Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E16 Review: The Buggy Prison Break

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 16: Assault on 42

A bit of a fun episode, but also one whose tone is a bit all over the place. It's a fun little prison break episode, where our heroes Captain America, Wasp, Thor, Ms. Marvel and SHIELD Agent Quartermain have to team up with a bunch of villains in the prison cells in order to face off against something that lives in the Negative Zone -- the bug-robot-alien Annihilus and his massive swarm of robot bugs. Oh, and they are trapped with no way to open the gate back to real world from their side, which seems to be just bad design in general, but then we wouldn't have an episode.

We also have a couple of brief fun roles for a lot of previous villains, with Captain Mar-Vell finally being accepted as an ally to the Avengers. Plus, the Leader and Abomination end up being two of the most recurring members among the villains that show up in this episode, particularly when the Leader ends up being the only one that's sensitive enough to 'hear' Annihilus and warn everyone that something's even out there.

And after a bit of a light-hearted japery between Wasp and recurring C-list villain Whirlwind, the episode ends up taking a sharp turn into horror as things start breaking down, Alien style, and a lot of random minor SHIELD Agents get attacked by Annihilus's minions and get straight-up killed. No one mentions this on-screen, of course, but a bunch of SHIELD Agents and even named villains get straight-up murdered, devoured by Annihilus's minions or thrown off into the Negative Zone's void, and I don't think any other episode of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes ever got this high of a bodycount except maybe the Masters of Evil civil war one... but even then most of the deaths there are sort of handwaved aside except for Zola.

The bugs are also treated as generic one-shot-kill enemies to being a threat, and there's a significant bit of jarringness when the body count ends up coming from the villains who actually decide to help, whereas the cowards hiding in their cell don't actually suffer any consequences. Blizzard, Whirlwind and the Radioactive Man, plus a bunch of AIM goons, all end up biting the dust. Whirlwind, I think, was the only one among them to really show any sort of personality, being sort of a recurring enemy for Wasp and having a brief bit of banter earlier in the episode, but the way they were presumably ripped apart felt undeservedly mean-spirited.

We also get a brief bit with Captain America refusing to let Zemo out, while Thor tells the silent Executioner about Enchantress's fate, presumably leading to the Executioner's eventual heel-face-turn on the side of the good guys had they opted to continue the Surtur arc into the third season. Captain America and Ms. Marvel also have a pretty badass bit where they resolve to blow up the gateway back to Earth to stop Annihilus from arriving. The Abomination assuming that his old boss the Leader just wants to escape is also a fun bit, and just how ready Abomination is to help out Leader is pretty neat for a character that's otherwise been depicted as a simple brute.

Annihilus himself is kind of a bland villain (I was assured by people far more versed in Marvel lore that he is kind of a big deal), but he is supposed to be a forcce of nature. Pretty cool design with that Ultron-esque face, the green-purple colour scheme and the cape-wing things. Not that cool that he ends up defeated by a generic "hack the plot device" nonsense, which I felt clashed rather hard with the horror-survival aesthetic of the episode

Still, despite the weird mood whiplashes, it's still a fun episode to sit through, with loads of cameos from minor villains and a bunch of neat action scenes. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E15 Review: Mortality Clutches

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 15: Powerless

"Powerless" here is listed as either episode 15, slotting in-between "Behold the Vision" and "Assault on 42", or as the final episode of the season, being sort of a bonus episode released in DVD or something? It's a fun little romp for the cast's power trio, and the only resolution to the Surtur plotline that the first half of the season spent an un-insignificant amount of time building up.

Demon!Enchantress shows up in Loki's prison with the snake and offers him a deal, letting him have access to mentally control the Destroyer armour (a.k.a. that thing from the first Thor movie), and here it's given an extra layer of badassery when we realize it's a weapon of equal power to the Thorbuster armour from the season one climax. Oh, and to make things even worse, the Enchantress's power has apparently grown so much that she casts a spell that causes Iron Man, Thor and Captain America to become mortal. Thor's no longer a god and is just some dude with a hammer, Captain America is back to sickly old pre-steroids Steven Rogers, and Iron Man not only gets reverted back to his Mk. I armour, but is also dumb. Thrown into all this? The arguably weakest and most mortal of the Avengers, good old Hawkeye.

And this all happens in the middle of a fight against the Wrecking Crew (who's missing one member for some reason?), and as much bravado as the three of them can muster, going in with a "we're still  heroes and our powers don't define us" mentality... yeah, someone who's used to fly around as a literal god, it's going to take some time getting used to. As much as this is yet another in a string of season two episodes focusing on the main season one cast, it's still one of the better-written ones, with some really great humbling moments for Thor, as well as a neat showcase of pre-supersoldier Captain America,  showing that even as a skinny, non-roided man, he's still got a lot of heart.

We do get a couple of really fun scenes of Thor angsting about how useless he is as a broken mortal, a lot of cool Hawkeye moments, and a lot of great scenes making use of the underground, abandoned train station that they fight the Destroyer in a fun little 'outsmart the monster' bit. Our heroes win, and thanks to Thor's humility and heroism they earn back their superpowers, and Enchantress leaves Loki back to his eternal punishment. She does imply that apparently this is all of Surtur's plan, presumably to get the Destroyer to Earth and be kept by Tony Stark (there was a huge emphasis on the whole 'sealed forever' deal) but, of course, thanks to the show's cancellation after season two, this ominous bit is sadly all we're getting for the Surtur storyline. Oh well. This is still a neat standalone episode, I suppose. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E14 Review: Born Yesterday

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 14: Behold the Vision

It's time for us to introduce a new Avenger -- or what would eventually become a new Avenger if you're at least somewhat familiar with the MCU at this point. And... and it's a bit unfortunate considering how much this season really likes to have episodes focusing on a single character with a couple of guest stars, which means that a lot of the established cast actually feels under-developed. None gets hit harder by this than Ms. Marvel, who honestly could really use some proper non-action screentime to develop her character. She just shows up for work and that's it? Also, no one even mentions the goddamn Hulk being kidnapped by the Hulkbusters?

Meanwhile, Vision goes around looking for certain objects, making yet another nod to the X-Men segment of the Marvel universe as he assaults the Weapon X facility to obtain a large amount of adamantium while displaying his bizarre and overpowered set of powers, while speaking in computer lingo. That's the cold open, before we cut away to four of our cast -- Cap, Black Panther, Thor and Hawkeye in Wakanda, trying to fix Captain America's broken shield with Wakandan science. Some of the friction from the Skrull war is apparently still around, because Hawkeye calls T'Challa out for bailing out on the Avengers when the going gets rough... but, again, this doesn't really get even properly being made into a B-plot, because we're so focused on the mysterious Vision.

Meanwhile, Vision attacks Jane Foster and Wasp while they're watching a horror  movie in the Avengers mansion (that gotta be pretty scary, honestly, with Vision pulling out a page from The Ring). The sequence against the Wasp is pretty cool, but was it really necessary? It doesn't really add anything to the episode, and this is a part where a superior show would've actually worked in some characterization -- either show Vision's personality, or scrap the entire scene entirely and focus on the Hawkeye/T'Challa conflict.

But nope, it's just action scenes all the way, with the very bland Vision taking the plane to Wakanda, fighting the Avengers a bit, everyone marveling at how strong Vision is, but the Avengers drive him back, Cap's shield is fixed, T'Challa rejoins the Avengers and Vision reports to his master/father, Ultron. It's an episode that's as dry as Vision's dialogue, only existing to be a vehicle to introduce Vision and show off his power. The episode could've had the same storyline as far as an overarching plot goes, and still have a proper B-plot going on -- other Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episodes certainly have no problem doing that, but Hawkeye and T'Challa's conflict can basically be summarized as Hawkeye taking some piss-shots at T'Challa in the first act, the conflict goes basically unsaid, and after the fight and without any proper character growth on T'Challa's part, he suddenly decides to apologize and rejoin the Avengers. It's pretty lazy writing, if we're being honest. 

One Piece 921 Review:龙

One Piece, Chapter 921: Shutenmaru

Holy shit, that was unexpected. This chapter of One Piece starts off seemingly like another generic build-up chapter. And it kind of still is, since I don't think we're going to have Kaidou actually do much at this juncture of the storyline... but god DAMN that last panel, though. 

The first chunk of the chapter has the samurai talk a bit about how they will attack the Shogun and the Beast Pirates while they're in a drunken stupor after a royal procession, as well as the logistics of contacting their allies and what the other Straw Hats' roles in this are going to be. Also, somewhere in this discussion, apparently Kin'emon's wife is... O-Tsuru? And she never made it through the jump in time, or something? We get the non-Luffy members of the Straw Hats dressed into disguises, with Brook similarly done up as a homage to the "samurai that died standing up" bit, while the rest are ninjas. We get a joke about Nami being pissed that Kin'emon gave her a revealing outfit... jeez, Nami, some of your post-timeskip outfits are far, far more revealing than that! We're introduced to one of Kin'emon's allies, an elderly kunoichi, Shinobu. 

And then Kin'emon tells the rest that we're going to have to recruit three powerful samurai that are more wildcards at this point -- Ashura Doji (which was mentioned in Oden's backstory last chapter), Kawamatsu and Denjiro. In other words... side-quest time. 

And then we cut away to the village Luffy saved, where they are attacked by this huge fat dude, Shutenmaru... who isn't actually Law or Tengumaru like I had thought before, so I guess last chapter was a mistranslation? And then JACK shows up, riding a goddamn land-shark creature, and I thought that Jack was going to be the big reveal of this chapter.

And then Shutenmaru slices Jack through his chest, which is... certainly unexpected! I guess the top-tier samurai in Wano are more Zoro-level other than just chumps without Devil Fruits. It kinda sucks for Jack, since he's really never felt quite as much as a badass as the manga probably wants me to think he is -- but hey. Jack is far from being down, though, but he and Shutenmaru begin to fight and clash.

And then the sky turns dark, everyone literally pisses their pants as a whirling vortex appears in the sky... and we behold Kaidou's true form -- a goddamn DRAGON. And honestly, with how oriental dragons are often portrayed with these sort of facial hair and Kaidou himself having a dragon tattoo in his human form, I genuinely had no idea why it never crossed my mind that Kaidou himself is a dragon. It's even foreshadowed when Kin'emon displayed intense hatred towards the artificial dragon in Punk Hazard, dragons feaetured in Ryuuma's backstory, and I'm curious if the whole "strongest creature in the world" deal refers to Kaidou being a dragon that ate a human-human fruit variant, instead of Kaidou being a human that ate the dragon fruit. 

It's definitely an intense, unexpected revelation and one that got me hyped up to unbelievable levels. Honestly while the writing in Wano hasn't been the most agreeable with me, what with the constant addition of side-quests and side-characters that sort of felt redundant... this Jack/Shutenmaru fight is pretty cool, but they quite literally pale before Kaidou's true form. Great stuff .

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E13 Review: Does Whatever A Spider Can

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 13: Along Came A Spider

Oh hey, Spider-Man! This is definitely a fun episode, but what else would you expect from an episode featuring Spider-Man? It also interestingly deals with the fallout of Skrull Captain America using his face to spread a fuckton of ill will towards the Captain. Spider-Man, being a superhero whose part of the mythos is being hated by the public due to the actions of the media (or one Jonah J. Jameson, anyway) spreading word that he's a menace, it actually gives Captain America and Spider-Man something to bond about. And we actually have JJJ arguing against Tony Stark about how superheroes and vigilantes aren't real heroes like firemen and policemen. A ridiculous argument considering the world they live in, but JJJ is sort of a ridiculous character. 

This leads to Captain America and Spider-Man being trapped with a group of civilians underground when the Serpent Society returns to attack and attempt to free two of their member that were arrested after the whole Skrull debacle, Madame Viper and King Cobra. Apparently Viper held dual memberships in Hydra and the Serpent Society, who knew? Just what qualifies you to be a member of the Serpent Society, anyway? Viper certainly doesn't actually have snake-themed superpowers like the others. Do you get an invite if you have a snake-themed supervillain code-name.

But the actual fight against them as Spider-Man and Captain America have to make do in cramped space (Cap uses his WWII era shield) is pretty damn great, with the powerset of the Serpent Society, especially the literal snake-cyborg-man Bushmaster, make for some really fun sequences. The entire episode is just that -- Spider-Man and Captain America trying to keep the civilians safe in cramped quarters, and earning each other's respect. In particular, Captain America ends up teaching Spider-Man that it's not really important to prove himself to people like JJJ, but rather simply prove who they are to the little people they save. It's a simple episode with a simple moral, and the episode ends with the civilians saved and Captain America exonerated by the media... but not Spider-Man, who JJJ characterizes as one of the attackers. Whoops!

Still, a pretty charming little episode, and honestly really sells just why the insecure, timid and fanboyish Spider-Man is so popular. We don't want to admit it, but compared to the larger-than-life characters like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, most of us relate way, way more to good ol' Peter Parker. And while all the great grandstanding is entertaining to watch for sure, sometimes after an alien invasion you just want to chill out with Peter's very relatable conflict of whether he should care about what people say about him. 

Anime OVA Review: Dragon Ball - Episode of Bardock

Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock [2011]

Oh god, this. Episode of Bardock is actually released very recently, to tie in with one of the many Dragon Ball Z video games. It's thankfully since been apparently confirmed to be a 'what-if' scenario, and in my own personal headspace more than anything else, this is going to be shelved in the 'non-canon' section. It's just so bizarre and makes my head hurt so much.

Because, you see, "Bardock: Father of Goku", released all the way back in 1990, is an actually great story about Bardock's ultimately futile attempt to defy Emperor Freeza and save his people from annihilation, while at the same time finding solace in the fact that he's seeing strange flashes into the future. 

But somehow, in this OVA, Bardock finds himself inexplicably transported into the past by Freeza's Death Ball. Which has never been shown to be able to transport people into the past. And only Bardock -- not the many Freeza soldiers, not the planet, not the Saiyans, and no other victims of the Death Ball. It's so absolutely stupid that the game Xenoverse 2 actually had to retcon in a "oooh a time-space opened due to the actions of the time-travelling villains!" cutscene to try and even make sense of the sheer stupidity of the premise.

Somehow, Bardock immediately realizes that he's in the past within two or three lines, even though the people talking to him are these weird eyestalked, purple-skinned blob people that claim that the planet is "Planet Plant". Bardock ends up befriending the alien kid in the most dry and perfunctory protagonist-befriends-random-villager scene that honestly has no chemistry at all behind it, and really makes relatively little sense considering that we last saw Bardock as... still an ass, just an ass fighting for his people. I do promote character development, but Bardock's huge 180 feels unearned and completely out of nowhere. 

He fights a bunch of aliens with laser guns terrorizing the Plant-ians, who have some sort of goop that the Freeza Force would later use in their healing chamber. And then the boss of these aliens, a space pirate called "Chilled", apparently an ancestor of Freeza, shows up. It would be easier to take Chilled seriously if he wasn't wearing that shitty-looking weird orange leotard with a neckline as low as Chilled's crotch. God, what a stupid design. Oh, and of course he's just a more banal ripoff of Freeza than Cooler.

Chilled fails to kill anyone, despite the Plant-ians being actually disposable, but just whacking one away causes Bardock to get so angry that he becomes the almighty Super Saiyan, which... is really weird, honestly. I'm not completely opposed against it, but it is so unnecessary to the story, comes out of nowhere, and feels unearned. Bardock beats Chilled, apparently inspires the myth of the Legendary Super Saiyan, and then walks off into the sunset, all victorious...

Honestly, I don't mind it if the OVA actually makes Bardock's character transformation from a rough-and-tough space-pirate-turned-freedom-fighter far more organic, but here he's in flat out designated-hero mode, and not having the benefit of having literal decades between watching Father of Goku and Episode of Bardock, the character disconnect and the lack of development between one to the other really took me out of it, leaving me slogging through the generic plotline of the movie (which had time travel thrown in JUST BECAUSE) feeling more confused than pumped.

And I'm just genuinely baffled that this script is something that they actually put into production and not just fanwank. Because by god, it really feels like fanwank. The premise is dumb, Bardock's character is inconsistent, Chilled is a flat villain in addition to looking stupid, and the whole time-travel and Planet Plant thing honestly just feels jumbled. Not to mention that the Plant people are so damn flat and boring that I was actually hoping that they die. I am not opposed to another Bardock story, because "Father of Goku" made him so cool, but really? Is this the best that they could do? The animation's somewhat pretty, but it's such a piss-poor mix of ideas that don't mesh or work well together, and that makes it just worse than all the other bad movies, whose crime is merely being boring, or merely being bad. "Episode of Bardock" manages to be bad and boring at the same time. 

The Flash S05E02 Review: Gelatinous Cube

The Flash, Season 5, Episode 2: Blocked

Can I just say how fucking refreshing it is for one of the first scenes in the episode to be Barry and Nora sitting down with the entire team, and then telling them about how Nora is here by choice, and that they're trying to stop Barry dying and/or disappearing during the Red Skies Crisis? And that it's just revealed to everyone in that scene? After so many moments of keeping secrets from the rest of the cast, leading to a huge fallout being a running theme and honestly kind of a sad gag in Arrow and Flash, it's very, very fucking cathartic to get that scene. 

The rest of the episode is... it's a standard episode, I guess. Our villain-of-the-week, Vanessa "Block" Jansen (seemingly an original villain for the show) is a metahuman who is able to compress air into a jelly-like block around people that she uses to turn people into super-dense meat cubes. They tried to give her a wee bit of a backstory by showing her as getting revenge and raiding the gun stores of a group of gangsters, the Moretti brothers... but it sort of goes nowhere and Block's more an obstacle than anything, a vehicle for the Barry-and-Nora plot of the episode. 

In their first encounter, Nora gets 'blocked' and thrown into the air, forcing Barry to save her and for the bad guy to get away. After a bit of a couple of bonding moments which includes an attempted physics lecture, Nora disguising herself as a junior CSI intern and Nora hilariously tripping and zapping Barry with lightning, Barry ends up going to Joe and ask him about parenting, especially about how excitable Nora is and how impulsive she is. Joe basically tells Barry how to parent 101, especially when the child is actively trying to impress Barry, bringing up how Barry wanted to impress Joe for adopting him originally, as well as the fact that Nora's exposure to Barry is mostly from a goddamned museum. 

It's a goddamn fine speech from Joe West, and kudos for the show writers for tying it to a small subplot about Cecile being worried about losing her mind-reading powers and how it'll make her a worse parent for their little baby. It's not a particularly complex or elaborate storyline, but it's one that's resolved neatly. 

Anyway, Barry shows Nora recordings of how he's fucked up before, and basically tells her a simple "there are no shortcuts to greatness" moral story, telling her that it's okay to be human and even being a superhero isn't just about running fast and throwing thunderbolts. And then, of course, in their next encounter with Block, Barry gets trapped while Nora's the one to take down Block by zipping around and snapping some cuffs on her. It's simple enough, although, of course, Block gets immediately murdered by our main villain, Cicada, who gets name-dropped by Nora. Love this faster pacing, by the way, compared to how the respective big bads of the previous seasons have been handled before. 

We get to glimpse Cicada's civilian life earlier in the episode, and Iris goes around investigating Cicada (the show remembers she's a reporter!) and finds a recording of his weird bug-Darth-Vader voice... but I certainly didn't expect him to show up and fight our heroes at the end of the episode. Cicada's powers seem to be using that weird lightning-shaped dagger to absorb the powers of other metahumans, causing him to nullify Flash, Vibe and Elongated Man's powers in one go. It's temporary, as they come back later, and thankfully I don't think we're getting a repeat of power-assimilation as we did with Thinker. 

The B-plots of the episode are pretty neat and are well-merged with the Barry/Nora parts. There's the Cecile one I mentioned before, and Iris's little news reporter deal is well done even if it's slow-paced. The Cisco and Caitlin subplots are merged together into a satisfying little side-story with Caitlin and Ralph trying to get Cisco out of his funk over being dumped by Gypsy, which includes "Ralph Dibny's 27 Steps To Getting Over The Love Of Your Life", a hilarious annotated list. Which involves Cisco getting a makeover by some dude named Bruce, Cisco being so depressed that the only thing that can get him out of the funk is whispering "Han shot second" into his ears, and him dismissively giving the villain-of-the-week the very unimpressive name of Block. Of course, we get a scene where Cisco basically accepts that Gypsy isn't "the one", and while it's not the best-written scene, Carlos Valdez's performance is earnest enough that I totally buy his speech about how Caitlin needs to grab onto this chance to make things right. Of course, though, when Cisco finally vibes the death certificate, they find out that it's... Caitlin's mom that forged it? Huh.

Overall, though, while not particularly groundbreaking or unique (Nora's storyline is basically a rehash of Kid Flash's, only hopefully the character's given more focus instead of being treated as a disposable sidekick) is still perfectly solid and entertaining 40 minutes of television. Not much complaints from me.