JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S01E05 Review: Loreal, Because You're Worth It

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 5: The Knights of Darkness

[revised 10/2018]


Episode five continues with more of JoJo and company fighting a bunch of Dio's evil minions, and honestly -- while Jack the Ripper was short and I appreciate the ridiculousness in that scene, I've never been fond of the Tarkus-and-Bruford scenes. Yes, I get that we kind of have to have a bunch of fights before we reach the final boss that is Dio, but I always felt like the fight against Tarkus and Bruford to be pretty bland and boring.

Throw in the introduction of tagalong kid Poco (whose ridiculous "chipper child-appeal character" antics were actually toned down -- and he's still annoying) and the episode really kind of felt like it dragged. At least last episode it was exposition, which was somewhat justifiable. We get a brief bit of Dio showing up and menacing our heroes (with a glorious WRYYYY and kinjaku kinjaku thrown in) and showing off his own new powers -- freezing things, which nullifies Hamon. The fight between Dio and the combined efforts of Jonathan and Zeppeli is neat, as short as it was (and we got Zeppeli going "Hey baby!" which is pretty glorious), Dio just kind of runs around, sics a bunch of zombies on the JoJo group. And then he summons Tarkus and Bruford, and books it out of there.

Meanwhile, Speedwagon heals Baron Zeppeli's frozen arm with the power of BODY HEAT that is apparently comparable to a heat seal. Got to love that Speedwagon.

Tarkus and Bruford... sort of just kind of pop out of nowhere. I'll praise some of JoJo's more ridiculous out-of-nowhere characters in the future like the Pillar Men from Part 2 or Mikitaka from Part 4, but these two just genuinely feel out of place. We get this long backstory about how they served in the civil war of England between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I, which just feels genuinely redundant. Their designs are also very conventional generic barbarian warriors.

And then Dio leaves, letting these two pretty bland brutes fight for him. Bruford fights Jonathan, and we do get the brief bit of "oh, that's weird" bit of Bruford apparently fighting Jonathan by wielding his sword with his hair. Which... what? And also, how is that more effective than wielding a sword with your hand? Using said hair to drain Jonathan's blood is a bit more vampire-themed, though, and I approve of that. Ultimately, though, Bruford is just a generic version of a villain who has a shred of honour, basically a discount version of future characters like Wamuu that we'll meet sometime down the line.

Again, I am being a bit too harsh on this fight, because it's still like the fifth episode of the series, but it's not an invalid criticism that Phantom Blood really moves slowly through not much innovation or story. Jonathan beats Bruford in this segment by figuring out that there are bubbles trapped under the water (because "it's a mining town" somehow) and uses those bubbles to unleash the Turquoise Blue Overdrive and take down Bruford.

Best line from Speedwagon? His very specific line of "That sword makes Jonathan's 195-cm-tall-body look tiny!" Yes, Speedwagon. You have to specify Jonathan's height. Speedwagon's commentary is easily the best part of this honestly pretty mundane action scene, and doesn't really do much to give us a whole ton of excitement. Again, it's not exactly bad, but it does kind of feel like we're not going anywhere all that much, character-wise or action-wise. At least during the huge glut of villains-of-the-week in subsequent Parts, the villain fights themselves are unique and interesting. But eh, the series is still young at this point. Hard to be so harsh about it.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Tarkus is a 1971 album as well as a song made by the Rock band ELP (Emerson, Lake & Palmer). It's a 20-minute suite comprised of seven tracks, actually a pretty calming piece.
• Bruford is a reference to Bill Bruford, one of the five founding members of the British rock band Yes -- who are the original performers of the ending sequence for this season! Bill Bruford would also be a member of the King Crimson band, another band that would become a pretty significant part of JJBA. 
• Poco borrows his name from the 60's country rock band Poco, with some of their more memorable songs being Heart of the Night, Magnolia and Here We Go Again.

Fairy Tail 532 Commentary: Lookit Dis Crap

Fairy Tail, Chapter 532: I Can No Longer See Love

Oh man, I haven't read a Fairy Tail chapter for quite a while, and people are telling me that 'hey, did you know Fairy Tail is ending?' to which I say, 'good riddance!' But I guess I'm going to see this car crash to its end, so from here on out, expect some... I won't say review, because reviews should really be more neutral and not vitriol-filled as my Fairy Tail reviews have turned out to be. It's more of a running commentary, I guess.

Anyway, since I last left off, we've got around a half dozen chapters. In quick succession, we have: Acnologia stomping on a corpse, Jellal being irrelevant and doing the exact same three magic spells that he knows ever since before he was regurgitated into this manga, Acnologia gets hit by a flying ship because Ichiya is literally the only awesome character left in this manga, boob jokes, more boob jokes, the big grand return of Anna who is a character we've seen in like a single panel before who everyone treats like the second coming of a major plot-relevant character, Anna being a huge introdump machine to tie up convoluted plot threads that are literally the most asinine plot twists ever, Happy crying, Lucy crying, random chapter-long flashbacks about a subplot no one cares about, the random introduction of this 'ravines of time' nonsense that literally was made up on the spot on the chapter it's relevant to, Natsu and Zeref shooting boring-ass magic beams at each other, Acnologia being the shittiest apocalypse dragon ever by failing to even cripple the Ichiya ship, and trite over-used lines.

Back to our scheduled programming. 

Natsu activated Dragon Force. Which... is absolutely dumb, considering that it was literally the first power up he gets. I mean, Fairy Tail has been the poster child for every single goddamned character reusing the same three or four moves they have been using for the past 500+ chapters, but this for the ultimate climax just felt stupid. I mean, not that Fire God King Crimson Ultra Mega Demolition Dragon Fang Wing Attack really amounts to anything than a punch wreathed in fire, so it's not like we're missing out on much.

"I'm a human, I ain't nothing like Acnologia! Why do you ask? Because that's Igneel's will!" At no point of this sentence that Natsu is actually answering Zeref's question (your power isn't good enough, if only you can transform into a dragon) nor does it make a god damned lick of sense. Like, seriously, even at its most asinine, not even things like Naruto had dialogue that made so little sense like this.

Zeref's plot literally makes no sense. He literally just changes his plan every single chapter. If his plan was to get power from the ravines of time or some bullshit, why invade Magnolia? Why the whole convoluted nonsense to drain Mavis, or to create Natsu to destroy him, or to cut down his fighting force pretty significantly, instead of recruiting Makarov and/or Mavis to recruit literal dragon slayers to, y'know, slay the motherfucking dragon you're so afraid of? Oh, he wants to reset time to a time before Acnologia, because he's afraid that he's going to spend eternity as Acnologia's plaything? Yeah, Zeref, you're a fucking idiot, you know that?

Then what was the literal point of all the foreshadowings if Zeref's such a big fucking pussy and is afraid of fighting Acnologia? What about that big two-page spread where Zeref and Acnologia face off against each other at the end of the Tartaros arc? I mean, it's not like Acnologia's a real threat anyway, he spent like five chapters just smooshing Eileen's skull into a mush, he can't kill Makarov on Tenrou Island, he can't even shoot down the Pegasus airship, and he literally has been spending, what, the last century doing nothing but eat Gildarts' arm and blow up Tenrou Island (and, again, failing to even kill anyone)?

Oh, good, Mavis jumps in the way of the fighting. Of course Zeref doesn't give a shit, but Mavis continues talking for god damned ever anyway. And then Zeref drains her power. And takes up like half the chapter to do so. 

And then Acnologia scores one hit on the flying ship, but fails to even bring it down.  How the fuck do you even kill all the dragons, you stupid-ass gecko. 

Zeref and Mavis have this chain of dialogue that was probably meant to be bittersweet or some shit, but all it feels like is kind of regurgitated. Thing is, it's hard to be emotionally invested when Mavis has as much personality as a wet paper towel, and Zeref's motivations are as muddled as my dog's poop on a bad day. Of course, Mavis doesn't even die. Doesn't even vanish like Gajeel did! Zeref literally says "she isn't dead". 

Boom, Fairy Heart, and Zeref... looks exactly the same, just with all the black turned white with some glowing white wing-flame things on his back. Which, honestly, as far as power-ups in anime or manga go, looks absolutely underwhelming. 

Good lord, this is just so funny to read. It's just so far off the rails that if you showed these sequence of chapters to me I'd brush it off as a sixth-grader's fanfiction. Holy crap. Is there even the semblance of a well-written story in this thing? Like, seriously, I don't expect every manga to be at the high standards of something like Tokyo Ghoul, but even some of the less serious and more trope recycling mangas like Naruto or Toriko or Bleach or Dragon Ball, all of which went off the rails at the end (Toriko and Dragon Ball more elegantly than the other two, but still) never felt this asinine to read. Like, jeez, it's an actual crime to think that some actually genuinely good mangas are put on permanent hiatueses or rushed to an unsatisfying end, while this piece of crap gets like two entire years for Zeref and Acnologia.

Teen Titans S04E13 Review: Azarath Metrion Zinthos

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 13: The End, Part 3

Sadly, the whole Trigon arc ended up being a bit underwhelming. That's not to say that it's flat-out bad (it's still better than Brother Blood in season three), it's just that for all the big foreshadowings and buildup, the final two episodes ended up being a bit m'eh. And definitely compared with the Slade and Terra arcs of the first two seasons, or with the finale episodes like 'Starcrossed' over in Justice League, the Light episodes in Young Justice or the Darkseid episodes in Superman: TAS...yeah, Teen Titans is more about comedy and whatnot, but the epicness of what's supposed to be the series finale honestly just isn't as much as I'd prefer.

A good chunk is simply because, well, Trigon is more of a plot device than an actual villain. And while he's a mite more interesting than Brother Blood due to his interactions with Raven, he's way too content to let his Negaclone Teen Titan army fight the little insects while he sits and does absolutely nothing. He even quickly tells both the audience and the Titans that, yeah, he knows of Robin's attempt to travel through hell and save Raven's soul or whatever, but he just doesn't care, because Raven's gone forever.

Mind you, Raven is kind of gone. She's reduced to a confused little girl, and Robin tries his best to comfort her. Robin's role here is kind of appropriate, and while it might just be favoritism for the 'main male character' of the show, Robin is the one closest to Raven, having the most understanding about her ordeals way back in 'Birthmark'. Yeah, Beast Boy might be the one who shares shippy moments with Raven, but Robin and Raven are kind of bound by a bond of mutual understanding, of shitty imposing fathers and being thrust into a destiny he doesn't want. Sharing a mind back in that one season 3 episode probably helped them to understand each other a fair bit, too.

Sadly, the process of getting little Raven to trust Robin ends up just being him saving her from certain death, then telling her stories of how brave she is. Raven's main problem -- her nihilistic, defeatist attitude, finally comes to form as the amnesiac mini-Raven shouts at Robin about how there's no hope for Trigon has won, and Robin's line, "I'll have to have enough hope for the both of us"... is a bit anticlimactic as far as dramatic revelations go. This whole sequence really isn't bad per se, but definitely could've used a couple more revisions. Honestly the whole Chibi-Raven thing really could've been a good character growth moment for Raven, but the fact that it felt like she was kind of stripped of any agency until she recognizes the good in herself and decides to fight makes her kiddification nothing more than a distraction so the plot can run its course until like near the end of the allotted runtime.

Slade, meanwhile, fights the gatekeeper of hell and kills him, which is a cool action scene, if nothing else but a bit of a distracting subplot from the whole Trigon thing. Slade blows up the demon with a bomb, throwing him into hell lava, before regaining his flesh again. It's at around this point that the three surface-bound Titans switch partners and take out the Negaclones, upon which they're almost immediately routed by another Magma Rager army. Yeah, poor Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy are definitely filler here.

Trigon has a random "I WILL ENSLAVE THE UNIVERSE" moment which really felt like he felt bored sitting for almost the entirety of two episodes, while the Teen Titans discuss chibi-Raven's situation. The Titans and a vengeful, demon-axe-wielding Slade, team up and damage Trigon enough to break his horn, but he knocks everyone down. Raven finally stands up and shields her friends, causing Trigon to finally have some personality. Like all abusive fuckers, he tries to assert his authority over his daughter, telling her that he is her creator and her master, that she exists only to serve him, and she is inferior to her father's power.

Raven transforms quite epically into her White Raven form, denies Trigon's shitty excuse of parentage, notes that the (now dead) Azarath monks and the Teen Titans are her true family, and just unleashes the power of white energy blasts unto Trigon's body. One utterly epic Azarath Metrion Zinthos later, and Trigon is gone, and all his evil magic is reversed. Again, it would be nice to have some logic as to where Raven got her power-up from, and a lot of the 'kid Raven' and 'negatitans' screentime really could've been better served being utilized as, like, a subplot to have them go around and try to collect plot coupons from Azarath or something to justify Raven's power-up.

Robin and Raven share a bit of a moment where Robin tells Raven that she is the most hopeful of them and kept up hope and kept on fighting (despite being reduced to a kid for two episodes because she thinks the situation is hopeless okay um) and the Titans are now a big happy family, with Raven back to wearing blue and apparently free of influences of her father, having outgrown a very oppressive parent.

It's a bit of a pretty generic ending, honestly, although Raven's awesome moment of standing up against her father is badass as all hell. Raven suddenly growing up, turning into White Raven and unleashing a plot device blast that kills/seals Trigon is very convenient, kind of like the random instant-Cyborg-healing in season three, but at least with magic and emotional demonic powers in play there's more justification here. There's way too much clutter in this final leg of the plotline, though, which is a shame because Raven and Trigon's story is really fascinating. It's a shame that they couldn't properly juggle it and give the relationship the attention it deserves. It's not outright bad at all, but it just fails to stand up to the buildup that has been done. 

Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange

I finally got around to getting a DVD and watching Doctor Strange! A good four months after it hit the theaters. I think this is the latest I've watched a MCU movie after it's released. I've seen bits and pieces of the movie in Youtube or whatever, of course, and I'm familiar enough with Dr. Strange as a character that I more or less know what's going to happen in the movie... but that doesn't make this movie any less enjoyable. 

A while back, I reviewed Iron Fist, the fifth installment of Marvel's Netflix TV show series... and it's not until I sat down to review this movie that I realized how similar Dr. Strange and Iron Fist's stories really are. Rich arrogant child (or manchild, in Stephen's case) finds themselves in a really bad spot, ends up finding enlightenment in a zen, oriental-based society, and ends up inheriting the mantle of the society's greatest protector. Also, somewhere in-between all this is a villain, and an ally magician/kung fu master that spends the entire movie/series fighting alongside the protagonist, only to break away from him in disgust and become a villain himself.

Only, unlike Iron Fist, this movie is actually good! It relies more on 'show' instead of 'tell', and we actually get to see Stephen Strange's fall from grace from arrogant douche doctor into a skeptic into someone intent on mastering magic, before his reluctant introduction into the huge war between the Sorcerers Supreme of Kamar-Taj and the forces of the dark lord Dormammu. Oh, and we get huge introdumps to the magical side of the Marvel Universe after movies that rely mostly on sci-fi both hard and soft, with even the Asgardians in Thor operating more on 'technology so far advanced it's magic'. 

Is the movie predictable? Hell yes. Is it like every other superhero or even fantasy story out there? Perhaps so. Hell, definitely so. But unlike Iron Fist, Doctor Strange actually is an enjoyable ride through and through. And yes, part of it is simply because Benedict Cumberbatch is just such an awesome and charismatic actor, and another part is because of the absolutely impressive visuals of the Astral Realm that a bigger budget movie can afford to do (holy fuck, that hand-and-hand-and-hand sequence)... but at the same time, Doctor Strange knows what it wants to do. It knows the story it wants to tell, it knows what it's going to do to get its main players in place and the tribulations and character growths they're going to go through, and this focus makes the journey through Kamar-Taj and the various wards and astral places a lot, lot more coherent and enjoyable. 

And even in a sense, the more introductory feel of the movie, with Stephen Strange going from skeptic to confused to a full practitioner of magic, really works well with the fact that it's the first Marvel movie to feature magic. Stephen Strange himself is a very interesting character. Like Tony Stark, doctor Stephen Strange is an absolutely brilliant, yet arrogant surgeon. He doesn't do anything particularly evil like, say, murdering puppies, but between being a total douche to all his work buddies other than his ex, and picking only cases that's "interesting" for a man his caliber to do, and his general demeanour, karma strikes in the form of a car accident that shatters the man's wrists and fucks up his nervous system. The movie delivers a very, very great way of showing his downward spiral from a montage of his desperation to contact everyone else and be denied for the same reasons he denied some patients before. He pushes away people closest to him, and can't even write his own name properly. In desperation he reaches Kamar-Taj with nothing but the watch he keeps as a memento from his girlfriend, and stumbles not on a zen alternative medicine, but a school of mages. Basically Hogwarts and Shaolin Temple combined into one.

The Ancient One and Wong are absolutely hilarious yet still retain an air of sageness to them, and Stephen's fast friend, Mordo, is likewise charismatic. Between the 'Wi-Fi' line, and the Ancient One and Mordo arguing about whether Strange is dying or if he will succeed all add an air of hilarity to what would otherwise be an unremarkable training montage. Also the large amount of random magical artifacts being used and name-dropped just makes me happy even if I don't know what half of them does. 

Yes, maybe the movie could've been better if it hasn't been so formulaic -- it's basically the character arc from Iron Man, and the plot from Thor (although it's a mortal thrust into a magical world instead of the other way around) mixed together. But at the same time, while it's not super-innovative it's still a lot of fun to watch, and at the end of the day, isn't that what superhero movies are supposed to be? Fun. Not all of them can be the Dark Knight or the Winter Soldier.

There are several very weak parts of the movie, of course. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) tries her best to be relevant, but other than the brief scenes earlier in the movie, she ends up feeling more of a distraction than anything, an easy way to get some hospital scenes going on. Kaecilius, the movie's 'main' villain, as well as his band of recurring but nameless cultists, is a very... boring villain. I honestly wished they actually had Dormammu actually show up and wreck stuff, but Dormammu wasn't super-developed either. Kaecilius isn't actually as bad as some of the MCU's worst offenders like Malekith or Ultron, but he's still a pretty bland villain. He's got a couple of great arguments with Dr. Strange (especially the name exchange), and he tries to point out how hypocritical and totalitarian the Ancient One's rule is as Sorcerer Supreme, but it's just not quite enough. Both the Ancient One's usage of darker magic and Strange's own usage of time-reversal magic ends up convincing Mordo to desert the Kamar-Taj at the end of the movie, which is actually fairly organic as far as these things go -- he has been a strong proponent against Strange's methods ever since he wants to use forbidden magic. 

Wong's easily my favourite side-character in the MCU. Such a hilarious fellow. He gets like a dozen 

lines, but he makes all of them shine. 

What else? The cape was hilarious and awesome. I like the cape. Dormammu is... okay, kind of whatever, and as a greater scope villain that Kaecilius is trying to summon and/or feed he honestly lacks much interest similar to how Galactus or Parallax from other derided superhero movies were, but the very... unorthodox method that Dr. Strange deals with Dormammu with the time-reversing Eye of Agammotto is actually something I found hilarious. A bit anticlimactic, sure, but the movie has always been on-the-nose about the plot. So yeah.

Overall, it's a perfectly above-average superhero movie. You won't find anything particularly groundbreaking in this movie, but a combination of impressive visuals, and a very charismatic performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, makes this movie actually one that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. The absolutely psychedelic visuals just make this a lot, lot better. Definitely recommended. 

Also, I think I liked the stinger with Thor and the ever-refilling beer mug more than I should.

Going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2 tonight. Will review it probably some time next week.

MCU Easter Eggs Corner:

I'm not super-knowledgeable on the actual Marvel comics, so I'll keep this specific to just the movie continuities.

• The Eye of Agammotto, of course, is the next in a series of Infinity Stones. It's honestly a bit obvious considering its power, and is confirmed offhandedly by Wong briefly near the end.
• The "Air Force Colonel who crushed his spine in an experimental armor" that Strange's assistant mentions is definitely a reference to James "War Machine" Rhodes, right? This movie takes place around or after Civil War, and Rhodes was said to have a crippling spine injury, so it definitely fits.
• Dr. Strange himself was briefly mentioned by Hydra agent Jasper Sitwell as one of the people they were keeping tabs on during Captain America: Winter Soldier, but it's ambiguous when the events of this movie happened. MCU movies tend to happen relatively similar to when they're released in real life, so maybe Sitwell is just... keeping tabs on a particularly smart surgeon? Huh.
• Stan Lee shows up as a passenger in a bus, of course.
• We can see the Avengers Tower prominently in the New York skyline.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S01E04 Review: That Poor Frog!

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 4: Overdrive

[revised 10/2018]

After the huge, fast-paced and hot-blooded climax to the initial Jonathan/Dio conflict, we get into a bit of a slow burn episode that introduces the 'anime superpower' of the first two Parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. We're going to get Stands that'll define every other part of JJBA other than these first two parts, but for now, it's the debut of Hamon (sometimes translated as 'Ripple' in English localizations), JJBA's version of ki or chakra or nen or soul power or what-have-you. 

We get a brief re-introduction to bland-love-interest Erina, with the ever-memetic "Speedwagon withdraws coolly", before we quickly get introduced to Baron Will A. Zeppeli, a dude in a smashing suit-and-hat getup, and he's apparently what passes for a vampire hunter in this world. And instead of going all Van Helsing with it, Baron Zeppeli fights with the ancient hermit arts of "Hamon", manipulating the ripple-like energy that is both manifested by actual ripples (Zeppeli can stand on water by balancing the ripples), by steady breathing, and it's also concentrated sunlight. Yeah, it's one of those things that you just have to accept and move on. 

Zeppeli is our mentor figure, then, even if he doesn't look that much older than Jonathan or Speedwagon, and he shows off this Hamon thing by punching a poor frog, and shattering only the rock below it. Zeppeli's voiced by such an excited voice actor (Shioya Yoku of Saint Seiya fame) that he does manage to make the exposition nowhere as boring as it should be. I definitely didn't find Zeppeli all that memorable in the comics, but the anime gives him a pretty neat voice that balances authority and a high-strung energy pretty well. Zeppeli's introduction is honestly quite ridiculous -- the man jumps like twenty feet into the air, uses his pinky to stab JoJo in the stomach, then shakes some pepper onto his sandwich (which he produces out of nowhere) like it ain't a thing. And then mid-monologue he sneezes on the pepper and falls flat on his ass. 

Zeppeli also gives us a very quick backstory that I really felt could've been executed a bit better instead of just thrown to us whole-sale, although I guess it could be worse. The Stone Mask, it seems, is something that Zeppeli's father discovered, and as all demonic artifacts are wont to do, it causes the death of everyone on board the ship that excavated it, and Zeppeli's only saved because he managed to survive until sunrise. And then Zeppeli somehow tracked down monks (?) that teach this sacred energy of Hamon and use them to fight vampires and whatnot. 

And Hamon is... it's neat, in that it actually forces you to keep cool instead of just giving in to the energy and rage (something that JJBA will, sadly, drop around after the first couple of times it's relevant) and as with all sorts of ki-like power, Zeppeli shows off a bunch of wacky powers like healing Jojo's broken arm, extending his arm ("Zoom Punch"!) and creating energy discs.

The mission statement is then quickly shown to be hunting down Dio, and the trio end up quickly encountering Jack the Ripper (cleverly foreshadowed a couple of times in earlier episodes), who was turned into a zombie (not brainless at all in this world, but rather more like lesser vampires) by Dio. The actual fight against Jack starts off with a hilariously batshit crazy bit of Jack bursting out of the corpse of one of the horses pulling their carriage, then flexing his muscles because he's somehow hidden a couple dozen knives within his muscles. 

Zeppeli gives no fucks, though, and just treats it all as a lesson while pouring a glass of wine to pull off that "I didn't spill a single drop" kung fu trope as he gives a little speech about Vikings, fleas, bravery and anticipating the enemy's move. I really kind of wish the Hamon explanation has just started with the fight against Jack after the initial frog scene, so we could've integrated the tension and action scene with the exposition -- would probably flow a bit better, and worked better in a show-don't-tell way.

Oh, and this is where Jonathan Joestar delivers his iconic line ("furueru zo HEART! Moetsukiru hodo HEAT!" -- often translated to "resonate, my heart! The heat's enough to burn!" or variations thereof), which is pretty predictably hammy. But other than Jack's stylish entrance and Jonathan dropping that line, I actually found the fight against Jack serviceable but not quite as epic.

While all this is going on, Dio is learning how to properly utilize his vampire powers, and is totally buying into this evil vampire lord deal, having his minions push a wheeled throne around while he lounges with a Sith cloak on. The episode overall lays it on way too heavy with the monologue and the exposition, and it's genuinely baffling -- comparing it to the manga, the anime cuts out an action scene where Jonathan fights Wang Chan, the shady Asian drugstore owner, who was zombified by Dio between episodes 3 and 4. Wang Chan actually does show up later on, so I'm not sure  why they couldn't have just kept that scene and incorporated some of Zeppeli's dialogue there. I dunno. It's a bit of a clunky episode, and it's just as well that Zeppeli, Jack and Jonathan manage to make the best of it by hamming it the fuck up.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Will A. Zeppeli is, of course, a reference to the rock band Led Zeppelin. I could list a whole lot of Led Zeppelin songs, but if I had to select one, it's gotta be Stairway to Heaven. Other great hits include Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, Black Dog and Since I've Been Loving You.

Nanatsu no Taizai 215 Mini-Review: Flashback's Over, Guys

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 215: Zeldoris, the Executioner

Well that was fucking anticlimactic. Not that it's actually a bad chapter, mind you -- literally everything else that happened in the flashback, and just how the original Gowther/Zeldoris/Dolor thing ended up panning on the Gowther side, kind of went unseen. Zeldoris basically completely fucked over Dolor-Diane, because he's acting as a receptacle of the Demon King by channeling the King's magic power, absolutely shutting down Dolor's magical power and absolutely fucking him over.

Apparently present-day Dolor is a huger asshat than we all thought. Gloxinia was curious to see if his successor would be blinded by rage (which, let's be clear -- was moronic in and of itself, because the only reason it's even a conflict is because King has sister issues) but didn't really have a lose-lose situation like what Dolor presented to Diane. Dolor's choice? Either die (which means Diane dies for real) or submit to Zeldoris and become one of the Commandments, and thereby be locked into the original timeline and never return to the present day.

Dolor, you are a huge, huge douche.

And Diane, of course, wakes up. Because she instead picks a third choice and runs away. Which isn't a solution I like a lot because it kind of feels like we're just going round and round as far as Diane's original personality goes, although she seems to have regained her original love for King. Which... I dunno. Does that mean the exhaustive 'Diane lost her memory for two years now' thing is done with? the flashback and the absolutely needless 'MAKE A CHOICE' subplot is done, though, and it's a quasi-decent read at least until slightly before the end, so maybe we can finally move on with the present day plot. 

Teen Titans S04E12 Review: Chibi-Raven and Evil Negaclones

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 12: The End, Part 2

We pick up slightly after the events of the previous episode to see that, well, Trigon has brought hell upon Earth. The sky is red, the oceans are lava, everyone's turned to stone and all buildings are destroyed. It's a bit silly, honestly, watching it as an adult now, but back then it's still 'the bad guy has conquered the Earth'. And if you subscribe to the theory that Teen Titans takes place in a small corner of the DCAU, well, this huge explosion kind of fucked any chance of Superman, Batman or any of the more senior heroes coming to the Titans' aid. The four Teen Titans are the only survivors, being protected by Raven's little spell, literally the only four people left alive.

Sadly the progress of this episode felt a bit more formulaic and trying to shove as many concepts in. We've got Raven, despite having most of her essence lost when she turned into the portal, leaving behind part of her power within the Titans. We've got Slade and Robin teaming up as they fight through hell, and Slade's own personal sub-plot. We've got the random appearance by the innocent little girl Raven. We've got the Negative Evil Teen Titans showing up because Trigon couldn't be bothered to get off his ass.

The biggest problem, I think, is that Trigon is kind of weird. He just spends 90% of his screentime in this episode just sitting on the throne made up by buildings. And, yeah, it is very impressive that none of the Titans giving their all, even channeling Raven's wrath with an epic Azarath Metrion Zinthos manages to even make Trigon flinch, but what's his main plan? He just sits in the middle of a ruined city growing bigger and bigger... to what end? Is he going to conquer the universe? Other universes? As it is, the dude just shows up in our universe, causes planetary devastation and just sits.

Slade shows up, quite randomly, apparently having gotten his hands on Rings of Azar that protected him from Trigon's attempt to dismember him last episode. It all honestly came out a bit randomly out of nowhere and beyond me liking the development because Slade is awesome it felt a little forced. Also Slade knowing all about Raven's little piece, talking about how the other three Titans must distract the great all-seeing Eye of Sauron Trigon seems to just be a convoluted excuse to get Robin and Slade together.

Mind you, it's not a choice that I'm complaining about. After the Titans make their displeasure and distrust with Slade clear, Robin goes off with Slade to walk through hell, and the two have a pretty great team-up that's a pretty sick twist on the classic Dynamic Duo team, and I really wished that Robin's relationship with Batman is shown more overtly here instead of just implied -- would certainly make this moment a bit stronger. Slade talks about his motivations, about how he enjoys other people's suffering, but bringing utter destruction isn't his cup of tea.

During the fights, Slade's mask fall off to reveal Slade Wilson's true state... an undead skeleton with a single glowing red eye. We only see Slade's horrifying visage for a split second, but damn that's effective. And yeah, Slade's main goal for working with Trigon and the deal that he keeps demanding Trigon to uphold is clear -- he's still technically dead, and he wants to be rid of being this shambling undead abomination. Also a nice little way to sneak in confirmation that, yeah, Slade did freaking die in the season two climax, a rarity of acknowledging death in this series.

The other three Titans fight Trigon, with Beast Boy having the most awesome scene as he flies up to a giant demon's ear and transforms into a whale. That has got to hurt. Apparently the Rings of Azar are very effective -- and really, we really should've had some foreshadowing or some explanation as to where Slade got these things -- so Trigon, instead of getting up his chair and fighting... sits back down and summons evil mirror images. Yeah.

To be fair, the fight against the Evil Negaclones are pretty cool, but felt a bit... boring? We know what Cyborg, Beast Boy and Starfire can do, and seeing basically them just launching the same attacks at each other kind of gets repetitive when it's stretched a bit longer than it should. Justice League Unlimited knew to keep the battle between the Justice League and their clones short and sweet, but here they dragged it on a bit. Yeah, there was this sequence where the Negaclones try to unsettle the originals by getting into their heads, but it doesn't work when it's just a couple of simple lines, with only Nega Beast Boy's taunts about Terra sounding half-effective. Nega-Starfire's "Robin will be mine mwa ha ha" is petty and superficial, while Nega-Cyborg's talks about the death of Cyborg's mother really came out of nowhere, and it would've been more effective if it brought up Cyborg's feeling of self-worth or lack of 'humanity' which have been his character's main struggles throughout the series. It's a bit of a missed opportunity that made what should've been a compelling 'fight against thy own self' scene be a boring repetition of every other Teen Titan fight ever.

Robin and Slade part ways as they go to find their respective goals, although not without an obligatory 'we're enemies the next time we meet' line. Robin finds a little de-aged Raven in a white cloak, all scared and amnesiac, which is either a clever bit of writing or another irritating distraction to have the Trigon plot run along through three episodes. I thought the kid Raven bit really could've been handled a lot better.

Honestly one of the biggest failings of the three-parter is how little Raven was in it. She was okay in the first episode that deals with her fatalism and accepting destiny, but she's barely in the second part, the other Titans are fighting random nega-clones that are nothing but filler, Trigon is sitting in a chair... it's a good thing that the Slade and Robin bits are there because, holy shit, Slade is entertaining as all hell, but when the B-plot that barely had five minutes of runtime is more interesting than the entire 'end of the world' episode combined, well, you know there's something wrong.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• A part of the Trigon arc that the season finale adapts (which ran through Tales of the Teen Titans #60-63) does feature Trigon turning the whole world into a dark, comatose state other than the Teen Titans, sitting on a chair for a good chunk of it, as well as the Teen Titans facing against the manifestations of their darkest fears and internal conflict -- although the Nega-titans in this cartoon are far more child-friendly.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S01E03 Review: WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 3: Youth With Dio

[revised 10/2018]

This first arc of Phantom Blood finally draws into a close, and this episode really hammers in just why anime is so much more effective. The music, the crisp colours and fluid movements, end up really selling the fight between Jonathan and Dio as this climactic battle between the two -- whereas in the manga it just feels like the first of many conflicts. But we do get a whole lot of great scenes, including Dio's voice actor gloriously hamming it up with so many glorious, memorable lines. We'll cover Dio's hamminess later on. 

The episode starts off with a pretty quick engineered-confession. With the help of Speedwagon and a bunch of policemen he's gathered, Jonathan gets Dio to monologue and confess his role in poisoning George Joestar. A cornered Dio attacks Jonathan, but George takes the mortal blow, while the blood splutters out and hits the stone mask that seems to stab Dio in the head, knocking him off the second-story window and causing everyone to presume him dead. After a tearful apology and farewell from the dying George... Dio, of course, reveals himself to be alive. 

But not before Speedwagon steals the scene after George's death, with a very dramatic finger point and declaring that "Sir George has passed down his noble spirit to Jonathan, and it has became his iron will that will pave the future!" Got to love that Speedwagon. 

And thanks to relatively lax censorship at that time, we are treated to some pretty gory and gloriously brutal deaths of the random policemen thanks to Dio. He slices off some poor dude's head like a sandwich just by swinging his hand, throws some other dude so hard that is explodes on impact, and Dio just wipes a bloody swathe through the poor policemen as he shows off a bunch of classic vampire powers like making lesser spawns, regeneration from bullets, crawling up walls and all that jazz. At one point Dio does a reverse-plank on the ceiling just to freak people out.  "Even Speedwagon is afraid!" indeed. 

Among Dio's hammy lines in this fight includes four usages of WRYYYY, a battle-cry that Dio does a lot. Meant to symbolize a bestial, vampiric battlecry (and actually played seriously in the first couple of times Dio does it), it quickly evolves into a hammy, glorious high-pitched roar-to-the-sky WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. 

It's a pretty brutal set-up for a final battle between Jonathan and Dio for now, and it's a typical desperate last stand for sure. Speedwagon's wounded, the police are dead, Dio's got crazy vampire powers... and Jonathan just charges in, ripping the spear from a convenient armour display, and somewhere in the fight (and Dio's clear desire to dick around with Jonathan) the mansion gets set on fire. 

Jonathan's motivation in this fight is pretty simple but effective -- he blames himself for the state Dio is in, as well as the death of his father, and just goes the martyr way of knocking Speedwagon out of the mansion and is perfectly willing to burn himself up with Dio if that's what is needed. It's a pretty stark contrast to the far more competent action heroes or guile heroes that will succeed Jonathan as protagonists in the future of the series. He's far from perfect and clearly is improvising a lot of  it, but damn if his earnestness isn't infectious. 

The subsequent fight of Dio walking up walls and implausible mid-air acrobatics is not the best the series has to offer, although it definitely is animated pretty well. Both Speedwagon and the narrator takes turns narrating the fight, though, getting ever more excited about just how determined Jonathan is or how inhuman Dio is or whatever -- I'm not sure if the fight would feel more mundane if the exposition monologues are cut, or more epic. 

And as the fight nears its climax, Dio tells Jonathan that it's "useless, useless, useless!" to resist him. Or, in the original Japanese, "muda muda MUDA!" -- this word, repeated, will be Dio's main catchphrase throughout the series. And it's so glorious to hear it. Glorious for another reason is the "goodbyejojo". JJBA likes to sprinkle in English words here and there among its dialogue, and it's charming. 

The fight ends with Jonathan managing to impale Dio on his back as they fell, and Dio realizes that despite his immortal power, he still can't best Jonathan's unwillingness to give up and his pretty great ability of improvising. It's a pretty neat end, and just like in the manga, they do manage to imply that this is the death of 'starter villain' Dio -- something that is definitely not the case. 

Anyway, the execution of this episode is pretty great. Despite the narrator's fight commentary (which probably could've been pared down) it's still a pretty well-executed fight and easily the point in the anime where I realize that, yes, watching this animated with fluid animation and great background music really does elevate the otherwise pretty mundane conflict in Part 1 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure into something more special. 

Teen Titans S04E11 Review: Daddy Issues

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 11: The End, Part 1

So season four of Teen Titans was kind of weird and awesome at the same time. On one hand, it tried its best at going off the deep end and doing something utterly desire. On the other hand, it tried to rein in on the wacky insanity and tried to tell a far more structured and episodic overreaching plot with its 'serious episode' quota. And considering that the producers intended the show to end with this three-parter, man, they certainly went for epic.

See, Teen Titans is honestly unique. It doesn't take it seriously more than half of the time, but still manages to tell stories that engage and when it switches gears and brings in Slade or Trigon to get serious, it manages to really do it well because of how well-developed and fleshed-out the five core Titans are. The show might not build a well-interlocked and rich, comic-book-homaging universe like the DCAU, but it certainly works well in other ways.

The ending of the fourth season takes place in a three-parter event, starting off with the prophecied date of Trigon's return finally arriving, and the demonified Slade goes off to murder the Teen Titans. But we then cut away to nearly a good, sizable chunk of the episode having Raven just... try to hang out and be a nice, good friend to the four people who cares for her. She tries her best not to be the creepy emo goth girl -- despite the other Titans making it clear that it never bothered them, subconsciously Raven knows what would please other people and this was the only way she could think of. She tries to make pancakes and fail terribly about it. She fights Plasmus, one of the Titans' most recurring villains and takes him out while saving the team. They eat pizza, she suggests all sorts of activities that Raven won't be caught dead doing...

Only for a solar eclipse to happen, and all hell breaks loose. Literally! Raven knows that for all her defiance in the previous episodes, it's only against an agent of her father. Azarath is razed to the ground and for all her bravado, she's a scared little girl who has absolutely no idea how to deal with Trigon coming, and she ends up just trying to make her friends' last day the most comfortable and happiest day of their lives.

Of course, the Teen Titans have Robin on their team, and Robin's nothing if not prepared. The Titans built this super-magic-proof room behind Raven's back and keep her in it, ready to face off against anything Trigon sends towards her... which, well, is Slade leading an army of Magma Ragers. It's the most PG they could get with demons, I guess, but flaming fire elementals are cool, it's just a shame that the animation team doesn't bother to animate their flames nearly most of the time, making them look unimpressive a good chunk of the time after they were summoned by Slade.

And, holy shit, we get one of the most awesome action sequences ever as Robin and Slade to battle that mirrors a lot of their most epic confrontations in seasons past. We see Starfire let loose with the terrifying strength and firepower that the alien princess has. We see Beast Boy embracing the werebeast form from 'the Beast Within' and just wreck house with the fire demons. And, most cool of all, Cyborg combines with the Titan Tower to unleash a gigantic cannon blast.

Trigon's manipulation of Raven, plus her friends being in danger, ends up causing her to be forced to give in and be taken away by Slade. We get a pretty cool exchange between the two. Slade thinks he's a villainous partner or at least a hitman to Trigon, but Raven knows her father. Trigon betrays and uses everyone as a pawn -- and if he's willing to turn her own daughter into a portal, honestly just why will he keep Slade around? Slade demands Trigon honour his bargain, but Trigon doesn't give a shit and just allows the fire demons to drag Slade away, before literally unmaking him. Honour among thieves and all. It's a nice little character moment for Slade, who has spent a good chunk of this season being menacing and glorifying in his newfound hellfire powers.

What happens next might cause you to debate a bit about how Raven's actions are justified or not, but she decides to embrace her inevitable destiny -- if nothing else, Trigon's show of power with the fire demon army has shown that, yeah, even without being in this realm, he's still pretty powerful -- in exchange for her friends' lives. If they keep fighting, I guess Raven assumed that the demon army will eventually overwhelm them and kill her friends? This way, Raven shields the other four Titans from the upcoming apocalypse as she transforms into the portal upon which Trigon is brought into the world.

End part one, where we get the obligatory 'let's try to fight destiny and fail' part of the plotline... but we get some really great moment from Slade and especially Raven, and Robin also gets a couple of great moments in too. Add a very wonderful action sequence to top it off, and honestly the only real weak point of this three-parter is Trigon, who... is just a big angry demon that's super-powerful and Raven's daddy, but not much of anything else. It's a common of three-parters in general, where the first part barely does anything but set up the next two parts, so yeah.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The coin that Beast Boy gives to Raven reads 'Liberty 1964', a reference to the year that the Teen Titans team first made their appearance in the pages of The Brave and the Bold.
• Trigon has appeared and been hinted at several times throughout the series, first showing up as a cameo in the season one episode "Nevermore" before being relatively central to the plotline of season four, but let's talk about his history now that he actually shows up in the show. Trigon is one of the main long-running villains of The New Teen Titans, the second incarnation of the Teen Titans team that this show is based off of. Trigon is a demon (apparently quite separate from the likes of Neron, Satanus, Blaze and the other denizens of a more traditional hell) born in an alternate dimension due to the mating between a god and a human. He was summoned to our world by Arella, Raven's mother, a member of the Church of Blood (a sick demon-worshipping blood-ritual cult led by Brother Blood, which is understandably adapted out here) summoned Trigon and conceived a child with the demon, who his his true nature in the form of a handsome human. When she found out that her baby-papa is a psychotic demon, Arella very nearly committed suicide when she was found by the mages of Azarath, a mystical interdimensional plane, who rescued her and raised Raven and taught her to control her emotions. Trigon is aware of Raven's whereabouts but left her alone to allow her to grow and be a potential gateway to our dimension, and the Justice League turned her away due to her heritage. This led her to become the catalyst of the formation of the New Teen Titans to combat Trigon and seal the demon in an interdimensional prison. Trigon has then continued to try to break free of his prison and destroy the world and the Titans, with his relationship with Raven generally being portrayed as an abusive 'daddy knows what's best' kind of deal. 

JoJo's Bizzare Adventure S01E02 Review: Bladed Hat

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 2: A Letter From the Past

[revised 10/2018]

After the first episode's over, we quickly jump into a sudden time skip, leading to seven years after their initial encounter and their childhood rivalry and traumatic dog-burning, and both Jojo and Dio are now young adults with rippling muscles. Oh, and to continue with the establishment of time, Jack the Ripper's been killing people left and right, apparently. Again, a good chunk of the episode is still devoted to the rivalry between Jonathan and Dio, which, while more subtle now (manifesting mostly as monologues during the rugby match). It definitely does feel a bit repetitive, but they do try to be pretty faithful to the source material and I can't fault them for it.

The conflict of this episode is quickly thrown in, with George Joestar dying. Jonathan ends up figuring out that Dio has been feeding George some slow-acting poison, and after a scuffle where Jonathan manages to overpower Dio's "thumb in your eye" trick, pushes Dio off the second floor... and in one of the sillier things that Jonathan does, leaves Dio relatively unguarded and alone as he goes off to investigate the drug. Jonathan's defining character trait is his earnestness and naivety, though this is a bit of an eye-rolling moment for me.

We also have the first negative-colours palette swap that the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure regularly employs in climactic conflicts. I'm not sure what this is in reference to (the manga is black and white, after all), but it did catch me off-guard when Dio screams out loud about how his bastard father never had any honour, and suddenly everything is bleached in different colours. Giving Dio pink hair for some reason. The later seasons will get better at how tasteful the colour-palette-swaps are, but in the first season and especially Phantom Blood, it always feels like they dragged on these sequences a bit too long.

Jonathan's journey to confirm the potion takes him into a random Asian drugstore, where he runs into everyone's favourite character from Phantom Blood -- Robert E.O. Speedwagon, a sharply-dressed leader of the local ruffians who tries to rob the two-meter-tall musclebound man. Speedwagon fights with "Ogre Street tactics", which includes throwing that bowler hat... which is bladed. Speedwagon apparently realizes that Jonathan fights "like a true gentleman" and is moved that he goes in for non-lethal wounds, and ends up befriending him. "I picked a fight with the wrong man!" A bit of a weirdly-paced scene, honestly, but if it gets Speedwagon into the cast a bit quicker, I don't mind.


Speedwagon is going to serve as the archetypal "lancer" character, that dude who hangs out the protagonist and witnesses everything, and sometimes gets to participate, but for the most part acts as an audience surrogate or a commentator -- with that latter role being something that the Western audience, at least, remember him fondly for.

Meanwhile, while Jojo returns with a new best friend and evidence of Dio's foul play, the unsupervised Dio wanders around the city holding the ever-mysterious stone mask, and figures out that it's not just a torture tool -- it turns people into super-powerful vampires that drains blood via their fingers. Dio narrowly avoids being killed when the sun rises up and evaporates the vampire attacking him. 

The episode still moves pretty slow, although I guess it can't be helped. Phantom Blood is pretty slow-paced, honestly, and a good chunk of all of this is just setup. We do get some fun action scenes on the part of Jonathan-vs-Speedwagon and Jonathan-vs-Dio, although both are relatively short. It definitely could've been a bit tighter, for sure. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Speedwagon, or rather, Robert E.O. Speedwagon, is a reference to REO Speedwagon, an 80's Rock band. Some recommended songs from REO Speedwagon: "Keep on Loving You", "Take It On the Run" and "Can't Fight this Feeling".

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S01E01: Dio Is A Dick

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 1: Dio, the Invader

[revised 10/2018 ]

So, by popular demand, I'm reviewing JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. JJBA has been one of the longest-running manga in Japan, written and drawn by Hirohiko Araki in 1987 and have been going until right now -- and it operates in a decidedly unconventional manner. It swaps protagonists throughout its long, long run, and even changes art styles and genres every hundred chapters or so. This long-running saga is separated into several very distinct "Parts", each working as a perfectly serviceable standalone story of its own. It's well known for an art style that is extremely... unconventional among manga artist, being this strange fit between stylized and realistic, with muscle-bound men striking weird poses being the norm. Or, well, at least for the first three parts, anyway. JJBA wouldn't be quite as remembered until Part III, Stardust Crusaders, but in 2012 they began adapting the entirety of the series as an anime, starting with the first two Parts for its first season.

So, after that pretty long introduction, here's (a revised and tidied up version) of my review of the first Part, retroactively titled "Phantom Blood".  Why the revision? I was reading through some of the backlog and I think it's high time that I revised some of these. I don't like going back and changing stuff, but at the same time, some of my reviews of Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency are clearly way below my standard, which is why I'm changing things up and clearing up some of the more embarrassingly hammy bits of my own reviews.

Plus, I've actually been rewatching the first season alongside a friend, which gives a neat little new insight to these re-reviews.

Phantom Blood as a whole isn't... isn't all that unique, but it does offer a pretty decent story. It's pretty basic manga stuff, throwing in a character into a situation of supernatural mumbo-jumbo, with a villain that's so obviously evil. Yet what makes JoJo's Bizarre Adventure actually end up being pretty successful is its approach to everything. Everything is so played up and played straight, with our hero, goody-two-shoes gentleman-cum-muscleman Jonathan Joestar, and our villain, the scheming, dastardly Dio Brando, both being played up to the hilt.

The setting is pretty interesting for anime (especially anime of that period), being Victorian-era England. We are quickly thrown into a bit of a prequel as an ugly thief, Dario Brando, comes across the wreckage of a carriage crash -- and upon finding that the rich nobleman is actually alive, plays along with the misconception that he was here to help. Thus the families of the Brando and Joestar family are intertwined.

Oh, throw in the mysterious plot device, a mysterious creepy stone mask that shoots out spikes when in contact with blood, the trigger of the show's descent into supernatural horror. Take a drink for every time the first season zooms in on the stone mask being oh-so-spooky before its true nature is revealed.

And it's... it's definitely an interesting blend of art styles and storytelling. It's Gothic-era England and we're going to deal with shit like vampires and Jack the Ripper, but at the same time everyone is comprised of 95% muscle in an obviously Fist of the North Star inspired art style (or is it the other way around?) of MANLY MEN. Oh, and everyone pulls off flexing poses any time the manga or animation asks for a still shot.



And then the episode quickly blazes through the exposition, and cuts out a bunch of extraneous dialogue in the original manga where we get a bunch of extra scenes just showing 'normal' life. We quickly establish that Jonathan "JoJo" Joestar is the perfect, naive gentleman that will get into a fight to protect a maiden even if he doesn't quite know how to fight. Dio, on the other hand, is a bag of hate that spits on his (implied to be abusive, and at least useless) father's grave and worms his way into the Joestar household as an adopted ward, clearly wanting nothing to do with befriending Jonathan, and ends up showing up Jonathan in every conceivable way.

Oh, and Dio kicks Jonathan's poor dog, clearly establishing him as a huge, huge asshole. AND LATER PUTS THE POOR THING INSIDE AN INCINERATOR! This also sets up this series' tendency to do horrible, horrible things to poor, defenseless mutts. It's honestly reached running gag status that any dog that shows up in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure will end up being killed gruesomely. If you have any doubts that Dio isn't actually evil and is just a social climber, this is the scene that really shows how horrible he is.

Also, in an often-quoted and memetic scene, Dio ambushes Jonathan's girlfriend, Erina, and forces himself on her for a kiss. Just so that Jonathan can't be his first. To quote him, "KONO DIO DA!", translated to "it was me, Dio!"  Nowhere as horrible as burning a dog alive, but still.

Anyway, this entire episode honestly is just hammering down how much of a villain Dio is, and I'm genuinely not sure just why this didn't get ridiculous -- it really should be, but the pretty earnest writing and the over-acting on both sides of the party ends up making all of these enjoyable. Amazing voice-acting (I'm watching the Japanese version), especially from Dio's VA, Koyasu Takehito. The Phantom Blood part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is never actively bad, though I don't think it quite reaches the highs of storytelling as its later parts. And ultimately, that's how I felt about Phantom Blood -- it's not bad, but it's just so... so mundane and starts off so slowly. It's a good thing we do kind of blaze through a lot of the information dumps in this episode, though. 

The JoJo Playlist:
One of the most memorable parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is how the author sneaks in the names of English bands and music titles (and later fashion brands) as character names or attack powers. It's a bit subtle in these early stages, but in subsequent series it's going to be pretty blatant.

• Dio's name, while clearly taking inspiration on the dude's god complex (Dio means "God" in Italian) it also is a partial reference to the band Dio and its main singer, Ronnie James Dio. Selected songs -- which I'll be doing for every one of these -- include Holy River and Metal Will Never Die. Dio's surname, Brando, is apparently taken from Marlon Brando, of Godfather fame. (Jonathan Joestar, on the other hand, borrows his name from a restaurant that the mangaka likes to go to.)
• The opening song , Sono Chi no Sadame (literally "Destiny of the Blood") is a fast-paced, glorious piece. Great one to give a listen to. 
• The ending, Roundabout, is a 70's song from the British band Yes. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure will always have their ending songs be thematically-appropriate English songs from that period of time, which is something that I really do appreciate. 

Teen Titans S04E10 Review: In Which The Teen Titans Feed Their Enemies To A Pie Demon

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 10: Mother Mae-Eye

It's a pretty zany episode that ends in a very, very dark note with the Teen Titans basically mailing the HIVE kids the cursed pie containing Mother Mae-Eye, dooming them to being brainwashed and eaten alive... which is absolutely the darkest, most sinister thing that the Titans ever does in the show, short of Cyborg accidentally eating the tofu alien a couple of episodes back. Mind you, though, this kind of black comedy is literally daily routine over in Teen Titans Go, the show's spiritual successor only in terms of character models and voice actors, and done in far more tasteless sense than this one.

Anyway, this is a bizarre episode. Mother Mae-Eye (ugh the pun) is this weird, deformed evil cartoon witch that does this sinister plot where she makes all the Titans think that she's their mommy, and we have a combination of Mother trying to fatten them up and acting oh-so-overprotective... which honestly got old after a while. This, on the other hand, is offset with some absolutely hilarious visual gags, as well as the fight scenes with the magical demonic gingerbread cookies.

I really think Mother Mae-Eye is a badly-written villain with a decent, wacky concept. The creepy mama vibes are suitably creepy at times, the weird bakery theme is hilarious... it's just that a combination of a horrible visual design, blah voice acting and a poorly scripted dialogue just makes her scenes a bore and I cheer when she leaves the scene and the Titans fight the gingerbread demons.

The HIVE trio also make a return in this episode, and this time they are the HIVE Five! Mammoth, Gizmo and Jinx are joined by two new buddies that make short cameos during the HIVE academy scenes in season three, the absolute yes-man Private-HIVE who's a Captain America knockoff... and See-More. Or Seymour. He's just this weird dude with a single eye that he can click around to use different eye powers. Eye beams, X-Ray vision (he saw Starfire naked, totally) and all that shit... I don't know why, but I really like See-More. I honestly really think that the HIVE trio (well, HIVE Five) should've been utilized more during the third season as Brother Blood's flunkies, but seasons four and five does try their best at spotlighting HIVE as a recurring villain.

That said, I really like See-More. Why couldn't he have had an entire episode all to his weird wacky eye powers? Certainly a lot more interesting than Mother Mae-Eye, who has my vote of most irritating Teen Titans villain ever.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Bottle City of Kandor, an important piece of Superman lore, has a short cameo during Cyborg's flashback to the gypsy shop. 
• Robin's new hairstyle bears more than partial resemblance to how the second Robin (Tim Drake) wears his hair in The New Batman Adventures.

Boku no Hero Academia 135 Mini-Review: Centipeder!

My Hero Academia, Chapter 135: A Distasteful Tale

Centipeder is apparently a winner of a fan art contest. Whoever made up that design? Props to you, you made a very cool-looking weird centipede-man that still looks creepy and buggy but still heroic at the same time. Most of this chapter is honestly just a bit of a recap and a pooling of most of the information that the heroes and the readers know. Some heroes don't trust the Yuuei students, their mentors stand up for them, some talk about a Heroes Network (basically an information forum for superheroes) and all that jazz. Confirmation that the quirk-erasing drug is temporary, but different from Aizawa's temporary disabling of quirks.

We also get confirmation that apparently the drug's made from some's blood and cells, which obviously we can surmise is the little girl with bandages. Eri? We get confirmation that Overhaul can disassemble and reassemble things. Both Midoriya and Mirio realize what the fuck they're talking about, and the moment of despair they briefly had is absolutely well done, and the anger they have, noting that their goals are shit if they can't protect Eri, is well-done. Nighteye even notes how, yeah, their goal is to protect Eri now.

So yeah, decent chapter, nothing too special. 

One Piece 863 Mini-Review: Brook & Jinbe be Badass!

One Piece, Chapter 863: 

Real life's being a huge, huge dick to me, so I don't really have much time. Yes, cartoon episode reviews are still happening but that's mostly because I have them mostly ready to go a couple of days/weeks in advance. So this is going to be a mini-review. A shorter review. First up? Amazing colour page, amazing great collage of like a couple hundred One Piece characters. 

So it's not a clone technique, it's not Gear Five or anything, it's literally just a bunch of animals that Luffy rounded up and forced Brulee to make to look like him, unleashed via mirror. Big Mom's rampaging and eating the souls of any cook who's afraid of death. Luffy, like the great idiot he is, almost immediately goes 'it's me!' when Big Mom demands to know which one of them is the real Luffy. KataDogtoothKuri apparently has some kind of mochi mochi no mi logia powers, quickly sees through Luffy's plan to smash Mother Caramel's photograph, and tells Big Mom of the Straw Hats' plan, which he sees through in no time flat. Luffy is trapped in Katakuri's attack, but Jinbe and Pedro go in for the rescue. 

Jinbe gives us some introdumps about Katakuri's powers, and claims responsibility for telling Luffy about Mother Caramel -- basically saving Capone's skin in the process. Jinbe challenges Big Mom, noting that this is his great mutiny, and I thought that it was going to be a silly moment of 'let's make a sacrifice for the sake of a sacrifice!' *cough*Makarov*cough* but thankfully it's not that stupid of a story, and Big Mom's power doesn't work on Jinbe because he doesn't have any fear. He gives a badass line along the lines of "a member of the crew of the future pirate king won't cower at a mere yonko", and still has the audacity to pretty cool-ly put a cup of sake down as a sign of respect, if nothing else. 

Meanwhile, Brook, disguised as one of the Luffies with a fake pasted-on mask, walks up nonchalantly to Mother Caramel's photo and smashes it with a dummy hammer.

What the shit, man, Brook!

Very awesome chapter. Jinbe was the uncontested highlight, but god damn, Brook's short, brief moment was awesome as well. 

Teen Titans S04E09 Review: All Work And No Play

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 9: Overdrive

After the piss-poor Cyborg focus episode in this season (the abominable Cyborg the Barbarian), and Cyborg's season-wide arc being the weakest compared to Robin, Beast Boy and Raven when they are carrying their own seasons, you might be forgiven for thinking that Cyborg only works well as a character that plays off other characters. When did a Cyborg focus really felt good other than the Fixit one and the infiltrate-HIVE one? But the show clearly still tries to give all five characters equal billing... well, all except poor Starfire, at least, so we get another Cyborg focus episode.

This one is a bit better, I think. There's a theme of Cyborg being obsessed and trying to upgrade himself and eventually purge himself of all of the 'fun'-ness of himself and just basically be a literal robot. It's a plotline very common in fiction, with Teen Titans even using it with Season One Slade-Obsessed Robin. It just takes it to a higher extreme by likening it to... drug abuse? Being a super-perfectionist over-achiever? On one hand, yeah, you can argue that catching a villain terrorizing the city is a very important goal, especially for a group of freaking superheroes, but honestly Billy Numerous is another in a series of disappointing Teen Titans villains in recent episodes. You can make a villain annoying and still likable -- Gizmo is a prime example of that -- but Billy Numerous is just irritating. On paper he's probably a lot funnier, a dude with Multiple-Man style powers that speaks in a funny hillbilly accent. In practice? He's absolutely irritating both in his behavior and accent, and I find it hard that this fellow is the one dude that makes Cyborg go to such extremes to better himself.

But Billy Numerous aside (which, by the way, marks a nice cool moment where the students that cameo'd in S3E1 start showing up as actual villains), the episode was pretty great, with some really fun jokes on Beast Boy and Starfire's end, and some really cool glowy-robot action scenes with Cyborg.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• STAR Labs, a facility prominently featured in Superman, Flash and Justice League related stories, is briefly mentioned during the Max-7 commercial.

Teen Titans S04E08 Review: Romantic Bonding in an Alien Deathplanet

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 8: Stranded

"Stranded" is a semi-serious episode (as much as a romantic comedy can afford to be serious) that develops characters outside of the main character of the season, which is a bit of a rarity. Here, though, is an attempt at actually shaking the status quo up a little. We develop Robin and Starfire's feelings by... well, splitting up the team on a wacky alien world, where Raven hangs out with a bunch of fluffballs while Cyborg and Beast Boy play comedy show with their attempts to fix both Cyborg and their part of the ship.

Yes, there's the alien threat (apparently called 'Shrieker' by supplementary material) that's somehow super-duper indestructible that menaces the lovebirds, and a couple of requisite action scenes both against evil alien and hostile alien environments, but the big part of the episode is just having Robin and Starfire try to understand each other, with Starfire's powers failing to work -- a nice callback to 'Switched' -- due to her not feeling boundless joy and exquisite happiness. Robin is a bit of a cold, badass cool kid, and seeing him stumble with trying to explain his feelings (and the difference between girl friend and girlfriend, which is crucial to anyone below the age of seventeen, and sometimes to most people above the age of seventeen) and end up kind of furthering their shipping somewhat.

It's nothing too memorable, and by all rights should've been a boring, sappy filler episode, or just full balls-out crazy comedy like the Killer Moth/Kitten one, but they got the right tone at keeping 'romantic' and 'comedy' in check to deliver an actually enjoyable episode that stars on two characters repairing a strained relationship.

Nanatsu no Taizai 214 Review: The Choice

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 214: I Can't Reach the You of That Day Anymore

Part of me is disappointed that the 'big choice' that King has to make is whether to kill Law or not. It's... it's not even a question of 'oh my god, what character development King has gone through!' It's more of the question of 'why the fuck would King be so into this glorified RPG that he would go into murder-mode immediately?' Literally the only reason King launched the magic spear in the first place was because Gerharde and Law coincidentally reminded King of Elaine and Ban, and the whole situation with them. What if King hadn't been able to relate so violently and dramatically to Gloxinia's flashback? That was dumb.

On the other hand it does mean that we might finally get the fuck away from this already-exhausting flashback storyline, so there's that. 

The rest of the chapter is just Gloxinia and King talking about stuff, how it's kind of the 'real thing', somewhat -- they go through the actual past, and actual time-travel is involved... but is returned to the present if they do something different. Or something, I dunno. It's all a bit confusing and truthfully I don't particularly care for the "live a mile in their shoes" storyline anyway -- if Gloxinia and Dolor had just shown King and Diane a long flashback I'd be content. 

Oh and Zeldris the executioner shows up to fuck shit up with Gowther (both of him) and Diane. Well, remember Zeldris? Baby Vegeta? I sure as hell completely forgot that he was supposed to be important. Certainly doing a great job at, y'know, jobbing in the present-day stories. Maybe he'll be back in the present day? Hopefully. 

Teen Titans S04E07 Review: Azarath Apocalypse

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 7: The Prophecy

And this episode does it again. An excellent follow-up to the brilliant "Birthmark", this episode has the Titans explore the mystery behind why Slade is back. Raven knows more than she lets on, but driven by a combination of wanting to reject her own demonic nature and wanting to involve her friends as little as possible, she's not really forthcoming when Robin and the others learn about the Mark of Scath. With Slade and Trigon all dropping cryptic hints to both Raven and the audience about how she will bring the end of the world and everything is her fault. The episode is simple, with Raven doing some soul searching while the Titans do some detective work in some spooky cultist locations, all the while doing excellent action sequences with the demonfire-empowered Slade.

Raven finds her home, the magical plane Azarath and her mother Arella, reduced to nothing but rubble. We don't get explicit confirmation, but yeah, it's implied that Trigon had already laid waste to Azarath and Raven merely spoke with her mother's ghost. She eventually channels her father's demonic powers to take out Slade, telling her father to fuck off and fuck destiny, before revealing to her friends that, well, the gem that will be the portal of Trigon's arrival is... Raven herself. Even with Raven's open defiance she's still clueless at how to stop Trigon from coming, and the episode ends on that somber note, which is pretty nice and mature for Teen Titans. 

Oh, and Slade is working for something that Trigon can give back, which kind of explains why our previous Big Bad is working for someone else. What it is, now, hmm...

Perhaps the episode's greatest weakness is the very, very slow buildup. We spend nearly ten or fifteen minutes just waffling around the same topics that has been covered so well in 'Birthmark', but the payoff of Raven finally being defiant against her evil demon daddy, and the excellent fight scene between her and Slade at the end, is absolutely excellent. The weird cultist ghost things could've really been cut out and more time devoted to actually building up the atrocities that Trigon has done, or a mini-flashback to Raven's time in Azarath, perhaps? It's a great episode nonetheless, though, so I really can't complain that much. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Scath is one of Trigon's many aliases in the comics. 

Iron Fist S01E13 Review: Frankenstein's Monster versus the Iron Fist

Iron Fist, Season 1, Episode 13: Dragon Plays With Fire

Well, it's a good thing this ended. Even without the racist undertones the show suffered from an agonizingly slow opening, an inconsistent batch of villains (though, credit where credit's due, the Hand is a lot more interesting than the generic ninjas in Daredevil), poor writing and scripting, and a strange economical approach towards action sequences. Again, the show has had a lot of great potential which is just squandered so much. A lot of the actors cast were great and charismatic (even if the scripting is asinine at times that you'd think they're dubbing anime instead of making live-action TV) and we've got the roots of several great storylines and characters. But, well, everything fell flat on its face. 

So, after being framed for the drug stuff, Danny learns that Harold killed his parents, but he needs to go to talk to Madame Gao to figure it out. It's such an unimportant detail in the grand scheme of things that I've honestly totally forgot about the mystery of Danny's parents' death, but it's obvious, really, that Harold's the one that did it. 

Also, no one really made any kind of response to Harold Meachum returning from the dead and seizing control of the company mere days after Danny Rand did the same, and hours after Danny Rand got framed?

The confrontation was decent enough, with Ward, who's possibly the most well-written villain in all this if not for his annoying drug addiction subplot, having thrown in his lot with Danny. Harold waltzes in into Rand Enterprises and basically takes it over for all of one day. After a brief consultation with Jeri Hogarth, Danny, Colleen, Claire and Ward do their thing. Ward gets hit with a golf club. Claire blows up a peanut cart. There's this obvious-CGI sequence of Danny groundpounding the floor with the Iron Fist, which totally cut a lot of people standing at ground level with the falling debris.

Then there's the confrontation on the rooftop, where Danny overpowers Harold -- though we did get a hilarious bit where he's so confident that he gets shot in the hand. Harold fights Danny, rants like a madman for a bit, Danny decides not to kill him, Harold shoots him but Danny blocks it with the Iron Fist, Ward shoots Harold, he falls down, he gets cremated. Danny's name gets cleared, Ward gets the company. Harold was definitely erratic and shitty near the end, but at least it's Ward that kills him. After the amount of abuse the fucker heaped on the boy, definitely appropriate for Ward to be the one delivering the killing blow. 

The epilogue sequence was a lot more messy, though. Danny decides to return to K'un Lun, only to discover dead bodies of Hand agents (not so high and mighty about leaving your boring post now, huh, you dirty deserter?) and the gateway to K'un Lun closed and/or disappeared. There literally is no reason for Danny to decide that, hey, he needs to go to K'un Lun now after last episode made such a big deal about him not wanting to go back -- it would've been something if last episode's fight with Davos had him talk about how he's going to solve the mystery of his parents, or because of his love for Colleen, but no.

And honestly a lot of this Hand stuff looks like it's going to be built up for the Defenders, and since a crapton of questions about K'un Lun and whatever (we did get a random flashback of the dragon's eyes, which isn't worth jack) is going to be answered there, and if it's going to be as oblique as this series then I really hope Defenders can get it right.

Oh, Gao gets herself free, hopefully for a far, far better third rodeo. She was so good in Daredevil, and I feel that she's absolutely a missed opportunity here. Joy confronts her father, basically realises that her father's a liar... and what does she do? Does she try to collaborate her story with her obviously-abused brother? No, she just straight-up meets Davos (how the fuck did they know each other) and swears that she will murder Danny Rand. What in the utter horse shit is this kind of logic thinking? It's so dumb. Even with Gao's manipulations, I'm honestly not quite sure just how Joy's mind went from "let me confirm the nonsense Ward's been saying" to "Danny Rand is the antichrist and he must DIE!"

Best part of this episode? Hogarth and Claire's snark. Claire's exasperated "is there a version of this where we don't kill anyone?" after Colleen's deadpan reaction about how she's going to kill Harold instead of Danny is hilarious, and Hogarth's quick recovery from her surprise by reminding Harold that falsifying death is a grievous offense. Her cutting jibe at how emotional Danny and Ward are (with horrible I-am-feeling-this-way dialogue) is equally funny.

Still, thirteen hours later and Claire never gives us any reason -- not even an obviously-handwaved one as to why she doesn't call in Daredevil for help at any point. Hell, a simple "a friend of mine could help, but he's grieving and/or hunting the Punisher" 

Good lord, this kind of ended horribly, doesn't it? Iron Fist wasn't completely bad, but it started poorly and ended poorly, and thanks to relatively inconsistent writing and somewhat sub-par fight scenes (let's be honest and just compare this to Arrow or Daredevil) it's not been an entirely enjoyable series for me to watch. There was so many ways that this series could've been done better.

One Piece 862 Review: Luffy's Entrance

One Piece, Chapter 862 Review: The Intelligent Type

We get a brief bit of Jinbe trying to wake Luffy up, but the main focus is still the wedding proper. Pudding wants to kill Sanji, and Sanji is trying his best to keep his wits about him. The wedding cake makes its grand appearance, and Big Mom freaks out -- it's not just a huge cake, it's the wedding altar at the same time. Of course, Big Mom is still planning the slaughter of the Vinsmokes at the same time, which is very, very awesome to have all these assassination and backstabbing plots all running at the same time. 

It's all tense as the wedding goes on, the Vinsmokes are none the wiser, Reiju is accepting of her fate as long as Sanji escapes... and then Katakuri (Dogtooth, whatever) sees a vision of Pudding falling over and crying. It's nice to see that Katakuri's powers have some limitation to them. Maybe he can only see a fixed distance into the future? Like he sees what happens five minutes later, but not what happens between them? 

Sanji lifts Pudding's veil, and she has this awesome, scary-ass face that she makes with her three eyes. Sanji, of course, comments about what a beautiful eye it is, and it just overwhelms Pudding. Apparently she's got a bit of a self-esteem issue about that third eye, who knew? It's... it's a bit odd, that's for sure, mostly because we didn't really have much foreshadowing about Pudding having problems regarding her third eye causing her to be ostracized and whatnot. Apparently even Big Mom told her to cover up her third eye, and she was bullied by kids so much that she was driven to become the bigger bully. Which is to say, murdering them kids. 

Of course, the counter-argument is that if Pudding made a big fuss about not being accepted for her looks it'd make this moment a lot less surprising and merely something that is inevitable, and I'm sure there were a couple moments here and there where Pudding comments about covering up her third eye, but at the same time I'd like some foreshadowing that makes this moment actually touching instead of a 'wait what just happened?' moment. It's not bad as, say, the big nonsense happening over in Fairy Tail at the moment, but it's definitely a twist that could've been done a lot better. 

Big Mom instructs the priest to do the deed instead while Pudding is freaking out, but at the same time Katakuri sees that Sanji dodges the priest's shot, so he does his finger-launching-bullet thing... accidentally shooting the priest in the head when Sanji does dodge his bullet. So one more thing about Katakuri we learned -- he can't predict what his actions will do? The Germa are confused, Katakuri is in battle mode, Big Mom's people are confused, Brulee is crying, and Luffy... Luffy makes his big entrance.

By exploding the fucking wedding cake apart. And an army of Luffy bursts out of it. Like literal multiple Luffies. Whether it's a Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, or some new skill Luffy has, or the Straw Hats disguised as Luffies by Nami's mirage powers or Brulee being forced to do so (some of the Luffies look different -- one has a gorilla face, one has a puppet's face) or something... but it's definitely an entrance I wasn't expecting. 

Overall, a bit of a... miss, I guess? Things happen, the plot advances, and it's good and I have no idea what'll go down next chapter, but both the Kage Bunshin no Luffy and crying Pudding moments kind of fell somewhat flat with me.