Swamp Thing E07 Review: The Return of Alec Holland

Swamp Thing, Season 1, Episode 7: Brilliant Disguise

I've been oh-so-slowly making my way through Swamp Thing and Punisher episodes, but they're... they're kinda heavy shows, y'know? It takes me a while to go through each individual episodes mostly due to how tense and serious they are.

"Brilliant Disguise" moves the plot along presumably to the final arc of this season, as we basically get introduced and are shown the name of "The Rot". The Swamp Thing spends a good chunk of this episode as Alec Holland because Abby ingested some... hallucinogens or something? It's certainly an excuse for Andy Bean to run around as an actor instead of just voicing a plant monster suit. The two of them sort of spend almost the entire episode sort of bonding and moving around, eventually leading to a sequence where Abby was nearly killed due to an encounter with a vine of the Rot. Really, she couldn't have asked Alec to take the sample for her? We do get some pretty neat showcases of the Swamp Thing's abilities, including apparently summoning and/or growing a bunch of exotic herbs to cure Abby's rot infection, and stab her with vines to help her inner microbes or whatever heal. 

While sort of a workaround in order to give the Swamp Thing and Abby a whole lot easier-to-film emotional interaction, the episode sort of ends with Abby going back to Atlanta's CDC facility to find a cure for what she's discovered, while the Swamp Thing seems to recognize that he's now part of something much, much bigger, with a much more powerful set of powers. Not sure what this will mean for the future. Are we writing Abby out until the last couple of episodes of the finale, giving the Swamp Thing some much-needed focus in his own series? Or are we just going to have an Abby-in-Atlanta subplot happening in the background of the next couple of episodes?

Meanwhile, the B-plot finally brings the Sunderlands and Cables together. It's a whole set of fun little backstabbing and treachery, and the revelation that Lucilia Cable and Maria Sunderland are actually in cahoots the whole time to get rid of Avery is pretty neat. Of course, it doesn't seem to be the end of Avery just yet since he survives falling into the swamp, but it's pretty fun to see the plan unfold -- especially since it's completely plausible that Avery and Lucilia were going off to hunt down Swamp Thing, which would bring them into conflict with the Alec/Abby pair.

That sequence where Avery tries to turn Matt and Lucilia against each other by revealing that he is Matt's father is pretty out-of-nowhere and kind of a silly soap opera complication to the whole Avery/Cables thing, but eh, it worked. Meanwhile, Maria shows that when not under the influence of a ghost, she's a lot more awesome and ends up arranging a meeting with both the naive and easily-manipulated Jason Woodrue with Avery's contact, one Nathan Ellery, representing a spooky organization that I think is called the Conclave. 

Ultimately, the plot moves nicely onwards and this is another very solid entry in Swamp Thing's first season. Despite some of the themes and general vibe of the show not really jiving with me, all of these episodes are consistently solid and it's a shame that the season was cancelled prematurely. 

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 20: Rematch & A Butt-Ton of Cutscenes

Part 20 of my playthrough of the fan-game Pokemon Uranium! Last part I was dealt a horrific loss against one of the bosses, main villain terrorist-lady Curie and her pet legendary nuclear robot thing, Urayne. This one features both a rematch and an exploration of a bunch of plot.

Not too long, this time around, because it's sort of meant to be a single page with the previous part, but I split it up.

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E24 Review: Booyah

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 24: Into the Breach

Well, okay, so the Apokolips stuff, or at least Granny Goodness and his space satellite, is just... it's just over in this episode. And it's at least a lot more epic than the lukewarm "Terminus", yeah? And the episode more or less plays out like how you expect it to, with the Earth-bound team of Beast Boy's Outsiders to deal with things on Earth. And, hey, Beast Boy does have a pretty strong antagonistic relationship with Gretchen Goode,  Ultimately, though, it sort of all comes down to Cyborg and his exploration of his new superpowers, which is kinda Mary-Sue-y but at the same time Cyborg has been pretty foreshadowed throughout the season as slowly growing into a main character. I just kinda wish that, again, the pacing has been done a lot better.

The Outsiders end up fighting against Gretchen, Overlord and the X-Pit, which mostly amounts to most of the team being disabled by the X-Pit while Cyborg and Overlord tangle in some Matrix-ReBoot style dimension, while Gretchen Goode torments Beast Boy in the force-field cube, showing that apparently good ol' grandma can actually toss around gorillas and ma'alefa'ak's. The Cyborg sequence is actually pretty good -- Overlord is mute and is less of a character and more of an obstacle, but Victor looking at his 'avatar', which is fully human, and then embracing who he is -- a Cyborg -- is pretty damn great. It's just kind of a shame that this lesson of self-acceptance ends up coming off the heels of some superpower shilling of just how-awesome-Cyborg's-new-powers-are, which felt like it was throwing it on a bit too thick.

The fight between Beast Boy and Gretchen is perhaps a bit more brutal than I was expecting, but it was pretty well-animated and well-scripted... shame that there's... there's not a whole ton of thematic significance going on here beyond Beast Boy just being generically defiant against Gretchen. Once Cyborg wins against Overlord, the rest of the Outsiders is freed. The rest of the B-team try their best to contribute something (poor El Dorado's huge scene is basically his teleportation powers being useless) and help to subdue Gretchen and blow up her machine, but Gretchen teleports away, while Cyborg alone follows.

And this leads to Gretchen returning back to the Orphanage, with the completely-bizarre-why-did-we-need-this-twist of Gretchen and Granny Goodness apparently... uh... they fuse together? I genuinely don't get what use this whole storyline is all about. I don't think any of the superheroes in-universe ever believed that Gretchen Goode was not evil, it's the matter of actually proving that the old granny is evil, isn't it? I dunno. It feels like a completely unnecessary storyline, and the whole "two Grannies merge into one" scene feels like it's just there to give instant evidence for Cyborg proving Gretchen Goode's evilness in the epilogue.

Cyborg then basically frees Halo from the mind-control rig, allowing Halo to Plot Device MacGuffin the Anti-Life Equation away. The combined strengths of all the superheroes present blow up Granny's satellite machine, blows up Overlord, Halo threatens Granny with repercussions, and Granny ends up buggering off with her own Mother Box. And... and that's about it. As I mention before, it's just a matter of whose plot device is bigger, and I genuinely feel like there's a significant lack of tension over the events that's going on. It's not like the first season's climax where you're wondering who the traitor is, and why he became traitor. Or the second season, where Jaime and the Scarab's relationship was key on how they were going to react. Sure, Cyborg finally accepting himself and having enough confidence to do something superheroic is neat, as is Halo unleashing her rainbow stuff, but they both feel pretty tame and just like the show's going through the motions.

And I guess that's it for the Granny Goodness storyline? So I suppose that the final two episodes are just either going to be wrap-up plus foreshadowing for the fourth season? After a couple of shippy moments, we get a bit of an epilogue.The kidnapped metahumans are returned to Earth. The Furies and Mantis (who didn't even do anything) are captured by the JLA. Cyborg has evidence to bring down Granny Goodness, then adopts a codename and joins the Outsiders. Granny informs Darkseid of her failure, and about how it was Vandal Savage who sabotaged their plans, so at least we're maybe not done with the glacial Apokolips plotline?

We get a potential storyline for poor, ignored Forager -- with Mantis being among the supervillains captured by the Justice League, is he going to return to New Genesis? Also, going on throughout this episode is the slow revelation that Lex Luthor is the one sponsoring the Infinity Inc. team, which has been foreshadowed in the background of the past couple of episodes as the cast is far more preoccupied with catastrophic stuff. I guess this was what Luthor ended up taking from his conversation with Godfrey about "joining them"? I must confess that the idea of some publicity war between two teams of young superheroes in media don't really feel exciting.

Ultimately, it's... it's all right. There isn't enough things that went on that I would call this episode bad. But man, this Granny's Orphanage two-parter ended up really sort of just playing out as "well, we kinda need a big epic climax", and the events that happen feel like they just happened for the sake of happening. We still have two more episodes left for the season, and I wonder just what material we'll cover within those two. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Beast Boy, Bio-Ship, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, El Dorado, Kid Flash II, Blue Beetle, Halo, Elongated Man, Superman, Geo-Force, Icon, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, Forager, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Nightwing, Aquaman II, Miss Martian, Superboy, Tigress
• Villains: Gretchen Goode/Granny Goodness, Overlord, Lex Luthor, Killer Frost, Lashina, Gilotina, Mantis, Darkseid, Mercy Graves, Lobo (post-credits)
• Civilians/Others: Trajectory, Other Infinity Inc. Members, Terra
• Various other characters appear in flashbacks. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• "Booyah", of course, is Cyborg's catchphrase, popularized by the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon. 
• As mentioned before, the second incarnation of the comic-books' Infinity Incorporated was a publicity stunt play sponsored by Lex Luthor. 
• The credits scene hover over Lobo's severed finger transforming into what appears to be a mutated baby. Are we getting a Slobo out of that? Is that the whole foreshadowing going on there? That we're getting Slobo, one of the original members of the comics' original Young Justice team?

Kamen Rider Zero-One E04 Review: Cover-Ups

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 4: I Saw the Bus Guide! Anna's Truth

So we finally go into the string of episodes that's going to slowly crack open the main premise and conspiracy-plot of the series while slowly drip-feeding the initial wave of toys, merchandise and alternate forms. In this episode, we've got Zero-One's Flying Falcon and Vulcan's Punching Kong forms being introduced. 

The basic plotline of this episode is another relatively simple one, with the main cast sort of being brought to Daybreak Town. We get the context of what exactly the ruined town is -- it's a town where a huge explosion apparently occurred, leveling the city and leaving the ruins half-submerged. Of course, Hiden Intelligence has clearly covered it up. As usual, Fuwa is determined to prove that it's the evil evil Humagears that's being evil and oh-so-evil, while our guest-star-of-the-week, a kid called Sakurai Go, is the son of the overseer of the factory and is bullied relentlessly by his classmates because his father is a fuck-up. (What a bunch of shitty kids, huh? "Haha your dad caused the Chernobyl meltdown, what a weeeenie")

Of course, an attack by yet another converted Humagear (this time a bus driver) ends up fucking shit up, bringing Vulcan and Valkyrie and the rest of AIMS into the battle. The Onycho Magia ends up buggering off with his wings since it's not the third act yet, but this ends up causing Fuwa to basically bring up and rant about how the evil-evil Hiden Intelligence company is covering up the fact that the explosion in Daybreak isn't caused by 'faulty machinery'. Aruto is doubtful, but in perhaps the first serious showcase of Vice-President Jun, it's pretty clear that things are, in fact, being covered up. After a conversation with Aruto's Humagear-buddy-of-the-week, the bus tour guide Anna, Aruto decides to go off and uncover the truth.

Also trying to uncover the truth is Fuwa, who is such an insanely irresponsible adult that he decides to bring the little kid Go with him. Although I guess he does have the ability to transform into an armored cyborg robot-man, so I guess it's not that irresponsible? It's at this point where Aruto shows up to hold off the horde of Trilobite Magia that attack, and, more importantly, reveal his true identity as the 'damn grasshopper' to Fuwa. So much for secret identities, then! I am not sure how I feel about the execution of this, though -- on one hand, I do like that the whole theme of the episode is about coming clean and not keeping secrets, and I definitely do like that they didn't stretch it out for too long. On the other hand, Aruto's reveal of his secret identity was sort of... underwhelming?

Fuwa, Go and Anna go off to the central security room of the ruined Daybreak Town, and essentially after a motivational speech by Fuwa, the kid gets enough courage to... reach down and take an SD card. More emotional, though, is the tour guide Humagear Anna, who fights through the corruption and gets enough time to unveil the security recording that shows that Go's father actually blew up the factory to box in the rampaging Humagear, as well as what's basically a terrorist gloating threat monologue by Kamen Rider Horobi of Metsubojinrai-dot-net. It's... it's extremely convenient, honestly, that Hiden Intelligence still has plausible deniability, and that Aruto's blind faith in his company is actually being rewarded with everything evil happening in the world being caused by the terrorist group. 

Despite the dual debuts of Aruto's Flying Falcon form and Fuwa's Punching Kong form, the two of them only really manage to blow up the Onycho Magia. And, unlike the previous couple of episodes, Anna was not recovered, and she blows up and shatters into dust. Which honestly does raise some questions about Mamoru and the sushi chef from the past couple of episodes... just what are those? Are they actually the original Humagears, just with a 'factory wipe' or something, or are they just brand-new Humagear with no memory or connection with their past 'lives' other than their appearance? It gets curiouser and curiouser. 

Ultimately, though, the episode ends with the happy tone of Aruto broadcasting the truth about the destruction of Daybreak City, clearing Go's father's name, and basically earning Fuwa's respect as he revealed both his secret identity and reveals the whole batch of information that they found to the public. It's kind of a relatively simple episode, but a neat one. 

Random Notes:

• We actually get to see a bit of Horobi de-henshining with his fancy new belt, but ultimately it's more of a teaser more than anything. 
• In a weird bit of painting the medium, the Katakana for Punching Kong's finisher actually briefly fall back down the hole alongside the detachable rocket fists. I guess the staff still has Zi-O on their minds?
• So I guess Fuwa's whole thing is that he really has to make strained, quasi-constipated screamy faces every time he wants to open one of his transformation devices, then. 
• Interesting that Flying Falcon doesn't even get to do his finisher this time around. 
• Know your Magia: This week's Magia is your obligatory bat monster, the Onycho Magia, based on one of the earliest-known prehistoric bats, the family-and-genus Onychonycteris. The grunt Magia have been officially named as the Trilobite Magia, a nod to one of the more famous prehistoric creatures out there. 
• The Gimmick Watch:
• Wing! Authorize. Progrise! Fly to the sky! Flying Falcon! Spread your wings and prepare for a force.
• Power! Authorize. Kamen Rider Kamen Rider Kamen Rider. Shotrise! Punching Kong!  Enough power to annihilate a mountain.
• Punching Kong's finisher is Power Punching Blast. 

Pokemon S01E53-54 Review: Cats and Dogs

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 53: The Purr-fect Hero; Episode 54: The Case of the K9 Caper

Again, been a while since I did one of these. I sort of barely remember watching either of these episodes, and more than some of the others in the first 'season', these really did fill kind of like filler-y episodes. Episode 53, "The Purr-fect Hero", is another Japan-only-holiday episode, although Children's Day functions more like a backdrop to the Meowth plot as opposed to informing the entire premise of the episode like "Princess vs. Princess".

Our heroes stumble upon some random preschool, and after a bit of a not-particularly-funny comedy gag with the preschooler teacher alternating between a sweet schoolteacher and an angry screaming head, we meet the character-of-the-week, a kid who is sad because he once met a Meowth that saved him from a Beedrill, but no one believes him. Of course, the expected shenanigans occur when Team Rocket does their weekly zany routine of trying to steal Pikachu, showing up as travelling magicians, and, of course, Team Rocket's got a Meowth of their own. Thanks to the expected wackiness of these sort of episodes, they end up accidentally kidnapping little Timmy instead, and because Team Rocket's not in the business of 'crushing children's dreams', Jessie and James convince Meowth to play the part of the heroic wild Meowth that protects the kid.

And... uh... the third act is just sort of the characters sort of floundering about a bit? Meowth's infiltration of the school basically amounts to nothing much as he panics, almost blows his cover a couple of times, and escapes. Through one way or another we end up in a relatively samey action scene (we do get a fun rare appearance of Onix and Pidgeotto doing some action, which is nice), and, of course, the wild Meowth shows up with his kung-fu kick to rescue Timmy and Ash from a giant rock.

Ultimately, kind of a throwaway episode. There's nothing particularly bad about this one, but there's also so little for me to really care for here.

Episode 54 is an episode that is a bit more fun. We get to see that the Officer Jennies of the world aren't as incompetent as they originally seemed, and Growlithe ends up getting more focus after being relegated to the last 5 minutes of the James-centric episode. Instead of playing off of the loyal companion vibe, these Growlithes are police dogs. Ash and company attack a fake thief that is apparently part of a training exercise, and ends up getting sort of roped into the police training regiment. It's another one of those "Ash sees people doing something cool with their Pokemon, and decides to enroll Pikachu in the same thing". Of course, the training that Growlithes and Officer Jennies go through aren't quite the same sort that a young ten-year-old trainer and his electric pet rat is supposed to do.

And... uh... it turns out that based on this episode, Growlithes are kind of... dumb? Like, the intelligence of Pokemon sort of alternate between being a particularly smart dog/cat to near-human levels of intelligence, but the Growlithes end up being tricked en-masse by Team Rocket showing up with a massive Gloom-gas bazooka, what I assume to be helium gas, and a voice-changer, basically causing all the police Growlithes to turn on their trainers. I really felt like the episode and the premise would've flowed a lot better if Team Rocket had, oh, I dunno, sent out Weezing to blind the Growlithes' eyes as well? Sure, Team Rocket's both cosplaying as Officer Jennies with their police miniskirts, but they don't even bother to change positions.  I get that the Growlithes are doggy Pokemon and dogs rely on scent the most, but I dunno. The Team Rocket plot of the episode, which dominates the 20 minutes, ends up feeling particularly dumb, particularly since the Growlithe can see what's going on.

Of course, Team Rocket's attempt to do the same trick on Pikachu ends up with it not working out at all, which I guess is because of the bond between Ash and Pikachu is stronger or something, but the episode never gives any hints that the Jennies push their Growlithes too hard or whatever, making this sequence sort of fall flat on its face.

Ultimately, while I do like Growlithe, and the idea that they serve as police dogs, this is not the best episode outing for them.

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 53:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Pidgeotto, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Staryu, Starmie, Horsea, Goldeen, Psyduck, Geodude, Vulpix, Zubat, Onix, Beedrill, Weezing, Arbok
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, James, Jessie
• Episode 54: 
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Jigglypuff, Growlithe, Meowth, Dodrio
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Officer Jenny, James, Jessie

Random Notes:

• Episode 53 was one of the several episodes that apparently aired out of order thanks to the whole Porygon incident, and in some airings and DVD releases, are grouped together with the Christmas episodes and "Princess vs Princess" as 'special episodes'. 
• Superman!Meowth, complete with the English word in the background, was actually animated that way even in the original Japanese version, which is a nice little hint that the Japanese anime is starting to slowly go more international-minded. 
• Ash may be a dum-dum, but he's smart enough to not bring out Charizard in front of a bunch of preschoolers. He's the only party Pokemon to miss out on episode 53. 
• Surprisingly, episode 54 does not censor the gun that the fake burglar uses, and even doesn't cut out the shot that zooms in on the gun! 
• The helium-style gas that Team Rocket uses has a Psyduck picture on it, which only really makes sense in the Japanese version -- Japanese Psyduck was a lot more high-pitched, sort of like a less-excited version of Donald Duck, emphasizing the 'duck' part. 
• Dub Changes:
• One of the biggest and oddest change in episode 53 is actually the fact that the wild Meowth that Timmy meets is able to do a special kick, which was what the wild Meowth did both against the Beedrill and the rock in the climax. That was why our Meowth had a such a baffled expression when Timmy asks Meowth to 'rescue' him from Team Rocket. This facet of the wild Meowth is never brought up in the English dub at all. 
• Episode 53 has a lot of specific Japanese-only cultural talks about kodomo no hi. In particular, the whole bit with Misty whacking Ash and Brock was a reference to how Children's Day used to be only about boys (a complement to hinamatsuri) until it ended up being renamed into a gender-neutral Children's Day. A lot of the jokes of James and Jessie also revolve around the holiday-specific kashiwa-mochi, which the dub team tries their best to rewrite to be less about the mochi, and more about the difference between James and Jessie's backgrounds. 
• In the original Japanese, the schoolteacher adopts a somewhat Crayon Shinchan-esque yakuza-style angry speech when she yells at the student, instead of just slightly raising her voice. 
• The original Japanese version of episode 54 makes it more explicit that the policewomen are humouring Ash and are setting up a special training course to let him feel what it's like to be a police officer, whereas the dub makes no such reference. Also, Brock is straight-out opposed to Ash joining the Growlithe-training in the dub, whereas he's more neutral in the original. 
• Dub!53 changes the who's that Pokemon from the obvious Meowth into Wartortle (???), although 54 gets to keep Growlithe.

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E23 Review: Just Like Season One

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 23: Terminus

An okay episode, I suppose? At this point it's clear that we're barreling headfirst into the conclusion of the storyline, and one of my biggest fears for Young Justice juggling such a huge cast -- or indeed, any superhero material with such a huge cast at all -- sort of comes true. With so many characters in play, things end up feeling more like a roll call and a play-by-play, and honestly, I can't fault more casual viewers from just tuning out so many of the background characters who end up not really doing much. Likewise, Cyborg and Halo end up basically reduced to plot devices. And while the episode certainly ranks high in the "major plot events" and cool action sequences part, it does have a huge lack of fulfillment that the climaxes in the first two seasons have -- with the sheer amount of characters running around, there really is a massive disconnect between the major plotline and the major emotional storylines. In fact, I'd go so far that the most effective emotional storylines between the Halo/Geo-Force/Helga Jace bits have sort of been wrapped up in the previous episode.

That's not to say that the episode isn't exciting, though, because it certainly is. The Justice League unleashes hell upon Granny Goodness' Orphanage, learning from their past mistakes and weaponizing a squadron of Green Lanterns to hold it in place. Of course, the Justice League A-Team gets instantly taken out by Granny Goodness' Anti-Life Equation, which ends up holding them in place with no free will.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Jefferson Pierce sort of mopes around silently while the Team and the Outsiders attempt to track down where Granny/Gretchen has taken Halo to, and quickly figure out that she's off-world. Dick is cured and is ready to go into action. Conner and M'gann get a bit of a neat argument that sort of builds up on their relationship in the past couple of seasons, with Conner rightfully pointing out that while he intellectually understands why the Anti-Light was formed, he doesn't understand why M'gann would join in after the disastrous events of the second season with them faking Artemis's death, or the mind-altering offscreen incident between seasons 1 and 2. Of course, this drama has to be tabled for now, because we need action and plot.

Vandal Savage quite literally shows up just to give a cryptic message, offering them coordinates to Halo's whereabouts, essentially using the Team as a power-play against Darkseid, presumably in retaliation for Darkseid making use of the Light to get what he wants and then abandoning them. Despite that fantastic Vandal Savage episode earlier this season, the Light has ended up basically fading back into the background as a pretty cryptic and honestly nebulous threat, and other than Luthor and Slade, has been pretty much been kinda-there.

Eventually, it's the original season 1 team, plus Geo-Force, Terra and Forager, going off to the Orphanage to rescue Halo, while presumably Beast Boy's with the rest of the superheroes on Earth doing something we'll see next episode. The new blood basically bugger off with instructions to find Halo while the season one team ends up fighting the Parademon army and the Female Furies, before we get one hell of a fever dream as Nightwing's sick mind reimagines everyone as their fun, happy season-one selves, complete with guest ghost star Wally West. It's an unapologetic, unabashed love letter to how far the series has came, and how far the characters have grown (or fallen apart, your mileage may vary). I'm not the biggest fan because it did really take a while and it sort of reminds me just how insanely under-utilized more than half of these characters are in season 3, but it's a nice little homage, I guess? Again, the actual events happening in season 3 are fun, but the general lack of direction really ends up hurting it, and I feel like this sequence makes me yearn more for the olden days of the first two seasons where the world-building and the individual character arcs are hand-in-hand instead of one coming into a screeching halt in favour of the other.

Plus, I think that this sequence would've felt a bit more special if we hadn't gotten a Kid Flash maybe-ghost-maybe-mundane cameo earlier this season.

It does bring to mind, though, the fact that despite getting a fancy new moniker, Kaldur barely did anything in this season, and didn't get any real development. Likewise, the most we got out of M'gann other than the single episode with her brother was this argument with Conner. Artemis, Dick and I guess Conner fare a bit better, but ultimately they just sort of acted as generic mentors, and other than maybe Artemis, remained pretty static throughout the season. Sure, the rotating ensemble cast means that not everyone is going to be thrust in the spotlight all the time, but it really is unfortunate that we got this juge nostalgia flashback and all I can think of was "yeah, they juggled their characters so much better in the past seasons". Because comparing this season with the second one, the older characters and the new inclusions (mostly Jaime, Bart, Virgil and Lagann) had a pretty neat balance of screentime. Here it feels like the show itself is confused with how to juggle the sheer size of its cast and we get awkward moments like Cyborg or Nightwing disappearing for huge swathes of episodes, or the randomly shoehorned "hey Malcolm and Karen still exist" bits.

The episode ends up climaxing with another action scene. Granny Goodness with the mind-controlled Halo, with the rest of the Justice League members also being mind-controlled. We get the revelation that the Anti-Life Equation has greater side-effects on non-metahumans, which is kind of a weak way to tie in the two main Apokolips-related storylines. We get a brief face-off between Geo-Force and Granny Goodness, and it's... it's all right? It plays on the same old "can Brion control his temper when he's being taunted" storyline that he's sort of been saddled with throughout the season, though at least there's something in that confrontation. Ultimately, the brainwashed Justice League take out Geo-Force and his squadmates pretty easily, Season One Squad comes in too late to assault the machine, Brion can't break Halo out of her trance, and she ends up being activated and enveloping everyone in the Anti-Life Equation.


And... I dunno, it just feels so low-key, y'know? The entire episode just feels so... so underwhelming, despite by rights being an episode that really should be exciting and eventful. But comparing it to the equivalent episode in the first season (which would be the revelation that the Justice League got mind-controlled by the Light), "Terminus" just feels so much like it's going through the motions. A lot of the desperation feels artificial because, well, there's a literal army of heroes that are left on Earth. A lot of the factions going up against each other also feels very underwhelming and under-developed, particularly the Vandal Savage bit. I dunno. Again, while the individual episodes of season three are all pretty solid in and of themselves, this episode, I feel, forces me to sit down and look back at the third season as a whole, and particularly the second half... and recognize just how haphazard the pacing is, both from the larger grand-scale planning to the juggling of the many, many characters. I dunno. I'll reserve my judgment until we complete the season.


Roll Call:

• Heroes: Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Green Lantern (John Stewart), Elongated Man, Superman, Icon, Captain Atom, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Halo, Black Lightning, Static, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Tigress, Forager, Geo-Force, Aquaman II, Nightwing, Superboy, Miss Martian, Kid Flash I (vision), Wolf
• Villains: Granny Goodness, Dr. Helga Jace (flashback), Gretchen Goode, Vandal Savage, Parademons, Mantis, Gilotina, Lashina, Overlord
• Civilians/Others: Terra, Kirby Jacobs, Lynn Stewart-Pierce, Jennifer Pierce, Anissa Pierce
• Various other characters appear in flashbacks to previous episodes. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The doorman of Garfield Logan's building is called Kirby Jacobs, an obvious allusion to Jack Kirby, the comic-book author that codified a lot of the New Gods material that season 3 drew upon. 
• In addition to the original members of the season one Team appearing in their shared hallucination as their season-one personas, we get a couple of homages to specific moments in the first season. The "we heard that... you know I can still hear you" antagonism between Kid Flash and Artemis is from the episode "Infiltrator". The lines "today is the day" comes from the first episode, "Independence Day". Kid Flash's initial crush on M'gann and antagonism against Artemis is evident. Kid Flash calls dibs on souvenirs, Robin makes new un-words, and Robin's chibi-heads in his computers return. Plus, the original season one theme plays out during the scene. 
• In the comics, Elongated Man gets his powers from a reaction his body has with the drink called Gingold, with the superpowers technically not coming from an internalized power... but for anyone watching the show, it'd probably be confusing why he gloops apart among the humans, huh? 

Pokemon Sword & Shield: Bunch of new stuff and reactions and whatnot

Y'know... that national dex news really ended up souring my opinion of the upcoming games. I'm not the sort of asshole to go around spamming the "Bring the National Dex Back" thing everywhere I go, and I am definitely upset that the pro-National-Dex movement has ended up being pretty damn noisy. I still do not support what they're doing for Sword & Shield, definitely, and do feel like the excuses they give us really isn't satisfactory, but I don't feel like what some segments of the Pokemon fandom are doing is excusable.

That said, though, the combination of seemingly-rudimentary-but-people-are-lapping-it-up quasi-multiplayer features, the still-underwhelming megamax gimmick, and the lack of the actual features I felt was crucial in a Pokemon game have truly soured me and I sort of completely ignored Pokemon news for the past... oh, couple of months, now. And it's almost October, which means that, for better or for worse, we're heading to Galar soon. And apparently there were a bunch of extra new trailers published here and there, a bunch of interviews, a bunch of new pokemon and new Galarian forms. Which, okay! New pokemon designs are always good.

I think the last time I did a post on the game was during the Duraludon/Rolycoly trailer? Since then we've got the revelation that we're getting some Galarian forms thrown in. Galarian Weezing has smokestack top-hats and dapper facial hair made out of green smoke. And also, he's Poison/Fairy. Part of me really wants to love this thing because my god it's such a hilariously wacky looking form, but another part of me really looks at this thing and goes "is this even real?" It has the bizarre bit of "yeah, this is surely a fakemon" in a way that none of the more controversial designs in the past like the Ultra Beasts or Vanillite or Alolan Exeggutor had ever elicited in me. I dunno. At least it's a mixed reaction from me, not a completely negative one.

Good old Zigzagoon and Linoone get a black-and-white cool angry raccoon punk look as they end up becoming Dark/Normal types, and I do like how they look! Galarian Zigzagoon is a simple but pretty awesome design. Not a huge fan of the weird wrist-accessories on Galarian Linoone, but I still ultimately don't mind that form.

Of course, Galarian Linoone has a Galar-specific evolution, Obstagoon, which... is an angry raccoon-man punk. I'm not sure how I feel about these region-specific evolutions, and I wonder if there's going to be a regular-Obstagoon in the future or if Obstagoons are only found in Galar. Of course... I'm not sure if Nintendo at this point even cares enough about game-to-game consistency, though. Obstagoon's neat. Humanoid furry pokemon has never been my thing, but Obstagoon's an alright one.

Sirfetch'd is a glorious thing to come out of this generation and is probably the best thing to come out of it. It's a pure-white duck and it's holding a leek lance and a shield made out of the sliced-off top of the leek plant. Truly, a Pokemon that embodies the sword and the shield, nevermind those silly legendary doggos. Pretty hilarious looking evolution to an often-overlooked Pokemon in the past, and it became a meme practically overnight for damn good reason. He's a Fighting-type, which... uh... yeah, sure, I dunno. Why not.

Cramorant is a bird? It's got a form-changing gimmick that allows it to scoop pokemon with its beak and change into a gulping form. He's all right. I don't care too much about this one, personally.

Morpeko is our Pikachu clone, and he's an Electric/Dark type that sort of switches from one 'face' to the next and it basically swaps from a happy mascot to an angry purple-furred "hangry mode". I'm not sure whether to bash my head against my desk with this "hangry" mode, or find it hilarious. It's all right. Could've stood to be more distinctive compared to Pikachu, but the gimmick and the looks are certainly better than Dedenne and Togedemaru. I do feel that we're getting another large influx of random one-off pokemon with a weird gimmick, something that's sort of becoming a bit of a trend since the sixth generation, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.


Polteageist is a fun name. It's a little blob ghost hiding in a teacup. I feel like this creature is perhaps one of those that "doesn't feel like a Pokemon" (I bet this dude gets all the hate online already), although I still like the concept and the artwork. Being a tea-themed monster is definitely appropriate for ye olde England, and I feel like I like this critter enough from its visual look and general theme to maybe give it a chance. Who knows, maybe it's one of those creatures that I'll like once I see it in the game? Wouldn't be the first time.

None of these designs call out to me immediately as being one of my new favourites, though -- I'm lukewarm on most of them, amused by Sirfetch'd and Galarian Weezing, and somewhat ambivalent with Polteageist. I don't hate any of them, though, which is neat.

I did find it pretty hilarious that after all of the defenders of the "oh no they are totally getting rid of a huge chunk of the national pokedex for balance reasons" ended up having to sort of swallow their words because it seems like whatever these Max-Moves and G-Max-Moves are will end up being as bad, if not worse, than the Z-Moves and mega evolution of old.

We also got a bunch of new human characters introduced, none of which really stand out to me other than the evil team. "Team Yell" is... a bunch of crazy punk overzealous fanboys and fangirls, which is hilariously appropriate considering the fandom fallout that happened from this game.

We got to see the "Pokemon Camp" and "Poke Job" gimmick, which is pretty tedious-looking, but I'm not going to complain about this since it's essentially the same thing with Pokemon-Amie or whatever we've been having in the 3DS games.

Overall, I'm still not as excited about this game as I was during the leadup to the past two generations. The game's prettier than the 3DS games, don't get me wrong, and if you really think that the Wild Area and mobile-game-style multiplayer raids are enough to tide you over, more power to you! Mostly, the only things that I feel are exciting about this upcoming generation is the ability to play it on my tee-vee and the new designs and the new region, with the added dread that I might have to end up being forced to play through some of the gimmick-laden features. I just wish that for all the pessimism I have about the actual features that this game has, that the solo player experience is still satisfying.

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E22 Review: Shattered Justice

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 22: Antisocial Pathologies

Another interesting episode, and we get a whole load of story plotlines finally come to a payoff. The Light meeting at the beginning of the episode is pretty neat, as Granny Goodness and Ultra-Humanite argue about the 'jurisdiction' of the young heroes they have essentially called dibs on. Ultra-Humanite essentially has dibs on Halo, because securing and learning all about her has been his operation from day one, what with Dr. Helga Jace being manipulated by him and all... but Granny Goodness also wants her. And there's the Markovs to talk about as well. And this, I feel, is Young Justice at what I feel is its best. I'm not the biggest fan of the genuinely slow-paced buildup to some of the events we're exploring here. Violet and Brion's romantic spat, seemingly just having a token "Helga Jace talks to Violet" scene every episode, and how they handled Violet's soul-searching and confusion... it's inconsistent, with some good and some bad, and some scenes just genuinely feeling repetitive. But the fact that there are so many factions in play, and even among the good guys and bad guys there are figures running around doing their own thing... it's pretty great.

And one of these factions is Deathstroke. While he's certainly more likely to be loyal to the Light compared to Granny Goodness, we're still wondering if Deathstroke going off to meet Tara at the beginning of the episode was something the Light sent him out to do, or if it's just Deathstroke's own whim. Slade's not particularly pleased that Tara's not been giving the full story in her reports, and Slade ends up basically playing a passive-aggressive mentor of sorts. He berates her for being soft and having a quasi-failure, before telling her that all this is for her own good, so she could be 'strengthened', and hands her something for a contingency plan. I do want to take this chance to say that I really do like how they've dealt with Tara so far, really selling that she's a conflicted person who's drawn between two worlds. I think that was made the Teen Titans cartoon of the Terra arc so much more beloved compared to the original Judas Contract storyline. "Judas Contract" was exciting because of all the betrayals involved for sure, but ultimately, we knew that Terra was a vile bitch through and through, and she's just being a double agent to fuck over our heroes. In both Teen Titans and Young Justice, we're genuinely never sure where Terra's allegiances are at after she meets Deathstroke. In Titans, the friendship we saw before Terra got 'corrupted' was genuine, and it's a race on whether our heroes can bring out the inner hero before she got corrupted by a bad influence. In Young Justice, the reversal of making Terra actually a sleeper agent from the get-go... who ends up being 'corrupted' by the superheroes' good influence, is such an interesting and fun reversal of how the character tends to be portrayed.

Do love the fact that Deathstroke's relationship is a lot less creepy, too, and he ends up feeling more like a 'darker' Batman-style mentor, teaching her how to survive in this cruel world and congratulating her for essentially 'cheating' during training and using her superpowers against him -- the world isn't fair, after all.

And, well, speaking of long-running storylines, the Anti-Light plot comes sort of crashing down. Nightwing is suffering very severe effects from Granny's X-Pit, and apparently he had far, far worse effects compared to Black Lightning because he isn't a metahuman. We get some very welcome cameos from the Bat-family, and the episode does a really, really great job at showing how much poor Dick is suffering from his wounds.

And after Dick gets stabilized, Batman goes from as concerned of a parent as he's capable of showing into basically aloof leader mode as he basically gets the other members of the Anti-Light -- Oracle, Robin, M'gann and Kaldur -- into a separate room to discuss things. And we get Jefferson's mind putting things together. All the separate teams, all the break-ups from the League, and as he rambles about Batman's Secret Society of Super-heroes, he realizes just how deep the rabbit hole of the conspiracy goes. It's not just the Bat-family working together to save Dick with a Bat-Drone in the previous episode. From things like recruiting Black Lightning into Nightwing's season 3 team to keep him in the loop, or giving the Outsiders a win when Kaldur'ahm lost from the Reach, or the engineered MONQI bit with Matches Malone... Khary Payton's increasingly angry voice is genuinely perfect for this, and he goes even more indignant as he brings in how they're perverting even the young Outsiders' mission.

This argumentation as the heroes fall apart is something that Tara observes, by the way, tying in to how Deathstroke keeps telling her that these self-righteous types will inevitably betray each other with their deception. And... well, this is when Helga Jace puts her own plan into motion with a bunch of mind-control chips, mind-controlling the Markovian siblings, and getting them and Violet to enter a car so Violet can get cured.

Meanwhile, of course, in the Hub, the arguments go worse. We don't listen to everything they yell at each other, but I do really like Jefferson's increasingly angry rants, while in the background, Superboy and M'gann get a telepathic argument. And it really brings up the different times that the Team nearly self-destructed thanks to their subterfuge and lies... particularly faking Artemis's death in season two and hiding the fact that Kaldur'ahm is a double agent from the rest of the Team. I do like how they pointed out that a huge part of the Anti-Light are proteges that once followed Batman's rules unquestioningly in the past, while Wonder Woman, who isn't as beholden to Bruce, is in space and has a more hands-off approach to things. "The mission comes first" isn't going to cut it for Jefferson, who argues that they're losing their selves in the process.

Beast Boy also gets his own time to argue with Oracle, and honestly, even the admission that some of the missions were merely 'partial' assistance doesn't sting any less. I did love the hilarious brick joke with Condiment King, though. That's fun. We also get a genuinely touching scene between Bruce and Barbara on top of the Hub. It's at this point where I really did wish that instead of well-written-but-ultimately-standalone storylines like the Bumblebee or Harper Row bits, we've gotten a bit more of characters like Black Lightning, Oracle or even Batman, y'know? Because this short scene is genuinely well done, with Barbara and Bruce arguing about whether their fellow superheroes even need the protection they shove on them.

Of course, while all of these arguments are going on, Helga brings Violet and the Markovs to a laboratory. And Violet ends up realizing too late that it's a trap, because Ultra-Humanite, Granny and Overlord show up, and Violet is restrained. Granny ends up giving one of those bad guy speeches, showing off the X-Pit to Helga. And when Granny pushes Violet out into the X-Pit, she ends up being protected by its influences, and Granny gives a long speech about how Violet's unique nature -- a Mother Box's machine soul inside an organic body -- is key for the Anti-Life Equation. It's kind of a bit of technobabble, honestly, and one that I sort of shrug at, but at least we've got some foreshadowing about this during the Metron episode.

Thanks to the X-Pit and Granny channeling Violet's powers, Helga ends up babbling all about her own secrets, and, well, reveals that her whole 'den mother' and 'supportive girlfriend' bit was all an act, and that all of the suspicious activities she's been doing hasn't been noble at all. She's kind of fucked-up, really, and she reveals that throughout all of this, she's been single-mindedly intent on protecting Brion and Tara Markov, because she views them as her 'children'... not out of some maternal instinct, but because she created them with the metahuman tar, and manipulated Brion into getting turned into Geo-Force in order to get her first 'child' back. She also rants about how Violet/Halo has been a 'false daughter'. She was the one responsible for killing Gabrielle Daou when she tested negative for the meta-gene, but when Gabrielle returned as Halo, she thought that she's another 'daughter'. And she's been playing a supportive ally throughout all this while, seducing Jefferson Pierce, in order to stay close to her children. And when she got Violet's hair tested, she finds out that Violet's not a real meta-human but an abomination, which is why she is so willing to get rid of her, and to also wedge a rift between Violet and her 'son' Brion. Hell, even the whole bit about Violet dying is a lie, in order to get Violet to accept the fake treatment from Ultra-Humanite.

It's some really heavy stuff, and I do appreciate that we got a whole episode to slowly build this up. All the while, it's also a demonstration of what Granny Goodness and Apokolips in general are trying to do with the Anti-Life Equation, since it takes away free will. Thus satisfied, Granny sort of mocks Ultra-Humanite (who's just standing there listening to all the exposition), telling them that she's going to bring Halo to Darkseid while the Light can keep their inferior mind-control chips.

And, well, this is when Tara, who also has been standing there listening to the exposition, acts. Having given the antidote to the chip by Deathstroke earlier, she breaks Brion free, and attacks the villains -- but Ultra-Humanite and Granny respectively teleport away with their own devices to return to their own evil organizations. Just like the Reach and the Light in the second season, it seems that the alliance between the aliens and the Earth-based supervillains have one hell of a rift wedge between them. And the episode sort of ends on the hero part with Tara and Brion returning just as Jeff is preparing to leave, and, man, you got to feel sorry for Jeff, who was singing Helga's praises before he's about to leave, and, well, betrayed by everyone, Jefferson leaves. Meanwhile, Terra seems to have gone fully back in support of Deathstroke, disillusioned with the heroes lying and backstabbing each other.

And as the episode closes, we get a couple of interesting scenes. Granny Goodness is out of the Light's meeting, and while we don't see what transpired in the conversation between Darkseid and Vandal Savage earlier in this episode, the Light has been smart enough, as always, to have contingency plans when dealing with treacherous allies. Deathstroke and Ultra-Humanite both have been playing their own game, with Deathstroke giving Terra the antidote chip, while Ultra-Humanite was trying to figure out what Darkseid and Apokolips' plans are. It seems that, at least this time around, the Light's been outplayed, what with the whole "Key to the Anti-Life Equation" deal. I kinda wished we've gotten a bit more out of Ultra-Humanite throughout the episode, though, whether during the meetings or during his conversations with Granny. He's just kind of robotic that it took me a while (exactly until the point that Vandal Savage crushes the tablet, really) that Ultra-Humanite's tone was meant to be indignant and accusatory.

Oh, and there's a brief little hint of the Infinity Inc. organization being a competitor for the Outsiders as far as being the hip-and-cool superhero team, and while they were a name-drop in the previous episode, we get to see them briefly here. I have suspicions on who they're allied with, but that draws more from my knowledge of the comics more than anything. Oh, and apparently, Gretchen Goode and Granny Goodness are like identical twins or clones or whatever? Honestly, that felt like a redundant little plot twist that really didn't need to happen.

Overall, though, a very fantastic episode. It's admittedly a bit too exposition-heavy, with both the Anti-Life Equation, the Light's machinations and Helga's plan and motivations all being thrown towards us, but it's definitely an episode we really did need after the past couple of episodes sort of meandering around a little. Some of the longest-running plot threads in season three finally come to a head, and as far as the Helga Jace storyline goes, seemingly more or less concluded. The Terra storyline is genuinely interesting, Black Lightning is also pretty interesting, and the politics among the villains is also something that really makes me pretty intrigued. A lot of great moments in this episode. Season 3 of Young Justice isn't quite as huge of a home-run as the first two seasons are thanks to the sheer amount of characters and plotlines that pull the show in multiple ways, but I'm definitely a huge fan of how at least the main storylines are being told.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Robin II, Oracle, Nightwing, Batman, Black Lightning, Aquaman II, Miss Martian, Superboy, Trajectory, Two other members of Infinity Inc, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Halo, Forager, Geo-Force, Zatanna (flashback), Red Tornado (flashback), Wynnde (flashback)
• Villains: Gretchen Goode, Ultra-Humanite, Klarion, Lex Luthor, Queen Bee, Vandal Savage, Deathstroke, Dr. Helga Jace, Darkseid, Overlord, Baron Bedlam (flashback), Granny Goodness
• Civilians/Others: Alfred Pennyworth, Terra, Courtney Whitmore

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The main 'face' of Young Justice's Infinity Inc is Trajectory, a.k.a. Eliza Harmon, a superheroine with super-speed in the comics, and part of the "Everyman Project" sponsored by LexCorp. She also showed up as an antagonist in the live-action The Flash TV show. In the comics, she was a wildcard who refused to listen to Luthor's orders, causing Luthor to cut her superpowers out and causing her death. 
• The two other superheroes in Infinity Incorporated go unnamed, and, as far as I can tell, uncredited. They all wear basically matching Power Ranger outfits, too, so I can't tell who they're supposed to be from their outfits. Some websites identify them as Brainstorm and Fury, two members of the original Infinity Inc, but I can't find any specific confirmation from the show creators.
• Black Lightning briefly yells out about Batman's "Secret Society of Superheroes". The Secret Society is actually a team name associated with the super-villains, representing... well, basically what is adapted into the Light in Young Justice. 
• The mind-control chips used by Helga Jace are noted to be identical to the Starro-based mind control chips used to take over the Justice League in the climax of season 1. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One E03 Review: Of Valkyries and Sharks

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 3: That Man, the Sushi Chef

Y'know, I don't want to be that guy that is all about social justice and everything. And I recognize what a massive leap it is to have a female rider show up as early as the third episode of a series. But at the same time, I really can't help but think that poor, poor Valkyrie ends up getting the short end of the stick in that she doesn't even get to beat the villain-of-the-week, and her finisher is reserved to blow up a bunch of the disposable mooks. Instead, the action highlight of the episode ends up being Zero-One's Biting Shark form. Which, admittedly, is still pretty dang cool, but also they kind of "did Valkyrie dirty", as the cool kids say nowadays.

That complaint aside, though, this is a pretty solid episode, and I feel like now that we're sort of past the stage of shoehorning in exposition and the gimmicky toys, we're moving into a more case-of-the-week rhythm going on. I really do appreciate it being a faster-paced villain-of-the-week and not making it a two-episodes-per-minor-villain like many Heisei series, by the way. This episode's conflict is a relatively simple one -- an ornery old sushi chef clings stubbornly to his tradition and the 'heart' of his cooking style, while Aruto, Izu and one of their Humagear, a chef named Ikkan Nigiro, tries to win his heart over. Like Mamoru and Taro from the previous two episodes, Nigiro is pretty inquisitive and really do want to be a good happy robot to make his human buddies happy, wanting to get a heart and everything. And just as Nigiro ends up impressing the old chef with his willingness and dedication to train... and, of course, gets transformed into a Magia and presumably destroyed in the ensuing fight where Valkyrie engages a bunch of lesser Magia.

I'm not sure what the tone of this series is meant to be. Aruto certainly angsts and gets visibly disturbed when poor Nigiro gets turned into one of the Magia mooks and ends up blending into the mass of transformed murder-machines, but the final scene of the episode essentially ending with the chef, Aruto and Izu buddying around the newly-rebooted chef Humagear feels pretty jarring, especially after all the talk about how "they're not dispensable!" Likewise, I feel like the old chef's talk about how humans and Humagears get together depends on the individuals ends up ringing a bit hollow when they essentially boot up a replacement Nigiro at the end of the episode. Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it's meant to symbolize them 'saving' Nigiro, but I dunno. Not a major complaint, honestly, but it still feels off to me.

With this being Valkyrie's debut episode as a Kamen Rider, Yua ends up getting a fair bit of screentime. She starts the episode seemingly being nice to Aruto in that sushi place, noting how Humagears are nice and valuable, and that they should live in harmony... but then ends up talking about how they're valuable as tools in the final act of the episode, about how they can just be restored from a backup if needed be. Which is certainly a nice little middle-point to take between Aruto's "all robots are my buddies" and Fuwa's outright "kill 'em all" mentality. I just really hope we get more of her motivations defined, although with the enigmatic scenes at the end of the episode, I do feel like she's going to be set up for some intrigue for a while. That's a pretty badass scene at the end, where she reveals that she's been using Nigiro as a tool to spy on Aruto and learning about his identity as Zero-One. Time will tell if she's evil, if it's just the AIMS head that's evil, or how they relate to Metsubojinrai.net.

Aruto basically spends the entire episode sort of being a good boy protagonist, nothing wrong with that -- although his jokes and antics certainly continue to grate. I am certainly pleased that this episode certainly does tone down his gesticulating around and keeps most of his jokes as bad puns... and Izu trying to deliver Aruto's punchline at the end is a better joke than anything Aruto's ever done. Also neat is Izu seemingly going off to do her own thing, accessing a computer dimension thing and contacting the satellite in order to create countermeasures for the Neohi Magia. Sure, the scene where the Progrise Key is being essentially 3D-printed is a bit goofy, but it does help to build up whatever story we're going to inevitably get about Izu and Aruto's grandpa.

Metsubojinraidotnet continues to just be sort of there, with Jin and Horobi noting about how Zero-One and AIMS aren't a threat for now, and how they will have to gather data for the mysterious Ark project, which is the weird glowy machine ball in the lake. They're all right. Also all right are the minor antagonists of the show, which is the dastardly bunch of vice-president CEO led by Jun whatshisface. They're sort of like an obligatory presence to give Aruto's CEO day job something concrete to gain victories about, and honestly feel pretty basic. Although, again, as a children's show, I really don't expect the running-a-company part of this series to get expanded upon too much.

The action scenes of this episode is pretty neat, particularly with the squid-based Neohi Magia delivering some fun sequences with his tentacles -- which also end up leading to some neat comedic moments of Vulcan accidentally freeing Zero-One from the tentacles. The first action scene in this episode (Zero-One vs Vulcan vs Neohi) is kinda generic and low-key, but they clearly saved a fair amount of budget and effort, both of the CGI and practical kind, for Valkyrie and Biting Shark's debut... special props go to the low-angle shots of Valkyrie zooming all around the place with neat dynamic angles, or the scene where Valkyrie does a backflip-kick of some poor mook that gets sent crashing onto a pile of trash.

Overall a pretty neat episode. Now t

Random Notes:

• Izu bouncing in the background trying to look at the video is so precious I can't
• Also precious is Jun's robot aide, Shester, who attempts her damn best to join in the hammy-evil-villain-laughter scene, but gives the perfect delivery of a robotic ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
• We finally get the theme song for the series and it includes the lyrics, in English, "Four-oh-four not found". Glorious. Also, it's actually a pretty upbeat rock piece, which I have been missing after the past four openings have been relatively chill. There are like a couple dozen analyses of the opening's visuals because Japanese shows tend to spoil parts of their show in the openings, but I religiously avoid these things and just enjoy the openings as "yep this be cool".
• The Gimmick Watch:
• Shot riser. DASH! Authorize: Kamen. Rider. Kamen. Rider. Shot rise. RUSHING CHEETAH! Try to outrun this demon to get left in the dust.
• FANG! Authorize. Prog-rise! Kirikiri-bai! Kirikiri-bai! BITING SHAAAAAARK. Fangs that can chomp through concrete.
• The voice actor doing these voices had such fun with the high-pitched Biting Shaaaaark, and the text-to-speech stuff are particularly cheesy for both Cheetah and Shark. 
• Biting Shark's finisher is called "Biting Impact", while Rushing Cheetah is called "Dash Rushing Blast". Neither are particularly cool or funny. Those wrist-saw-blade things are sure not what I expected from a 'shark bite' attack, though. 
• Know Your Magia: This week's Magia (who's some random barbershop Humagear) is the Neohi Magia, named after the ancient Triassic-to-Cretaceous era cephalopod genus Neohibolites, from the order Belemnitida. 
• Nigiro is played by an actor who played a minor character for three episodes of Drive, and more memorably as the first host for Kintaros in Den-O. 
• Very curious that the tentacles of the Neohi Squid hits Nigiro, but completely ignores Izu. Is it just main character plot armour, or a hint of something else? 
• I'm not the biggest fan of how the 'basic' Rising Hopper armour pieces sort of slide away and hang off the side of the side of Zero-One's head to make way for the Biting Shark faceplate. They did it in Den-O, too, and I always felt that this sort of transformation is kinda messy. 
• I didn't actually notice until this episode but the CGI grasshopper and shark buddy break apart into DNA strands before attaching to Zero-One as armour pieces. That's cool. 

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E21 Review: Grandma Fights

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 21: Unknown Factors

After the previous episode being a bit more... oddly-paced, this one jumps headlong into the Apokolips storyline... although, again, we get another seemingly unconnected B-plot attached to it. I at least care a lot more for Mal and Karen than I do Harper, although not having seen them do anything at all throughout the entirety of season three does make it a bit hard to be super-invested in them, and I wouldn't blame some of the more casual viewers for completely forgetting that they existed. And, again, their storyline is one that felt pretty detached and standalone. There's nothing wrong to have one of these, of course, but honestly, with so many characters in the Team that we're sidelining, it does really feel like we're just bouncing all over the place and the pacing's honestly not the best that it could've been. 

Let's talk about the Karen/Mal storyline first, because it's essentially just this huge argument about "should we genetically change our children's DNA to give them metahuman powers?" And both Karen and Mal sort of talk about it in jest, at least until Karen goes into labour, and their child ends up having a hole in her little baby heart, and, once more, the massive blizzard everywhere means that there's a massive problem of getting a heart surgeon there in time. Of course, since this is a superhero show, Bumblebee just simply shrinks down and goes through a Fantastic Voyage style surgery.

And... well, it's completely believable for Karen, right after giving birth and having to go through some superhero stunts just to rescue her newborn girl, to start having thoughts about maybe giving her daughter the absolute best chance she has at surviving the world. It's easy to go "we accept our children no matter what happens", but in a world where superheroes and supervillains with metahuman powers are everywhere, and with Karen having the scientific know-how on how to manipulate genes to activate latent meta-genes... in the mental state that Karen Beecher is in, it's easy to see why she was tempted to do some genetic manipulation. The kicker, of course, is that we don't really see just what happens at the end, with Karen's choice being kept deliberately ambiguous on whether what's "best for [their] daughter" involves giving her powers or not. It's definitely an interesting way to end this little story arc, although, again, with this storyline not having any real bearing throughout the rest of the season, it ends up being yet another storyline that they set up to not really do much with. At least it's a pretty solid story, though. 

On the more action-packed side of things, Nightwing and Black Lightning try and infiltrate Gretchen Goode's mansion to try to investigate their suspicions that Gretchen Goode = Granny Goodness. Which is honestly pretty damn obvious to the audience, Metron's yes-but-no answer notwithstanding. Things end up being way too easy as they enter the mansion. Lightning and Oracle do comment on this, and, well, to the surprise of absolutely no one, they end up literally falling into a trap as Granny Goodness's minion, a robotic being called the Overlord, teleports them away. This leads to Oracle calling for backup, and thanks to all the other members of the Anti-Light council being busy or otherwise dispatched, only Kaldur'ahm is available. And he ends up bringing Wyynde, who insists he come along.  

Also, while the first half of the episode is going on, we also get to check in with the other members of the Outsiders. Other than more Brion/Violet romance drama, we get a bunch of neat little world-building stuff, with the Outsiders facing off against Condiment King off-screen, apparently other superhero teams like Infinity Incorporated being founded thanks to being inspired by the Outsiders, more Helga trying to convince Brion to go back to Markovia, and some neat Cyborg/Beast Boy bonding. 

I do love just how quick Kaldur just ends up ringing the doorbell to greet Gretchen in her own mansion, and we get a pretty tense bit as Gretchen ends up agreeing to show Kaldur and Wyynde to where she's kept Nightwing and Black Lightning -- in a torture dimension called the X-Pit where, of course, Granny uses to 'discipline naughty children'. Ultimately, though, despite Granny's obvious tricks to get the Atlanteans to step out into the X-Pit, their magical runes allow them to recover Nightwing and Black Lightning safely. And Granny Goodness seemed pretty game at letting the heroes leave... but not with the Mother Box. Not willing to leave behind a sentient being, Granny ends up activating the mind-control she's done on Nightwing and Black Lightning, and we get a fight scene, and it's pretty neatly-animated. Kaldur'ahm is always badass!

The Overlord also activates some lasers that injure the Mother Box, which alerts walking plot devices Halo and Cyborg, who show up, help to beat up Granny Goodness, and Halo uses her "old god chanting" to cure the brainwashing. There's the neat little subversion that the robotic figure of the Overlord, which is kinda implied to be some sort of giant figure nestled in Gretchen's mansion, is actually a teeny-tiny pocket-sized robot hidden in a small carrying case, but ultimately it is kind of a standard action sequence.

Everyone manages to return, but Nightwing seems to suffer some side-effects, while Helga ends up texting her mentor... revealed to be the only member of season three's Light roster to not have had a proper spotlight, Ultra-Humanite. Ultra-Humanite plans to get "Helga's kids" out, so they're making a move... while Granny Goodness contacts Darkseid, telling him that she's "found the Anti-Life Equation", heavily implied to be something regarding either Cyborg or Halo.

Ultimately, a pretty solid episode. I think we're finally in an interstitial period between set-up episodes and filler episodes, and finally actually going on through with the Apokolips and Gretchen Goode plotline. A lot of really interesting stuff and ways that the series could go! I really do wish that the side-plots are integrated better to the main plots of the episodes, though, as much as I adore giving the side-cast something to do. Pacing and plot juggling is definitely Young Justice's third season's biggest weakness, and I wonder if that's because they know they're popular enough to afford a fourth season, so they can leave some huge plotlines for the next season, and thus not everything is as well-paced or well-plotted as before? Regardless, though,the Outsiders, Granny, the Anti-Light, Helga/Brion/Tara/Violet, Darkseid and the Light are all plotlines that will potentially clash in the next couple of episodes. With six more episodes to go before the season is over, this is definitely a decent buildup. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Nightwing, Black Lightning, Oracle, Aquaman II, Wynnde, Guardian II, Bumblebee, Bio-Ship, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Geo-Force, Forager, Halo
• Villains: Granny Goodness, Overlord, Ultra-Humanite, Darkseid
• Civilians/Others: Catherine Grant, Calvin Durham, Sha'lain'a, Dolphin, Dr. Silas Stone, Terra, Dr. Helga Jace, Dr. Evelyn Fox, Rhea Duncan

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Granny mentions the Anti-Life Equation, which in most media has been the mysterious equation that Darkseid is after, a mathematical equation that will allow Darkseid dominance over the minds of any sentient being in the world. 
• Overlord and the X-Pit all show up in exactly a single issue, Mister Miracle #2, where the Overlord was Granny Goodness's minion that attempted to trap Mr. Miracle. Like this episode, Granny continually contacts Overlord only through a screen, and it's not revealed until the end of the episode that Overlord is actually tiny and held within a box by Granny. 
• He briefly showed up as an Easter Egg in one of the social media pieces before, but here we get a more blatant shout-out to the Condiment King, a.k.a. Mitchell Mayo, a Batman enemy created specifically for a gag in Batman: The Animated Series as a supervillain who fights with guns that shoot out, well, condiments. 
• Karen briefly name-drops a "Ryan", who brought the Bumblebee suit from the Atom labs, very likely referencing Ryan Choi, the fourth person to bear the mantle of Atom. 
• Geo-Force mentions the Infinity, Inc. who in the comics was originally a superhero team comprised of the successors and children of the Justice Society of America, and operated on-and-off over the years. In the 52 storyline, Lex Luthor, seeking to clear his name from his crimes, published a therapy called "Everyman Project", a chance for any person in the world to obtain superpowers through a simple medical surgery. He ended up founding his own team of superheroes called the Infinity Inc, which actually answers strictly to him. Time will tell which version of Infinity Inc this one is based on. 
• In the same token, Bumblebee developing a way to apparently cause the metagene to manifest in any baby in the world is an adaptation of Luthor's Everyman Project. 
• Dr. Evelyn Fox is a minor Adam Strange supporting character, who was accidentally teleported to Rann through a Zeta Beam, and ended up helping to deliver Adam Strange's child Aleea. 
• The Atlantean city of Shayeris is name-dropped by Kaldur. 

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 19: All Systems Go, The Sun Hasn't Died

In this part of my let's play of the fan-game Pokemon Uranium, we go full-on into story mode as we explore the master plan of the main villain Curie, as well as welcome the final permanent member of our party.

Not much to say here, this is the first part of the game's pretty dang long climax.

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E20 Review: Metron's Chair

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 20: Quiet Conversations

An... interesting episode? It's more or less self-contained, dealing with the storyline of "Cyborg gets possessed by the Father Box, and the heroes need to get the help of the kooky god-hermit Metron to help out". It's a very comic-book-y storyline, and the information dump to the glacially-paced New Gods storyline (which I sincerely doubt is going to be resolved this season at all) is definitely welcome. As a huge fan of Metron, seeing him just fly around as this unhelpful dick, while we get random information and exposition about the Source Wall and the Mother/Father Boxes is pretty neat. Cyborg's basically been utterly sidelined as being emo and distant throughout the entire second half of season 3, and bringing the focus back to him is pretty welcome, even if it does seem like we're basically just going to set up both Cyborg and Halo as walking plot devices. Literally!

Victor Stone's character is one that we've explored in many different places over the past couple years of DC comics' other media. Between live-action movies to animated movies, there's a significant push for good ol' Cyborg, and it's sort of the same kind of fatigue people are feeling when they see Uncle Ben or the Waynes get shot up again, y'know? But the distancing that Victor and Silas has with each other is honestly told pretty well, and Victor's very bitter yelling at his poor old man is amazingly delivered by his voice actor Zeno Robinson. And it's hard to fault Silas for wanting to reach out, even if Silas's constant attempts is what is triggering poor Cyborg being taken over by the Father-Box side of his techno-biology.

Ultimately, after a couple of exposition and a welcome bit role from the Forever People, we get a team going off to the Source Wall in order to get the eccentric New God Metron and his Mobius Chair to come to Earth and fix Victor Stone. The smaller team of Superboy, Black Lightning and Forager also makes this episode feel a lot more tightly-paced than the previous Outsider-centric episodes, too. As much as the DC geek in me love the larger cast, it really did feel like the writers have no idea what to do with anyone in the Outsiders squad other than Beast Boy. Here, Superboy, Black Lightning and Forager all get ample dialogue when they show up and time to shine, and Metron (now with some... interesting blue face makeup in this incarnation) is an amazingly fun character to bounce these guys off of. Black Lightning and Superboy have never been the most patient of people, particularly when lives are on the line, and seeing them deal with this god-like entity who seems to have no emotions and is far more intent on observing Victor Stone being consumed by machines than even entertaining the thought of helping out... yeah, pretty neat. The random Superman cameo also gives Superboy some neat little dynamic with his adopted big brother, which is much, much needed ever since the end of the first season... while also giving a sneaky way for Metron to give some cryptic plot-advancing stuff about the Apokolips stuff.

All the while, on Earth, Victor and Silas have more of an argument, with Silas trying his best to calm his son down and insist that he's there to help, while Silas's mere presence ends up stressing Victor out even more. I did feel like we're probably missing one or two scenes of Victor and Silas arguing, though, because we sort of go from "your presence is stressing me out!" to "I trust you to put me in a medically induced coma".

Eventually, Team Superboy end up convincing Metron to come with them, but turns out that Metron is only interested in observing how a Father Box will consume an organic person and transform Victor completely into a cybernetic creature. And it's a pretty neat "this being is so timeless that mortal lives don't mean jack to him" moment, and we do get a pretty nice sequence of the superheroes attacking a very indignant Metron to get to his chair. Ultimately, Victor ends up being cured when they get him to the chair, and we get to see a mysterious beam of light being absorbed by Metron's chair... which, according to Forager, is the Father Box's soul returning to the Source. Metron ends up leaving, although also with a cryptic answer of "no but yes" at whether Apokolips' Granny Goodness is the same as Earth's Gretchen Goode. Okay?

Also, pretty interestingly is Terra observing everything throughout the episode, and she ends up giving a report to Deathstroke that there's been no major developments. It's actually interesting! With the changes made to this adaptation of Terra's famous Judas Contract storyline, this seems to be a huge subversion that really ends up working out. We've been looking at Terra lurking in the background, watching and waiting, knowing that she's a double-agent all this while. But this version of Terra has been traumatized and now has been shown kindness by the superheroes, so it's actually interesting that this version of Terra isn't just a bitch manipulated by Slade, but an actually conflicted person who seems to really end up taking a liking to the Team.

There are a lot of B-plots running throughout this episode, and I don't really like a whole lot of them. The Violet stuff is neat. I'm still very much unsure about how Violet was handled in "Early Warning", and honestly, I do end up leaning more towards "that was handled poorly". I get the sensation of Violet being frustrated at what the fuck she even is, and she's dying even before a proper self-discovery journey, but man, that scene in "Early Warning" really doesn't come off well, yeah? We get a bit of a far, far better "I am confused and I am still searching for who I truly am" sequence here as Violet, masquerading as Gabrielle Daou, returns to Gabrielle's family and attempts to give them closure by telling them that she's dying... only to eventually break down and tell the Daous everything, including the fact that she's technically an alien entity taking over Gabrielle's corpse. There's some amazing voice acting from Zehra Fazar, too.

There's also a subplot about Helga Jace telling Brion to basically calm down and try and understand Halo's situation, but considering the moments in this episode of Helga going off to talk to her mentor, as well as her subtly noting how Brion and Tara could return to Markovia if they keep up her exploits, it's interesting to see just what Helga's main game is.

Another B-plot that ran through this episode is the relatively all-right sequence of Kaldur'ahm bringing (the currently still unnamed) Dolphin to Atlantis. It's a neat bit to give Kaldur something to do after being more or less reduced to a background character this season, and I do like having some answers as to what's going on with the first Aquaman, as well as Kaldur's parents. It does really feel kinda samey with a lot of the teenage-metahuman rehabilitation scenes we've seen with Ed Dorado, though we do get a bit of Dolphin trying to comfort Kaldur for flinching at being reminded of the Anti-Light's lies from the previous episode. I do really like Dolphin's line about how Kaldur'ahm is a good man because he feels guilt while lying (bad men will lie without guilt). It's a nice, slow-paced character moment for Kaldur'ahm, although I did roll my eyes a bit at the overblown "psych, you think Dolphin is a love interest for Kaldur'ahm? Nope, he's got a boyfriend all along!" And I don't mind the fact that Kaldur'ahm's bisexual, not really -- it's at least a positive representation of LGBT relationships as opposed to the poorly-handled disaster that's Violet/Harper, but the fact that it was basically used as the punchline to "haha, you guys thought we were building up to making a new shipping thing, aren't you?"

And... there's the whole M'gann and Harper Row storyline. And I'm not saying that child abuse and standing up to abusive parents isn't an important topic. Because it totally is! But the way that this is handled felt extremely shoehorned in, and barely has any sort of thematic significance to any of the things going on. It also is a storyline that's a bit 'too real', I feel... which is fine if Harper Row was a character I cared about, but she's just kind of there as a slightly more prominent recurring background character, and the whole sequence felt like a poor attempt to shoehorn in a Very Special Episode. The scripting and voice acting is all right, but throughout all of the M'gann/Harper stuff I felt a genuine disconnect, like I'm watching some other show about characters I'm not invested in. Considering how well-done Young Justice has incorporated more mature topics into their plotline before, this is definitely a miss for me.

Ultimately, this was an episode that genuinely felt 'whelming to me. The Cyborg and Team Superboy stuff were decent but ultimately kinda bland, and ditto for the Kaldur'ahm stuff. The Violet storyline felt kinda inconsistently paced, though, and I'm not the biggest fan, while the Harper stuff just made me sort of shrug it off. Definitely kind of a stumbling block as far as Young Justice goes, an episode with multiple smaller storylines, ending up feeling the most 'filler' out of this season's episodes.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Cyborg, Forager, Geo-Force, Black Lightning, Dreamer, Superboy, Tigress, Miss Martian, Sphere, Halo, Aquaman II, Superman, Aquaman (Orin), Wynnde,
• Villains: Parademons
• Civilians/Others: Terra, Metron, Dr. Helga Jace, Harper Row, Madia Daou, Samad Daou, Dolphin, Eduardo Dorado Sr, dr. Silas Stone, Sha'lain'a, Calvin Durham, Cullen Row

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hooray, Metron and his Mobius Chair make their debut in Young Justice! Metron is a character that is affiliated with the New Gods of the DC universe, often portrayed as a benevolent but ultimately detached observer. Moving from one place to the next with his teleporting chair, Metron is not affiliated with either New Genesis or Apokolips, often observing and documenting events without really intervening. 
• Young Justice credits Metron with creating Mother and Father Boxes, but in the comics, Metron only created the Boom Tube technology while the boxes were created by a different New God, Himon. 
• The Source, as well as the Source Wall, are recurring major elements of the New Gods' mythology. The Source is basically the metaphysical, Star-Wars-Force esque god-like energy that flows through the gods, while the Source Wall was the 'edge of all known universe', which separates the physical universe from the Source itself. Many gods and former gods have tried to peek behind the Source Wall, only to be trapped and become part of the wall itself, a fate that various characters in the DC universe have subjected to each other multiple times. 
• Forager casually mentions that they have teleported into the head of Gog. In the comics, Gog was an anti-hero from the Kingdom Come alternate universe, who grew disillusioned with the superheroes and ended up becoming an antagonist. In the New 52 reboot, Gog is teleported from Earth-22 (the Kingdom Come universe) to Earth-1 and ended up fighting our heroes, and eventually got imprisoned in the Source Wall. 
• Calvin Durham in the comics is a former minion of Black Manta who ended up becoming an ally of Aquaman after Black Manta continued to abandon his promises of an utopia, focusing more on vengeance on Aquaman. The character of Kaldur'ahm is very loosely based on the comic-book "Cal" Durham, who ends up being retconned into Young Justice Kaldur'ahm's foster father. Sha'lain'a is original to Young Justice, as far as I can tell. 
• Superboy's team met Superman and the Parademons in the Minosyss Ring, which borrows its name from Minosyss, the planet where the Teen Titans storyline The Return of Donna Troy takes place. 
• Dreamer makes her first reappearance since the season one episode "Disordered"! She mentions that apparently, Big Bear attacked Metron in the past.