Legends of Tomorrow S01E02 Review: Awesomeness

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 2: Pilot, Part 2

Beyond the fact that neither Rip Hunter nor Ray Palmer stood out much this episode, it really addressed a lot of the problems that the first part of the pilot had, and ended up living up to its potential. Now not having to do a rushed, pacing-destroying recap of all the members of the group, the show is given ample room to breathe and actually tell its story.

Team Legends spends their time in 1975, though once more the team gets split up a couple of ways. We deal a lot with time-travel this episode, hilariously funny because the Flash this week also dealt with the ramifications of changing the timeline. Well, while the moral of the Flash is that you can't forcibly make changes to the timeline, that's the ultimate goal of Team Legends. And while they managed to at least minimize damage to the timeline this time around, their little time-traveling crusade claims a casualty as Hawkman dies!

Well, no big loss there. Hawkman's easily the least interesting of the group, especially when he proves himself quite useless and kind of a jerk. Not only does he barely react to his son's death last episode despite theoretically remembering him, he also makes advances towards Kendra when they should be figuring out how to get Kendra to meditate and learn how to use the magic knife to kill Vandal Savage. Also, Hawkman's excuse for not knowing of the language on the dagger (itself ending up to be a sappy love poem) ends up to not really quite hold. 'It's a language known to the clerics'? Carter, you've lived 4000 years, you're telling me Chay-Ara never taught you that language at all? Doubtful that this is the last we'll see of Hawkman since reincarnation and everything, but we did the threefold way of removing a character that didn't really work, creating a martyr figure for the team to rally around, and delivering a big sacrifice to raise the stakes. 

But other than that, the episode focused a lot on characterization. It doesn't quite touch on everyone quite as well, and not all of them worked (RE: Carter Hall), and both Heatwave and Rip Hunter aren't really doing that much, but everyone gets their moment to shine and develop. None moreso than Martin Stein, though Captain Cold does give him a run for his money.

Stein's scenes just utterly shine throughout the episode. From the moment he walked on stage in this episode just threatening the random TerroristCon guard with historical knowledge (and earning him the respect of Heatwave) and just hamming it up in what is easily my favourite Martin Stein moment of all time, to the sub-plot of him having to hunt down his younger self to get the Alpha Particle Scanner that his younger self had (apparently the Waverider doesn't have the capability?)... and meeting his younger self! At first it's just good fun as Stein's younger self is just this super-brilliant bong-smoking dude who keeps hitting on Sara (and has thick luxurious hair) it ends up being a bit of an introspection moment for the older Stein as he is filled with self-loathing over how little he hasn't changed over the years, how he's still an arrogant prick who thinks he has all the answers -- and he points to his grandstanding earlier in the episode as clear evidence of that. Huh.

The older Martin Stein also very nearly had his entire marriage annulled by interacting with his younger self (who followed Team Legends to the Waverider and missed his first meeting with Clarissa), and I have to admit, it would be an easy sacrifice to make for the show-writers, with the loss of Martin Stein's marriage going to factor extremely heavily onto Stein's character and be a huge loss, but they don't have to kill anyone to do it. The prospect of Stein losing his marriage actually affected me more than the actual death of Carter Hall, I can't lie.

Sara and Jax plays off well the older and younger Martin Steins, and Jax's talks of encouragements to the older Martin Stein is well-written, and we finally address the fact that Stein basically abducted Jax against his wishes. Sara... still doesn't do much other than swapping the Rogues for the Firestorm Duo as the ones she hung around with, but she does get a couple of starring roles as she teases the older Stein because his younger self keeps hitting on her, and she does beat up a bunch of Savage's thug single-handedly.

Captain Cold also steals the show, even if his storyline isn't quite as tragic and self-introspective as Martin Stein. Cold just owns every scene he shows up in, from talking to the guard to TerroristCon, or planning a heist, or simply interacting with the novice do-gooder Ray Palmer. He's finally gotten back the smooth charm from the Flash that he kinda lacks in the first episode, and he plays off Ray Palmer quite well. We get a bit of an impression that Cold is more concerned about actually making a mark with his heists instead of just making money, we get more references to the asshole of a father he had... and, y'know, he's just awesome all around. 

Ray is a bit less so. He gets to learn that he can't just cock his way through everything and has to actually leave some things to the experts -- like breaking and entering -- as well as ending up causing a big temporal flux by dropping a chunk of his suit in the 70's... but otherwise I still don't really think Ray got adequate screentime or characterization. The miniaturization effects were still cool, though, even if it's lower-budget than Ant-Man. Oh well, we still have an entire season to go. 

Kendra also gets to rant about how Carter shouldn't let destiny decide that they have to fall in love together (even if Kendra ends up falling for Carter in the end for... some reasons I don't understand) and it's a nice scene for her when she's just trying to meditate and solve how to use the magic Aman Dagger while Carter's more concerned that Kendra has remembered them having sexytimes and seems to want to re-enact said scene. We get the twist that the dagger's power has to be wielded by Kendra to actually finish off Vandal Savage, which is cool. And leads to Carter's death. Whoops.

Savage himself is still a pretty effective villain. He's just full of gravitas and works quite well for me, being a real threat especially when he establishes his credo as a hero killer. Making him immune to, well, everything other than Kendra's dagger ends up being a bit cheap of a way to take him down, but as this show proves, an Atom suit blast to the face can sure as hell slow Vandal Savage down, and I bet being nuclear-blasted to the face would hurt a hell lot to Savage as well. We'll see just what the full scope of Savage's powers are, however. Back during Arrow/Flash he had these magic tricks which he hasn't exactly shown now. Still, I like Savage. He's cool.

Damien Darhk, all dressed up Blofeld-like, shows up unexpectedly in the 70's, looking as old as he did in Arrow of the present day! Blood rituals? Demonic immortality? Lazarus Pit? Whatever the case, it's a welcome cameo, and not one that ended up being a big 'what is this all about' like Claire Temple's cameo in Jessica Jones. Darhk shows up, does some Darhk things, doesn't overstay his welcome, and leaves.

The action scenes in this episode are likewise awesome. The big superhero throwdown in the VillainCon thing (already awesome because of Martin Stein hamming it up), the other big superhero throwdown in Vandal Savage's holiday home, Sara Lance beating the fuck out of the random scientist goons... it's just fun all around. 

The Flash S02E011 Review: Zooms and Reverse-Flashes, Oh My

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 11: The Reverse-Flash Returns

This was an episode which I wasn't sure would be handled well. I guessed correctly that the Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash that showed up at the post-credits scene last episode was Eobard Thawne when he first time-jumped into the past to do battle with the Flash, one of the first times in his career as a time-travelling supervillain instead of his final gambit in season one. It's beautifully complicated, but it definitely makes sense. The Eobard Thawne here has not experienced everything that we have in season one, and it's kind of a temporal echo where everything that Thawne did (from Thawne's point of view) needs to have happened for him to go back to the past (in Thawne's future, stick with me here), kill Barry's mother and masquerade as Harrison Wells, thus leading to the whole events of Flash season one and his eventual death. But what about Eddie Thawne's death and Eobard Thawne being erased from the timeline and shit? Well, Harry Wells made up something about temporal echoes and alternate splinter timelines, so that's what we're going with.

In any case, this episode gave us a wonderful origin story to the Reverse-Flash, allowing a villain of credible threat to return as a recurring villain in the future. It's a great way to reuse the Reverse-Flash, and the fact that this is a very faithful adaptation of a more 'classic' Eobard Thawne compared to the far more engaging Harrison Wells Evil Mentor Life Destroyer we got in the first season is a nice touch. Eobard Thawne here relates his extremely comic-book backstory, that he idolized the Flash, only to learn that he's destined to be a villain, so he said 'fuck it' and became a villain. It's like it's taken from a DC character book or something! Eobard Thawne really can't hold a candle to the sheer charisma of his season 1 counterpart, but few villains can. And Thawne's role as the villain of the week was particularly great. It's a bit disappointing, perhaps, in that it ends up being a pretty self-contained episode and not a big game-changer like it was hyped up to be (Zoom, again, is a no-show) but hey.

Barry's interactions with Thawne was great, even if he might have inadvertently caused Thawne to learn so much more regarding the fastest man alive. Cisco and Harry Wells also get some really great lines and interactions with the rather confused but still standard evil Thawne, showing that even when this Thawne is utterly inexperienced and was beaten by Barry in less than a scuffle, he still carries enough gravitas and caused-slash-will-cause enough psychological damage to totally fuck up our heroes.

Also Dr. Tina McGee shows up to do stuff! She's cool. I like her. 

Barry also has to struggle with the fact that he has to send Thawne back to the future because Thawne is involved in this insane time loop system (which may or may not hold up to the time travel rules in Legends of Tomorrow, we'll see) and Thawne being locked up in their basement instead of travelling back to the future changes the timeline significantly enough to nearly cause Cisco to disappear. Barry did end up throwing Thawne back to the future, but he did save McGee from dying. We'll see if this ends up having ramifications, or if it's just something inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. 

Speaking of Cisco, he got a bit of a superpower upgrade thanks to Harry Wells figuring out that adrenaline is the thing that causes his Vibe powers to be activated, and created these cool sunglasses (based on his comic counterpart's sunglasses) that will cause him to better Vibe things. I don't think we got any easter eggs in the montage of stuff that Cisco vibed in this episode, though.

Iris and Wally get a rather decent, inoffensive side-plot. Iris is so much better utilized when she's not bogged down with nonsensical, borderline-incestuous love triangles, isn't she? The bit with Iris and Wally eventually reconciling with their dying mother and forgiving her is something that you could see from a mile away, but it was done well, without much fanfare but without glossing over it. 

Oh, and Patty, despite going away last episode, is still around. To go away again. Her storyline is getting exhaustive, and Barry ends up just looking like a gigantic tool. He's all like "aw, I didn't get a chance to tell her" at the end of last episode, and when Patty shows up with dialogue that's almost literally "tell me, I'm giving you a chance now before I leave" Barry... decides to pussy out again. And then Patty calls Barry out on some fake threat and ends up figuring out the identity anyway. It's boring, and honestly a bit of distraction from far more interesting stuff, but hopefully it's over and done with. Bye, Patty. Don't come back.

Even moreso than Patty, I don't care much about the Jay/Caitlin nonsense romance, but we did get a gigantic bombshell dropped upon us that Jay's Earth-1 counterpart... has changed his name. And he is... HUNTER ZOLOMON! Who will sound like a stupid name for anyone who isn't familiar with the comics, but Hunter Zolomon is the alter-ego of Zoom from the comics, who is radically different than the Zoom here. Time will tell where this big plot twist will go, but it's definitely a moment that made me go "whaaaaaaaaaat?!" as it's a clever little plot twist that doesn't seem to be pulled out of the writers' ass. 

Overall, a pretty great episode, despite my whinings. I just wish we get a bit more Zoom, because comparing the positions of the first and second seasons, Zoom still is nowhere the credible threat like Reverse-Flash was. Hopefully he gets better. 

Toriko 356 Review: Skipping Everything

Toriko, Chapter 356: All Coming Together

We're skipping everything! As you might be aware, I'm not a fan about skipping all the journey with Zebra, Sunny and Coco's teams. I mean, yeah, giving the pacing a kick to the balls and forcing the plot to move with the whole Neo crisis is great, but skipping everything entirely? We could've at least have had a courtesy one-two chapter flashback per area, but I guess that would just be even weirder for the pacing. Shame. I'm curious just what went along in the development of the manga, because the way this is built up is that we'll get 15-20 chapters per area, but things are just sped up with only the already-underway Blue Grill arc finished up after the sudden speed-up. 

But we just apparently wrap everything up, and it's a shame. The Zebra/Brunch pair has been very popular and we've been waiting for them to team up in, well, forever, so it's a shame that we don't see them. Sunny and Livebearer, too, are two of my favourite characters in Toriko so not seeing them team up and play off each other's flavour of weirdness is a shame. No one cares for the Coco/Tairan pair and evidently the manga doesn't, glossing over their partnership even worse than the other two pairs. 

We get quick descriptions of the area, and how Neo's attack kinda made their jobs easier -- Brunch and Zebra were spared from fighting the beasts of Area 5 thanks to the meatballs' arrival and managed to prepare News, for example. Yun the penguin get even more and more bigger as his camping capabilities are literally stretched to the limit per area. We see the Cave of the Old which was foreshadowed before that will age you 200,000 times the normal speed, stretches several kilometers like a labyrinth, and apparently the way to get through it safely is with the Back Channel. Jiji knew about this, and because he's a total dickhead, he neglected to mention it to Sunny and Livebearer, trusting them to come over it. I mean, yeah, Sunny and Livebearer did get Earth (which is connected to everything on the planet and absorbs nutrients or some shit) but that's besides the point. Jiji is a dick.

Sunny and Livebearer mentioned that they ran onto the 'Civilization' which showed them the way, and they ran onto Yosaku and that other dude from the 0th Biotope, so presumably everything went as planned like how it was in the Heracles, Bambina and Moon areas. Except off-screen. Man, all the wasted buildup...

We then go to Area 3, which is made entirely of clouds, and we've seen snippets of this area before, where the 0th Biotope HQ is and the mysterious floating roads that Jirou and Setsuno (?) were travelling through. Atom is apparently the magma that shoots into space and gathers space dust or some shit like that, and preparing it requires the removal of all the poison from it. Coco and Tairan are coincidentally fitted for the area... but we honestly don't get much from them. Even the farewell where Zebra, Brunch, Sunny and Livebearer all expressed some bromance with each other was reduced to a running joke for the Coco-Tairan pair. 

Literally everyone else goes off to bring the full course back to the human world, and that includes people like Chiyo and Brunch who you would think would hang out with the actual fighters. Brunch at least is going off to meet the Bishokukai, which means he might come in with, oh... who else is left from the Bishokukai that isn't already fighting with Neo? Er... Grinpatch, I guess?

Zebra, Coco, Sunny, Komatsu and Jiji head off to Area 2 on a leaf surrounded with Jiji's back channel, and Jiji starts to tell a story about the origin of Neo. Then we cut away to the Neo Blue Nitros telling the rampaging Jirou about the origin of Neo. Then we cut away to Toriko receiving the information from smelling Guinness' piss and telling Starjun about the origin of Neo. Then we cut away to Joie telling Midora about the origin of Neo...

Which will happen next chapter! D'oh.

Yeah, it's a decent enough chapter for the three aborted arcs, I suppose, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth nonetheless. 

One Piece 814 Review: Assassin Prince

One Piece, Chapter 814: Let's Go See Master Nekomamushi

Drum Kingdom's new soldier hats have Chopper antlers! That's funny. We see Kureha and Dalton, who probably won't really ever show up in the manga ever again other than in montages like this. Which is a shame. Kureha's one of my favourite one-off islander character.

This chapter is alright. It's mostly just characters talking, and introducing us to Nekomamushi properly when he's not in his angry 'kill the intruder' mode. He's quite smart and able, evidently, and respects the Straw Hats a great deal, as we see the short flashback after Sanji and Capone went away, noting that the remaining Straw Hats evidently had something personal happen, and tells Carrot to stay out of their business when they clearly don't want/need their help. Nekomamushi, despite being a big scary lion-man samurai... is distracted by catnip. And balls. And despite Brook trying to talk him up earlier in the chapter, Nekomamushi's a bit of a fun character. 

Luffy, Brook and Nami discuss a bit about Sanji's wedding, which is basically what we got last chapter, but emphasized. Luffy's fine with the idea of Sanji getting married, but not that they would be Big Mom's underlings... and less okay with the idea that Sanji will not return. I like how Luffy keeps hitting the giant crocodile mount they were riding on without even noticing it. Robin notes that she had heard the name Vinsmoke before, and Brook... is just silent. We got a reaction out of him last chapter, but he apparently is keeping mum (probably because he doesn't have lips. Yohoho!) for whatever reasons.

Zoro, meanwhile, is in "who cares" mode. He for whatever reason sees Sanji leaving as being ungrateful and causing problems for the group, which is hilarious. But Zoro does make a good point, noting how they've angered Kaidou due to their actions in Punk Hazard and Dressrosa, also noting that the confrontation with Kaidou is close considering that the Minks and the samurai are involved as well. The last thing they would want to happen is, y'know, picking a fight with another Yonkou. Even though Luffy already did it at the end of Mermaid Island. Zoro and Nami argue a bit about Sanji's fault in all this, Luffy wants to just charge in, while the rest of the crew has more logic than that.

They arrive at Nekomamushi's realm to talk to Pekoms, and we meet Pedro the jaguar, who we briefly met before as the unseen master of the cow and gorilla that fought Luffy earlier in this arc. They lead the Straw Hats to Nekomamushi, who's eating Lasanga in what can only be a reference to Garfield. Nekomamushi's just a fun ditz, while still being competent enough to give our heroes some information. No wonder he and Brook get along well. 

Also Chopper's got a deer mink girlfriend! Maybe. He likes her, at least.

The Straw Hats meet Pekoms (or Peko-mamushi as Luffy calls him um what) and Pekoms reveals to us that the Vinsmoke family... is a family of assassins in the underworld. So, 'Prince'... was way completely off the course and all the speculations that we've made over the years? Prince of a kingdom, son of a Celestial Dragon... all of that... is just quashed as Sanji is apparently a member of the biggest assassin's guild in the One Piece world. Woo curveballs! One Piece, you crazy manga, never stop surprising us. 

Boku no Hero Academia 75 Review: Gross Muscle Man

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 75: Heroes Stake It All

We cut back and forth between the cast members, before focusing back on Midoriya's fight against Gross Muscle Man, which is pretty decent. We start off with Todoroki and Bakugou, who meets the creepy Hellraiser dude... who's chowing down on a dismembered arm. Well, fuck. Hellraiser dude is creepy enough by itself, and even Bakugou is creeped out, but Boku no Hero Academia has never used graphic imagery like dismemberment. I mean, sure, Midoriya's arm gets mangled all the time, but, well... Todoroki does note that Tokoyami and Shouji were the ones in front of them, and Shouji can create body parts, so it might be that, but shit, Hellraiser Bondage Dude is creepy. 

We get a handy 'where is everybody' map! None of the villains are named, though a lot of the B-class nobodies whose named I don't remember are, which is cool.

Spinner, with his insane "Iron Throne Sword" as someone on Tumblr called it, engages Mandalay, who distracts Spinner with a telepathic "man you're handsome" thing before slashing him. The dude with the big wrapped-up cylinder, apparently called Magne (a.k.a. Hikishi Kenji), has magnet powers... that attract humans, apparently. Tiger stops Magne from fully pulling Mandalay, though.

Mandalay notes that Ragdoll isn't responding... was she the one that Hellraiser dude ate?

We get back to Midoriya fighting Gross Muscle Man, and, well, the visual imagery of muscle fibers threading in and out and forming entire giant arms is just... disturbing. That's some clever use of the standard self-strengthening superpower, that's for sure. We get some interesting tidbits about just what the villain alliance is planning. Midoriya is apparently marked for death, and apparently Gross Muscle Man has some 'requirement' regarding Bakugou though he isn't keen on elaborating further, just going "hey, you know where Bakugou is? No? 'Kay".

Muscle Man is just violent and barbaric, hitting Midoriya over and over and over. And the art is just gorgeous in this scene, showing action that really looked speedy and brutal. Midoriya's strength can't keep up and Muscle Man just monologues about how his gross muscle thing is just so much better and all that jazz. Kouta lobs a rock at Muscle Man's head, still afraid but at least trying something. The kid mentions that he's the child of the Water Horses, and Muscle Man just gets extra-angry and gives some crazy rant about how you should back up what you want to do with your strength... and the Water Horses died because they simply just aren't able. 

Midoriya charges in, trapping his broken arm in-between the forming muscle fibers, charges up his muscles on his good arm, and prepares to strike with 100% power. That's intense! That's awesome. It really makes Midoriya work for his victory, Gross Muscle Man gets some depth, Kouta probably gets his 'hate heroes and villains' thing turned around in a rather believable way, everyone else gets more setup... pretty awesome.

Nanatsu no Taizai 158 Review: New Dudes

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 158: The Heroes of Revelry

Not much to say about this chapter, really, which is around to introduce us to some new dudes. Via montage! Everyone's fighting these giant sand dinosaur things, and we briefly see that Threader, Hendricksen and baby Griamor are hanging out together. A couple of pages is devoted to Diane, Gilthunder and Hauser doing their best to take down their sand monster, but it has slime that causes all weapons to slide off, and eventually gets defeated by the caped dude with a staff we saw at the end of last chapter, who freezes the slime on the sand monster. 

We then cut away to a bunch of other characters we haven't seen before. There's this little elf-looking kid making poems while playing on a guitar. Sadistic poems. There is this group made up of three scarecrow-faced jester knights who fought with poison and are apparently assassin-knights of Maraka. There is this dude with hair that covers his eyes, who apparently punched the sand-monster so hard he made a crapton of craters on it. Probably came over from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, then. He mourns the death of the monster and is all like 'oh the lamenting of the soul' and bullshit like that. There's your requisite Japanese Iai samurai character, who even dresses like a stereotypical samurai, like Nobunaga from Hunter x Hunter or Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin, who naturally cuts the monster he faces into two.

And then we get all these shots of these characters one-shotting a single sand monster (well, Diane's group failed to even kill theirs, and the clowns were 3-on-1) but we then see a pile of at least five. Who's responsible? Well, Meliodas. Who's hanging out with Arthur.

Overall a mostly pointless chapter other than to introduce a bunch of new characters... though I'm not sure that we actually need so many new characters. But oh well. 

Fairy Tail 470 Review: Dragonslayer

Fairy Tail, Chapter 470: Hybrid Theory

Sorry. My laptop fritzed out and deleted all the Sunday/Monday manga reviews when I was writing them, real life got in the way, and I never got around to really re-doing something I already did. I guess now's a good time as any to talk about them, now that the Thursday/Friday Shonen Jump ones are out. (Tokyo Ghoul might take some time to write by virtue of there being so much to talk about)

Anyway, Fairy Tail! The first chapter in a long, long time that I can unashamedly call good. 

We don't cut back to any of the other guilds where the C-listers are inevitably holding the line until Fairy Tail members show up to save the day, which, let's be honest, is what's going to eventually happen. We don't get some overdone speech about friendship and the importance of Fairy Tail the guild. We don't get Lucy pointlessly crying. We don't get retcons that don't make sense. We don't get redundant flashbacks. We don't get Natsu being all macho and shit.

No, what we got was an actually genuinely well-done plot twist. Something that was actually built-up upon a while back, progresses in a way that makes sense (something that Fairy Tail is kinda poor at when they do a plot twist) and doesn't randomly show up. We pick up where we last left off, and it seemed like it's going to just be an interesting, if unimpressive, continuation of the Ten Saints battle. God Serena had the four good Saints at his mercy, and Walrod is thinking about how he's going to make a last-ditch effort to take God Serena down with him. 

Remember how I said in my last Fairy Tail review how shitty it was for the chapter to cut to Walrod, Jura and those other two dudes being defeated without actually showing them? Well, this last stand was done pretty decently. Walrod summons a crapton of trees to lift God Serena up. Wolfheim (who's totally going to be the Strausses' father or something, isn't he) transforms into a demon monster thing and whacks God Serena in the face. Jura does some earth fist punch thing. Draculos drains God Serena's powers or something. 

Of course, Hades August and the Spriggan weird-assassin dude are still around so even if they took out God Serena they're still in peril. God Serena then shows off his skills, which is displaying a crapton of Dragon Slayer elemental magic. And the chapter up to this sequence alone would've made for a decent if unimpressive, chapter. God Serena uses ground, fire, water and wind spells (well, cavernous, purgatory, neptune and gale) and defeats the four saints, and assassin dude says that Serena has eight dragon lacrima in his body. 

Walrod is all desperate and suddenly everyone goes "what is this overwhelming magic I sense?" And a figure approaches. I groan because I think this would be Natsu, pulling his Main Character Godmode to beat up God Serena and be all "because I am Fairy Tail!" and some shit like that, but no. Acnologia of all people arrives. He delivers an actually badass line instead of a tired catchphrase that wasn't that cool in the first place. "Smells like dragon." God Serena makes a bit of a boast, but Acnologia just one-shots God Serena. And I do mean one-shot. I mean, it would be cooler if Acnologia ripped off Serena's head, but he ripped out a chunk off his side, and just calmly walks of with the same flat expression, saying he's going to slay the other seven.

It's a great chapter! I mean, a bit of a shame that it's not going to really be followed up with something actually cool since, y'know, Fairy Tail, where every damn person in the guild is protected by plot armour, but hey, I call it like I see it. It's a genuinely nice twist, a well-written chapter that seemed to be building up God Serena, and then Acnologia re-establishes his status as the series' Big Bad and Hero Killer, to quote a couple of tropes. And after the honestly disappointing affair Zeref had in recent chapters, it's something we definitely needed.

The Walking Dead S01E05 Review: Conspiracies and Burying the Dead

The Walking Dead, Season 1, Episode 5: Wildfire

A bit of a slower episode, and honestly I don't have as much to say about this episode. A good chunk of this episode is just Shane and Rick arguing with each other, while the rest of the camp tries to recover from the aftermath of episode 4's zombie attack. Rick believes that their camp position is compromised and they are better served going off to the CDC building which is very far off (the hell do I know where Georgia is in respect to Atlanta)... a risky proposition since resources are limited and they're not sure of whether there will be a payoff, but then again there's not much else to do just hanging around. Shane and Rick get into a bit of an argument, and thanks to the whole Shane-Lori friction there's a moment when Shane and Rick are in the woods, and there's a chilling moment where Shane has his shotgun set on Rick's head. It's not clear just what is going through Shane's head, or if he's just working out the frustrations from their arguments, or if he's just considering shooting Rick so he can continue to fuck Lori... but it's a good thing Dale showed up.

There are a couple of nice moments for the minor characters, but the ones that get the most screentime this episode are Andrea and Jim. Jim's basically a plot device, though, and despite being set up to be important with his weird prophetic dream, he's apparently bitten by a walker last episode, and while he tries to hide it, well, there's no stopping the disease. And therein comes the biggest emotional blow to the group. No matter how hard they try, they can't save Jim, and going to CDC is a very long shot anyway. But they can't really leave him alive, and while Daryl could've pointed out that Jim's zombification is imminent in a more diplomatic way than running at him with a pickaxe, it's still a valid point. They eventually get consent from Jim to leave him behind so he can die in peace, which certainly is something more dignified than being shot in the head after turning into a zombie.

Andrea had to deal with her dead sister's body, and protects it fiercely with the gun skills she learned from Rick. For a moment it seemed like Amy's about to become a zombie and fuck the sentimental Andrea up, but apparently Andrea had enough nerves and balls to end Amy's unlife by herself. It's a nice, heartbreaking moment that might've ran on for a bit too long, but certainly effective in making Andrea more as a character.

Carol gets to whack Ed's head with a pickaxe. Damn, girl, I know he beat you and I know someone has to break his brain, but when you make even Daryl nervous...

Morales and his family (he had a family?? I didn't know that) split off from the group for... uh... vague reasons. There's some talk about his family or whatever but they don't really make sense. Apparently he doesn't show up ever, so I honestly wonder why not kill Morales off instead of Jim. I literally can't give two shits about Jim, who's claim to fame is that he went loony one time and dug holes, whereas as little screentime Morales got, he's still part of the Atlanta crew and did a fair amount of fighting with Rick, Glenn and the rest. Oh well.

Everyone else goes off with Rick, though, even Daryl. Daryl's basically the team's comedic sociopath at this point. He's definitely cooperative and while he bursts into angry tantrums at times all it takes is Rick, Shane, T-Dog and/or Glenn to hold him back and he'll usually calm down. Certainly far more reasonable than Merle, though the fact that, y'know, the people in that group left his brother to die is still going to be a ticking time-bomb if/when Merle returns.

The love triangle, if it can be called that since Lori is pretty much a faithful wife who's spurning all of Shane's delusions of love, is starting to get annoying and we really need some payoff or confrontation at the final episode of the season. Though the fact that this actually ties in to whether Rick or Shane's decision is the right one makes Shane's attempts at currying favour with Lori somewhat more relevant.

They do end up in the CDC building and while there's an overly-long 'LET US IN' sequence, apparently there's a mysterious scientist who's driven into near-suicide thanks to, well, his work in trying to figure out a cure to the titular 'Wildfire' ending up failed because he spilled something into some other thing, he's forced to evacuate by the helpful computer (Red Queen is that you) who proceeds to sanitize his entire lab. By way of explosives, thus completely destroying every single sample in the room. We get a couple of recordings from Mr. Scientist who gives a fair establishment of how long he's been trapped in the CDC building. He seemed pretty hopeless, though we might get some answers about just what the origin of the zombie plague is. Which, while honestly might not be the most interesting thing, will still help to shape the state of the world. And, well, whether there is a potential of a cure or whatever or not remains to be seen.

Overall there really aren't any glaring issues to this episode. Not even the talky scenes felt like too much padding. But on the other hand there's also not really a stand-out spectacular scene or sequence like the previous episodes, so this episode really felt weaker simply by virtue of being an in-between sequence between episodes four and six, spending most of its scenes either setting up for the confrontation at the CDC building or winding down from the zombie attack on the camp.

The Walking Dead S01E04 Review: Death

The Walking Dead, Season 1, Episode 4: Vatos

Yep, shit goes down as we get two on-screen deaths. Granted, they aren't really the most important of characters -- Ed the wife-beater is hardly going to be mourned by anyone, and while Amy did get an extended bonding scene with her sister at the beginning of this episode, she really hasn't been that much of a presence in the show to really impact that much. Yes, her death scene is sad, especially after the oh-so-tragic moment where Andrea was about to give her that gift, but overall, y'know they're minor characters in the grand scheme of themes.

But the fact that people die, and the fact that all the death happened smack dab in the middle of the safe zone camp where no one thought the walkers were going to attack... hell, they were having a party after the whole successful fish catch by the Andrea-Amy siblings. And so far, other than that one deer-eating zombie, the problems at Camp Lori has always been internal -- the love triangle, Ed being a jackass, Jim being crazy in this episode -- whereas the zombie problem was always focused in the city. This is the inevitable crash of the wall dividing the two settings apart. 

Other than that, though, the episode mostly follows Team Rick's attempts to get Merle (who's MIA at the moment, but the trail they followed confirmed that he at least survived and is in possession of a van) and ends up tangling with this apparently-stereotypical Latino gang that's actually a bunch of nurses and dudes that are protecting a hospital of elderly who couldn't be evacuated out of the city. We get some stuff down at the camp, too, with some interactions of the minor characters -- Dale gets more things to do, Andrea and Amy had their moment, Jim calls Shane out on his apparent 'rule with an iron fist' behaviour, Shane proves he's a better man, Jim has his weird... thing with digging holes and prophetic dreams what the hell is this Game of Thrones or something

A nice little running theme in this episode is how people change thanks to the apocalypse -- Glenn goes from being a pizza boy to an awesome stealth soldier thing, Guillermo the Vatos leader goes from a custodian to basically the leader of a small community, Jim breaks down thanks to apparently leaving his family to be eaten by the zombies, et ceterea.

The Vatos are the main point of interest, though. The apparently stereotypical gang is a facade, and while they do play though and threatened to throw Glenn off the roof and whatnot, they're apparently, well, just faking it. They were a bit of a distraction from the established plotlines, but a welcome one. The sight of other survivors is a nice world-building moment, and for what little screentime he had, Guillermo was a nice little foil to Rick as the leaders of their respective groups. The backstory was pretty cool too, as impractical as it ended up being. Also pretty cool to have Rick's bag of guns be a proper plot device to string this whole thing along. 

Daryl, by the way, is still a bit racist and trigger-happy, but nowhere to the extent that Merle was. A couple of times he managed to be talked down by Rick, and while he might just be angry on principle, he was still pissed that the Vatos abducted Glenn. Yes, he suggests that taking the guns are far more important and practical than saving one man, but in the end Daryl does go ahead with the proposed plan of go in and shoot them all. Or maybe he just wants to shoot people in the head. Hard to say. 

Good thing abuelo was there. It's kind of an anticlimatic resolution to the faceoff between the two groups, but, well, to compensate for that we got the zombie attack on Camp Lori. I think it's a nice take on having proper human antagonists before we dip into the whole 'the worst enemies in a zombie apocalypse are other humans who are still gigantic assholes' territory that literally all zombie genre movies go to. Or maybe we'll get sentient zombies, or demonic zombie masters? Eh, too D&D for this show.

Overall, though, a pretty decent episode. It's pretty much filler -- though I don't know how big a role the Vatos is going to play in future episodes -- with some neat character moments for the B-list characters until the nice confrontation between Rick and Guillermo, and the zombie attack at the end. But it's still a pretty decent episode. There are some weak points, like Jim randomly digging graves for the sake of unneeded foreshadowing. 

Agent Carter S02E02 Review: Zero Matter

Agent Carter, Season 2, Episode 2: A View in the Dark

Still a lot of fun and far more interesting than the first season of Agent Carter was at this point in its life. We get straight to the point with the whole Isodyne conspiracy, revealing that Chadwick is a member of a secretive Council which may or may not be Hydra/AncientHydra (whose only other member is the underwhelmingly-named 'Tom'), but Chadwick himself seemed to not be the brains of the outfit, and rather the more active beast among the pair is Whitney Frost herself. Chadwick gets dismissed by the Council who appreciate having a senator among their members more than, well, anything about the Zero Matter project that he put a lot of resources and time into... though, as Frost points out, it is Chadwick's womanizing that apparently put him into all this business, even if I'm not quite sure what Chadwick banging Jane Scott has got to do with Jane Scott touching the Zero Matter.

 We also get some backstory regarding the black goop courtesy of Jason Wilkes, who helps Peggy out. The black goop is named Zero Matter apparently, which is this mysterious crack in the universe that resulted in Isodyne's atomic tests... which then proceeded to suck up a crapton of tanks and soldiers before becoming, well, a goop. That absorbs everything around it unless held in place by all the special harness and whatnot. By the end of this episode the Zero Matter explodes, seemingly consuming both Wilkes and Frost, but since Frost is revealed to be alive, albeit a Zero Matter crack on her forehead... things are going to get interesting. This is certainly a plot that could rival the likes of Agents of SHIELD instead of some spy stuff... which, while certainly interesting, is extremely underwhleming compared to everything else running along in this universe.

We get a bit more romance on the Peggy front. She seems quite accepting of Sousa finding his love of his life -- though to be fair the nurse and Peggy got it off almost immediately. Sousa seemed to be pretty sure too, intent on popping the question that night until Peggy's SOS (to Jarvis, admittedly) caused him to completely lose everything and go ballistic. I do hope we don't get too exhaustive with this little 'does Sousa have a torch for Peggy' arc. Peggy herself seemed to really like Wilkes during the short time they were together, and I found it pretty decently done even if Wilkes is written to be pretty flirty from the get-go the two actors do have some decent chemistry for Peggy to mourn his death.

(This is the MCU, though. Wilkes will probably return as a metahuman soon)

We also get some nice, far more subtle yet still present addressing of sexism in the era, most notably to Whitney Frost, who in her day job has to struggle at being a slightly older lady actor, having to deal with an actor who disparages her body shape and age to her face. Way more subtle while still being pretty prominent of showing how women are discriminated against instead of... well, everything Supergirl does. Meanwhile, when she's not doing her day job, she apparently is far more active than Chadwick is, going off and threatening doctors with a gun to hand over liquid black hole. Wilkes himself also gets to deal with being a black man in the 40's, briefly dropping the fact that no other company would have his kind as a scientist, and that random eclair-selling douchebag refusing to even talk to him. 

We get a couple of decent action scenes, and a fair amount of cool scenes with both Jarvis and Anna... including Jarvis lifting weights while dressed like someone about to participate in Smackdown to battling with Bernard the flamingo. They don't appear as much as the first episode with the focus on Peggy and Wilkes, but are still a pair of fun characters to be around especially when they deliver comedy in small doses. We don't get anything from Jack's end of the story which I don't mind because I honestly don't care.

Overall a pretty decent episode, quickly setting up all the sci-fi bits. Again, far more eager to start telling the story about Zero Matter and the Council and everything, still fun, still solid and a vast improvement over the first season. Also, it goes without saying that it's a better female superhero show than Supergirl is, tackling feminism without being laughable in the way it does that, handling the romantic subplot well and generally having better pacing and buildup than it. The only thing Peggy Carter really lacks is powers and super-suit. And honestly, I've gone from being apathetic and indifferent about this show to actually quite liking the fun charm it has. 

Agent Carter S02E01 Review: Frozen Corpses and Wine Refineries

Agent Carter, Season 2, Episode 1: The Lady in the Lake

Well, that was fun, if nothing else. I've never really been too impressed by the first season of Agent Carter -- it was certainly a good show, a fun show, but I remain unconvinced that it needs a season two. I mean, this episode is definitely great, and the little ancient-Hydra-cult pin (which probably makes jack shit sense to anyone not caught up to Agents of SHIELD) alone means that there would be tie-ins to that series... and it's definitely a solid episode, and Peggy Carter certainly has her fans out there. I just... I dunno, a series set in the past of a continuity with such a rich present-day storyline means that there's not much that you can really change and the status quo can't be shaken. It's a given that Peggy Carter will survive, that the SSR will get dissolved and replaced with SHIELD, and whatever big threat we're facing will inevitably get taken out. But I digress, because I like Peggy Carter as a character enough -- she's fun -- and the series is serviceable even if it never really reaches the epic heights that other superhero series do. 

The show has kinda changed genres as well, as instead of being a Cold War piece where Peggy needs to gain the respect of her SSR teammates and be regarded as someone more than a secretary... it's delved into a bit of a mystery detective show. And it's definitely an atmospheric piece. I honestly don't care too much about David Sousa and her ship-sinking moment with Peggy when it's revealed he has a new woman during the timeskip, but having Peggy and Edwin Jarvis back is definitely a blast. The two are simply hilarious to watch, and play off each other so well. The main plot is serviceable... the mysterious frozen body in the lake ends up being something far more sinister than a serial killer, and the friendly policeman that Sousa and Carter befriended, Andrew Henry, turns out to be the killer, hired by someone big. But he's contracted the mysterious freezing-virus or whatever the hell that is, and ends up dying. It's a nice enough plot twist, I guess.

The ones behind Henry's death and the whole frozen thing is revealed pretty quickly, as Calvin Chadwick and Whitney Frost, the two owners of Isodyne. Of course the character named Frost is going to be involved with someone getting frozen, eh? Whitney Frost shares a name with the alias of a Marvel supervillain, Madame Masque, so we're going to have ourselves another worthy opponent for Peggy Carter to fight, in addition to the possible team-up of Johann Fenhoff and Arnim Zola that was teased at the end of last season. Oh, and Dottie Underwood.

Dottie shows up at the beginning of the episode, impersonating Peggy and robbing a bank... and immediately gets taken down by Peggy herself. The proto-Black-Widow is one of the outstanding plot strands form the finale of the first season, and I for one am glad that season two is not going to be all about fixing the cliffhangers from season one. Dottie gets arrested, but because Jack Thompson is a bit of a dick (and a sexist dick, though not as much as he was in season 1, and it might be because he just wants the credit here) he pulls Peggy off the Dottie case and lobs Peggy off to Sousa's branch office in L.A.

Jack gets utterly humiliated during his interrogation of Dottie, though, who nearly snaps his neck with a table. Dottie only wants her beloved Peggy and there's definitely some twisted infatuation on Dottie's part. And then Agent Vernon of the FBI shows up, takes Dottie away, and tells Jack that the SSR is done for and the times they are a'changing. Jack is enough of a power-grabber that he decides to throw his lot in with the FBI, though I honestly don't care about Jack Thompson as a character. Dottie, though... I doubt her character's going to be written out so soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if she breaks free and shows up in LA to fuck things up in Peggy's campaign against... whoever the hell it is she's fighting. 

In addition to Calvin Chadwick and Whitney Frost, we get a new character, dr. Jason Wilkes, who is this scientist who quickly flirts and struck up a friendship with Peggy but ends up apparently being involved with some... floating black goop that I'm sure is the plot device behind all the freezing things and whatnot. Jason Wilkes is an extremely minor character in the comics, so I didn't get much about him from a quick google... though honestly I don't care enough to know everything about every new character and would prefer to be surprised by what they do and who they are. 

But the plot with Frost, Chadwick and/or Wilkes honestly don't interest me that much. I mean, it's cool, I guess, but it's so ambiguous at the point that it's hard to care about them beyond being the threat of the week. No, what's fun in this episode is Peggy, Jarvis and the previously-unseen Mrs. Anna Jarvis just mucking around and interacting. And Bernard Stark! Who is Bernard, you ask? Well, Howard Stark's new flamingo! The episode gets a bit too comedic at times, the show might get, yes, but it's certainly fun. It benefits in cutting out all the surplus fat from the first season like the whole Fry's dormitory or the endless scenes in that diner. 

Overall, though, the episode felt a bit choppy as we cut back and forth between the various plot strands and the various new characters, but it's definitely a strong, if low-key, opening to the second season. This show might not be as spectacular or heavy in universe-building as Jessica Jones, Agents of SHIELD or Daredevil are, but it's definitely a fun little side story. Can't fault that, really.

Vixen Season 1 Review

Vixen, Season 1

I knew Vixen existed, this little animated web-cartoon project that was set in around the timeline of Arrow's third season and Flash's first season (possibly before the time Oliver joined the League), featuring the introduction of DC C-lister hero Vixen, done in animation a la the DC movies as opposed to live-action. Except that Vixen's coming to Arrow in live-action mode soon, so I guess I should check it out. Vixen runs for six episodes, each lasting a scant five minutes... I'm honestly kinda confused why they didn't just make it a 30-minute mini-movie/episode instead of releasing it in this piecemeal format, but eh, whatever works. It's kinda weird calling something that's shorter than a regular TV or cartoon episode a 'season'... but if that's what the showmakers are calling it, well. We're getting a second season of this relatively soon.

Honestly the biggest thing that Vixen has going against it is its extremely short duration. All six episodes strung together barely reach thirty minutes, and episodes one and four repeat an almost identical sequence of Vixen fighting the Arrow and the Flash, with the one from episode one just serving as a 'this action scene that makes no sense so we're going to rewind time after this' prologue. Considering how in thirty minutes they have to introduce Vixen herself as a character, introduce her background, her powers, her backstory, a customary villain to beat and have her interact with Arrow and Flash, well, thirty minutes isn't quite adequate time to work around with.

Thankfully the show writers did it well. While I am still honestly kinda irked why they had to repeat the same action scene in episode four -- surely we could just cut away to the action starting, and then to Vixen falling, going all "that's how we got here" and flying back up -- the opener gives us a decent look at Vixen's range of powers, namely manifesting the powers of animal spirits through her totem. Of course being a bit of a DC geek I'm already familiar with Vixen's powers and character, and know the rough edges of her backstory, but it's still quite well done.

The earlier episodes focus more on Vixen -- or rather, her alter ego Mari McCabe -- as a person. She has a bit of a strenuous relationship with her foster father Chuck. Chuck really tries hard to be a good daddy and most of the time Mari is quite polite to him, if rather cold -- though she notes that this might be an effect of the death of Mari's foster mother. Also the fact that Mari's soul-searching for her real parents and her real parentage, apparently her status as being adopted bothering her quite a fair bit. We also get hints that she has an interest outside her soul-searching, namely searching for a career in fashion design. She also stabs some douchebag in the hand for trying to get a 'job' from her if you know what I mean.

Then, of course, the mysterious family heirloom totem grants her animal powers, and we have Mari get her feet wet relatively quickly. Meanwhile, Barry and Cisco (who look awesome in animated form) realize what's happening and mobilize. I honestly find it rather hard to believe that a single metahuman would cause Barry to call for backup when comparatively larger threats like Reverse-Flash or Zoom never made him call Oliver... but eh, crossovers. Arrow and Flash battle Vixen for a bit, which is cool, but they quickly establish that Vixen isn't a metahuman and her powers come from somewhere else -- Oliver is quick to accept magic, and as we see in season four of Arrow, for good reason. Also, Vixen isn't remotely interested in this whole superhero/supervillain thing. 

Mari went to a nice historian doctor ask information about the Anansi totem necklace (and we get an introdump on) and we get a legend about a shapeshifting trickster god from African lore... and the doctor sells Vixen over to this mysterious African lady Kuasa who knocks Mari out and brings her to the Zambesi Village. Kuasa herself is not named in the show, mind you, other than the credits. Anyway, Kuasa reveals herself to be Mari's biological sister, removes the clingy totem forcibly with the poison of a certain spider... but Mufasa the animal spirits talk to Mari, she accepts her role as the totem's guardian, and she beats Kuasa up even without the power of the totem. Now the climax could've been handled better, with Kuasa bringing Mari all the way to Africa just to tell her a story and leave her for dead being quite strange when Kuasa had the chance to kill Mari when she was unconscious all the way during the flight from Detroit to Zambesi. We also don't really get much follow up on what Mari did to Kuasa, or the cultists worshiping Kuasa -- implied to be part of a ritual after Kuasa received some powers from 'darker sources'. The Rising Darkness from Constantine? I doubt Vixen was created before the decision to fold Constantine into CW was made, but eh.

Then Vixen talk a bit to Arrow and the Flash, and ends up parting on friendly terms with them and becoming the heroine of Detroit. As cool as it is to hear the Arrow and the Flash show up as stylized animated versions voiced by their real actors (also to a lesser extent Cisco Ramon and Felicity Smoak), delivering some of the funniest lines in the entirety of CW lore, I am honestly quite unconvinced that their presence needed to be so major. Mari went from distrusting the two capes to... befriending them... after the whole Zambesi conflict? I thought that was just odd, and it might've been better if they initially parted on friendlier terms. Vixen outrunning Flash also ended up being kind of an odd way to build Vixen up as super-awesome, but honestly we've seen Flash outrun missiles and jets, and a cheetah can't be faster than that. I suppose it's Vixen jumping all around the cityscape that slows Flash down. But still, the presence of Oliver and Barry (who are definitely in there for marketing) isn't a minus in my books, and honestly the story still functions quite well even with the big distraction of two other superheroes in it. So yeah.

Overall, though, it's certainly a solid addition to the ever-growing CW universe, and I can see why they went with a web-animation to introduce Vixen. All those crazy special effects with summoning elephant and rhinoceros auras would be damned difficult to replicate in live-action... though since Vixen's going to actually show up in Arrow soon (played by her voice actress) I guess it's just budget constraints versus actually introducing the character? Or something? It's a nice introduction of a wider range of superpowers and magic into the CW-verse, and it's an actually pretty solid little mini-movie on its own. It's an origin story to one of DC's most unique characters in both her status as a female black superhero, as well as her origin story and concept in general, and in my opinion it's done quite well.

Legends of Tomorrow S01E01 Review: Getting Weird in the 70's

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot, Part 1

(Lots of 1's in that title)

Legends of Tomorrow is a series that I have been looking forward to for a long, long time. And, well, it delivers. Mostly. It's the CW-verse's answer to superhero movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and the upcoming Suicide Squad, taking a bunch of C-listers and throwing them into a big adventure away from the bigger names that are dominating the movie screens... or TV channels, in this case. Legends of Tomorrow has the benefit of actually having these characters being already established in their home series Arrow and The Flash, so this feels more like a C-List Justice League movie instead of 'let's introduce the audience to a bunch of people they're likely to know jack shit about!'

And, well, the only real newcomer in this whole Star-Trek-esque team is Dr. Who Rip Hunter, who quickly brings us up to speed in a big meeting with the mysterious Time Masters that our favourite immortal, Vandal Savage, has basically conquered the 22nd century and is lording it like some video game villain or something, shooting little kids in the head and shit. The rest of the team are mostly known quantities. Sara Lance, the White Canary, has been a major supporting character in Arrow's seasons two and four, and is a major source of personal grief for her sister and father, both prominent characters in the show. Ray Palmer, the Atom, is likewise a major character in season three and featured in season four as well. Captain Cold is a prominent recurring villain-slash-anti-villain in both seasons of the Flash, while his buddy Heat Wave has shown up ever now and then in the first season.

One half of Firestorm, Jefferson Jackson, may only have one episode's worth of screentime prior to this, and as I had said in my review of said episode, seemed to be quite hurriedly written in to cover for Ronnie Raymond's actor not being available for whatever reason. But Firestorm as an entity, and Martin Stein, one of the characters with the most screentime in this episode, is certainly an established character in both seasons of the Flash, graduating from recurring character to full-on supporting character for a brief time in the second season. Hawkgirl and Hawkman, like Jefferson, suffer from having only two (plus a couple of earlier bit roles in Hawkgirl's case) episodes which are mostly introdumps about their unconventional backstory, so they're likewise more ciphers. Especially Hawkman.

So anyway, the focus of this episode is mostly bringing the team together, and while Rip Hunter seems like a benign, happy-go-lucky "let's save the world!" mission command type dude who knows what he's doing... British accents tend to have that effect... it soon spirals out of control as more and more rogue elements show up. There's the evil time-traveler, Chronos, who DC fans might just assume is there as an appropriate time-travelling enemy... but turns out to be more than meets the eye. Lenny, Mick and Sara going wild at a bar in the 70's is hilarious, but it definitely left their timeship defenseless. Jefferson Jackson does not want to be on board the time travelling business, but is drugged and forced on board by Stein. Kendra is insistent on bringing her son-from-a-previous-life with them to avoid his supposed destined death. And Rip Hunter turns out to not be exactly who he says he is.

Chronos in his low-budget Vision cosplay...

See, while a good chunk of the episode shows Rip Hunter as a slightly-maverick but seemed-to-be-totally-legit Time Master, fooling both the audience and the Legends (which is what I'll call the group for now), he turns out to have gone rogue after acquiring the timeship Waverider, which for whatever reason comes with Eobard Thawne/Barry Allen's A.I. buddy from the future, Gideon. All more and more mysterious on that end with Gideon, but hey. Rip Hunter's a rogue Time Master, and instead of the 'you are all legends where I came from' line, apparently Hunter picked out the Legends simply because they have minimal impact on the timeline after that particular time... except maybe the Hawks, who seemed pretty integral to the whole Vandal Savage immortality thing. Plus people like Ray and Stein, as we saw, are pretty desperate for some validation in life, for some glory and recognition, enough for them to get myopic and realize that Rip Hunter didn't go for what is easily the most powerful hero in the CW-verse, the Flash himself.

Chronos in his high-budget Darth Vader cosplay

Also, Chronos, a.k.a. time-travelling Boba Fett (as Captain Cold points out) turns out to not be just a time-thief like he is in the comics, but is in fact working for the Time Masters... albeit he shares Boba Fett's role as a bounty hunter so as not to make him too good in this adaptation. Chronos himself honestly isn't just that threatening, even if he does have a laser gun (Rip Hunter has a laser revolver, which does not make sense even if it looks cool) to vaporize the two random witnesses who have minimal impact to the timeline. He's at least awesome-looking, though, and despite not doing much other than break the Waverider's cloaking device, it did take almost the entire Legends team to drive him off.

The episode itself is honestly pretty much setting things up, and thus we get a rather long exposition about the origin of Vandal Savage, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, something that we have already gotten back in the crossover episodes a while back. I thought this could've been shortened, since it's just exposition we don't really need. Yes, it's nice to make Legends of Tomorrow relatively standalone by making the exposition repeated here so anyone who's just interested in seeing Firestorm and Captain Cold time travel don't have to work through a backlog of six seasons to understand everything, but still, I thought it was a wee bit too much, and kinda hurt the pacing as someone who views this is next in a series of superhero-themed material. But oh well, it doesn't impact the show too much.

We get a couple of requisite tie-ins from Arrow characters. Ray Palmer has apparently been helping Oliver out off-screen in his war against Darhk and HIVE, presumably in a scene that takes place after the whole 'Felicity is in danger over her life' episode that premiered a couple days before this one. Ray's going around sabotaging HIVE computers with the ingenious method of expanding to full side while being inside one, and Ray and Oliver get a bit of a heart-to-heart as Ray considers whether he should accept Hunter's offer. I thought it was a nice little scene for the two of them, and it's telling that Ray went to Oliver instead of Felicity, who he's closer to. Ray and Oliver have always been portrayed as love rivals or simply just allies, but we have a dearth of the two of them just talking and acting like friends. It's nice to have that scene.

Sara and Laurel get a nice sparring lesson, and Laurel's own character development from being a joke of the least-likable character in the show into the Black Canary post-Sara's-death, finding a purpose and a sort of twisted release in punching criminals in the face, certainly is a nice analogue for Sara's own search for a purpose after returning from death and attempts to distance herself from her older Canary assassin moniker. To this end Laurel rebrands Sara's alter-ego as White Canary (cleverly tying in to Oliver's similar change of persona from the more violent Arrow to the more idealistic Green Arrow) and tells her to go for it.

Rip Hunter, prior to being British
and posh and everything

I thought the montage of them considering Rip Hunter's offer was pretty decently well-done, explaining why they ended up going with it. Hawkman and Hawkgirl's scene didn't work out as well for me, mostly because Hawkman is still a gigantic tool and they're just arguing over hunting down their arch-nemesis and ends up settling it with an off-screen fight. "Couples' counselling is in order" indeed. Stein is being adorable about time-travelling and shit, and he's still a joy to behold in this show, but Jax is far more reluctant. He ends up getting drugged, which is hilarious, and mellows out later in the episode, and I'm honestly slightly more receptive about Jax and Stein's relationship in this series than the one they were forced upon in the Flash. Captain Cold just wants to steal stuff through time. Heat Wave just wants to punch people through time.

The character dynamics are certainly the focus of this episode, with unlikely friendships and partnerships being formed between the group of people with scant little interaction with each other previously. Sara and Lenny quickly struck up the most unexpected and oddest of friendships as they just kinda hang out and walk around in the 70's, and it ended up being extremely fun. Stein and Ray grow a bit of a mutual respect for each other, and apparently Ray Palmer used to be one of Martin Stein's students, a fact that was not alluded to in either one of their home series... but totally makes sense.

We also get the return of Aldus Boardman, previously seen in a short video clip from the Flash/Arrow crossover where he was apparently this expert on Vandal Savage from the 70's. We learn that he, in fact, was the son of a previous reincarnation of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, all grown up. There's definitely a sense of parallelism with Hector Hall (maybe he will show up in the show's future?) from the comics, though obviously Boardman is not donning a mystical golden helmet any time soon. But the surprise and the sheer confusion on Kendra's face as she has to accept that she's somehow the mother of this man older than her who she has no memories of... and the conflicted, guilty look on her face as she lies about remembering her son on his deathbed, plus another layer of guilt for inadvertently causing Boardman's death by bringing him along with them.

Meanwhile, Carter Hall, Hawkman, who apparently remembers everything from his past lives (he even says something about his 4000-year-old memory) doesn't even share a scene with the son he supposedly remembers... and doesn't even acknowledge him! Any defensive action Hawkman makes is only because Kendra was the one to initiate it first and he just wants to score points. You birdbrained asshat, Hawkman.

Jax and Stein don't really work too well. There's the nicely-written scene about how Jax was inspired because he saw Stein run towards the ship to help him, and how he likes being a team and whatnot... but honestly you'd think Jax would jump at the chance of getting glory again since his past characterization has been about his desire to be someone great like how he was when he was a football star. Yet he spends a good chunk of the episode trying to run away from this chance at glory, when you'd think he would have a reaction similar to Ray Palmer. It's just odd, is all.

Rip Hunter gets a great scene near the end when the cocky Dr. Who persona breaks down, and he reveals himself to be as flawed as the other people in the room, revealing that he broke the rules of the Time Masters in trying to want to change time, and he's going to seek revenge for Vandal Savage killing his son, Jonah, who was the kid Savage shot in the cold open. That was an unexpected tie-in to the seemingly-throwaway scene at the beginning, which is clever even if Vandal Savage himself doesn't really do anything at all and Chronos steals the show's villain role. What little Savage got this time around is great, though, and the descriptions from Hunter and Boardman certainly makes him feel great.

Meanwhile, Sara, Lenny and Mick are just having fun mucking around in the seventies. Fuck being benched, right?

We get some nice little nods to DC comics -- the Waverider, Rip Hunter's ship, borrows its name from Waverider, an actual person and member of the Time Masters. While talking about 'rank amateur' dictators throughout time, Rip Hunter name-drops Per Degaton, who is a time-travelling villain that nominally battles the Justice Society and would actually be a more appropriate antagonist for the time-travelling Legends team...

Overall, though, there are a couple of things that don't really work here. Hawkman is easily the weakest of the characters (Heat Wave doesn't count as he is intentionally simple), and Jax is still kind of a cipher. The amount of introdump and repeated information also hurts the pacing somewhat... but honestly, those are minor problems. The show was fun, the show had an insanely and unexpectedly awesome series of action scenes against Chronos, Rip Hunter's twist near the end of this episode isn't wholly unpredictable but ends up being pretty great. This is awesome. I'm looking forward to the next episode. 

Arrow S04E10 Review: Anarky Returns To Slow Down The Plot

Arrow, Season 4, Episode 10: Blood Debts

Arrow had a great cliffhanger at the end of last year, so of course this episode goes back and shits all over it. I mean, it was a possibility that Felicity didn't receive a mortal wound, and it's not like she gets out of this unscathed, but after all the teasing about the body in the grave, about Felicity being shot and the cliffhanger scene being dramatic as all fuck, and this episode even replaying the "four months later" scene at the graveyard just to remind us... pulling the rug out and going 'lol gotcha' is just shitty writing. At the very least put Felicity in a coma for an episode or something, I dunno. She survives but is in a bad shape... and apparently she's going to be crippled for life, but she's not the one in the grave. Present-day Oliver is certainly angry and on the warpath thanks to Felicity's near-death experience, but honestly the whole thing with Felicity's near-death experience just felt poorly handled. I dunno.

It doesn't help that this episode really felt low-key. I mean, Flash opened the second half of its season with a relatively low-key episode, but it was well-written and well-paced. This one, not so much, and the key difference is how both shows had their cliffhangers. Arrow's last episode seemed to imply a sense of urgency, that Damian Darhk and HIVE is going forward with their plans and will be going on the frontal assault onto Oliver Queen and Green Arrow. But other than Oliver beating up a couple of faceless HIVE mooks, Darhk and his organization takes a backseat to a returning Anarky.

And Anarky, while entertaining, still doesn't really have much in common with the more philosophical and nuanced comic-book version of his character other than using a staff in combat and leaving that A symbol in red graffiti. Oh, and he gets a white version of Anarky's Greek-face mask thing, which I guess is something. Arrow's Anarky is at least a pretty decent character, an adaptation of the concept of anarchy itself, so at least points to the show for originality even if I don't particularly like it. Anarky is a wild card thrown into the battle between Team Arrow and HIVE... and honestly he's more a distraction than anything.

After finally deciding that Felicity's near-death is the moment where the kiddie gloves come off, Oliver gets Quentin to give up the information of Darhk's base, marches in... only to find Anarky has killed every HIVE mook in that base. And then the main plot is pushed aside in favour of this relatively less interesting side-quest as Team Arrow hunts down Anarky, catches him, and thanks to some disagreements between Oliver and Laurel (though nowhere as verbally violent as they normally are, for a change) Anarky gets captured by the police, let off, captured, and escapes. It's no fault of Anarky's character, of course. He's still a decently terrifying villain, terrorizing Darhk's family, able to gain intel on Darhk's whereabouts without an explanation, and having developed a slightly unhealthy obsession with Speedy, viewing each other as kindred spirits. 

And indeed a good chunk of the episode does focus on Speedy, giving some nice moments where she talks to Laurel and, uh... Boyfriend Dude about her anger issues, and eventually overcoming them and showing that she is stronger than her bloodlust and that she's a better person than Anarky, able to control her urges to kill. And it's certainly an impressive feat since she actually does have some mystical powers that's causing her to need to kill, unlike Anarky who's just psychotic and emo over his burnt-up face. But is it the right time for an episode to focus so much on returning filler villain Anarky and developing Speedy, when really the main plot point should be more centralized on HIVE, Oliver and Felicity? The show just loses momentum and while the episode's Anarky plot isn't necessarily bad, the decision to show it at this point in the show is a strange one and not one that I thought was well done. 

I guess setting Anarky loose to have a single and disposable madman take out the dangerous Damian Darhk, head of HIVE, is supposed to symbolize Oliver Queen giving into his rage and baser desires, and parallels Thea's own personal journey, and all that jazz, but still, it's a distraction. And while Oliver's initial plan is to storm Darhk's building -- alone, I might add, instead of bringing the entirety of Team Arrow, the League of Assassins, the Flash, John Constantine, Firestorm and the Hawks, or at least the first two if the powers-to-be doesn't allow the others to show up. When Green Arrow actually faces off against Darhk at the end, Darhk trounces Oliver as badly as he did before, and makes it clear that Darhk's mastery of the Force or whatever will absolutely overwhelm Oliver. So, uh, kinda bad planning on Oliver's part at the beginning of the episode. 

John Diggle gets some nice moments being forced to talk to the stone wall that is Andy Diggle and not get any answers, but a quick talk with Lyla causes Diggle to take another approach and approach Andy like his brother instead of like a member of HIVE, which naturally gives them a hint on where to find Darhk. While Andy is still in a cage, and still kinda pissed at Diggle, they're at least playing cards which is something.

Felicity doesn't get much to do since, y'know, she's paralyzed and in and out of operation, but she does get a short, powerful moment where she almost breaks down because for a moment she thought Oliver is planning to leave her thanks to her disability. Oliver is, of course, going all 'hunting down Darhk is what Felicity would want', and in an unexpectedly subtle manner, Laurel, Diggle and Thea all nudge Oliver to at least pay Felicity a visit, because as strong as any human being can be, Felicity's still going to need emotional support from the person she loves the most. There's a nice sweet moment which almost mollifies my concerns with pacing, at least.

And while the whole point of the episode is apparently to give us a moral that no one should give in to their baser desires and kill -- as exemplified best by Thea refusing to shoot the psychotic Anarky in the head, and John Diggle getting some headway by using words, not fists -- the episode ends with Future!Felicity insisting that Future!Oliver needs to kill Darhk. Um. Okay, I guess Felicity can be dark if she wants to. It runs kinda contrary to the whole message of the episode, and it just odd all around to skip around to future scenes. Points to note is that Felicity isn't wearing her ring in that future scene, and it's just odd to show all this when really all they do is to add into the confusion because the whole Darhk arc has kinda slammed on the brakes as far as pacing and momentum goes. 

Oh, and Darhk's family is as much HIVE as Darhk is, despite looking like innocent people caught in the crossfire at first. Darhk's wife actually is kinda pissed Darhk didn't kill Green Arrow then and there. Interesting, but still, ultimately all this achieves is just prolonging the conflict after the promised escalation.

Some shit goes on in the Island as Oliver and Taiana is brought by Conklin before Reiter, but Constantine's magic rune stops Reiter from killing Oliver. I don't give two shits, honestly.

Oh well, count your blessings, I guess. It's not a bad episode at all... it's just oddly-paced and the revelations done to the death tease end up being utter disappointments. The episode clearly works on its own merits. Anarky and Thea were quite strong this episode, and so was Diggle. Oliver and Felicity got a nice moment together. But overall pacing-wise the season has kinda pulled the brakes on what had been a very interesting series that built up HIVE, Darhk and the ghosts making their move. But whoops, this episode spent a good chunk hunting down a returning one-off villain, whose purpose in the grand scheme is just to give Darhk an excuse to stop doing anything interesting and sensible in the war for the next couple of episodes.

One Piece 813 Review: Sanji's Note

One Piece, Chapter 813: The Tea Party Invitation

A far more solidly-paced chapter than the previous one, and while we still don't get too much information regarding the workings of the Vinsmoke (which makes a lot more sense than Vinsmoak) Family or Big Mom's pirates or whatever, but Sanji gets a crapton of focus and he does a fair amount of cool shit in this chapter. 

We get a nice cover page of Laboon and Crocus being happy. Did Laboon know about Brook? That's a question that's been bothering me for a while. I guess he does? But, eh, whatever about Laboon. Be all happy. This chapter continues upon the big bombshell that Capone dropped on us last chapter, and Sanji is just so shocked that the cigarette just drops out of his mouth (and sets Capone's castle-floor on fire a couple pages later, which I thought was hilarious). Brook apparently knows what the Vinsmoke Family is, though in true anime fashion he just trails off and doesn't tell us what he knows.

Capone confirms that Sanji's family was the one who approached Big Mom and arranged for the wedding, and Caesar also confirms that Pudding (or Purin, depending how you want to romanize her name) is Big Mom's daughters, and it's definitely a power play on Big Mom's part to get Luffy's crew as her underlings.  Lady's got a lot of daughters! That must've been hell for her womb. Or maybe she just adopts daughters the way Whitebeard or mafia godfathers do. Nami and Brook discuss this, and we get a short flashback of pre-timeskip Sanji during the pre-Skypiea arc telling the crew about how he was born in North Blue instead of East Blue, and Brook confirms what the theorists have been clamoring about for years, that it's not easy to go from North Blue to East Blue, because you have to pass through the Red Line. 

Of course, it's something that would be easily explained if Sanji was the son of a Tenryubito/King/Gorosei or whatever, but why any one of these parties would want to wed Sanji to a pirate's daughter, let alone the daughter of the Yonkou... Obviously Big Mom is one of the most powerful people in the One Piece world, but you'd think the Tenryubito and the Kings would look down on encouraging pirates, unless Sanji's family cares so little of him that they just want to have some leverage over Big Mom? I dunno. It's weird.

Sanji gets over his shock quickly, though, and gets to be all badass, talking down on Capone and Big Mom's tea party, and firmly tells Capone that Monkey D. Luffy will never be anyone's underling because he'll be the Pirate King. Hell yea. It's always awesome to hear the likes of Sanji or Zoro, people who are equal badasses as Luffy is, insist that Luffy will be the Pirate King. 

Sanji goes all "I'll let you keep Caesar. Let us go" (so much for that theory that the Curly Hats will be developing a reverse-Stockholm Syndrome on Caesar Clown), going all ultimatums on Capone, but Capone himself isn't backing down. Capone notes how the Curly Hats don't have a choice since they're already captured within Capone's castle -- the large body can walk on its own apparently -- and Capone displays more of his ability, able to morph the insides of his castle body and create cannons, goop Nami up, create chandelier-knives and whatnot. 

One of Capone's Firetank Pirates, "Monster Gun" Vito (who is the Caribou-looking dude fro before) shows up and monologues about how scary Big Mom's tea party is and how people who are invited but don't come basically sign their own death warrants. Vito's got huge hands and ends all his sentences in -rero, which kinda reminds me of... Rubber Soul, was it, from Stardust Crusaders? The one who created the memetic rerorerorerorerorerorero thing? In any case, though, Vito (love the Godfather reference, by the way even if this Vito has nothing in common with Vito Corleone) whispers something into Sanji's ear that kinda pisses him off. This apparently causes him to get a resolve to go along with the marriage thing for now. 

Sanji writes something on a paper, basically an innocent-sounding "hey Luffy I'm going off to see a girl", and makes a show of being all whisper-whisper with Nami, Brook and Chopper. Sanji notes how he needs to deal with all his past alone -- basically kinda like Robin from Water Seven but a lot more badass since Sanji's planning to fight instead of just let fate have its way -- and having sensed a powerful presence outside (good ol' Observation Haki!) Sanji kicks the three other Straw Hats out, leaving a pretty distraught Caesar and Sanji himself stuck inside Capone. 

Sanji doesn't stop there, though, stealing a gun and pointing it at Caesar Clown's head, taking the poor gas man hostage. Sanji does an awesome monologue reminding the Firetank Pirates about his 'only alive' status, how the person who arranged his marriage and the one behind the wanted poster are likely one and the same, and he makes an awesome demand for everyone to leave his friends alone, while Sanji will come with Capone. Capone takes the deal...

Though in the outside world, Nekomamushi has shown up and is towering over Capone's real body. Nekomamushi is pissed off, having found Pekoms (who in the present-day is probably hanging out with Nekomamushi, which makes sense that we haven't met Nekomamushi in the present day since that would spoil Pekoms' presence) bleeding and whatnot. Capone tells Nekomamushi that he is Pekoms' comrade (he's not wrong there) and they were attacked by one of Jack's subordinates. There's a bit of confusion, and Nami's just screaming at Sanji (who tells him that he'll be back) and Capone... transforms his legs into tank treads and rolls off. Wait, what? If your body is a fortress you turn into T-1000? What the hell? That's Baby-5's power!

Wanda begins pursuit of Capone, but Brook tells them it's useless, because even if they catch up to Sanji, Sanji has no intention of coming back. Well, Sanji doesn't accept his fate to be executed so you can bet he's going to do some stuff in Big Mom's presence and all that. Getting more and more interesting here and I honestly don't care much for staying long at Zou and dealing with the likes of Whitebeard Jr or the samurais. Get on with either Jack or the big Big Mom arc! Or both!

Toriko 355 Review: Breath Wars

Toriko, Chpater 355: Sniffing Contest

Apparently Guinness the Wolf King's big soul-sucking power is... well, him just breathing. It's nice how both Heracles and Guinness's powers both involve breathing, but where Heracles just wins out in sheer volume and force of the air he breathes in and out, Guinness's breathing revolves around his sense of smell. Apparently simply smelling something allows Guinness to, well, gather data on everything about its target, even information about gourmet cells and favourite foods. Toriko summons his appetite demon. Toriko uses his Devil's Search to counter Guinness Search, and it does begin to draw out a wee bit of Guinness's soul or whatever, but it doesn't quite manage it. 

Starjun recovers, and the two of them do this combo attack. Starjun summons a great blade of flame on his arm that he calls Satan Burner, and Toriko muscles up his right arm... and then compresses it to look thin and emancipated as fuck. They do a combo of Jet Knife and Hoshigiri, which causes Guinness to consider dodging the attack, something he's never had to do ever since he fought Jirou in the past. And Past!Jirou looks creepy as fuck. Maybe that Guinness Tooth weapon he used way back in Joie's introduction was ripped out of Guinness himself?

We get an obligatory 'so big on the surface of Earth' scene, and then Guinness... takes a piss. And only Toriko can make piss description into something that sounds plot-relevant, as Guinness puts enough information into his urine that Toriko's sense of smell allows him to receive information from Guinness regarding NEO. Also, Guinness confirms to us readers that there's a third demon inside Toriko, even if we only see its leg. 

Meanwhile Zebra and Brunch (fine, I'll call him Brunch instead of Buranchi, though I might slip back without warning) has finished preparing News. Guess we are going to skip past all the others, and out of the three other teams Zebra and Brunch are definitely the most anticipated and foreshadowed team and I'm honestly kinda bummed that we're not going to see them. On the other hand, cutting away to like ten or twenty chapters of showing the other three tag-teams do their own wacky things while all these interesting fights are happening would be a stupid change in pace, so I guess it's inevitable after building up NEO so much in the middle of the Another arc.

Eh, I guess they just want to hurry on to space as quickly as they can?

Movie Review: Batman - Bad Blood

Batman: Bad Blood

Well, I actually enjoyed this a fair bit. Batman: Bad Blood is set in the same universe as the two relatively newer DCAOM (DC Animated Original Movie, which is a freaking mouthful) Batman movies, namely Son of Batman and Batman vs. Robin, both of them which may or may not be in the same continuity as the other New 52 projects from DCAOM with a similar animation style (Flashpoint, War, Throne of Atlantis... ), which means that figuring out DC movie continuity is just about as troublesome as figuring out its comic continuity.

Bad Blood adapts a strain of Batman lore that I am not overtly familiar with, namely the origin of the Batman Incorporated storyline... except adapted to only include the established DCAOM cast, meaning Bruce, Dick, Damian, and Alfred, as well as to introduce the modern Batwoman and Batwing in their very first portrayals outside of comic books. I know just about the smallest details about Batwoman, and almost nothing about Batwing other than his identity, so this was definitely all new.

The premise of the movie is that Batman is missing, and Dick Grayson, Nightwing, needs to take over the mantle of the Bat, something that was a fairly big event since Dick is honestly the only person that the fandom agrees is cool enough to wear the cowl without seriously pissing people off. Sorry, Jean-Paul Valley. Of course no one remotely sane would believe the movie would kill off Batman, so the kidnapping of Bruce Wayne and frankly a blatant disregard about them figuring out Batman's secret identity, is part of the villains' master plan.

The setup is nice, though. The movie introduces us straight to Batwoman attacking the villains, before Batman swoops in and helps out. Batman is apparently killed in an explosion, and Batwoman, working independently, tries to figure out what happened. The lack of Batman causes both Nightwing and Robin to return to Gotham City to answer the call. There's still a bit of brattiness in Damian, but the barbs are definitely friendlier between the two of them, and Damian is nothing short of cooperative with Nightwing, though he (rather rightfully) distrusts the newcomer Batwoman.

Batwoman felt like a nicely compelling character, even if they added some Huntress into her film character development with her being content to use guns and being more aggressive compared to Batman and Nightwing... an aspect I'm told that Batwoman doesn't have in the comics. I'm not overtly familiar with the newer incarnation of her, and the only Batwoman I have ever read about is the one from the Silver/Bronze Age, but Kathy Kane is a fun character. Her lesbianism is given a couple of token scenes (cameoing Renee Montoya, Batman's resident lesbian cop) but nothing really major is made out of it. We get her backstory of being traumatized after her mother and sister were killed during a kidnapping attack, and her resolve to become Batwoman was more out of a desire to prove that she doesn't need anyone's help again. Batman is still involved in her backstory somewhat, though, and her old friendship with Dick gives us a somewhat believable reason that Dick would want to recruit her so quickly.

Batwing, likewise, felt organic. Lucius Fox's introduction into the movie was smooth as he went to cover up Bruce Wayne's absence on Wayne Enterprises, and Luke Fox just shows up. Luke's backstory as a soldier and the amicable-if-slightly-strained relationship that Luke and Lucius has is a nice, refreshing break from the "you don't give me any attention dad!" backstory that several superhero origin stories employ. Of course, Luke gets held hostage when the villain squad attack, figures out the identity of Batman (well, the current mantle-bearer) and wants in. Dick understandably declines, though Luke just hops into the new Batwing armour, shows up in a Big Damn Heroes moment and just continues kicking ass throughout the movie. Neither Batwoman nor Batwing felt like side characters, but neither did they dominate the movie and outshine Dick and Damian's plight.

Dick and Damian are done well. Dick is clearly chafing under the weight of simply bearing Batman's cowl, as shown when he explodes a bit to Damian and talks a bit with Kathy. He also does things differently than Bruce, as observed by Dick politely, apologetically but firmly declining Luke Fox's offer to help, as compared to Bruce just brushing off Batwoman and Batwing and telling his two children to keep it in the family. We don't get too much before Dick dons the Nightwing garb again, but Dick is just cool. Damian doesn't get as much to do, and he's still a bit of an ass, but his status as Bruce and Talia's son make him rather unique as he has a far more personal stake in all this. He also gets a nice little character development as he tries to save the thug Tusk from being sliced up by the motor turbine, reprising Bruce's credo from Batman Vs Robin, and while he ultimately fails to save Tusk, Damian is certainly growing to a more likable character.

Alfred also gets time to shine in a combat capacity, which is awesome! When everything breaks loose at that Wayne presentation thing and the Bats are all occupied, he takes a handgun, and heads off to get rid of the whole mind-control thing all by himself, taking out a supervillain (admittedly Calculator's hardly a combatant) and ends up with a total body count of two, and easily throws the biggest wrench into Talia's big evil plans.

Bruce gets the least to do, considering he's being 'reprogrammed' for half of the movie, and mind-controlled for another quarter, but he does display both jerkass and inspirer qualities equally in this movie whenever he gets the chance. Of course, the whole point of the movie is to show what Dick, Damian and the two newcomers to the Bat-family can do outside the shadow of Batman, so it's only appropriate that Batman is reduced to a nothing but his shadow. He does get some nice moments like that horrifying personal-hell dream, and when he eventually breaks free from Mad Hatter's control and points the gun away from Dick. Highly predictable, of course, but still an emotional moment nonetheless.

I think the biggest weakness of this entire movie are the villains. Talia al Ghul returns, bringing the League of Assassins back from Son of Batman, and her plan involves her creating an army of supervillains. Though Talia does end up hiding behind a decoy antagonist first, namely Heretic, who is imposing in his own right, easily taking out Batwoman and giving Batman a decent fight in his first appearance, has a bat-mask and a huge build, and certainly mysterious enough when he saves Damian from being killed by the Electrocutioner. He has all the buildings of an interesting villain, and since it's someone completely new I was excited to learn about his backstory.

And boy, what a weird backstory that was! Heretic was a clone of Damian Wayne created by Talia (or Ra's, the movie isn't clear on who specifically) and aged up to adulthood, but Heretic has no memories and desires a soul, which is why he's hellbent on understanding Damian and transferring Dmaian's memories into his own. A very interesting character... who gets killed unceremoniously by Talia for no reason beyond "he's flawed". Talia's plans and characterizations throughout the whole movie is unclear. Yes, she wants to take over the world and do what her father couldn't, that bit is fine, but just how she stands in regards to Damian is just odd, sparing Damian during the halfway point, and ordering a mind-controlled Bruce to 'kill the bastard' in the climax. Talia's speech about being in love with Bruce and owning him and all that doesn't work well either, and honestly I would've preferred it if Talia and Heretic were working together for a good part of the movie.

Rather unused as well is Onyx, who apparently really, really likes Heretic, moving into his defense when Talia threatens him, and is always found by his side. Onyx, in the comics, is a bald, dark-skinned League of Assassins member... who switched sides and fights for the side of the Bats. Well, at least they got the first part of her character right. But Onyx honestly does nothing but lurk in the background, do some sword-swinging alongside the other C-lister villains, shows shock when Heretic dies, fights Batwoman for a bit, then randomly shows up in the end and maybe kills Talia? I dunno, she's just a bit too much in a movie that's already overloaded with characters, and she's definitely the least interesting of the newcomers.

Mad Hatter, on the other hand, gets a relatively big role. When was the last time Mad Hatter commanded any respect or threat beyond 'that weird hat guy with mind control tech'? Well, Mad Hatter not only is able to pick through freaking Bruce Wayne's memories, he's also instrumental to mind-controlling the world leaders in Talia's plans, actually shows some badassery in using his head all Oddball-like and killing a bunch of guards, gets a couple of awesome snarky lines when he talks to Talia and Heretic, and is a surprisingly enjoyable addition to the movie. He also has a rather gory and thankfully off-screen death, but since it's at the hands of Alfred there's honestly no shame in that, Tetch.

The movie does love killing off villains, though. Literally every single villain that works for Talia dies in one way or another. Tusk, Electrocutioner, Mad Hatter, Heretic, Firefly and that one random ninja guy who wasn't named nor could I identify most certainly die, Onyx and Talia's fates were ambiguous, whereas Blockbuster, Calculator and Killer Moth really looked like they either died or suffered seriously grievous wounds.

I really liked how they used a bunch of C-lister Batman villains, by the way. Firefly and Electrocutioner both show up most likely thanks to their roles in the well-received Arkham Origins, and their physical appearance are quite obviously based on their incarnations there. Killer Moth is another nice classic Batman villain who shows up to give Firefly a flying buddy. Calculator of all people is an unexpected addition to the team, even if he doesn't really do much and certainly didn't do his Evil Oracle deal, but look cool with those cybernetic implants. Tusk seems to be created solely for this movie. There's this one random ninja guy who shows up with the other villains, but doesn't do much nor is named before a rock flattens him when it looks like he's going to fight Dick.

Firefly and Killer Moth honestly don't do much other than to fight and provide some awesome aerial scenes. Firefly, the obviously bigger threat, is kind of Batwing's rival as soon as Batwing shows up, whereas Killer Moth gets dispatched by a rock rather hilariously as part of his chronic loser status. Electrocutioner as well, though the dude's portrayed as a legitimate threat, at least, nearly killing Damian before he gets an undignified knife to the neck courtesy of Heretic's knife throw. Surprisingly for such a large cast, I thought every single one of the villains (other than the decoy Heretic and the plot device Onyx) ended up getting a fair amount of screentime that's not just centralized on a certain showcase scene.

We get a couple of short cameos from other classic Batman characters as well throughout the movie. Black Mask shows up for Dick!Batman to take down, and it appears the ensuing fight was the one that burnt Black Mask's black mask to his face. Blockbuster shows up as the villain Nightwing takes down rather effortlessly, and while this is the 'rawr me smash stuff' version of Blockbuster it's a nice nod to how an intelligent version of Blockbuster was Nightwing's main villain during his solo series. Penguin shows up near the end as the villain for the good guys to chase in the final scene. Starfire gets a short cameo talking to Dick on a phone, and Barbara Gordon's Batgirl makes an utterly surprising appearance near the end. Yay Batgirl! She makes me happy.

Overall the plot itself honestly is just there to facilitate the characters, and I couldn't be more happier than that. Bad Blood is a surprisingly good movie, easily surpassing the angst-ridden Damian duology in both storytelling and character development. It's not really perfect and there are some problems, naturally, but as a mostly-original story introducing a couple of new characters I certainly enjoyed this movie .