Game of Thrones S08E03 Review: Wrath of the Night King

Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 3: The Long Night

(Warning, this episode features heavy spoilers from the very plot-twist-y episode, and I'm not going to include any particularly spoiler-y images. Scroll down if you haven't watched this episode!)

So, to open up by acknowledging the episode's greatest strength... this is an amazing episode visually. As a visual spectacle, as someone who's interested in the logistics of filming and creating such an amazingly immersive episode where you truly feel the terror, dread and hopelessness as our heroes fight against the endless armies of the dead, and someone who admittedly loves visual spectacles... "The Long Night" is an amazing episode in that aspect. From the opening scene of slowly building up dread as we just slowly pan over some 15-20 characters as they await the incoming onrush of literal death, to fight for their lives and most likely die, to the opening salvo with Melisandre and the Dothraki, to the dreadful confusion in the darkness-enshrouded large wasteland, to around halfway through the episode where our main characters are trapped in the claustrophobic corridors of Winterfell... this episode is exceptionally well done, selling the horror of the episode, and raising the stakes compared to other "big battle" episodes in Game of Thrones.

Shame it's... it's a pretty difficult episode to visually watch. I genuinely get what they were going for, but if you haven't watched this episode, do yourself a favour and crank up any brightness and contrast setting to the absolute highest that you can on your television or computer. Because while the episode itself isn't as horrible as some people put it, you really do need to adjust some brightness settings to actually appreciate the episode. 

Yet, narratively... narratively, it's a bit of an odd meal that I'm never quite sure how to process. Throughout the 80-minute runtime of the episode I was constantly on the edge of my shit, going "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT" every couple of seconds whenever something horrifying happens to one of our beloved characters, as we pan away from this character to that character to yet another character, and when the final and surprising climax of the episode happens, it was a huge "holy fuck. HOLY FUUUUUCK!!!!" moment. It was an amazing experience to live through.

The music in this episode is also spectacularly used, with some segments (the Arya one in the middle of the episode) using little to no background music, while the "darkest hour" segment near the end makes amazing use of a crescendo of nothing but piano. It's just amazing and sucks you in. 

Yet when the dust settles, and the spectacle is over, and I sit down to write the review of this behemoth of an episode... I'm genuinely baffled at the events that happened, and I'm genuinely not sure how much I like this narratively. And to reiterate what I said above -- the episode was certainly nothing short of a cinematic episode, and I was completely immersed in the horror and dread and awesome tension, and for an episode that's 90% "oh holy hell zombies", it never really got tiresome, something that genuinely surprised me. 

But also something that genuinely surprised me is... how little I actually like the ending now that I've had time to breathe and take stock of the events that happened. The subversion of an audience's expectation is a dangerous trick if it is done for just subversion's sake -- look at The Last Jedi for how utterly poorly-received the subversion of Snoke's importance ended up being. And Game of Thrones has made its mark by having its first season (and book) subverting some of the most prevalent tropes in fantasy setting, including killing off two of the main leads in not particularly honourable ways... yet still shaping the narrative and the fantasy of the world to revolve around them. 

And... and, well, the Night King and the oncoming army of the dead has been a plotline that has been foreshadowed literally from the very first scene of the TV series and the first chapter (or was it the second?) of the first book. It was the mythological plot, it was the Bigger Threat over this silly fight over who gets to rule what, and while the Night King is more of a force of nature than an actual character, and part of me is happy that a character I genuinely care about, Cersei, ends up essentially being the final boss, the ultimate, final big bad of the series... it's also kind of a cop-out that they solved complaints about how the Night King is a flat villain that only has vague motivations that was ever-so-slightly hinted at if you look really hard through Bran's Raven-visions back in season 6, as well as Bran's short analysis on his motivation last episode.

And while I certainly didn't expect the Night King to be anywhere as complex a character as many of the other characters in this sprawling show... it's sort of an anticlimax, y'know? I honestly don't mind the plot twist that he dies in this episode. I don't even mind the subversion that it isn't Jon or Daenerys that ended up dealing the killing blow and that it was Arya. I minded the fact that for all the oomph and the eight seasons' worth of buildup and all the awesome episodes like Hardhome, Eastwatch and the whole Three-Eyed Raven sequence... the Night King does scant little in his final episode, leaving the bulk of the fighting to the endless horde of wight-zombies, mostly just spending the episode riding around Viserion, raising the dead some more, and sort of stand around and look cool. None of the other White Walkers even do anything, despite the huge assembly of around a dozen or so at the end of the previous episode, and how they cluster around the Night King like the cover of an 80's metal band cover. Like, at least let some of our characters fight the nameless white walkers or some shit. 

And while I was scared about all of the characters throughout the episode -- there were moments where characters I thought were safe like Tyrion and Arya seemed like they were straight-up going to die in one last blaze of glory -- the death tally for the episode ended up being surprisingly low. Sure, a lot of random nameless dudes, particularly the Dothraki and Unsullied, ended up dying, but as far as named characters go, it's a shockingly low amount of Edd, Beric, Melisandre, Jorah, Theon, Lyanna and that Dothraki leader dude. And maybe Ghost the dog and Rhaegal the dragon. Considering how much the previous episode scared the fandom and audiences in general by waving death-flags and tying up loose ends, it set up a notion that anyone except for maybe a couple of 'safe' characters are dead, but at the end of the day it's mostly just a bunch of genuine cannon fodder (albeit likable ones in terms of Edd and Lyanna) and a couple of characters who were pretty obviously going to do a redemption-by-death anyway, it's just a matter of which villain they die to. And, sure, maybe we're saving some of them to die in the series finale against Cersei's forces, but still. 

And while I adore the subversion that characters with very obvious death flag -- Gray Worm and Missandei -- actually did survive, as do all of the named characters in the crypt, it is honestly sort of ridiculous that we didn't have a higher body count after just how we keep cutting back and forth to show the people in the courtyard (Brienne, Jaime, Tormund, Grey Worm, Podrick and I think Gendry and Davos maybe?) just continually getting swarmed by zombies, getting back up, getting swarmed, getting back up again and so on. And I honestly do think that the courtyard battle where basically almost everyone somehow managed to survive felt frankly a wee bit ridiculous. 

And, again, don't get me wrong. The episode is a pretty badass action sequence all throughout with a lot of amazing set pieces. The opening of the episode is pretty amazing, from the slow buildup of our characters just sort of awaiting the dread, to Melisandre showing up with a horse and giving the pretty awesome visual spectacle of lighting the Dothraki's arakhs on flame, and the long viewpoint of having the entire Dothraki army with swords lit on fire in the dark charging towards the unknown darkness... only to be quite literally snuffed out within seconds. That was chilling, and while there are a lot of complaints about just how dark the episode was, particularly with the fog and blizzard that swirled around the battlefield, I felt like it added to the scariness of fighting an unknown horde of zombies in an icy land. 

The triumphant charge of everyone outside of Winterfell, ready to defend it and devolving into a chaotic melee, is also pretty well done, with the episode really focusing on either chaotic close shots or spectacular wide shots of the scale of the show, while we cut back and forth around a half-dozen characters we care about. And then Dolorous Edd gets impaled while rescuing Sam, and we get our first casualty. Oh no, a recurring and likable (if not particularly important) character gets killed! And then everyone retreats, with ambiguity if less important characters like Pod, Gray Worm and Beric will make it or not.

They all do, thanks in combination to the arrival of Daenerys and her dragon carpet-bombing the wights. And then a blizzard shows up, which is pretty badass as well, and we also have the spectacular showcase of Melisandre chanting and praying to the Lord of Light to light up the trenches and create, again, another visual spectacle of a wall of flames protecting Winterfell. Visually, it's striking, and it's a fun showcase of having a bit of a back-and-forth as our heroes start launching the big guns at the endless army of wights, with things like Melisandre lighting the Dothraki swords on fire, Drogon's arrival and the flaming trench tactic all seeming like legitimate ways for them to swing the tide of battle. 

And then, of course, the Night King arrives riding a dragon. And honestly, while it all boils down to "oh fuck our heroes are trying to survive against an endless tide of undead", the cinematography of the scene is pretty well done. The sensory-fuckery of never being quite sure which dragon is swooping around until it's too late, how Jon and Dany's senses are clouded by the blizzard, to the eventual 2-v-1 battle when Viserion the undead dragon starts to genuinely fight against Rhaegal and Drogon... it was definitely a far more extended fight than I thought we'd get, because I genuinely didn't expect CGI dragons fighting more than like five seconds, and it's amazing, including a particularly gorgeous shot of the dragons bursting out of the chaotic blizzard-filled clouds and into the calm night sky above. That is beautiful. 

The fact that zombie Viserion loses half his jaw and spends the rest of the episode bleeding blue flame from the side of his face and neck is also a pretty neat visual effect.

Meanwhile, after a sequence of Arya pulling off all the stops of her Faceless Man training and just slays her way through a fuck-ton of the dead, she, too gets overwhelmed, in no small part thanks to actually taking a hit and falling down the ramparts. We start getting things falling apart -- we get to see some of our heroes swarmed over by wights (although they mostly survive), we get to see the Hound in full PTSD mode, we get to see Sansa and Tyrion and the rest of the crypt cast in fear and huddling, we get to see the desperate last ring of defense that Theon has around Bran... and we get another death. It's Lyanna Mormont, the badass little child, surviving a first seemingly-fatal thrown-aside by an undead giant, before being grabbed and squeezed in a very painful-sounding crumple... but she manages to stab the undead giant in the eye and dust it just as she dies. 

It's just such a shame that not all of the action scenes are as visually striking and focus-driven as the dragon fight or the Lyanna scene -- so much of the fight against the zombies includes intentionally foggy or blurry shaky-cam camera. It does help to show just how horrifying things are from the point of view of the battlers, and while I get that, yes, a battle in Winterfell would be foggy and the Night King did seem to summon a blizzard early on, it doesn't make the episode feel as smoothly and as well choreographed as, say, The Watchers on the Wall. 

Again, case in point... the group in the courtyard -- Brienne, Jamie, Tormund, Pod, Gray Worm, Sam and maybe Gendry and Davos (the two are sort of missing) -- honestly don't do jack shit other than get overwhelmed, break free, get overwhelmed again, and break free again, and honestly it's sort of straining credibility that Sam and Davos, who aren't physical badasses, are somehow still alive after all that. 

But then we take a break from the huge dragon melee and the huge zombie swarm to follow Arya, and we get a pretty badass scene. It's certainly long, and probably an obvious "cheat" by the filmmakers to shoot a tense horror scene that didn't require as many extras as the elaborate exterior ones, but the horror of being trapped in a shadowy library as she tiptoes around, sneaks around bookshelves and Assassin's Creeds her way throughout the castle is, again, nothing short of breathtaking. The sequence highlighted in equal parts Arya's badassery (slashing that one wight in the chin mid-stride is awesome) while also making it clear that, shit, Arya's terrified out of her mind. 

And in a scene where we have so little dialogue, it's so amazing how Maisie Williams manages to convey both badassery and vulnerability at the same time. Of course, she ends up teaming up eventually with the Hound and Beric Dondarrion as more and more of the undead show up, and they end up basically taking turns rescuing each other until Beric manages to hold the line against a couple of wights, and survive just long enough to pass away in front of Arya. We then have Melisandre give some cryptic foreshadowing to a particular prophecy she said so long ago ("blue eyes"), as well as note Beric's prophesied role (both of which more casual audiences might be forgiven for forgetting) as being the herald of the Prince Who Was Promised... after a pretty awesome recalling of Arya's iconic exchange with Syrio way back in season one -- "what do we say to the god of death" -- and Arya basically disappears for the rest of the episode. Intentionally, and it's a pretty well-done misdirection, I must say. 

A good man.

And we do get the creepy scene at the crypt, where everyone and their mother called out that putting the refugees in a place where it's full of dead people is a bad idea. With Jon knocked off of Rhaegal (who literally disappears for the rest of the episode, and I'm not sure if Dracowight Viserion's mauling is lethal) and charging towards the Night King, he resurrects all of the dead in the now-memetic "come at me" pose, and that includes the dead in the crypt. Yet while we do get a pretty scary moment of Sansa and Tyrion about to do something potentially fatal with that dagger... none of the people in the crypt really ended up dying or even in a position where they're close to dying. Not Sansa, not Tyrion, not Varys, not Missandei, not Gilly. 

And, of course, while all of this is going on, we get a couple of pretty desperate scenes. It's kinda dumb for Dany and Drogon to stay rooted on the ground for too long, but this had the effect of Drogon being absolutely overwhelmed by the wights that swarm him like ticks, leaving Daenerys unprotected on the ground as Drogon flies off and tries to shake off the wights that are trying to kill him (a very awesome visual), leaving Daenerys at the mercy of the army of the dead... if not for Jorah Mormont's arrival.

Likewise, the Godswood is breached by the army of the dead, and Theon Greyjoy and his Ironborn end up being the last line of defense against Bran and held their ground way longer than I gave them credit for, being genuinely impressive. Jon Snow, meanwhile, while managing to at least last against the wights, ends up being trapped in a courtyard with a rampaging zombie Viserion, and unable to really stand up against him. The Dovahkiin he ain't, and there was a particularly hilarious scene where he tries to charge Viserion, only for the undead dragon to turn his head and he runs an immediate 180 and takes cover behind some conveniently blue-dragonfire-proof rubble. 

And, of course... Theon and Jorah both have their respective redemption-equals-death moments. Jorah's was a bit less spectacular, even if dying while fighting back-to-back with her queen is pretty badass and that's basically the ideal death for Jorah, dying as a shield for her queen. Theon, meanwhile, ends up actually standing his ground and fighting against all of the wights until the Night King and his walking-metal-album-cover entourage shows up, and we get one last line from Bran-Raven thanking Theon and saying he's a good man, before Theon charges in. No longer is he the man who betrays the Starks, no longer is he the meek Reek who can't stand up to Ramsay Bolton, no longer is he the dumbass who jumped off a ship and abandons his sister. He charges the Night King and gets the manliest death in this episode. It's impressive, genuinely, how the show has gotten me to go from "fuck Theon!" to "fuck, Theon." to "FUCK YEA THEON". 

And as Theon dies, as Jorah dies, as Brienne and Jaime and the rest of the courtyard squad gets overwhelmed by wights for the umpteenth time, as Jon Snow tries a suicidal screaming competition against the undead dragon... we get a crescendo of music as the Night King and Bran stare face to face... only for motherfucking Arya Stark to jump out of the fog and try and stab the Night King in the face, leading to a very awesome and smooth sequence of the Night King catching Arya, her dropping the blade and then stabbing it straight in the Night King's heart... dusting the ENTIRE ARMY. Including the undead dragon, cockblocking Jon Snow of the badassery of potentially killing an undead dragon. 

With everyone victorious, Melisandre's job is done and she drops her magic necklace and walks into the snow to die in her true self, the final casualty of this episode. Which is more cathartic than shocking or dramatic, admittedly. 

And... and I don't necessarily have a problem with it being Arya Stark that killed the Night King. It's foreshadowed in the series proper, even if it's not particularly memorable foreshadowing and I only remember it thanks to Melisandre reminding us. And I do like the subversion that Jon isn't the one to deal the killing blow. But... y'know what? It's still ultimately an unsatisfying narrative ending for the undead army plot even if in the moment it's a great holy-shit-oh-no-HOLYSHIT segment. I mean, sure, again, I'm not expecting a whole ton from the Night King as a character at this point, but I genuinely felt like we could've found out more about him. And even as a visual spectacle, the Night King is genuinely off-screen or on a dragon for the most part of the episode, with his contributions basically surviving Drogon's dracarys attack, lobbing a javelin (which missed), raising the dead (again) and killing Theon.

And considering the fact that this was the last hurrah for the white walkers and wights anyway... the white walkers really did jack-shit and even less than the night king, huh? We couldn't have the last boss that Jorah fight be a white walker? We couldn't have one of those bearded dudes lobbing lances at the defenders? Or have the Courtyard Squad fight one of them? Or have Arya, Hound and Beric team up against a white walker? I dunno. Sure, the huge zombie hordes and the huge zombie dragon was impressive, but I genuinely expected... more than just "ZOMBIES MORE ZOMBIES EVEN MORE ZOMBIES". Hell, we didn't even get a single scene of a character having to put down the zombie of one of his friends or something. Sam and Edd? Jon and Benjen? Tormund and one of those Wildlings from Hardhome? The headless zombie of Ned Stark? Grey Worm against a battalion of zombie Unsullied? Come on, if you're going to do zombies for most of the cast, at least make some of it interesting. 

Overall... I still immensely enjoyed this episode (and I genuinely feel bad that I ended up being so critical of an episode I was genuinely glued to the screen while watching), and it's undeniably impressive visually, and an amazing and tense watching experience. The individual death scenes that we focus on (Theon, Jorah and Lyanna in particular) are all done pretty well, too. And I will hold judgement on how much I like it based on how the remaining three episodes pan out. And it could definitely stand to be visually more distinct and clearer. But narratively and as an overall piece of the story... it's definitely leaves a bit of a mixed taste in your mouth, particularly how the white walkers are handled and ultimately concluded. I've seen someone comparing this to a nightmare -- very scary and will freeze you and make you feel very into it while trapped in the nightmare, but once you wake up and think about it, the scariness of the nightmare you had isn't that impressive. 

Game of Thrones S08E02 Review: The Night Before Shit Goes Down

Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Holy shit I forgot to post this episode review, somehow I listed it for April 2020. Whoops. This episode review was written without any knowledge of what happens in the third episode, by the way, which aired last night! Expect my review of episode 3 tomorrow or the day after. 

The second episode of the final season of Game of Thrones is... it's a bottle episode, which ends up basically being treated as a payoff of many of our characters both main and secondary. In an ideal world maybe these storylines could've used another episode or two to breathe, but it would also ruin the fact that our heroes are simply just running out of time before the spooky White Walkers come and fuck up Winterfell. Narrative-wise, it's also pretty interesting just how the fandom as a whole have been shrugging off characters as "safe" because it wouldn't have been complete if, say, Gendry died before he met Arya, or if Jaime died before one last meeting with Tyrion or Brienne. And in this episode, so much shit happens as far as characters go, with every single character that was left in the background of the previous episode getting a lot of screentime, and a lot of storylines gets resolved... fear for the lives of your favourite characters, dear watchers, because characters with resolved storylines are probably the first on the chopping block. 

The main political storyline of this episode is... it's still the bizarre web of muddling uncertainty on what Daenerys plans to do with the North after taking back the Iron Throne. She's been so dead-set in just doing the two "big things" of reclaiming the Throne and helping Jon beat back the Night King's army of the dead that she really haven't considered the real logistics of what's going on. And with the Northerners very much willing to call her out (Lyanna Mormont, we love you), we do get a pretty awesome scene with her and Sansa bonding together for being lady-rulers... yet she really has no answer as to just what she's planning to do with the North even as she admits that she's doing a foolish mission in no small part because she's smitten with Jon. Honestly, the conversation between the two is done so well, and makes me forgive the somewhat contrived drama from the previous episode. Sure, we don't get any resolution just yet since it's Game of Thrones, but the conversation between Sansa and Dany is genuinely well done, from the discussions of trusting men, or about how sometimes men do stupid things for women, to the burden of ruling. Shame that the whole "shit, what to do with the North" remains something that will always keep the two women, unwilling to compromise, pretty distant. 

Meanwhile, Jon has apparently did a bit of an offscreen research, and has been avoiding Daenerys throughout the episode in a series of pretty unintentionally hilarious "no sex today bye c'ya" sequences. In the final scene of the episode before the cliffhanger of OH SHIT THE UNDEAD SCOURGE IS HERE, Jon ends up telling Daenerys before the tomb of his biological mother that, hey, by the way, they are related. It is pretty hilarious that Daenerys is completely unshaken by the incest thing (she wouldn't, really) and more about the fact that if what Jon claims is true, he's the last male heir of the Targaryen throne. As everyone speculated, the fact that it's Jon's brother and best friend that is providing Jon this information is definitely more than a mite suspicious-sounding to Daenerys. 

And while I'm genuinely not super-invested in this relationship, it is pretty interesting to see just how the writers will take this, whether Jon will even care that he's the rightful heir at all. Jon as a character has always been reluctant even in the times where he ends up in a leadership position, and it's interesting... but we do have to get through a zombie army first. 

Speaking of the zombie army (and I am jumping around the episode), this episode shows a lot of preparations for fighting them. We've got dragonglass weapons being forged, dragonglass ramparts being set up, scenes of people like Dothraki screamers and whatnot, a huge table scene of them setting up strategy... and the revelation by Bran that the Night King's main goal at this point is to kill him, the Three-Eyed Raven, because he's the full culmination of mankind's memory, and to kill memory -- to make it so that no one remembers mankind -- would be true death. It's a pretty poignant theme (delivered well by both Bran and Sam via flowery speeches), that even if we die, we are survived by written accounts, by the songs of bards, by talk of mouth. It's perhaps not been a theme that has been front-and-center in Game of Thrones, but definitely one that's pretty true of most fantasy settings. 

Bran himself ends up noting that he will be the bait, hiding in the Godswood, for them to lure out the Night King and making it so that the forces of Winterfell will have a proper target to murder. That's one aspect of the final battle that's interesting, and while it does sort of reduce the story into having two keystone members of the army as living plot devices (Bran and the Night King) it also marks the stakes of the plot in a more clear way -- something that these large-scale fantasy battles are always better for including. 

Love the fact that Jon, Sansa and Arya are basically unanimous in trying to protect their brother and trying to dissuade this. 

Still, while we do have the political undertones of the Stark/Targaryen drama, as well as the logistics to set up the final battle in Winterfell, we do have a whole lot of payoffs as this episode is basically just the calm before the storm of death and destruction that's about to besiege Winterfell. We start off with Jaime's arrival on the court, with every single Northerner and Daenerys being in agreement for once -- none of them like the Kingslayer, and they don't have the audience's benefit of being privy to Jaime being humbled and developing as a character. It's not until Tyrion's testimony and Brienne's defense of Jaime's character -- and Sansa's unwavering trust in Brienne -- that Jaime is spared from becoming dragon snack. It's a pretty great scene, and Bran even gets a good dig on Jaime by quoting "the things we do for love". The subsequent scene between Jaime and Bran is also pretty neat, with Bran's creepy detachment from emotion and everything being pretty unsettling. 

Meanwhile, Jaime's revelation that Tyrion mis-read Cersei and she has no intention of cooperating at all obviously rubs Daenerys the wrong way, ranting about just how Tyrion has sort of utterly sucked ever since he went to Essos and became her Hand, prompting Jorah Mormont to deliver this impassioned speech that, sure, he was once jealous of what Tyrion has ascended into, but also recognize that Tyrion is a smart man and despite his mistakes, he deserves a second chance. It's a neat moment for both Jorah and Daenerys... although poor, poor Tyrion has admittedly been pretty "off" as a strategist for the past couple of seasons.

And then we get a fun mix of scenes as characters interact with each other. Arya and Gendry flirt around in the Forge, with Arya showing off to Gendry that she's so much more than just a spunky girl that can defend herself, and ends up having sex with him near the end of the episode, noting that she wants to know what it's like. It's a pretty interesting to see her basically starting to indulge in healthy, non-faceless-man interests once more. 

Arya also gets a pretty neat scene talking to the Hound, and it's not particularly big, but it's a neat little follow-up from their not-quite-friendly encounter in the previous episode, with the Hound admitting that he's genuinely fought for Arya in the past. They're buddies now, aww. Just like many other characters in this episode, mainly Theon and Jaime, the Hound has gone through a fair bit of character development over his appearances in the previous seasons, and has well and truly earned redemption, and Arya's parting remarks to the Hound clearly says far more that, no, she doesn't consider the Hound on her "list" anymore. (Beric's also there, but... he's sort of a flat character, huh?)

Oh yeah, Beric, Tormund and Edd arrive with their unit to inform the Winterfell defenders that the zombies are coming. We get a pretty awesome, hilarious scene of the remainders of the Night's Watch -- Jon, Sam and Edd, and also fucking GHOST --  hanging out on the ramparts and making jokes about just how far Sam's gone into being a certified badass. Speaking of characters returning, Theon also shows up, catches up the Winterfell folks on that's been going on with the Ironborn, and we get an awesome, tearful hug between Sansa and Theon. That's neat. 

After a fun bit of brotherly reunion between Jaime and Tyrion -- pretty well done, if unspectacular -- Jaime meets up with Brienne to thank her and ask to serve in her unit, an act that baffles and unnerves Brienne since Jaime hasn't insulted her once throughout their conversation, which is pretty hilarious and also heartwarming. Also freaking Podrick Payne's actually a certified badass in the battlefield and the bed. 

This ends up leading to the increasingly large gathering of characters around the fireplace. First just Tyrion and Jaime reminiscing about the past, then Brienne and Podrick join in (leading to a hilarious "half cup" joke), then Davos show up, and finally Tormund. Tormund's hilarious speech as he tries to build himself up and talk about how he got the name "Giantsbane" in his hilariously doomed attempt to woo Brienne is HILARIOUS as shit. And these characters that, as Tyrion pointed out, has been on different sides of the battlefield fighting each other, gathering together for one last night around a fire and just... just talking, you know? It's pretty awesome, and it could only get so interesting in a show with a history and lore that's as well-crafted as Game of Thrones. It's not perfect -- particularly the TV adaptation with its wonky pacing -- but it definitely made me care for many of these characters, even less important ones like Tormund and Podrick, and seeing them just interact and exchange random lines and stories is just amazingly well done. 

It, of course, leads to the wildling Tormund questioning Tyrion why Brienne is considered a "Lady" and not a "Ser", leading to Jaime basically calling bullshit on the whole "women can't be knights" thing, and notes that any knight can knight another person, leading to the very dramatic and genuinely tear-jerking scene as Jaime knights Brienne without a sign of mockery and all seriousness. You get the feeling that Jaime has always respected Brienne for being the true, perfect knight that he has never been able to be, and the composition of the scene, from Brienne's clearly-hurt "never wanted to be a knight anyway" to the dramatic delivery, the music, and the applause from everyone else in the room... it's amazing. Brienne of Tarth has grown very organically into one of my favourite characters in the entire series, and from what's a "yeah, she's a badass fighting against the system that oppresses her, of course we'll root for her" character into one that I genuinely cheer for when Jaime knighted her, giving her the one thing she genuinely wants. 

Another fun scene is Lyanna telling Jorah off for daring to suggest that she hide in the crypt with everyone. She's a badass little bear, go you tiny child, stab those wights in the face! Jorah is then gifted Heartsbane by Sam, because Sam served under Jorah's deceased father, and he's clearly not practiced well with such a long blade. It's actually pretty neat. 

Of course, not all the scenes in this episode are super amazing. Davos and Gilly running the soup kitchen earlier in the episode and talking to a little girl with face scarring about how she has to "protect everyone in the crypt" felt a bit off, other than to set up the fact that the refugees are hiding in the crypt. And... and I kind of suspect that the refugees might not be in the safest place at all. Can the Night King raise the corpses of the dead people that wights didn't kill? I don't remember. I do like just how Davos totally sees little dead princess Shireen in this scar-faced little girl.

We also get the non-sequitur of a scene between Gray Worm and Missandei, where they straight up swing fifteen death flags above their heads. Because, holy shit, they were just straight-up talking about retirement plans and going back to a beach. Moreso than any other character in this episode,  one or both of this pair will die. 

And while Game of Thrones has -- to my slight disappointment -- moved more from politics to action scenes and huge setpieces in its final seasons, I absolutely adore that before the eve of the big zombie battle, we're having this amazing sequence of people just talking and sharing in their humanity, simultaneously forging bonds and wrapping up storylines (Jaime, Brienne, Jorah, Arya, Gendry, Hound, Sam, Bran, Gray Worm, Missandei and Theon all arguably have 'wrapped up' most of their story, and characters like Gilly, Edd, Davos, Tormund and Pod were always likable but never safe) and making a lot of these characters fair game for the scary scary shit that's about to come down when the Night King and his army of more-than-four horsemen advance upon Winterfell. I really like this -- it's been a fair amount of time in Game of Thrones where I feel like no one is safe, and it's this uncertain tension that defined the first couple of seasons of the show where we have people that were built up to be main characters like Ned Stark or Khal Drogo dying like flies. 

Overall, this Sunday's yesterday's episode is going to prove to be a huge, huge clash, and for once, we're not hindered with "unresolved storyline plot armour" that has been around a significant amount of our characters for a while. Sure, at least Daenerys and Jon are probably safe, but I am genuinely worried for a good chunk of the cast, since a lot of them did wrap up their storylines as best as they could over this episode, and a final confrontation with the threat of the personification of death itself, I genuinely doubt that we're going to finish the next episode without at least a good chunk of the cast in Winterfell dead.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E23 Review: Alternate Win Condition

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 23: Clash and Talking Head

Yeah, I caught up with JoJo, and sort of... failed to keep up with the anime for a month or so. Mea culpa, things have been pretty hectic in real life. I'll try to keep this review relatively short.

This is basically the ending of the Squalo/Tiziano two-parter, and, honestly... the powers of Clash and Talking Head are interesting, with Clash in particular seeming particularly imaginative with how its a robot shark that can just zip around and teleport from liquid to liquid while carrying its prey. But it apparently can't just... kill Giorno the moment it gets away from Narancia? For being supposedly super-elite mafia assassins, Squalo and Tiziano take their sweet, sweet time doing anything, and this odd pacing honestly feels pretty off compared to how well-paced and tense all other Vento Aureo fights have been.

Honestly, if not for the fact that Squalo and Tiziano are openly gay for each other (which the anime definitely makes a lot more obvious compared to the manga, where you're not sure if it's just the art style or if they are intentionally gay), I'm pretty sure that this storyline would've been pretty much been easily forgotten. Instead of using the robot shark to rend and main Giorno, we spend a good chunk of the episode with Clash trying to "dispose" of Giorno's body in the sewers, allowing Narancia's Aerosmith to track them, and it's supposedly Narancia's solo fight against these two mafioso who's taken away his credibility and separated him from the rest of his party.

Which, by the way, is a writing choice that has the side-effect of making Bruno and the others look utterly buffoonish just to facilitate this bit. The entire group is just standing around Abbacchio's Moody Blues as it just gets stuck like a torn tape in the cup, because it apparently can't duplicate Clash's teleportation ability.

It's still some good show for Narancia, though, with him quickly figuring out what's going on, getting some good hits on Clash that injures Squalo via the if-Stand-gets-injured rule, and even slices up Clash with propellers. Tiziano lets Narancia think that he can speak the truth for a while, causing him to give the wrong warning to the rest of the group and causing Mista to fire into an exploding gas tank.

And with the rest of the group dispatched, Narancia walks into the crowd to hunt down Tiziano and Squalo. And Narancia keeps talking about how "I found you!" while Tiziano and Squalo insist that Narancia can't possibly find them and it's all mind-games, apparently Narancia cut off his own tongue with a knife, dislodging Talking Head (somehow without Tiziano realizing), and used a new tongue that Giorno created from a ladybug to replace his severed tongue... and it's this display of brutality that will cause the two mafia hitmen to get a sudden breathing change since they'll be actively looking out for Narancia.

Tiziano jumps in the way and takes the initial shot, allowing Squalo to use the liquid from his blood to summon Clash... but Narancia just continues to fire and VORA-VORA-VORA-VORA's Squalo to death. Volare via indeed. I do like how the anime has Narancia's volare via be a more subdued, quiet declaration, as opposed to the loud yell from the games.

And... and it's still a badass moment, but honestly, so much of this fight's conclusion hinges of what is probably supposed to be interpreted as mindgames, but just felt like a drawn-out conclusion and a repeat of the whole Little Feet fight on whether Narancia's radar can track a missing enemy... except Clash and Talking Head are both executed less well than Little Feet. I dunno. For someone who's supposed to be the super-elite bodyguards of The Boss, and supposedly being a head up compared to the execution squad, the way that Squalo and Tiziano dick around with their Stands really make them feel a whole lot less impressive than Little Feet or White Album. Considering the other members of the Elite Guard is going to involve what's essentially a suicide bomber and a pair of sadistic nutjobs, that really doesn't put the Elite Guard in much of a positive light as combatants.

And as a whole, the Squalo/Tiziano fight is probably the least interesting JoJo has been for me in a while. Part V as a whole tended to really avoid the "oh, it's another Stand battle" that plagued Part III and made the pacing feel so sluggish. It doesn't help that Talking Head in particular is kind of an underwhelming Stand, but there's just so much missed opportunity, y'know? The Bucciarati squad end up looking like fools more than usual in this one, Squalo and Tiziano really don't have much going on beyond "they're lovers", Clash is taking forever to kill Giorno... and most importantly, despite this supposedly being the big Narancia moment... while he certainly does have a badass fight at the end, I really sort of wished the arc would explore a bit more of Narancia's resolve particularly after his indecisiveness when deciding to follow Bucciarati or something. I dunno. 

Pokemon S01E13 Review: His Crab is Bigger

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 13: Bill's Lighthouse / Mystery of the Lighthouse

As a kid, I'm pretty sure this was my least favourite episode. It didn't have much action, it didn't have much comedy, and it didn't even spotlight a Pokemon properly. And looking at it now... it was very much intended to be a filler episode, huh? Like, even the first part of the episode with the long recap with a lot of reused cutscenes and the slo-mo segments of Ash charging at Krabby seemed to be pretty obvious budget-saving techniques.

But I'm genuinely curious just how utterly bizarre this episode is. The first short scene deals with Ash discovering about the whole Pokemon transport system, and in a rarity for this show, we actually get a guest star of the week that's actually a character from the games, and he's not a gym leader! Hell, Bill (or Masaki) is even a character involved with the Pokemon transport system. Maybe we'll learn... something? Nope, we just get a bizarre whale-calling episode with high-handed dialogue that honestly feels pretty redundant. Like, the episode isn't super bad, but it was pretty boring.

Anyway, we start off with the trio having a brief argument with the narrator about whether Ash legitimately caught all six of his Pokemon, which gets Ash to go off and catch something 'on his own', even though... he kinda did that with Caterpie, at least? We get the longer-than-it-needs-to-be segment of Ash catching a tiny Krabby on the beach, at which point Misty and Brock tells Ash about the whole transport system thing. Apparently the pokemon transport system automatically transports any pokemon you catch to the researcher that issued you the pokedex, because of official league rules.

Ash is worried about whether Krabby will get to Oak safely, and this eventually leads to finding a place to call Oak from (because in the 90's, cell phones are a fantasy and pagers are a luxury), leading them to a nearby lighthouse. We get a pretty long conversation at the door between the owner of the lighthouse, Bill, and our heroes trying to get permission to enter and use their phone, which just screams "we need to fill an episode's quota of scenes".

And then Ash calls Oak, where he is eating and we get some jokes about food and Krabby resembling food (I definitely could go for some crab right now). We get the hilarious joke of Gary's Krabby being way bigger than Ash's. Ha! And Gary has caught 45 Pokemon, and whether that means 45 individual creatures or 45 pokedex entries, it's still a lot more than Ash. Dick-measuring contest!

Then Bill shows up in this bizarre Kabuto outfit, and apparently he's trapped in this poorly designed cosplay suit and was just waiting for someone to come and free him. This is a complete non-sequitur that tells us nothing other than Bill is really into Pokemon research... but dressing up as a prehistoric horseshoe crab monster really isn't something I'd call proper research protocol. Or a healthy one. I suppose this is meant to be an adaptation of that segment in the game where Bill gets accidentally fused with a Pokemon in a science experiment accident, but it is such a bizarrely dumb way to adapt it.

We then get these grandiose speeches from Bill about how there should be more than just a mere 150 Pokemon in the world I know the episode was made when the franchise was small, but... HA! And about how researchers and trainers are similar because they seek to find the heart of Pokemon and stuff.

And then we get the really bizarre 'meat' of the episode, so to speak, where apparently Bill is using this cloudy day to try and meet a lonely, mysterious giant Pokemon that's apparently the last of its kind, and he's using this kinda-sorta whale sound to try and attract it. It's a giant Dragonite, or represented by one (the episode is ambiguous), and we get some scenes that went on for a bit too long focusing on the song Bill is using to summon the Dragonite-Nessie-Cthulhu mythical Pokemon.

Team Rocket, who's mostly irrelevant this episode (and I do love them, but they're ccompletely bland in this one) has been trying unssuccessfully to climb the cliff, but they see Maybe-Dragonite and just BAZOOKA THE FUCK out off it, causing the Maybe-Dragonite to rampage, knock Team Rocket away, and destroy part of the lighthouse before leaving. And then we get some more talk from Bill about how being a pokemon lover is great and stuff, and our heroes leave.

And... and, boy, it's kind of a pointless episode, huh? I love the Krabby dick joke and all, but it honestly feels like this episode could've been more. Even as a mysterious "there is more to this majestic world than we know" episode, it lacks any sort of oomph, and honestly just feels half-assed. Not a fan of this one for sure.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Pidgeotto, Butterfree, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Krabby, Meowth, Dragonite
• Humans: Ash, Brock, Misty, Professor Oak, Bill, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes:

• I try to limit myself in noting the pokemon's Japanese names, but I really, really find it adorable that Krabby's original Japanese name is quite literally just "Crab".
• So do trainers without pokedexes allowed to carry more than six pokemon? Because I'm pretty sure not that many people walk around with the pokedex... or do they? Misty seems pretty savvy in knowing how it works. Lots of questions on how this system works (what if you lose your pokedex? Why do the bad guys also seem to be restricted to this? What about 'pet' pokemon?) but it's a "accept it and move on" situation, I suppose. 
• It's a blink and miss moment, but among the carvings of Pokemon on Bill's lighthouse door is Mewtwo, who canonically shouldn't exist yet. Hell, Mewtwo being couted among the '150 Pokemon in the world' is already a headscratcher, although it's something that most early pokemon media tend to screw up -- the Adventures manga did the same thing.
• This is the only time where Bill is depicted to have green hair. In all other material -- manga, TCG, future games -- his hair is green. Or, for that matter, for Bill to be portrayed without addressing the fact that he build the pokemon transporter system.
• I'm legitimately not sure if the huge Dragonite shadow was meant to be a stand-in for a mysterious unseen Pokemon, or if it was just legitimately a particularly gigantic Dragonite. As a kid, I thought it was just straight-up a Dragonite, and was definitely confused when Dragonites showed up later on and they're not Godzilla-sized.   
• Dub Changes:
• The Japanese dialogue has Misty ask Ash a question more along the lines of "should all six of your pokemon be considered 'caught' or not", with Ash handwaving it as being close enough, whereas the dub has Misty straight-up accusing Ash that all six followed him... when this really is only applicable for Pikachu and Squirtle, and arguably Charmander. 

Pokemon S01E12 Review: Teenage Gangster Squirrel Turtles

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 12: Enter the Squirtle Squad

It's the last of the "get all of the Kanto starters" episodes, ending with the water starter Squirtle. And the trio are still wandering the coutryside between Cerulean and Vermilion before they fall into a pitfall once more! Except this time it's not those dastardly Team Rocket, but rather... a gang of Squirtles with sunglasses! Enter the Squirtle Squad. Our heroes are ready to throw down with these tortoise gangsters and Pikachu straight-up takes one out with a Thundershock when the sirens of Officer Jenny shows up and sends these little criminals running away.

We get some backstory from this Jenny (after, of course, a now-running-thin joke of "all Jennys are the same"), establishing that these are a gang of Squirtles abandoned by their trainers, and have been causing all sorts of havoc. It does sort of set a theme continuing from the previous episode about abandoned Pokemon, and I really wish the show had more to say about it beyond "oh no the poor things", but... eh.

Team Rocket also encounters the Squirtle Squad as they are about to eat their lunch, where the Squirtles arrive with rope, tie them up onto a tree, and munch on their onigiri and sandwiches. Meowth gets the bright idea of... kicking James in the face, and claiming that he's the boss of these lowly humans and that they should totally team up as fellow villains! And they do, with the Squirtles spraying Ash, Brock and Misty with water so that Pikachu's thundershock will shock his human allies, and in the ensuing fight, Pikachu gets thrown into the river and stabbed in his back by a random wild Goldeen.

As Meowth and the five Squirtles celebrate, the humans are captured and are worried that Pikachu, held in a cage, is sick and they need to find some medicine. Ash cries while begging the Squirtles to let him cure his buddy, which touches the Squirtles enough to let him go to town and buy a super potion, under the threat of executing Misty. Ash makes good on his promise, although the road ends up becoming pretty randomly treacherous... and Ash also gets stabbed up the bum by the same wild Goldeen.

This injury apparently hampers Ash's journey so much (to be fair, it probably hurt a lot), and to add insult to injury, we get a random Gary cameo as he walks out of the shop and whacks Ash in the face in the process. As Ash finally stumbles into the cowboy-style shop, though, Jessie and James are doing some straight-up armed robbery with a bazooka and some sort of machinegun. I remember this because unlike most depictions of guns in the Pokemon anime, this one wasn't censored! Also surprisingly, after Team Rocket makes their getaway with the gunpowder, Ash barges in and gets like four shotguns pointed at his face.  Considering that Dratini episode was taken out of rotation for Western audiences, it's surprising that this scene wasn't cut either.

Anyway, with the intervention of the pretty incompetent officer Jenny, who shows up late, Ash hops on her sidecar and go of to the Squirtle Gang hideout. And... the extremely responsible Jenny sends Ash to crawl through a side-entrance, and I have so many questions about this scene. Why not just walk through the front entrance? The Squirtle Squad was expecting Ash, after all. And Jenny could've sent her pokemon to accompany Ash or something, even if she herself can't fit in. It's weird. Ash shows up, and we get a brief imaginary spot of Misty being thrown into a dark chasm, but apparently the entire group just ended up moving outside of the cave for no real reason but to have this brief bit of faux-drama. Also, to set up the stage for the climax, I guess.

Ash cures Pikachu with the super potion, but then Team Rocket arrive with fucking bombs and air-drop them onto the Squirtle Squad to get their revenge, and also to allow Meowth to abscond with Pikachu. Ash ends up risking himself to shield the lead Squirtle (who has spiky sunglasses), who ends up rescuing Ash instead, carrying him to the safety of the cave, and then using a water gun to blow a hole in Team Rocket's balloon, rescuing Pikachu and sending them blasting off again.

Oh, and the Squirtle Squad put out the resulting forest fire from the bombs, and are deputized by Jenny into the town's fire-fighting squad. And as Ash leaves, the lead Squirtle shows up, and is happy to join Ash on his journey. For... for some reason, despite him being shown to be in a closely-knit gang. It's always bizarre, even with Ash saving Squirtle before, it's always something that felt shoehorned in. Which means... full party get!

Not the biggest fan of this episode, honestly. The Squirtle Squad are pretty charming, sure, and I do like the fun concept of a gang of rowdy Pokemon troublemakers ending up being suckered into becoming accomplices of the comparatively worse Team Rocket, but at the same time, the set up for the final conflict is a bit muddled and the real moral of the story or whatever feels kind of mdudled as well. Not the worst by any means because it's at least not boring, but far from being my favourite episode. 

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Squirtle, Meowth, Goldeen, Charmander
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Officer Jenny, Jessie, James, Gary

Assorted Notes: 

• This epissode marks the first usage of a Pokemon item in the Super Potion. I'm not sure if it was the anime or the TCG that codified the appearance of potions as a spray bottle, but that's how the potions have been consistently portrayed since the first generation. 
• Dub Changes:
• A bit of an addition in the dub is Ash subtly hinting that Gary chose a Squirtle as his starter Pokemon by saying "with my own Squirtle". 
• Meowth and the Squirtle Squad threatened to 'execute' Misty in the original Japanese, whereas in the dub, it's a more playful threat to dye her hair purple. I remembered this because Ithought it was an utterly silly (but pretty effective - for Misty at least) threat.
• Team Rocket claims their guns are "ice guns" in the dub. I mean, they do apparently shoot flower petal confetti when they escape, so maybe those really aren't real guns. 
• This will be a pretty consistent change in the dub, but the rice balls (onigiri) that Team Rocket is preparing to eat is referred to as donuts in the dub. Because clearly American kids are too dumb to know about any sort of cuisine other than their own?

One Piece 941 Review: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Ieyasu

One Piece, Chapter 941: Ebisu Town's Most Beloved

An... interesting chapter? Again, I still feel like we don't really spend enough time with a lot of the Wano-kuni characters for me to really care if Tonoyasu (or Yasu'ie, I guess) gets rescued or not. So much of these Wano charactesr are introduced to have a single defining character trait or two, with implied mystery, and then oh no the mystery is revealed, and everyone acts like it's some HUGE PLOT TWIST when the genuine scarcity of information means that it's just, y'know, another bit of new information. 

And the fact that so much of this happens off-screen in such an understated manner makes it really hard for me to be excited. Tonoyasu is revealed to be the Witching Hour Boy, a mystery that was dragged on in the background of Wano chapters that keeps popping up but we never really get any real clues or subversions or whatever, so this revelation genuinely feels hollow. 

We get to see a bit of Orochi being angry at everyone, particularly at Kyoshirou, who's... just putting on a poker face and doing his job. Neat. Meanwhile, Queen is freaking out at the fact that Komurasaki is apparently dead, and apparently with the aid of Raizou and Caribou, Luffy's eaten all of the O-Shikuri snacks, which is... okay, that was obvious, but also kind of funny that once again, Big Mom's going to be figuratively cockblocked from getting to eat a sweet she wants.

Oh yeah, something about one of Holdem's minions burning Shutenmaru/Ashura-Doji's base or whatever, and... it's ambiguously implied that it's the minks and Kanjurou that does it in order to get Ashura Douji to move? It's neat, but, again, Ashura Douji is such a m'eh character that I really don't have an opinion of, so I genuinely don't really care, I guess.  

Meanwhile, Brook, who's still pretending to be a ghost, ends up happening upon Zoro, Komurasaki and Toko mostly by chance, and we get some ha-ha-not-really-funny bit of "EHHH YOU'RE SLEEPING TOGETHER" comedy that... honestly didn't really work this time around. And they all run to the capital, where Orochi plans to cremate "Komurasaki" as a criminal, simultaneously with the execution of Tonoyasu... and apparently he's Yasu'ie, a Daimyo that was loyal to Oden, and he's just laughing while crucified while wanting to tell the world of something to leave the world with no regrets. And... I dunno. We see so little of Tonoyasu, and what little we saw was just him being a pollyanna hobo who laughs at everything, so the revelation that this character is also someone else, who we really never knew about, is just... eh? It's neat that we're moving through these at a pretty fast speed, all things considered, but the pacing is really wonky.

Animated Movie Review: Freedom Fighters - The Ray

Freedom Fighters - The Ray [2017/2018]

In 2017, after the Crisis on Earth-X crossover between the CW DC superhero shows, we are briefly introduced to the Ray, gay superhero from Earth-1 fighting Nazis on the dystopian alternate Earth of Earth-X. Shortly afterwards, we got an animated tie-in series of shorts that ended up on a cliffhanger. It's not until recently that a proper 'second season' was released, but in the form of an entire movie that also compiles the previous 'episodes' together. 

And it's... it's an okay work, I guess. Running for slightly more than an hour, it's a prequel to how Raymond Terill ended up becoming the superhero called the Ray. It does have some continuity problems with the actual live-action continuity that we're just going to have to handwave with Oliver, Barry, Cisco and everyone else involved just having some really shoddy memory during the crossover. And that the many other colourful characters showcased here are just elsewhere when the crossover happened. 

I'm not going too in-depth as far as synopses go, since I reviewed the first half of this movie already, but it definitely flows a lot better as a single one-hour movie as opposed to a series of abruptly-ending shorts. Earth-X Ray ends up getting transported to Earth-1, dying, and giving his powers to his Earth-1 doppelganger. Becoming the Ray, he ends up going through basically the same sort of character development that most young heroes go through, which is the right way to use his powers, and whether to showboat and threaten 'evil people' with his powers. It's... it's all right, even if the script is pretty predictable. 

There's also a not-insignificant amount of screentime devoted to exploring how the Ray is a gay person who is keeping his gayness (and later on his superheroing) secret from his parents. There's... there's some attempts at trying to make parallels with hiding his gayness and hiding his superhero identity, but it's a case of not doing enough and doing too much at the same time. They don't really do enough in the romantic department to really justify focusing on it too much, while at the same time, they do have a lot of scenes of Ray flirting with his boyfriend that ends up not going anywhere. 

We also take advantage of the animated media to do a bunch of things that the live-action budget can't really manage to do, which includes Ray teaming up with Earth-1 heroes to fight a literal giant robot in the middle of the city, the re-appearance of modern-day Vixen complete with more animal powers being used instead of just gorillas, and Oliver Queen using a bunch of crazy laser-net arrows. It's neat, even if the usage of Green Arrow is puzzling since they can't get Stephen Amell back to reprise his role. Matthew Mercer does his best, but it's clear that it's a different voice actor... and compared to practically everyone else, who is voiced by returning CW actors, it's definitely off. 

Of course, Earth-X's Overgirl ends up tracking the plot device (Red Tornado's brain) to Earth-1, and beats the shit out of Ray, making him realize how much he's screwed up by glorifying in his power and not using it responsibly. Ray ends up enlisting our Vibe to zip over to Earth-X, and we get a superhero cartoon showdown as Ray teams up with the remaining Freedom Fighters on Earth-X -- Black Condor, Vibe and Phantom Lady -- to fight off Overgirl, Black Arrow and Blitzkrieg. We get your typical sappy speech, and Ray decides to stay there where he's needed more, which is... it's neat, I guess. Also, it's bizarre that Nazi Arrow ends up being arrested considering he's pretty much Fuhrer when Crisis on Earth-X happens, so... yeah, I'm just going to handwave this as "some time will have passed between Ray and Crisis."

Ultimately, it's... it's an all right feature. Probably not worth watching unless you're already caught up with the CW stuff, though -- so much of the content in this series ends up tying in to the CW universe that it's probably going to be a bizarre walk through the park if you're not at least somewhat familiar with the casts of Arrow and Flash. It's not my favourite superhero material out there since the Ray is ultimately just another cut out of the same cloth of "using my powers responsibly", with just shades of gay added on. I really wished that there was something that was somewhat unique about Ray other than his sexuality and his Earth-jumping backstory, but... eh. It's all right, for what it is. 

My Hero Academia 224-225 Mini-Review: Interviewing a Psycho

My Hero Academia, Chapter 224: Resurrection Festival; Chapter 225: Interview With A Vampire

Another mini-review, because I've been really slacking on these. Chapter 224 basically sets up the fight between Shigaraki's Villain Alliance and Neo-Destro's Liberation Army. We get a fun bit of argument between Twice and the other villains about whether they should save Giran the broker guy, and some set-up like how they don't have a lot of high end Noumu to spare. Shigaraki's plan is essentially to have Gigantomakhia track them while they're fighting the Liberation Army, and have both their enemies tire each other out, then defeat whoever's left. It's a weird plan that has so much potential of backfiring, but it's honestly such a "yeah, sure, why not" plan that I can't dislike it.

The huge revelation, I guess, is that the weird-faced hero Slip And Slide from the Todoroki/Bakugou incident is actually a member of the Libertation army, which is interesting since I never actually considered that any heroes would subscribe to Neo-Destro's nonsense.  

And then we get the fight, and honestly, this chapter was utterly enjoyable just to look at the background of the genuine random crowd-fillers of random people using wacky powers -- it was why the UAJ arc or whatever when Shigaraki brought a gigantic crowd of supervillains was so fun. Also, villain-against-villain also means that the villains we care about can actually unleash their brutal quirks, leading to some awesome disintegration shots of Shigaraki ripping random people to dust. 

Chapter 225 focuses on a small part of this villain war. Lots of great splash pages, we get a little accurate analysis by Neo-Destro that the Villain Alliance isn't in their full strength. Most of the chapter surrounds Toga's fight with Curious, a super-popular writer who is highly interested in Toga's story, and we do get a lot of fun random abilities from the small cabal of superhumans under Curious's employ. Curious has the ability to make anything she touches into an explosive, Yoshigake Kira style (sans bubble), and there was a fun bit where Toga tries to drink the blood of the Army's soldiers, only to have them explode in her body.

Some pretty amazing expressions from Toga as Curious talks about how she wants to know just why Toga, who had a perfect life, would throw away her "normal" life, punctuated with some interesting flashbacks to her... wearing a 'mask' and laughing alongside random normal students? Again, we get a Kira-esque answer, with Toga noting that this is what she wants from a normal life, this is what her twisted, fractured psyche thinks of a normal life. It's a motivation that I've seen used before, but it's not one that I thought would apply to crazy psychotic maniac like Toga. Again, always nice to see some of the secondary characters get thrust into the spotlight.

Batman Beyond S01E02 Review: The Hero Gotham Needs

Batman Beyond, Season 1, Episode 2: Rebirth, Part 2

Picking up right where we left off from the first part of this two-parter, Bruce Wayne quickly figures out that the data in the CD that Warren hid is some sort of mutagen data for a powerful flesh-eating nerve gas, which is a neat take on the whole "your company is producing destructive weaponry" theme that Iron Man is built on. Old Man Bruce is still surly, however, and refuses to personally do something about it, telling Terry to just give the data to commissioner Barbara Gordon (so that's what happened to one of the sidekicks), and Terry calls Old Man Bruce out on just how shit he's behaving. Something's happened to him, and it wasn't just getting old -- at this point, it's implied that it's just Bruce being emo and soul-crushed by the whole "forced to use a gun" thing, but honestly, after spending most of his life as the peak of humanity, having age turn you into merely above-average is probably going to hurt Bruce's psyche a lot.

After spending a significant amount of the previous episode just making smug smiles and implying horrible things happening off-screen, Derek Powers's master plan is shown in this episode. He's meeting up with a general from the war-torn country of Kaznia, one Vilmos Egans, and shows off the results of his nerve gas... using poor, poor, Harry being consumed by these maroon rust-like splotches into increasingly horrific shots -- which are offscreen to the audience, but we do get a pretty effective reaction shot from Vilmos to tell us that, yeah, it's probably not pretty. There's definitely a lot of Lex Luthor vibe to Powers, and I'm actually somewhat curious that the Big Bad of this series is going to be more of a Luthor-style calculating villain instead of a Joker-style anarchist. For now, at least.

Meanwhile, Old Man Bruce realizes that Ace has been tied up (Terry you dick!), shows that he still carries Batarangs even as an old man, and then quickly realize that Terry has snuck into the Batcave and stole the new, upgraded Bat-suit. We get to see what the Batman Beyond suit is able to do -- in addition to wings, we get to see Terry flying around and then use these cool fingerprint listening devices to listen in to Derek Powers' discussion with Egans, talking about the fatality rate of their nerve gas, while noting that the only cure is extreme heat or radiation. Also, the fact that it was Mr. Fixx that killed Warren, not the Jokerz gang.

We then have a bit of an action scene between Terry and a bunch of random soldiers with laser guns arrive, which ends up being a bit complicated when Bruce calls in with the suit's intercom and uses an immobilizer failsafe to straight-up just lock the suit down, which is hilarious. Bruce ends up relenting and decides to basically help Terry out for at least this one mission, because he can at least appreciate the need to, y'know, not let Terry die like an idiot as the guards beat him up. Directing Terry to enter a broom closet's fake wall, Old Man Bruce once again wants to leave everything to the police, but Terry ends up appealing to their shared lost parents, and Bruce ends up relenting and allowing Terry to use the suit, at least for now.

Terry shows up at the dock where Derek Powers and Fixx are supervising the nerve gas canisters being loaded, and I really do love just how inexperienced Terry is. Even with Bruce's instructions, he spends a bit too long monologuing, and it's honestly only everyone being baffled at the Batman's reappearance that he ends up being able to do so well. The fight scenes are... they're all right, if nothing too spectacular, but during the fight, a stray bullet from Powers' gun hits one of the nerve gas canisters, causing him to be afflicted and consumed by the gas.

Meanwhile, Terry continues to go after Mr. Fixx and the hovercraft, showing off the new bat-suit's absurdly sharp claws. The fight over the Gotham River is neat, and Mr. Fixx shows off a pair of Electrocutioner-style knuckle-duster fists. Terry gives the declaration that "I AM BATMAN!" and during the fight, Fixx gets knocked into the ship's controls, sending the ship tumbling out of control and into the bottom of the bay, also presumably killing Mr. Fixx as he's trapped with nerve gas and the river. Terry escapes, though, and I was baffled at how blase he is at the death of Mr. Fixx. Sure, he killed his dad, but not even a token effort to save him? Nothing from Bruce? I genuinely don't remember if Fixx returns as a villain later on or not, so I'm not sure if this is intentional.

It's a fun little first outing, and the end of the episode shows off a couple of little status quo things -- Bruce Wayne himself shows up at Terry's house, showing that even as an old man, he can still pull off the city's favourite son card and basically recruits Terry as a go-fer while talking to Terry about welcoming him to Bruce Wayne's world, formally accepting him as the new Batman... while Derek Powers, dosed by the gas, ends up going through extreme radiation therapy and the combination of the gas and radiation causes him to mutate into Dr. Phosphorus a metahuman with glowing, radioactive skin.

Overall... it's not the perfect opening to a series, but it's still a pretty neat one that handles the Bruce/Terry dynamic pretty well, sets up the state of future Gotham, as well as builds up one of the main villains. I'm not sure how regular these episodes will be. This isn't a show I pre-watched and took notes on like Ultimate Spider-Man or Superman: TAS, but I'll try my best to at least finish the first season before 2019 is over.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While the character is entirely original, Blight's appearance borrows from minor Batman enemy Dr. Phosphorus, being a radiation-based supervillain whose skeleton is visible thanks to a glowing, transparent skin.
• The fictional country of Kasnia was featured in both Superman: The Animated Series and later in Justice League. 

Batman Beyond S01E01 Review: The Hero Gotham Deserves

Batman Beyond, Season 1, Episode 1: Rebirth, Part 1

It's the 20th anniversary of Batman Beyond, and it's a show that... as a kid, I frankly didn't really like. How dare they imply that my hero, Batman, ended up growing old and has to be replaced by some punk kid I've never heard of before! How dare they replace all of my favourite villains with third-rate knockoffs! Of course, I've mellowed out a lot, and I've heard a lot of great things about Batman Beyond as a whole. In particular, the episodes I reviewed while covering the Justice League season -- Epilogue in particular -- genuinely impressed me. I've been intending to watch through the series without any preconceived "grrr this is a replacement" and appreciate the show basically without being a bratty little kid, and here we are! I'm not sure how regularly this is going to be a thing, it depends on my watching schedule -- I just thought I needed to get at least this two-parter out first instead of waiting until I finish the entire season, considering I have a backlog of other TV shows I haven't watched and reviewed.


And the first episode opens with Bruce Wayne, the Batman, in a cool-looking brand-new suit with a red logo, a retractable cape-wing thing, and a full-face mask. It's clearly Gotham City, but in the future, and apparently we get hints of some dude called Derek Powers trying to take over Wayne Enterprises. Meanwhile, Batman goes and tries to rescue a girl (Bunny Vreeland, daughter of Veronica Vreeland from Batman: The Animated Series) kidnapped by a bunch of random thugs, only to get a heart attack in the middle of fighting them, and while Batman manages to take down all but one, he ended up being forced to pull a gun to defend himself. It's just to scare the final thug into running away, and he does it for a good cause, but a combination between being forced to use a gun as well as his failure is such a sobering and soul-crushing moment for old man Bruce that he ends up hanging up the suit, vowing "never again."

That's an amazing prologue, setting up that, yes, even someone as badass as Batman will eventually become old and vulnerable, while also keeping things ambiguous enough in this future time period that implies things without confirming anything. Where are Nightwing, Robin and Batgirl, and why are their costumes on display? Where are Batman's other allies like Alfred and Gordon? What about Superman? Or the Justice League? What's going to happen? It's the same sort of uncertainty that Young Justice's sequel seasons would use to great effect, and while this prologue does lean a bit too hard into making Batman into a bit of a failure of sorts, the rest of the two-parter debut is definitely going to fix that.

And then we jump even more into the future, into the year of 2039, exactly 20 years later. So apparently the prologue sequence of Batman hanging up his cowl happened in 2019. Huh! As with all imaginations of the future, we get wacky futuristic buildings, policemen on hoverbikes, and random Japanese kanji plastered all over the buildings. Considering the amount of effort that dubbed anime ended up going through to remove kanji from shows like Digimon, Pokemon or One Piece, it's actually sort of hilarious that this American-made cartoon just plainly have random foreign words plastered all over their backgrounds.

We're introduced to our hero, Terry McGinnis, your average high schooler, who ends up in an encounter with a burly dude dressed in a clown suit and spray-painting all over some public transport, before extorting money from a random lady in the bus-tram thing, because "I give you funny, you give me money". This is a member of the Jokerz Gang, a gang of punks that fashion themselves after the Joker while being nowhere as effective, funny or brutal as the real deal -- so in other words, like all those edgy teenagers on the internet who post those "as a kid you root for Batman, but as an adult the Joker makes more sense" memes. Terry beats up this random Jokerz gang member (he's named Scab, but none of the Jokerz have their names said on-screen). And we quickly sort of learn a bit more about Terry. He's in Hamilton High School (gotta appeal to the audience by having the protagonist be their age) and he's got a girlfriend, Dana Tan, and he's got his own local bully-rival, Nelson. None of the school stuff in Batman Beyond has really appealed to me all that much, but they do help with the world-building, so yeah.

Meanwhile, Terry's dad Warren McGinnis ends up getting embroiled in some intra-company conspiracy thing as one of his co-workers, Harry, passes him a tiny CD, but ends up being electrocuted and taken away by the Wayne-Powers' head enforcer, Mr. Fixx. And as Warren talks to his boss, Derek Powers, he gets given a cover story about how Harry has a severe allergic reaction, and Warren will be able to see him next week.


I also find it hilarious that the people of 1999 apparently can think up of hoverbikes and robotic wingsuits and whatnot, but also can't imagine that within the next decade people will be able to make data-carrying receptacles more sophisticated than a CD. Ah, the 90's.

Anyway, in a pretty huge revelation for the time that the show was produced, we learn that Terry doesn't come from the most wholesome family. His parents are divorced, and while it seems to be an amicable one from what little we see, Terry and Warren have a bit of an argument and Terry says some hurtful things about being a "success" like Warren. Also, instead of more traditionally wholesome sports or study groups or whatever, Terry really just likes going to the club with his girlfriend, and while it's certainly not something that should be thought of as abnormal or dirty, again, at the time that the show was created, I remembered how oddly different this is compared to most other shows on air.

And then the Jokerz gang shows up! Now led by someone who actually impersonates Joker (albeit with white lip makeup and a pompadour), the J-Man, they beat up Nelson in front of the club, and one of the grabs and starts tickling Dana which is probably the closest thing you could get into showing a gang member molesting a teenager in a cartoon. Terry understandably picks a fight with the Jokerz, leading to a bike chase.

It's this fateful bike chase that ended up bringing Terry and the Jokerz to the Wayne Manor, which is a lot more imposing and less friendly-looking than it has been in the past. Old Man Bruce shows up and basically tells them all to fuck off and leave his property, and we get a fun smirk from him when the Jokerz proudly declare that they are the Jokerz. We get a team-up between Terry's undisciplined flailing around and Old Man Bruce just laying the law with nothing but his walking stick and arthritis, absolutely trouncing the Jokerz gang... and even backhand-whacks one while in conversation with Terry.

The Jokerz escape, Old Man Bruce is still a badass, but... a badass with heart problems. Terry helps Bruce into the mansion, and we get to see the adorable and best character of the show, Ace the dog!

(Who, in light of Justice League Unlimited's "Epilogue" episode, is 100% named after Ace of the Royal Flush Gang, and it's pretty sad yet also heartwarming). 

After helping Bruce sit down and eat his medication, Bruce ends up falling asleep, while Terry excuses himself... and accidentally opens the way to the batcave when he sees a bat stuck on the grandfather clock. Terry walks into the cave, realizes enough about what's going on, before Old Man Bruce shows up and tells him to "get out". It's honestly pretty great hearing Kevin Conroy simultaneously inject a lot of vulnerability and tiredness into Old Man Bruce's voice but still making him sound as badass as ever.


Terry returns back home after all of this... to find his dad dead, and his home vandalized and spray-painted with Jokerz graffiti. His mom is there, the police are there, and the death happened suddenly and off-screen. No dramatic slow-motion shot of pearls dropping in Crime Alley, no last-minute responsibility speech from Uncle Ben... it's a genuinely shocking swerve, and the subsequent brief montage of a funeral and mourning ends up with Terry angsting and angry at himself that he went around picking fights with a gang, blaming the Jokerz for tracking him back to his home and killing his dad as revenge. Of course, the audience knows that Warren is most likely killed by Derek Powers due to the whole company espionage thing, but the self-blame has always been a great motivator in these superhero shows, and Terry's feeling of guilt and responsibility ends up being a driving force.

While cleaning up his room and preparing to move in with his mother and little brother, Terry realizes that his father hid the mysterious CD behind a photograph. He's being watched by Powers' people, but Terry ends up going off to the Wayne Mansion. Old Man Bruce is unwilling to help, again, because he's hung up his cape, but Terry's yellings in front of the mansion about something stinking in Wayne's company, and the "you're no Batman!" accusation ends up causing Bruce to relent... and this is the end of the first part.

Y'know... this story is a lot more mature than its predecessors. The tone is all different and funky, the  main focus as far as villains go is less on bank heists and colourful criminals and more on corporate espionage, and we get to see a Gotham City that's changed utterly in a world where Batman has retired. But honestly, Batman Beyond does a lot of things well. Old Man Bruce and Terry McGinnis are characterized relatively well, with the former being surly and bitter without losing his badassery or being too much of a cunt, whereas Terry is enthusiastic and well-meaning without basically becoming an annoying chirpy sidekick. We'll pick up this series tomorrow for the second part of the series premiere, but it's definitely a pretty great opening to a series that I didn't give the time of the day as a kid. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Nearly every single thing in Batman Beyond is either original or only very loosely based on the comics, so this segment won't be quite as numerous as before. Mostly, it's just going to be nods at the larger TAS canon in general.
• Most of the ones we see in this episode are in the form of costumes -- the main heroes from Batman: The Animated Series (Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing) have theirs displayed prominently in display cases. 
• While the only real thing that this has with the iconic graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns is featuring a crotchety old Bruce Wayne, the "never again" line is definitely a homage to that. 
• Ace borrows his name from the Golden Age animal sidekick of Batman, Ace the Bat-Hound. This Ace doesn't wear a cowl and go around to fight crime, though. His breed is also changed from a German Shepherd in the comics to a Great Dane.