Pokemon Sun & Moon E02 Review: Totemic Tutorial

Pokemon Sun & Moon, Episode 2: The Guardian Deity Tapu Koko Appears

This episode was broadcasted alongside the first episode of Sun & Moon as a two-episode special pilot, and it sort of shows. This is where the actual "Ash goes to school" bit end up being implemented and... and it's significantly less exciting than the wonder and curiousity that Ash sees the region from. Where the first episode moves very quickly through things in the region, this one is happy to just... dial things back. The result is a far more mellow episode that doesn't really give a whole ton to talk about. We get to see a bit of everyone's personalities. Sophocles is a geek who loves technology. Kiawe is a little resentful that Ash is a special protagonist that immediately gets a Z-Ring from a goddamn god-like being, but not an asshole. Lillie's afraid of Pokemon. Mallow's excitable. Lana... Lana's there.

A good chunk of the early part of this episode is just a conversation between Kiawe and Ash, and... and I actually kinda wished that Kiawe had been a bit more confrontational just to add some excitement and conflict to this episode, but at the same time, I do like that we're subverting the "first arc, main character and his future best buddy have to have a misunderstanding." We also get a tutorial about the new in-game mechanic, regional variants. It features Alolan Exeggutor and its butt-head, and anything that features Alolan Exeggutor is worth watching in my book.

The middle part of the episode is a continuation of the "let's give every supporting character a bit of a spotlight" as Ash goes through the most friendly hazing ever. It's... it's cute, and Sophocles, Lana and Kiawe all get to compete with Ash and Pikachu in different things. It goes for a bit long, but before Ash can battle with Kukui as the final part of the hazing ritual, Tapu Koko, god over the silly peasants living in this island, descend and basically lead Ash to a battleground in the forest and... and we basically get a video game tutorial, yeah? Tapu Koko essentially teaches Ash how to do a Z-move, much to the shock of everyone else, and Pikachu unleashes a Sparking Gigavolt attack onto Tapu Koko, who shrugs it off in his totem form.

I do like that the entire area is bathed in a yellow glow from Tapu Koko's Electric Terrain attack, which is a nice little visual gimmick. The Z-crystal shatters or disappears or something, so it's one of those game tutorials that allow you a taste of one of the end-game weapons, but immediately takes it away afterwards.

It's a pretty scene, if nothing else, and I'm a sucker for the entire action scene in general. Part of it is probably because I jumped straight from the first season straight to a show produced more than two decades later, but at the same time... it's a pretty sequence. The episode itself is all right. It's utterly bland on its own, but as the second part of the two parter it's actually pretty neat. I sort of wish that they did more, because take away the pretty animation and the whole hazing ritual is kind of banal filler. But... eh. Not particularly bad, but nothing really for me to talk about, really.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Eevee, Sableye, Electabuzz, Elekid, Popplio, Togedemaru, Bounsweet, Pikachu, Alomomola, Goldeen, Sharpedo, Finneon, Braviary, Fearow, Alolan Exeggutor, Komala, Rockruff, Corsola, Luvdisc, Tapu Koko
• Humans: Lana, Sophocles, Lillie, Mallow, Kiawe, Professor Kukui, Ash, Samuel Oak

Assorted Notes:

• So what's the point of the hazing? Like, Kiawe wants a race on a Tauros, sure, but anyone with half a brain can realize that Togedemaru, a Pokemon with "spiky" right there in her name, will win in a balloon-popping contest with or without the lightning rod gimmick, and anyone can figure out that a seal can swim faster than a mouse.
• The school bell is a Komala whacking its log on a fake Bronzong and that's adorable, actually. 
• SUPAKKKINNGGUUU GIGAVORRRUTOOOO

Hearthstone: Descent of Dragons Card Reaction/Review #1

It's been a hot while since I've done one of these, but I figured, hey, why not, right? We're knee-deep in the card reveal season, and we get a whole load of cards and if there's something that's common among these Descent of Dragons cards is the sheer power level they have. It's a bit shorter and more succinct compared to my usual reviews, mostly because I don't have a whole lot to say about a lot of them other then "yep seems great!" We're going to cover a chunk of cards here, although I'll leave some of the neutrals and classes that don't get a lot of new reveals after a break.


We'll start things off with Hunters first, and I think we've seen most of what Hunters have to offer in this expansion? It's kind of all over the place, but Clear the Way and Diving Gryphon are both building towards a Rush tempo hunter archetype. Diving Gryphon's a great rusher card, a 3-mana 4/1 rush that immediately tutors for another Rush minion. It's essentially a Shadow Bolt in minion form that draws another specific card, and you can combo this with Dire Frenzy for some neat combos by having the Gryphon chain into a larger Gryphon. Clear the Way is the sidequest, and while it certainly isn't a winning condition by any means, a 1-mana delayed 4/4 Rush is pretty neat value, and certainly one you could accomplish very easily with the aid of Diving Gryphon, Springpaw and a bunch of other cheap Rush minions. I'm not sure if the deck has enough to make up a 30-card deck, but it's certainly a neat one.

Veranus is a pretty awesome card! It's Hunter's Mark on all of your enemy's minions, or a one-sided Equality, bundled with a vanilla body. A 6-mana 7/6 with a powerful effect? And the Dragon tag? I'm not sure dragons are going to be super relevant in hunter, but Veranus does look like a pretty damn powerful legendary. Nerfing health is significantly more powerful than something like Eadric's attack nerf, and Hunters have a lot of ways to deal with single boards like Unleash the Hounds, Explosive Trap or Deathstalker Rexxar. A pretty interestingly powerful removal tool for sure!


We've got a lot of "cast many spells" cards over the past couple of expansions like Mana Cyclone, Raid the Sky Temple and the upcoming Learn Draconic, and the other new mage legendary, Chenvaala, is... a 3-mana 2/5 elemental that summons 5/5 elementals every time you cast 3 spells in a turn. It's basically Dragon Soul in a class that can only support it, and it's a body and an elemental. Ultimately I still don't think it's particularly super-overpowered -- it's a lot more clunky compared to something like the Flamewaker or Mana Cyclone, and a 5/5 elemental is neat value. It's good enough to probably find a home in a deck here or there, though.

Speaking of cheap spells mattering, Arcane Breath! One thing that always makes mages even more powerful is having cheap spells, and Arcane Breath is a neat one that's not only fair (it's basically Arcane Blast from TGT, but without the spell damage bonus), but with the added potential of cycling into another spell if you're holding a dragon. A spell you discover at that, meaning that you can chain this to more value-generating spells or removal if you need. I'm not sure about the viability of dragon mage specifically, but maybe you just run the new Malygos and Azure Explorer and call it a day just to activate Arcane Breath?

Dragoncaster is neat. It's like a reverse Arcane Tyrant, where you pay the 6-mana 4/4 body cost upfront to make a subsequent spell cost zero, a la Inkmsater Sonia. I'm not quite sure if it's that good, though. I guess you can, oh, I dunno, Puzzle Box or Pyroblast for essentially 6 mana and get a 4/4 alongside it. Which is neat and all, but I do have a feeling that this is just a mite too impractical and clunky. None of these cards that I don't like are bad, though, and even the ones that don't see play aren't inherently weak, they'll just be cards that don't really have enough support.


A trio of Shaman cards. Cumulomaximus is... it's a neat overload synergy card, sort of comparable to something like Blazecaller or Weaponized Wasp, dealing damage while it lands on the board... but the ask is that you have overloaded mana crystals, which isn't something that you might reliably have while also having 5 free mana. It's not a bad card, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being the next Spirit Claws or whatever.

Nithogg is... weird? It's a 6-mana 5/5 dragon that summons a bunch of 0/3 eggs that hatch into 4/4 rushing drakes, and... and I dunno, it just allows your enemy to really fuck things up since the 0/3 eggs are just kinda there defenseless. Sure, the dream scenario of basically doubling Nithogg's power with the Shaman's hero power quest or with Shudderwock or something is neat, but ultimately the 0/3 eggs that take a turn to hatch probably ends up being a bit too impractical.

Bandersmosh is... there's a chance this ends up being good. There's a chance this ends up circumventing the cost problem some of the more powerful legendaries have. It's going to do some degenerate things in Wild -- a 5-mana 5/5 Aviana or Ragnaros or whatever is certainly powerful as all hell, but at the same time it might just end up being the next Shifter Zerus. I'm trying to be optimistic about this one, though, mostly because its card art just looks so happy.


Amber Watcher is a great card. Remember how Antique Healbot was good? And Healbot is still seeing some play even in wild! Well, Amber Watcher is basically the same thing, but she's a 4/6 instead of a 3/3, which is basically vanilla stats. And she's a dragon, which is a more valuable tag in this expansion, and also she can restore health anywhere. Control Paladin might be back, and I'm actually very, very optimistic about the chances of this one.

Sanctuary is... it's a neat side-quest. Taking no damage for a turn might be pretty damn valuable, and sometimes you just play this on turn 2 and you just get a 3/6 taunt for free, essentially a more powerful Sen'jin. But it's so easy for enemy heroes to deal damage. Half the classes have a way to deal damage with their hero power while they build up a board, and if you topdeck Sanctuary at any point other than turn two and your enemy doesn't have a good first turn, this one's just kind of a dead draw. A very interesting card design, not a particularly good one.

Dragonrider Talritha is... she's an interesting flavour. She's a 3-mana 3/3 that ends up jumping into a dragon onto your hand, Val'anyr style, and she's like this dragon rider that jumps from dragon to dragon after each of her mounts die. That's great value, but she's so vulnerable to silence, hand-buffing isn't the best thing out there, and I'm not sure if the base 3/3 stats is going to make her work. Talritha is a card that I wouldn't be too surprised by if she turns out to be strong, but I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up being another gimmick legendary either.


Rogue now! Dragon's Hoard isn't particularly exciting, but functional. It's a better Pilfer, in that you discover a card from another class, and it's a legendary... which is either going to be very good or end up with such a specific synergy you can't use it.

Flik Skyshiv is the non-dragon legendary and it's basically like the arena-only card Fatecleaver, a 6-mana 4/4 that acts like a Vilespine Slayer... it kills a minion, but also wipes it from the hand, deck and the battlefield. Presumably any new copies generated by other cards after Flik's battlecry won't be affected. Which means that Flik Skyshiv's going to wipe out your opponent's entire Pogo-Hopper deck by simply landing on the field, and those decks that spam Khartut Defender will suddenly have their entire board cleared with a single card. It's a powerful effect, I'm just not sure if decks will actually end up running Flik for the off-chance that they can use her against Pogohopper.

Necrium Apothecary is basically what Myra Rotspring wishes she could be. A 4-mana 2/5 is decent stats, and all it needs is a combo activator to both tutor a deathrattle minion from your deck and gain its deathrattle. You can actively filter what deathrattles you want, making it highly possible for you to, oh, I dunno, do the Stalagg/Feugen combo, or to just abuse Sylvannas's deathrattle. It's a pretty powerful effect, more powerful and reliable than Myra's, and I'm sure we'll figure out a powerful combo with this that's reliable.



And... Warlock! Valdris Felgorge made everyone excited in that he's a 7-mana 4/4 minion... that draws 4 cards. It's Sprint with a body! More importantly, it also increases your hand size to 12, which... it's pretty great for handlock! Free Mountain Giants, bigger Twilight Drakes... and... and is that kinda it? It's a neat little mechanic that breaks the formula of Hearthstone, but ultimately it's just kind of a Sprint that comes with a body. Which don't get me wrong, is still powerful, but I genuinely don't think that the hand size modification is particularly that powerful.

Abyssal Summoner sure helps with this, I guess. A 6-mana 2/2 that summons a taunting demon with stats equal to your hand size? With Valdris, this is insane, but even in regular Handlock you just vomit a lot of stats into the battlefield. Is it enough with the sheer power levels being lobbed around? I don't think so, but it's certainly something.

Nether Breath is just efficient. Without a dragon, it's a shitty 2-mana 2-damage ping, but if you're holding a dragon, it's a cheaper Shadow Bolt with lifesteal. A great card! Crazed Netherwing is a 5-mana 5/5 that unleashes Hellfire if you're holding a dragon. Like Duskbreaker and Abyssal Enforcer before it, a pretty neat card for sure! 5 mana might be a wee bit too late for the Hellfire effect, but eh, it's still pretty dang good.

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 26: The Mountain Dwellers

And here it is. My final Let's Play segment of Pokemon Uranium. Which I kinda rushed in order to not to interrupt my Sword/Shield playthrough too much.

Which, admittedly, I thought I was going to finish posting way before Sword and Shield, but editing and reorganizing the screencaps took a whole amount of time.

It has been a wild, wild ride, and... yeah, I trash-talk this fan-game a fair bit, especially its plotting and some of its game mechanics, but honestly... I really did enjoy playing through Pokemon Uranium. It's clearly still a burden of love by the creators, and it really sucked that they weren't able to complete the game the way they wanted it to. Still, it got a whole lot of playtime from me, and while I'm not sure if I'll ever do another extensive screenshot Let's Play like this ever again, it has certainly been a fun experience doing this.

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 2: Wilderness and Cityscapes

Last we left off, I went through what's basically an extended prologue through Wedgehurst, a.k.a. Tutorial Town. Weare introduced to a bunch of the main supporting characters, beat Hop's ass like three times, met a mysterious foggy wolf, got a letter of recommendation and got waylaid a lot by fluffy sheep. Dang those Wooloo!

And... yeah, I've been playing through this game a fair bit, and I did spend a good chunk of it sort of just exploring the Wild Area. It's... it's pretty neat. The actual game balance and the gimmicks of Wild Area is a discussion for another day, but as an actual experience? A combination of the free camera and the Pokemon moving around in an environment that's decidedly a lot less cartoony than Let's Go is... it's actually phenomenal. For all the gripes that I have with this generation's games, I have to admit that the Wild Area felt genuinely awesome to traipse through, and knowing that this is obviously a proof-of-concept to something more spectacular (and hopefully far more inclusive in the amount of Pokemon they include) in the future is pretty damn neat!

The Wild Area itself actually sort of stretches through a good chunk of Galar, and at the moment the only one accessible to my character is the huge patch between Motostoke and Wedgehurst. This huge chunk of Wild Area is divided into further sub-sections with names like Rolling Fields, Watchtower Ruins, Dappled Grove and the like. It's pretty neat, and each of the areas seem to have kind of its own theme. Some parts are hailing and have ice pokemon, some are clearly closer to the ruins where the Golurk and Golett are walking around, some are populated with ghost Pokemon... it's pretty neat.

There are also clearly larger Pokemon like Onix, Golurk, Palpitoad, Galvantula and Xatu just sort of wandering around outside the grass, clearly far more powerful than anything my team has, and the game warns me that these are pretty fucking powerful, good luck challenging them. I think I can't capture them until I have the appropriate badge? Which is kind of stupid, but even more stupid is the game allowing me to catch a level 50 Abomasnow before the first gym and sweep the entire first half of the game, so I can see why they did that.

There's also a large amount of older Pokemon in the Wild Area, I feel. The only Generation VIII Pokemon I encounter, I think, was the Gossifleur that I immediately added into my party, or the Skwovets that fall out of the berry trees. Something I really do appreciate about the Wild Area is how interesting the Pokemon's behaviour are. Some -- like Machops and Tyrogues -- are far more aggressive than the other creatures there. Some are just content to wander around, and some will actually run away from you.

There's also the whole Dynamax Battle stuff, which I'm happy to note that you can actually do run without connecting online. The game just shoves a bunch of AI trainers for you. It's gimmicky as all hell and feels like something that belongs in a mobile game or something, but I don't hate it. I just am really indifferent. The visuals are neat, if nothing else, but ultimately it's just a regular battle with some extra steps. My first Dynamax battle was a giant fuck-off Pidove, and let me tell you something -- there's just an inherent amount of hilarity in seeing a massive monster burst out of a rocky circle and it's a giant pigeon with dead eyes unleashing a distorted cuckoo. Also hilarious is whatever the fuck that noise my giant dynamax'd Sobble makes. Great job on the game makers, by the way, for the cry-distortion with the Dynamax Pokemon. That's pretty cool. Basically, Dynamax is both Mega Evolution and Z-Moves rolled into one, and you can only do it (as I understand?) in the Wild Area and gym battles. Again, very gimmicky, but the visuals are neat.

Speaking of which, I did a couple of Dynamax raids and the absolutely over-the-top Tokusatsu-villain-exploding-in-a-huge-fiery-ball-of-death animation as the Dynamax Pokemon loses and reverts back is just amazing.

There are also these random NPC's that sell you stuff based on the 'W' you have, which I think stand for watts? That's the currency of the Wild Area, and you use them to buy stuff. Like cooking ingredients for the curry minigame, or "TR"s, which... are one-use TM's. What is this, 1996? In all seriousness, though, having there be one-time-use versions of the TM's actually has been a neat little challenge that I'm happy we got back. I am so relieved when Generation V gave us infinite TM's, which made post-game Pokemon team-building so much more painless, but in the same vein it also takes kind of the thrill and resource management of the first four generations away when you run across a moderately-useful or extremely-useful TM early on and you have to angst on who to use it on. Having both TM's and TR's... it's pretty great, actually.

Camping is also neat! It's basically like Pokemon-Amie or whatever they called it in VII, and I'm all for anything that basically allows you to interact with your Pokemon. This time around, you camp and you have all six members of your party all running around the campsite and you can play and interact with them by throwing a ball or waving a little cat-tease toy and stuff. Sobble and Yamper are adorable, and honestly, if nothing else, I'm enjoying a lot of the flavour stuff from Sword/Shield.

Anyway, what can I say about the Wild Area? It's pretty cool. I love the watchtower area in particular.

After the Wild Area, I have to enter Poke-London Motostoke City, which is this combination of steampunk aesthetic and a general rustic feel that a lot of UK cities have. It's basically the super-huge Lumiose or Castelia City of the region, and hoo boy is it a huge city! Parts of it are still blocked off, and parts of it open up as you progress through the gym challenge registration cutscenes, but it sure is a big city! The trains going around in the background, the ridiculous gigantic gear-elevator contraptions that allow you to travel from the 'lower' parts of the city to the 'upper' parts, the fancy looking walkways and railways, all of the fancy posters with Chewtle or Octillery or whatever in the background... Motostoke's a pretty city.


As per usual, Hop, Sonia and Leon show up at various points in the city to basically none-too-subtly nudge you towards progression with the plot, and that's basically the gym challenge. After being distracted by reinventing my wardrobe and spending all of my money in the clothes shop, I also get distracted again making the League Card. Which is basically the same thing as your Trainer Passsport in previous games, and it really shouldn't be something that entertained me this much, but the fact that you can modify so much of the stuff in the League Card from background to effects to expression to the actual pose -- and one of the poses available is the fucking Takeshi Hongo henshin pose from Kamen Rider. Considering how I absolutely ignored the equivalent to this back in the past couple of generations, I do admit into spending a bit more time than I thought I would with this little gimmick.

Anyway, the gym challenge registration moves on a bit slowly. Some dude with purple clothes and white hair bump into Hop and is a Grade-A douchebag, and what I assume is going to be yet another rival, quasi-goth shy girl Mareanie Marnie make a brief appearance here. Ultimately, though, my character ends up being directed to the Budew Drop Hotel.

At which point... plot exposition! Sonia gives us this story, pointing to a golden statue of a hero with a sword and a shield which he apparently wielded against a gigantic Pokemon during the "Darkest Day", and Sonia none-too-subtly notes that no one knows what the hero's sword and shield looks like. They're Pokemon, of course. They're the legendary doggos. It's a neat little backstory to the legendaries of the region. Nothing too new or groundbreaking, but at least it's a tie-in to the Dynamax stuff.

Oh, and I also meet Team Yell, the region's villainous team. And while I thought Team Skull from Sun/Moon would be the epitome of ineffectiveness as far as villains go, Team Yell take it to a whole other level. They're not even criminal punks in the way Team Skull were. They are just straight-up sports hooligans running around with face paint, weird double-horned trumpets and fold-out posters, and they're all cheering for Marnie, the goth girl competitor. They're pretty pathetic fighters, and after my character (and Hop) clear them out, Marnie shows up to chew her rowdy fans off. I get the feeling like Marnie comes from, like, a small town or something, and she just has a bunch of childhood friends or cousins that are just waaaay too supportive.

So the next day comes, and the stadium... the scene is basically one huge cutscene as Chairman Rose makes this whole speech about how this 'season' of gym challenges is about to happen. I was very ambivalent about likening the gym challenge into a sports tournament, but I acknowledge that the execution is a pretty cool idea. Even cooler, of course, is the cutscene with pretty cool slo-mo close-up shots of seven of the eight gym leaders slowly walking into the battlefield, and each one being introduced in turn. I've seen some of them (like huge buff baby Milo) in promotional materials, but this is the first time I've seen many of them. The most notable one, I feel, is Opal, who's an old grandma with a huge... huge whatever-the-fuck that thing on her neck is called.

And then all of the competitors sort of pour into the stadium, with the camera, of course, focusing on my character. We all wear silly sports outfits, which I'm personally not a big fan of. At least the game gives me a way to customize it and buy a cooler-looking football jersey.

Still, it's a pretty cool cutscene that really sets up the gym challenge and makes me feel pretty dang pumped up to challenge these gym leaders and go through their stadiums and whatnot. It's certainly an interesting move that I don't think Pokemon's done before -- sure, you'll have a gym leader or two show up earlier in the story and be an NPC, but I don't think we've ever had a vast majority just straight-up spoiled and shown to us.

There's also a specific order that the gym leaders have to be challenged in, unlike how things seem to go in Unova or the supplementary fiction (where the gym leaders all have different teams depending on the amount of badges you have), apparently the Galarian gym leaders duke it out to make sure which one of them are part of the 'minor' and 'major' league, and since all Galarian gym challengers have to register at Motostoke, it means that there's kind of a set route for most challengers to go through. First up is Milo in Turffield, the grass type gym leader.

Anyway, I continue on to explore the city. It's a huge city! There's a bunch of things to look at, a bunch of neat little buildings and details. There's some little girl who's missing her Minccino, there's a Wynaut playing hopscotch, there are a bunch of random Onixes and Corviknights and Mandibuzzes in the city, there's the train station that I would've arrived in Motostoke from if they didn't make me walk through the boonies... Motostoke's neat to explore, and the visuals are sure cool.

Overall, though, after exploring Motostoke and beat Hop's ass silly as I venture on to Route 3, the route Westward of Motostoke. En route there, I capture a bunch of interesting new faces, like the Galarian Zigzagoon (which we've seen before) and Rolycoly (which I totally forgot about). Rolycoly looks great in motion, by the way, which is a running trend I've been seeing throughout Generations VII and VIII, where some of the Pokemon just have 2D artwork that doesn't look great when they're standing still. Rolycoly actually grinding around like a bizarre unicycle is a lot cooler than the formless lump of coal with an eyeball that he initially seemed to be.

Among the new encounters in route 3 is a Corvisquire, who's just perched in a pretty cool way on a rock, slowly glaring at me until I whistle and it swoops in to attack. This is Corviknight's pre-evolved form, and as I quickly discover from its position in the Pokedex, Rookidee turns into Corvisquire, which in turn evolves into Corviknight! It's actually a pretty neat little discovery, because I had absolutely no idea that Corviknight was the regional bird.

MY NEW BABY

Sonia also gives me a bit of a talk about how Chairman Rose owns a huge chain of factories and stuff, and everyone in the world seems to like him a lot. Not sure if we're going to explore his large amount of factories a lot, though. After all, I'm not sure if we're going to have a pollution-is-bad moral or whatever. Also, that white-haired rude kid that's joining the gym challenge is apparently sponsored by the Chairman. I would scream about nepotism, but then arguably my character and Hop is also benefiting from nepotism as well.

While making my way through Route 3, one of the random trainers had a brand-new pokemon called a Sizzlipede, which is a little flat centipede with a mustache that also breathes fire. It's Magmaw. It's Magtail. I NEED one, and apparently the Pokedex tells me that it's found in Route 3. It's also the rare encounter of the route, and I wasn't sure which patch of grass it hangs out in (the western half of route 3 had a lot more Rolycolies, the eastern half had more Zigzagoons and Vulpixes) and it took me almost 45 minutes just sort of going through the grass trying to find Sizzlipede.

But I did get one, and I love it. It's Bug/Fire. It's a fire-shooting flat centipede with a mustache. I have merely seen a fraction of the eighth generation, but suffice to say that this is easily one of my instant favourites.

Seriously. Look at this thing. It's like a flat centipede, it's got adorable angry eyes, it's got a mustache made out of the centipede's fangs, it's the very rare type combination of Bug/Fire (only Volcarona had it before, right?) and it's got cute little glowing heat rings on its underbelly. I love this thing.

Which ended up with a bunch of evolutions! Sobble evolves into Drizzile, which... is not what I expected. I don't like this form as much as Sobble, and I'm curious what he'll turn into in the end, but apparently Sobble ends up being kind of a punk, with his head-fins covering his eye in an emo-style, and his hands and feet being painted neon-green. And also he now attacks by lobbing fucking water balloons. It's... it's something all right, and I guess we're going to have a British street-punk final form? Not what I expected or wanted from Sobble, but to be fair, I don't know what I did expect Sobble to turn into. He's all right. He'll grow on me, I guess.

My original Rookidee evolved into Corvisquire, and Blipbug evolves into... Dottler, which is like, some sort of bizarre dome-shaped thing that I suppose is inspired by the ladybug? Surprisingly, it's now Bug/Psychic, and one that seems to be geared defensively. We'll see if I keep Dottler's final form around. It's certainly interesting, and I do love that they're definitely being a lot more experimental with the early-route creatures.

Route 3 terminates at the entrance to the Galar Mine, which I'll be exploring in the next part. It's the pretty gem-encrusted mine that shows up a lot in the trailers for Sword/Shield, and I'm genuinely surprised at the sheer amount of time that has elapsed since starting my adventure and reaching the first gym, because, shit, I haven't even reached there yet! I've always felt like it's like, a couple of towns and a Viridian Forest analogue before you reach your first gym (or trial) in most generations, and this... this took a while. I'm not complaining, because, shit, I'm having one hell of a good time playing through this game.

My current party so far, and this is definitely subject to change:


Bobble the Drizzile's probably here to stay, and I love Magtail the Sizzlipede so much that I wasted half an hour hunting him, and those two are probably the most safe. I'm also kind of a fan of Nightwing the Corvisquire, who's... who's kind of boring, but also pretty useful. I know he turns into a Steel/Flying creature and that's a pretty neat type-set. The other three, though? Bookworm the Dottler is something that I'm reserving judgement until I see her final form. I love my bugs, but I already kind of have Sizzlipede and so far she's not been impressive. Cassie the Yamper is adorable as hell, but she's also very slow and her Nuzzle doesn't do a lot of damage even to things she's strong to, so I'm not sure if the adorable corgi-ness is going to justify keeping her around (it probably will). Charcoal the Rolycoly is... he's actually pretty great in the same way that Geodude is great in early-game routes in the games that you find it in. He's moderately useful to shore up my weaknesses even if I sic Corvisquire and Drizzile on most of the things I meet.

Anyway, next up... we're going into a cave, and we'll see if the Zubats made it into Galar!


Random Notes: 

• Dottler and Rolycoly are basically on a short-list of Pokemon that I might swap out. I did consider Gossifleur, Nickit, Galarian Zigzagoon and Pancham to swap them around with. Considering the ease of experience grinding, I might still actually do so. 
• A bunch of random key items I have:
• The headphones, given by some dude in front of the record store, which apparently allows me to adjust the specifics of the volume of the things in the game. "It can change the loudness of the things around you!" My god, this is a realty-warping device!
• A portable box like Let's Go, which allows me to swap Pokemon in and out of my box. Kinda makes an already easy game a lot easier, IMO, since this basically means that you have a portable Pokemon Center wherever you go. I have resolved to not abuse this feature. 
• Poke-uber The Corviknight taxi service, which is basically Fly.
• Escape Rope, which is now a key item that I can select from my bag and is apparently infinite-use. An interesting update!
• Is curry, like, a huge deal in Britain? Serious, genuine question. Like, I'm pretty sure I associate India or Japan with curry more than any country in Europe. 
• Some of the shops in Motostoke are vinyl-record shops, which are actually what TR's stand for: Technical Record. It's hilarious that the one-time use TR's are straight-up noted to be vintage, although it does raise a whole lot of other questions about what TR's and TM's are. Are they, like, music records that somehow teach Pokemon how to use Payback and Bullet Seed? 
• One of the NPC's in the registration center is the Ball Dude (Ball Guy?) who is a dude that I think is meant to be a mascot or something, he walks around with a giant expressionless Pokeball as a head and hands you Pokeballs. This is amazing. 
• You can choose the number on your jersey, any number as long as it's three digits. It's a neat little feature. 
• Insert your own "Pokemon's new villainous team is a toxic fanbase" joke here, because I'm not going to make it. 
• They did spoil all of the types that are represented among the gym leaders, and one of the clothes shops that's a bit to the Western side of Motostoke sells uniforms for all of the types that aren't represented by a gym leader. The Ghost and Poison outfits are pretty cool!
• Random trivia about the gym leaders: Nessa's got little life preservers on her feet which is just so hilarious considering how sleek the rest of her design is; Kabu is from Hoenn, and Raihan loves selfies.
• Perhaps the most surprising creatures that made it past the Galar national-dex purge to me are Qwilfish and Delibird. I met Qwilfish among the four Pokemon that showed up in my max raid, and one of the trainers in route 3 had a Delibird. It's glorious, and I'm happy that Nintendo at least seems to be picking both obscure and popular Pokemon for the Galar Dex at least. Trubbish, by the way, also made the cut, being an uncommon encounter in route 3, and oh boy I could already see the frothing anger coming from the anti-Unova parts of the fandom.

Kamen Rider Kiva E09-10 Review: Talk to the Fist

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 9: Symphony - Ixa, Fist On; Episode 10: Saber Dance - Glassy Melody

Two more episodes in one this time around, and we finally get the debut of Kamen Rider Ixa, and a pretty interesting dilemma with the monster of the bi-week, Oomura the Frog Fangire and perhaps the first Fangire who outright didn't want any trouble. The idea of a representative of a monster race that didn't want to be evil is nothing new in Kamen Rider and its Tokusatsu ilk -- out of the ones I watched, Faiz, Den-O, Kabuto, Ex-Aid, Ghost and Drive played with the trope to some degree; while OOO, Blade and Amazons straight-up used it as a main theme. Hell, even the currently running series, Zero-One, brings up comparisons with Kiva with a secondary rider who's a resolute extremist in wiping out every single member of the evil race he meets.

So it's pretty interesting to see this two-parter focus on Oomura, a kooky and socially-awkward violin repair specialist. While initially brought over by Shizuka to help Wataru out of his creative block, and clearly not someone who wants to be there, Oomura ends up relenting and helping Wataru out in giving him some instruction in making a master violin. Of course, as with all Fangires, we get hints that Oomura has had some sort of involvement with the 1986 cast, as even pretty early on in episode 9, we get to see that he seems to recognize Otoya's violin. Oomura quickly shows that while he seems to be awkward, he at least is willing to instruct Wataru, and the huge advice that resonates with Wataru -- "don't copy your father, but make something that resonates with yourself" -- is damn good advice. In the midst of working with Wataru, however, Oomura suddenly goes crazy when Shizuka smashes some teacups and causes a bit of a ruckus, hurrying out of the building. Turns out that Oomura can only withstand pleasant-sounding sounds, as we get to see him freaking out and attacking a bunch of street band players.

Over in Cafe Mal d'Amour, Comissioner Shima refuses to give Ixa to Megumi, albeit not unkindly, noting that the Ixa system 'chooses its owner', whatever the fuck that means -- this ain't Kabuto, that fist doesn't fly around and leave those it deems unworthy, right? Of course, Nago shows up to rub salt in Megumi's wound, expounding in no small means that he is clearly the superior choice for Ixa. Dick. We get a couple of scenes of this being hammered in, with Megumi even begging Nago at a ramen store to at least let her try.

That conversation is interrupted, though, as Nago ends up attacking Oomura, and we get to see him transform with a weird fist-like device that allows him to fight hand-to-hand with Oomura's Fangire form. Wataru as Kiva shows up later on, and easily overpowers Oomura in Basshaa Magnum form, but Wataru de-transforms and allows Oomura to escape... only for Oomura to be confronted by Nago, who properly transforms into Ixa, who easily beats the shit out of Oomura -- a pretty painful sequence to watch, considering that Oomura looks desperate and outright trying to escape -- and the episode ends as Ixa's face-mask-visor thing clicks open, revealing the eye pieces, and causing a whole lot of flames to explode out. "Please return that wicked life to god" indeed. That's the cliffhanger for episode 9...

And we pick up in episode 10 with Wataru, in human form, standing between Ixa and Oomura, allowing him to escape again, and causing Nago to be absolutely angry at Wataru. Wataru then meets up with Oomura, who tells Wataru that... he hasn't eaten a single human for the past 22 years, after a meeting with Kurenai Otoya! Which we get to see as we flash back and forth between 2008 and 1986, where we get the meeting of Otoya and Oomura, and we get the two of them meeting. Essentially, the two of them bond over their love of music and violin (albeit they are very confrontational initially), and we get a beautiful back-and-forth between the two time periods as Oomura tells Wataru about his father, and how Otoya and Oomura ended up bonding as Otoya shares his philosophy about music and whatnot. Otoya essentially recognizes that all Oomura wants is good music, and Otoya's music can satiate the Fangire's hunger. This goes so far that Otoya was willing to attack Jiro and even Yuri with a fire extinguisher cloud to ensure Oomura manages to escape and live peacefully.

A bit basic, for sure, but ultimately a pretty touching scene showing that, hey, not all Fangires are evil, and some are just utterly misunderstood. Wataru tries to arrange a meeting with Nago, but it ends up devolving into a rant of "EVIL IS EVIL, ALL FANGIRES ARE EVIL!" before Nago brushes Wataru off and storms off while declaring that "I am NEVER wrong!" So I guess Nago's the sort of character who's a bit too obsessive when looking for justice, then?

Of coures, poor, poor Oomura ends up being so utterly disturbed when he walks past a road with street construction, and the poor dude's just panicking... only for that asshole Nago to show up and smash Oomura's peace-inducing headphones apart. What. A. Dick. Wataru angsts about whether he should go and fight... but, of course, he does, and he finds Oomura rampaging in fangire form against the construction workers. Where is Nago in all this? No, really, absolute justice my foot. We then have Kiva trying to stop the Frog Fangire, and after failing to stop him with words, we get an amazing scene where Kiva sets up that elaborate red moon kick on the ground, shocking Oomura to his senses.

And Oomura's about to leave the city permanently, only to meet Ixa once more. Ixa basically unleashes his "Rise Up" technique, creating some gigantic sun and lightning sequence and slashes Oomura before leaving. I loathe Nago after this two-parter, but I do admit that the sequence really does make Ixa look pretty damn cool. The 2008 scene ends as Wataru arrives too late, since Oomura's already crystalized and turned into a mosaic, and shatters as he apologizes to Wataru and Otoya, noting that it's kind of his fault for attacking a human and breaking the promise. Except it isn't -- poor Oomura has clearly got some problem with loud noise, and that's really the only reason he got so angry in the first place, meaning that, yeah, in his utter zeal to KILL THEM ALL, Nago essentially just murdered someone who's relatively innocent. All the while acting like a self-pompous jackass while doing so. It's an interesting direction to take the character, honestly -- Nago rubbed me off the wrong way after his first couple of appearances, but right now I straight-up find him utterly unlikable, and the show seems to be pushing him in that direction. Very interesting for sure, and I wonder just whether he'll be redeemed, or if he'll end up going the villainous-secondary-rider route.

As for the rest of the 1986 scenes, Jiro joins the Blue Sky group, Yuri flirts with him a bit, and Otoya gets tossed around like a butt-monkey. They are chasing someone who keeps killing random people who purchase a mysterious Black Star Violin, and after a stupidly hilarious sequence at a masquerade mask auction, Jiro knocks out Otoya and his fool tengu mask, and Yuri obtains the Black Star Violin... only to later reveal that she is an absolutely atrocious violinist, and we get Otoya suddenly going serious and demanding that Yuri hand over the violin to him.

The Frog Fangire (who the audience knows is Oomura -- the episode doesn't even really treat it as a mystery), of course, ends up attacking Yuri, absolutely angered at her abuse of the Black Star violin, and in the process of fighting Jiro-Garulu, Otoya ends up witnessing Jiro's transformation. Jiro later meets up with Ramon and the third member of their motley crew, Riki, who demand an explanation as to why Jiro is working with humans. Apparently, we get the confirmation that the three of them aren't Fangires, but are rather survivors of separate races who were wiped out by the Fangires. And that is the 1986 cliffhanger for episode 9.

Episode 10 starts off with Otoya telling Yuri about how Jiro's totally a monster, and this sequence is mostly comedic and played as laughs, and Otoya honestly doesn't even come off as serious in this scene. Neither is Jiro, admittedly, who takes the chance to squirt a bottle's worth of tomato sauce onto Otoya's face. They do get a more serious scene later on as Otoya steals the Black Star Violin for himself, mostly a confirmation that Jiro is not a Fangire, and he doesn't intend to harm the humans for now And it's after this that the 2008-relevant scenes between Otoya and Oomura plays out.

Ultimately, a very, very interesting episode. The mystery about the Fangires and the other monster races are built up upon slightly, and there's the whole bit about the Ixa Rider System and how it's created. Oomura is an amazing guest star (even if his story, again, isn't the most intricate) and Wataru gets some amazing acting moments in this episode. Most interestingly, though, are the treatment of Otoya and Nago, two characters that aren't the most likable thanks to their pretty assholish attitudes. For Otoya, we finally get to see a side of him that isn't just womanizing or goofing around. It's not much, but his seriousness in regards to the Black Star Violin, and how he handles both the meeting with Oomura and Jiro, are both well done. For Otoya, it's a douche that's starting to show that he can be a lot more deep than that. For Nago, on the other hand, we get to see more and more just how inflexible and how much of an arrogant prick he is. A pretty good sequence, honestly, and I do like the relative moral ambiguity going aroud here.


Random Notes:

• Oomura is played by actor Murai Katsuyuki, best known to the Kamen Rider fandom as the actor who played President Murakami, the Rose Orphnoch and the CEO of Smart Brain, essentially the primary antagonist for a good chunk of Kamen Rider 555. 
• It's technically written as "IXA", with all capital letters, but I'm going to use Ixa instead since it feels a lot more natural to type. Ixa, I think, is based on a combination of a knight and the sun, both of which are pretty appropriate, I suppose, for a vampire hunter. Hell, even his janky gun-blade is vaguely shaped like a warped cross. 
• Ixa's belt and fist has a hilariously "I-am-a-ro-bot" voice, that's far, far more mechanical sounding than any Kamen Rider belt or gimmick I've ever heard before. 
• Know Your Fangires: Oomura is a Frog Fangire! I genuinely wouldn't be able to tell. 
• Wataru's writer's block (builder's block?) is pretty hilarious. He was just straight-up burning the violin he was working on, and when Oomura shows up, he agrees that the violin is shit and chucks it back into the flame. 
• Otoya being buddies with Buruman the dog in episode 9 is adorable. 
• Throughout the 1986 scenes in these two episodes, Ixa being 'almost ready' is constantly mentioned by the cast, but we don't quite see 1986-era Ixa just yet. 
• Man, Nago's ego, though. He makes Tendou Souji look humble by comparison. I am finding him supremely unlikable, even before the murders, with how high-and-mighty he acts around Megumi and how he essentially treats Wataru as a gofer. I'm almost certain this is intentional and we're supposed to not like him... but I dunno. 
• So, uh, where did Yuri and Otoya get the funds they needed for the ridiculous amounts of money being thrown around in that violin auction? 
• Jiro doesn't lose his clothes or become naked now when he transforms back, apparently. 
• I'm not sure why Oomura lets the Black Star Violin sink into the bottom of a lake. Sure, it leads to the awesome, melancholic scene that closes the 2008-era scenes, but it's one thing to be impressed by Otoya's music so much that you change your way of life, and another to throw your life's work down a lake. 

Pokemon Sun & Moon E01 Review: Alolan Transfer Student

Pokemon: Sun & Moon, Episode 1: Alola! The Starting Island, the Starter Pokemon!

So I'm going to watch and review the first ten or so episodes of the soon-to-be-concluded series, Sun/Moon. It's kind of a little special thing that I'm doing, and I'm not going to do the entire series at all, just the first ten or fifteen episodes or so that I've watched.

I'm not sure if I'll do the Sword/Shield anime, since the commitment to watch it weekly isn't something that I'm sure I can do -- and these fast few months have taught me that it's a lot less stressful to write reviews on my own pace. It's definitely interesting to jump ahead a couple decades' worth of animation improvement and go from the bare-bones budget of the Kanto seasons to Sun/Moon. Especially since the Sun/Moon anime did the unthinkable and reinvigorated the anime by getting a brand-new studio and redesigned a lot of the characters to be a bit more rounded, leading to many memes back when the anime was first released about how Ash "aged backwards" or whatever. Still, once you get past that little hiccup of "this looks kind of different", it's honestly just a matter of art style changes, and it's still the same old Pokemon anime everyone knows, loves and sometimes hates. Besides, I do love the far, far more fluid expressions and animations this allows the series to pull off.

A brief little introduction to Sun & Moon too -- it's released in late 2016/early 2017, adapting the seventh generation of Pokemon games, and back when it first premiered, it came under criticism for the sudden tonal shift. The previous series, XYZ, was a far more action-packed series, culminating in an epic fight against the mighty Zygarde as well as one of the more well-received tournament arcs in the series. Meanwhile, Sun/Moon ends up with the premise of Ash going to Alola and attending a school, with the series retooled into a more... slice-of-life comedy instead of being action-packed. Instead of three people travelling over a region, this particular season ends up with an ensemble cast at a school. Detractors of the show note that this season is particularly directionless even by the Pokemon anime's admittedly low standard, so I'm genuinely curious to see which side of the spectrum I'm on. I've never minded show retools as long as the end product is a good show, and I've basically shrugged off a lot of the inconsistencies in the anime as "they gotta sell the status quo", so we'll see how well this particular one is handled, yeah?

Anyway, the episode opens with a pretty dang gorgeous depiction of Ash zooming around on a Sharpedo jet-ski on the reefs near Melemele island. Turns out that Ash and Pikachu are on vacation, and the anime definitely portrays the beauty of Alola's ocean pretty well, as is the busy beach. After the Kanto season where most crowd scenes are just people it's pretty awesome to see this season just cutting into huge crowds with people and pokemon wandering about. We get some nice little brief highlights of the new Pokemon, including Pyukumuku, as well as Lana and her Popplio fishing up a Bruxish. It's a fun scene that illustrates the gorgeous Alola stuff before we get the opening.

And then we get the always-awesomely goofy Alolan Exeggutor, and a brief scene of Ash accidentally stepping on a poor Litten's tail and getting a fire hairball to the face. It's probably some foreshadowing for a Pokemon Ash'll get in the future? I'm genuinely going into this series mostly blind, so it's all new to me. After that Litten encounter, Ash and his mom, Delia, gets a bit of a conversation in the bar about how they won the ticket to Alola because Mr. Mime was really lucky... and this is told via a tongue-in-cheek fast-forwarded flashback. It's funny. We later learn as Ash and Delia ride a Tauros-pulled taxi carriage that they also have to deliver something to Professor Oak's cousin in Alola, and we get a brief primer of the games' little gimmick, ride pokemon. And then we get a market scene, and Ash ends up chasing after a Grubbin burrowing through the ground. Again, it's all a lot of "welcome to the new region, have some info-dump" moments, which is pretty neat. We'll give the show some time to settle into the new region.

As Ash chases the Grubbin, he's observed by a weird totem creature, Tapu Koko, which is the legendary guardian deity of the island, and Tapu Koko seems to be a bit troll-y, waking up a nearby Bewear. Bewear is... he's glorious. I'm already a fan of Bewear, but the anime made it even more hilarious, waving with a :D face permanently plastered on its dumb pink face, before accidentally smashing a tree by waving his arms... and the voice that the Japanese anime chose for Bewear makes it sound like a goddamn squeaky toy -- a squeaky toy that dances around and crushes a bunch of trees in its way. I've seen enough of random screenshots to know that Bewear's going to be a recurring character, and this is certainly another fun little spotlight. This episode seem to play hard and fast with just letting new faces have brief appearances here and there, and that's definitely neat!

While escaping Bewear, Ash then stumbles onto the Pokemon School, which is where a majority of this season will take place. We get a machine-gun introduction of many of the human characters (and I'll be using the English dub names, already being way too familiar with these guys via the games), although the one that gets the most screentime is the happy excited girl Mallow. We do also get a brief spotlight on Lillie, a girl who is interested in Pokemon academically, but is actually scared shitless of them -- like me and spiders! After an accident involving Tauros (something Ash brushes off because he owns a lot of them) Mallow drags Ash around to see the main building. Lots of fun features like the pokemon fossils and classes and stuff, and we eventually meet with Oak's cousin, Samson Oak (Nariya Okido). Ash's mom has done the delivery, and Samson... really loves doing Pokemon puns and impersonations. I haven't watched the dub for this one, and I'm curious how faithful the dubs are translated because Samson temporarily mimics the appearance of the Pokemon he is making lame puns about.

Oh, and we also briefly get to see the much younger professor, Kukui, but we don't really get a lot of him before Team Skull shows up with their glorious rap gestures and demands that one of the students, Kiawe, hand over his Charizard because they blocked the road. Sure, Team Skull, threaten the dude with the giant fire-breathing dragon. I'm sure your aggressive rapping gestures will intimidate him. They gang up on Kiawe and unleash three Zubats, Salandits and Yungooses, but Ash zips in to help Kiawe out. Pikachu speed-blitzes the Salandits in some pretty cool animation, while Kiawe sends out Turtonator and shows off Turtonator's gimmick, which is using his shell as a shield... an explosive shield that blows up the Zubat and Yungoos swarm. It's actually pretty cool seeing this in action!

And then we get the gimmick of the generation, Z-moves, and it's... it's actually pretty cool in the anime, with some nice background music, Kiawe's voice actor hamming it up like there's no tomorrow, and the animators having some fun with animating Turtonator unleashing DAINAMIKKKU FURRU FUREEEMUUU. 

We get a brief little intro-dump about how the locals of Alola need to go through a pilgrimage through the islands to learn how to use Z-moves, and a brief scene of Tapu Koko continuing to stalk Ash, culminating in a meeting while Ash and Delia are having dinner. Tapu Koko unleashes a loud scream, before zipping around and leading Ash towards a fountain, handing him over a Z-ring. We then have a brief flash forward to Ash apparently already crashing in Kukui's house, having asked to stay on the island to discover more about Pokemon and Alola in general, and he's enrolled as a student in the school.

The episode is... it's a pretty fun little opening. The episode mostly just focuses on a wild showcase of Ash experiencing and meeting the many colourful Pokemon and characters of Alola, which honestly is probably how the character feels while going through this. It's a decent enough introduction to a new region, and yeah, the series is light-hearted and all. I did enjoy myself watching through this episode. We'll see if the rest of the season grabs me!

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Sharpedo, Whimsicott, Mankey, Abra, Petilil, Bonsly, Sudowoodo, Slowpoke, Growlithe, Sableye, Finneon Lumineon, Luvdisc, Relicanth, Chinchou, Shellder, Staryu, Alomomola, Corsola, Milotic, Pyukumuku, Lapras, Popplio, Bruxish, Pikipek, Cubone, Carvanha, Wailmer, Poliwag, Alolan Exeggutor, Litten, Dratini, Wingull, Herdier, Mr. Mime, Drifloon, Smeargle, Makuhita, Eevee, Golem, Butterfree, Golduck, Sandslash, Nidoran M, Nidoran F, Tauros, Krokorok, Growlithe, Machop, Grubbin, Tapu Koko, Bewear, Charizard, Elekid, Noibat, Pichu, Riolu, Surskit, Rufflet, Parasect, Paras, Lilipup, Poliwhirl, Sandile, Bousweet, Togedemaru, Primeape, Machamp, Boldore, Yungoos, Salandit, Zubat, Turtonator
• Humans: Ash, Lana, Ash's Mom, Professor Oak, Kiawe, Lillie, Mallow, Samson Oak, Professor Kukui

Assorted Notes:

• Holy shit, the later seasons really love their Pokemon cameos, huh? There is a lot of featured Pokemon, and I loved looking at the backgrounds and hunting them down. 
• It's kind of hard to note which season Sun/Moon is. It's kind of the 12th season in the Japanese numbering, but the Sun/Moon series is technically the twenty-first season in the English numbering, who really likes to rebrand the show throughout the Johto through Unova series. Until I figure out which episode numbering I want to follow, this one will just be titled "Sun & Moon" in this blog. 
• In a fun easter egg, the green shirt Ash wears in the flashback has the stock menu sprite of a Water-type Pokemon from the old GBC games. 
• Ash also makes a reference to being used with Tauros, having captured thirty and prominently using them during the Kanto season. 
• Team Rocket's "this feels bad" ("we're blasting off again" in the dub) is changed to "what is this feeling?" for this season. No 'dub changes' for this episode, because the dubs have been pretty consistent about not changing too much from the original Japanese in later seasons, while the Japanese studios have also been pretty good at not including too much questionable content. 

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 25: The Town That Was Not Meant To Be

The first of my two-part series covering the post-Elite-Four content of the fan-made Pokemon game, Pokemon Uranium. Not really a whole ton to say here, this part's pretty short, mostly consisting of me re-challenging the Elite Four and doing a bunch of non-legendary-hunting side-quests.

I've actually had this written up for a while, just didnt have the time to edit it. Sword and Shield commentary will resume soon.

Kamen Rider Kiva E08 Review: [EAT KILL ALL]

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 8: Soul - The Angered Dragon Castle

The second part of the Prawn Fangire two-parter, the fact that we get the revelation at the end of episode 7 that the actual culprit for the serial murders in 1986 is actually Jiro instead of Count von Prawn means that both storylines end up taking different directions, which is a lot more refreshing than the 'oh, there is a revelation about the present-day plot in 1986!' bits that we've been having all this time.

After some hijinks among the 1986 cast, we get a bit of interesting ship-tease between Jiro and Yuri. Yuri keeps following Jiro around, and there's some line about a woman following a man is "either a thief or in love", and it's ambiguous, even with the meeting at the end of the episode, whether Yuri's actually in love with Jiro or if she's just stringing Mr. Werewolf all along. Either way, this gets interrupted with a sniper gun shot that nearly hits Yuri, with Jiro pointing out that Yuri is a potential candidate for the mysterious serial killer since she, too, stays at the cafe all the time. The problem, though, is that we know Jiro is the serial killer, so there's yet another Fangire in play!

We get even more Otoya/Jiro/Yuri antics, with Otoya accidentally beating up on some poor dude who just wants to ask Yuri out on dinner. While Yuri basically tells a passing-by policeman to lock Otoya up, Jiro ends up killing another Mal d'Amour patron, giving the excuse that he was 'too late' to stop the murder. Yep, if there was any doubt that Jiro is a monster... and then, in perhaps the comedic highlight of the episode, Otoya tries to impress Yuri by being the bait, drinking a gigantic beer mug's worth of black coffee... and proceeding to instantly knock himself out.

Yuri's stalker turns out to not be... Basshaa! Who I now realize is meant to be the Creature of the Black Lagoon. And Basshaa is pretty weird, and I'm still not sure what he's all about, whether he wants to play with Yuri and just doesn't know his own strength, or if he actually does want to murder Yuri. In any case, Basshaa handily beats up both Otoya and Yuri with bubble attacks, knocking the two of them out... but Jiro stands in the way of the killing blow. Jiro and Basshaa are acquaintances, apparently, and are sort of affiliated with each other? Their conversation is quick, but basically we seem to learn that Jiro's trying to stop eating humans for the time being. Whether it's because he's grown fond of Yuri, or if he just doesn't want to draw attention for now, we don't really know. Either way, it's a pretty interesting storyline development as jiro ends up becoming more and more enigmatic.

In 2008, we get more of the Megumi/Nago verbal fighting, which... honestly, it's not hard to really pick Megumi's side in all this considering what a douchebag Nago consistently acts. I definitely also agree with Megumi's assessment that Nago's a massive hypocrite, since despite admonishing her and straight-up sabotaging her initial operation, Nago is still making use of Wataru as a gofer. Megumi also gives both Wataru and the audience some context about Nago... which is interesting? In his idea of "a small sin is still a sin", Nago sort of accidentally drove his politician father into taking his own life. We get to see a bit of this flashback, with Nago being uncompromising in his justice, and refuses to forgive his father. We also get to see the start of his obsession with buttons, when he rips off his dad's suit button while defending himself from his dad's beatings. At least it's an abusive dad that died? It's an interesting backstory, even if I still don't like Nago all that much.

Hilariously, it's neither Megumi nor the self-styled super-competent Nago that ends up uncovering Count von Prawn... by, uh, stealing the creepy bloody soup stock that the Count leaves behind, because it makes for good varnish. One burned violin and one jealous, eavesdropping Shizuka later, and the Count shows up to take his secret sauce back, and, uh... it's just so surreal that this is happening. Our vampire heroes and villains are fighting over a ladle of soup stock, while some wacky love-triangle hijinks are happening.

In any case, Wataru is dressed up in an adorable suit set, but Shizuka shows up and drags Wataru off on his date because she's jealous of Megumi. At least Shizuka has a quasi-legit reason for interrupting another Megumi/Wataru date, y'know? Count von Chef attacks and reveals that the soup stock is apparently to 'fatten the soul up', before revealing his Fangire self. Megumi shows up to fight the Prawn Fangire, Wataru gets Shizuka to safety before going full-on Kiva, and we get a pretty cool battle. A rider kick later, and the dying Count feeds his soul to a rose... which ends up reviving his butlers and fusing them into this giant CGI chandelier monstrosity.

Which means Kiva summons his own giant CGI monstrosity, the Castle Doran, as well as its smaller buddy, the Shu-Doran, and we get a combination sequence, an exchange of missiles and fireballs and shit, and Doran vomits out a fireball that helps to propel Kiva forwards as a kick. And scene.

Ultimately... not the biggest fan of the conclusion. The 1986 storyline doesn't really have a solid conclusion, but it's at least somewhat satisfying as it keeps the intrigue aroud what the fuck Jiro is all about, and Otoya's continued abuse is kind of amusing. The 2008 storyline sort of goes back and forth on Nago's backstory and the Megumi/Nago fight and the investigation into the restaurant, before focusing almost squarely on the latter and devolving into a relatively unimpressive (even by the standards of the shows at that time) giant CGI-monster battle. There's a neat bit of "aww, the Fangire has a heart" when Count von Chef gives up his own life to resurrect his butlers, but ultimately, kind of a messy end to a two-parter. 

Random Notes:

• I checked, and this is apparently the first and last appearance of Shu-Doran (or Shoo-Doran, it basically means 'little Doran'), a windmill that transforms into a miniature Doran dragon. It's never explained, and presumably just here to randomly promote a toy. 
• So, uh... Shizuka just doesn't know that Wataru is Kiva? Or the Fangires? Considering she knows about Kivat, and seems to be Wataru's childhood friend that takes care of most things for him, this actually caught me by surprise. 
• The chandelier Fangire demon thing actually looks relatively neat and nowhere as unnatural-looking as Castle Doran. 
• Jiro licking his lips and fingers while having his back towards Otoya and Yuri questioning where the monster went is such a darkly comedic scene.
• Absolutely adorable is Megumi, eating some fried fish, seeing Wataru slowly walking back to his home while holding a soup ladle, and then running after him while biting said fish. Also hilarious is how Wataru and Megumi straight-up panic the hell out when the varnish causes the violin that Wataru is holding to catch on fire. 
• Among the antics in Cafe Mal d'Amour, circa 1986, is Otoya mispronouncing the Wonderful Blue Sky Group as the Refreshing Spring Breeze Club. His attempt to leave without drinking coffee causes the owner to sic the little golden retriever puppy at Otoya. 
• The puppy's name is Buruman! Buruman is a good boy.
• I love the implication that Count von Chef just doesn't recognize Wataru when he's all dressed up, considering how frumpy he tends to look normally. 
• Like, seriously, though, holy fuck, Otoya, that massive mug of coffee...

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 1: A Blind Start!

So, unlike the past two generations, I've kept myself more or less completely blind about any news of Generation VIII. Basically, after the first two or three trailers, I ended up going completely blind and shut off any real news of what the hell's going on with the eighth generation of Pokemon... and a good chunk of it is due to the massive glut of shitty fans on both sides of the arguments of the controversies surrounding this generation. From the people out for blood and nitpicking every single thing that Generation VIII failed to deliver on, to the people on the other side throwing vitriol at the haters, calling every single attempt at criticism as childish and basically worshiping the games as the second coming or something. Both sides of the argument genuinely disgusted me so much that I sort of just took a whole load of steps back and sort of ignored the franchise's news and the massive amount of online argumentation surrounding these games.

And... and as an interesting side effect, if nothing else, I ended up not knowing about any of the news about these games. The last trailer I watched, I believe, was the one that debuted the Dynamax/Gigantamax forms. I've seen some of the more... meme-tastic Pokemon that has been revealed since like the longcat Meowth and Sirfetch'd, and a comment on this blog alerted me to the existence of Galarian Yamask, but other than that, I remain blissfully unaware about anything that's going on in these games. So for the first time in decades, I'm actually going into a Pokemon game basically completely blind about anything that I'm meeting, which isn't a feeling I've had since... since, oh, I don't know, the Game Boy era? Anyway, this means that I'm basically doing a completely blind playthrough about everything that's going on, and that includes my reaction to the plot, to new Pokemon designs, and everything -- and I intend to remain mostly unspoiled. I've gotten a friend to help me edit in the pictures, so I won't get spoiled trawling the net for pictures.

Anyway, this is going to be a super-casual let's play description thing. It's not going to be anywhere as thorough as my playthroughs of the previous games that I did text Let's Plays of on this blog, and especially nowhere as intricate as my Uranium playthrough. It's more of a summary/reaction thing that's going on.
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Anyway... with that disclaimer out of the way, Pokemon Sword! The game opens with your usual "welcome to the world of Pokemon" speech, but instead of a Professor talking about it, it's some dude called Rose, who's like, an announcer in one of those huge football stadiums in Poke-Britain, and he shows off some weird-ass elephant Pokemon that looks like it stepped right out of Dumbo's high-on-acid hallucination. That's not a complaint; I do actually like that elephant.

And then, we're introduced to the Galar Champion, who is the most... well, let's just say that Leon wouldn't look out of place in like, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or something. He's got long purple hair, he does wacky victory poses, and his fashion sense could only be described as the unholy spawn of a football player, a king, and a Formula One car. I can not take this man seriously with his big-ass poofy cape stickered all over with sponsorship stickers, or his absolutely ridiculous-looking shorts-over-pants look. He's wacky, and he fights some dude called Raishan (who I bet is a gym leader or something), and Leon shows off the gimmick of this generation: Gigantamax, where it's basically Mega Evolution, but your Pokemon grows, and it's apparently different enough that Nintendo wants to market it as something completely different.

Credit where credit's due, Gigantamax Charizard (Giga Charizard? Max Charizard? Charizard-Max?) does look pretty damn cool even if it's honestly not the most creative design out there. It's just Charizard, but bigger and with extra flames. It's a cool cutscene, if nothing else.

And then we start off in Postwick Town, where our 'rival', Hop, shows up and... and he's basically Hau 2.0. in that he's just a happy, excitable neighbour. Except unlike Hau, who sort of starts off being friendly and mellow and we sort of see that the writers of the game at least wanted to give Hau sort of a "high pressure from his family" story, Hop's just... Hop's just kinda there, a flat character who just really really wants to be champion and has kind of a big ego, but not big enough to be charming. He's like stuck on this middle ground between Hau's saccharine cheeriness and Barry's high-on-sugar excitableness, and as a result, I just... really don't like Hop. He's easily my least favourite part of the game so far; he's just so obviously a vessel for the tutorial, but even compared to the admittedly lackluster rivals we've been having over the past couple of games, he's extremely bland. I don't know. I don't think I hate him, but he's just got so little unique qualities that it makes me hard to even have an opinion about him. He's just so gosh-darned boring.

Anyway, one thing that Pokemon Sword has is the same ol' habit that the seventh generation had -- Tutorial Town lasts for quite a while, although at least the cutscenes and dialogue sort of move a bit faster than Sun & Moon. The damn hand-holding is still there, though, and Hop stops you after every single god damn block of an area that you go through. And, like, at least in Sun & Moon you sort of have like a rotating cast of characters that stop you, y'know? Here there's just this obnoxious, over-friendly little twit who won't leave me alone.

What works, though, is just how charming Galar is. I will concede that I'm part of the camp who think removing things like the National Dex or older features like walking Pokemon is an absolute crime to the franchise, but one thing you won't catch me complaining about is the graphics -- because, yeah, sure, Pokemon's not the sort of franchise to aim for ultra-realism or any of that shit. It's stylized, and it's meant to look pretty, not photo-realistic. And sure, it's not perfect, but man, the sights of the countrysides of Wedgehurst and Postwick, the fields with the Wooloo running through them, and later on, the massive vistas of the Wild Area and Steampunk London are all pretty damn great. It's just such a shame that the areas themselves don't do much other than look pretty (the routes are, in particular, depressingly linear, although admittedly it's probably because I'm still in the early areas) but dang, these areas do look pretty neat. They really do capture the vibe of a smaller, peaceful town where there's just farms and adorable baby sheep everywhere.

Wedgehurst is neat, being your typical "town after your starting zone, but without a gym"... and it's interesting just how much time I've put into this game without even reaching the first gym. Hopefully it'll make the first gym battle feel more like a spectacle. Wedgehurst has a clothes store, which I do like! Not the biggest fan of the default hat that the dude protagonist has, and we do get a surprisingly decent amount of customization even early on.

Anyway... it's basically a typical, slow "start your journey" stuff. Mom -- sorry, we're in Britain. Mum gets a bunch of dialogue, you get to explore the two small towns and the tiny routes that connect them, and we get a bunch of quick information dumps about how Leon is Hop's big brother, Leon's got a Charizard, he's sort of a local hero that everyone's a fan of, he's got that Roronoa Zoro shitty-sense-of-direction gag characteristic and he's going to give me my Pokey-mans. Also, my character lugs around a big-ass chunky bag that could probably fit a small person inside. Also also, Hop's already got a Wooloo, which.. is kinda interesting?


Anyway, long story short, after a bunch of dialogue, Leon decides to allow me and Hop to pick our starter Pokemon, and we get a neat little cutscene of Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble running around a little pond and the tree next to it, which.... I really liked. Of course, from day one of Sword & Shield's announcement, I've been on Team Sobble and been completely indifferent about the other two. What will Sobble evolve into? Who the heck cares, I have my sad lizard boi and I love him. He's a sad boi.

I do like how they sort of sneakily made the rival fight to be a stealth-tutorial for leveling up and type advantages. Which, obviously, as a long-time veteran of this game isn't a refresher I need, but your starter will basically gain a level and learn the STAB move after beating Hop's Wooloo, which would be perfect to use against Hop's own starter. Anyway, there's, like, a barbeque scene or something after this?

Anyway, shortly after the whole picking a starter thing, one of the dumbass Wooloo NPC's that have been headbutting a gate ends up breaking through it and entering into the Slumbering Weald. I've played enough Darkest Dungeon to know that anything called a 'weald' has evil fungus monsters and wretched crones, and we have to save the baa baa sheep. The Weald has pretty fantastic, atmospheric music, a neat little mist effect, and we get to meet the obligatory rodent-of-the-region and bird-of-the-region. The rodent's called Skwovet, which is a bitch-ass pain to spell properly, and I'm... I'm not a fan. It just kinda looks dumb, y'know? And I guess it's a regional early-route rodent, but still. The bird's a lot neater, a precious little chickadee-robin birb called Rookidee. A simple design, but one I like.

Anyway, the Weald sequence sort of ends with an encounter with the box mascot, Zacian... but not quite. He's lacking all of the yellow highlights and the sword it's biting, and it's identified as a "???", and all of Sobble's attacks sort of pass through it as it unleashes more and more mist that cover the area and knock me and Hop out. Leon saves us (and the Wooloo), and... this sequence sort of takes a while, but I really do appreciate it a lot. Generally, I really do appreciate how the games have been slowly moving into incorporating the legendaries a bit earlier into the story, making them feel like actual characters instead of literal plot device coupons that show up with minimal foreshadowing and then disappear to be captured. Like Nebby and Tapu Koko in Generation VII, we learn about Zacian very early on, and that's a neat narrative way to make the inevitable encounter with him down the line feel like it's part of a larger story. Somewhere down the line I kinda want to make a comparison in just how I feel the legendaries are integrated into their respective games. But not now.

Then... more tutorial as my character goes through Route 2 towards the Professor's Lab. Basically, long story short, Hop's a chatty fellow bullshitting about Pokemon Centers, shops, capturing Pokemon, as well as the new gimmick in this generation about whistling to attract the overworld-wandering Pokemon. And, by the way, this generation has a mixture of traditional pop-out-of-grass encounters, as well as the highly popular wandering overworld Pokemon from the Let's Go games. Which I really do love. We can skip some of the more tutorial monologues, and I do so whenever I can, but even so it still feels like the game kind of slogs on.

Thankfully, once Hop stops his yakking and his constant "let's race, hurr hurr hurr!" The routes are pretty neat. We meet both Sonia and Professor Magnolia pretty quickly, and man, these characters are so much more interesting than Hop, why am I saddled with him? Sure, they're still kinda bare-bones, but I do like the depiction of what I get of Magnolia being a very chill old lady who's just as happy to document types of tea and take care of her little corgi baby instead of just devoting life and limb to researching the Pokemon world. Sonia's a retired adventurer that once was of the caliber of Leon, but ended up sort-of-trying-to-be-a-researcher, but is implied that she's not very good or motivated? Anyway, long story short, my character gets the Rotom-Phone (it's a literal smartphone), the Pokedex app (no, really) and beat up Hop again, just so that I can impress Leon for him to give me a letter of recommendation to enter the gym challenge. And... the idea of that whole sequence is very anime and kinda neat, but the execution is kinda bland because... well, Hop kinda sucks and I'm pretty sure having Sobble spit water gun like 6 times to beat up Hop's team isn't the sort of battle that 'rocks you to your core'.

There's also this absolutely shit way of us getting the Dynamax plot device. XY had our character go through kind of a quest of going through this epic Lucario tower, and the power of Mega Evolution has been foreshadowed throughout the game before you can access it. Sun/Moon had you be picked by the legendary totem guardian of an island, and then go through kind of a local ceremony and be taught a dance before you could use Z-Moves. Here, rocks literally just fall down from the sky, the NPC's handwave with, like, three lines of dialogue, and now I have the Dynamax bracelet.

Y'know, they could've at least tried to make this gimmick be more interesting. Like, I really want to like this new gimmick, but it's hard to do when the game itself doesn't make it feel actually interesting.

And then it's capture time, and Route 2 has a bunch of new creatures! I'm unimpressed with Skwovet, of course, but I caught a Rookidee as soon as possible, and, of course, a Yamper because corgis are adorable as shit and I want one. Hoothoots and Seedots are also around here, but I've been catching those since the early '00's. Oh, and also, apparently for some reason my character already has a fishing rod since the beginning of the game. Oooookay? I only encounter Magikarps in fishing spots, though.

Newcomers who I've genuinely never seen before is Blipbug, which... which is basically a geeky little bookworm caterpillar with like a bow-tie and a massive pair of glasses and such an elongated head and... by all rights, I should find this stupid-looking, the way that I sort of am iffy about Scatterbug from XY, but man, this little nerd worm just looks so anxious I can't help but like it. I shouldn't, but it just looks so "oh jeez oh jeez". Silly small worm. I don't feel like it's a design that I normally would like, but man, the model just looks so ridiculous, I can't bring myself to dislike it. There's also Chewtle, the pre-evolved form of Drednaw and man that expression he has on his face with the single chunky tooth and the Charlie Brown eyebrows... Chewtle isn't my favourite design but that face's sure something all right. There's also the Dark-type fox Nickit, which... is still kind of an ordinary animal-turned-into-a-Pokemon, but he's pretty cool and I can totally see him being a popular creature.

Wooloo is also basically the new plot-blocker device, with a bunch of them blocking roads that I can't go through, and after leaving Tutorial Town, a bunch of Wooloo end up blocking the train path, dumping me into the Wild Area. At which point Sonia sort of shows up with even more tutorials, although for the Wild Area, at least it's excusable in that it's a new area.

Anyway, I'm tired. I'll cover my impressions of the Wild Area in the next bit. Overall, though I've absolutely been having fun with Sword. I love most of the designs I meet so far, even if Skwovet is sort of ordinary and boring, and I still don't know how I feel about Chewtle. There's still the little odd bit of confusion since they clearly programmed in walking animation for all the Pokemon that made it through the National-Dex filter into Galar, but cut out the following-Pokemon feature from Let's Go. The storytelling is also pretty tutorial-heavy and I'm obviously not the biggest fan of Hop... but I am having a pretty fun time going through this game.

Random Notes:

• I'll be trying to have a party exclusively of new creatures, I feel, although I'm not purposefully limiting myself at all. We'll see how things go -- right now my party consists of Sobble, Yamper, Rookidee, Blipbug, Nickit and Wooloo. I don't super love any of them but Sobble and the corgi all that much yet, but I'm definitely trying to test these new guys out to see if I'll grow attached to them.
• The Pokemon Center PC's are now Rotoms! This was so unexpected and also adorable, I love it.
• Rotom phone is a lot more quiet than the Rotom Dex. Guess it's in silent mode? Also, are they like mass producing or mass breeding Rotoms now so that Poke-Apple and Poke-Samsung can make smart phones?
• The Pokemon Center now has a counter where you can change your Pokemon's nickname, and also has the move relearner and deleter. It's extremely convenient, and one that still at least makes pokemon nickname changing take a wee bit of effort to make it feel like an event. The days of hunting Luvdiscs to farm heart scales are over, though.
• There's a weird Audino-looking Pokemon in the nickname counter in the Pokemon Center. They don't say its name yet. I'm not super crazy about it, but it's neat to see random new creatures here and there!
• The Wooloo are just there as literal roadblocks, huh? Sleeping Wooloo blocking routes, crazy Wooloo blocking trains...
• Also, the EXP Share is just on all the time, and it's not even an item. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I just feel so neutral about it, y'know? I kinda wished that they at least made it a toggle-able option for the players out there that want a challenge. 
• I was about to talk about how we get a new attack in "Power Trip", but apparently it showed up in Sun/Moon as Krookodile's signature move. Well Rookidee knows it!