My Hero Academia 92-93 Review: All Might Just Won't Die!

My Hero Academia, Chapter 92: One For All

Man, I really expected All Might to die in this chapter. Or the next. It really seemed to be that moment you expect in mangas where the show has found its roots, the big mentor character has became likeable enough and taught the main character enough. And having him finally face off against Sensei/All-for-One really seemed to be the perfect point to build up this arc villain, have the villain pull off a victory and have All Might be defeated and/or killed all in one go.

But god damn, no wonder All Might is the symbol of justice! The man just will not die! Mad respect to All Might, and the mangaka for making the artwork look like it hurt so much just to be All Might in that position. I know the anime just started and is like on episode eight or whatever, but, yeah, I'm definitely watching this shit in that pretty pretty animation.

I didn't review this chapter two weeks ago due to time reasons, and I almost considered just shrugging it off and just going on with reviewing 94... but damn! Re-reading it really made me kick myself for not reviewing it sooner. It's one of my favourite chapters of all time, not just within this manga, but in all manga in general, I can safely say.

This chapter starts off quickly establishing that the kiddies are okay and out of the way, while All Might is absolutely incensed to hear Sensei talk about 'Shimura Nana', who is All Might's mentor. Nana is the previous One For All wielder, and is Shigaraki's grandmother. Sensei keeps talking shit about Shimura Nana, each moment driving All Might into a frenzy and allowing Sensei to get awesome counterattacks... in live television, too.

Gran Tourino manages to shake All Might and save him from crashing down from the sky, and, well, we get a montage of everyone across Japan (including other classmates) seeing this in television with various reactions. Some of them go all 'damn heroes, they keep slacking off' to 'eh, it's All Might, he'll pull through'.

Sensei gives this rather hypocritical speech about how he hates All Might for robbing him of his tyrannical empire, and swells his arm up to punch All Might... who cannot afford to dodge, because behind him is a trapped civilian! And he's a superhero. Gran Tourino gets knocked away, but All Might stands firm, blocking Sensei's massive blast... only to be reduced to his skinny, pathetic-looking state. Right in live telly!

Everyone from Bakugou to the live announcer is shocked, and Sensei shits all over All Might's true form, but All Might gives a pretty awesome reply. "My heart is still the heart of the symbol of peace!" indeed. It's short, a tiny speech two panels long, but as the saying goes... actions speak louder than words. And seeing this ragged-ass spindly figure that looks so wounded and hurt just stand up to Sensei? Damn, All Might. Mad respect to you.

Of course, Sensei chooses this moment to give a monologue about how Shigaraki Tomura is Nana's grandson, and this utterly breaks poor All Might, because it's not long ago that All Might battered Shigaraki around. And we get a short flashback of Nana teaching All Might to smile whatever happens (which is actually a sad explanation to how Buff-All-Might, the symbol of peace, always has that silly Golden Age grin plastered all over his face whatever the situation). And All Might just looks so utterly devastated.

And then the random civilian girl tells All Might to not give up and save her. Again, short and sweet, but damn if it isn't impactful. Lesser mangas might spend entire chapters just to have the hero reel from this, and to have him give a long trite friendship speech, but, again, the economy of dialogue and the sheer greatness of storytelling via artwork and good pacing shows just why this manga might have it within it to become the next big thing.

The crowd watching the television are more unsure, and I think it's realistic for some of them to go 'man, we're fucked if All Might can't beat him', which is sensible... but in the end they all come together and cheer for All Might. Even Bakugou got over his initial shock -- some of us thought that Bakugou might become disillusioned when he sees All Might's true form and that's what will make him go all Sasuke and evil, but nah.

Then All Might repeats his catchphrase -- again, in a wholly sensible way -- tells the random civilian to not have fear... tells Sensei that heroes have so many things to protect... but that's the reason that they can't lose. He focuses his power into one arm, turning it into its super-buff form. Man, All Might's badass.

My Hero Academia, Chapter 93: The Embers of One For All

And you would think that that one last act of defiance would be his final 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' act before dying, but no. Not even then. We even get a death flag in this chapter, with the random fancy flashback of Nana telling All Might to 'remember your origin when you have to surpass your limit' and some inner fire thing. We get to see young All Might wanting to make the world a better place, and how the world needs a symbol of peace they can look up to. 

Sensei gives no shit, since he's ultimately still uninjured, but he notes that cornered heroes are dangerous and he floats into the air, remembering how desperate All Might was when they initially fought, with All Might's internal organs strewn all around. 

But then, a blast of flame! Endeavour and Edge Shot show up, and while Endeavour's all "what the hell's wrong with you, man?" he still looks pretty damn badass. Doubtful that Endeavour can do a damn thing if All Might couldn't, and Endeavour himself seems to realize it, in his own self-centered way. We get a short flashback about how Endeavour worked so hard to surpass All Might, but the harder he trained, the harder he felt the gap between himself and All Might's back, and roars at All Might about 'how did your back get so pitiful?' Aw, Endeavour, you do care. In your own jackass way. Edge Shot tries his little super-speed-stretchy-stab thing that Sensei dodges, while Kamui shows up to rescue the other wounded heroes. Tiger also shows up to rescue the wounded civilians.

And as All Might watches these lesser heroes try to alleviate his burden, even as Endeavour and Edge Shot tries to slow down Sensei in the background, they keep telling All Might that everyone is hoping that he wins. And normally I don't really like it when the plot focuses too much on just THE hero and reducing everyone to background distractions (i.e. Toriko at the moment)... but considering All Might's status in the universe's society and how he's been built up as the ultimate strongest hero with a fatal weakness... well, I definitely don't mind.

We get a short flashback of a young (and awesome-looking) Gran Tourino and Shimura Nana talking about how All Might has such potential to inspire as the Number One Hero... and we get this nice little montage of everyone just hoping that All Might needs to win.

And, damn, it's a beautiful speech, not only because it's well written and well paced, but simply because the buildup and everything really makes you believe it, not just see it as some regurgitated thing that other shonen manga did like a thousand times already. This is just wonderful work.

Sensei just blasts all the lesser heroes away, then rattles off an insane amount of quirk names, before turning his right arm into this... gross amalgamation of hands, arms, rocky growths and all sorts of cool-yet-disgusting things. Sensei notes how All Might doesn't have One For All anymore, and all he has are the lingering embers of the quirk that grows ever smaller, and he even threatens Midoriya as he comes in for the killing blow...

And as the two fists clash, Sensei activates 'Impact Reversal', utterly fucking up All Might's right arm. All Might then retorts how he needs to be alive for Midoriya... and we get a short couple of panels showing a figurative All Might protecting the last embers of his powers just to complete his duty, and how he needs to surpass his limit -- how, like his own master, he needs to be a teacher an raise Midoriya properly before he can be allowed to die. 

And then he just delivers an extremely satisfying mother of all SMASH!!!-es with his left arm, right onto Sensei's face. Way to surpass your limits, All Might!

Mind you, he might still die in the chapter coming this week, but damn. These two chapters really made me like All Might so much more as a character, and really, whoever wins it's great storytelling either way, with this great buildup making it really sad and extra-tragic if All Might actually does die, and making it an utterly triumphant comeback if he survives. 

Man, can't wait for this week's chapter.

One Piece 828 Review: Star-Crossed Lovers

One Piece, Chapter 828: 1 and 2

It's a slow chapter as the Straw Hats and Pudding get to know each other -- and after a couple of death threats courtesy of Pedro, the Straw Hats get to know that, hey, Pudding is a really nice girl! And she claims to have actually already met Sanji, who told her that 'I have to go adventure with my friends'. Which means nothing, of course, since if Pudding actually turns out to be just a nice girl and not some sinister double-agent working the Straw Hats, Pudding could simply, y'know, join the crew. Pudding is all 'I can forget about Sanji as long as he gets to be happy', but I dunno. She might be setting a trap. Or I might just be too paranoid. She might just be a sweet kid. She gives the Straw Hats a map... which may or may not be a trap. 

Big Mom apparently has 43 husbands and 85 children. A literal Big Mom. And as everyone expected, the children are the basis for the massive infrastructure of the Big Mom Pirates. We get a quasi-confirmation that yes, Chapati Lola is an errant daughter of Big Mom that went out to find her own husband and not get one forced upon her by Big Mom. Also Pekoms is gone and in his place are the words 'turn back' carved upon the Sunny. Of course, this being the Straw Hats, they don't give a shit.

Meanwhile, we get a short look at the titular '1 and 2', Sanji's elder brothers. They have fancy hair, but have Sanji's curly eyebrows. One of them seems to be able to control other people through some means, and they don't really seem too keen on meeting Sanji again. They've liberated a random island by ending a war in like forty minutes or whatever, and are going off to join the wedding.

Overall nothing too eventful but a fair amount of world-building nonetheless. 

Game of Thrones S06E07 Review: What is Dead May Never Die

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 7: The Broken Man

It's still a solid episode, don't get me wrong... there's just a lack of anything much that happened in this episode. Not even the big spoilery thing that happened at the beginning of the episode (so, um, spoiler alert before you read the next few paragraphs) really managed to elicit more than a brief 'oh my god, what the hell?' moment. Characters are moved around, sure, and some progression is made on all fronts, great lines of dialogue are spoken, but really... it works better as part of a larger installment than it is as a standalone episode. 

The big thing that happened, of course, are the scenes that bookended this episode, revealing that amidst all the deaths and resurrections happening all throughout Westeros, there is a character who I honestly did not expect to return -- the Hound, the badassest fucker in the entire series. It's definitely a very welcome and unexpected return for the Hound... but ultimately he didn't do much this episode. We get the explanation that he was healed by a introdump-y agnostic Septon, who went unnamed in the episode (and is apparently a composite character from two different dudes in the books), and there's a slow-paced little story as the Hound just hangs out with a bunch of pacifists building a church... before a bunch of dudes claiming to be from the Brotherhood Without Banners comes around, and apparently slaughtered the entire community, including the poor Septon, launching the Hound on a one-man vengeance party.

And as much as it is inherently entertaining to see a badass person like the Hound basically be Westeros's version of the Punisher (to counter Arya's Daredevil?) it really felt odd to have so many things going on... and then to have this little storyline divorced from everything else that has happened. The fact that we haven't seen the Brotherhood Without Banners since like season three or something really makes it hard for show-only viewers to really care about them beyond being just another villain for the Hound to take down. And for book-readers... well, they're probably peeved that the Brotherhood -- whose whole deal was that they don't pillage from the poor, unlike the rich armies -- is reduced to what's basically a collection racket that slaughters entire communities if rejected. 

The other big event that happened in this episode is Arya, trying to find a ship back home... but honestly, for an assassin who should really have known better, it's hard not to go 'Arya, you idiot' when she just walks around town flaunting gold and not reacting with suspicion when a random old woman comes about. That particular scene went along for a bit too long, I thought, and ultimately didn't have much payoff. Arya randomly dying like that after spending a season and a half being involved in this assassin cult without accomplishing anything notable would be the ultimate waste of time, so I really don't think she's going to die here. Eh. I dunno. Just finding it really hard to be invested in Arya's story most of the time, least of all now. 

What else really happened in this episode? Margeary's scenes take up a huge chunk of the episode, but it ultimately ended with the revelation that Margeary's super-religious act that seems to fool the High Sparrow and Septa Unella (a.k.a. 'thing that would not speak') and even the Queen of Thorns herself is... well, an act. It's good! Smart Margeary is best Margeary. There's a bit where she's apparently not sleeping with Tommen (and the High Sparrow knows this because...?) and we get a misogynistic (but technically practical, considering how lack of heirs end up in the Westerosi setting) reply from the Sparrow.

It's always fun to see Olenna Tyrell, but, again, the scenes ended up being way too slow-paced and the payoff could really be seen from miles away. Olenna buggers off to Highgarden, but when Cersei asks for an alliance... Olenna pretty rightfully tells Cersei to fuck off because this whole High Sparrow business was the brainchild of her petty schemes to put the Tyrell siblings in prison. Olenna delivers a pretty damning 'fuck you' speech, noting how absolutely nobody in King's Landing is Cersei's ally. Well, she's got Qyburn and the Mountain, at least. Yeah, everyone's definitely rooting for the Tyrells in this one. Maybe Cersei will snap and be the one responsible for detonating all that wildfire in Bran's weird flashback thing?

Jaime leads an army to Riverrun with Bronn (hey Bronn!). Jaime does get a pretty awesome moment telling the shitty Frey kids that they are shit, but ultimately, the scene is more of an introduction to Blackfish Tully -- who we haven't seen since the Red Wedding. The two exchange words, and despite Jaime's clearly superior numbers, the Blackfish has enough hatred in him not to give up the siege. Blackfish is a bit of a dick for allowing the Freys to kill Edmure (even if the Freys are too much pussies to go through with their threat) but, like he pointed out, the Freys were going to do it sooner or later. Some great dialogue, especially courtesy of Bronn, but again, it's another slow-paced scene in a string of slow-paced scenes.

Yara and Theon's scene is honestly unnecessary. It establishes that they've crossed the seas, that Yara's a lesbian... and Yara basically tells Theon to man up, drink beer and stop moping with his PTSD, because there ain't no therapists in Westeros. It sounds dickish in a vacuum, but considering how the Ironborns' culture are, and how Yara is very clearly non-malicious and it definitely comes from a good heart. Yeah. Definitely rooting for these two to join Daenerys's court.

The rest of the episode has a very, very long montage of Jon Snow asking for allies, all Gondor-style, but it takes so much time. Thanks to Tormund and the awesome giant Wun Wun the wildlings join up, but it took a longer discussion to talk to the girl-ruler Lyanna Mormont, and Lord Glover straight-up refused to help. There's definitely some real repercussions of Robb Stark choosing romance over the sensible choice of just marrying the Frey daughter that he's betrothed to, and in a non-romantic setting, well, this cost Jon and Sansa a lot of allies. Sansa's shown to be a lot more independent, which is nice... now if only she stops suspecting Davos. Not her fault since she traveled with Brienne who doesn't have a favourable impression of Davos, but still. She ends up writing a letter to... Littlefinger, I guess? Eh. Again, it's just mostly going through the motions and I can't help but wonder that it couldn't have all been done in a scene of Jon just receiving ravens, or a quick montage of the houses refusing to give aid. 

Despite being slow, though, it's definitely still an enjoyable episode. Can't really fault the show for having some slower chapters... I just hope we get a fair bit of payoffs in the next one. 

Movie Review - Warcraft: The Beginning

Warcraft: The Beginning

I have had such hopes for Warcraft. The series has been a huge part of my childhood, and it was Warcraft -- not Lord of the Rings, not Dungeons and Dragons, not Elder Scrolls or other contemporary medieval-fantasy works of fiction that, well, introduced me to the genre. I probably put more hours into Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion The Frozen Throne more than any other game out there, and despite not playing its MMORPG sequel until relatively recently, I kept up with many of the storylines and lore parts simply because I loved Warcraft III so much.

I never got the chance to play the first two RTS games, but I am intimately familiar with the (expanded, and thrice-retconned) lore behind them as I read a lot of the tie-in novels that told the tale of the Dragon Aspects, of the corruption of Medivh, of the first two wars, of the War of the Ancients, of the origin of the Night Elves. And my love for the series has been rekindled by being insanely devoted to its spinoff digital card game Hearthstone, and recently finally cracking down and playing World of Warcraft for real... though only for the first 20 levels. 

I can probably rant about how the MMORPG system kinda ruins the storyline and character-driven appeal of what made Warcraft III good, but we would be here all day.

Nah, I'm here to talk about the new Warcraft movie that hit theaters last week. Reviews universally panned it. And while I don't exactly think it's a bad movie per se, I'm also not duped by my fanboyism to call it a good movie. 

First off, I'm going to say that, well, the movie is a visual spectacle. They eschewed having terrain realism for replicating the insane exaggerated feel of the games with the gigantic Black Portal and Kharazan's insane architecture. It's certainly a labor of love, and as a fan who's intimately familiar with how Warcraft Human structures should look, how orcish watch-towers and barracks should look, it's definitely a gigantic love letter for the fans.

The orcs themselves are really great, rivaling the likes of Avatar in great motion capture. They look animalistic and brutal yet still retain enough human features to make us sympathize with them. I really like the direction they took with the Horde, too, portraying the majority of the Horde as raging warriors bound by tradition, led astray by the villainous warlock Gul'dan who seeks only to gain more magic power and the patsy warchief Blackhand who's basically Gul'dan's puppet. Meanwhile, we get to see the Horde through more heroic characters like Durotan, Draka, Orgrim Doomhammer and Garona, a stark contrast to how the Horde must look to the humans.

The language barrier is done well, too, without having half the movie with the orcs talking in 'lok-tar zub-zub ishnu-alu-torah'. The scene where Garona explains that the humans and orcs have different languages -- and the audience just perceive it as English when it's their POV -- is brilliant. 

The big set pieces with the big battles, the gryphons and shit are all done well. We've got a lot of interesting characters, too. Garona is a half-breed slave who suffers at the hands of the Horde, but is treated like an animal by the Alliance, and only seeks to find a place for herself. Medivh, the Last Guardian, is apparently battling the demonic influences of Fel Energy and failing. Khadgar is a pariah among the mages of the Kirin Tor, and only seeks to figure out how Fel came to Azeroth, without realizing that one of his allies brought it here. Durotan wants to get rid of the corrupting influence of Gul'dan so the rest of the Horde can come through. Lothar is just a loyal soldier to his king, who loses his son halfway through and has some... weird... romance... with Garona?

The problem with this movie is that they try to have so many subplots, so many characters going on, that you would think the movie would be better served by paring down the POV characters to just Durotan, Lothar, Khadgar and Garona. We are told about the Kirin Tor and the Guardian, yet the movie never explains just what the Kirin Tor are (really, 'the mage order Kirin Tor' would've taken like two seconds to say) or just what the Guardian does. A short explanation from Lothar or Llane to Taria (who does jack shit in the movie) or Garona would've done wonders for the cohesion of the movie. Medivh is also instantly suspicious from the beginning, thus kind of ruining the big twist that, oh, he's actually corrupted by a demon!

The weird Aloni thing in Dalaran with Khadgar going into a giant black box and meeting... what I think is supposed to be Aegwynn... is also weird and came out of nowhere with a cheesy 'from light came darkness' prophecy, and really just having Aegwynn explain that she's a previous Guardian, or have her be replaced by Medivh's sanity, or just cut out the scene entirely and have Khadgar arrive at the conclusion on his own.

Garona's whole character is also a mess, though that's something she shares with her game/novel counterpart, so yeah. The big 'assassination' moment where she's forced to stab Llane in the back on Llane's orders so at least one of them will survive is definitely a great moment, one that is superior to what happened in the games, but the rest of Garona is just a big mess. She's a walking plot device more than anything, and why she suddenly struck up a friendship and the totally-random romance with Lothar, and the weird flower bits with Medivh, end up taking so much screentime for no payoff.

Speaking of no payoff, really, show-writers? You create that golem, have Medivh become demonic, and you don't turn the golem into an Infernal? Shame on you! That clay golem looks ridiculous, and really the only thing that could've saved it was putting it on fire. The golem fight is easily the most tiresome and bland fight in the entire movie.

The whole demon corruption angle ends up feeling rather bland and unpolished. Gul'dan and Medivh working together could've been foreshadowed, really, by something more than weird pages in a book, and maybe have Gul'dan actually commune with Sargeras the demon himself promising to feed souls to him? Have Medivh answer to a 'master' that takes a different appearance? I dunno, so many ways to make this coherent.

The ending, I know, is supposed to set up for the Alliance/Horde war in the future, but it rang a little hollow and haphazard. The Baby Thrall bit makes no sense in the overall story unless you know who Thrall is, Lothar seeing the dagger in Llane's neck and being out for blood is a bit of a downer ending, and Gul'dan lives and is still on Azeroth, with only Garona's tenuous influence holding him back. Wouldn't it be better to just lob Gul'dan back through the portal?

Gul'dan is a very entertaining villain (and I never realized those spiky shit on his back are actually demonic growths instead of accessories) but ultimately his motivation ended up being boiled down to 'mwahaha more Fel'. The other orcs have motivations ranging from standing within the Horde to saving their race from their dying world, but the human Alliance's entire purpose is just 'oh no defend our land kill the orcs' which is honestly a bit too simple and boring. We don't really build the world to see why we care about Azeroth, we don't really build a lot of the characters to care why a lot of them die or live... and really, Medivh and Garona are two characters that take up so much screentime without any of them really deserving it.

Anyway... did I enjoy the movie? Damn well I did, it was a beautifully crafted movie. Was it a good movie? Nah. It's got a clunky scripting and really could've stood with less grimdark and more light-heartedness that Warcraft is known for. Or, hell, simple character-building for the actual main characters

Warcraft Easter Eggs Corner:

• Yeah, I'm having this because not every part of the movie really makes it clear to viewers what's going on. The blue-skinned humanoids rounded up by the Horde at the beginning and used to power the Dark Portal is the Draenei race, which used to cohabitate the orcs' homeworld of Draenor before war with the orcs nearly wiped them out. The surviving Draenei would later join the Alliance in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade as a playable race.
• Garona was initially introduced in the first Warcraft game as a half-orc, half-human, but when the first war was condensed to take place over the course of a short period of years, she ended up being retconned into half-orc, half-draenei. 
• Llane's wife and Lothar's sister, Taria Wrynn, was never named nor expanded upon in lore, and is wholly original to this movie.
• During the scenes where we briefly saw Dwarven and High Elven delegates in the huge council, we can glimpse what is clearly meant to be an adaptation of the Dwarven king Magni Bronzebeard. The dwarves and high elves will eventually join the human kingdoms in the second war to form the Alliance.
• Durotan and Draka's baby Go'el would be raised by humans under the name Thrall, and would later become the Warchief of the Orcish Horde, leading the orcs away from mindless bloodlust and into a far more heroic incarnation compared to the version of the Horde led by Gul'dan, Doomhammer or Blackhand.
• Orgrim Doomhammer was actually from Blackhand's Blackrock Clan in the games/novels, and his closeness to Durotan of the Frostwolves was actually a rarity among the orcish Horde. In the original lore, Doomhammer would usurp Blackhand as Warchief at the end of the First War, while Gul'dan remained Warchief back on the other side of the portal.
• During the orcs' ambush of Lothar's party, we hear the orcish warcry "Lok-Tar Ogar", translated roughly as "Victory or death". 
• While Khadgar and Lothar's party are travelling back to Stormwind, we briefly see a Murloc in a river, with the characteristic mrglglglgl sound.
• We briefly see orcs that match Grom Hellscream and Kargath Bladefist to a T, most clearly when the portal goes down and the remaining refugees come face-to-face with a host of orcs. Kargath is the orc with pale grey complexion and two giant blades for lower arms; Grom is the orc with a painted lower jaw and the axe Gorehowl.
• We briefly see Llane's son Varian, who, of course, is named. Varian Wrynn, of course, would later be the king of Stormwind and the leader of the Alliance for nearly all of World of Warcraft's life.
• Aloni's role as a mysterious woman that knows more than she should and warns Khadgar about Medivh's insanity is traditionally taken up by Aegwynn, Medivh's mother and the previous Guardian, who had previously also been corrupted by the demon Sargeras. 
• Khadgar turns a guard into a sheep, which is the classic Mage spell Polymorph. Khadgar explains the selectiveness of the Polymorph spell in the various games as 'only working on the simple-minded for a time', and indeed Polymorph only affects lesser units and transforms them for a time.
• Blackhand's role in this movie is taken from the 'normal' Blackhand, but his mutated appearance with a giant demonic arm and a crapton of spikes is taken from Alternate Draenor Blackhand.
• Every single location from Ironforge to Elwynn Forest to Stormwind to the Black Morass to the Redridge Mountains to Blackrock Mountain to Kharazan are all lifted directly from lore. 

Arrow S04E23 Review: Cathartic

Arrow, Season 4, Episode 23: Schism

Over the past two or three weeks, I've talked about various season finales. I praised Agent of SHIELD's season finale. Legends of Tomorrow was functional and entertaining, if not particularly good. The Flash had some nice fights, but ultimately a bit of a flop due to a lack of proper buildup. Supergirl was just a blah piece filled with mostly a lack of tension.

Arrow, despite the stream of great episodes we had for the past two or three episodes, ends up flopping in its fourth season finale, delivering what I think is the weakest season finale in this half-year's worth of superhero shows, which is honestly surprising because considering how bad the lead-up to Arrow's sister shows were, they at least had the decency to give season finales that are at least entertaining, if nothing else. This didn't even manage to do that. The ending of this episode was wholly unsatisfying, and, yes, the whole theme of the episode was about the duality between the good and bad within Oliver's soul or whatever, but that doesn't mean that the episode itself has to struggle between being good and bad.

For the big looming threat of Damien Darhk setting off nuclear Armageddon (again), there was a distinct lack of tension throughout the entirety of the episode. One of the biggest things, really, was how we established last episode that Damien Darhk is so powerful now with his soul-empowered magic that he can 'suck out the oxygen within your lungs' or whatever, but fails to really pose that much of a threat. Even after Thea threatened to kill his daughter and after he got his daughter back, Darhk doesn't even make a move to take out Oliver or Thea, or even one of the three non-combatants in the room. And even if Oliver's mysterious white magic was the reason why his arrows suddenly worked on Darhk when he oh-so-narmily became a beacon of hope, there really was no reason why his powers only knocked the crowd of civilians down for like two seconds. 

Having a crowd of civilians stand up for your hero might be a great symbolic moment, but honestly here it looks stupid. They did it better in the old Spider-Man movies, and, hell, even recently in Supergirl. Oh, sure that big crowd of random civilians can somehow be enough to change the tide of battle against an army of Ghosts -- who are ex-military and have been shown to at least be a match for normal policemen and ARGUS mooks. Yeah. That was just anticlimatic. And the beatdown between Oliver and Darhk is just... wow, lacking of tension whatsoever. It's just boring, with the far camera shots and the general genericness of just two dudes punching each other. Hell, even the battle with the Wrecking Crew a couple episodes ago had more tension than this!

And the fact that a good chunk of the episode is devoted to random heart-to-heart moments instead of, y'know, trying to defuse the city... the speech from Curtis to Oliver about how the Green Arrow inspired hope in him is one thing. Oliver going to stop a single riot in a single street is another -- it makes Supergirl's big broadcast thing actually look super-sane in comparison. And to have all these random soul-searching subplots... of course Diggle is going to come back. Of course Quentin isn't going to run off to a bunker and he's going to come back and help. Of course Malcolm Merlyn is going to show up rather randomly. Of course Sheldon Cooper will see the error of his ways and get killed by it. There really was too little time devoted to any of their individual characters, and what little we get for all of them ended up being overly mushy and just dumb. 

And, yes, while the writers might try to go deeper and have Oliver be an inspirational hero, surely there are better ways as opposed to giving random, generic sappy speeches and getting an army of civilians to fight against an army of ex-military brainwashed people? And to have Oliver kill Damien Darhk at the end seemed to kind of backfire over the whole 'the Green Arrow is DIFFERENT than the Arrow' moral that we had throughout the season. I mean, it's not like that Darhk didn't deserve to die, but it's the same problem I had with James Gordon over in Gotham with him killing Gallavan. And for Oliver it's even worse because he spent entire seasons repenting from being a killer. At least have the decency and have Diggle or Thea or Malcolm be the one to murder Darhk, if you really want to get rid of the character that bad. Or, hell, at least have Oliver kill Darhk out of necessity to save his city instead of killing a clearly-already-defeated Darhk.

The ending doesn't really add up either. Having Quentin and Donna head off for a bit of a holiday is one thing, but to randomly just get rid of Thea (because she's afraid of becoming too dark) and Diggle (even though Lyla totally understands about his big mopey problem) and leaving just Oliver and Felicity felt hollow, turning the victory into a more Pyrrhic one than it should've. Really, if Oliver Queen could inspire so much hope and all that, he really should've been able to at least inspire his closest allies. Even the bit with Oliver getting sworn in as mayor felt empty. There is a lack of sense of character progress, not when Malcolm Merlyn can just merrily walk around with a smug smile for no real reason.

Felicity, too, was in full happy form with absolutely no fallout from redirecting the nuclear bomb to Havenrock, which really makes me wonder why they even went with that decision at all. When she, of all people, should have more reason to leave compared to, say, Thea. 

It doesn't help that there's an insanely increased amount of time devoted to the flashback, which basically ended up with Reiter dead, Taiana dead, the refugees on the plane dead, and Waller going in to tell Oliver that 'killing is the way to justice', which, yeah, I get that it leads to Oliver's mindset in season one, but it's still pretty dumb to drag this stupid flashback through twenty-three episodes and just... y'know, ending stuff so abruptly. Would the flashbacks have hit harder if the story between Taiana and Reiter were told in a single interlude episode, or if the flashbacks themselves ended in the mid-season point? Really, season four had the worst flashback among all of Arrow's flashback sequences, and the writers could really stand to drop the whole thing entirely in the next season.

I dunno, it's very disappointing, really, and I honestly think it's a notch below even Supergirl's finale. 

Game of Thrones S06E06 Review: Coldhands

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 6: Blood of My Blood

This episode's pacing was honestly a bit all over the place, but it's still an entertaining hour and a half nonetheless. The problem, probably, was because there never really was a focal scene that stole everything else. Every single plot of Westeros (save for Castle Black and Winterfell) moved forward a little, and we get payoffs all over... it's just that, well, the pacing wasn't the best that it could've been. That's not to say that it isn't a bad episode, of course -- there's just a lack of cohesion within the episode itself, but as an installment in a season, it's definitely awesome.

We start off where we ended last episode, with Bran and Meera failing to outrun the wights, making Hodor's big sacrifice last week honestly kind of even more of a downer. Meera was basically giving up, while Bran's half-catatonic... and then a Death Knight shows up! Who proceeds to absolutely dismember the wights in the most awesome manner ever, with a cpair of chained flaming sickles. Book-readers might recognize this character as Coldhands, a character cut out of the show (Coldhands would've appeared in season 3 at the very earliest, helping Ginny and Sam escape the White Walkers, and would've helped Team Bran find the Raven's tree). Except while Coldhands' identity is still a mystery even for book-readers, we get instant revelation about his identity here... Benjen Stark!

Who Jon Snow's group marched out of Castle Black to search for back in season one, and ended up being thrown to the wayside when, y'know, the whole army of undead and wildlings became far more important for them to deal with. Benjen tells Bran about his backstory. He was very nearly turned into a wight by a White Walker, but midway through his transformation the Children of the Forest stabbed him with a dragonglass dagger, and magic turned him into, well, what's basically a Death Knight. Benjen recognizes Bran as the new 'Three-Eyed Raven', whatever that actually really means.

Apparently the Raven might've just managed to upload a thousand years' worth of greenseeing into Bran's brain, though, because he sees a gigantic series of flashbacks that had taken place throughout the season. While most of it involves White Walker related scenes, we also get several short one-scene wonder scenes with Aerys Targaryen the Mad King shouting "BURN IT ALL", a vision of dragons flying over King's Landing (which we saw before) and a vision of wildfire blowing up in tunnels, which we definitely haven't seen before. It's implied to be Aerys's master plan which caused Jaime Lannister to become the greatest hero Westeros doesn't know, but is this a portent of things to come?

The most eventful bit in this episode is probably the showdown between the forces of Jaime and the Tyrells against the Faith Militant to rescue Margeary Tyrell. Who, to the disappointment of both the audience in-universe and in real-life, does not get to make her walk of atonement naked through the streets. While we get a pretty awesome moment with Jaime Lannister, Olenna Tyrell, Mace Tyrell and a host of knights besieging the high sept -- Mace's hilariously-goofy speech notwithstanding -- the High Sparrow proves himself to be as shrewd and manipulative as the likes of Littlefinger and Varys. He's apparently succeeded in brainwashing Margeary, who, in turn, manages to rope in King Tommen into entering an alliance with the church.

The jury's still out on whether Margeary was truly broken by the High Sparrow, if she has truly repented... or if she's hatching a long scheme to get both King and Church under her thumb. Margeary seems like a shrewd enough woman to dupe that fuckwad High Sparrow, but on the other hand her long speech about how she cared more for her own image compared to helping the poor really sold me too. I dunno. And the fact that she seemed to have sold Loras out? That doesn't jive with what I would think Margeary would do.

Regardless, Tommen exiles an indignant Jaime Lannister, telling him to head off and be a knight... but not as part of the Kingsguard. Jaime and Cersei have a bit of a discussion, and Cersei seems to want to play the longer game -- despite, y'know, being the one that caused this whole mess in the first place. Jaime brings up the very tantalizing mental image of recruiting Bronn and an army of mercenaries to go all Ezio and murder the High Sparrow, but alas that is not the way we're going to. Oh well. That whole King's Landing business is done and dealt with, and hopefully we can get something more interesting for all the characters involved. 

Speaking of unrest in the kingdom, Jaime is sent to quell the big mess in Riverrun. Apparently, off-screen, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully has taken over Riverrun (not the Skyrim starting town) from the forces of the Freys, and we see two of the Freys -- whichever they are -- reporting to Walder Frey, returning after several seasons' worth of being absent. Walder Frey tells his sons to take over Riverrun with his usual, ahem, encouragement. He's also got a new sex-wife thing, dirty old fucker that he is. 

With Coldhands finally making an appearance despite seemingly being written out, will another character related to that particular locale of Westeros finally be making an appearance? The off-handed mention of the Brotherhood without Banners honestly might be a hint to her appearance. I shan't say any more for spoilery reasons. 

Walder's plan is to shake the Blackfish by showing not only the knives used during the Red Wedding (we get an off-handed mention that, yeah, Blackfish just escaped off-screen)... as well as Edmure Tully, who has been prisoner to the Freys all this while. That would be interesting. 

Meanwhile, we finally get some progress on Arya's front. We see a bit more of the stage version of the Game of Thrones, and Arya seemed to swallow her morality and poison Lady Crane's drink, with the Sansa-actress being quite obviously ready and hoping to take over... right up until Lady Crane stops Arya dead in her tracks. She seemed to be just a pleasant lady who wants to talk about how she, too, used to sneak into the actors' dressing rooms and how she really could've improved on the script, and she asks Arya an armour-piercing question: "do you like pretending to be someone else?" For a moment, I thought Lady Crane was actually a Faceless Man, until, nah, that's just conveniently the very question that Arya needed to hear. 

Arya ends up reneging on the Faceless Man's ideals, saving Lady Crane from being poisoned, and throwing away her third chance, and regaining the identity of Arya Stark, with the awesome moment when she finally dug Needle out from where she hid it in a pile of rocks. Arya Stark is back, and has definitely regained what she lost when she fell down the dark path of being an assassin. Her little speech about wanting to 'get back and those who took her family from her' is an awesome bit as well, probably applying more to Arya's state of mind than it does for actor-Cersei's. 

Of course, the Waif is now sent off to murder Arya... and honestly, my money's totally on Arya Stark now. The question, really, is what "Jaqen" will do, and whether all this is a cleverly planned screenplay courtesy of the Faceless Men themselves.

We get a long, extensive sequence as Sam and Ginny return to the Tarly homestead, which is quite impressive! We meet Sam's douchewad of a father, Randyll Tarly. Who's just a hugely dismissive fucker, marrying off Sam's sister to someone she clearly doesn't like, a gigantic dick to Sam and when he finds out that the woman who 'seduced' his son is a 'wildling whore', goes off into a big rant about what a piece of shit Sam is. He's decent enough to oblige to keep Ginny around as a servant and raise the 'bastard' Little Sam, though this really seemed to be to win favour with his wife more than anything else.

Honestly, it's horrible and all, but really the only smart thing for Ginny to do is to just play along, no matter how horrible Randyll's insults to Sam are. It just seems too ridiculously naive for her to go 'I can't believe bad things happen to good people!' when this is, y'know, season fucking six of this series. It ends up with Sam deciding to bring Ginny and Little Sam along, and steal the family sword Heartsbane, his legacy that was denied to him, though, so good for him! Hopefully Sam gets to stab Randyll through the heart with it. 

I just wished it took a lot less screentime, because, y'know, I still don't care that much about Sam and Ginny.

Meanwhile, in the Dothraki desert, Daenerys decides to bugger off for a minute or two, and returns with Drogon. And, yes, it's majestic as all fuck, and very much an impressive 'cheer for the Khaleesi' moment, but it feels very anticlimatic considering Daenerys's previous attempts to cooperate and tame Drogon ended up with Drogon throwing a tantrum and going to sleep and causing Daenerys to be captured by the Khalasar. I dunno, showing us a scene of Daenerys actually taming Drogon again really would've made this scene a lot better instead of just 'LOOK DRAGONS'. It's a great speech from Daenerys... though honestly I groaned a little at the way-too-obvious "I need ships! A thousand ships!" right after last episode had Euron Greyjoy say that he wants to give Daenerys a thousand ships to get in her good favour. 

With Bran's speech, though, having Daenerys march on King's Landing with an army of Dothraki, Second Sons and Unsullied, plus three dragons, an imp and an eunuch, would definitely be possible in the near future. Of course, we still have to find out which Greyjoy Daenerys finds herself allying with. 

The Flash S02E23 Review: The Twist That Came A Mile Away

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 23: The Race of His Life

Yeah, that's honestly an underwhelming finale, really, so much that I didn't feel like writing the review until like two weeks after the fact. The big fight against Zoom had a couple of cool scenes, but ultimately half the episode was spent having to set up the ridiculous premise that the two had to race to save the world. I really don't buy the 'you're angry, stay put' justification for the rest of the team to lock Barry in a cage and decide to go after Zoom themselves.

Really, why not repeat the same thing they did last episode? And honestly, is the population of Earth-2 so disposable that they can live with themselves throwing Zoom back there where he, no doubt, will terrorize the population as bad or even worse than he did on Earth-1? It's just such a moronic moment, and the fact that Zoom just doesn't kill Joe because of plot armour ends up being dumb. Zoom's big plan to create a chain reaction to destroy the Infinite Earths also ends up being whatever, and maybe it'll sound impressive if we actually got to know this like last episode or the episode before that, but when the show fails to make me care for Earth-2, which has characters we know on it... hell, the characters in the show don't even care for Earth-2, multiplying it by infinity just doesn't get me invested more.

Oh, and there's the big chase fight with time remnants that doesn't make sense but look cool, and some zappy-zap and speedy-speed moments. Can't fault the action standpoint of the episode, of course, which looks better than any Flash/Zoom fight before. But ultimately it felt quite cathartic, and only forced to end with Zoom being captured by the Time Wraiths (and probably turned into the Black Flash) because, hey, it's the last episode of the series.

Oh, like everyone guessed, the Man in the Iron Mask is Henry Allen. Except, wait, he's also Jay Garrick, he just has Henry's face. He's also the Flash. Of Earth-3. Yeah. I would've rather they not went with the 'Zoom is Jay but not really' twist and make something more sensible. Oh well, hopefully Jay will have a better showing next season.

And then, at the end of this episode, Barry decides to run all the way back to the moment when Eobard Thawne is about to kill Nora Allen, and rescue his mother, thus wiping out the entire reason why season one's ending is so good, wiping out season one's time-travelling Barry Allen, and wiping out the timeline for a mini-Flashpoint event. Of course, even if this is going to stick (Spoiler: it's not) I'm definitely not looking forward for a huge chunk of season three to just show how, oh, Cisco and Caitlin and Iris and Joe aren't nice to Barry because the events that happened didn't happen the way they did.

Overall it's as much as I expected. Messy and really only there to set up Season Three. Zoom is utterly ineffective as a villain, the Iron Mask Man twist ends up being just exactly as everyone predicted... why couldn't we have sprung RealJay last episode, so we actually have a reason to care about him, and have this episode be a big climatic showdown between Jay, Barry and Zoom? Bah. So much in this season has been kinda poorly executed, and this finale is definitely one of them.