Spriggan 12 will not only be gunning for Fairy Heart but to murder Acnologia as well is at least something to make this feel kinda different,  but the hyping up is just not working for me and I’m left, still, extremely indifferent and only the slightest bit curious. Which is why this is the first I’m going to review today to get out of the way.

Brandish, naturally, didn’t kill Mr. Space Sexual Offender whose name I cannot remember and cannot be bothered to look up and keeps him around in a miniature size and the little shit can just fuck off. Brandish can stay – from what we’ve seen of her so far she’s just an indifferent woman that acts like an asshole to everyone and that is absolutely refreshing considering most of the other interesting characters have been reduced into Natsu’s cheerleader team.

Anyway, I honestly don’t have much to say about anything else in this chapter so let’s roll call the Spriggan 12. Whatever Fairy Tail may be at least the character designs (mostly) look interesting.

·       “Winter General” Imber is the bishounen guy with glasses we see before and he’s all about ‘you must respect Zeref damn infidels” and we are told that he controls ice (Gray even reacts to this) so yeah he’s going to fall to Gray when it comes, I’m sure.

·       “Desert King” Ajeel, or Azil as some other translators do it. Ajeel’s what I’ve been calling him and until official names come out that’s what I’m gonna call him. He’s the sand dude we saw before and still looks and acts like a tool.

·       “Nation Breaker” Brandish, who is, y’know, Brandish. Who’s perpetually annoyed and indifferent at the world but listens to Zeref. I do think she’s my favourite out of this bunch but considering the others have so far been entirely unimpressive…

·       “War Maiden” Di Maria is just antagonistic to Brandish. She’s your generic stripper-armour-hot-lady in these kinds of manga that apparently is a war knight with an unknown magic and, well, y’know, it’s basically marked as Erza’s enemy because yay parallels that don’t make sense.

·       God Serena… is a gigantic tool. He tries so hard to have the kind of sheer ridiculousness that other manga characters like Tsukiyama or Alex Louis Armstrong or Franky or 90% of the JoJo cast (or even a lot of other Fairy Tail characters like Ichiya and Hot Eye) exude effortlessly… but comes off looking like a gigantic idiot. Even Brandish and Di Maria agree on that. Yuri, you got old and stupid.

·       “Mage King” August, the Hades lookalike, is apparently so powerful that he uses magic of all times and places (which, like Makarov, Hades and quite a few bit of the Fairy Tail cast) and he’s apparently ‘far more powerful than the rest of the Spriggan 12’ and we get a page full of reactions.

·       “Adjudicator” Wahru Ihyto, a weird-looking dude that looks straight out of One Piece, who’s all like ‘sinful, sinful’ regarding their target being the body of Zeref’s former lover.

·       In addition, we get two other names that Makarov has never seen before, Bloodman and Nine-Heart, the latter who is mentioned to be in the castle but is not attending the meeting. Plus a bunch of others who Makarov doesn’t even get to discover the names of.

So overall it’s looking like Team Zeref is going to unleash war not only upon Ishgar but also against Acnologia. I’m assuming Walrod, Jura and, uh, those Ten Wizard Saint guys will be involved though considering this is Fairy Tail it’s going to go all Bleach-Squad-Zero and have all the powerful good guys be taken out and the Fairy Tail guild get all the screentime. Which sucks.

Overall not to impressed though it definitely isn't a horrible chapter. It's just that we've been doing this 'buildup' for a while. Man, in an ideal world all these flashbacks and whatnot would've taken place in stead of Avatar and Orochi and all those bullshit filler, and we would be a couple of chapters into the Dragon King Festival Ragnarok thing right about now.

Daredevil S1E2 Review: In Which Daredevil Is Found In A Dumpster

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 2: Cut Man 

This episode doesn’t really impress me as much as the first episode, but on the other hand it just feels like such a different beast from most of the other superhero TV shows out there in that Daredevil, the titular hero… gets his ass handed to him. Really hard. The first half of this episode features this new character Claire Temple (who’s apparently merged with the character of Night Nurse from the comics… neither of whom I am familiar of) finding a severely wounded Daredevil in a dumpster, and spending like a good ten minutes just playing ‘tell me your secret you mysterious person’ with each other, while Daredevil goes into convulsions due to a pleural effusion and whatnot.

All this is cut back and forth with a rather generic yet still-touching flashback story of Matt’s father, Jack Murdock, dealing with trying to follow fixed boxing matches to get money for his poor son… but the Big One, pitting him against Carl Creel (also known as the Absorbing Man, making a full appearance in Agents of SHIELD’s second season). It’s some Pulp Fiction-esque shit as Jack ends up, naturally, winning the fight and pissing off the bad men running things and gets gunned down… all to get a shit-ton of money for Matt Murdock. It’s a bit generic, honestly, as touching as the story was, though I did think that it was executed well and worked well with the narrative.

What really distracted, however, were the constant cutaways to Foggy and Karen just running around being drunk. We did get the nice, meaningful scene of Karen confessing that she’s traumatized from the whole episode 1 thing, and I did laugh at the “WE ARE FILLED WITH MIGHTY EEL STRENGTH” thing but other than that it feels like relatively unimportant padding and they really could’ve gotten something more interesting for the two of them to do.

Claire is pretty interesting, as this outsider who sees two sides of Daredevil the vigilante – on one hand she’s seen all the people that Daredevil has helped presumably prior to season one. On the other hand Daredevil is an obstinate bastard trying to ignore the wounds on his face, and goes around dropping fire extinguishers on people’s skulls and actually following on with the threat of dropping the corrupt policeman off the roof. Granted it’s into a dumpster and he apparently lived, but this isn’t Batman who uses the fear of being dropped off a roof and ultimately stops from dealing potentially life-threatening injuries.

It’s a really wild contrast to the first episode’s “lawyer story with superheroes thrown in” vibe, switching gears rapidly to explore Daredevil’s, well, more devil-like tendencies. The interrogation with Claire actually advocating Daredevil to stab him in the trigeminal nerve was chilling, and the aforementioned casual endangerment of life adds to how much darker Daredevil is. It is a bit gratuitous, especially the eye-stabbing scene, but again it creates another stark contrast with the rest of the MCU. The fact that Daredevil doesn’t really give a fuck when it’s, y’know, child-kidnapping and human-trafficking shitstains… also do like the little nod to the ending of last episode because the kid Daredevil is trying to rescue is the catalyst for this whole episode taking place.

Claire’s costume – basically nothing more than a white hoodie and an additional ghost-esque piece of cloth with creepy eyeholes to cover her face – looks awesome and creates a stark contrast to Daredevil. It’s white compared to black, obviously, but it also actually looks creepy and sinister and actually looks like a costume instead of Daredevil’s piss-poor fashion choice. I mean, I know the dude’s blind but come on, when even the show itself makes fun of the “costume”…

Also, that last fight scene in the corridor? It did go on for a bit too long and Daredevil did look freakishly tired all throughout, but it was a fucking awesome scene and it made sitting through this mostly talk-heavy episode totally worth it. He just keeps falling down even while he does these impressive feats of jumping around and dropkicking and spin kicks and whatnot, but like the message in the flashback, he always gets up and it’s a nice, subtle way to tie in the two sections – something that Arrow could stand to learn.

It’s definitely a slower episode and one that’s more geared towards displaying how much darker this show is going to be, and sets the tone of the superhero sections of the Daredevil TV show. I still find it weird because Daredevil really looked pathetic in the first half of the episode, being beaten off-screen by a bunch of thugs, though I guess still persevering in spite of his injuries counts as badassery? I dunno, it just kinda seemed like an odd choice to show the main hero be so pathetic early on in the series, and I do realize that invincible main characters are boring, but on the other hand you don’t just tear down the badass cred of your main character in the second episode.

Though, again, that final fight scene was beautifully shot and re-establishes Daredevil’s badass status so yeah, all is forgiven. Overall I still think this episode is a bit of a weird beast, but I still kinda liked it.

Nanatsu no Taizai 139 Review: Ban's Backstory!

The Seven Deadly Sins, Chapter 139: Tell Me About Your Past

Not a particularly eventful chapter, though like the Tokyo Ghoul one it's no less important. We get a quick flashback to the end of the King-Ban-Golem fight from before we got distracted by more Ten Commandments stuff, and, well, nothing particularly interesting happens. Ban's immortality revives the Fairy Tree, his blood revives King, the fairies accept King as their king, Ban threatens to kill the fairy bitch if she tries to harm Elaine, and then sets off with Jericho. Pretty much what we assumed happened, and told as fast as possible. Honestly it would've worked better if we just eschewed the whole 'Ban pierced by roots' cliffhanger and just had this, because that bit was pointless and one can't help but wonder if there was some plot point that was nixed because the whole Meliodas-getting-power and Galan and Diane's flashback and all that jazz took up way too much time.

We get a bit of Jericho and Ban in the city and Jericho gets super excited and flustered about sleeping in one bed with Ban... except, of course, Ban sleeps on the floor. It's of course a shit-ass thief city where women are ogled and there are thieves everywhere, and Ban apparently lived there as a kid.

Some random dude gets beaten up by some random thugs, but one of the thugs let slip that this hooded dude is the one who revived a dead person, so naturally Ban beat all of them up no problem. Ban brings the hooded dude into the inn (and nicely done, the art does show the hooded dude's arm with speed lines) before throwing him onto the wall, revealing that the hooded dude stole Jericho's wallet while pretending to be unconscious.

The hooded dude reveals himself to be a Were-Fox, a beast man. Not a Werewolf, a Were-Fox. Okay then. The Were-Fox admits defeat in thieving skills to Ban, but denies reviving someone from the dead, telling Ban that humans are quick to blame gods, demons and monsters for everything they don't understand. But the Were-Fox collapse form exhaustion, and begins talking about how he can't run away from death, and rants about how the Were-Foxes are intelligent among the beast men, but physically weak and basically forced into a life of constant thievery by the humans.

Ban then flashes back, remembering how he used to only live by stealing. And we see little Ban getting beat up just for trying to steal a potato, before being put into jail and befriending this mentor character (WHO WILL DIE I GUARANTEE) called Zhivago. So we're getting a Ban flashback, I guess? Not exactly the right time for another flashback because holy shit man what about the Ten Commandments and Dreyfus Fraudrin and Diane and everything else... but on the other hand Ban is my favourite character so I don't particularly mind this detour. It's a world-building chapter with the Were-Foxes and the thief town and Ban's backstory being explored, and we did get a couple of genuinely funny moments with Jericho, who's usually just... there, and it's overall a pretty solid chapter other than the weak recap pages.

Daredevil S01E01 Review: Great Episode, Stupid Costume

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 1: Into the Ring 

Okay, I did say that I wasn’t really interested in Marvel-Netflix’s Daredevil. It’s just like why I didn’t exactly watch DC’s Constantine, though the upcoming tie-in with Arrow’s fourth season might change that depending on how much I like Constantine in that show. See, unlike John Constantine who I only know tangentially from Zatanna and Batman comics, I actually do know Daredevil. I mean, I am hardly an expert on Marvel comics (unlike DC) and I won’t say I’ve read a lot of Daredevil comics… but hey, I was bored and I ended up booting up the pilot of this show.

It was… okay. My Daredevil reviews will be a bit different from my normal TV show reviews, since it’s a been out for a while I’m going to be a lot more concise instead of the rambling way I usually review TV shows that came out a week or a month ago. Also not sure how regular Daredevil reviews will be, because I'm not sure how regular my watching schedule's gonna be. So yeah.

Anyway, Daredevil the TV show is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is honestly the main reason that it drew me in, but the way this pilot is structured it might as well as simply be a courtesy. Unlike its sister-show Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil doesn’t even bother trying to fit with the tone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, being far darker, far more pessimistic and has a focus on the dark seedy underbelly of crime. There is the offhand mention of the destruction of New York City (presumably what happened in the first Avengers movie, though, y’know, they tend to blow cities up and it might be referring to something more recent, basically any MCU movie before Age of Ultron) but other than that Daredevil makes it clear that it is doing its own thing, its own darker Netflix-sanctioned brutal tone.

It’s a good take, certainly. And one that fit someone like Daredevil better than, say, CW’s heavily-Batman-inspired take on Green Arrow. But without getting into Arrow comparisons, Daredevil’s first pilot episode was… pretty decent. It does take it slow, introducing the main characters – Matt Murdock (a.k.a. Daredevil) and his buddy Foggy Nelson, plus the damsel-in-distress-turned-main-character Karen Page. Karen is Daredevil's main love interest in the comics, but I didn't know/forgot that particular bit so it's a bit of a welcome surprise when it turned out that she was going to be far more important than what she initially seemed to be. We spent quite a bit of time in the beginning building up Matt and Foggy’s “those two dudes” chemistry, as well as the whole “lawyers without profit” setup they have going on. The sheer amount of snark that Foggy and Murdock lays down onto various characters does definitely have a MCU vibe, I must say. We did get a fair bit of backstory about Murdock’s father and how he got blind, but we don’t exactly get the entire episode devoted to just being Daredevil: Origins, which is great and is something more superhero shows/movies should be doing. Though honestly Daredevil's origin story isn't all that spectacular and the little we saw in the opening and the short flashback bonding moment is really all that we need to know. 

Daredevil’s action scenes are, of course, pretty awesome, well-choreographed and nowhere as brutal as people led me to believe. Or I dunno, maybe Game of Thrones and 24 have desensitized me to TV violence. It’s pretty nice and I do like how Murdock doesn’t immediately win his fights... unlike what the Ben Affleck movie did with him having super-strength, I do like how Daredevil is just a blind man with above-average martial arts training and better hearing to compensate for his blindness, and against the trained assassin in the second half of the episode he actually does take as much of a beating as he doled out. I also do like how there isn't any overlong scenes detailing his powers. We did get a bit of him listening to people's hearbeats to see if they're lying, and him listening to his surroundings and whatnot, but it isn't fully spelled out for us and I appreciate that quite a bit. 

The show’s tone is definitely darker, though, make no mistake. Daredevil’s main villain isn’t some alien army or fallen Norse god or rogue AI, it’s a faceless, well-organized criminal organization that’s happy to kill all the little people, and I absolutely love the ending which shows that while Daredevil might’ve saved Karen Page from being killed, exposed the shady deals in the company and those kidnapped girls in the opening scene, we get some Godfather-esque cutaways from Murdock training to showing how Kingpin’s organization is still running at full strength and how all the people that failed the organization (the assassin that Daredevil fought at the climax, Karen’s boss, the poor policeman blackmailed to attack Karen being found by his daughter) all wiped out.

It’s a nicely structured episode, with Karen being built up as just a random episodic case that Murdock and Foggy takes up, but ends up introducing Karen as the third member of the main characters and tying into the big Kingpin (oh come on literally everyone knows that the unseen main villain is Kingpin) organization plot pretty seamlessly. I also do like the smooth ‘main villain’s right-hand-man’ Wesley (who wasn’t named on-screen in this episode) due to how strong his performance was. We also get established to what I'm assuming to be the main lieutenants of Kingpin's organization. In addition to Wesley, we've got the white old man Leland Owlsley (who people told me is actually a major villain, the Owl, in the comics. Well with a name like Owlsley...), the Chinese drug lord Madam Gao, the Japanese man Nobu and the Russian brothers Vladimir and Anatoly. At least they're easily identified by race, if nothing else. 

Daredevil’s costume design is extremely stupid looking, far worse than the ‘let’s make this realistic and street’ design that Arrow had in his first season, and even more ridiculous than his one-piece horned comic book suit… and when you look worse than your already-silly comic book counterpart, you know you’ve done fucked up. That’s really my biggest complaint about this show. Yes, you can make things darker or alter details so it doesn’t look too stupid… but basically ditching the costume in favour of wrapping a piece of cloth on your eyes and wearing black clothes? Jeez.

But overall it was a nice watch. Not particularly great, but it’s definitely a solid episode. It veers more into the ‘optimistic naïve lawyers digging way too deep into a powerful organization’ type of crime thriller stories than, y’know, superheroes throwing tonfas at bad guys, but it is a pretty decent pilot.