Movie Review: Resident Evil - Welcome to Raccoon City

Resident Evil : Welcome to Raccoon City [2021]

a.k.a. the modern adaptation of Resident Evil that didn't suck!

Because I didn't know what Netflix did, but that wasn't an adaptation, just... just a borrowing of IP. Welcome to Raccoon City, mind you, is hardly perfect. It smooshes together the main characters and vague plotlines of the STARS team going into the Spencer mansion in Resident Evil, as well as the outbreak in the city in Resident Evil 2, mixes all the main characters of both games together, exorcises a bunch of others and shuffles around their importance and competence. Plotlines and characters like Mr. X, Ada Wong, the mansion Tyrant and many others are dropped entirely, while characters that aren't connected are given a tenuous connection here for sake of drama. 

There are also a bunch of wink-wink-nod easter eggs like the 'itchy scratchy' bit (which felt a bit forced), the Jill sandwich joke (very forced), the trucker hitting the lady, the Ashford Twins (raise your hands if you know who they are!) and the admittedly fun recreation of the first zombie head-turn from the first RE1 game. 

When you really stop to think about it, a lot of the stuff in this movie aren't explained particularly well, and some of the new connections -- making William Birkins a mad scientist who also has the Redfield siblings as part of his orphanage, and has been harvesting kids from the orphanage, and also Lisa Trevor from RE1 is just a hulking monster that lives in said orphanage and its catacombs leading to the Spencer Mansion -- none of them are really adequately explained and just handwaved over. Some of the others (like the presence of the Lickers, the G-Virus or Lisa Trevor) you could at least rely on second-hand knowledge from the games, but overall the movie itself is kind of a mess in explaining things. 

But other than those minor problems? I had a blast watching this movie. We get some fun recreations of some iconic shots from RE1 and RE2, albeit 'remixed' to be in a bit of a different order. We get some pretty great casting, even if not all the characters are used to their fullest potential. Leon Kennedy never really grew out of his 'confused, handsome newbie' phase other than that single bazooka moment, while if we're being honest, Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield really don't do much. But at least they were treated relatively with respect. Claire Redfield takes the brunt of the characterization and being the 'face' of the good guys, although I'm still not sure if the random decision to make her part of William Birkin's creepy orphanage is really necessary. I suppose it gives us a clumsy way to tie in the RE2 and RE1 cast members as far as plotlines go?

Wesker also has his plot going on in the background, which is... serviceable. I feel like they try a bit too much to humanize Wesker and make this kind of a sympathetic backstory for him before he dons the shades in the mid-credits scene, but I do feel like the movie might be better served by having Albert Wesker actually be a conniving cold-hearted bitch. But I do like the interpretation of him as someone who's a bit over his head, especially when he realized that he just shot a father in front of his daughter. 

William Birkins (played by the glorious Neal McDonough) and Chief Irons (Donal Logue, a.k.a. Bullock from Gotham) also share in being absolutely entertaining. Birkins gets to ham shit up -- probably not as much as I would've preferred to -- before turning into a giant eyeball monster. It is kind of a shame that we do get a shoehorned plotline about him being Chris Redfield's surrogate father... Chris, Claire and Birkins share so little screentime together that it really feels like just something random they tried to work into the main plot but ended up leaving on the cutting room floor. 

Chief Irons, meanwhile, lasts a lot longer than his video game counterpart(s), doesn't get to have creepy pedophilic vibes, is as much of a dick as Donal Logue's hamminess allows him to be, and gets the glory of being killed by a Licker. Which, by the way, we actually get to see being creepily stalking in the shadows, but also jumping out and being glimpsed by our heroes in its creepy, eyeless, bulging-brain glory. Yes, it's not that much more detailed than the Licker model we see in the RE2 remake games, but you know what? At least it looks like a Licker, and at least we see that. 

Lisa Trevor, meanwhile, is an... interesting addition. Her addition really does feel shoehorned in, and while she is amazingly executed as a friendly monster that befriends Claire as a kid and ends up helping them out later, her arrival is so out of nowhere, and there's not really too much explanation beyond her being one of Birkins' pervious orphanage victims. Appropriately creepy and soulful, though, again, thanks to the movie having a bit too much characters, Lisa basically disappears after her mid-movie scene. 

I do really think the movie does try to do too much. The orphanage plot feels a bit forced, and characters like Sherry Birkin seems to be shoved there just out of obligation since she was in the original RE2 plotline. I do really feel like the movie's version of events -- characters trying to get out of the city, while another group is investigating a creepy mansion, and the two being linked by some shared backstory -- could've worked a lot better... but perhaps after some exorcising of plot elements. Maybe if they really went all-in on Birkins being an abusive parent-figure to the Redfield twins? All in all, though, definitely a more truer-to-text adaptation of the games compared to anything we've gotten so far. And in terms of actually delivering as far as a horror-action mix movie, yeah, I think this one does a decent, if not mind-blowing, job.

Movie Review: Werewolf By Night

Marvel's Werewolf By Night [2022]

So we got this little Marvel project that basically came out of nowhere, and I felt like it's the perfect little entry into the Halloween season. Completely coming out of nowhere and honestly feeling like a standalone movie if not for the Marvel branding at the beginning (and the token showcase of the Avengers' silhouettes), Werewolf By Night wouldn't feel out of place if you told me that this was a standalone adaptation of Marvel properties. 

Now admittedly I was already familiar with some of the characters here, which drove my excitement for the show. I was a long-term fan of Elsa Bloodstone ever since I discovered Nextwave through seeing her in a mobile game, and any Marvel fan should be passingly familiar with Man-Thing. And I wasn't actually that well-acquainted with the titular Werewolf By Night, but I did look up the issues of his run that Moon Knight debuted in. 

And... this movie is surprisingly well-done. It absolutely is not for everybody, with its homage to the old Universal Horror movies of yore, and shot almost entirely in black-and-white other than the lighting given off by the plot device known as the Bloodstone (a nice trick that they also did in Love and Thunder). We did get some colour at the end to show the MCU versions of Elsa, Man-Thing and Jack Russell, but otherwise the movie's in black-and-white, which I know pisses a lot of the younger audience off. But as someone who did go around looking for these older horror entries, this was pretty damn great for me. 

The plotline is really nothing too over-the-top once you get past the introduction of the funky concepts. There are monster-hunters in the world who go around slaying demons, monsters and the creepy-crawlies of the world... and one of the greatest, Ulysses Bloodstone, has just passed away. With the aid of a hideously morbid message embedded into a corpse like a damn gramophone and his creepy wife Verussa, Ulysses Bloodstone sets up a hunt to determine who would be the new leader of their little... coven? Cult? Organization?

And the audience is pretty much shown the main characters from the get-go. Jack Russell is who we get the most screentime of in the beginning part of the show, while the pissy Elsa Bloodstone strides in and the movie makes it pretty clear that she's not in good speaking terms with her stepmother or the rest of the organization. There is this Viking-esque guy Joshua who gets a bit more of a speaking, antagonistic role and a very pale-looking guy that looks like he's cosplaying a Lord of the Rings elf, but otherwise the rest of the hunters are just there to be killed. 

And, again, there's a fun, gothic, comic-book feel to everything going on with the fight in the maze, which also later extends to a crypt. The plot really isn't anything too shocking -- turns out that Jack Russell has infiltrated the hunt in order to free his buddy Ted, better known to the comic-book fandom as the Man-Thing. Ted is the monster that the plot device known as the Bloodstone is implanted to, and who the other monster-hunters have to slay. And all the other hunters are jerks for Elsa and Jack to avoid and kill, in one point. Elsa's backstory as someone who's basically put through parental abuse as they groomed her up to take over her father's legacy is something familiar for me, but is told rather organically throughout the movie. 

And, of course, the not-exactly-plot-twist of Jack Russell being a monster himself gets revealed to the surviving monster hunters as he gets zapped by the Bloodstone. Angry, racist Verussa, who sees all monsters as beings to be eliminated, decides to shove Elsa and Jack into a cage, and then uses the power of the Bloodstone to transform Jack into his werewolf form... at which point we do get a pretty brutal sequence. I think Marvel/D+ is using the black-and-white and the blood splatters to get away with a whole lot more brutality than they otherwise could?

We also get a pretty expected friendship moment, because Jack's sniffing of Elsa while in human form causes his mutated werewolf form to resist mauling Elsa and leave her. Man-Thing also shows up and uses his badass fire-power to burn the shit out of Verussa. The movie ends with Elsa in possession of the Bloodstone and the rest of her clan's resources... while Man-Thing plays solitaire, makes coffee for Jack and demands sushi with his grunts. 

Overall, it did admittedly run a bit long, and I actually wished that we perhaps get a bit more from Jack (beyond his charming kookiness), but there are a fair amount of fun combat scenes here, and keeping the monsters to just the two does make it a bit easier to follow and swallow the development done for all the characters involved. Pretty fun entry, if a very unusual one! 

Marvel Easter Egg Corner:

• Elsa Bloodstone is a character introduced in the 2001 Bloodstone comic-book series, as the daughter of monster-hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, but faded into obscurity until she was chosen for the tongue-in-cheek miniseries Nextwave, which established her as a British, tea-drinking, monster-shooting badass. She would then enjoy a surge in popularity as she gets featured in many video games and crossovers. 
• Man-Thing, real name Theodore 'Ted' Sallis, is one of the more iconic monsters of Marvel comics. He was a scientist who was trying to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum, but ended up being betrayed by his wife who sold him out to the terrorist organization AIM. In desperation, Ted injected himself with the imperfect serum, and crashed his car into a swamp. While not explained until later, magical forces in the swamp reacted and transformed Ted Sallis into Man-Thing, a shambling monster who is able to secret burning acid in response to negative emotions.
• ...yes, if Man-Thing's concept is somewhat similar to DC's Swamp Thing, you are absolutely correct.
• Werewolf By Night, or Jack Russell, is a comic book run that most famously introduced Moon Knight to the world, but at the time of publication capitalized on the comic book code relaxing on depicting supernatural beings like werwolves. The titular Werewolf By Night (or just 'the werewolf') is a man who discovered on his 18th birthday that he inherited the curse of the werewolf, causing him to be thrust into a world of dark monsters. 

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War E02 Review: Weird Hat Guy

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 2: The Blood Warfare 1: Foundation Stones

A little bit late from when it's released, but we get episode 2 of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War! And I still have enough to talk about here. I don't doubt that eventually I'll lapse into like, two-episodes-per-review or something, especially when we do get out of the setup and into the fights... but for now, I'll try to do episodic reviews as much as I can. 

Anyway, we start off right where the previous episode left off, with Yhwach bullying the poor Arrancar soldier Luders Friegen with the whole 'you can give your report lying down... but I suppose you don't need your legs, then'. Yhwach basically doesn't really give two shits about the wellbeing of the Arrancar, and essentially pulls out flimsy excuses out of thin air ('are you a prophet?') to basically murder them, exploding them into bloody, gory corpses after they literally outlived his usefulness. 

In the human world, we get brief scenes showing more of Ichigo and company talking to each other, particularly Orihime pointing out that Uryu and Ichigo had gotten a lot more buddy-buddy recently. Ichigo returns just in time for the two substitute Shinigami to receive a broadcasted call (which makes a bit more sense -- the manga had it to just be a call for them to return) that catches our heroes up on the events that happened in the Seireitei. Akon talks about the death of Sasakibe, the infiltration of the First Division office... and how a single member of these invaders killed 116 First Division Shinigami in 182 seconds. Okay, I did not remember that! Poor Yamamoto must be pissed!

After a brief few shots of our heroes being somber, Ichigo decides to patrol the area before the glorious return of Nel, who has the best and most ridiculous voice in the anime ever. She headbutts the shit out of Ichigo all the way to the ground... but then she begs Ichigo to help out Hueco Mundo. This segues nicely into Yhwach revealing that he has captured Harribel and held her in chains.

We then cut to the funeral of Sasakibe, which is a nice, somber scene intercut with a silent memory of Yamamoto seeing Sasakibe kneel before him and pledging his service. It's... it's very somber, very quiet... and it is interesting that the anime basically cut out Byakuya's eulogy for Sasakibe. Could you tell that I've been skimming through the manga while I'm watching this? I don't really think it's as simple as them cutting out scenes, though, and more like them saving certain parts of the manga for later? I assume a lot of this Sasakibe stuff will be more important when Yamamoto confronts Sasakibe's killer. 

And then as Nel and Pesche inform Team Ichigo of the takeover of Hueco Mundo... we actually get to see it! I mean, we don't actually get like an anime-only Yhwach-vs-Harribel fight or whatever, but we actually get to see them about to clash with each other. Yhwach hovering above the burning blue flames and the aftermath of Harribel being smashed onto a stone slab... the two of them confronting each other as Nel runs away, before the Reishi explosions in the distance cut away the flashback... it's a small thing, but it's a hell lot more respect than the manga actually gave to Harribel! I don't think they'll go so far as to adapt that one light novel that dealt with their fate, but it'd be nice to get like, a short, abridged showcase of this at the end of the anime to show what happened to Harribel and the other Hueco Mundo residents since they kinda got ignored. 

A lot of the conversation here is just Team Ichigo deciding to go to Hueco Mundo, with the whole 'we help our friends if they need help' heroic bit. We do get one of my favourite comedic moments in this arc as they run through the Garganta, with Ichigo asking Urahara how he managed to arrive at the perfect moment... and apparently Urahara's just waiting outside Ichigo's window for the perfect opportunity. Oh, you weird candy-selling hat man! Actually, his role in the manga is really something that's ripe for a couple extra scenes to explain in this anime adaptation. 

Our heroes arrive in Hueco Mundo to see the Quincies rounding up the surviving Arrancar while massacring large swathes of them, and Ichigo being Ichigo, he goes off to help the Arrancar despite the group not containing Dondochakka. 

We then get to see Sternritter "J", Quilge Opie, overseeing the captured Arrancar before him... and we get a very nice flash to his name-card. They picked a pretty perfect voice actor to give him the sort of manic energy that his manga counterpart exudes, and he just hams shit up while taking any excuse he can to just keep impaling random Arrancars with a spear, all under the guise of selection. 

Loly and Menoly show up and get absolutely fucked up as Quilge slashes Menoly apart and bitch-slaps Loly. It is interesting that Quilge makes it sound like he's expecting some Arrancar to show guts in this way, but I'm pretty sure he's just bullshitting. Quilge shit-talks Aizen for appointing such losers as his aides (which is a very fair criticism), before the Tres Bestia show up. And it happens pretty quickly, but damn, Apacci's chakram attack literally tore apart entire squadrons and leaves behind rivers of blood before Quilge catches it with one hand. Man, these Quincy goons suck!

Also, a neat little single-line addition to the anime is Sung-Sun noting that the Quincy invasion happened when they were away, explaining why they weren't around to defend their master Harribel. 

We get some nice scenes showing Mila Rose tearing through Quilge's minions, as well as Apacci using her weird spiral green Cero and one-shotting a random Quincy with a badass, bloody back-handed punch. A neat little extension from the manga counterpart is having Quilge be a bit more involved in this, with Sung-Sun sneaking up on Quilge and trying to assassinate him with her weapon while Quilge makes his offer of surrender. Mila Rose also does a huge power-slam with her ax. The three of them face off against Quilge...

...but of course, get absolutely wiped out just as Ichigo, Nel and the others arrive over the ridge. I mean, again, it's kind of expected to see these lesser enemies from the previous arc get bullied by the lesser enemies from the current arc! But there's a pretty great moment because we briefly cut away to the Captains' meeting as Kurotsuchi Mayuri explains to everyone present that, yes, their new enemies are Quincies. 

Again, pretty great animation all around. There's a nice bit where they're filling in the gaps here and there... and I am happy that they're not going to overbloat the season by having, well, entire filer episodes (unless they adapt the light novels) but give us just enough to help pad out some confusing plot holes here and there. Very much appreciated for sure! Now the Quilge Opie arc isn't the most interesting part of the manga (especially before the Seireitei invasion), but Quilge is a very entertaining, scenery-chewing bastard and I will highly enjoy his antics with voice-acting. 

Random Notes:

• We get the opening, 'SCAR', and the ending, 'Saihate'. Very great visuals in both, and I'm particularly enamored with the monochrome-and-pink of the opening. It really is something that screams Tite Kubo. 
• I will alternate between 'Yhwach' and 'Juhabach' because a lot of these anime reviews are kind of stream-of-thought. I'll try to use the official spelling of Yhwach, but I've been calling ol' mustache-man Juhabach for near damn close to a decade now, so. 
• Ah, a brief little hint to Yhwach's powers when he talks about seeing the future and prophets and stuff! I didn't catch that at all, although I mostly didn't really care much about the Luders/Ebern sequence in the manga. Also, I wonder if Quilge's 'selection' is also meant to be foreshadowing... although it's probably just him being a loco. 
• "You have done nothing worthy of praise or punishment" would probably be the best you could hope to receive from a stereotypical minion-killing evil boss. Unfortunately, Yhwach is much worse than most stereotypical minion-killing evil bosses. 
• Jugram Haschwalth has a brief role, albeit hooded (he wasn't in the manga volume this adapts!). 
• ...it is actually hilarious for them to actually have like, Quincy janitors mopping up the remnants of Ebern and Luders. At least, I assume they are Quincies and not more Arrancars. Either way...
• Minor point, but they de-censored Tier Harribel's Resurreccion form. 
• I did think of reviewing the Chainsaw Man anime too, since I really did enjoy the manga when I read it, but I don't think taking up too many series at once is going to be feasible for my schedule in the near future.

She-Hulk S01E09 Review: Broken Fourth Wall

She-Hulk, Season 1, Episode 9: Whose Show Is It Anyway?

Yeah, I'm... I'm not the biggest fan of this one. Admittedly, it's a very, very brave, ballsy move. And I can respect that. My hang-ups over this episode doesn't come from the frankly underwhelming plot about the Intelligencia storyline, but rather about the massive fourth-wall break that happens around halfway through the episode. 

It's just that... well, I do really think that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law didn't really try to commit too hard into the fourth-wall breaking that her comic-book counterpart does, which makes this complete shattering of the fourth wall as a huge part of the climax feel a bit more bizarre than funny. Compare, I guess, the Deadpool movies where the fourth-wall breaks happen at a much more frequent rate. Although... I suppose the show might've gotten a bit too annoying if they had done it a bit more often? Eh. 

The actual events that followed up the cliffhanger of the previous episode were a bit more procedural, if not the most exciting way to spin it. The other lawyers meet Jen in Blonsky's old cell, there's a nice little talk about how Jen doesn't get the 'anyone would respond like this' since she's not just 'anyone', but a Hulk. She gets a power-inhibitor cuff slapped on, she's fired from her job and we get to see a montage as she ends up moving back with her very supportive parents. At least dad is, anyway. Jen and Nikki try to hunt down Intelligencia and bring them to justice, which leads Nikki to use Jen's high school dance video to get a way into Intelligencia. And because they assumed a 'him', Nikki uses Pug to infiltrate the douchebag gathering, leading to Pug having to meet the Intelligencia members who are all frat bros who bitch about Lady Thors and She-Hulks and other 'females' and all that. Very obviously, Todd (the 'Wakanda spear' guy from last episode) is actually the mastermind of all this, which... sure, why not. 

With the power of coincidence, Jen takes that time to take Blonsky's offer up on using his mountain retreat, not realizing that the retreat is where Intelligencia is having their little retreat in. Also, Blonsky, or rather, Abomination, is the guest speaker in this location... but the episode doesn't really make it particularly clear whether Abomination is actually the secret mastermind or sponsor behind Intelligencia or that he's just there to make money with his Abomination form. It leans more towards the latter since Abomination helps Jen out later on, but I don't know... this 'revelation' of Abomination entering the room feels kinda cheap. 

And then things go absolutely off the rails. Todd injects himself with Jen's Hulk blood and turns into a deformed Hulk. Titania shows up! Hulk shows up, and mistakes Abomination protecting Jen as an attack!

And while I do agree that things kinda make sense, Jen... punches through the Disney+ Marvel menu. Okay? She decides to swing into "Marvel: Assembled", the behind-the-scenes show about the MCU... where she proceeds to basically take the role of a fictional character that's self-aware that she's in a show and talk to the writers. We get jokes of the massive Disney-Marvel NDA, we get jokes of the 'all just a dream' cop-out from the writers, and she comes face-to-face with Kevin Feige. Or rather, K.E.V.I.N., an AI entertainment algorithm that creates movies based on a formula -- poking fun at how Marvel themselves do admittedly fall into using formula. 

There are a couple of fun jokes here, the best part of which is KEVIN telling She-Hulk to transform into her human form because 'She-Hulk' is expensive... and for the camera to cut away to the animation team doesn't have to animate her transformation. All the while, of course, KEVIN himself is a CGI robot. It's probably the funniest joke in this episode. 

Jen and KEVIN have a bit of an argument, and Jen's argument is that the main story of her show is that her balance between her Jen and She-Hulk lives... and KEVIN agrees? Okay? Which... ends up returning to a superior climax, right? Except there really isn't any climax to speak of, because what we return to after KEVIN rewrites reality seems to be a retconned version where Todd never uses the 'derivative Super Soldier serum', Emil gets arrested, and... what happened in this sequence is muddled and Jen never really got her comeuppance against Todd and that other douche she slept with (who didn't even appear, right?) and... I don't know. I'm not going to trash-talk this episode just because the climax didn't agree with me. Because it's definitely experimental, and I know there's a lot of people who like these sort of comedies... but I don't know. Maybe I'm just old. 

At the very least, I would've liked them to at least show how things went down in this 'fixed' version of events? With perhaps showing how the She-Hulk blood didn't work on Todd, or something? Or an actual conversation with Emil that explains what he's up to? No, instead we get Daredevil dropping down from the sky (literally!) and while it's always welcome to see Matt Murdock again, it feels far more shoehorned than Titania or Hulk in the 'bad' climax. Oh, hey, I guess KEVIN also sneaks in Hulk back into the family barbeque, with the completely out-of-nowhere introduction of Skaar, Son of Hulk. Okay, sure. 

And... uh... yeah, I guess the final shot of the episode is She-Hulk going back to lawyering. Wong breaks Abomination out of prison. And... I don't know. This climax does try to be clever, it does try to be different. I respect that. The whole season has felt very experimental, really... I guess this just isn't a show for me, but I respect the fans of this show. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The episode opens with a shot-for-shot parody of the 1977 The Incredible Hulk TV series, although obviously with She-Hulk in place of Hulk. 
  
• Despite the bizarreness of Jen's fourth-wall breaking, Sensational She-Hulk #31 did have Jen break through her comics and demand explanations from Marvel offices. 
• K.E.V.I.N. is, of course, a reference to head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige.
• Skaar, Son of Hulk, is the son of Hulk and a Sakaarian in the comics, which he conceived during the events of World War Hulk which was very, very loosely adapted to Thor: Ragnarok.
• Wong and Abomination talking about the Wi-Fi password in Kamar-Taj is actually a reference to Mordo and Dr. Strange's discussion about Wi-Fi there (the password is Shamballa).
• Jane Foster's Thor is mentioned as one of the female superheroes that Intelligencia is complaining about, using the moniker of 'Lady Thor' which Jane in-universe loathes. 
• She-Hulk mentions the X-Men, rightfully asking KEVIN when they're going to be added into the MCU. 
• Black Panther's music plays when KEVIN talks about how the SFX team has moved to another project. 

One Piece 1064 Review: SHACHI DOES SOMETHING ZOMG

One Piece, Chapter 1064: Egghead Labophase

Oh, what an interesting chapter! I didn't manage to get this chapter out in time for the early translations' release, but I remain blissfully unspoiled until I got my hands on it. And... it opens in perhaps the first time in a very, very long time that a Cover Story actually properly ties into the main story. We get to see Aokiji and Van Augur kidnapping Pudding in the cover story, confirming and putting in words what some people are apparently still debating about... but I think this puts to rest any arguments on whether it's Aokiji or not who attacked Whole Cake Island. But Pudding actually appears later on in the chapter itself, making this cover story a great tie-in despite the disparity in the chronology of events. 

But, to the shock of many people including myself... we don't actually cut away from the Law vs. Blackbeard fight! And it's not just Blackbeard massacring Law like Aizen massacred all those captains in Bleach, no! I still think that narrative demands that Law loses in order to preserve Blackbeard's threat level, but by god he's going to make Blackbeard work for his final villain status. Hell, even Law's crew get to do something, and after spending the entirety of the Wano arc being handwaved as complete and utter deadweights! Law just sends his crew out to do their thing before going all-in with awakening unleashing a R-Room: Amputate that slices poor Stronger in half! I'm sure the horse is ultimately okay, this isn't JoJo after all, but I really do still wonder what makes R-Room different from a regular Room since Blackbeard expresses disbelief that Law's powers could 'do that', identifying it as an awakened technique. I guess Law cuts Stronger in half without making the usual Room dome first?

Blackbeard unleashes his own attack, the 'Tremor Crush', which knocks down many of the other Heart Pirates, but then Doc Q lobs his basket of exploding apples from Jaya. Use your Sick-Sick Fruit, Doctor! But then... Shachi, swimming in the ocean, gulps down a fuck-ton of water and... I think the best description of it is Pokemon's Hydro Pump? He just Hydro Pumps the shit out of the apple basket, which explodes mid-air? Holy hell! The only explanation that Shachi gives is that 'don't mess with people raised in the frigid North Blue', but that hardly explains how he suddenly became like a Water-type Pokemon or some shit. Apparently, the Heart Pirates are experts in aquatic battles, and... having a submarine and everything, that makes sense, huh?

Bepo also uses his ears to basically be a radar, redirecting Jean Bart to jump in the way of bullets to protect Law. And... it's just taking a bunch of bullet shots, but Jean Bart literally just blocks a bunch of bullets from Van Augur! Again, I highly doubt that any of these guys will stand up to Blackbeard and his double-Devil-Fruit nonsense, but being able to basically control the crowd of other Devil Fruit users Blackbeard has under his employ is most certainly useful. 

Law unleashes a K-Room: Shock Wille, the attack that took down Big Mom, and... holy hell, it looked like it hurt Blackbeard. the giant sword jabbing onto his sternum and unleashing the mother of all bloody explosions as the shockwaves tear through his body. First blood to Law! 

And, well, Van Augur just warps Blackbeard away from the attack, and even offers a retreat while disparagingly calling out Blackbeard for jumping in without a plan. Which honestly has a strong 'Nami and Usopp talks shit about Luffy charging in' vibe to it, no? But Blackbeard's pretty civil with Augur, going back to face off against Law. The two talk smack about each other's crew's disadvantages, and about the risk-vs-benefits of Devil Fruits. But the final shot we get of the two fighting is Law and Blackbeard clashing, before Blackbeard activates Black Vortex... and we cut away. 

And interposed within this scene we get the aforementioned Pudding tie-in, where the Polar Tang is bombarding the Sabre of Xebec from below. A couple of random Blackbeard goons talk smack to Pudding, who's in a jail cell and having the most confidently defiant expression on her face.

So... yeah. It's a great moment for Law and his Heart Pirates. Now I don't think Law's going to be killed off-screen necessarily -- narratively, he's grown too much as part of the main cast for him to die off-screen. But the Ace parallels are pretty obvious, and by sheer dint of us needing Blackbeard around for a confrontation with the Straw Hats does meant that Law's probably not going to walk out of this victorious. A very unexpected confrontation, and... while at the end of the day it's one of those tropes common in anime where two badasses walk into a room, and the one that's going to be the insurmountable threat for our hero walk out alive... but I really do love that they're at least letting Law show his due. 

Then we cut back to Egghead. Bonney has swapped everyone's ages around, which fools the Pacifista, and... a lot of their discussion about Bartholomew Kuma are stuff that the fandom already know about for a while now. Jinbe summarizes a lot of the reputation that Kuma had, notably the whole bit about him being the 'Tyrant King'. Apparently, after being a pirate and revolutionary, he got captured, but Vegapunk got interested in his... muscle and abilities? Which led to the whole cyborg stuff? Bonney understands the Shichibukai deal, but doesn't understand why her father would sign himself off to become a mindless cyborg. Bonney, while playing around with a lightsaber/beam sword, also rants about how Kuma wasn't a tyrant but was a good king, and hated the World Government. Again, not something that takes a lot of genius to figure out from context clues. Bonney then mentions offhandedly that Kuma was part of a 'special people'... and whether this means that Kuma was a secret Lunarian all along (he is shaded to be rather tanned in the anime) as she airs her grievances against Vegapunk. 

Speaking of Vegapunk, or rather Vegapunk #2, she's bringing the rest of the crew to meet Shaka. We finally get to see Egghead Island from a top view. Team Luffy is in the Fabriophase, the factories on ground level, whereas Lilith is taking the rest of the Straw Hats to Labophase, which is above the clouds. Zoro and Brook are staying behind on the ship to watch, and I wonder how this is going to tie into things? But the rest of the crew have fun on the Sky Island clouds, and they dress up in local Egghead outfits. Sanji gets a Hawaiian shirt too? And Robin's basically looking very... um... yeah, 'tough' isn't quite the word I'm going to use here, but yeah. 

And then we cut to Shaka, Vegapunk #01, talking to another person over the line and noting how his intelligence has caused him to be able to predict enough of the future to know that his death is imminent. And he's talking to Dragon, really hammering home the Revolutionary ties that Vegapunk has with Kuma and Dragon. It does lead me to wonder what kind of 'death' Shaka forsees though. Is it death in the form of World Government assassins who figures out that he's buddy-buddy with the Revolutionaries? Natural death of the Vegapunk old man body? Or something else?

Anyway, pretty great chapter all around!

Random Notes:

• One thing to really think about... Shachi means 'Killer Whale' and Penguin is, well, penguin. Which does tie in a lot to a theory that they might have partial Fishman heritage thanks to that, especially since we haven't seen them without their very obscuring hats. 
• Other than Bepo, Shachi, Penguin and Jean Bart, Law also name-drops Hakugan -- he's the masked dude that normally pilots the Polar Tang. 
• Oh yeah, there's a moment with Akainu bitching about being unable to move freely as the Fleet Admiral as he waits for Law and Blackbeard to finish their fight before moving in. Do something, you magma bitch. 
• A little easter egg with the extraneous materials is that Luffy's old-man form is the 'bad ending' Luffy from the SPS!
• I love that Jinbe of all people has a comically angry Kuma with a crown as a 'MENTAL IMAGE'. 
• Vegapunk's giant mecha very casually has anti-gravity. Localized anti-gravity that only works in Egghead, sure... but still! Anti-Fujitora tech, then, to complement the anti-Kizaru tech we had earlier?
• Love the little detail of Franky offhandedly noting that he's never been to a Sky Island, and Lilith name-dropping Pyrobloin -- which is from the world-building segment of Skypiea. 

She-Hulk S01E08 Review: The Frog and the Devil

She-Hulk, Season 1, Episode 8: Ribbit and Rip It

Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil Daredevil

Yeah, no disrespect to She-Hulk, but man, I really like Matt Murdock. Specifically, Charlie Cox's portrayal of everyone's favourite Man Without Fear. The Netflix Marvel side of their gargantuan media universe did not always deliver in the crossovers, and I did have certain thoughts about Daredevil's second season... but overall? That show instantly catapulted Daredevil from one of the weirder superhero concepts ever into one of my unabashed favourite superheroes of all time. The fact that season one of Daredevil was also when I first started reviewing a lot of these superhero shows regularly on this blog is probably a huge factor, too. 

So yeah, when Daredevil and his supporting characters started to appear outside of their little Netflix-TV bubble and into shows like Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home, I am jubilant. JUBILANT, I say!

And, of course, this is still She-Hulk: Attorney at Law so the story still ultimately focuses on Jen. And the tone is still a lot more comedic than anything the Daredevil show ever did, but I'm just happy to see my favourite blind lawyer devil back! 

After several rather slow She-Hulk episodes, this one fires on all cylinders both on the superheroing side and the lawyer side. Our client this episode is Leapfrog, a.k.a. Eugene Patilio, who goes around trying to be a hero. Or, more accurately, being the shittiest adaptation of Batman ever possible. He has terrible catchphrases, hires a bunch of goons he calls 'tadpoles', and dresses up with frogs as a basis. And his superpowers basically involves hiring Luke Jacobson, throwing daddy's money at him, and commissioning him for a super-powered suit. So Eugene demands Jen's lawyer firm to sure Luke for the allegedly fraudulent suit. 

This puts Jen at massive odds with Luke, of course, who immediately destroys a dress she pre-paid for and calls his own lawyer... who, of course, is everyone's favourite blind lawyer, Matt Murdock. Matt very quickly puts a kibosh on Jen's case, though we do get some nice nods that Jen herself is already not very happy to represent the spoiled twat that is Eugene Patilio. There's some actually interesting superhero-lawyer stuff involving the court demanding Luke's client list, which Matt goes to talk about how protecting a superhero's secret identity is immensely crucial not just to Luke's career and credibility, but also to the safety of the superhero and those around him. 

Eugene, of course, is a complete dumbass, and basically admits to putting jet fuel into his rocket boots -- which Matt sniffs out. There's a particularly funny line where Matt goes "he's lying, don't ask me how I know. I just know" and the judge dryly telling Matt that, yes, everyone present can see that.  

Of course, Matt and Jen kind of make it up by hanging out at the local lawyer bar, and Matt does the 'I've been doing the superhero thing' coy bit, with Matt encouraging Jen to use her She-Hulk powers to do some good when Jen can't do it. There is, of course, some flirting, which, honestly, both actors exhibit reasonably well. After a brief distraction with a douche that tries to creep on Jen, she gets a call from Eugene, who is being attacked by an initially unseen assailant. 

So of course Jen suits up in her superhero outfit for, I think, the first time since the original training with Bruce. She takes up on Matt's initial advice and decides to rescue Eugene from his assailant... which, of course, unfortunately for Matt, is Matt himself in his Daredevil guise. And, yes, I do agree with Jen's later assessment that the ketchup-and-mustard look is nowhere as flattering as his original armoured Daredevil suit, but can we just appreciate how cool it was for the show to finally give us a decent action scene and have Daredevil and She-Hulk fight each other?

I do like how the show handles the fight, too. The far more experienced Matt manages to run circles around Jen, even surviving that bit when she caused the whole floor to crack into a fissure, and Matt's completely focused on taking down Eugene. But She-Hulk is, well, a goddamn Hulk, and all it takes is a well-placed thunderclap to bring the devil down to his knees. A bit cheating, yes, since Daredevil is super-sensitive to anything involving his hearing, but the misunderstanding is cleared up pretty quickly. 

There are some great lines in the meeting between the two, and I do appreciate them keeping the blind jokes to non-offensive ones. "Do you pretend to be blind? Because this is really problematic!" is a very, very fair complaint from Jen, and I loved her little pissy note that she thought the guy dressed as a devil is the villain. Turns out that Eugene has kidnapped Luke to force him to build a new supersuit for him, but... also isn't very smart, because he is hiding in his Lilypad. His secret frog-themed super-base, with a giant 'LILYPAD' in neon lights above the roof. 

There's a fun bit of banter as Matt and Jen argue the differences between 'henchmen' and 'goons', and we get a classic Daredevil corridor fight -- even if it's not anywhere as elaborate as his own show. Also, She-Hulk smashes in, taking out a second wave, and the two basically team up to fuck up Leapfrog and his tadpoles. There's more fun banter about the insanity plea so commonly seen in this comic book, but then Leapfrog kind of decides to run away, jumping out of the window... and, well, breaking his legs in the process. Ha! Very fun. 

The two have a nice, cute moment decompressing on the rooftop about the superhero and lawyer life, and they hook up afterwards, because of course they do. Not much to say here, although I do find that this is probably She-Hulk's fourth-wall joke that actually landed for me. The episode should have closed at this point, right? She-Hulk had a superhero's night out with another superhero lawyer, gets some nice pointers about stuff like balancing lawyerhood and superheroing... 

Until, of course, Jen lampshades that this is the penultimate episode... and there's the whole best female lawyer gala to attend to, and the overarching Intelligencia subplot to talk about. Intelligencia hacks the ceremony to ruin She-Hulk's speech and showing the sex-tape on-screen. Apparently Jen doesn't deserve to be called a Hulk cause "she's a slut", and... uh... it's a dumb plot point that kinda makes me roll my eyes, but I can actually get behind Jen's reaction of reacting with righteous rage and bashing the monitor and going all berserker in trying to get the other guy who's obviously recording her. The episode ends with the cliffhanger of the whole world watching her break down after keeping her cool for practically the entire series. Again, I do like this, even if I am not particularly invested in the sex tape storyline being taken as one of the main drivers of the show -- having one of the moments so dear t Jen's heart be stolen from her and turned into a moment of ridicule by people who have nothing better to do but to be dicks to her is... a pretty valid reason to unleash the mean, green savage monster within you. It's a powerful moment, even if I'm not entirely sure that the faceless Intelligencia is going to be a paritcularly engaging final villain. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 
  Daredevil last appeared in the MCU in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
• His Netflix show's theme song plays in the background as he enters the court room. Matt also makes mentions to how he works in Hell's Kitchen, as well as how he works mostly pro bono cases. 
• Matt discusses how people misusing a super-suit could make someone look bad, undoubtedly inspired by the climax of Daredevil's final season, where Bullseye stole his armoured costume and committed crimes as Daredevil. 
• Daredevil's costume in this show is inspired on the very first costume he wore in his first couple of appearances before the full-red suit stuck. 
• Leapfrog (Vincent Patilio) is a Daredevil enemy. An inventor prior to his career as a supervillain, Vincent was a low-achieving novelty toy inventor whose inventions never got it past the patent office. When he finally made something that works -- a leaping coil technology -- he went to a life of crime and was swiftly defeated by Daredevil. In contrast to him, his son Eugene Patilio would become a superhero (if an equally bumbling one) as the Fabulous Frog-Man.
• MCU's version of the character keeps the Leapfrog name and the more villain-leaning tendencies, but gives him Eugene's name. 
• During the trial, Matt mentions the Sokovia Accords from Captain America: Civil War, citing that it has been repealed and the restrictions it causes on superheroes no longer exist.
• When Jen and Matt are talking after the fight, a billboard for Rogers: the Musical (from Hawkeye) can be seen in the background.
• She-Hulk makes a joke about how she might fight 'another Hulk who's red'... a reference to the Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) and later Red She-Hulk from the comics. 
• The 'fridged' bit is a reference to the infamous practice in comic-books of killing (usually female) love interests, particularly in reference to how DC's Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, had his girlfriend unceremoniously killed offscreen and stuffed into the fridge for cheap shock value. 
• More of a nod to Batman, but Leapfrog's goons in the background seem to be working on a Frog-Signal. 
• The creep that hits on Jen buys a Wakanda spear and says the iconic "Wakanda Forever" line. 

One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 1031-1035

We had a brief break from Wano thanks to the little Uta/Film: Red tie-in. But now we're back to more Roof Piece!

Episode 1031:

• 
  This episode's mostly just... in-between stuff? Basically the moment where Big Mom takes out Page One, while Nami, Usopp and Tama runs around? And the much-maligned 'Mothering Mode'? It's done well for what it is, but it's kind of unfortunate that this is the episode we come back to after a break.
• Pretty sure Law realizing that Zeus would be troublesome for Luffy and then teleporting him down is something off-screen in the manga. But Law being smart is definitely in-character!
• Okay, yeah, Page One is totally being bullied. Poor Page One, you get absolutely no respect from anyone. 
• Huh, so we actually get to see an extended scene of Nami and Usopp being brave to protect Tama. We even get a brand-new named attack from Usopp, the firework flower, right before the manga's pinecone bombs. And... well, Big Mom is still the one that ultimately takes down Page One, but this is a nice extension that gives Nami and Usopp a much-needed badass moment here. 
• UGH, mothering mode. Yeah. It's just as bad as it was in the manga. 
• Yeah, speaking of the manga, we really still need more payoffs to this part of Big Mom's characterization. From a narrative or character development standpoint, this part really needs to get addressed. 
• Wait, Big Mom remembers 'cat burglar' but not 'god'? 
• Oh yeah, the anime did really play up the fact that fucking Holdem burned down Okobore Town, and Big Mom getting pissed off, huh? That shot of Tsuru's hair being blown away by the flame... was it a last-minute change to have them survive? Honestly, this is probably one of the bigger weaknesses of the arc as a whole. All the fake-out deaths. 
• Oh, hey, new ad eyecatchers.
• Good fucking mother, though, that was way too pretty of a special effects sequence for Big Mom taking out fucking Page One. (The anime team deciding to goldenify Conqueror Infusion would lay a lot of debates to rest, I think, about who has what sub-sub-type of Haki). 

Episode 1032:

• Yeah, okay, I guess there's no better place to slot it, but having the flashback to the day Oden and Izo disappeared slotted after the Izo/Kiku conversation is kind of the only appropriate way to do it. I feel the scene works pretty well, at least as far as the present day scenes go -- having Kiku admit that, yeah, Izo going with Oden is the right thing for a samurai to do is pretty neat. 
• Haha, Izo and Kawamatsu talking about how Wano will be like in the future. Haha, that's harsher in hindsight for sure. 
• I don't remember if it's in the manga, but having Kin'emon order the Scabbards to scatter, while Kiku decides to tag along to finish off Kanjurou, is pretty neat. 
• Was Yamato dicking around with the little fake decoy Momonosuke something in the manga? Eh.
• Okay, at least the animation in Luffy-vs-Kaido is pretty cool as always. The instant flashes to their eyes, the rocks crumbling as Kaido kicks off it...
• Hawk Gatling! Grizzly Magnum! 
• The arrival of crucified mummy Zoro! And somehow, even the random Beast Pirate goons know how to rile Sanji off with bounties!
• Okay, so Monster Point Chopper gets to lay off a couple more extra hits on Queen. And also Katakuri gets some candy arrows on Chopper.
• There is some D'arby-level ham in GOOOODBYE, MR. RACCOON DOG!
• "Big Mom is starting to look like a goddess!" Haha!
• Okay, that is one cool shot of Nami's angry eyes as she zaps Ulti.

Episode 1033:

• Yep, Sanji's voice actor's ranting about how the 330-million man has to drag around the 320-million man is actually pretty fucking funny!
• I was about to say that the flashback to Sanji finding Zoro and the others are unnecessary, but they brought in a different animation team to show Kid fighting a bunch of mooks and... it's pretty fluid! I like it! Like, shit, I didn't think Kid gathering scrap metal from a bunch of Waiters and tanking bombs would be particularly interesting, but I am proven wrong!
• Trafalgar Law sitting like a boss as Sanji catches him is such a mood. "At least have the decency to be a girl!"
• Yep, 'twenty or thirty broken bones' can be healed up by turning someone into a blunt. At least use your magic Operation Fruit, Law, jeez. 
• I don't think that short scene where Sanji is tying up Zoro ('like a ham') is in the manga, but it's a nice little manly bonding moment between the two when Sanji basically is just a bit worried in his tsundere way about Luffy in the rooftop. 
• Back to the Roof Piece!
• Damn, Luffy's conqueror's haki blasts exploding as he keeps punching Kaido -- black-bordered-with-red in the blue-tinted background -- that looks so amazing. 
• That Raimei Hakkei explosion! The red-black scythes flying everywhere! The brief black-and-white shot! Black lightning undulating like tendrils! This is so awesome! 
• Damn, Luffy raising his arms to block the Raimei Hakkei, and the eruptions of black lightning from the singularity in the space between his arms and Kaido's kanabo...
  
• And then that crater being created by the sheer force of their haki explosion!
  
  
• Oh that is a beautiful shot of Luffy with the moon behind him. And then he rockets back down at Kaido, makes a giant fist that is right in front of the moon, and activates Ryu'o with all the glorious red and gold... fuck this anime is pretty. 
• RED ROC!
• Kaido talking about how joyful it is to land a punch on someone stronger than you, and how being on the top, it's a scene where no one is stronger than you... I'm... I'm actually not sure if this is in the manga? It might be. If it did, it certainly didn't quite have the oomph that the anime version of the scene has.
• Oh yes, that Conqueror Infusion or whatever the fuck? That subtle golden aura around Luffy as he blocks the Ragnarok attack?
• Back to Nami, and... yeah, ultimately it's not going to change the fact that she's not the one to take out Ulti, but I absolutely love the added scenes of her just standing up, being a badass, taking no shits from Ulti or her Gifter minions and just summoning tornadoes and shit. 
• Yeah that elephant Gifter with his human face on the tip of the truck... that's fucking disturbing.
• Oh yeah. Ulti is absolutely my favourite member of the Tobi Roppo now. Her taking aboslutely no shits from any of the Straw Hats and even talking about how she's going to beat the fuck out of Big Mom for bullying Page One? She's a lunatic, but I like her. 
• 
  Holy fuck, the Maser Cannon. The over-the-top combination sequence, the zoom-in to Prometheus and Hera's absolutely nightmarish faces, the music... yeah, Big Mom's Maser Cannon is already my favourite of her attacks thanks to the Godzilla reference, but damn, this one's cool!
• Yeah, poor, poor Zeus. You know, it's always kind of fun just how much personality Oda gave little Zeus despite only really having him tag along as a plot device or a power-up, so much that his fake-out death here actually feels like an event. 
• Holy hell that shot of Luffy being tossed through some rocks, before he bounces up and the sakura Ryu'o petals swirl around him. Another very cool shot. Then the rotoscoping shot as he lands a hit on Kaido... and another, and another, and another... damn, this arc really made Luffy feel badass. 
• The screen becoming purple as Kaido... activates his Conqueror's Haki, I think? Or just his aura of badassery, I suppose, as he stalks towards Luffy. And that badass shot of Kaido with the Conqueror's Haki lightning...
  
• Oh man, their clash, their clash! It's just, I think, maybe a couple of panels or even just a single one that the animation team expanded, but it looks just so damn good. 
• The music, the lights, the exaggerated shading all really make the joy of battle really scream out as Luffy and Kaido clash against each other, really highlighting Kaido's 'joy in the midst of battle' credo while this is all going on... and then the sudden stop as one of Kaido's blows hits and Luffy never strikes back as he gets tossed into the ocean.
• And, hey, we actually see the series of blows that finally causes Luffy to lose for the third time, which I felt is definitely quite important in terms of pacing! I actually like the anime's version of this scene a hundred times more than the manga's version, which was just a cliffhanger panel for shock value's sake. 

Episode 1034:

• "Gomu Gomu no what was it?" Oh, how prophetic, Kaido. 
• A little bit less crazy after the Kaido-vs-Luffy fight, but that's okay. I could use a bit less crazy at the moment just to fucking breathe.
• It is kinda weird that Big Mom needs to order Hera to eat Zeus instead of... instantly ripping out his soul? I get that it's necessary for the story to flow, but still...
• "At least make it up to one person! Then I'll die!" Ah yes, having Zeus's 'final' moments be a bit more drawn out with a monologue that lasted a bit longer does make his sacrifice a bit more impactful, even if it is still a bit jarring coming off of the Kaido/Luffy fight. 
• ...shit, it is still funny as hell how easily Big Mom just catches Zeus and switches off all the epic music and visual effects. 
• For how little he ended up mattering in the story proper, Perospero sprouting candy arrows from his palm is pretty cool.
• Hell yeah Monster Point Chopper tossing Queen around. I mean, sure, he doesn't get to beat him and it's Sanji that defeats Queen, but I do appreciate that Chopper's big moment in the Wano arc is extended a bit more. 
• Shit, there's a Gifter with a very worried-looking hamster as a hand. That's adorable. 
• Another gifter has an ostrich as a lower body (with the ostrich head coming out of his crotch) and his hair is a burning candle for some reason. 
• I actually laughed at the scene when the Gifters take a look at the fake Momonosuke doll and actually go "that is Oden's insolent son!"
• Okay Eustass Kyaputen Kid, that's actually a pretty cool rescue. How long did you hide under that rubble before Big Mom swung the burning sword down at Usopp, though?
• Actually, did Kid never try to magnetically control either Napoleon or Hassaikai? Huh.

Episode 1035:

• The anime does add a couple extra scenes that really make it clear just where Shinobu and Momonosuke are hiding -- in the attic above some random corridor. 
• Caesar Clown is a complete jackass, but I do think his points do have merit. Especially when the side effects are something that Chopper bears with his own consent, not something that's done to random kidnapped children. That's the big part of taking a risk, I guess -- you have to be the one voluntarily taking it, not someone else.
• I still find it so dumb that "Black Coffee" is the name of Queen's attack. I get the bura- pun, but still, it's so charmingly dumb.
• You know, we give Chopper a lot of flak for taking so much screentime with the Ice Oni thing, but I really do appreciate just how badass our little reindeer is for having the cojones to stand up to two Yonko commanders. His brief flashback to how Luffy left that floor to the rest of his crew, his conviction... and him faltering when Bao Huang's message is spread across Onigashima... pretty well done. 
• Oh, Kanjurou, you dick. Kudos to Momonosuke's voice actor, too, for really selling this kid's desperation in face of logic. It's a bit more of a dick move that Kanjurou's doing it to the man's kid as opposed to the other samurai. 
• Yeah all things considered, it's a good thing that the anime extended Kiku's first slaying of Kanjurou, though I do still think that she does deserve to 'amend' her mistake, so to speak. Shame she got stabbed through the gut here. Actually, a mutual-kill between Kiku and Kanjurou would kind of be epic, too, especially since Kiku's words before falling unconscious with the fallen snow melting and all that is kinda neat. 
• Oh shit, okay, Kanjurou using his brush to set up his and Kin'emon's final confrontation to be on a kabuki stage? With Kanjurou narrating the fight like a play narrator? Fucking awesome. Okay, yeah. The two are the Scabbards that we've known and seen for the longest, and seeing them fight like this in a proper confrontation is definitely very well-done. 
• Damn it is cathartic to see Kin'emon finally cut down Kanjurou. I'm pretty sure the manga version had none of the epicness of the confrontation of this scene. 
• Also damn, Kin'emon's last stand is fucking epic. "Get out of my way, samurai of Wano!" "I will not!" Shame what came next.
• The anime, at least, goes the manga route and goes from a close-up straight to showing Kaido smashing Kin'emon down, with the club and the smoke obscuring what actually happened. I'll talk about what happened when it does happen, but at least this episode was actually pretty well done on the Kin'emon front.

Movie Review: Resident Evil The Final Chapter

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter [2016]

[Disclaimer: these reviews were written in 2019 alongside a batch of the first three movies reviews, but I decided not to publish them in 2020 due to reasons, and these were pushed... way back]

And so it ends with a whimper, not a bang. Y'know, I've always thought that the second 'trilogy' of movies were a bit better in that they embraced the over-the-top ridiculous silliness that the franchise can be, but I must only have Retribution and Afterlife in mind. The Final Chapter is... honestly, a bit of a huge slog to watch through in that it jumps around so much. Not just the many moments where Alice gets knocked out and had fragmented images running through her mind in the first third of the movie, but this one suffers from a simple lack of focus. 

The concept of the movie itself is simple -- a final stand; Alice against Umbrella for the cure that will wipe out all the zombies on a post-apocalyptic earth. That's an all right concept for a final chapter in this movie franchise. Hell, even bringing things back to the Hive in Raccoon City, the location of the first movie, is pretty interesting, and I'm even a huge fan of bringing back Extinction's Alexander Isaacs (Iain Glen) to serve as the 'final villain', so to speak, sharing the stage with Albert Wesker. We get two of the movies' best villains teaming up together, and the Red Queen is always welcome as an unsettling part of the movie. Best of all, Red Queen's even playing a fun trope in combining 'unsettling child' with 'artificial intelligence doing interesting things while following her programming'. Some of the revelations, while they feel like ass-pulls created just for this movie, is even somewhat consistent with what we know about the movie universe. Things like the Alexander Isaacs that got zombified and killed in Extinction being a clone, or that Umbrella planned all this zombie apocalypse while most of their 'chosen' hid out in safety underground, or that Isaacs somehow outranks Wesker... not very sensible, but I can roll with it. Even all the revelations around Alice's backstory and why Umbrella is so dead-set on her is one that I can sort of get behind. Plot holes and retcons can be 'revelations' if framed right. Unfortunately, none of these are. 

What I can't get behind, though, is how the movie actually delivers this information to us.

Let's start with the beginning of the movie, shall we? Y'know, this movie has a franchise of having cliffhangers that they don't deliver on. Apocalypse ends with Alice, Carlos and company escaping on a van? Nope, next movie opens with the entire world dead. Extinction ends with an Alice clone army being born? Well, Afterlife at least does something fun with it for fifteen minutes. Afterlife ends with a huge helicopter Umbrella army about to blow up Arcadia? Again, Retribution does something fun with it for its opening credits roll. Retribution's end is actually a pretty fun cliffhanger that I remembered being excited for. Alice, Wesker, Jill, Ada and Leon all standing on the White House, against a horde of bioweapons and zombies, as humanity's last stand?

This movie doesn't even try and pretend to have anything to do with that cliffhanger other than 'welp, something happened, they all lost, Wesker betrayed them lol'. At least Alice doesn't get her story-breaking powers back, but the rest of this movie is honestly so bland that I kind of wished that she had. The real reason was probably that they couldn't get any of the other actors back, but at the very least some showcase of Wesker betraying Alice in the zombie horde would've made the first act of the movie not the dreary slog that it was. 

Because the first act of the movie was a dreary slog. Sure, the information about James Marcus trying to save her little girl, the first outbreak of the T-Virus, and establishing Isaacs and Wesker's backstory in the time before the movies? Okay, sure. But then Alice wakes up, fights the giant butterfly monster from Resident Evil 5 for quite a while, and then just sort of gets contacted by the Red Queen, who gives her the mission to infiltrate the Hive, steal the anti-virus they have just conveniently created, and that Umbrella is trying to wipe out humanity. 

And then we just have dreary dusty post-apocalyptic world, slogging on and on with Alice just getting knocked out and captured by an Umbrella convoy led by "Isaacs" (actually a clone), who just refuses to kill Alice for some reason and instead engages in a game of 'have her run tied to a rope behind our armoured convoy while we lead a zombie horde to the last human settlement in Raccoon City. It would've been a far more fun image if they actually tried to play up how absurd this is, but after a short action scene later, we get Alice... knocked out by the final group of survivors. It's like a repeat of the Walking Dead ripoff scene from Extinction and Afterlife where we have this 'survivors band together' sequence, except that I literally care for no one in this movie's human survivors. It's just Alice and Claire, and... everyone else there is literally interchangeable, none of them are really interesting enough for me to care for them. Sure, there's a mole there, but, again, there's nothing there that's really interesting. 

The action scene that happens next... we did get a fun martial arts sequence between Alice and Commander Chu, and the huge spectacle scene of Alice and company dropping ridiculously explosive and flammable oil down on the zombie horde and lighting a skyscraper on fire is over-the-top implausible but visually cool. But the rest of it is so dark and shadowy and so hard to tell what's going on... not that I really do care because, again, I don't care for anyone there other than Alice, Claire and Isaacs. 

Then we have the Umbrella infiltration sequence with a series of traps, which are ridiculous even by Resident Evil standards. Like that corridor that just has enough folding panels to drop one dude into a chute to nowhere, drop Alice into the slaughterhouse, and drop Claire into a glass box? Again, the pacing at this sequence was so, so slow. Sure, there's that brief action sequence against the Cerberus and the Bloodshot monsters, but those were so short and, again, shot in such dark, shadowy places and ended so abruptly that it's hard to care. (Really, the butterfly monster sequence probably should've happened here, too). 

We're nearly an hour into the movie and see a bunch of people whose names I don't remember get killed by turbine traps, zombie dogs and finger-slicing chutes until we actually get to the story that the movie really wants to tell, and we get the long exposition that Alexander Isaacs and the rest of Umbrella's high command has basically cryogenically frozen a bunch of people under the ground; that Alice is a clone of Alicia Marcus, dead daughter of Umbrella's co-founder James Marcus; that the Red Queen is a digital clone of young Alicia Marcus; and that, apparently, the real Alexander Isaacs and Alicia Marcus are just chilling in cryo-pods. And somehow, there's this utterly bizarre sub-plot where Isaacs and Marcus are arguing over... shareholders or something? What? In a post-apocalyptic world, and one where Wesker is clearly not loyal to anyone but Isaacs, I'm genuinely baffled that they even bothered waking up old Alicia Marcus instead of just letting her suffocate, or having Wesker shoot her or something. It's bizarre. 

Speaking of which, Wesker, who was established in previous movies to be superhuman, and also being able to have enough plot armour to survive bombs, helicopter crashes, point-blank shotgun shots to the head and apparently the White House zombie apocalypse... gets like half a leg trapped and somehow he's dying? At least give the courtesy to have half his body pinned there or something. 

We then get a very bland sub-plot of Claire's boyfriend being the Umbrella mole (which ended poorly for random boyfriend), Marcus 'fires' Wesker in the movie's best and most hilarious moment and allows Red Queen to smash half of Wesker flat... and we get an honestly pretty lackluster and extended fight against the real Alexander Isaacs, who has some cyborg Sherlock Holmes style "I can predict what you are going to do" ability. Which is... not particularly interesting. Alice eventually does a silly grenade trick with Isaacs in the laser corridor(tm), which is honestly just there just so the movie can go "hey, look the laser corridor, everyone reminds that about the awesome first movie, right?" Except the fight scenes in this sequence in particular just jump from one camera angle to the next so rapidly and it's just not fun at all to see. 

And then we get the confrontation between Alice, the real Isaacs, and the clone Isaacs from the first act. The two Isaacs kill each other, and Alice releases the anti-virus... which is also airborne and can also kill all the zombies in the world, apparently. Simultaneously Wesker dies, drops the dead man's switch and blows up the entirety of the Hive, killing Marcus and the hibernating Umbrella clients. And then Claire (who got out somehow?) sees Alice, and the Red Queen reveals that apparently the whole movie is a secret test of character to see if Alice would make the willing sacrifice... because... uh... fuck the rest of humanity if she fails, I guess?

Speaking of which, Alice was always a generic stoic badass action hero in these movies, but she always has something that makes me don't mind her. Extinction gave her a fair amount of cloning blues. Afterlife sort of kind of gave her survivor's guilt. Retribution gave her a daughter (who goes unmourned and unmentioned here). But despite learning that she's a clone, and of a woman whose disease is one of the first causes of the T-Virus... nope, Alice has absolutely zero reaction. Jovovich does her best, but when the script is as tepid as it is, I can't blame her for not really being able to bring out anything out of her character in this one. Again, I don't mind the concept of all these huge revelations that the entire Resident Evil zombie apocalypse saga revolves around Alice... except it's not delivered well at all and Alice herself barely reacts to any of this. 

And that's it. That's honestly a pretty terrible movie to go out on. All five of the movies have given me something to enjoy -- some more than the others, but The Final Chapter is just a huge, huge mess. The sad part is, I could've seen a fun movie if they had a bit more of a solid writing and editing team. On the hands of a good team, the story here around Alice would've been poignant and dramatic. Instead it's just pointless stalling and gruesome deaths around a bunch of huge revelations that they never really do anything with. 

Random Notes:

• The lack of closure with any of the characters bar Alice and Isaacs is particularly jarring. Claire is brought back just for a pointless 'oh no my boyfriend is evil' subplot and really does jack-all throughout the movie. Wesker gets reduced to doing nothing and standing cool and dying like a bitch. Not even a single mention of Chris Redfield. Not even a vague 'Jill, Ada and Leon died'.
• So I never really quite understood why Alexander Isaacs would adopt Alicia Marcus, who not only witnessed her father's death, but also in her older age also vehemently opposed Isaacs. Even if he didn't kill her pre-zombie-outbreak, wouldn't he have done so after Extinction?
• Even more egregious is the lack of mention of Becky, the surrogate daughter Alice risked her entire life for in Retribution and the source of some much-needed characterization for Alice. Nope, not even mentioned at all. 
• Speaking of which, considering that Wesker's plan was to kill Alice and the survivors, the bizarre 'gambit' presented here that he imprisoned Alice in that underwater base and staged an elaborate rescue mission throughout Retribution just made that whole movie a bizarre, pointless distraction in terms of an Umbrella ploy. Which is a shame, because Retribution is one of the more entertaining movies. 
• Speaking of dumb Wesker things, in this movie he could definitely have killed the entire team in the giant fan of doom, but he shuts that off after killing Batwoman (also, hey, Ruby Rose is in this movie!) because... uh... reasons?
• Also stupidity in this movie is the Umbrella road ambush. Which worked for some reason despite this being a world with 4000 humans left, but also because despite catching Alice in their trap, they play pinata with her instead of shooting her in the head. 
• Also also Isaacs clone had like three different opportunities of killing Alice in that armoured vehicle. 
• Also also also, they just literally left that huge door to the Hive open. Despite the fact that Wesker and Red Queen clearly is able to shut it remotely. 
• How the hell did Wesker survive the massive bioweapon attack in the White House, and not made sure Alice had also died? T-virus enhancements and mutant powers, probably, but it's not like he uses that at all in this movie, and I completely forgot that this Wesker is supposed to have it. 
• Isaacs outranking Wesker is one of the less bizarre retcons, but I still have to point it out. Isaacs was really just treated as just some high-ranking scientist in a facility in Apocalypse and Extinction, and clearly Wesker was calling the shots there. And Wesker is basically stated to be chairman in Extinction and Afterlife... so yeah. 
• The Red Queen can't kill Umbrella employees... forgetting that her very first appearance has her kill an entire facility of Umbrella employees. Oy. 
• Isaacs, being a cybernetically enhanced superhuman, couldn't kill Alicia Marcus, a woman on a wheelchair? Also, with his super-speed, he could've had stolen the dead man's switch from Wesker. Or, later on in the movie, killed the clearly-crazy Clone Isaacs with his super-speed. 
• Umbrella being behind all of this all along makes absolutely less sense when you realize that the nuclear bombing of Raccoon City was engineered by Umbrella in Apocalypse as a cover-up... a cover-up that would've wiped out their entire population of 'high command' hidden underneath Raccoon City. 
• There was a lot more cryogenically-stored humans in the Hive than what you would expect for "Umbrella High Command"... this either means that they had a lot more civilians or their families with them down there. 
• A simple edit of someone revealing that they are clones would probably make it less of an unintentionally brutal move for Alice to kill all of them.
• Praising a cool thing of the movie? The Red Queen is 100% on fire in her snarking at Wesker and Isaacs throughout the movie. "You're all going to die down here" for real! 

Movie Review: Resident Evil - Retribution

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

[Disclaimer: these reviews were written in 2019 alongside a batch of the first three movies reviews, but I decided not to publish them in 2020 due to reasons, and these were pushed... way back]

Otherwise known as 'the first Resident Evil movie I watched on the big screen'. It's been a while now and I could've sworn I watched Afterlife at some point before Retribution, but Retribution was definitely the first real part of this franchise that I jumped into... and hoo boy, what a strange feeling it was. And yet the movie basically handwaves all the backstory into a huge exposition near the beginning, then puts it on the backburner as Alice goes off to basically play around in an Aliens storyline? It's bizarre, honestly. I do think that the movie works as a standalone movie since, well, I enjoyed it the first time I watched it.

By the standards of this movie franchise, though... hoo boy, it sure is a weird one. 

The idea is a bit of an interesting one. We get a callback to all the previous movies, including the fact that Umbrella has access to super-sophisticated cloning facilities (which we saw in Extinction), that they can clone characters from previous movies (we get Resident Evil's Agent One and Rain; and Apocalypse/Extinction's Carlos Olivera), and they have mind-control device (Apocalypse's Jill Valentine, last seen in the previous movie's mid-credits sequence) and access to super-powerful bioweapons like the Lickers and Executioners. We get the return of the movie franchise's two biggest antagonists, Albert Wesker and the Red Queen, each trying to one-up the other in their whole plan for... world domination of this post-apocalyptic world or something. And yet it all takes a backseat to the story of Alice wandering around the impractically large underwater base that Umbrella has all this time. Honestly, at this point, I'm just taking the video game route of shrugging and accepting the ridiculousness of what it is. 

The last movie's huge cliffhanger gets quickly shown as Jill Valentine and her army of faceless Umbrella goons murder or capture everyone on board the Arcadia. Chris, Claire, K-Mart? Who cares about them, Alice is the main character, right? They're not the concern of this movie, and Alice just wakes up. The movie does a repeat of Extinction's fake-out cold open, by having 'an' Alice wake up. Turns out that this is a clone Alice in a regular suburban city, married to Carlos Todd with a deaf daughter called Becky. Then ZOMBIE ATTACK! The zombie attack scene was pretty well-shot and pretty fun, featuring yet another return of the flower-mouthed Majini zombies (honestly one of my favourite visuals in the live-action movies). After a brief encounter with Michelle Rodriguez's character Rain, this Alice fights against the zombified Todd and they both die in the process. Mind-fuck, right? Not really, no, it's pretty obvious what this is if you kind of stop to think about the kinds of sci-fi that this movie franchise likes to deal with. 

And it's not a terrible concept on its own, really, but at the same time there's a huge amount of 'why, though' niggling at the back of my head. The real Alice wakes up naked (of course) before being freed (of course) by a power outage. She finds herself in fake Tokyo, fighting against zombies including a pretty cool sequence with a chain weapon and... and this basically really is what we're here to tune into these movies for, yeah? Cool, over-the-top action sequences. Except that the movie makers still try to bring in the video game characters into the movie lore, which I feel like maybe they should just try and just... do their own thing if they want to?

Ada Wong is cool, though. Played by Li Bingbing and showing just how someone can pull off crazy kung fu stunts in that dress, she introduces herself as Alice's unlikely ally... and that she's also working for Albert Wesker, who survives and is also betraying Umbrella, which is taken over by the Red Queen? Okay, sure. Just... just accept that it happened off-screen somehow. Wesker's the lesser evil, I guess, and the Red Queen is now evil... because? Just because. We get the explanation that Alice is trapped in an underwater grand facility that contains fake versions of different capital cities, all populated by Umbrella-made clones in order to stage the outbreaks. Which, despite the world already in a post-apocalyptic state, the Red Queen still continues to do over and over. It's a cool visual, right? Also, Wesker needs Alice to be rescued for plot reasons because Alice is a walking MacGuffin.

Alice and Ada have to fight their way through video-game levels the fake cities to rendezvous with a team of human survivors led by Leon Kennedy and Barry Burton from the games; and Luther West from the previous movie. And a bunch of other mooks that quickly die because they are unimportant. After this huge exposition sequence, we get the typical tense music and action scenes. Alice and Ada fight against two giant Executioner Majini in Fake Times Square, which... not going to lie, is awesome. Alice is still the writers' favourite character, but at least they're willing to give secondary characters a chance to shine, too, because Ada Wong gets a couple of badass action sequences here. The Leon/Luther squad get pinned down by a mass amount of Las Plagas in the Moscow zone, which hilariously has things like chainsaws and rocket launchers (accurate to the games but very random in the movies) and most of the non-named characters get killed by the grinning Plagas zombies.

Alice and Ada, meanwhile, encounter little Becky from the prologue, and we get the Aliens plot! Badass woman protagonist meets scared child, and her maternal instinct activates. I'm not complaining, giving an established badass the chance to take care of a child is an easy but effective way to give him or her a chance to get some primo characterization. Just see Ripley, Wolverine, Mandalorian, et cetera. And Becky's state of mistaking Alice-Prime for one of the faceless clones that served as her mom is... an interesting one. It's just a shame that the movie doesn't really try to explore this too much beyond 'protect the child!' 

Also speaking of wasted potentials, Alice and Ada fight against a group of clones of Alice's old allies. We've got One, we've got Rain, we've got Carlos. And sure, seeing the actors back and everything is very cool (even though I don't think Evil Carlos even got a memorable line). And... and we don't even get anything much out of them beyond 'look at this good guys doing evil things'. Alice gets with the program that these guys are clones almost immediately, which is understandable since she's dealt with clones before, but it brings to mind what the Doylist point of bringing these clones back in the first place. Hell, as Alice and Becky meet up with 'good' Rain, she doesn't even get to meet her evil clone! We don't even get that obvious subplot!

Alice leaves Good Rain and Becky behind to steal a sports car for some street stunts, because at this point the survivors of Team Leon are trying to escape the car-driving Plagas zombies in a pretty entertaining explody-splody car chase. The Red Queen unleashes a particularly giant Licker, and with Alice's help, the good guys escape by, uh, launching the car into a subway station which sure looks awesome but also is clearly impractical. The giant Licker seemingly gets buried. We jump to the next action scene, where they are about to go up the lift, but mind-controlled Jill Valentine and the Clone Squad arrive. Good Rain gets killed with little fanfare, Becky is abducted (Aliens!) and cocooned (ALIENSSSS), and the secondary characters shoot at each other while Alice goes off to recover Becky. It happens kind of quickly, but I actually do like Barry Burton's last stand. Again, kind of over-the-top and I really wish the movie gives us more to care about Barry beyond his red jacket and one or two zingers, but him doing a mutual kill with Agent One is pretty neat.

Alice killing the Giant Licker happens a bit quickly, too, although she and Becky at least gets a token bit of seeing the clone factory and Alice's line of "I'm your mom now". Again, the setup to reach this sequence is kind of messy, but I did like the Alice/Becky sequence. Anyway, Leon and Luther manage to escape with the lifts, the bombs they put earlier in the movie explode and destroy the facility (and kills clone Carlos very unceremoniously). 

Hey, the movie is over, and they can return to their base, right? Not really, because Jill Valentine and Clone Rain show up with a giant submarine that breaks the ice. They hold Ada Wong hostage, and we get a final boss fight battle. And... the choreography between Alice and Ada is actually pretty cool! They keep pulling out wacky weapons like spiky staves and fold-out scythes and that's pretty neat. Clone Rain, meanwhile, injects herself with the Las Plagas parasite which basically turns her into a bullet-immune Wolverine-style character, spitting out bullets from her fingertips, and Rain fights both Leon and Luther. Luther gets killed with a chest palm strike; Alice rips the mind-control spider from Jill's chest, and Clone Rain manages to beat everyone and is actually pretty badass. Alice eventually shoots out the ice under Rain's foot, causing her to fall into the water and be dragged down by underwater zombies. 

Again... it's an action scene where 'this thing happens, then that thing happens', but sure, it's pretty entertaining. Time for an epilogue, too, as the survivors bugger off to the White House, where Albert Wesker smugly sits in the Oval Office. He re-infects Alice to give her back her superhuman powers (god damn it, movie makers) in order to turn her into the 'ultimate weapon', and the final shot is that of the White House under siege not only by a horde of zombies, but giant flying zombie moths. 

And... and hoo boy, what an interesting movie, huh? The actual story of Alice and company escaping the underwater base is actually pretty solid. Michelle Rodrigues and Sienna Guillory play pretty fun and badass antagonists. Hell, I'd even go as saying the Alice/Becky storyline is all right. And the action scene is sure fun, and there are a lot of great moments in the movie all around. But honestly, as an installment in an ongoing series? It's extremely messy. None of the homages really work out all that well, and the attempted 'canon welding' or whatever the hell they're doing here feel like two steps back after Afterlife. It's still fun to watch, ultimately, because the shameless video-game visuals of jumping from one city 'stage' to the next and the higher-than-normal amount of action scenes makes it a fun action movie, but ultimately it's a messy one with a lot of missed potentials. 

Random Notes:

• Mind-controlled Jill Valentine is an actual boss from Resident Evil 5, complete with purple spy bodysuit. The 'Las Plagas Undead', explicitly named by the Red Queen, are sort-of based on the Las Plagas from Resident Evil 4, except a whole more over-the-top and without actually showing the zombie flower-mouths exhibited elsewhere in Afterlife and Retribution. The actual Plagas enemies in RE4 actually do use chainsaws and rocket launchers, though. The Kipipeo giant moth. makes a couple of brief cameos at the end of the movie. 
• The RE5-style flower-mouth Plagas and the Executioner Majini make a return after appearing in the previous movie. The Lickers return from the first two movies of this franchise, albeit this one is far more giant and muscular. 
• Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong and Barry Burton from the games make their cinematic debuts here. Ada is more or less pretty similar to her game counterpart as far as her role goes, but the other two are kind of just there. The 'J-Pop Girl' at the opening sequence of Afterlife also makes a return cameo here!
• Meanwhile, the fates of the Redfield siblings are left utterly ambiguous, because the actors are unable to return due to scheduling conflicts -- Claire does return in the next and final one, though. 
• So the ridiculously resourceful Umbrella corporation has access not only to cloning technology, but also to entire blocks modeled after the world's biggest cities (we see at least New York, Tokyo and Moscow) and is able to have massive cloning facilities, with each clone having enough of an implanted personality to behave and think that they are regular people... all just to demonstrate the power of the T-Virus. All that despite the cloning thing (or even the fake cities) being probably far, far more marketable. 
• Speaking of which, at least this sort of clears up where Umbrella keeps getting their seemingly endless source of faceless soldier-men in Extinction and Afterlife. Sort of.
• If Umbrella can basically implant memories to make the clones loyal to them, why not implant said memories to make an army of Umbrella-loyal psychic Alice clones? 
• Poor Clone Carlos really doesn't even get a good moment, huh? 
• Clone Rain's Plagas-injecting syringe is actually point-for-point identical to the syringe used in the Resident Evil 4 game. Clone Rain ejecting bullets out of her fingers thanks to her Plagas mutation is also something done by the final boss of RE4, Saddler. 
• I'm still not entirely sure how a mind-control device is placed on one's chest instead of the head or spine, and... and somehow when Alice rips it out, there isn't even like any scars. Okay.