One Piece 846 Review: Big Mom's Army

One Piece, Chapter 846: Egg Defense

We have a couple of short match-ups, with Nami apparently holding her own and controlling thunderbolts (sadly offscreen) and earning the respect and wrath of Charlotte Galette. Amande, the lady with a huge huge hat, slices King Baum in half with a huge sword quite brutally, making sure to kill Baum slowly instead of swiftly in one strike.

Mont Dor, the weird dude with the weird hair and weird clothes, stands on top of floating books, talking about how Luffy is weakened from the fight against Cracker, and he can't stand against the Chess Barbarian Army. Which Luffy is doing, and Opera the whipped craem minister attacks Luffy as a giant wave of whipped cream. Which is hot and can melt shit, apparently? Luffy then finds himself in a weird Through-the-Looking-Glass style Escher location where he's confused while D'or talks about how it's the world of books. Nami yells at Luffy to watch out and apparently it's a hypnotism-genjutsu thing and Luffy gets whacked by two gigantic dudes with haki'd up hands.

So yeah, not a very good time for either Luffy or Nami. Amande discovers the vivre card, noting that it belongs to Lola, and when they find out about how the Straw Hats are friends of the 'runaway', they decide to take this matter up with Mama. Luffy has no say in the matter because he's immediately knocked out. 

We get a moment where Sanji talks with Big Mom, who decides to actually forgive the Straw Hats despite the transgressions they've made -- destroying the Seducing Woods, defeating Cracker, and eating the Fishman Island candy. Big Mom notes how she's not unreasonable, and while those offences are enough for her to want the Straw Hats dead, she's willing to ignore them in exchange for a smooth wedding. 

We then cut to some unexpected introdump featuring Baron Tamago, who talks about how there are 30 poneglyphs in the world, but only nine -- four Road Poneglyphs and five Rio Poneglyphs -- hold the information that they need. Big Mom has three ponegylphs in total (one of them a gift from Jinbe and Wadatsumi), one among them a Road Poneglyph. Meanwhile yet another one of Big Mom's three big lieutenants, one Lady Smoothie, is... squeezing a random woman into a smoothie. She's a big lady, and she is guarding the poneglyphs with Tamago for the moment. Smoothie's handiwork, the corpse of the woman she squeezed... isn't pretty.

Tamago also gives us the information that Pedro, who has infiltrated Whole Cake Island, was once the Poneglyph Thief pirate captain who was only spared due to Pekoms' pleading. Brook's ghost is watching, which is a very welcome return, where Brook and Pedro are infiltrating that building. Brook and Pedro talk for a bit, but then decide to use Pedro as bait.

We get some progression on the Luffy/Nami/Revenge Army front, a short Sanji moment, but I do really want to see more of the Brook stuff. Mostly because Brook, Tamago and Pedro intrigue me so much. Lots of cool things in this chapter -- it's always fun to see lots and lots of devil fruit powers being displayed and used in quick succession. 

Justice League S02E13-14 Review: Eclipso

Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 13-14: Eclipsed

Flash and Hawkgirl are easily the members among the main seven characters who get the least focus. Hawkgirl has her romance with Green Lantern and her little tsundere act, and will get progressively better later down the season, and she's intentionally kept as a secondary character so her gradual personality change and character development can be seen over time instead of done over 40 minutes. But Flash? From being woefully underutilized in the first season -- he only really had a single 'focus' story arc, and that one was basically a filler episode shared with Green Lantern -- and while Flash has got some decent moments in other episodes (the Dr. Destiny one, him flipping out in Vandal's space station), we never had one that really, truly focused on him. He was the comic relief, he was the jokester, he was the kid of the team.

So an episode that thrusts Flash into the forefront is a bit of a rarity. See, out of the seven members of the League, seeing Flash kind of shill out and be more public than the other six is very reasonable. The fact that he shoots his mouth off most of the time ends up not being entertaining but rather quite damning when he falls into the clutches of jackass TV host "Glorious" Gordon Godfrey, who, like any slimy TV host in real-life, twists Flash's words into things that, well, aren't truly the Scarlet Speedster's opinions. The public's negative opinion on superheroes have been slightly touched upon in Superman: TAS, but that's a bit of a different take because, for all the shit he's done, Superman was brainwashed. Flash, meanwhile, shells out for commercials of energy bars, causing the TV hosts to criticize and call out Flash using his powers for profit, and Flash's natural instinct -- to run towards the problem and face it headlong -- ends up causing him to make a bigger fool of himself on live television as Godfrey calls out the Leaguers thinking themselves better than the rest of us humanity.

Green Lantern ends up playing the long-suffering responsible big brother role to Flash, while Diana just doesn't understand the subtleties (or lack thereof) of media propaganda and has more or less the same instinct of action as the Flash does: beat 'em up! Especially with the hilarious line "what's wrong with the way I dress?!" to which Green Lantern and Flash can only basically look at each other and shrug.

The main plot, however, isn't just Flash trying to restore his credibility to the viewers of Glorious Godfrey's TV show. No, the main plot is a new adaptation of Eclipso, one of DC's classic supervillains. The show cuts out all the religious undertones of Eclipso's origin, but plays up the horror of a mystical jewel with unfriendly mystical entities within that possesses anyone who comes to contact with it. The horror aspect of Eclipso's story is definitely played up with a good chunk of the first episode having a group of unlucky soldiers stumble into an ancient desert tomb, with some excellent tense music, shots that are basically the PG-13 version of horror tension buildup, an insane midget who shouts dire warnings to the soldiers, and finally a soldier, possessed and psychopathic, leaving his comrades to be trapped in the tomb while he waltzes out, possessed by Eclipso.

The plot continues to cut back and forth between Eclipso's slow and horrifying ascent as he switches hosts while working his way up the military ladder, while the League (sans Batman, who's the only one absent this episode) discussing how to deal with Godfrey's bullshit claims (3% increase in white collar crime! 50% increase of divorces in marriages!) which, honestly, is something that celebrities and politicians in real life probably have to deal with every day. Superheroes being held at a pedestral and being judged for every single god-damned thing that they do is an aspect of the genre that often gets ignored in more children-oriented adaptations, and it's great to see it tackled here.

The two plotlines intersect at the climax of the first part, with Eclipso's current host donning his comic-book costume to attract the attention of the Justice League, but that's only a ploy to swap hosts and possess Wonder Woman. Sadly the second part is a bit lackluster with a good chunk focused on the insane and irritating Mophir giving the backstory of the Black Diamond in a sequence that kind of kills the pacing...

But Flash fighting the mind-controlled Justice Leaguers is very entertaining as he tries his best to combat all the other League members (bar Batman, who isn't picking up his phone -- I do like it that they recognize his absence and work it into the show), all of whom are invariably superior to Flash in straight-up strength and combat. Meanwhile, Eclipso's other machinations has caused this technobabble device to be launched towards the Sun in order to put the Sun into a state of permanent eclipse, and it's a very nice bit as Flash is forced to mature up and improvise to both rescue his friends from mind-control while racing against the clock before the device reach the sun. The creepy sound effects that the Black Diamond hosts make only serve to increase the horror aspect of the whole situation.

The ending is a bit lackluster, with Flash using a big burst of light to rescue his League members, and then Green Lantern creates a track around the Sun that Flash can run circles around, and him saving the world ends up saving his reputation, too, with an all-too convenient epilogue showing that Godfrey's business and studio is failing and Flash's old agent gets rejected by him and is forced to contend with Mophir. It's a bit of a shame because the buildup of the episode, both on the Eclipso and Glorious Godfrey fronts, are amazing, but the ending is just a generic 'throw a plot device at it and it solves everything', main character learns a lesson. Bit of a shame that this episode ended up being kind of generic.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Black Diamond, in the comics, is the mystical device that keeps Eclipso, the incarnation of god's wrath, in check. While Eclipso himself is not named at all, and the origin is revised to have the Black Diamond be part of a snakeman cult, Eclipso's traditional appearance makes a cameo as the gaudy supervillain costume worn by General MacCormick. 
• Mophir is a minor character from the comics that has more or less a similar role as the ancient guardian of Eclipso's Black Diamond.
• Glorious Godfrey, in the comics, is one of Darkseid's New Gods sent to infiltrate Earth with his powers of hypnosis and mind manipulation to turn humanity away from the Justice League and to welcome the coming of Darkseid. While this episode does not feature Godfrey as anything more than a bit of an asshole TV show host, the fact that the New Gods are a big part of the DCAU lore and Darkseid being indisposed earlier this season might go either way on this Godfrey's status as a New God. (Young Justice would take the Godfrey 'superheroes are scum' role and milk it for all it's worth)
• The advertisement of the Lightspeed energy bars feature Flash beating up Heatwave, Mirror Master and Captain Boomerang, all members of Flash's Rogues. All three would later appear in Justice League Unlimited.
• While running towards the sun, Flash briefly name-drops the Cosmic Treadmill, which in the comics is a super-advanced treadmill that Flash uses to travel through time.

Justice League S02E11-12 Review: Crime Syndicate

Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 11-12: A Better World

I have never realized just how pivotal this episode would be as we go on into the next three seasons of Justice League, but without spoiling anything, let's just say that the events of this episode will have a pretty huge impact down the line. And can you blame the writers for doing that? It is indeed a wonderful episode.

The episode opens with a grim confrontation between Superman and... President Lex Luthor? Clancy Brown and George Newbern absolutely steal the show as Luthor's sliminess, his constant "you need me to make yourself look good. You need a villain" lines, Superman audibly trying to hold his anger in, and some really great cuts as Superman incinerates Lex Luthor and burns him to nothing but a black soot stain. It's great that the death was definitely implied and shown, but we don't get to see anything graphic. Just Superman's eyes shining red, we cut away to Batman and Wonder Woman beating up other goons while Luthor's horrified scream rings out, Batman going "do you smell something?" and the two of them walking up to the Oval Office with surprised and horrified looks.

Superman is super-powerful, and the question really begs is that why doesn't he just take control? It's a topic explored in many alternate-universe Elseworlds stories like Red Son, Kingdom Come, Injustice, various Crime Syndicate stories, and many others, all of which dabbled with the idea of Superman trying to rule the world. We skip ahead after Superman killing Luthor to a totalitarian utopia where the seven members of the Justice League rule over a crimeless world. Yes, free speech is outlawed, no public protests, you can't even argue with a waiter about bad service without Justice Lord SS robots arresting you, the Justice Lords' first instinct of any trouble is to kill first and ask questions later, Lois is all but a prisoner... and, yeah, all things considered it's kind of a better world, and better to be ruled by Extremist!Superman and Batman rather than to have, say, Luthor or Darkseid or Despero or any one of the many real-life scumbag world leaders, y'know, rule... but on the other hand, it's a slightly different shade of evil when it boils down to it.

The show takes a good half of the first episode to establish the Justice Lords' new world, and honestly without any indication that this is supposed to be an alternate universe it was a bit of a shock when I first watched this episode as a kid. As someone who kind of have experienced the bad side of protesting mobs I can't help but cheer for Lord Hawkgirl and Lord Green Lantern taking down a mob of university students, but on the other hand, y'know, it's free speech, and campus unrest over wars waged for no reason is something that rings true. But the lengths that they go to brutalize the protesters, and the fact that one of the most likable characters of the DCAU, Lois Lane, is basically a prisoner of love in Lord Superman's apartment, is definitely a sign that they have gone from being extremist leaders to despots with a moral code.

(The fact that the episode aired coincidentally around the time America decided to invade Iraq is a nice little parallel, too)

Lord Batman discovers the universe where our Justice League hangs out in, and over various conversations between the Leaguers, the show reveals that apparently one of the reasons they went evil (or, well, extreme) was that Flash died*, most likely thanks to Luthor. The Lords want to bring their totalitarian brand of justice to the regular world, but to do that they want to take the Justice League out of commission, which they do by having Lord J'onn pose as a friendly inter-dimensional doppelganger, only for the Lords to spring a trap on the League. In the process, Hawkgirl is accidentally injured and had to be hospitalized, while Lord Batman imprisons everyone in specialized cells in the Batcave.

*In the comics, whenever DC comics kills off a Flash, the tone invariably gets darker and edgier, usually not for the better. Barry Allen's death during Crisis on Infinite Earths, Bart Allen's death during Infinite Crisis/Final Crisis, Wally West being wiped out of existence in New 52...

Meanwhile, the other five Justice Lords head off into our world right in time when Doomsday shows up. Doomsday is, of course, one of the most iconic Superman villains for being the one that actually managed to kill Superman. Now Doomsday never got a chance to show up in Superman: the Animated Series, and this is his debut in the TAS-verse. We get a spectacular fight scene which showcases the Lords' brutality against a brainless monster. Well, mostly brainless, anyway. Lord Superman ends up lobotomizing Doomsday at the end of the fight, making him an absolute non-threat... which is very cathartic, to be honest, considering how bland and boring of a villain the comic book version of Doomsday is. It's a great sequence taht's both triumphant and dark at the same time. Yes, in a meta-sense the Justice Lords' lack of restraint and their quick thinking and their extreme methods is probably why Doomsday was taken out with minimal casualties and they probably saved our Superman from biting the bullet, but on the other hand, this was an angry rage monster. What would the Justice Lords do with more... human villains? What if they met one of the more sympathetic villains like Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, Solomon Grundy, Cheetah or Ventriloquist? Or simply an out-of-control hero like Metamorpho? Thankfully, we don't go that dark.

Meanwhile, our Batman finds that, hey, Lord Batman is literally him, and not even Batman can outsmart himself without causing a paradox, but the only thing that can outsmart Batman is something that the Dark Knight cannot prepare for. And Batman tells Flash to improvise, which he does by faking his own death. Lord Batman's uncharacteristic outburst of concern and horror when he realizes Flash had flatlined was a very nice touch from the showmakers that show that, yeah, despite these characters being evil versions of the Justice League, they were still the characters we all know and love, just ones that lost their way.

Flash frees the other Leaguers and head off to rescue Hawkgirl from Arkham Asylum... we see a disturbingly sane Joker acting as the main warden of a prison full of lobotomized Batman villains (in a great visual gag, Scarface is the one that was lobotomized instead of Ventriloquist). The Leaguers end up failing a password test, and had to fight against an army of Superman robots in a pretty cool, if fillery, fight scene.

The biggest and most awesome part of this episode, though, was the fight and conversation between the two Batmans in the Batcave, where Kevin Conroy absolutely nails talking to himself. The action as the Batmans sneak through the Batcave is honestly secondary to the excellent lines and scripting done in this episode, where they debate ethical concerns about a world without free will, about the good that fighting crime from the dark and the sunlight, about going to the extremes to actually make change, to make a world where no child will lose their parents to a random punk... it's surprisingly dense and very deep and well-written, easily one of the best exchanges in the entirety of superhero cartoons. Hell, this is how you stop two heroes from fighting each other. Not "WHY DID YOU SAY MARTHA".

Here are two best parts of that argument:
-Lord Batman: "What are you hiding for?"
-Batman: "I do my best work in the dark."
-Lord Batman: "I used to think that, too. But what have you ever accomplished from there? Besides scaring a few punks half to death and putting a few more in jail."
-Batman: "It all adds up."
-Lord Batman: "Not fast enough. If you really want to make a difference, change the system instead of just patching it, you've got to step into the sunlight. Take over like we did."
...
-Lord Batman: "A world where there's no crime. No victims. No pain."
-Batman: "And no choice! Who elected you anyway?"
-Lord Batman: "Who elected you? The problem with democracy is that it doesn't keep you very safe."
-Batman: "It has other virtues. But you seem to have forgotten that."
-Lord Batman: "I didn't forget! I just chose peace and security instead."
-Batman: "You grabbed power!"
-Lord Batman: "And with that power, we've made a world where no eight year old boy will ever lose his parents to some punk with a gun!" [dramatic beat]
-Batman: "... you win."

Batman is someone who still struggles with the pain he suffered as an eight-year-old child even so many year later, and Lord Batman bringing up that, yes, grabbing power, security, peace and all that to create a world where the tragedy that befell not only Batman but also so many other children (just look at the many Robins!) even after he became the Dark Knight... yeah. There's definitely solid argument for both sides of the coin and even right now I cannot safely say that I wouldn't pick Lord Batman's vision of the world.

Of course, as the two Batmen go on a drive to hunt down the Justice League, our Batman ends up pointing out that, hey, mom and dad would be fucking ashamed of what Lord Batman had done, and he ends up switching sides. Lord Batman shows up to save the Justice League from the police and get them to the teleportation room, in a nice reversal of 'beat up the doppelganger and pretend to be him' trope.

We then proceed to the long-awaited Justice League vs Justice Lords fight. Obviously the League has an advantage in that they have two extra manpower in Batman and Flash, but on the other hand, the Lords are well-prepared to kill, and the League needs something that... the Lords aren't prepared for. Which, in this case, is teaming up with Lex Luthor. There's a bit of an annoying deus ex machina with Luthor's power-negating gun, but Luthor is the type of guy to be walking around with a power-negating gun. So. The fight was short and not as impressive as other more epic ones throughout Justice League's career, but we have some absolute highlights like the J'onn double martian serpent monster battle, or Flash machine-gun-throwing rocks at Lord Superman, or Wonder Woman using her tiara to whack Lord Wonder Woman in the face to save Batman... and Lord Superman definitely crosses the line when he was well-prepared to execute Flash during their fight, which was the point that our Superman and Lex Luthor shows up to take out the Justice Lords.

Of course, the price for Luthor's allegiance in this fight is a full pardon for his past injustices, and the satisfaction to know that he has taken out a Justice League team all by himself... but how much has he changed? Is it worth it bringing Luthor in? There was no easy way out short of Batman pulling a Tower of Babel scenario (and TAS's Batman isn't that cold-hearted and paranoid yet). Is Superman allying with Luthor a sign of how the League is still optimistic enough to offer villains a second chance, or a way of succumbing to a different kind of darkness that could've been easily avoided? Luthor ends up wanting to dabble in politics at the end, so it does mean that the events that led to the Lords' creation might very well still happen. Nothing is ever clear, but they successfully managed to drive the Lords back with a very epic righting of the American flag by Superman. I'm not American and I don't care for patriotic displays for America, but I have to admit that this moment is indeed badass.

It's a great Superman moment, too, which is kind of overshadowed by the awesome Batman-v-Batman ethical debate. Superman, despite being, y'know, Superman, isn't perfect. He isn't god, he isn't an all-knowing being who can find the solutions for everything. He has to do his best and sometimes his best isn't enough, and he can only hope that his best will be enough without betraying his principles. Also, Superman didn't make it to his first merit badge as a Boy Scout. That was a hilarious note to end this surprisingly deep and excellent episode on.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The idea of the Justice League discovering and fighting an alternate universe ran by evil counterparts of the Justice League has been around since Earth-3's Crime Syndicate (Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Power Ring and Johnny Quick). The idea of an alternate universe where our Justice League became evil thanks to a key event in which Superman kills a villain that killed a loved one will be revisited in the 2013 game Injustice: Gods Among Us, where Joker took Luthor's place as the villain that killed Lois Lane instead of the Flash.
• Justice Lords Costumes:
• Lord Superman's costume, being mostly black with a silver insignia, is a reference to the older Superman's appearance in Batman Beyond, which itself probably draws inspiration on the black-costume-silver-insignia funeral garb look that Superman sports shortly after his resurrection.
• Lord Batman's costume is somewhat based off Batman Beyond, with some 'armoured Batman' design cues making it in. 
• Lord Wonder Woman sports a mainly-red costume that covers most of her body except for her head and arms, which might be a reference to Donna Troy's second Wonder Girl costume, which looks mostly similar to that, substituting the 'W' golden insignia for a bunch of golden stars.
• Lord J'onn J'onzz's costume has him wear a black bodysuit, which is a look that would bleed into the comics (I'm not sure which came first) where more modern incarnations of J'onn would wear a full-body suit in addition to his iconic red cape and X chest insignia.
• Lord Green Lantern and Lord Hawkgirl are just the normal designs with some colours inverted and switched around. Oh, and Lord Hawkgirl has a cool-looking new helmet, and Green Lantern has shaved his head. This won't be the last time we see a bald John Stewart in this show.
• Lex Luthor becoming elected President just to spite Superman is a plotline that ran through the 90's and 00's, where Lex Luthor was elected President of United States. 
• Doomsday! Doomsday is, of course, most well-known among comic-book fans as this muscular spiky super-strong super-evil alien that showed up of nowhere and straight-up kills Superman in one of the biggest comic-book events of all time. Of course Doomsday gets a backstory later and Superman is revealed to have recovered from his death with a combination of Kryptonian physiology and some wacky super-technology shenanigans, but the fight with Doomsday taking out the Justice League before going punch-to-punch with Superman is definitely a homage to their iconic battle. It's very cathartic for me to see Justice Lord Superman to just go 'nope fuck you not this time' to Doomsday.
• In the Justice Lords universe, we have short appearances of Batman: TAS and Superman: TAS characters. Lois Lane, the Joker and Poison Ivy appear in speaking roles, while Two-Face, Ventriloquist and Scarface have non-speaking cameos. The costumes of Nightwing, Batgirl and Robin appear in Justice Lord Batman's Batcave. Our universe's Lois Lane and Ron Troupe also show up, technically their first appearance in Justice League (previously they only showed up in a dream sequence).
• Batman's secret code, 91939, is a reference to Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27, published in 1939.
• Wonder Woman throwing her tiara as a boomerang is a homage to the 70's Wonder Woman live-action TV show, where Wonder Woman often used her tiara as such a weapon.

Legends of Tomorrow S02E03 Review: Can't Get Hard

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 3: Shoguns

This was a perfectly entertaining filler episode, which tried its best to kind of compensate for grinding the Legion of Doom and Mystery Time-Travelling Killer plotlines to a halt by giving the characters some room to breathe. Nate, Ray and Mick all got some character arcs in this episode, Amaya is apparently going to be part of the team, Jefferson and Stein discover a conspiracy. Oh, and samurais, and ninjas, and Mick getting to say "Konichiwa, scumbag".

It was fun, I'll give you that. It's another one of those episodes just set in a particular timeline and does it really make sense for the entire team to dress up in Japanese clothes instead of the normal superhero body armour they wear, and for them to leave Firestorm on board the Waverider? Did it particularly make sense for Ray to go from 'that suit is coded to my DNA' to 'yeaaah anyone can use it' so the evil Shogun can stand up and fight against Steel and SamuraiAtom? Did Mick fighting the ninjas who literally popped out of nowhere make sense at all? No, not really. But it's still an entertaining episode nonetheless.

The character subplots are partly recycled, and some partly new thanks to, y'know, new characters. We've got Ray trying to get into grips on whether he can be a hero and be meaningful without the Atom suit, something that has been explored to varying degrees in both Arrow and the first season of Legends, though arguably slightly more effective here because he actually has the suit stolen and ended up coaching his protege Steel to destroy it. There are some expected words of wisdom about how 'it's not the armour, it's the man', plus Ray going around with a sword trying attacking his armour, but that's about it. He ends destroying his armour with Nate's help, but hey, if this makes way for a less Iron-Man-y armour and an actual suit that's more spandex and true to the book with fish-scales and shit, I'm all for it.

Mick has a smaller subplot of trying to convince Amaya that he's a decent person. Well, more like Sara is trying to convince Amaya that Mick is a decent person. Mick's more interested in shooting fireballs at crazy shoguns and fighting ninjas. That little brawl against the ninjas in the forest? Awesomeness. Sara herself got some really cool fight scenes too, since being an assassin fighting ninjas is basically bread and butter to her. She ends up killing Samurai General Dude with what initially appears to be a simple iai clash, but, y'know, she's an assassin, and she stabbed Samurai General Dude with a small dagger.

Newcomers Nate "Steel" Haywood and Amaya "Vixen" Jiwe struggle with their own parts in the team. And Nate, well, discovers that he has superpowers that involves himself turning his body into steel... but as the other Legends joke about it, he spends almost the entire episode suffering from performance issues. You see, Nate almost immediately falls in love with the nice Japanese lady that saves him, and he really wants to impress her. Trouble is, she is betrothed to the shogun, and Nate has to fight them. But he fails to get hard, which depresses him a lot since he performed so well earlier when the drugs Ray gave caused him to get harder than ever. Ray to find out just what turns Nate on so he can stay hard and maintain his performance in combat. (We are talking about metal skin powers, not something more dodgy.)

There's some talk about how Nate, as a haemophiliac, spent his childhood struggling with fear of death, and while the romance (and the 'oh no the woman is actually betrothed to the evil overlord') is very textbook and felt rehashed, Nate's talk about being a superhero, as well as his... performance issues... are decent and help to shape this newcomer.

Amaya is the only member of the team that didn't work out that well for me. And while it's nice to have Sara and Mick have someone to bounce dialogue off of, Amaya felt... really flat. Having someone antagonize the token psychopath has been done already with Ray and Firestorm during season one, and Amaya's dialogue ends up just more or less a small introdump for the members of the audience who forgot Vixen's backstory. Yeah, defending the Japanese village is a parallel to her former role as the defender... big whoop. Can't we have gotten Stargirl, or Obsidian, or Dr. Mid-Nite as the tagalong? Amaya's animal antics all basically amount to her channeling super-strength anyway, none of the fancier things that Mari McCabe was able to do in Arrow.

Martin and Jefferson, meanwhile, find a message from the Barry Allen of 2056 directed to Rip Hunter, but we don't see what's in it, other than it spooked the two of them enough to not tell the others. It's really the only thing tying this episode to the larger overreaching seasonal plot.

The Shogun was... very generic. I'm not sure if he was a historical character or a DC lore character I'm not aware existed, but he served his role as evil overlord villain decently. Did my research, he's a historical character. He's very much forgettable, though. And so are the supporting cast, who just fit the role of that wise old man and the flat nice girl role that you find in literally every piece of fiction out there. It's a bit irritating that Flash is making so much a point about how a single mother's death changes so much in the course of history, but the leader of an entire country getting blown up by a high-tech suit of armour? No one even mentions the repercussions this would have on the timeline -- especially since these kinds of assassinations are ones that the Legends are supposed to stop. And considering the argument about Per Degaton last season, it's a bit of a strange direction to take. But y'know what? I bet not even time itself cares about the Shogun. He's boring.

The revelation that the nice Japanese people they saved are the Yamashiro ancestors is fun, but ultimately meaningless since none of them are anywhere as interesting as other guest stars, like say, Jonah Hex, Connor Hawke or Rip's adoptive mum. Add that to the oddly 'eh, we'll deal with it later' attitude that the Legends team have about tracking down the time-traveling assassin, or avenging Hourman and Rip Hunter's death, or whatever is kind of odd. Oh well. It was entertaining. Not the best Legends episode out there, but it was fun... which is something I really needed after a very, very exhausting week.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Nate finally gets his Citizen Steel powers. While he briefly calls himself 'Citizen Steel' while rattling off a series of names to match his grandfather's 'Commander Steel' (which I think is the first we've heard it in this series?) he ends up settling as 'Steel', which is what Haywoods' secret identities have been referred to multiple times anyway in the comics.
• The Yamashiros are, of course, ancestors to superheroine Katana (Tatsu Yamashiro), who is a major supporting character in Arrow's third season. No idea if the characters featured here (or the Shogun himself) are DC characters, and I'm too tired to research it.
• Tokugawa Iemitsu is a real life Shogun that ruled from 1623 to 1651, according to Wikipedia. He apparently ordered his brother to commit seppuku, and expelled all gaijin from Japan, which... isn't very nice. Wikipedia lists his death, but makes no mention of future powered armour or a metal man beating him up. The conspiracy is real, people.

Pokemon of the Week #1 -- Drifblim

Pokemon of the Week: #427, Drifblim, the Blimp Pokemon

Helium not included.

A bit of an experimental thing. Every Sunday I'll go on a random number generator, and whichever number pops out, I'll talk about that Pokemon in a short article. Kind of to break the slight monotony I'm feeling with just doing manga and cartoon reviews. (TV reviews will be back as soon as I have time to binge-watch all of the episodes I'm missing). I've thought about doing huge block reviews of every single Pokemon out there, but unlike, say, Hearthsone cards, I just can't fit all I want to talk about a single Pokemon on a couple of paragraphs.

So today's random number is 427, meaning that Drifblim gets to be lucky number one for our very first Pokemon of the Week article. Yay!

I've never really had much attachment to Drifblim. She's a very weird design. She's obviously based on a hot air balloon, with octopi-cloth tendrils and weird little cloud toupee, and a little 'X' patch as a nose-mouth thing. Come to think of it, Drifblim might honestly be the very first ghost-type that's just a normal object turned into a ghostly version of the Pokemon... it's just not as evident as the likes of Pallosand, Chandelure and Honedge. Honestly, Drifblim's a pretty okay design, and as a big fan of Ghost-types in general, I've always found Drifblim somewhat fascinating. Unless I'm forgetting someone, Drifblim is the only Ghost/Flying type, and that's because she's a ghostly balloon. So how can something so cute be a Ghost? Well, in typical Pokemon fashion, Drifblim (and her much more adorable little pre-evolution, Drifloon) is given a slightly sinister backstory by the Pokedex.

Multiple Pokedex entries note how in the evening Drifblims flies off to unknown destinations in huge swarms that suddenly vanish if noticed by people, and both Drifblim and Drifloon are known to pick up people and carry them away when they fly. Apparently, though, since he's a floating giant balloon, he can't really control where he's flying and tend to get lost. Since Drifblim is a balloon, though, she can at least control the altitude of her flight by adjusting the amount of gas in her body. I think in the Japanese version the Pokedex entry straight-up says that they take children to the Land of the Dead. Probably based on some obscure Japanese yokai.

Drifblim's most prominent roles in the games is in her home generation, Generation IV, where she's one of Gym Leader Fantina's signature Pokemon alongside Mismagius. In the manga in particular Drifblim is the most hilarious-looking transportation for a hammy French lady in a dress like that. In the games getting a Drifblim is a bit hard, mostly because getting a Drifloon is a mini-event. A lone Drifloon shows up on the valley windworks every... Friday? Then you catch it and evolve it into Drifblim.

In the later games Drifblim is a lot less prominent. She's used by Unova's Elite Four Shauntal in rematches, and are available in the wild in both Unova and Kalos games, but never really spotlighted in the way that Drifloon was in the Generation IV games... and honestly that's a bit of a weak spotlight. That's okay, though. Drifblim is a cool, slightly more obscure Pokemon.

I have to admit that while I never hated Drifblim at all, I never really gave her much thought before writing this article. She's just kind of there. Certainly never used her, not in the same generation that had other awesome ghost types like Dusknoir and Froslass. This balloon (well, blimp) ghost dude that sometimes kidnaps people. I do love Drifblim's ability selection, though -- Aftermath, Unburden (which for a time was her signature ability) and Flare Boost, all of which relate to his balloon-y ness. Especially Flare Boost, which honestly is a bit morbid but still very relatable.

In-game, Drifblim has a relatively large amount of HP for a fully-evolved Pokemon, and tends to lean more on Special Attack as far as stats go. Her defenses are a bit atrocious, which is to be expected because, y'know, fucking balloon. Definitely not one of the stronger Pokemon out there, with a base stat total of 498 he falls short behind some heavy-hitters like Alakazam, Scizor, Gengar and Talonflame, but she's just neither a sweeper nor a wall, making her a bit of an oddity.

Shiny balloon!

By the way, shiny Drifblim is gold and neon blue, which is awesome. Nintendo never really gave a shit about making good-looking Shinies until, oh, fifth generation or thereabouts, but some of their accidents really work well. Like Drifblim.

Movepool-wise she learns what you expect from a Ghost-type. Shadow Balls, Hexes, Ominous Winds, though Gust is the only Flying-type move she learns by level up. Fitting considering how... poor of a flyer Drifblim is. She also learns a fair amount of wacky normal moves like Explosion (balloon, duh), the Stockpile trio (balloons grow!), Minimize (balloons shrink!) and Baton Pass (good with Minimize, I guess?). With TMs Drifblim gets a wider array of moves, with Acrobatics and Fly for Flying-type STAB, a couple of Psychic and Dark moves, plus Will-o-wisp and freakin' Thunderbolt and Thunder for no real reason. She's got a pretty cool moveset, it's just that her stats don't lend her into being a good sweeper or a tank, neither does she have the right moves to be a proper supporter... which is a darn shame, because in theory any Ghost/Flying Pokemon should be a pretty horrifying attacking force. Drifblim's just too chill, I guess.

Overall, I don't really have much to say about Drifblim. She's got a very interesting and relatively unique typing, but she's just kind of there. I do like her, I think she's cool, but she's not the most memorable Pokemon. Though she's not one of those that I hate and would rant about, so this is a little appreciation post for Drifblim. There's really not much else I can say about her. She's decent but not strong, she looks okay but not the most well-designed... but now she'll always have a nice, special place in my heart for kickstarting this little project.

As a side-note, yeah, I consistently refer to Drifblim as a 'she'. I just kind of subconsciously assign genders to all the Pokemon, regardless of gender ratios. Yeah. That's how I roll.

Justice League S02E09-10 Review: Emerald Impotence

Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 09-10: Hearts & Minds

I had prepared a long Tokyo Ghoul and Hearthstone article for the huge chapter and the ton of card reveals that dropped over the week. But tragedy struck and my laptop fritzed out, so while I recraft those two pages, I'll just move this one JLA episode up the schedule. 

Anyway, another space episode! This episode takes out the DC Trinity and has the B-team of the Justice League respond to a crisis in space. And, boy, what a great opening this episode had! We had Kilowog lead a group of other Green Lanterns against a fleet of evil purple-skinned aliens, and we actually see two speaking Green Lanterns -- Gallius and Arkiss -- vaporized to nothingness on-screen. What a sudden and unexpected way to kickstart this episode!

The episodes of the second season do a lot better at highlighting the personal stakes that the characters have in the plotlines. Yes, Superman and J'onn dicking around in War World to free the people controlled by Mongul's propaganda brainwashing is something they would do anyway, but what makes "Hearts and Minds" so much more interesting and engaging is John Stewart's personal stake in what's going on, with him going off to save his teacher and former lover Katma Tui from this monstrous alien tyrant Despero.

In-between having to face his old flame Katma Tui, the episode also explores John's relationship with Hawkgirl, a relationship that budded all the way from 'War World'. There's a nice moment and both the (rather suggestive) voice acting, dialogue and body language between John and Katma when they do meet up with each other on Kalanor shows that they have so much history and attachment between them, and there's a nice little difference between Katma and Hawkgirl, where when John loses his willpower to fight, Katma's plan is just going full-on with training and giving up on John almost immediately, being more focused as a soldier and a boot camp sergeant than a love interest, whereas Hawkgirl recognizes the problem, talks to John in a gentle but firm tone, and doesn't begrudge John and actually forces him to go back to train with Katma. It's a nice bit of relationship maturity writing -- Hawkgirl's attraction to John is very evident, but neither will she sabotage the mission or hurt her friend by taking the chance to steal the man, so to speak. Hawkgirl sees John at a vulnerable moment, and while she could continue being rock-hard as always, she recognizes when it's time to comfort her teammate and friend. And slap that ass. That was hilarious.

But before we talk more about the space stuff, we get a pretty awesome moment as Kilowog, near-dead, crashlands on Earth, and has to be put on full life support in a pretty well-crafted scene. John, uncharacteristically, just zooms straight into space when Kilowog mentions that "they got Kat", leaving his stunned Justice League comrades to take care of the wounded Kilowog. We get some of the best and funniest scenes as Kilowog and Flash muck around John's apartment in search of John's power battery, which includes Kilowog eating a tub of ice cream (tub included) and a VCR tape, while Flash has to fend off John's very protective landlady, who's the coolest old woman in the entirety of DC comics.

Meanwhile, while we wait for Kilowog, Hawkgirl, Flash and Martian Manhunter to show up on Kalanor, John goes up and confront Despero, finds Katma Tui transformed into a zealot dressed in an outfit that rivals Slave Leia in stripperificness and gets executed for his troubles by being thrown into the Flame of Py'tar. John, you really shouldn't mock a person's religion when they're ready to throw you into the fire. Of course, Katma Tui's actually a double agent and the resistance members she's friends with teleports John out of certain death. There are other problems that are quickly evident beyond Despero's despotic rule of the planet, though. John's power ring won't work.

Having Green Lantern's power ring crap out on him isn't something new, not even in the show -- we had him run out of juice back in "the Savage Time", but here the problem isn't in his ring. The "impotence", as Flash points out so utterly hilariously, is in John's head.

Man, taking John's impotence problems while having him deal with an old, harsh ex and a more understanding potential love interest just spins all of this in a hilarious metaphor for dealing with performance issues.

The fight against Despero is ultimately your basic sci-fi plotline, not that it's uninteresting. Despero has this story about how he's ostracized because of his third eye, and him discovering the Flame of Py'tar caused him to be hailed as the second coming of the prophet or some shit like that, allowing him the religious worship of his entire planet. He plans to invade other planets near his system, and only our heroes can stop him. There's a resistance, and Flash, J'onn and Kilowog need to deliver a bomb to get rid of Despero's source of power. We get some pretty cool fight scenes, but when push comes to shove it's John, Katma and Hawkgirl that face off against Despero. Despero threatening to murder Katma and turn Hawkgirl into an "exotic personal attendant" (read: sex slave) causes John to go into full overdrive, punching Despero so hard that he leaves an imprint of his power ring on Despero's third eye.

J'onn, Flash and Kilowog, meanwhile, battle Despero's forces all the way to the Flame of Py'tar, who then makes contact with J'onn and proves that it's actually sentient. It talks about how Despero has perverted its purpose, and after the Kalanorians reject Despero and accept the Flame of Py'tar, it magically turns Kalanor into a verdant paradise and turns Despero and all his troops into trees. Oh-kay.

It's not one of the strongest episodes of the Justice League cartoon, mostly due to its very linear plot, but it's certainly a very enjoyable one. John, Hawkgirl and Katma are realized very well, Flash and Kilowog are fun, while False Prophet Despero is a pretty cool take on the character. I certainly enjoyed this episode, fillery as it might be.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Katma Tui is a pretty prominent alien Green Lantern for a while, being Sinestro's successor as a Korugarian Green Lantern and becoming John Stewart's love interest in the comics and the two ended up marrying. In one of the shittier treatments of minor characters by DC comics, Katma Tui is randomly murdered by Star Sapphire while not wearing her ring in her apartment. Quite bizarrely, unlike many, many other minor characters, she has never really been revived until reboots happened.
• Despero began life in the DC comics as a random alien tyrant with mental powers granted by his third eye, and attempted to defeat the Justice League in a game of, um, chess. It was the sixties, but Despero at least starred in the first issue of the Justice League of America comic released at that time. In subsequent appearances Despero was a lot more powerful and less chessy, and became a greater menace to the Justice League with a combination of his strength and hypnotic powers. The Flame of Py'tar was actually used by Despero to empower himself at a point.
• Kyle Rayner, the then-current Green Lantern in the comics (the fifth human to bear the name Green Lantern) is mentioned briefly by Katma Tui. Kyle has made an appearance in Superman: The Animated Series, and there was slight confusion when the Green Lantern that showed up in Justice League was not Kyle, but rather newcomer John Stewart.

Justice League S02E07-08 Review: Princesses' Night Out

Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 07-08: Maid of Honor

Wonder Woman is a complex character with a rich, varied history, even moreso than the likes of Batman or Superman. Most casual fans only remember the badass, immortal warrior princess that came out from the secluded Grecian myths to defend the Earth. But depending on the period of story that is written, Diana also has moonlighted as an ambassador, the illegitimate daughter of Zeus, World War II freedom fighter, a generic crime-fighting hero, a boutique store owner, a warrior queen, the only member of the League that resorts to murder, and the Justice Society's secretary with the weakness that she loses her powers if her arms are bound by a man. Obviously that last bit has been thankfully exorcised from most post-Golden-Age depictions of her character, but what is important to remember about Wonder Woman that despite all her awesome ass-kicking (and, yeah, Wonder Woman is a certified badass), she is also a woman at heart.

Despite being able to toss around tanks and easily ranking among the League's strongest guns, with really only Superman or maybe J'onn matching her up in terms of raw power, Wonder Woman is still the more feminine of the Justice League's two women, and this episode tries to explore that. Here, while attending a party for important politicians, Diana saves Kasnian princess Audrey (ripping that gorgeous dress into shreds in the process), and earns the playful princess's friendship. Audrey is your typical party girl, and she quite literally drags Diana in an escape from her small army of bodyguards, and takes her clubbing and shopping and all those things girls do.

As they hang out on the Eiffel Tower, Audrey reveals that she's going to be married to a man she doesn't even really know on the next day, hence the extra-wild partying. Especially so for a princess with a responsibility to her country, just saying 'I'm going to live my life freely' isn't going to cut it. She either goes through this marriage, or her people will be more fucked than they already are. There's a bit of a dark moment where she jumps off the tower, all happy that Diana caught her... was it an actual attempted suicide? Or is she just insanely daredevil-y? There's a slight bit of lesbian secret love undertones under it all, but most of it seems to just be one-sided from Audrey. There's a bit of a fun moment when Diana experiences the wilder side of modern life, even if we don't get anything too risque we did get to see the princess admire some arm-eye-muscly-candy.

Of course, the groom-to-be is Vandal Savage, who Diana immediately socks in the face. Savage makes several notes that, nah, he isn't that Nazi Vandal Savage, he's his great-great-great-grandson! By this point in the story, Savage's survival at the end of World War II hasn't been confirmed... we only know that he lives very long, we don't know if he can regenerate from being blown up inside a bomber plane while underwater. And, yeah, Diana grudgingly buys into Savage's bullshit for lack of proof.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is hanging out at that party, skimping out on going all Batman and enjoying the champagne nonchalantly while his Justice League buddy beats up the terrorists. Batman launches his own investigation, in one of the most awesome Batman moments ever, he walks up to one of the Kasnian secret agents who's talking in his own language how no one knows Kasnian and how he'll never spill his secrets, and speaks in their language "Don't worry. You will." while the camera pans slowly to the looming silhouette of the Bat.

The relationship between Batman and Wonder Woman is further developed in this episode, and the two are the only Leaguers that star in the first episode -- Flash, Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter don't show up until the second part as backup, and even then only for action scenes. There's a bit of a back-and-forth flirting-while-doing-business between Batman and Wonder Woman, and the moment between Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman at the party. Of course, Batman plays it coy and denies any knowledge of 'we never finished that dance' when confronted by Diana at the end of the episode, but Diana kind of figured it out. It's another neat callback to the fact that, hey, no one but Superman knows Batman's secret identity among the League. He's distant, but he definitely has an attraction to Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, on the political side of things, Vandal poisons the king, marries Audrey (and from the looks of their bed and their clothing, they totally consummated their marriage offscreen) before, naturally, taking over Kasnia. Kasnia has this space station that Vandal Savage's forces hijack and turn into basically an asteroid-gathering railgun, with which Savage threatens basically the whole world with. It's a less depressing way to show Audrey being trapped in an abusive, gold-digging relationship, in which Savage abuses the power that comes with being married to the crown princess instead of beating the princess up.

Of course, it devolves to some beat-them-ups afterwards, the League stop Vandal Savage, Batman redirects the railgun towards the castle and blows it up, burying Vandal Savage underneath the ruins of the castle. Audrey takes control of her life, and resolves to rebuild Kasnia, after the big boom figuratively and literally frees her of her old burdens.

But the second part? Wow, the second part really shines by making the procedural scenes really feel awesome. Vandal Savage shooting the laser is demonstrated very well by having the giant laser slam down onto the sea next to an American aircraft carrier, creating a tidal wave that snaps the carrier in half and looks absolutely awesome as sailors desperately swim up while the heavier vehicles and equipment sink down to undoubtedly piss Aquaman off. (Also, yeah, like a dozen sailors survived. How many people crew an aircraft carrier again?)

Audrey's wedding is another stand-out scene as the calm, wedding music with Savage and Audrey being married being juxtaposed with Batman and Wonder Woman beating up Savage's goons. And the best part is, the fight scenes are silent, with the voiceover from the wedding scene playing in the background as Diana silently whacks terrorists around with a tree, as the Batwing gets hit by a tank and blows up... ending with Diana interrupting the wedding by, um, smashing a tank through the church.

There are several other small details that really make it awesome, too. Batman's fight scenes in the control chamber, especially the moment with the chair, is really cool. The scene that shows the teeny-tiny Javelin next to the giant space station is breathtaking. J'onn's got a great moment as he stretches his body out like Plastic Man and just suffocates some poor schmuck to unconsciousness. Flash finally stops goofing around and shows off his true power -- after nearly being killed courtesy of being sucked off into space, the Flash absolutely gets pissed off and zips through the space station, taking down the entire facility in less time than it takes Green Lantern to blink. Him shaking off any attempt at comedy makes Wally seem a bit more mature.

Also great is the surprising maturity of the episode, with the king quite brutally suffocating while being poisoned. He's rendered basically brain-dead, eating through a tube, after the poisoning attempt. And while he doesn't exactly die from the poison, y'know, Batman did launch a giant laser blast that demolished the castle, possibly unknowingly dooming the king. I mean, Batman, Diana and Audrey barely made it out there. Also horrifying yet awesome is Vandal Savage rising up of the rubble, as his broken limbs snap back into place with horrifying sound effects and a disgustingly awesome imagery.

Perhaps the only real weak part of this episode is Vandal Savage's very James-Bond-y villain henchman, Colonel Vox, who is this big Russian-esque dude who speaks from a mechanical apparatus. Oh, and he can use sonic screams. He's just flat and doesn't really feel any more threatening to Wonder Woman than the tanks and the helicopters, and they really took so much time in taking him down.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Audrey notes that Diana has 'feet of clay' while she's dancing, which, of course, is a subtle nod to Diana's origin story -- moulded from Themyscira's clay and animated into life.
• Colonel Vox is based on Vox the Bionic Bandit, a very obscure 70's enemy of the Metal Men that had a grand total appearance of one time. I bet more than half of you people reading this sentence don't even know who the Metal Men are, let alone Vox the Bionic Bandit. Someone must have really liked this weird robo-voiced sonic-screaming obscure villain.