One Piece 1100 Review: The Best Jolly Roger

One Piece, Chapter 1100: Thank You, Bonney

So in spite of all the number theories... 1100 ended up being a rather simple 'how did we get here' chapter. The Marines arrived and are pretty keen on co-opting the whole operation. We get a younger Kizaru decked out in a very spiffy hat to basically oversee the conversation between Vegapunk, Kuma and, via den-den mushi, Saint Saturn. There's a repeat of the whole 'I'm just doing my job' sentiment that Kizaru would show in the present day, with Vegapunk being rather pissed off that Kizaru's basically enforcing the arm of the law. 

And... I really don't want to get into the specifics of the actual deal with Kuma, but basically everything that we expect would happen did happen. And the sad thing is... this is honestly Saturn being nice. Or pragmatic, I guess. He wanted a symbol, so he turned Kuma into that symbol -- a Shichibukai privateer that would obey everything the government asks of him. He really could've just ordered Kuma and Bonney murdered, and that would be the end of it. But he's making a lot of demands to force Kuma to give up his individuality, and there's a lot of hoops he jumps just to get Vegapunk to also basically heel. 

But a combination of wanting someone ostensibly loyal to the government to be the template to this 'Clone Army', as well as Ace apparently taking out one of the Shichibukai members before this means that there's a slot for Kuma. It's... it's very interesting that after Ace refused that Shichibukai offer, apparently at some point he met whoever got inducted instead of him and beat that person up! Or killed him, more like! It's nice to see that Ace is actually supposed to still be a badass. This is a short little mention, but I do really appreciate it. 

Two very good panels here, with the angry Vegapunk face really showing just how much he realizes how fucked up all this 'FOR SCIENCE' thing is. It's a bit more subtle, but he's finally realized that he's got a heart and he's got principles. And, of course, we get another great face of Kuma's happy-sad crying at the realization that, yes, Bonney can get cured. Even Kizaru seems to be a little touched, pulling down the rim of his hat. 

Saturn also holds Bonney hostage, basically up until Kuma's modifications are complete -- Bonney's cure would take one and a half years, while Kuma's modifications would take two. I do kind of feel that it's partially Vegapunk wiggling the numbers just to allow Kuma some time to be with a cured Bonney, but Saturn can't even give him that. Kuma bargains for a single request -- that Bonney be allowed to grow up and spend that quarantine time in Sorbet Kingdom, in the church, instead of the soulless government science factory. 

And... we get a montage. And what a heartbreaking montage it is, because, like it keeps being pointed out... this is the end of Kuma. This is us counting down the seconds to when Kuma finally loses his humanity. They play around a lot, even with Vegapunk and Sentomaru... and, shit, even Kizaru does the Nika dance with them in one of the panels. At around this point we also get to see Vegapunk in his office basically rattling in anger about how he wished there were five more of him, which would be the genesis of his Satellites. In the midst of it all, we see Bonney being cured, Kuma turned into a cyborg, and an adorable scene of Bonney scribbling her daddy's face. 

And then Bonney is mostly cured, and the treatment just needs some time to fully take charge. Kuma brings Bonney back to Sorbet and the church, but even the long arm of the government has reached there. After a brief recap of some of the Sorbet citizens... turns out that the doctors and nurses are actually CP-8 agents, specifically a lady called 'Alpha' that acts like a haughty nurse, but goes straight-up sadistic in front of Kuma, crushing a rock and noting how fragile kids can be. Some really heavy scenes, too, of Kuma thinking to himself about how he'd really love to take his daughter out on all of the islands that they had planned to go. CP-8 and Alpha set up a whole damn checkpoint system around the church, ostensibly for security but it's really a prison to keep Bonney in. Kuma makes what he knows to be the final farewell to Bonney, patting her on the head and telling her 'thank you' and that he's so glad that Bonney was born. 

And then the rest of the story is another great 'all around the world' montage as Bartholomew Kuma, the Tyrant, is announced as a Shichibukai. We get an absolutely great shot of Doflamingo's face in shadow as Sugar announces the news to him. Robin and Crocodile react to it. Dracule Mihawk doesn't really give a shit. Among all of the reactions to the Shichibukai at the time of the series' start... we get... fucking Alvida and Koby. That's so random! I love it. We don't get anyone else that's not a Shichibukai otherwise. Then we get to see Ace, Whitebeard, Jinbe, Marco and Blackbeard reacting to it, including a zoom-in to Jinbei's disapproving face. And Hancock also doesn't give a shit, with Rocks-pirate member Grandma Nyon informing her. And there's Moria and Perona reacting to it... before the final shot of the Revolutionary members Dragon, Sabo, Koala and Hack. 

It's always really nice to see the greater world of One Piece, and how many other characters react to a certain type of news. Again, I do feel like it's particularly great worldbuilding to involve characters that are dead in the present day of the story like Whitebeard and Ace. 

And we get to see Kuma on his boat... with the jolly roger being the goofy drawing that Bonney made on the flag. God bless you Kuma. This bit is extremely wholesome, and I absolutely am tickled to imagine that this big, badass 'Tyrant King' Bartholomew Kuma is wandering around putting down the World Government's enemies while sailing a goofy-ass boat like this. 

And in a twist that I don't think anyone would see coming, turns out that Kuma's stop... is Luffy's home town? This is approximately a year or so before Luffy sets sail, and before the fateful year that all the Supernova stuff happens (which coincides with Bonney and Kuma's own deadlines) and we even get to see a young, pre-sail Luffy run around chasing around tigers and stuff. Unexpected! Now the question is if Kuma's going to this island to see Dragon's son... or is he tracking the Nika Nika/Gomu Gomu Fruit? 

Random Notes:

• Drake, who hasn't became "Red Flag" X-Drake, is part of Kizaru's crew! I wonder when Kizaru zapped him in Sabaody if Kizaru actually knew that Drake defected under Marine orders!
• Vegapunk's giant, non-Punk-Record'd head is very uncomfortable to look at. 
• Is the nameless Shichibukai that Ace defeated and/or killed the same one that killed Zephyr? Or is this me doing another pointless exercise in trying to wiggle-room the non-canon Oda-written movies?
• There are a couple of timelines going around with one year, six months and whatnot, but basically Bonney is cured around half a year before the beginning of One Piece's pre-timeskip year, which would be when she turns ten and the big deadline for Kuma's flashback.
• Love that Bonney just casually calls Sentomaru 'that weirdo'. 
• Making a cameo is a ship called 'Umit Cargo Ship'. "Deep Ocean" Umit is one of the underworld brokers we saw at Big Mom's tea party. 
• It seems like Bonney is introduced to her trademark favourite food pizza in Egghead. 
• It's brushed through pretty quickly, but I think most of the translators seem to think that thanks to the kanji used, Alpha (Arufa) is connected to Kalifa.
• Crocodile and Robin are talking about the Rainmaker ship from the Alabasta arc, with the implication that cowboy hat Robin's about to murder a bunch of people that witnessed that ship. 

Reviewing Bleach Fillers -- The Bount Arc, Part 1

Bleach, Season 4: The Bount Arc [Episodes 64-91]

A couple of years ago from now I watched and reviewed all of the One Piece filler arcs, and I decided to -- slowly -- do the same with Bleach. It was a bit hard because I had a bit less free time after the pandemic is over, but it is kind of nice to have a show that I don't necessarily have to pay full attention to, y'know what I mean? Bleach is also nice in that its anime is actually sorted into 'seasons', and while this won't be exhaustive, some of the fillers are literally just contained in these 'seasons'. 

So yeah, this is my review of Season Four, or the 'Bount Arc', the first filler arc in Bleach. I've never watched the original anime to completion -- I watched a bunch of the action scenes, of course, and I watched the majority of the Ichigo-vs-Ulquiorra, followed by Ichigo-vs-Aizen season when they ran on TV. But I've never really watched any of the filler arcs except for a couple of episodes of the Zanpakuto Rebellion one. 

The Bount arc runs through 28 episodes, taking place chronologically between the end of the Soul Society arc (after Aizen's party goes back to Hueco Mundo) and before the arrival of Ulquiorra and Yammy. There are a couple of scenes that adapt some of the human world civilian scenes that take place in the canon manga, but ultimately most of this is anime-original. It's a convenient enough spot to insert a filler arc, and... it's a pretty long one! And, well, filler arcs in anime will always fall under the problem that nothing here is going to really matter or be followed up on in the long run, and a lot o anime fillers really do struggle in trying to make fights and antagonists that are somewhat relevant, but ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of things. 

What I do like, and maybe this is just me being nostalgic for 'old-school' Bleach in general, is that the arc initially just starts with the human cast of Ichigo, Chad, Uryu and Orihime, plus Renji (who hops in with a gigai body) and Kon (who ends up being a major supporting character). The arc also revolves around Mod Souls, which is a nice concept that was part of the world-building in early Bleach chapters but is ultimately entirely forgotten by the canon manga. It's neat that the villains here are essentially rogue mod souls!

The concept of this arc is admittedly somewhat of a 'ripoff' of what was going to happen soon when the Arrancar arc begins with Orihime's kidnapping. Because, well, Orihime is kidnapped by a trio of mysterious hooded figures with strange powers, and a lot of the early episodes are just one-off conflicts as Ichigo and company try their best to deal with their dwindling group of friends, and later on when their school gets held hostage. Again, nice to see some of the 'civilian' world get a bit more of a spotlight, even if admittedly episodes like the ones where the Mod Souls got turned into dolls and paired up with the humans ended up dragging on at times. We get introduced to a cast of colourful power-wielders, namely giggling girl Ririn (who casts illusions), foppish showboat Kurodo (he can mimic people's appearances) and quiet Noba (who has space powers). 

And it's interesting that these three guys are actually Mod Souls like Kon. It takes something that was already established in prior Bleach canon and expands upon it, and while it's admittedly a bit odd that they have weird powers unlike Kon, it's very much something that makes sense in the continuity that some other Mod Souls are running around wild if it happened to Kon. Turns out that the whole thing is something set up by Urahara as a training arc for Ichigo and company -- and the excuse that Ichigo needs to learn to properly control his Bankai after his original explosive first usage is one that makes a lot of sense. Uryu also gets a bit of spotlight here too, because Urahara wants him to learn how to be useful when his powers are, at the moment, unavailable to him. 

There is a problem with the Mod Soul guys where their powers are insanely diminished from their original couple of debut episodes when they actually do become allies. Again, I get that the main characters are Ichigo and his buddies, but it does still feel rather off. 

Again, these are all facets that I would totally believe would be an actual 'filler' chapter within Bleach manga itself, perhaps not with the stretched-out/padded-out sequence that the Mod Souls and Bounts have, but it does help to add a degree of 'legitimacy', if that's the right word, to this arc. 

And around six episodes in, we finally get to see the titular Bounts, who Soi Fon and Yoruichi are investigating in the background while our heroes are fighting the Mod Souls. We get the revelation that the Bounts are a tribe of humans equivalent to the Quincy, who go around devouring souls like vampires. Oh, and they're immortal. It's a pretty simple concept, and, again, fits as a standalone enemy in an arc that can be conveniently ignored for the rest of the series. While the writers of this arc couldn't predict the true significance of the Quincies to Bleach lore in the final arc, it's neat to use the Quincies as a benchmark for the weirdness of their new enemies. 

The Bounts, in addition to being creepy vampires, also have abilities called 'Dolls', basically their version of a Zanpakuto, but they're all like manipulated artificial beings that obey everything their summoners say. Again, I do feel like this is neat enough as a filler arc goes, having something that functions similarly to what the canon characters (namely the Shinigami and Arrancar) use, but are different in just a bit of a critical aspect. 

The beginning part of the Bounts fighting admittedly ends up being a bit slow, and there's definitely a sense that they're trying to ape the introduction of both the Gotei 13 and the Espada's introductions by showing a lot of distinct designs in a shadowed area. There's also a fair amount of the vampire vibe going on, at least in the initial first couple of encounters with the Bounts. 

And as far as being a quirky villainous subgroup goes... the Bounts are... okay? I've seen better, and all of Bleach's major antagonists qualify into the whole 'quirky villainous subgroup' category, but the Bounts are meant to be disposable, one-note antagonists. But with them having to carry a whole season, it really doesn't bode well that a lot of them barely have any more of a personality than your average filler movie villain, which at least has the excuse that they only have to hold a presence for around 1.5 to 2 hours.

I do like, though, that we are introduced to a sympathetic Bount character immediately, the female Soma Yoshino, who befriends Uryu very quickly and is quickly shown to be a bit of a rogue element among the Bount 'coven'. She opposes the main villain Kariya Jin and butts heads with some of his other minions, and it's from her that we learn a bit more about the Bounts, and their plan to create a portal to Hueco Mundo. Yoshino is also disgusted with the direction that the Bounts have gone in the recent years, particularly how they have consumed souls with the intention of killing them. 

I suppose Uryu is the secondary character with the biggest focus here. This filler arc takes place in a part of the canon story where Uryu has lost his Quincy powers and wouldn't gain them until the beginning of the Arrancar/Espada arc, and there's a fair amount of story attempt where Uryu has to be constantly protected by Ichigo, Chad and Orihime, being dragged around and taken hostage and stuff. His Quincy heritage makes him a target for the Bounts, but he ends up sympathizing with Yoshino and befriending her.

Speaking of people being depowered, there's also an interesting bit where Rukia, once she rejoins the main cast... just never gets to use her Sode no Shirayuki. The real-world reason is that the reveal of Rukia's shikai won't take place until the Arrancar arc, of course, when she kills that one minion of Grimmjow's, but the anime just kind of shrugs it off with Rukia being 'unable' to use anything more than Hado for this arc. Far more interesting, though, is that Chad and Rukia are shown mulitple times that they're just trying to build up their power to catch up to Ichigo and the Shinigami, and Ichigo himself has his character arc in this season be him trying to control his Bankai -- something that Urahara explicitly notes as being something that he activates under exceptional means when he fought Byakuya in the Soul Society arc, and I do like that it's a bit of a 'power limiter' for him when he's fighting the Mod Souls and the Bounts. 

And then... well, the first batch of episodes where the Bounts actually show up are honestly rather generic. I do really like the fight against Ho and Ban, who use the dolls Guhl and Gunther -- two bottlecaps that manipulate the water into monstrous water structures. The fight against them takes place in a hospital, which is a nice scenery that we don't really get to see a lot of in Bleach. These two really didn't have much of a personality to speak about, but I do like the format of our familiar heroes fighting and overcoming simple-to-understand powers. 

We also get a bit of a multi-Bount fighting, with Kariya Jin's main flunky, Koga Gou, hunting Uryu and Yoshino; while the snake-wielding Utagawa Ryo menaces everyone. Utagawa uses his snake doll Friede, that's able to transform anything that resembles a snake into snakes? Utagawa sticks around for a fair bit, and I do kind of think that the writers must be using the early Arrancar arc (which would be in the manga at this point) to build up hype. Utagawa is the 'Luppi' of the group, menacing our heroes and looking like a rather difficult fight... and then when conflict arises among the ranks of the bad guys, he gets effortlessly defeated by the 'Grimmjow' analogue, Ichinose Maki. Utagawa is a pretty generic 'sneaky' villain, being dishonourable, taking hostages and betraying Jin the first chance he gets before getting killed. The snake powers are cool, though. 

I do think that the character that adds the most colour is definitely Ichinose Maki, because of his backstory. Of course, when we actually do see the canon Kenpachi that precedes 'our' Kenpachi, Maki's devoted loyalty gets called into question... but I absolutely love that this builds up on details that exist in the canon manga. The mention that Zaraki Kenpachi rose up into the ranks of captain after defeating his predecessor gets a neat little follow-up in Maki's backstory, where Maki is a very devoted follower of the previous Kenpachi. He ends up coming into conflict with 'our' Kenpachi, who views Maki as being such a 'vine' that he's not even worth fighting. Maki ends up wandering around, exiling himself from Soul Society, before stumbling upon another powerful man that saved him from a Hollow -- Kariya Jin. 

Again, this connection to Soul Society lore is great and I really do like that this arc just builds up on the concept of Mod Souls, or the Thirteenth Division's might-makes-right mentality. All of these will ultimately still be handwaved away as filler that won't really matter in the main story, but there's a nice bit of 'legitimization', I feel, that makes a good filler as opposed to bad ones. 

The first real 'half' of the season ends with an assault on the Bount mansion to rescue Uryu. We get a pretty fun fight between Ichigo and Utagawa, then Ichigo and Maki. The climax, of course, is Yoshino facing off against Kariya, with Yoshino being inspired by Uryu and his 'pride' as a Quincy -- even a powerless one. I don't really think the relationship between them was meant to be romantic per se, since Yoshino's super-old, but regardless Yoshino ends up dying and being used as part of a ritual by Kariya to create a bunch of brand-new bug dolls. It's relatively dramatic, all things considered -- again, Yoshino herself is kind of a flat 'she is an ally' character, but the story is done relatively well. 

...and then we break from this tension to episode 17 of the season, which is filler-within-a-filler, with Lirin and Kurodo doing some Home Alone nonsense and getting caught up in hijinks. This is probably the most bland part of the season.

The final part of the season feels a bit more disjointed compared to the first two, and that's mostly because... there's a feel of fights just being thrown to us. Yoshino's death allowed the other Bounts to create these strange mosquito or hornet-like 'Bitto' that go around absorbing the souls of random civilians, again, not too dissimilar to what Yammy did during his first appearance in the world of the living. Some of our heroes like Renji and Ichigo encounter civilians (including poor Keigo!) that got attacked by these creatures. I've always found it an interesting novelty to see these supernatural threats in Bleach attack human bystanders, for the simple reason that all of Bleach's major arcs happen in realms without any humans around. There's a sense of urgency in this whole sequence. 

And over the course of around seven or eight episodes, we get our typical shonen anime cast match-ups, as the Bitto sucking human souls ends up empowering all the existing Bounts. At the same time, Soul Society dispatches four vice-captains -- Rangiku, Shuhei, Kira and Yumichika -- to help investigate. 

The first of this fights to happen is Ichigo and Lirin protecting Keigo from Koga and the always-creepy Dalk, and Koga overpowers Ichigo handily. We get a surprisingly fun flashback from Koga -- involving him mentoring and losing a young mentee called Cain. This flashback takes up almost an entire episode and really does frame Koga to be this long-suffering, older mentor figure who's seen other Bounts die and how he's seeing Kariya as the ultimate saviour that is going to allow these younger men to survive. The Cain story, for something that's really not going to matter down the line (even within this arc), is rather sad and pretty well-told. 

Dalk is a fun visual spectacle, and during the fight we get to see Ichigo's Hollow take over again. The Hollow doesn't actually contradict any of the huge revelations in the final Vandenreich arc, interestingly, which would've been so easy for the anime team to slip up on. I think they just transplant the 'berserk, psycho but secretly protective' dialogue from the manga up to this point here? Ichigo is also ultimately helped by Kira, and I didn't remember that Wabisuke's power was already revealed by the time of the Soul Society arc! This does mean that Kira and Rangiku have the most well-defined power-sets at this point, allowing Kira and Wabisuke to take disable the empowered Dalk  long enough for Koga to retreat. 

Less-interesting is the fight between Rukia, Orihime and Kurodo against the very bland 'evil female' villain, Yoshi, who has a sword-and-fan Doll Nieder. Where Kira shows off some cool power usage with Wabisuke, Rukia is limited to just using Hados like Byakurai and Sokatsui, which really isn't explained for any particularly believable reason. Yoshi herself is a pretty simple melee fighter. This fight ends up being taken over by Mabashi, the previously-reluctant Bount.

Mabashi is probably the last member of Kariya's batch of villains that have some semblance of personality, even if at this point it's basically a violent crack addict. Initially, he was super averse at betraying Bount tradition and has to be force-fed human souls from the Bitto by Kariya. Mabashi's doll, Ritz, is a creepy one, speaking with the voice of a child and is this bizarre plant-squirrel thing that has grows from a seed and starts zipping around and attacking our heroes. Ultimately it hijacks Rukia's body -- probably the anime team is inspired by the Zommari fight, which I'm not sure would've happened in the manga at the point that this arc was being written? Meanwhile, Shuhei crashes this party and is very much willing to cut down Rukia in that typical 'soldier' mentality. Ultimately, the Mabashi fight ends with Orihime deciding not to try and deal a killing blow to Rukia, and embrace her role as a healer. Mabashi is driven off, and 
 

Again, bringing these more prominent Vice-Captains into the arc is very much welcome! I don't think the arc does anything to really revolutionize their characterizations, but having more establishing moments like this, showing Kira's gloominess, Shuhei's cold professionalism and Rangiku's happy-go-lucky personality all do a great job at really hammering home who these secondary characters are. 

The final fight in town has Rangiku join up with the, uh... the 'quiet trio' of Sado, Noba and Ururu, and the cutaway to this was very random. Where the previous couple of Bount encounters had some buildup, this is just something that Rangiku stumbles into. They face off against old man Sawatari, whose Doll, Baura, is a giant rock fish that can slip in and out of large flat surfaces. It's a power that looks rather bizarre, and... I really do feel like this fight's focus is more on Rangiku as opposed to Chad, which is kind of a shame. Chad always gets shafted in the manga, but even in a filler arc where the rest of the main characters (Orihime, Uryu, Renji, Rukia) get some kind of spotlight, Chad just kind of repeats the same 'my strength is to protect others', with how his main focus was trying to get Ururu back after she's swallowed by Baura. While the giant rock fish that teleports through surfaces, as well as Rangiku's Haineko, are all pretty fun to see, I felt like this is the most dragged-out of the fights and could've been shortened a bit. Sawatari also ends up retreating, and it was at this point that I realized the Bount arc was going to run two seasons. 

Meanwhile, Mayuri sends off Nemu to the world of the living to meet up with Uryu, who is struggling to even create a single light arrow. It's kind of interesting that Mayuri is still written with his Soul Society arc era jackassery, and over the season, the writers added the reason that Mayuri's predecessors sealed away the data about the Bount, which gives him a bit of a personal, egoistical stake in all this. Nemu hands over Uryu a fancy new artifact that'll allow him to have power for the duration of the arc, but because canon has to take precedence, this is definitely a power-up that'll be lost by the time of the next season. I get that the alternative is to have Uryu wallow in uselessness for two whole seasons, but it's really not a solution I'm a particularly huge fan of. Uryu shows up in the final episode of this one to pave way to the next arc, by helping the Bounts create their portal. 

Our heroes then raid the Bount cave, but the four Vice-Captains are waylaid by Ugaki and his doll, Gessel, who takes the form of giant creepy floating eyeballs that shine light on people in the cave, and the shadows cast by these floating eyeballs allow Gessel's main body, a giant rune-covered golem thing, to attack. The four Vice-Captains are waylaid by this basically offscreen before our heroes show up. Ugaki serves as a fun little 'miniboss' for this arc, all smug in his little tarot room as he summons different attacks from Gessel's appendages. Again, Rangiku and especially Kira get to strut their stuff a bit with their Shikai release.

Ultimately, though, this becomes the Ichigo and Renji show, with Renji in particular getting the highlight. It's a fun bit where Renji realizes that teamwork is good and all, but Renji can't allow himself to always rely on having someone to rescue him. He tells Ichigo to stand back, Yumichika comments about the whole Squad 11 mentality, and we get the spectacular activation of Hihio Zabimaru. The fight really isn't all that impressive, coming from seeing what Hihio Zabimaru has done throughout the many different canon arcs and movies, but at the point of time that this arc was broadcasted, this would've been the second time Hihio Zabimaru gets activated and Ugaki here would be Renji's first victory with his Bankai. 

However, once it's clear that Gessel was going to be defeated by Hihio Zabimaru, Kariya ends up melting the walls to Ugaki's room, causing his death by a rampaging Gessel. Ichigo brings this up as he confronts Kariya one-on-one, calling bullshit on all of Kariya's talk about how the Bount are a precious, dying species and all his friends are his precious comrades. Kariya also monologues as he brutalizes Ichigo over the course of half an episode, doing that typical 'anime shonen antagonist overpowers the protagonist so much while taunting him', zipping around with super-speed and super-strength and whatnot. Kariya reveals that he wants to go to Soul Society for vengeance, particularly since he discovered (how?) that it was Soul Society experimentation that caused the Bounts to be created in the distant past. Again, Ichigo calls bullshit on this particularly since the Bounts are hurting their fellow humans. 

We get a sequence of Ichigo allowing Zangetsu to pierce himself, talking once more to Old Man Zangetsu... which, again, knowing the revelations that we did from the final arc, is a scene that surprisingly did not contradict everything. Ichigo activates Bankai, which is his whole kinda-sorta character arc in this season, and manages to clash with Kariya a bit and wound him for the first time. Unfortunately, we've reached the final episode of the season and have to leave with a cliffhanger, which means the episode/season ends with Uryu showing up and completing the Senkaimon gate for Kariya and company to go to the Soul Society. The reason Uryu gives is wanting to defeat the Bount himself because of his Quincy pride and the best place that Uyru can fight is the Soul Society due to the abundance of Reishi. There's also something about them not being able to beat the Bounts themselves at that point with half the cast injured, and... I dunno, I know the Urahara shop guys aren't really going to involve themselves in combat, but I did feel like this excuse rang hollow.

The Bount arc continues in 'season five', or 'series five', of the anime, and... I thought it wasn't as bad as people said it was. Was it because of its placement in the anime, which would be such a gigantic plot tumour in-between the highs of the Soul Society and Arrancar/Espada arcs? Still, while I don't think the season was bad... it's not great, of course. Characters aren't really able to show off what they can really do without going into spoiler territory, with Rukia and Shuhei feeling like they were gypped the most. I also did feel that for an arc that initially prides itself on wanting to give the lesser-spotlighted characters something to do, we don't really get all that much from the likes of Orihime, Rukia and especially Chad. The Mod Soul characters are... they don't annoy me as much as I thought they would, but I would be lying if I said they added anything too substantial to the arc. The canon protagonists are already perfectly capable of doing their own comedy routines, and while I thought they were going to do something interesting with their powers, only Noba really did much in the actual fight against the Bounts.

The villains themselves are also... not the best? The powers are cool, of course, and I have said my piece about how neat Koga and Mabashi are, while Ichinose Maki at least has an interesting backstory. But the two lynchpin characters with the most focus -- Kariya and Yoshino -- really don't do much but spout ominous stuff all the time. I was entertained while watching this arc enough. It's still very heavily filler-y, but we'll see how things conclude in the next 'season'. 

Extra Random Notes:

• Depending on whenever you guys see this... I actually watched the Bount arc around the time before and after the second cour of TYBW is running, but I'm saving this for when I need actual 'filler' posts in real life.
• Out of all the dolls, my favourite design has to be Dalk, Koga Gou's doll, which takes the form of a bunch of metal orbs that merge together into this sinister female mannequin, and can split up into metal balls that she can shoot at people. Unlike most of the other Dolls, which are either silent or be yes-men, Dalk is such a sassy, sadistic creep! 
• Ganju and Hanataro show up a fair bit in this season, but they are 100% so irrelevant to what's going on in the story. Ganju does help out a bit as a random backup against the creepy water twins, but I really would've rather they be removed and the screentime given to them given to Chad/Orihime or the Mod Souls instead. 
  
• Old Getsuga Tenshou is white, huh?
• Yeah, while Kurodo not being able to surpass the powers of whoever he copies is a nice way to limit him, there's really no reason for Lirin and Noba to be utilized so minimally after their introductory episodes. 
• We also get the first appearance of Uryu's mother, whose design is uncannily similar to how Kanae Katagiri would look when she's revealed in the manga, many years after this arc would be on air. I wonder if the mangaka Kubo has already designed Katagiri's appearance and shared it with the anime team (which he does with the Zanpakuto spirits), or if Katagiri's final design was designed after the anime appearance. 
• Likewise, the idea that Jin is fighting in revenge for the fact that his Bount people were exterminated in the past is uncannily similar to one of the reasons of the Quincies' rampage in the final Vandenreich saga. 
• Yeah, what does Maki see in Kiganjo Kenpachi, we'll never know. 
• There's also a bit of a subplot about how Yoshino, as the only female Bount, is the only Bount capable of becoming a 'mother', despite all Bounts being sterile? It's a bit bizarre addition, but I guess it's something that fits with the gothic vampire themes. 
• Why are the women Bounts called 'Yoshino' and 'Yoshi'? 
• The Rukia sequence does have a bit where Rukia has to use the full chant of her Hado spells in order to inflict maximum damage, which doesn't do anything to defeat the enemy but was still pretty neat to bring up something that was brought up in the manga. 
• Man, Yumichika really didn't do jack, huh? He's at least less insufferable than Hanataro and Ganju. 
• Got to love that second opening. AS GODDAMNED D.J. CHATTERED!

Netflix's One Piece S01E07 Review: Luffy, Help Me

One Piece, Season 1, Episode 7: The Girl With the Sawfish Tattoo

So we begin the final two-parter as we close out the Orange Island arc, and there are a lot of interesting changes made here. Due to the build-up of Arlong being this 'big bad' seeded throughout all of East Blue, we get a more bombastic 'time to raid the bad guy's base' vibe to the entire assault, and like the rest of the fandom, I am a huge fan of Jeff Ward's Buggy tagging along for the assault... though obviously he's not going to be in a particularly helping mood. There's a very One Piece esque quality to how Buggy as a decapitated head just gets dragged around the Sunny, and it reminds me to luckless defeated antagonists like Caribou or Caesar Clown being dragged around by the Straw Hats. In a larger dose I would probably have a bit more problem, but in smaller doses of Buggy being a little shithead before being shoved in bags or tossed away, I do really like it. Oh, and the streamlining of the Straw Hats all arriving at the same time actually works for the betterment of the plot, particularly with them cutting out Johnny and Yosaku. 

And, just like the Sanji flashback last episode... a significant part of this episode is taken up by Nami's flashback. Which I feel that, just like the original source material, they really do earn by having Nami travel with us and have a mysterious attitude and goal all series long. They do still trim the details of the flashback down a fair bit -- Genzo gets reduced to a funny-looking extra, for example -- and I do think that the flashback suffers a little because of it... but not by much. 

The main point of the flashback, of course, is to sell Nami's bond with her adopted family Bellemere and Nojiko. And... in this case, I actually do think that the race-lift for Nojiko makes a huge, thematic sense to really emphasize the whole 'found family with bonds as strong as a regular blood family' themes of Nami's flashback. I do like that the first shot of Nami's flashback family has them play cards as a happy family... and then we cut to the all-business, cutthroat, angry fishmen (fake Hatchan) playing cards with Nami on Arlong Park. There's only business there, and it stretches things to say that Nami's even friends with these people even before the audience is introduced to the fact that these guys invaded and tore apart Nami's hometown. 

And, of course, a major bit of contention here that I'll point out is that... Hatchan is completely cut out of the story entirely. There's not even a cheeky 'he's off-screen somewhere' like Jango or Pearl were. Some people think that the spiky-haired fishman playing cards with Nami is Hatchan, and I honestly wouldn't have minded that -- that in this continuity, Hatchan's just a background member who simply didn't get to fight -- but while I understand why he's cut, it is kind of worrying, a little bit, for any potential future seasons and what else they would cut from it. Because I really wouldn't mind even just giving some lip-service and have him off-screen or something.

I do really like, however, the restructure of Arlong Park into a real theme park... something that I don't think Oda really planned out until he crafted Sabaody and Fishman Island. There are actual games and stands and booths on the little theme park, including the rest of Buggy's body which I thought was a fun visual gag. 

While Nami's map-room being a prison isn't given as much focus as I would've liked it to, I do like the how the show handles Nami's constant flashes to her backstory, with her flipping maps in the prison-room in the present day cutting back into her younger self flipping through the book she stole. And while Arlong's visual execution is still arguable, I do really enjoy the integration of his sadistic side and his bit of racism-driven motivations. They added a fair bit more of his desire to be the superior race of the world, his views on humankind and the deigning of allowing Nami a special place that humans, in his mind, would not normally deserve... and the clearly emotionally abusive relationship as Arlong forces Nami, despite her clear reluctance, to collect tribute from Coco Village. 

Speaking of which, they combined some of the villages, with the Straw Hats arriving at Cocoyasi and finding just a single house flipped upside-down. It fits the dread that the manga counterpart of the scene has. They witness Nami getting into a confrontation with the villagers... and here's probably a brief spoiler of the next episode but here's one of the worst changes to the show, where they kind of cut out the fact that the Coco Village villagers have known all along that Nami's trying to buy their village back, and that they're just 'playing mean' to make it less hard on Nami. The villagers to come around at the end, but I felt like that's a bit too big of a change? Eh. 

Nami tells Luffy off and tells the Straw Hats to screw off, maintaining that façade of anger and detachment, and I do like the contrasting opinions between the suave Sanji who quickly points out that Nami's hiding something, while Usopp just wants to get the hell out of dodge before the super-powerful fish-monsters come back. 

I also love the bit where Zoro interjects when Luffy is about to talk to Genzo, intercutting his "I'm a pirate" with "...hunter", which is a nice bit of worldbuilding that fits into the accelerated pacing and the lack of time that would've otherwise been spent to them arguing and winning the villagers' trust. We already get that scene later on as the Straw Hats visit Nojiko's house, Sanji wins her over with some cooking, and Nojiko spills the tea about her backstory. 

And it's at this point that we get to see the full backstory, and while the actual gunshot is surprisingly censored, everything else about Arlong's invasion of Coco village, Bellemere hiding the two girls, Arlong figuring out that there are three people in the house, the tribute hunting and the connection to money, and Bellemere refusing to say a lie like "these two are not my daughters"... all of it are done amazingly well. Honestly, other than Usopp's flashback (which, I'm sorry, was always the weakest of the original five) I felt like all the flashbacks were done exceedingly well. Nami's and Sanji's are a great standout from the rest even then, though. The tension in these scenes are really palpable, and they actually got a really good child actress to play little Nami. 

I do really like the show actually focusing on Luffy's reaction to that story. Usopp is dumbfounded, Sanji's quiet and pensive, and... Luffy goes up onto the roof of Nojiko's house, followed by Zoro. And there's a nice little discussion as Luffy insists that he knows Nami, the real Nami, while Zoro is a bit more cynical... and Luffy brings up how his gut feeling about Nami is the same one that told him about Zoro. 

Arlong's dealings with Nezumi is done a lot more smartly here. Nezumi still walks around in a gloriously dumb-looking reproduction of his manga counterpart's rat getup, but he's built up a bit more. Nezumi and his cronies show up earlier in Arlong's party, and the later discussion takes place in a dark, secluded room. Arlong doesn't just simply threaten Nezumi or make a show of his strength, but actually goes on a really well-delivered rant about how despite all of the supposed efforts by the World Government to make sure the Fishmen were given equal rights as regular humans, it's really just little more than lip service... and I don't want to just write the entire conversation here, but it's one of the better rewrites in the Netflix adaptation in my opinion. 

Nami then goes to Bellemere's grave to dig up her money, leading to a confrontation between her and Nojiko. It's an interesting confrontation between the two, and the desecration of Bellemere's grave adds an extra sense of anger on Nojiko's part. In the midst of all this, we get the final part of the flashback -- of little Nami making a deal with Arlong, leading to her lifelong goal of her entire teenage years of stealing, cheating and hoarding enough money to buy back Cocoyasi Village from the fishman. Of course, Nezumi interrupts it and seizes Nami's treasure. What a dick!

Nami running around in the dark, in desperation, after her lifeline has been cut, after her last hope, her lifelong effort, has been completely torn asunder... all the while Arlong is giving a speech about retribution and vengeance to his fishmen army. And with all of this rhetoric going on, I actually do appreciate a lot of the additional world-building hints that not all fishmen are cruel -- with the fishman staff in the Baratie and the brief mention of Jimbei. 

And the clinching scene of the East Blue saga? Nami ranting "ARLONG ARLONG ARLONG ARLONG ARLONG!" while she cuts up her own deltoid with a knife to get rid of the mark of the tattoo? The sheer moment of desperation before Monkey D. Luffy, the bringer of hope and the dumbass who doesn't know how to distrust his friend even after a life-shattering betrayal, comes in? I have to admit that I actually didn't really feel that this moment was as impactful as some of the others down the line (Robin's "I want to live"; Zoro's "nothing happened"; everything about Brook's original joining) but it's pretty up there as one of the scenes that this show needs to get right. And... it does. Out of all the scenes here, I think this is the one scene that Eiichiro Oda himself notes that they needed to get right. 

Now I'm not going to lie and say that this is a transformative scene that really blew my mind away or anything like that. And honestly, for a Netflix adaptation, I really thought that they'd use some better makeup on the wound on Nami's arm instead of what looked like three clean cuts. But it's really competently done, the acting between Emily Rudd and Inaki Godoy really works, and considering this is Nami with all her walls broken down and Rudd is now able to show Nami's more genuine side? It's well done. 

And with us seeing all the way to the future of these stories? Seeing how Nami is at the lowest point in her life in this arc. She betrayed the people that have been nothing but selfless and helpful to her. She betrayed her village, her family, even her real sister. She tried to bear all the burdens on her own, but whether it's pirates or the marines, they have all betrayed her. There's no way out, and the very same people she tried to push away? Just like Bellemere when Nami was all angry and said some nasty things about how she's "not [her] real mother", Luffy comes back, and is willing to help. No questions asked. Because that's what family does. 

And I've been watching the Wano arc in the anime... and I've honestly never quite realized it. But this is exactly why, in the face of certain doom when facing off against Ulti, this is why Nami refuses to deny that Straw Hat Luffy is her captain, and that god damn it, he's going to be the King of the Pirates. Because to deny Luffy at the pain of death would be equivalent to doing the antithesis of what Bellemere did

And honestly? This really does play into Luffy's character, doesn't it? He knows people. He doesn't care why Nami betrayed him. Why Robin left him. Why Vivi deceived him. What the politics behind Momonosuke's kingdom, or Tama's starvation, or Law's backstory, or Rebecca being trapped in the prisons, or why Hatchan is so afraid of Celestial Dragons, or that characters like Franky or Mr. 2 used to be an enemy. What Luffy sees is that they're his friends, they need help, and whatever the reason is? He's going to lift his hands into the air and yell "of course I will!" Badass.

And the episode ends with the village on fire, as the Straw Hats, well, assemble for one last fight. 

A great addition that takes place in the background of this episode, by the way, is the usage of the Baratie set. I've been focusing on the Arlong and Straw Hat side of things, but there's a B-plot going on as Garp and his company arrives at Baratie, leading to a giant steak-filled conversation as Garp and Zeff talk to each other. Two of the best actors, and I love the little tension as Garp clearly knows that Zeff knows about Luffy, and Zeff is just maintaining his nonchalant 'I know nothing' excuses. Their dialogue mostly talks about the typical 'new age' theme that One Piece likes so much, but the performances of the two older actors are amazing to withhold. 

These are two characters that never interacted with each other in the source material, but it makes perfect sense as they're both from the same 'generation' of sailors and while they don't exactly know the specifics, they are parents (well, grandparent in Garp's case) to two of the Straw Hats. Again, it's this nice little moment of detail that feels so nice where we get to see short bits and bobs about what happens in other parts of the setting after our heroes left. 

Koby and Helmeppo also have a fun little discussion about their internal reveal that Koby's found out about Garp and Luffy's connection, and I absolutely adore this scene that really highlights their bizarre friendship. The little dork Koby drinking alone in Baratie's bar, and Helmeppo's even got a fair bit of comparison as Koby realizes that there's some similarities between Helmeppo and Luffy, having grown under the shadow of powerful Marines. 

One Piece Easter Egg Notes:

• The back side of the playing cards Nami is playing with has the symbol of the Sun Pirates, but with a shark jaw in the middle of the 'sun'.
• There are arguments here and there, and some people think that the guy with spiky hair that Nami's playing cards against is meant to be the cut Hatchan, but he actually corresponds to a recurring background member of the Arlong pirates.  
• Our heroes find an upside-down house that is revealed to have been flipped by Arlong's immense fishman strength during the original attack on Cocoyasi. In the manga, our heroes find the entirety of Gosa Village with upside-down flipped village as part of the Fishman Pirates' rampage. 
• While we don't see Gosa Village, Nezumi still mentions that it was recently attacked in this version of events. 
• Sanji says his 'mosshead' insult at Zoro, which is a running gag in the manga. 
• Zeff mentions hunting boars on the island of Jaya, the island where, well, the Jaya arc takes place. 
• Nezumi name-drops Jimbei as a Warlord of the Sea, and Arlong is immediately pissed off at hearing him -- which is more true to the dynamic of Fischer Tiger, Jimbei and Arlong as established in the Fishman Island arc as compared to the now-retconned line of Jimbei being Arlong's "boss" in the original East Blue saga. 
• In the same vein, the fact that Arlong Park now looks like a theme park is also taken from the revelations in the Sabaody arc where Arlong modelled his park after Sabaody Park where the Fishmen were not allowed entrance. 
• The book little Nami flips through has a map of the Oykot Kingdom, the war-torn country where she and Nojiko were originally from.
• During the party when Chew does his archerfish trick, one of the Fishman is wearing a Criminal shirt -- extra-appropriate considering that Criminal is a brand that originated from the Fishman Kingdom. 

Loki S02E05 Review: Breaking the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Walls

Loki, Season 2, Episode 5: Science/Fiction

 

And, yeah... it's these last episodes of Loki's second season that really manages to tell a really great story. It's just such a shame that it took so long for the story to be told, and in retrospect I definitely could've done with the random TVA no-name characters like Dox and Brad, or even the many, many references to He Who Remains and a potential conflict between Kang (or the Kangs) and Loki's TVA. So much of this season really just revolves around what the hell Loki wants in the fact of apocalypse. It's just perhaps the unfortunate result of my expectations from the first season that I kind of expect every episode to have a huge bombastic cliffhanger or something. But taking the big huge time explosion that spaghettified Victor Timely in episode 4 as the big event equivalent to the Thanos Snap in Infinity War makes the back end of Loki's second season a lot more fun to watch. 

And this whole episode basically deals with Loki as he goes through what Sylvie and Mobius have been discussing rather heatedly in the previous episode -- the fact that all the members of the TVA were plucked from rather ordinary lives from other timelines. Loki starts time-slipping again, just like how he did in the season premiere, and he starts to see these other characters throughout time and space. Right after seeing the completely empty TVA time-station and time-shifting away just as everything goes to shit and get turned into spaghetti. 

Casey (who remains rather irrelevant to the entire series) used to be a prisoner that escaped Alcatrqaz in the 60's. Hunter B-15 is Dr. Verity Willis, a pediatrician. Mobius M. Mobius is Don, a jetski salesman with two kids. Obviously Sylvie is still in that McDonalds. But Ouroboros turns out to be a sci-fi author A.D. Doug... who starts to demolish the fourth wall as he starts to talk to Loki about how Loki's time-slipping powers are working 'narratively'. O.B. is always a bit of a kooky character and I feel that this is where he's best utilized. Loki calls bullshit on this, but O.B. notes that this feels like science fiction. Or just fiction in general. Or maybe fiction is just science that isn't explained yet. Something along those lines. Things got a bit loopy. But O.B. gives a nice little in-universe explanation to Loki's fourth-wall breaking that doesn't seem as forced or 'just because the comics did it' as She-Hulk did. O.B. points out that clearly something has to be driving Loki's jumps so that he goes through the original lives of his TVA comrades, and if it's not the hand of an omniscient scriptwriter, then it's... Loki himself. 

And this does really tie in to the original 'glorious purpose' of this particular variant of Loki. He's in denial that he needs to do any kind of introspection about himself, and he immediately rejects the 'fiction' part of this equation... but then comes around to it. 

The actual time-slipping and time-jumping parts really doesn't work quite as well, and is honestly just driven by Tom Hiddleston's strength as an actor. I don't frankly care enough about Casey or B-15 enough, neither do we spend anywhere enough time with them or their 'original' variants to care. After the otherwise fun science/fiction spiel, O.B. also uses the power of time-travel and offscreen timeline working to create a primitive TemPad, even if it cost him 18 months of his life and his marriage. 

Rather understandably, the episode gives us most of the screentime with Don, the man formerly or will later be known as Mobius M. Mobius. We do get some rather sad moments as Loki tries his best to convince Don that he is meant for something greater, even if he has to give up his family and his life as a smooth-talking salesman. It's not the most glamorous life, but you can feel Don as he struggles to weigh his consequences... while Loki, as loath as he might be to admit it, is begging for help from one of the few people he might consider his friend. 

The final meeting is also a rather interesting one, with Loki finally meeting Sylvie... who retained her memories, a TemPad and is very much perfectly willing to continue being a McDonalds worker instead of being involved in all of this TVA bullshittery. I'm not that impressed about just how married she is to this particular life, but I guess it's the life she chose? Sylvie also correctly points out that Loki's motivations is less about fighting for the TVA, for the preservation of the multiverse, for the greater good... but more to hold on to the only place in this big fucked-up universe where Loki felt like he belonged. While the whole 'the TVA needs to stop this multiversal apocalypse' thing is a great counter-argument to Sylvie's cynicism, I do like that she puts Loki's true motivations into words.

With Sylvie technically refusing to join the team, Loki and the rest of the cobbled-together TVA team tries to do something and throw some comic-book technobabble at each other. Which mostly is just O.B. and Loki doing their work while Mobius plays the 'confused regular guy', B-15 just kind of stands there and Casey tries to steal stuff. 

We get a hauntingly terrifying scene as Sylvie just hangs around in a music store that she clearly frequents -- a nice little nod to the fact that Sylvie is out there having a life in this particular small branch timeline... and we just get a hauntingly wonderful and terrifying representation of Sylvie's own "head buried in the sand" mentality as she's stuck listening to the music even as her shopkeeper friend freaks out about the fact that their entire universe is being shredded and turned into even more spaghetti. And as Sylvie zaps to the point where Loki and the 'original' variants are trying to fix problems, everyone starts to get spaghettified one by one. 

And... again, kudos to Hiddleston for selling this scene, as he realizes and internalizes the rules of science fiction... and takes control of his time-slipping powers. Loki takes control of his power and the narrative, leaping back to episode four -- which essentially resets the cliffhanger... only this time Loki is here with a time-power related power-up, a purpose and an urgency to save everyone. 

Again... I will always say that I am not the biggest fan of how Marvel's Loki show is less about the mythos of Loki and the Asgardians, or Loki and how he relates to the greater MCU, but revolves around this wacky time-travel show. And I'm still honestly unconvinced if the way Loki tackles time-travel and its characters and its vague parallel buildup of Kang with the rest of the MCU works for me. But as far as telling a story about Loki, Mobius and Sylvie, and how they are just people trapped in this insane apocalyptic disaster, all the while Loki is trying to figure out what he wants? It's an all right show, as far as that bit is concerned. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hunter B-15 is revealed to be the MCU incarnation of Verity Willis, a major supporting character in Loki: Agents of Asgard, who was the daughter of a family that was tasked to guard an Asgardian artifact called the Andvaranaut. Verity inherited the artifact's power to see through any lies, and this ended up with a strange relationship with a reformed Loki. 
  
• In addition, Verity's dad Roger Willis, who was also featured as a minor character in the 80's Mighty Thor comics, is referenced in the episode. Verity is working in the Roger Willis Children's Clinic. 
• Incidentally, while it's not stated outright, the idea of Loki transforming from the God of Mischief (or Lies) into the God of Stories is the central theme of the Loki: Agents of Asgard comic run.
  
• Reliving the same moment over and over again is one of the warnings against time manipulation that Karl Mordo told Dr. Strange in Doctor Strange.
• Loki references Mobius's 'form and function' line about jetskis in season 1 when talking to Don. 
• In the first episode of Loki, Loki threatens to 'gut [Casey] like a fish', which is the first thing that Frank!Casey says in this episode. 
• In the bar that Loki and Sylvie are having their conversation in is an arcade game of the Zaniac, the movie that Brad stars in earlier this season.

One Piece 1099 Review: The King Just Won't Die

One Piece, Chapter 1099: Pacifist

This is going to be a short review from me because I wrote half of this review, my computer lost the document when it ran out of battery. And then I lost a second copy of it trying to upload it to Blogger, so... yeah. Not having a bad week in general, and this is probably the only review I have to write from scratch and I just don't have the energy at this point. Lots of real-life shit in the way, and while the blog will continue to update with posts (many of which I wrote a week ago) expect 'live' posts like this to be a bit more... muted. 

Anyway... it's a pretty good chapter, and I'm honestly kind of sad I'm a bit salty. It's not as bombastic or tragic as the previous couple of chapters for Kuma, but it's definitely a nice connective tissue between the tragedy conga of 1098 and presumably the big revelation in 1100 -- and we can already infer what Bartholomew Kuma's ultimate fate is. As Saturn put it several chapters ago, in his eyes, a Buccaneer like Kuma only has the fates to be dead or a slave, and the motherfucker somehow managed to turn Kuma into both. It's absolutely interesting how One Piece has given us the ending of Kuma's story, which was already tragic in and of its own for damn close to a decade at this point... but it's just so sad to see everything just tumble down for him. 

The first couple of pages basically has Kuma see the towns burning as King Becori returns and starts setting fire to everything, apparently (in a nice continuity nod, of which this chapter has a lot) inspired by the burning of Goa Kingdom. There is an amazing panel of Kuma on the bottom left of the first two-page spread as he failed, once again, to save everyone... and you just see the face of a man that snapped. 

He clearly didn't snap hard enough, because against all odds he's still a pacifist (that's going to be a theme) in that he still refuses to murder Becori, the latest in many fuckers in the One Piece world that deserves a slow, painful death.

I'm not really sure how Becori survives that gigantic-ass Ursus Shock that blew apart the top tower in his castle, though. That seems pretty powerful. 

This 'One-Man Revolution', however, attracted the attention of St. Saturn. We get a bunch of explanations about the status of kingship. Kuma didn't exactly reign, but everyone treated him as a king. Instead, the technical day-to-day operations fell to some dude called Bulldog, the previous-previous king before Becori. And while it's a small detail, the true identity of 'Connie' is finally revealed as being Bulldog's mother... so she's queen dowager, but to a different king than Kuma. It explains Bonney's disguise in the Reverie, even if I personally do think that it's a bit... weird, I guess? I don't think Connie matters enough for me to really put up that much of a fuss, but it really does make sense if she's an actual person and an actual queen dowager. 

And then... Bonney just eats the Toshi-Toshi no Mi ("Age Age" or "Year Year"; the name of this fruit was revealed in a recent SBS) offscreen and rather randomly, sprouting all the way to the age similar to Ginny and giving poor Kuma a heart attack. Some guy who conveniently has the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia identifies it.

Oh, and also, thanks to the World Government's propaganda, every single aspect of Becori's evil reign as a despot and a psychopath gets attributed to Kuma instead, which explains his 'Tyrant' epithet. It's basically what everyone was guessing, and... it's not that much of a surprise? Morgans is a real piece of work, and I really did wish that we've learned a bit more about the supposed 'Tyrant' part of Kuma's reputation other than maybe one or two lines by random people. 

Anyway, Becori arrives with a fleet, and... he gets blown back again, but not before Kuma has a long talk with Bulldog, Connie, Gyogyo and a young and very confused Bonney about how he's going to be really wanted this time around for attacking Marine vessels. This earns Kuma his first (presumably large) bounty. And then Kuma goes off around the world to look for a cure for Bonney... while Bonney resolves to set off to sea at 10... which would be her age during the pre-timeskip year, where, like Luffy, she would've set out to sea. 

And in an amazing sequence, we get a montage of Kuma going to all the islands that he sent the Straw Hats to during the timeskip. I don't know how much of it is serendipity (and some of it must be, Mihawk's island probably didn't have much to do with medicine) but I do like that the first island that Kuma goes to is the island of the primitive-looking-but-very-medically-smart people that Chopper trained under. Going to Vegapunk's old island of Balgimore (where Franky was sent), Weatheria with its scientists (where Nami was sent) and even the Boin Archipelago with its herbs (where Usopp was sent) makes sense too in Kuma's journey, and this adds a nice layer of extra meaning when we realize that Kuma doesn't just know these places, he knows the people. 

...well, except for where he sent Brook, I guess, because that really just felt so random and doesn't necessarily benefit Brook. 

And at some point, Kuma comes into contact with Dragon and the others. At this point, Ivankov is already in Impel Down, and there is a cute moment where Belo Betty asks permission from Kuma to be the new head of the Eastern Army, because the Revolutionaries have been keeping that position vacant in memory of Ginny. That's a very cute gesture, and I do like Kuma's rather adorable line of 'eh, you guys are going from one sharp-tongued woman to the next, sure'. 

Dragon directs Kuma to the island that would be Egghead, and talks about the "winds of fate"... yeah, he's all but stated to be someone with wind powers, huh? I mean, I guess the nature of his powers is confirmed, all we have to do is to figure out if it's Logia or Paramecia. 

Kuma arrives on Egghead with Bonney (stashed in a little carry-pack!) and I guess this is what Bonney meant when "I visited Egghead as a child", which was one of the reasons I thought that she wasn't actually a kid that aged herself up. Just me misreading the phrasing of that line, I suppose! I like the little continuity nods of Vegapunk still having a gigantic head, so this is before Punk Records and the Satellites. The fact that people have also pointed out that the female satellites seem to draw elements of Bonney (Lilith shares Bonney's appearance, and York shares her gluttony) seems to lend some credence to this. I also really like Bonney playing around with Sentomaru's giant battle axe in the background while the adults are talking. 

Vegapunk basically wants to do a stem cell transplant for Bonney, which is, I guess, how, he replaces all of Bonney's cells with healthy ones. But we do see the still-kinda-immoral Vegapunk that we saw in Vegapunk's own flashback of meeting with Dragon, which I appreciate. Vegapunk basically gaslights Kuma into realizing that there is a hope of curing his daughter. It's just very, very expensive, and while I wouldn't say that Vegapunk's a character that's as sneaky as, oh, Doflamingo or Arlong or even Nami, he also none-too-subtly notes that his interest in science also means that he's not unwilling to keep Kuma's Buccaneer blood a secret. He just really wants to make science, and is just so utterly dumb at realizing how corrupt the World Government is and how they'll turn all of his inventions into what's basically weaponry. 

And we do get to see that Vegapunk isn't really evil. He has the ideas of making a clone army out of Kuma's immensely powerful body, and Vegapunk actually has the idea of combining Buccaneer blood and cyborg tech to make an indestructible, bulletproof clone army. It's Attack of the Clones! And Vegapunk paints a picture of these guys as being peacekeepers, like cyborg superheroes or robo-cops or something, and he doesn't even mention anything about turning Kuma into a cyborg. Kuma even likes this, noting that it's a nice reason for 'being born'...

...except, of course, we all know how this story ends. Saturn is eavesdropping on every conversation in Egghead, and I love that Saturn also being featured earlier in God Valley and even in this chapter as he realizes something is fishy in Sorbet Kingdom makes him such a personal vendetta target for Bonney and Kuma. And it's pretty clear that it's Saturn that's going to make the whole inhumane deal of Kuma being turned into a mindless cyborg and to surrender all of his individuality. 

And the final scene closes on Kuma and Vegapunk discussing the name of these cyborgs... 'Pacifista', because Kuma is a pacifist, meaning that it was intended to not be an ironic name. It's meant to be an intimidating pacifist's weapon instead of an army sent to pacify pirates. 

Anyway, a great chapter all around. I'm just kind of sorry I couldn't muster much energy for this one. 

Loki S02E04 Review: Kang the Spaghetti

Loki, Season 2, Episode 4: Heart of the TVA

Yeah, we get the ball rolling a bit more this time around. There has admittedly been a big gap between my watching of the season premiere of Loki to this episode thanks to real-life stuff, and as such this review will be a bit more succinct. But the back-end of Loki's second season definitely delivers more than it misses. 

And 'Heart of the TVA', interestingly, revolves around solving the crisis of the exploding Time Loom. And for the most part, 'Heart of the TVA' proceeds as a pretty typical solving-a-problem episode. Loki himself has just been latching on to the TVA and trying to do good. But does he really believe in that greater good? Is he just trying to latch onto some kind of 'glorious purpose', as the series loves to quote from the original Avengers movie, in a last desperate attempt to find meaning in his life? And that seems to be the main purpose of these next couple of episodes. Though in this one, Loki, Mobius and the rest of the cast are in full crisis-solving mode. 

Of course, some of the problems of this season really do rear its head. Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes are technically antagonists trying to... well, I'm not sure if they're still trying to work for He Who Remains, or if they've fully gone off the deep end to do their agenda. But they certainly run around and do a lot of glowering and machinations without me really getting what they're trying to do other than some vague desire to bring down the TVA.

Likewise, a lot of the minor characters only introduced in this season -- like Dox and Gamble, of whom I had to keep looking up on Wikis to know which is which -- really don't matter. One of them, Gamble, just kind of gets shuffled off unceremoniously off-screen after a conversation with the (likewise forgettable) Hunter B-15. Meanwhile, Dox is stuck with a bunch of the rogue TVA agents, all of whom are at least very resolute in their cause and refuse to join with Renslayer when they show up. Only Brad is attached enough to his previous life to go with Renslayer. Admittedly, that was a great scene, and a very memorable one, as Dox says one last 'fuck you' to Brad while she and the rest of her loyalists are squished into a compressing cube by Renslayer. 

A lot of the dialogue between characters like O.B. and Victor Timely are... they're cute. I wouldn't say that they're unenjoyable, but it's clear that it's mostly just exposition at this point, and while this episode did move very slowly in this exposition bit, it's actually major setup for the next episode so I won't really complain all that much. 

There is a very nice conversation between Loki, Sylvie and Mobius -- the three main stars of this show -- as they stand in front of an elevator and Mobius gives a cute little MCU quip about eating lemon cakes and whatnot... which got Sylvie infuriated because all of these timelines being blown up represent billions and trillions of people. It's something that the show keeps bringing up but never really explored beyond the superficial, though... again, Tom Hiddleson and Sophia DiMartino does an amazing job at acting it out. There are a couple of great lines, like Loki bringing up Odin's lesson to Thor, as well as how 'breaking and razing things to the ground is easy, fixing things is hard', and leading to an amazing mike drop as Loki notes to Sylvie that "we are gods". The themes are a bit messy and a bit jumbled, and I do wonder if the season would've worked better with maybe an extra episode or perhaps less distracting secondary characters for Loki, Sylvie and Mobius to explore their own stances about the TVA's morality. 

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, while Loki and Sylvie are having their heart-to-heart, and Renslayer is turning Minutemen into cubes, Victor and O.B. are geeking out over their cross-timeline paradoxical influence. As mentioned above, these are scenes that are really just fluff. The actors are funny enough for the scenes not to be boring, but the scenes themselves are really nothing to write home about. 

Victor Timely gets distracted by the TVA's hot-cocoa machine, which leads to the action climax as Loki and his buddies try to rescue Timely. Now I'm still not 100% sure what Renslayer's major plan is -- she gets pissed off when Miss Minutes reveal to her that He Who Remains had erased her memories, but I really can't make heads or tails of her plan other than generic revenge. We also resolve a random plot point from the first episode which I was absolutely confused about (since I took a break between episodes) but basically the 'bad future' that Loki saw in the season premiere is actually this episode, and he ended up pruning the version of himself from that episode to... uh... do something to stabilize the timeline or some shit. It's really something that's a bit inconsequential, and if they had to resolve it, I really wished that they had called more attention to it.  

After the tech team take down the barriers to stop Loki and Sylvie from using magic, they hack Miss Minutes and lock her out of the system. What an amazingly well-executed final line, though. "You'll never be him." is an excellently-delivered line. The Lokis mind-whammy Brad, and use him to... uh... prune and zap Renslayer. Which is a bit of a surprise and went on for way too quickly for it to really have some impact... but I think it's done fine enough. I guess I was just expecting Renslayer to be the 'final boss' of the season, when this is the limitation of her role. (This is, incidentally, I guess the extent of Brad's involvement as well). 

This leaves us with around 5 minutes of screentime as it seems like our heroes have narrowly averted a crisis. All that's there to do is to get Victor Timely out there with the doohickey to plug it into the thingamabob, right? The exposition is said, the music builds up... and Timely gets immediately turned into cosmic spaghetti before the Loom blows up and engulfs the TVA in glorious destruction. It's an ending and a cliffhanger that honestly kind of came out of nowhere and is honestly rather well-executed and hilarious.

Again... I still don't think Loki's second season stands anywhere near the excellence of its first outing. Neither is it anywhere as good as any of Disney+'s better offerings, like Moon Knight or WandaVision or Ms. Marvel or Hawkeye. But it's definitely starting to pick up the gas with episodes 3 and 4, and while the season's complete plot is honestly a bit jarringly different from what I expected, once I sat down and accepted that the story of the season is about Loki and not the Kang variants or the Kang war or Ravonna Renslayer or any of those things, it's definitely a fair bit more palatable. 

Random Notes:

• Loki recaps the events of Thor, specifically how Odin banished Thor to Earth to teach him a lesson. 
• While likely just a coincidence relating to the 'string theory' stuff, the way Victor was turned into spaghetti is similar to the effects of how the duplicate Ant-Men were destroyed in Quantumania.

Gotta Review 'Em All - Moves [Generation V], Part 2

Part 2 of my coverage of Generation V moves! All the types here only get a handful of moves here and there, compared to the types I covered on part 1 of Generation V moves. 

There are a bunch of 'almost' signature moves in Generation V, I notice. Moves like Razor Shell that are very much associated with a single evolutionary species but are available to a couple of others, or moves like Steamroller or Drill Run that are obviously designed with one of the new designs in mind but they have to 'share' the move with another Pokemon in the debut generation. 

____________________________________

Water-type Moves:

• Scald (Netto/Boiling Water) I've always thought this move and Brine debuted in Generation IV, but I felt like Scald is one of those rare gems in Generation V where we get a non-signature move that is super flavourful. It's a pretty decent middle-level Water-type move, but the flavour is of boiling water -- something that has never really been represented in Pokemon before. The effect, a chance to Burn, is always welcome and, again, extremely flavourful in terms of what the move itself does. But rather bizarrely, while the move is available via TM, up until Volcanion debuts in the next generation, Scald is exclusive by level-up to... Panpour? Huh? The water monkey that has nothing to do with boiling geysers, boiling teapots or superheated water in general? Hmm. 
• Soak (Mizubitashi/Watering) We've had a handful of moves that had been able to change the user's type, but Soak is the first move to be able to disrupt the enemy by changing their type. When you use Soak, the opponent becomes so utterly drenched with water that they become pure Water-type, overwriting anything else that they may have been before. I guess the idea is that you're so drenched by the explosion of water that you are now vulnerable to the same weaknesses that water has? And that, conversely, you are 'wet' enough to get that same-type bonus from Water-type moves? I guess it's like getting super-drenched in heavy rain! Very interesting one. 
• Water Pledge (Mizu no Chikai/Water Oath) ...basically the same thing as Grass and Fire Pledge. I really don't have much to say here that I haven't said in the previous parts. A combo move exclusive to Water-type starters. Cute on paper, not particularly useful in practice. 
• Razor Shell (Sheru Bureido/Shell Blade) A move that was originally exclusive to Oshawott and Shellder. Later on, other crustaceans also get the ability to use Razor Shell. But it was very much associated with Oshawott and his evolutions, whose prominent appearances as a Water-type starter type is tied with it using its 'scalchop' weapon. It's always fun to see a starter Pokemon have a move designed around it, and even more fun when it makes sense that later on, other Pokemon like Kingler or Crawdaunt get access to it too. Bit of a shame that the Snivy line doesn't get anything special, though, unless Leaf Tornado was meant to be it? 

__________________________________

Bug-type Moves:

• Rage Powder (Ikari no Kona/Rage Powder) Basically similar to the forgettable 'Follow Me' move introduced in Generation III, Rage Powder is another kind of 'powder' that forces the user into the center of attention, framed as scattering powder that enrages the enemy so much that their attention and anger is only focused on the user. 
• Quiver Dance (Cho no Mai/Butterfly Dance) Called 'butterfly dance' explicitly in Japanese, this move is exclusive to a lot of the butterflies and moths in Pokemon, and it buffs the Speed, Special Attack and Special Defense stats of the user. Kind of like Dragon Dance, but for bugs! I love it. I love that butterflies are so cool in Generation V (most likely just to make Volcarona super-useful) that they get their own version of something originally exclusive to dragons. While other non-lepidopterans have gotten access to Quiver Dance, they've all at least been Bug-types or are flowers (which are associated to butterflies). 
• Struggle Bug (Mushi no Teiko/Insect's Opposition) This one shows up a lot in movepools after this, and it's really because there's not a lot of good Special-category Bug-type moves. Struggle Bug's description and animation has always been a bit baffling, The actual move is a simple damaging move that has a chance to reduce the opponent's Special Attack... pretty run-of-the-mill. The animation is a bunch of weird green strands with little dots on it, and the description of the attack says that the bug 'struggles' against the opposing Pokemon. Okay? Not sure about the flavour of this one. 
• Steamroller (Hado Rora/Hard Roller) This was originally only available to the Venipede line and Golem. (Not Donphan, whose whole point was rolling up into a ball) And it's a pretty decent Physical Bug-type move with a chance to make the opponent flinch. Love the English name, too, 'Steamroller'. The whole point of this is to basically make a move out of Whirlipede's whole design, yeah? To have a pillbug or roly-poly or millipede design turn into a big spiky wheel to take down the enemy? Pretty neato.  

___________________________________

Poison-type Moves:

On the other hand, while the 'primary' elemental types are starting to really repeat itself, it does feel like types like Poison and Bug really do get a fair bit of a 'buff' in this generation. Poison, in particular, suffered from only really having Sludge Bomb as a good Special-category move before. 

• Sludge Wave (Hedoro Webu/Sludge Wave) A bit of a rarer move, Sludge Wave is basically the same flavour as Sludge Bomb, only instead of a massive giant gunk, it's a wiggly wave that hits multiple enemies at once. Neat to have multiple options for late-game Poison-type moves, though, particularly since Generation V is arguably one of the last generations to really care about multi-battles. 
• Venoshock (Benomu Shokku/Venom Shock) I could've sworn this is a Generation VI move, considering how I've never seen it in a Gen V game, but it's practically everywhere in Generation VI. Another 'drench the enemy in purple liquid' style attack, Venoshock had a pretty memorable animation in the 3DS games with a lot of 'splashing' effect that I mistook as poison spikes the first coulpe of times I saw it. Venoshock itself is pretty middling in terms of power, though it does double if the enemy is suffering from the Poison status. 
• Acid Spray (Ashiddo Bomu/Acid Bomb) Basically an upgraded version of regular 'Acid', Acid Spray (or 'Acid Bomb' in Japanese) does the same thing (reduces the enemy's Sp. Def, simulating corroding of armour), but with higher damage. Bizarrely, in its original Generation V animation, Acid Spray is animated with green liquid, which fits the idea of 'acid' a bit better. In subsequent generations it's all purple like every other Poison-type move. Boring! 
• Coil (Toguro O Maku/Coil Up) A non-damaging move, the user coils up to increase their Attack and Defense stats. It's classified as poison-type because snakes are poisonous, I guess, and only Pokemon with long bodies like serpents (Arbok, Seviper, Serperior, Dunsparce), eels (Eelektross, Huntail, Gorebyss, Milotic), and, uh, Furret can do it. Pretty funny! 
• Clear Smog (Kuria Sumoggu/Clear Smog) Not to be confused with regular 'Smog', Clear Smog is non-damaging and it's basically a single-target version of Haze, returning stat changes to normal. I guess the idea is that you can use activated charcoal or something to bind to poisons, nullifying them? A bit interesting that this is counted as a Poison-type move, though. 

___________________________________

Dark-type Moves:

• Foul Play (Ikasama/Trickery) God, I love Foul Play. I used Foul Play a lot during my competitive days in Generation VI. Foul Play basically calculates damage using the enemy's physical Attack stat, meaning that it deals way more damage if the enemy is a high physical attacker. More importantly, it allows Special-leaning Dark-type Pokemon (like Zoroark) to deal massive Physical damage to certain targets. The flavour is that 'the user turns the target's power against it', which the anime has taken into something like a judo toss, causing the enemy's powerful momentum to injure itself. 
• Snarl (Baku Auto/Bark Out) A very common Special-type move among Dark-type Pokemon, Snarl is just... well, the Dark-type Pokemon does a snarling action, unleashing dark shockwaves that radiate out from it. It has a chance to reduce Special Attack, and it's basically the move you keep before your Pokemon learns Dark Pulse or something. I'm not quite sure why snarling or barking out is particularly 'evil', though. 
• Hone Claws (Tsume Togi/Claw Sharpen) A variant on Swords Dance, Hone Claws increases physical Attack and accuracy. Pretty simple flavour, you hone your claws to get a boost in damage. I do like the mental image of these evil-looking punk Pokemon like Obstagoon or Zoroark or Weavile just menacingly sharpening the claws the way a human punk would play around with their hand-held knife or something. 
• Quash (Sakiokuri/Postpone) A bit of a confusing name in English. The Japanese name is literally 'postpone', which is what the move does -- it postpones the enemy's attack to the last move of the turn. It was exclusive by natural learning to the Murkrow line in Generation V, though, as with a lot of Gen V moves, there's a TM for it. Not particularly useful outside of double battles, and while it is a 'trickery' move, I can't really think of a particularly useful avenue for this move. 
• Night Daze (Naito Basuto/Night Burst) And here we end with Zoroark's signature move, Night Daze -- or Night Burst in Japanese. It sure is a huge explosion of dark energy, which is what you'd expect from a Pokemon like Zoroark would do. It's cool that Zoroark has a signature move, being a Pokemon that initially debuted in the movie and everything. I liked Night Daze on my Zoroark, too, but other than mentioning its animation -- a sphere being created then exploding -- it really is just kind of a generic anime beam explosion thing, isn't it? 

___________________________________

Fighting-type Moves:

• Low Sweep (Ro Kikku/Low Kick) Ah, it's been a while since the English translation doubled up on moves! Low Sweep is known as 'Low Kick' in Japanese, whereas the move known as Low Kick in English is ketaguri or 'kick down' in Japanese. The more you know! Anyway, Low Sweep is a sure a move that the user does a low, sweeping kick that reduces the Speed. I get the flavour, you injure the enemy's feet and make them slower to run or evade. 
• Quick Guard (Fasuto Gado/Fast Guard) An interesting move! This is Protect, but specifically only towards increased priority moves. I'm not smart enough to talk about priority brackets to really know just how much more useful this is compared to just running regular Protect or Detect, but it is very much flavourful for a seasoned martial artist to have such good effects that they are able to parry moves that are meant to strike before the enemy can react.  
• Final Gambit (Inochi Gake/Risking Life) A move that is a fair bit more interesting than it actually is, Final Gambit is basically similar to Explosion or Selfdestruct -- the user faints, then deals a bunch of damage to the enemy. Only for Final Gambit, the damage dealt is equal to whatever HP the user has left... which is kind of counter-productive since if you have a lot of HP you kinda can do other things instead of dying. The sort of self-sacrificing nature does fall in line with the more heroic, superhero-esque idea of the Fighting-type, though. 

• Circle Throw (Tomoenage/Overhead Throw) Throh gets two almost-signature moves in this generation. His rival Sawk doesn't even get any! Man, I guess Game Freak really likes Judo a bit more, huh? Both of Throh's 'throw' moves are available to a bunch of other Pokemon via breeding, and at least one other Pokemon is able to learn them in Generation V. Circle Throw is based on a specific overhead throwing technique in judo, and this is translated in battle to Throh forcing a switch on the opponent. In addition to Throh, Poliwrath and later Pancham and Spidops are able to do this move. 
• Storm Throw (Yama Arashi/Mountain Storm) Storm Throw, or its far cooler Japanese name, Mountain Storm, is just a damaging throwing move that will always result in a critical hit. This was originally fully exclusive to Throh until Pinsir of all Pokemon gains access to this in B2W2. Okay?
• Sacred Sword (Seinaru Tsurugi/Sacred Sword) There are two of these Sword moves, all associated with the Swords of Justice. Sacred Sword is a move that all four of the sword-fighting ungulates are able to do, and is a very respectable Fighting-type move that ignores Defense and Evasion stats. In the anime and manga, Cobalion and his buddies just manifest a glowing energy sword, temporarily turning them into unicorns. Strangely, this move quickly became made available to other Pokemon -- first the Honedge line (who are literally swords), fellow legendaries Kartana, Zacian and Chien-Pao (who are all swords in different definitions), Iron Leaves (also a member of the Swords of Justice) and Gallade. It's... I can understand why all of these other Pokemon learn Sacred Sword, and while the Swords of Justice aren't my favourite legendaries, I did feel like this move probably should've been restricted to them. 
• Secret Sword (Shinpi no Tsurugi/Sword of Mystery) Now Secret Sword is only unique to Keldeo, the 'special' student of the Swords of Justice. I really do love just how much Secret Sword does cater to Keldeo's story as the underdog and the apprentice among the Swords of Justice. Despite being a member of the team, Keldeo will never make great use of Sacred Sword for one crucial reason -- Keldeo is a special attacker, whereas Sacred Sword (and Keldeo's three big brothers) are all physical. Secret Sword, however, calculates damage with Keldeo's Special Attack stats, but still inflicts physical damage, allowing Keldeo to shine and unleash a potentially far stronger sword attack compared to his mentors with this move. For all the hard time I gave the Tao Trio's signature moves for being bland anime elemental explosions, I will give the designers props for Secret Sword. 

___________________________________

Psychic-type Moves:

Whereas all the other types on this page only got a small handful of damage, Psychic gains a whopping 12 new moves! And almost every single one of them are non-damaging, weird stuff that really makes me feel like Generation V was another one where they experimented a lot with what they could do with the battle system, and it's just that other than the 'fusion' moves, they lumped everything in Psychic. Anyway, I'm going to rapid-fire this. 

• Guard Split (Gado Shea/Guard Share) and Power Split (Pawa Shea/Power Share) I guess inspired by Pain Split (which really should've been retconned into Psychic in this generation to make a trio of moves), Guard Split and Power Split takes the average of either the defensive or offensive stats, and then splits it between the two users. Other than to make some fun memes with Shuckle and his super-imbalanced stats, these moves aren't particularly useful, though. 
• Wonder Room (Wanda Rumu/Wonder Room) and Magic Room (Majikku Rumu/Magic Room) These are variants of Trick Room, and... they're nowhere as memorable as Trick Room. Wonder Room is at least interesting, where the Defense and Special Defense stats of all Pokemon are swapped around. There's a genuine sense of confusion there not too dissimilar with Trick Room swapping the speed turn order. But Magic Room just... stops everyone from using items? Hmm. 
• Telekinesis (Terekineshisu/Telekinesis) This one is interesting -- the user makes the opponent float with telekinesis for five turns, which is something that the anime and manga already do a lot with Psychic-type Pokemon. But instead of disabling them, Telekinesis makes them be an obvious target and causes all moves to always hit. Interestingly, the target also becomes immune to Ground-type moves, which is one of those super-niche move interactions I love from Pokemon.
• Ally Switch (Saido Chenji/Side Change) A move that probably makes more sense in a cinematic anime fight, or in a real-time game, than in a turn-based game, Ally Switch instantly teleports the user and an allied Pokemon on the field, presumably to redirect attacks or something. And... it's not really that useful, really. Kadabra and Alakazam are the only ones able to learn this naturally in Generation V, but, again, there is a TM for it. 
• Psyshock (Saiko Shokku/Psycho Shock) Psyshock is basically identical to Secret Sword above, only without the fancy story. The user's Special Attack and the enemy's physical Defense are used to calculate damage. Neat, I guess. 
• Stored Power (Ashisuto Pawa/Assist Power) Another damaging move, Stored Power deals more damage the more buffs the user has on their stats. Very impractical, but with the right shenanigans, Stored Power has the highest base power out of all special category moves at the time of writing. 

• Synchronoise (Shinkuro Noizu/Synchro Noise) A very interesting effect. Synchro Noise (and it's a noise, meaning it's another 'sound' move, a lot of which is introduced in this generation) unleashes a scream that damages every Pokemon on the battlefield that shares a type with the user. In addition to a lot of Psychic-types, a lot of 'screaming' Pokemon like Exploud, Hoothoot and Chatot are able to do this. Very weird, and I assume this move was made literally just for the pun.
• Heal Pulse (Iyashi no Hado/Healing Wave) I guess Psychics can heal, too? Heal Pulse is a 'hado' or a pulse/wave move that unleashes a blast of healing energy. If this move debuted a generation later, I would bet that it would be classified as a Fairy-type move... though I guess it is not too uncommon in fiction that psychics and espers are able to heal wounds and knit them close. 
• Heart Stamp (Hato Sutanpu/Heart Stamp) A move that really should have been exclusive to Woobat, Heart Stamp deals damage and causes the enemy to flinch. No real reason that this move has to be Psychic other than Woobat being a heart-nosed bat and Woobat being Psychic, but then this move is also given to... Jynx? Eh. Luvdisc getting it later on makes a lot more sense, though. 
• Psystrike (Saiko Bureiku/Psycho Break) And they decided to finally pander to the Generation I fanbase... in a generation that famously doesn't feature any pre-Gen-V Pokemon before the endgame. Mewtwo, everyone's favourite psychic lab-generated superbeing, gets his own super-powerful version of Psychic, called by the very-easily-mixed-up name of 'Psystrike' in English but the far more impressive 'Psycho Break' in Japanese. Psystrike also has the same effect as Psyshock and Secret Sword. Interestingly, the move is often depicted in the DS/3DS games as Mewtwo unleashing a pulse before a bunch of... psychic stones slam at the opponent? Later games and the anime turn it into a more generic big-explosion-anime-purple-spirit-bomb thing. Can't fault Mewtwo for that, he's been doing giant psychic hadokens since 1998.

___________________________________

Steel-type Moves:

• Autotomize (Bodi Paji/Body Purge) Holy shit, this move has an edgy Japanese name. "Body Purge"! I love the flavour of this one, too. The user literally purges parts of its body, which increases its Speed stat, and almost completely for flavour reasons, the user also becomes lighter! And it's obviously very flavourful for Steel-types, which are kinda robotic in nature, and the more 'organic' Pokemon that naturally learn these like the Aron or Skarmory do look like they could easily shed parts of their metallic anatomy and become faster. A very 'Rock Lee removes his weights' trope. I approve!
• Heavy Slam (Hebi Bonba/Heavy Bomber) Steel-types tend to be heavy, and Heavy Slam capitalizes on that. It deals more damage based on the difference in weight, and I love that there's a bunch of moves that take into account the sheer difference in qualities like weight and speed to calculate damage. Not much to say beyond that!
• Gear Grind (Gia Sosa/Gear Saucer) Man, the Generation V development team really loved Klinklang, huh? It's a non-legendary Pokemon and it gets two signature moves! Gear Grind is a multi-hit move, and Klinklang summons two gears to grind its opponent. While you think it would be Klinklang's main body, the games and even the manga depicts it as being 'faceless' gears that Klinklang summons out of nowhere. Huh!
• Shift Gear (Gia Chenji/Gear Change) Originally exclusive to the Klink line and later given to other Pokemon like Magearna (a clockwork doll), Cyclizar and Revavroom (both vehicular ones, get it, shifting gears)... and, hilariously, Amped-up Toxtricity, which I guess is a reference to a guitarist term. I don't play the guitar, but I'm sure there's a joke as to why the main guitarist can use 'Shift Gear' but not the bassist. Anyway, this is a reference to how you change gears in a manual car, going to the high gear -- represented by the Pokemon boosting its own Attack and Speed stats. 

___________________________________

Flying-type Moves:

We get a couple more Physical Flying-type moves in this generation, and... I feel like Acrobatics and Hurricane also do show up a lot among Flying-type movepools. I guess the types that I was thinking of in terms of Generation V just adding a lot of moves that kinda dilute the list of moves is more in the first couple of types I covered in Generation V. 

• Acrobatics (Akurobatto/Acrobat) A move that I feel can generically be given to any Flying-type Pokemon, unlike some of the other more specialized ones that are tied to either being a bird or being able to summon great winds. The definition of Acrobatics is that they can swoop in and do all sorts of mid-air stunts to attack the enemy. This move deals extra damage if the user isn't holding an item... which is meant to represent them being far more nimble and able to do all sorts of acrobatic maneuvers when they are unburdened. Cute!
• Hurricane (Bofu/Windstorm) This one has a more flavourful one! Basically a much, much stronger version of Gust, Hurricane is flavoured as the Flying-type Pokemon summoning such a huge hurricane that it can reach upwards to hit Pokemon in the invulnerable turn of Fly or Bounce. That's cool! 
• Sky Drop (Furi Foru/Free Fall) Not the most practical move, and I'm actually surprised I didn't know this move existed! Sky Drop was only exclusive to Braviary and Aerodactyl in Generation V, with the wreslter-bird Hawlucha gaining access to it next generation, but the idea of Sky Drop is that the user brings the enemy into the air, basically putting the two of them in a semi-invulnerable turn like Fly... and then lets go and bashes the enemy into the ground, dealing massive damage. There are a couple of fun little tidbits to Sky Drop, where Flying-type Pokemon will avoid damage in the second turn since they can just, well, fly. From Generation VI onwards, Sky Drop is also not able to affect Pokemon heavier than 200 kg, because I guess that's the limit of even what Braviary can lift?

___________________________________

Ground-type Moves:

• Bulldoze (Jinarashi/Smooth Over) Basically a weaker version of Earthquake, without the RNG of Magnitude. There's an additional Speed-lowering effect, but otherwise Bulldoze isn't particularly memorable. I guess there's the neatness of the flavour, where you're bulldozing or smoothing over a surrounding terrain, which is more than I can say for a lot of the repetitive Fire or Electric type moves from this generation. 
• Drill Run (Doriru Raina/Drill Liner) This is a move only naturally learned by Pokemon with drills -- the Rhyhorn line, the Dunsparce line, Fearow (or 'Onidrill' in Japanese) and the Drilbur line. And judging by the debut of Drilbur in this generation, I'm actually surprised they didn't let Drilbur have Drill Run as a signature move considering how much they allow Excadrill to use it in the anime. But the idea is that you spin so fast like a drill and you charge forwards at the opponent without leaving the ground, hitting them with the force of... well, I don't think 'drill tanks' actually exist in real life, but I do get the idea of some kind of construction or mining equipment from this move. 

___________________________________

Rock-type Moves:

• Smack Down (Uchiotosu/Knock Down) Surprisingly, not a move that's truly represented before. We do have Rock Throw, but Smack Down specifically shoots out a rock that hits a bird so accurately that it falls down -- which happens when you use Smack Down against Flying-type Pokemon or those with Levitate. They just get hit out of the sky and fall down to the ground, losing their immunity to Ground-type moves. It's the whole reason why Flying-types are weak to Rock-types in general, although... have you really ever tried to hit a flying bird with a rock? It requires a lot of skill! Very fun move, this is one of the few moves out of the glut of rather samey moves in Generation V to really leave a bit of an impression in my mind.
• Wide Guard (Waido Gado/Wide Guard) I'm not sure why this move is classified as Rock-type. Normally these sort of 'guarding' moves are classified under Normal or sometimes Fighting or Psychic, but I guess Wide Guard uses rocks or something? Really felt like the name or the animation could've been a bit more descriptive. The animation is always just the same kind of vague multi-coloured energy barrier as most protective moves, though. Wide Guard protects against AoE moves. 

___________________________________

Ghost-type Moves:

• Hex (Tatarime/Evil Eye) Only a single Ghost-type move? Huh. Hex, or 'Evil Eye' (which makes me surprised that the actual in-game animations never featured an evil eye like Mean Look) is one of those 'kick the enemy while they're down' move, dealing more damage if the target has a status condition. Not too much to say about it, flavour-wise it does feel like something that the Dark-type would do but I also recognize the need for these other types to branch out a bit. 

___________________________________

Dragon-type Moves:

• Dragon Tail (Doragon Teru/Dragon Tail) I personally always confuse this move with Generation IV's 'Dragon Rush'. One deals regular damage, and the other has the same effect as Whirlwind or Circle Throw or Roar. This is the one that forces the enemy to switch out, Dragon Tail. I'm... not sure what the flavour here is? I guess a sweeping strike from a tail does the same 'oh no Team Rocket is blasting off again' as a gigantic whirlwind? We've had a fair bit too many 'Dragon [insert verb or anatomy]' moves at this point, honestly. 
• Dual Chop (Daburu Choppy/Double Chop) ...but at least it's easy to say why Dragon Tail or Dragon Claw are considered Dragon-type moves. If I describe the move 'Dual Chop' to you, it doesn't sound like anything a dragon will do, right? Even its Japanese name is just 'Double Chop'. Its effect and description... striking brutally multiple times. Surely it's Fighting-type move, right? Normal-type, Dark-type, maybe? No? At least the later generations realized how honestly bizarre this move is, and added it to the movepools of Pokemon like Machamp and Ambipom. Yeah, maybe they've ran out of generic moves to give Dragon-types at this point...

___________________________________

...yeah, that was a bit tiring. I think I'll wait a fair bit before Generation VI, huh? My Generation V move reviews has been cooking in the background for quite a while, but going through all the Fire, Electric, Psychic and Normal moves have taken forever.