She-Hulk S01E07 Review: PORCUPINE!

She-Hulk, Season 1, Episode 7: The Retreat

A bit better than the previous episode, although I'm not sure if it's thanks to the random, colourful group of obscure Marvel supervillains that showed up which I will readily admit is pretty fun. "The Retreat" is basically a bottle episode, focusing almost entirely on Jen. We get a brief scene of Nikki in the beginning and Josh in the framing scenes at the beginning and the end, but otherwise it's all Jennifer Walters and the rest of... 'Abomaste'. Did I get that right?

And well, it still feels like the episode ran on for a bit longer than it needed to be, and there were moments where I'm not sure if they're kinda mocking the process of therapy, which media really likes to do... or it could just be the mutated bull-person and the guy in a porcupine battle-suit with a gas mask that's making the process inherently funny. 

And, well... the 'main plot' elements basically can be boiled down to a single sentence. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Josh is actually secretly evil, probably working for Intelligencia, gets close enough to Jen to make love sleep with her (as Jen insists on the terminology) to get her asleep so that he can get the blood sample that the Wrecking Crew weren't able to get. But for Jen and for the majority of the episode, they think Josh is just a dipshit who got close to have sex then ghosted her. 

Again... very American humour, but at least the comedy for this episode works a bit better than the wedding episode. The setup isn't particularly interesting, but once we get Jen and Emil meeting each other at the Wi-Fi deprived retreat, Jen quickly discovers 'Abomaste' that in her anxiety-ridden wait for Josh's reply. We get a bunch of colourful supervillains like Man-Bull (the result of a science experiment gone wrong, and has a lot of rage at people who wants to stab him), Águila (self-identifies as a swashbuckler, not a matador), Porcpuine (refuses to leave his spiky suit) and Saracen (he identifies as a vampire, but might actually be one). 

And... there's a lot less 'haha what a dumb concept' maliciousness here, because... well, I don't know. Maybe it's my love for the Superior Foes of Spider-Man run, or anything that DC comics does with the Rogues, that makes me love anything to do with a group of bumbling C-lister supervillains. Except these guys, at least from what little we see of them, aren't even supervillains and are just a bunch of weirdos that are working through their issues with Emil. A lot of it is treated for laughs, of course, but thanks to not focusing on just a single topic, the comedy in this episode flows a bit better. 

It even has some point, because Wrecker comes in. Jen demands the show do a 'Previously On' on him, which is nice since I don't recognize him without his hoodlum costume and his crowbar. But Wrecker is here taking 'radical responsibility', and Emil's wonderful dad voice ends up causing Jen to take a sit and share... and basically it's an outlet for Jen to earnestly share her insecurities. That everyone is only interested in She-Hulk and not Jen, and it's a very earnestly delivered by Tatiana Maslany. The C-list supervillains are all pretty charming and supportive, first by almost going off and murdering Josh where he lived, and later on just being a bunch of supportive people who convinces Jen to delete Josh's number. 

This one... I kinda liked. It moved a bit faster-paced and the wacky sights along the way felt more like a superhero comedy show than just a generic comedy show. Tim Roth's Emil Blonsky might not be what people expected from the character (and I'm kinda sad that he's not heading the therapy as Abomination) but it's actually a pretty pleasant episode to watch. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jen refers to the process of transforming into a Hulk as 'Hulking Out', the franchise and the fandom's term for it. 
• In addition to Abomination and the Wrecker, we get the following villains:
• Porcupine has been a couple of villains over the years, but the most well-known one is Alexander Gentry, who created the Porcupine battlesuit for the U.S. military but received only laughter for his efforts. He ended up becoming a supervillain and facing off against Ant-Man.
• Águila (Alejandro Montoya) is a mutant that's able to channel energy through his sword, and became a villain of Iron Fist and Luke Cage.
• Man-Bull (William Taurens) is a scientist who kidnapped people to experiment on,  but eventually tested his creations on himself. He menaces Daredevil. 
• Saracen is an immortal vampire that lived underneath the Vatican and fought Blade. 

One Piece 1063 Review: You Get A Devil Fruit, You Get A Devil Fruit...

One Piece, Chapter 1063: The Only Family I've Got

Okay, this one was also unexpectedly huge! I came to this chapter, reading it, and expecting it to mostly be just more exploration about the Vegapunks. Not that it's not interesting, of course, because I am all for the Egghead arc! It's got a much, much stronger opening than basically the previous... honestly, it's probably the most excited I've been to read the beginning of a new island for a long, long while. 

But I thought that the big eventful thing is just going to be the cover story, which I normally save for the 'random notes' segment, but I have to talk about here. We've got a big enough *gasp* with the revelation that Aokiji had attacked Whole Cake Island in the pervious chapter, but this one shows that he's been successful not only in beating poor Cracker, but also in kidnapping Pudding! We often forget that Aokiji's technically affiliated with Blackbeard for now, assisting him to betray him later on (presumably) but... man, Big Mom's operations are being absolutely fucked over, huh? The problem is now what this will mean for Big Mom, or more specifically Katakuri. Surely that mutual punch with Oven won't do much but bother the dude, right?

Anyway, back to Egghead, we get to see a bunch more wacky stuff, although mostly just on the team Luffy side. Atlas goes back to do her work, and we get to see that Egghead actually has some human (or maybe robotic?) inhabitants. They're just hiding when the pirates came along. Luffy, Bonney, Chopper and Jinbe run across a clothes-fabricating machine, giving them some cool futuristic outfits. Or, well, the first three got black future outfits, anyway -- Jinbe got a Hawaiian shirt, and... man, I just love Jinbe more and more now that he's allowed to engage in many of the wacky stuff that the other Straw Hats engage in as well. 

But then they get assaulted by a Pacifista dressed up in police clothes, which detects Luffy's gang as theft since they took the clothes without paying. As Luffy looks at the Pacifista and decides to do some self-defense, Bonney kicks Luffy square in the face and starts begging him not to attack Kuma, revealing that the 'daddy that turned into a cyborg' wsa actually Kuma, shocking our heroes. Again, it's going to be a Bonney/Kuma heavy arc, it's just that the revelations in this chapter isn't particularly huge to the audience.

...what is huge, though, comes with a huge dose of ZEHAHAHAHA, because Blackbeard's been busy! We thought that his fight with Hancock and Coby was the big requisite 'Blackbeard does something insane' quota of this leg of the story, but no. He's fighting Law! Bombarding Law's submarine from his big-ass log ship!

And we cut to Law and he's a she! And she's a sexy lady! 

Rule 63 fetishes and gags aside, though, for a moment I thought that poor Ivankov had been killed offscreen and his Horm-Horm Fruit had been taken by Blackbeard crew. But no. Law quickly counters the effects of the Devil Fruit ability with a strong burst of his own Haki, reverting back into a man. 

And we cut to the one that caused the gender-swap... and it's Doc Q! Doc Q has the Sick-Sick Fruit, and that was the effect of one of his plagues. Then Van Auger is revealed to have the Warp-Warp Fruit, and he warps Jesus Burgess to the island that Law and his crew has been hiding out at, and Burgess reveals that he has the Buff-Buff Fruit, allowing him to wield a big-ass mountain with ease. Devil Fruits for everyone! And... a lot of these are obvious powers, sure, but I am honestly quite happy to see a lot of Blackbeard's minions weaponizing powers and seeing what they can finally do. 

And then we get to see Blackbeard in his big fat glory, riding Doc Q who is riding Stronger. And Stronger is a proper Pegasus now, not like Pierre from Skypiea. Stronger has consumed the mythical Zoan Horse-Horse Fruit Model: Pegasus, though... well, carrying Blackbeard is taxing the poor animal.

But Blackbeard has been basically camping out here, waiting to take down whichever member of the Supernovas will cross their way in order to harvest their Lode Poneglyphs. And in a nice tie-in with this chapter's cover story, we learn that, of course, Aokiji kidnapping Pudding might be a way for Blackbeard to finally read the Poneglyphs!  So yeah. I don't really see this turning out particularly well for Law, and I would say that despite his over-powered status, I don't really see Law winning against four other Devil Fruit wielding combatants... especially since most of Law's crew doesn't seem to be particularly good fighters. It is kinda terrifying, too, considering how much Law relies on his Devil Fruit powers in combat and Blackbeard's whole deal is to disable Devil Fruits... and I don't really think that Blackbeard will be the type to pass up on getting the Ope Ope no Mi. 

...and I don't know. Will Oda kill off Law? I mean, Blackbeard is already taken Coby (and Pudding) prisoner so I guess he could take Law prisoner too, but I don't know. It doesn't really seem to be a particularly likely event and would feel forced unless Law could bullshit a way to Blackbeard to make him spare him for a certain benefit. But man! This was completely unexpected. I thought the major revelations would be taking place on the side of Egghead, not elsewhere in the world! Devil Fruits on Devil Fruits on Devil Fruits, everyone gets a Devil Fruit!

Random Notes:

• A very understated joke is Atlas looking at Luffy and co. and commenting on their bulging bellies after they eat the food from the food-fabricator... and Jinbe deadpanning about how "my belly was already like that."
• Chopper points out that Sanji wouldn't like the food-making machine. Yeah, I actually do wonder how he would feel about these delicious food made by a machine 'without heart'. 
• So last chapter's official translations have a bit more affirmation, particularly of Shaka's title as being more accurately translated to 'Good' or 'Justice' instead of 'Logic'. Atlas is also now consistently drawn as PUNK-05 throughout this chapter. 
• Aw, that little shot of flashback Kuma holding baby Bonney! Poor Kuma. 
• People are starting to gripe about how a strong burst of Haki can negate Devil Fruit powers, but didn't everyone realize that when it turns out that Law can't Room/Shambles or do the soul heart swap thing on Big Mom and Kaido? I kind of think that this affects the effects of Paramecia Devil Fruits specifically, not the rest. 
• It is a bit hard to tell, but it seems like after fighting Sabo and probably the other Revolutionaries, Burgess now has some metal implants on his face.
• So I guess Blackbeard's entire crew is going to get a Devil Fruit of some sort, then, to contrast with Shanks's crew being noted to not have a single Devil Fruit user. 
• With Lafitte already being implied to have a Devil Fruit with his wings, and Sanjuan Wolf's size being confirmed to be a Devil Fruit ability from databooks; we're waiting out for Avalo Pizzaro and Vasco Shot's fruits. 

Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 25: God Descends

 

I apparently had way more to talk about the Spiritomb and the Daybreak quests than I anticipated, and also completing the Pokedex (mostly because I was going for 100% completion) took a bit longer than I expected. Thanks, Pichu and Cleffa and Chingling.

But I have every single Pokemon captured.

Every single research at level 10.

(Except for Darkrai, who I can't unlock without spending US$60 for a chibified remake that doesn't add anything new)

Every Unown, Spiritomb Wisp and Old Verse obtained. 

...not all sidequests done, but basically all except for the stupid balloon game and the solo battle nonsense. So everything of significance.

Time to meet god. 

Professor Laventon is the first to congratulate me for completing the Pokedex, though he mentions that the whole 'seek out all Pokemon' thing is meant to lead to one specific goal... a goal that he doesn't want to interfere, because it's something that I have to do alone. And, indeed, it is in fact something that I get to do alone. No last-minute tagalongs in the form of Laventon or Akari or Cogita, and no surprise villainous return by Volo -- probably one of the bigger plot twists in this game!

So once more, I ascend the Spear Pillar. My party is made up of three gods and three mortals. On one side are Dialga, Palkia and Giratina, all in their Origin Formes. The three angelic dragons created by Arceus himself, the building blocks of the universe itself. And on the other side of my party are three mortals. My starter, Decidueye. One of my earliest party members and the first noble we fought, Kleavor. And the ever-stalwart Goodra.

I play the Azure Flute, and... and there's a wonderful cutscene as a glowing staircase that leads up into nowhere manifests before me. And I ascend it. Walking up it, I somehow end up in space -- a platform with the Sinjoh Ruins runes carved on the bottom, surrounded by auroras that form force-field walls. The background beyond this platform is just... glowing green sky, and atop is space. I don't think this is just a platform above Sinnoh, no. This is the fabled Hall of Origin. Arceus's realm itself. there is a cool bit where my character looks around, before  Arceus appears out of nowhere behind me in the camera-panning trick that Legends: Arceus loves so much. 

Finally. 

After 70 hours of playtime... behold! Arceus! He who was ancient when the universe was young! The thousand-armed god who shaped the universe! Born of the egg that existed before reality itself existed! The heavenly fount from which all light pours across the lands of Hisui!

ARCEUS!

There is just a moment. I face Arceus, and Arceus faces me. 

This creator god that was the subject of all the legends, all the motivations, the man behind the man, the creator of the dragons and lake guardians and the other legendaries, the subject of all the Old Verses. I fought the guardians of space and time. I fought the renegade demon-dragon of antimatter. I proved myself before the guardians of willpower, emotion and knowledge. I faced the prince of the oceans, the hedgehog of gratitude, the lord of the volcanoes, the continent-pulling titan and the crescent-moon steward of dreams. I quelled the forces of nature that ruled over storm and thunder, over abundance and fertility.

All to meet Arceus, good ol' Llama-face himself. 

And he roars. 

And my god-phone transforms into a glowing ball of light. 

And the drums begins to play against a dark screen.

And it's Dark Souls boss time. 

And... And to say that this battle was hard is kind of a understatement. The last one of these battles that I did was, what? Thundurus in the ocean? That was insanely easy. Origin Dialga was slightly more frustrating, but that took maybe three, four tries. Arceus took nearly twenty. There's no mercy here, and the hardest part of the fight is actually the first part. 

Without going in-depth to every single battle mechanism that Arceus has, in the first phase, Arceus only has two moves -- Judgement, where he just shoots laser-clusters that I have to alternately dodge left and right, but it's so fast paced. And then there's also Draco Meteor, where I have to dodge both a fast-moving concentric wave that emanates out of Arceus, but also a ring of Draco Meteor about to rain down from the heavens to smite me, a mere mortal. A combination of these two.. . dodging them alone isn't too hard if that was the only thing I had to do, but it isn't. I also have to throw balms at him. Which is where I often falter. 

Oh, and I'm technically throwing 'Mysterious Balms', but it really is... glowing balls of light that my phone has transformed into? Okay?

And as the phases go on, Arceus does have a couple of extra moves based on his different plates. There's one very easy one where he uses the Fire Plate to cause almost the entire field to explode other than a ring around him. There's the Electric Plate, where he has four lightning orbs, and I have to hit him four times otherwise he will thunderbolt the entire battlefield. There is the Ghost Plate, where he basically... does Shadow Force! Disappearing, then cracking the screen, then charging at me!

(Yes, I know, it's called Zap Plate and Spooky Plate and whatever, I don't really remember.)

But the most thrilling part is the battle segments, and there's just something so cool at fighting Arceus and being able to send out good ol' Giratina to roar in defiance in Arceus's face, before spamming Dragon Claw. One thing that this Arceus has, though? When casting Judgment, it automatically transforms to whatever type the Pokemon it's facing is weakest to. So when faed against the terrifying prospect of the samurai-archer-plant-owl that is Decidueye, Arceus summons the Flying-type Plate and transforms into Flying Type, before unleashing Judgement upon poor Decidueye. 

I love that the Judgement attacks Arceus uses -- which, as always, takes the form of a clusterfuck of laser beams -- has special effects now. The Dragon-type one looks like a cluster of Draco Meteors, the Flying-type one has feathers exploding out of it... I also saw the Fighting-type one at one point, and it is disappointingly not a bunch of laser-beams ending in fists. Boo! 

Every single member of my party got a chance to shine thanks to how many times I kept dying and resetting the fight, but the most thrilling exchange has to be my Goodra shooting a Hydro Pump, and then Arceus replies with a fucking Hyper Beam. With how impressive the animation of both of these attack, manifesting in gigantic fuck-off Dragon Ball Z beams of utter destruction, it's pretty awesome to behold.

I also love that the music actually gets a bit more and more hectic as the phases count down, getting straight-up disturbingly distorted in the final phase. I really can't appreciate just how alert the music ended up making me in the final run. 

Ultimately, after way too much frustration and repeats... Kleavor beats Arceus. Humble old Kleavor. 

And then Arceus just stands there like it ain't nothing. It's just a test. Barely a game to him, barely a tickle. It's not like when we brought Giratina or Palkia down low and humbled them to the level of mortals. No, Arceus is the fucking god of this universe, and you better respect him and his giant ring. 

But Arceus commends me for seeking out all Pokemon, and my devotion to a goal. I have proven my actions, just like the ancient hero (will we ever know who this is?) and Arceus is joyful to see the same truths proven anew in a different time and space. He's happy to have brought me into this world, and Arceus bestows his blessing. And then, I quote, "and I bestow upon thee a part of myself".

So yes. We are going through the cosmic horror story trope, the Dungeons & Dragons trope that... that the Arceus that we see and use and are familiar with in the game. The llama-looking guy with a flowing hair and a giant golden ring, the creature with a base total stat of 720... that is merely a part of Arceus. An Aspect of Arceus, if you will. The true Arceus is much more vast, much more incomprehensibly powerful, and it also solves one of the weirder plot points where Arceus is described in Generation IV dex entries as a 'being with thousand hands'. 

It's always been my personal headcanon, of course, because it really didn't make sense for Arceus to basically be the god of the setting, but can be captured in a Pokeball and is only slightly stronger than the other legendaries and even some non-legendaries. 

So yeah. The Arceus we're familiar with is just a part of Arceus that goes around to witness the world through mortal eyes. And I receive Arceus... and a brand-new item called the Legend Plate, which unlocks the titular "Legend Form" of Arceus. Which... looks like the default form of Arceus, but now Arceus's Judgement transforms to fit whatever the enemy is the weakest towards. Very cool. 

And thus... Arceus is captured. There isn't any tasks to complete, unlike the other legendaries. My character just instantly alreadyb undertstands Arceus from the battles against him. Laventon meets me, and gets emotional as he realizes that the Pokedex is complete, and says that his dream is a reality. 

And as I return to Jubilife City, with everything to do in the game (other than the Solo stuff) completed... there's a brief bit when my Arc-Phone makes some noise, and directs me to my house and ultimately my bed. Turns out that this is yet another endless mode, the "Eternal Battle Reverie", as Arceus brings me in my dream, Sandman-style, all the way to the Hall of Origins where he has what's basically a Battle Frontier with legendary Pokemon as the opponents. Very neat, and the idea that Arceus spent time to organize this with the rest of the legendaries (or even creating brand-new Dialgas and Tornaduses for the challenge) is kinda funny. 

There's a short scene where Cyllene and Kamado bring me up to the rooftop of the Galactic Building. I refuse to give Kamado the satisfaction of telling me information and being self-satisfied, though they still go along with telling us what the origin of the Galaxy Expedition Team's name is all about. Kamado used to give his teammates the names of celestial bodies (are Cyllene and Beni actually planetary bodies?) as part of his aspirations, and one of his sponsors (which he shamelessly tries to deny) mentions that Kamado has a whole damn galaxy under his control. The conversation ends with Kamado telling us that eventually the Galaxy Team would have to be disbanded once cooperation with Pokemon and the two other clans can be maintained... but Cyllene tells Kamado that she will make sure she and her descendants carry the legacy of the Galaxy team all the way to the future. 

...which, of course, ends up with Diamond and Pearl giving us good ol' Cyrus, who has twisted great-great-great-grandma Cyllene's wishes and noble ideals into... well, into a mixture of Volo and Kamado's brands of insane logic, anyway. It is nice to acknowledge this, though. 

And finally, Laventon gathers all the Galaxy Team members in his laboratory, being so jubilant that the Pokedex is finally complete. Can I say how cool it is that this game doesn't need me to fucking trade and do trade evolutions to get every single Pokemon? I love that so much. Cyllene commends my work and gives me a Shiny Charm, Beni is happy to treat the whole Galaxy team to lunch... and through it all, Kamado still wonders whether my exploits are driven by a selfish curiosity or a genuine desire, while also still calling me an 'asset' and a 'mysterious stranger who fell from the sky'. Yeah, yeah, Kamado, you mustachioed dipshit. Everything must be about you and your paranoia and how I relate to you, huh? No, you can't be happy that the pokedex is completed, that I just met god himself and proved myself worthy. Man, Kamado, piss off.

After the celebrations, Akari has one final line left... and then...

I think that's it, guys. That's... that's Pokemon Legends Arceus.  

Such a great game. I really do feel like while it's far from perfect -- and I have stated many times my frustrations about some of the sidequests in the postgame -- this game delivered the quasi open-world experience that Sword and Shield promised and didn't really manage to deliver the flavour of. And this game still manages to deliver a very rich story, tying it into the lore of Sinnoh, with very powerful supporting cast members. It incorporated the Pokemon into both the overworld and into many parts of the story, for once making the limited cast actually almost justifiable. A very rich post-game. A great way to fill your Pokedex without reducing it to a simple 'catch the creature and forget about it'. Not to mention new forms, new exploration gameplay, actuall boss fights that don't involve battling... yep. I do still think that they really could've given us a bit more Arceus at the end of the day, but... but this is probably the most fun I had with a Pokemon game since the sheer novelty of buying a Pokemon game at its debut date with XY and its 3-D graphics. 

And I have to admit that I've been kinda feeling somewhat burnt out on the franchise (everything IRL about Sword/Shield's development and packaging with the DLC's and incomplete Pokedex and truncated story was frustrating; Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee was a cute but hollow remake; I didn't even feel compelled to touch the Diamond/Pearl remakes since they added nothing), but this game single-handedly revitalized my love for the Pokemon gaming franchise in general. Anyway... I don't want to raise my hopes up, but hopefully Scarlet and Violet manage to also be as satisfying as this. Great playthrough! I loved this. 

Movie Review: One Piece Film Red

One Piece, Film: Red (2022)

Two weeks ago, I had the fortune to watch this movie in the theaters... the first-ever anime movie that I watched in a full theater with proper subtitling. I was a bit late and the theater didn't quite have the huge turnout that it probably had in its opening weeks, but... it was still definitely an experience!

And probably becuase the story of Film: Red itself and how it is structured is so... different. Normalyl with any superhero movies based on a shonen work, no matter how good it is, it's still primarily an action-based movie with a villain and a lot of punchy-punches... but it's still so different compared to how these movies normally go, particularly One Piece ones. The antagonist isn't erally defeated by fighting. We don't get the colourful mooks that are defeated by Zoro and Sanji, and there's honestly barely any yelling of attack names in the climactic battles... hell, in stark opposition to the previous movie Stampede, most of the cast other than Luffy hoenstly gets relegated to this bunch of 'oh, they sure are fighting'. 

But the movie itself knows the story it wants to tell -- Luffy, Uta and Shanks -- and that's the bulk of the movie's screentime. Those that watched the movie's tie-in episodes like me get a bit more of a context as to the childhood dynamic between Luffy and Uta, but it's definitely not required watching to understand what's going on in this movie. 

Sure, as with most One Piece movies since Z, we get a slew of guest stars, many of whom persist throughout the movie's plot and kind of join this rather large army that the Straw Hats gather to confront Uta. Law, Bepo, Bartolomeo, Koby, Helmeppo, Blueno, Brulee and Oven (!!!) join our heroes; while Fujitora, Kizaru and Katakuri also have a not-insignifcant amount of screentime on the other side of the story. It really does feel special with some of these characters -- I don't think Blueno's done anything for the past decade, it's surprising to see Kizaru a bit more bloodthirsty and apathetic about civilian casualties, and Oven of all people hanging out all the way to the end of the movie is fun. 

But the movie does start off rather slow and innocuous, which is extremely crucial to the tone that this movie is going for. All the happy pop songs, the rapid-fire explanation of who this non-canon (quasi-canon?) character is, Uta's happy meeting with Luffy... and then the revelation of her Uta Uta no Mi powers. In probably one of the more interesting subversions of most One Piece movies, Uta actually interrupts the prologue segment that would've normally opened one of these movies, cutting away the reular showcase of each Straw Hats' fighting style and going straight into showing off Uta's own style, where she very effortlessly stops everyone from fighting by weaponizing music notes and sheets, taking down the generic Jellyfish Pirates, as well as Brulee and Oven who show up to try and kidnap Uta. 

And... yeah, this is something that definitely makes the movie genuinely unique. J-pop isn't a genre I'm particularly excited about, but the sheer dedication of Film: Red to break up the movie with songs and to frame a lot of the scenes with action scenes cut like music videos? It works. It works so well, and honestly paying attention to the lyrics and the sheer fractured, troubled mind that is Uta as her songs peel off more and more of her sadness and her guilt... it's great fun. 

Except, of course, as anyone could've predicted by all the marketing material, Uta's childishness and her constant bickering with Luffy turns into something a bit more sinister as her pop idol "you can listen to my songs forever!" turns into something more disturbingly literal, and that she's just trying to get everyone to stay with her in her illusory song-world to be happy forever and ever and ever and ever. And while it's not the most original anime villain plot ever, it is still something that's rather well-executed. The focus on Uta does make her initial good intentions (she wants to eradicate piracy and suffering) be juxtaposed well with how little she respects the wishes of people like Luffy or that one little girl that keeps recurring throughout the crowd scenes. 

And meanwhile we keep cutting away to other factions that have infiltrated Elegia. We get to see the Gorosei and Lucci do their typical enigmatic mumbling of how dangeous this is. We get to see that SWORD and Cipher Pol have both infiltrated the concert to make sure the threat of Uta doesn't really go everywhere, and there's the disapproving look of the Frankenstein-looking Gordon, Uta's caretaker who looks at the concern from the stage. 

And, of course, Luffy decides to leave and Uta goes all yandere-mode, using her Uta Uta no Mi powers to get the audience to help her hunt down the bad pirates. The non-Luffy Straw Hats are basically indisposed of at this point so that Luffy can run around with Bartolomeo and Law, who end up discovering Gordon while running away from Uta's creepy music demon soldiers. They learn part of Uta's backstory to match the parts that Luffy already knows about -- after all the happy moments of being with Shanks and whatnot, Uta seems to think that Shanks abandoned her in the nation of music, Elegia. Not only that, Shanks seems to have used Uta's talent for music to get into Elegia as an excuse to steal Elegia's treasure and burn down the whole fucking country, with the animation and dialogue pulling no punches at showing that the entire country's worth of people was wiped out. 

Also, at more or less the same time, we get the other characters trying to figure out how to beat Uta... and we get the plot twist that when Kizaru, Fujitora, Momonga and the rest of the Marines show up... that the Uta Uta no Mi doesn't allow Uta to warp reality, but rather puts everyone who hears her song to sleep and transports them into a dream world. We also learn why Gordon is so against Uta's plot -- in a misguided attempt to create a paradise, Uta plans to kill herself with a constantly-waking mushroom that will trap everyone in the dream world forever, since they will wake up if Uta goes to sleep. It's a bit convoluted, sure, but you can totally see just why they only ahd a single new character in this movie. 

We get the great contrast between the dark, gloomy raining real world as Momonga and Fujitora get assaulted by civilians that are puppeteered by Uta like zombies as she rants about the injustice of the world... with the bright, shiny, cartoonish dream-world where there are flying music notes and Uta's wackadoodle Alice in Wonderland minions. Blueno and Law are kind of instrumental at getting the various factions all bunched up together and sharing information, becuase the rest of the Straw Hats basically go off to investigate the hidden basements of Elegia to find the enigmatic 'Tot Musica' -- a mysterious musical piece that, according to Robin, is going to be able to bridge the dream-world and the real world with the aid of a 'Demon King'. (This sequence has the other Straw Hats fight some like, golem robots or some shit, which is where the bulk of the Straw Hats yelling attack names come from). 

Luffy, very pointedly in this movie, however, still wants to confront Uta. But as we have established is something that Luffy and Shanks have in common, they will not throw a punch to someone they don't have to defeat. So it genuinely is an oddity to see a full movie where Luffy refuses to throw a punch at his childhood friend and sister-figure who he sees as someone that's basically doing something that she hasn't thought through properly. We get action scenes, yes, of Luffy beating the disposable soldiers, but there's no triumph to it, none of the oomph when we see Luffy beating down goons in Stampede or Z or Gold. He just wants to reach someone he views like a sibling, confused at why she's saying all these horrible things. 

Again... this is the crux of the conflict, and I am impressed that the Uta story is kept so front-and-center after we were left to basically dig the wiki for the cliffs-notes version of Bullet and Tesoro's backstories. And for a good chunk of the movie, Uta's conflict seemed pretty simple. Shanks abandoned her, so she's pissed off... but Shanks is a good guy and Luffy (and the audience) can be sure of that, so there's a reason, right? So we need to bring the reason to her. 

Also amazingly shown is Koby explaining Uta's plan to the crowd of civilians... and I do really like that the crowd is realistically split in half. Some of them actually genuinely do appreciate Uta's fantasy world, others just want to go home, and there's a particular dork that goes "I like school!" leading Uta to freak out, turn everyone that's not a combatant into foodstuff and then flood the concert hall.

Things get complicated, of course, because more aggressive Marines start to show up. Akainu sics Kizaru and tells them to start shooting civilians, leading to a very amazingly voice-acted moment as Uta freaks out at the sight of this. (Oh yeah, Charlos and some Tenryuubito nonsense also happens, but I really do think that it's kind of a distraction that probably wasn't necessary since the movie already works well with the various Pirate and Marine factions). That scene where she panics and rips off her sleeve and tries to save one of her fans that got shot in the chest is pretty harrowing, because all she wanted to do is to bring her 'new era' to them. 

Oh yeah, and the Red-Haired Pirates show up at around this point, too, but Uta and Shanks' argument are a bit too violent, not helped by Kizaru shooting her sleepwalking fans at the same time. There is an amazing moment where Shanks beats the shit out of Kizaru with a single speed-blitz slash and forces him to stand down, but, again, these clashes really kind of are the back-end to the Uta story. Beautifully animated fanservice, yes, but still. 

 

At which point Uta brings out the Tot Musica, and... summons a goddamn CGI demon from hell! The piano demon that Uta summons is a bit more thematic compared to Bullet's vaguely-defined PS2 video game boss fight, though, and this music demon basically ends up becoming the enemy for the final 15 minutes of the movie. 

And normally I'd be pissed off at this, but... we actually do have a good reason, because it ties to the huge Uta revelation. Gordon reveals it all and it's actually believable, for once, that he's keeping this a secret from Uta. Turns out that Tot Musica is actually haunted, possessed by the spirit of the Demon King -- which in and of itself makes Tot Musica already a bit more unique and more threatening than just another Devil Fruit user, but also believably a one-note villain that lasts a single movie. When Uta was a child, the music sheets rose up and ended up appearing in front of Uta, causing her to sing it and get possessed by the demon. It was Uta, in demon form, that massacred the entire kingdom, while Shanks and the Red-Haired Pirates are the ones who saved Uta. They left Uta in Gordon's care to both let her talent grow, and also to absolve her of any of the guilt. 

Again, is that an excuse for missing out on Uta's growth for a dozen years, without a single Den Den Mushi call? Debatable. But at least, there's a good reason for Shanks skipping out on her.

What's not an excuse, though, is Shanks and Gordon leaving Uta behind in... literally the place where the demonic sheet music slumbers. That's a gigantic dumb move on their part. 

...and then we learn that as Luffy is about to stretched his hand out to her and solve the day with the power of friendship, Uta gets consumed by the shadowy enery of the Tot Musica as she reveals that... yeah, she knows her culpability all along. part of her intense emotions towards Shanks is based off of her own refusal to acknowledge her guilt. It's complex and messy and there's not just a single factor, but poor Uta basically gets consumed by that giant Tot Musica demon, and just like smoe kind of SCP cognitohazard, Uta's concert continues to put more and more people to sleep and into the dreamworld as the Tot Musica's power grows stronger and stronger. We get a bunch of chaotic action scenes, a lot of screaming, and a lot of fun moments from the Red-Haired Pirates, who actually do stuff. There's a guy that screams lasers, the monkey and his handler does stuff, Lucky Roo does a fuusen, Benn Beckman uses Armament Haki... cool stuff!

Which leads to a surprisingly grat moment. As all the players finally gather -- including Katakuri, who's there to save his little sister -- and Shanks reaffirming that Uta is his daughter, we get a surprising connection via Observation Haki between Usopp and Yasopp, who allows the two teams in the real and dream worlds to coordinate their attacks and destroy the piano demon's tentacles. It culminates in the animation jumping up all the way to eleven as Shanks and Luffy combine their punches, and Luffy even goes to Gear Fifth for a while as the artstyle goes nearly black-and-white with heavy inks (which helps disguise Gear Fifth) to punch Uta out of Tot Musica. 

...and you'd think that's the end of it, but no. Luffy and the others are still trapped in the dream world, and the weakened and dying Uta ends up singing one lsat song to break Tot Musica's influecne and free everyeon. Shanks unleashes a blast of Conqueror's Haki to scare off the two Admirals in such a great showcase of badassery, we get a flashback to Shanks discovering baby Uta, and... and Luffy gets a bit of a fever dream as he meets Uta in a heaven-esque realm. Luffy wakes up, we get the implication that, yes, Uta died in Shank's ship. 

And... you know what? Surprising downer ending, but ultimately the movie is probably my favourite of all the One Piece movies. Yes, the final act did stretch on a bit more, but they definitely did the right thing focusing on a single plotline and just staying with it instead of trying to script this and split people up by their battling capabilities. I still find it impressive that characters like Oven and Blueno still continue to be relevant all the way to the climax, but the focus is still on Uta, Luffy and Shanks' stories. Slightly convoluted plot, sure, and the musical aspect might catch some people unawares, but I did enjoy my time watching this movie. 

Random Notes:

• "New Genesis" is the obvious award-bait song, and "Tot Musica" is awesome, but no song caught my attention as much as the amazing IKARI-YOOOO screaming in "Backlight", easily my favourite musical piece in the whole movie. 
• This movie is released in the midst of the anime serialization of the Onigashima raid in Wano, but we do get some hints of the power-ups received at the end of Wano. To wit, we get to see Luffy briefly dip into Gear Fifth mid-punch; Zoro activates Conqueror's Haki and Asura for a split second; and Sanji has some blue flames in his Ifrit Jambe. It's things that you really won't realize isn't just the stylization if you don't already know. 
• As usual, it's impossible to put this into the canon timeline. It has to happen after Wano since Luffy is considered a Yonko and Jinbe is part of the crew; but Big Mom, Koby and to a lesser extent many of the other guest stars appearing make it hard to shuffle this into the manga timeline. Uta herself is canon, though, having a brief cameo in one of the chapters. 
• For all the fuss made by the fandom when they saw the 'chibified' Thousand Sunny, the anthropomorphic Sunny barely had anything beyond funny events and hanging out with chibi-Bepo, chibi-Chopper and chibi-Blueno. 
• In addition to the names and some powers of the members of Shanks' Red-Haired Crew, some other interesting confirmation we get in Film: Red include the fact that Blueno and Kalifla are part of Cipher Pol, that Helmeppo is part of SWORD (only very recently confirmed in the manga!) and that Roger and Rayleigh seemingly find Shanks in a treasure chest.
• There is also mentions of Shanks and Uta being part of a 'Figarland' family, which I initially thought referred to the kingdom of Elegia... but no, it's just a random subtle hint of Shank's parentage snuck into the movie, isn't it?
• I am disappointed that Brook didn't get anything interesting to say or do other than the do-re-mi sheet music singing, but the rest of the cast got shuffled into the background too, so I really can't complain too much. 
• Ah, yes, Sanji considering Brulee a lady. She looks like a hag, but Brulee's still actually not that old, is she?
• In addition to Benn Beckman, Yasopp and Lucky Roo, this movie kind of establishes like around three or four extra members of the Red-Haired Pirates and shows off what they can do. Hongo is definitely the crew's doctor, and the more muscular-looking Gab can shoot laser beams out of his mouth. 
• Also, Big Mom, Perospero and a bunch other members of their crew show up, but they really don't do jack-all beyond that brief cameo. 
• I kinda forget to mention that Uta's also suffering elevated emotions thanks to the wake-up shroom. I mean, the backstory does explain a lot of what she's doing, but having an extra psychedelic tossed in can't be good for her mindstate, explaining why she's so melodramatic in the movie. 
• Also, a great foreshadowing when Sanji finds the mushroom and chucks it into the trash. Sanji, who will never waste even leftover food, recognizes it as poison. 
• Usopp cosplays as KISS and Jinbe cosplays as Elvis Presley. This is amazing. 
• Uta is actually adopted, but there is no point in the movie where Luffy, Uta or Shanks ever refers to Uta as anything but "Shanks' daughter". If anything, it's other characters like Gordon and Benn Beckman also claiming quasi-parenthood of Uta. Adopted family is real family.  
• WE ARE plays in instrumental over Luffy and Shanks's double-punch, and I cannot stress just how cool it is for a music-heavy movie actually, even briefly, cover the original One Piece song. 
• It does speak to how much I read/watched One Piece that I can kinda remember a bunch of the attack names and even sorta hear 'Counter Shock' or 'Asura' or 'Monster Point' or 'Franky Fresh Fire' or 'Elephant Gatling' at the back of my mind even though the characters don't actually say the attack names. 
• That said, when every fucking person starts unloading on the demon at the end of the movie, it did get a bit confusing to follow at points. 
• A lot of the visuals of Uta's powers are great! The colours, the music videos, the psychedelic Tot Musica demon, the weird carriage she rides around in... but I'm not the biggest fan of her swarms of musical notes. Which doesn't look bad, but just looks not as good as the rest of the movie. 
• Some of the critics of this movie is that people expected more Shanks, and... from a movie called Film Red, I can kind of get it. On the other hand... I actually am surprised that we got Shanks around the 2/3rd's point instead of like, the last 5 minutes? Yeah. 

Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 24: 108 Shackled Souls

So after a whole lot of grinding and running around, I finally finished a lot of the more lengthy side-quests in the previous 'part'. And... completing the Pokedex is pretty cool, even if I do think that there could be a couple of UI improvements to make looking up tasks mid-battle or something a lot easier. This segment is just me doing a whole bunch of shit before I finally confront Arceus, which includes the Daybreak mini-DLC, the Spiritomb hunting, and some unexpected shinies. 

And... well, I didn't have a good time doing the whole Tornadus/Thundurus hunt. Landorus was nice. But it is kind of neat to properly tie the three weather kami to a Japanese-based region, and particularly one that's so traditional like Hisui is.

I do have a bit of an annoyance with the Spiritomb quest, which is so time-consuming to do without a guide. At least the Unown sidequest had clues that tell me where to look for them! Other than the counter telling me how many wisps are in each area, even if there isn't a "mark the answers on the minimap", I kinda wished that once I got like, 70 or 80 wisps, the little Spiritomb girl would give me a clue and start to give like, rough estimates of where each wisp is. I don't know.

Anyway, in the midst of running around doing the Spiritomb quest, I also kind of breezed through Mai's whole quest about the massive mass outbreaks, which, I feel, is a neat way to bring in a bunch of the NPC's back. The Munchlax is cute and I suppose Mai is the warden that we kind of glazed over very quickly in the beginning of the game before we go off to the secondary areas, so it's nice for her to do something. I do like the confusion and speculation about the massive mass outbreaks done by the NPC's, though it really could've been something that they tied in to one of the legendaries. Maybe the Forces of Nature? Anyway, this is part of the post-release "Daybreak" update, which is why it feels kinda different. All of these more lighthearted quest all were given to us pre-final-mission!

There's a neat check-in with basically all the noble Pokemon guardians and watchers and whatnot, and they all have their own opinions on the mass outbreaks. Some of them like Gaeric really don't have too much to say and basically feel like they're tossed in just for me and Mai to have something to say... but I guess it is a showcase of how the three clans of Diamond, Pearl and Galactic are basically working together and we get to see the trade of information and technology, foreshadowing how modern-day Sinnoh would have all three cultures melt into one. 

Oh, and Akari offers to battle me again... with me having a full legendary team at the time, because I was testing out the kami's Therian Forms. Boy, that girl can never catch a break huh? It is nice that she gets a bit of a closure as she's trying to basically reaffirm that she also has a role among the Survey Corps. Her team's a bit higher-leveled now, all level 60... but she's also still rocking with unevolved guys like Clefairy and Pikachu. Heck, even the starters she have are still unevolved! Prinplup at level 62? I think the only evolved Pokemon in her party are Mr. Mime and Staraptor. Dude. I mean, I guess it does fit the theme that the actual battlers in Jubilife City are all relatively losers (with Volo, Kamado and Beni being the exception, I suppose)

Oh, and Akari's finally made friends with her unruly Pikachu! Good for her, she's tamed her rat!

Anyway, after a brief sequence with Mai putting mushroom cakes, and some generic sitcom rivalry between Melli and Lian... and an actually neat segment that ties together the Diamond/Pearl clan rivalry a bit better with Adaman and Irida acknowledging that space and time is the source of how beautiful the current daybreak is. And then I shock them by talking about how in the future, people will fight in gyms, and they get bamboozled at how the hell one is supposed to fight in a gym. Ha!

We don't actually get any real explanation about the massive mass outbreak beyond mumble-mumble-something-Almighty-Sinnoh-mumble-mumble-test, but okay, whatever. I felt like there was a way to tie it in to the dozen different legendaries in this game.  The punchline of this whole quest chain is that... a Zorua ends up mimicking Mai just to get a bunch of mushroom cakes from me, tossed in-between the otherwise pretty bland massive mass outbreak quests. That's actually kinda cute. 

We also unlock some battle challenge whatever with Ingo, and I guess that's to showcase how the future will have more battles in the future or something. But this random guy Gared gives me like ten different 'Path of Solitudes' with random fuckers like Bidoof or Wormadam or whatever, and... I'm probably never going to complete these, just like the solo species master trainers in Let's Go Pikachu or whatever. 

Irida and Adaman also both have brief segments where they want to finally face off against the Origin Forms of Palkia and Dialga, with us carrying the respective legendary in our party against all of their Eeveelutions. It's kinda overpowered on our part, and we do get some pretty neat dialogue from them about how they've accepted Almighty Sinnoh isn't what they once thought it was... and they gain respect from the members of the opposite clan. Neat! It's kind of obvious that this is basically showing how the Pokemon battles and the Jubilife City culture would eventually cause the Diamond and Pearl clans to be subsumed and eventually create the modern Sinnoh culture. Again, it's all stuff that I felt could've been slotted to the epilogue story (i.e. when we were hunting Heatran and the others) a bit better instead of added to the Daybreak DLC as it seemed to be. 

Also, since I finished the Unown bit last part... we didn't get a cutscene for finishing the Unown dex, huh? I don't even expect them to open the Sinjoh Ruins or whatever, but at least Professor Laventon should have a line of dialogue or two!

I also collected all the Old Verses, which took me around 10 minutes or so after finally giving up and getting a guide. All of those were pretty cool, it's just such a shame that looking for items with Ursaluna isn't particularly fun. Lots of neat lore about the Legendary Pokemon of Hisui, as well as randomly a Potato Mochi recipe snuck in-between. It's also heavily implied that it's Cogita that wrote the Old Verses, with how #12 has Cogita compare Hisui to Sinjoh, and that she'll spend eternity here until I, the Chosen One, arrives. 

I also did a whole ton of Pokedex task grinding. And... while I blaze through Andor and House of the Dragon, I'm just mindlessly grinding against the lower-leveled Pokemon in the Fieldlands and Mirelands. Ultimately, though, while all those Pokedex entries get filled up relatively quickly if you know what you're doing, some dex entries are particularly difficult to do. My last four (not counting Spiritomb, which I saved for last) were Cherubi, Chingling, Cleffa and Pichu.

Eventually I realized that the blue trees at the bottom-center of the Fieldlands map, near the Alpha Lopunny, always spawns Cherubi. Something I would definitely very much would've liked to know before I hunted all around Hisui for a Cherrim! So yeah, I just kept resetting the map for that. Chingling, too, always hangs out near the Alpha Chimecho on Lake Acuity, and that eventually became a bit easy for me to spam -- although it is annoying that Chingling eats mushrooms instead of berries. I've been so used to oran berries being beloved by practically everyone!

And then... I just kept resetting the maps over and over and over again until I get Cleffa and Pichu. Cleffa, at least, I can predict where they spawn -- at night in the Fabled Springs, usually around where the Alpha Clefable and the Roselias gather. It's just that they are so skittish in running away while the Alpha Clefable and the aggressive Roselias try to murder me!

I can't complain, though, because in the midst of my runs to try and get a Cleffa... I got my first shiny in Legends: Arceus! Well, my first one that's not the plot-mandated Ponyta. It's a Clefairy! With its green ears and shit. I remember you from the Pokemon Platinum Veilstone gambling minigame! Fuck yeah. Admittedly, Shiny Clefairy isn't particularly super-cool, but the fact that this was a regular spawn instead of a outbreak or whatever, which I felt made it feel a more special. 

Speaking of outbreak shinies, my first one was Chingling (ironically captured after I completed the dex entry for the little bastard), which gave me so much anxiety because Chinglings really like to run away. I did get the Chingling and I do plan to evolve it to a Chimecho...  which is a much more striking Shiny than the Shiny 'just more anemic than normal' Chingling that I didn't really notice. I also got a shiny Barboach at one point! Shiny Barboach, on the other hand, looks so much better unevolevd with the golden-orange mustache whereas shiny Whiscash just looks off-putting. 

Shinies! They are special. 

Pichu, meanwhile, is just a big asshole. They run away so fast, they spawn in places where Paras and Staravia gather, and there are a bunch of spots that I have to check -- and they share the same rare spawn as Pikachu, making it a bit more soul-crushing to run there and find Pikachu instead of Pichu. With the Clefairy line, at least they bring their whole damn clan when they spawn. There's this one spot near the Floaroma Meadow where two Pichus might spawn at once, but, well, it's such an annoying shot in the dark for the little bastard gremlins to appear. But eventually? With the aid of smoke bombs and delicious honey, Pichu ends up being the penultimate Pokemon that I complete the dex entries of.

Also, slightly before getting Cleffa and Pichu, I ended up getting enough experience points or whatever to rank up to the full ten (?) ranks on Cyllene. I thought that it'd only be full if my dex is full, but I guess I got some extra tasks done? My reward is more cash per capture, which I absolutely love. More money for clothes! And inventory space! And Rotom appliances!

Which means... Spiritomb hunting time. 

And it's a lot harder to gather the last couple of wisps. It's easy when you just run around gathering and picking up anything glowing. It's a bit harder when you realize you have to open up a guide and re-check every single spot to see if you've gotten this wisp or that wisp or whatnot. It's so easy when there are still 15 wisps remaining, but when there's just ONE wisp in the whole of the goddamn Coastlands with its stupid itty-bitty little islands and shit... oh boy, that's when things get hard. That's when I finally gave up and used a guide. 

Finally, after all 107 wisps are gathered, I return to Vessa, the creepy little child, who asks me to meet him in that huge rock formation shaped like the Odd Keystone in the Mirelands. Of course the event only happens at night. Vessa tells me how he's not been completely honest, and that there was one last wisp left... which, of course, is Vessa himself. Get it? Vessa, vessel? I tell Vessa that he's kind of a strange one, and he agrees wholeheartedly, before giving us the final wisp. Vessa did have a strange line, talking about a 'traveler who used that strange magic' and wondering if that traveler will 'forgive him'. 

...wait, hold up. What traveler? Since when does the Pokemon setting have wizards and shit? Or is this some kind of traveling, wandering legendary Pokemon? Or is it Cogita, perhaps? 

The screen goes dark, the wisp sound effect happens, and then... we see one last wisp appear in the core of the Odd Keystone, and Vessa is gone. Touching that last wisp completes the final 108... and Spiritomb, the Pokemon formed out of 108 spirits, bound and shackled to the stone. The narration also briefly has Vessa muse that this is his 'final mischief', presumably before he gets sucked into the legionic hive-mind that is Spiritomb. I mean, man. I know the Pokedex entries for Yamask and Phantump and Spiritomb all talk about dead ghosts turning into Pokemon and shit, but there was always the idea that... that they might be mistakenly recorded. Nope, Spiritomb is literally a fucking legion of souls, of which at least one is very much sentient, compressed into a flat face of whirling purple-green eldritch flames forever shackled to a stone. 

And... and that was fucking great. It's not a particularly long cutscene, not for the amount of time and frustration I poured into this collection quest. But Legends: Arceus has really been great at taking certain Pokemon who already has a story baked into their concept and actually portraying it as part of the game in a way that makes them a lot more memorable! Remember how utterly stupid and off-brand talking to 32 people in the Underground is, and how it really doesn't feel sensible for Spiritomb? Or how weird that the region based on USA has wandering legendaries based on ancient Japanese weather deities? Legends: Arceus doesn't get every single Pokemon the attention it deserves (Heatran, Cresselia and Regigigas felt obligatory and tacked-on) but honestly? They did such a wonderful job making these Pokemon stories -- these stories tied to these fantastical monsters -- into part of the role-playing experience. That really is something that I felt has been lacking in Pokemon for quite a while, and what elevates this game above... honestly, practically almost every other Pokemon game at this point. 

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War E01 Review: bAnkAi-ing it up like 2012!

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

After a decade since its end (holy hell I'm old) and way too many fake news about how 2013 is totally the year Bleach is returning, no, wait, 2015, honest, 2016? 2017? No, after the live-action adaptation, surely! No, the spinoff manga Burn the Witch is totally a sign the anime is coming back! No, it takes a full decade, apparently. Finally, Bleach is getting its final and honestly rather controversially-paced arc adapted into anime format. 

And... Bleach holds a special place in my heart. My very first serialized manga was Full Metal Alchemist, but I didn't really read too much manga until the year of 2011 or so, when I finally sat down and read a lot of the 'big' manga names at the time. Naruto, Bleach and One Piece were the Big Three, and the former two were entering their respective final arcs. And Bleach... well, Bleach was always one of the most stylish mangas I've ever read, full stop, and that includes any and all other manga I've read. The anime, while the quality of the animation (and the unfortunate censorship it does) might not be the most consistent, was helped by the absolutely rocking soundtrack that introduced me to a whole new genre of music -- rock opera. It's just such a shame that... Bleach was kinda 'done dirty' by the industry. The anime wrapped up after the Fullbringer arc and never went to adapt the manga's final arc, when other Shonen series (Dragon Ball, Naruto) were allowed to continue and even basically act as sequels for their respective source materials. And the quality of Dragon Ball Super and Boruto are highly debatable, but they got something when Bleach didn't even get the existing manga volumes sitting on shelves adapted.

Then came the year 2022, and... Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War dropped. 

And episode one adapts the first couple of chapters of the arc, and... I'm very optimistic! I am so hyped, inordinately so, especially with the announcement that the anime will adapt things a bit differently to fix a lot of the problems that the final 20-or-so chapters of Bleach had. We'll see!

And I'm not sure if I'll be reviewing this per episode, or if it'll ultimately devolve into the 'three-to-seven episodes per batch' that I'm doing with One Piece and Wano. So long as I'm reasonably excited, I suppose! 

And I'm not sure how I'm going to talk about this, because, like the One Piece episodes... I have read these chapters before. I already know what's going to happen. But the opening of the TYBW arc does feel like a nice place to do a soft-reboot episode, yeah? We start off with the two Shinigami assigned to Karakura Town -- Shino and Ryunosuke -- running around and getting mauled and nearly killed by the sudden arrival of giant hordes of Hollows summoned by a Quincy. 

And the way this sequence is played is genuinely pretty creepy, and yet still as stylish as ever. The constant cutaways to parts of Karakura Town (which looks good) to show a traffic light at green... and then for the traffic light to become red when Ryunosuke meets the giant Hollows? The Hollow chase is also extended a bit more to make these beings feel a bit more monstrous, and I can't believe just how cool this scene of just two lower-ranked Shinigami being bullied by Hollows ended up being. How much of a horrifying sequence it is for poor Ryunosuke, running around chased by that giant spider-Hollow, trying his best to find his only hope... only to see his commanding officer already bloodied and maybe dead in the clutches of a half-dozen giant Hollows? 

And then in come our heroes, with the epic superhero music and Shiro Sagisu's always banging tunes replacing the silence that gripped Ryunosuke, and we get a brief shot of every one of Ichigo and his buddies' names -- something that a lot of newer anime like to do. The anime extends the Hollow fight by showing our heroes actually fighting them! Orihime, Chad and Uryu use their powers, then Ichigo goes BAN! KAI! And yells GETSUGA TENSHOU for the first time in a decade and I'm just happy. It's a scene that's extended from its manga counterpart, and while I'm not going to hem and haw about every extended scene out there, it's a neat way to extend this. 

And holy hell, the animation! The animation is so cool! I've been spoiled lately with how good the Wano anime looked, with how good other recent anime like Demon Slayer or Cyberpunk looked, but damn. From the animation of the Getsuga Tenshou to the effects of Genryusai's flames or the giant Quincy arrow-thing that impales Sasakibe or Chad's La Muerte causing a building to explode into a giant skull, or Ebern's dizzying fight with Ichigo around a bridge... all so very beautifully animated. 

And as we get reintroduced to Ichigo and his buddies in the real world, we do get brief cutaways to the Soul Society, and... now we know what's going on with Mayuri's lab, or Ikkaku and Yumichika investigating the missing villages. But for now it all remains a mystery as the episode closes out with a dual set of action scenes. 

A group of Quincies arrive in the Soul Society base, right where Genryusai Yamamoto is just hanging out... and then we actually get to see the brief lightning as Sasakibe activates his Bankai... then the poor dude gets fucking impaled and sent crashing into Genryusai's office with a big-ass light spear through his gut. The poor, poor Vice-Captain of the First Division is never anyone's favourite character and is barely relevant in the manga (he gets a couple bonus scenes in the anime filler arcs) but it's a nice little showcase of how the Wandenreich are definitely going around killing named characters. 

There's also a very appreciated bit of detail that people online pointed out wasn't in the manga -- Luders Friegen and his fellow Quincies actually consistently stand in the shadow of one of the pillars in Genryusai's office, which ties into something that is established a bit later on in the manga. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, as Ichigo and company muck around with Ryunosuke, someone who appears to be an Arrancar appears in Ichigo's bed... and its' Asguiaro Ebern, a character I 100% forgot existed, and he's backlit amazingly by the window. Absolutely love how he's trying to sell himself as basically a big badass villain and Ichigo's just very angry that this random mofo is standing on his bed. Ichigo and Ebern fight in a pretty cool manner across the skies of Karakura Town, and Ebern, of course, reveals that he has a Quicny pendant and summons a giant... well, it's not a bow, is it? It's a big-ass crescent with four fucking reishi-beam cannons. 

And we get the wonderful frame of Ebern's face contorting in an over-the-top excited manner as he sees Ichigo finally activate his Bankai. Of course, Ebern fails to steal Tensa Zangetsu, but man, it's such a cool moment that added into what is otherwise a pretty basic hype-building fight. And then we finally take a look at Juhabach (or Yhwach, I guess, is how I'm supposed to spell his name) in his shadow palace... and both Friegen and Ebern bow before Yhwach and he casually just dismembers Friegen as he dos some ominous proclamations. 

Pretty well-done, honestly. Again, the corresponding chapters in the manga aren't bad, but... but this just kind of elevates the source material a lot, yeah? The music, the voice-acting, the far more improved animation (by dint of being 10 years after the end of the previous anime)... definitely an adaptation that faithfully adapts the Thousand-Year Blood War and even elevates aspects of it. Great first episode for sure!

Random Notes:

• Some changes have been made from the previous anime, most notably the colour of Icchigo's Getsuga, which now matches its intended manga counterpart (which was meant to look like a moon!) 
• The credits end with a montage of literally the highlights of the entire Bleach anime, before closing off with one of the poems from the tankobon volumes.
• It's definitely something that gets lost since 90% of Bleach is action, but I do appreciate Ichigo, Orihime, Chad and Uryu bitching and arguing about bread. An understated moment is Uryu of all people leaving one of the yakisoba bread for Ryunosuke because 'he might like it' while the others call the normally-serious Uryu out on him being the one that doesn't want to eat it himself. 
• This brings me memories back! I started this blog reviewing the final chapters of Bleach as well. I'm not sure, again, whether I'll make this a weekly thing, or if subsequent episodes are going to be a bit shorter in length like my One Piece/MHA anime reviews, but we'll see!

Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 23: Weatherman

Yep yep, it's not been too long since I've been doing Legends: Arceus stuff, but despite my long hiatus around the time that I'm supposed to go to either the Coronet or Alabaster lands, I haven't been able to put this game down. It's just so... relaxing to just go around and battle and catch stuff and trying to tick off all the boxes in the Pokedex while I watch a TV show, y'know? 

And one by one, the boxes get ticked off. Flareon, Vaporeon, Rhyperior, Blissey, Scizor, Sylveon, Manaphy, Clefable, Regigigas, Chimecho, the Porygon line, Yanmega, Cranidos, Shieldon... one by one, I hunt down the elusive baby Pokemon (I can't breed in this game!) and look out for more elusive Pokemon like Pikachu or that goddamned Cherubi. 

I've only ever found Cherubi and Cherrim both exactly once in this game!

Also, completely by accident, as I was investigating the Ramanas Island under the behest of Mai (there's a swarm of Zorua!) I get assaulted by Landorus, who shoots these cool gray-and-orange tornadoes at me! And... and like an incidental boss fight, Landorus attacks me with two of the Zoruas that appeared thanks to the Mai quest. I didn't even have anything beyond level 60, and it was by sheer luck that I captured the Landorus in under six tries, since he'd easily one-shot everything in my party. 

The game also gives Landorus a brand-new signature move, Sandsear Storm, which is the gray-and-orange tornadoes he's been shooting at me in the overworld! It burns the target, which... okay, not an effect I'd associate with a god of fertility, but sure! 

Mai's quest leads into a bit of a comedy moment as one of the Zoruas impersonates her Munchlax, and her assuredness in picking out which one is her Pokemon ends up in complete failure (much to the displeasure of her Munchlax). But she tells me to report this to Cyllene, and the three of us basically decided to name this as "massive mass outbreaks", which are different than the regular mass outbreaks. These outbreaks only happen in certain weather. Which I guess is meant to be a tie-in with the three weather kami. 

A bunch of question marks appear all over the Fieldlands, and I have the chance to investigate them as part of a sidequest. After taking out a bunch of Stantlers, Wurmples and Zubats, I finish that quest, but I guess I've unlocked these massive mass outbreaks or whatever. Mai, Calaba and Arezu have a bit of a chitchat on what exactly causes the outbreaks, but it just leads to a chain of quests where I investigate massive mass outbreaks in other locations. Melli shows up to make a fool of himself in the Mirelands. The Arc Phone gets upgraded to telling me what species shows up in the mass mass massive outbreaks, which means... yay, I don't have to figure out where Bonsly spawns! And somehow this is all tied in to Mai's Munchlax and Aguav berries. Okay?

We'll save that until later, though, because I proceeded to go on a bit of a Unown and Spiritomb wisp hunt. The Unowns are a bit easier since they have clues on them, some of which are a bit more obvious. The dead tree next to the hot springs! Climb the Grand Tree! The top of a waterfall in the Fieldlands! Some are a bit harder to find. Also, while doing this, I also finished some of the final side-quests that I've neglected, including finding the five Alolan Vulpixes in the snowlands,, and doing the pretty short Swinub quest. Again, I do plan to finish all the sidequests except for that accursed balloon one. 

A surprisingly chilling one is a quest in the Icelands where I find a torn journal of some poor traveler who got basically lured to his death at the hands of a woman in a kimono... or, well, a Froslass. Brr! It's one thing to read about Froslass preying on humans by pretending to be a lady with a kimono in the dex, it's another to find the remnants of one of their victims...

...and then after looking for the Froslass, instead I find a journal and I think the Froslass enchanted the human into thinking that he lived in an illusory village? There's the whole journal disappearing when I was about to give it to the descendant in Jubilife, too. Spooky!

One particularly annoying sidequest was the Clefairy one on Mt. Coronet, where I have to keep resetting the day to get to a full moon. Man, and I thought that I had enough of this when I had to evolve Ursaluna! It's really annoying to try and keep resetting the moon cycle when sometimes the moon just gets covered by clouds and shit, y'know? The Clefairy dance is at least cute, with one of them kind of being a bit too small and off-sync with its buddies. 

Going around catching Unown and Spiritomb wisps while trying to rack up Pokedex entries is probably also my impetus to properly hunt down Thundurus and Tornadus, as well as camp out and wait for certain space-time rifts to cause Magnemites to show up (I caught Porygon, Shieldon and Cranidos a while back, which I think are the only other rift-exclusive Pokemon). 

I didn't realize that there are Unown in Jubilife City either, which... made some of the Unown hunting kind of stupid until I realized that one of the clues is literally 'village gateway'. Doy. Some great hiding spots for the Unown, too. That village gateway Unown that's hiding among the glyphs on top of the gateway, or Unown V that's hanging off a dead tree branch like a coat-hanger, Unown ? literally hanging off my coat hanger...

The hardest Unown that I had to catch has to be Unown W, the left eye that overlooks the village. I can figure out it's on the back side of one of the Magikarp statues. What I didn't realize that there was a doorway to reach that Unown from Kamado's office! I wasted so many feather balls!

...and it's at this point that I realize I didn't have to complete all research tasks for Arceus, just capture everything. 

Okay. Shit.

Okay, that makes my job a lot easier because a lot of the babies and lesser-evolved Pokemon don't have a lot of tasks to choose from! Like Cherubi (Absorb's pretty much the only thing I can do with it), Shieldon and Cranidos (Ancient Power for both and not much else)... and, as I later find out, Pichu, where every single task relating to Pichu involves capturing it. And the little rat is a bastard to even encounter, let alone capture!

Anyway, I go on and buy a bunch of items with the accumulated merit points, to get the things to evolve some of the Pokemon who I simply couldn't find the items for. Onix to Steelix and Magmar to Magmortar, basically. Also, some Pokemon that I simply had access to but never evolved are Rampardos, Honchkrow and Mamoswine. 

Basically, the only Pokemon at this point that I haven't captured are Munchlax, Pichu and the entire Magnemite line. Jeez! 

I had to reset and go back and forth from Jubilife to the locations to reset the weather. I need the heavy rain for the mass massive outbreaks to occur in the Fieldlands, as well as specific weather patterns to summon Thundurus and Tornadus. Eventually I had to just stay in the Coastlands for a while to properly get a couple of Magnemites to fill in that particular evolution line. I caught two Magnemites and a Magneton, and quickly proceeded to evolve the Magneton on the Coronet Highlands. 

I did have the fortune to get Porygon, regular Sneasel and the two fossils on some of my previous space-time distortions, but considering that completing the Pokedex is basically needed to meet Arceus, it kind of is a shame that we don't, like, have a sidequest where we get one of those as a reward, a la the Alolan Vulpix sidequest.  

So I just kind of go back and forth, playing a lot through mass outbreaks and doing a bunch of dex entry quests, while I keep resetting the weather to get a blizzard in the icelands or a thunderstorm in the coastlands; while also trying to reset the damn Fieldlands and find a Pichu or a Munchlax. Eventually, I did get a Pichu near the rivers in the Fieldlands, although not before shaking off a whole army of Paras. It's the damn Munchlax that proved the most troublesome. 

The first of the two lesser genies I manage to trigger is the one in the Alabaster Icelands, which is Tornadus during a snowstorm. I fly around on Braviary and find him just spinning around near the Bonechill Wastes like the Tasmanian Devil, and... it's a fair bit harder than Landorus for the simple fact that Tornadus spawns where there's a whole bunch of Glalie, including an infuriating alpha one.. I had to go back and revamp my party a bit to help me clear the Glalies instead of bringing a bunch of pokedex-entry members of the party.

Anyway, after a bit of a tag-and-chase with Tornadus... he actually managed to kill me once, which reset the weather! Thank goodness for save scumming. The idea of the battle is that basically I just have to keep lobbing Jet Balls or balls of mud at him, and then challenge him to battle in the split second that he's stunned. That's annoying, though I eventually used a combo of the smoke bombs and jet balls to get near enough.

Tornadus, like Landorus, has his own signature move this time around, Bleakwind Storm, which has a chance of freezing the target. Or, well, 'frostbiting' the target, as it were. 

Hunting Thundurus is a bit easier, mostly because I was on a wisp run throughout the Coastlands when the weather changed into a thunderstorm, and at this point I realized that the genies spawn in places where it's a wide area. Which means, for the Coastlands, it's the damn water. Which means a Basculegion open-world boss fight or whatever. 

...which, surprisingly, wasn't that bad? Mostly because I was already dreading fighting Thundurus on fish-back, and prepared a bunch of smoke bombs, which allowed me to approach Thundurus without him realizing. I laid like a layer of 8 smoke bombs from the beach all the way to where he was spinning around like a jackass. Then a sticky glob to his face (probably the first time I realized that this is an upgraded ball of mud), and then I fight him with his brothers before catching him easy-peasy with less than five ultra balls. 

Thundurus's new move is Wildbolt Storm, and... again, I don't really care about the genies, not really, but it's nice that they get something new.

Anyway, I bring the three genies as requested to Cogita. It is interesting that Cogita kind of acknowledges how these legendaries probably go from one 'chosen one' protagonist trainer to the next, noting that if not for the extraordinary times, she would've asked us to let these three fly free, as is their nature... except that Hisui is being assaulted by the aftereffects of the space-time rift, and it's best to keep these three Forces of Nature contained. If you say so, lady. 

Cogita reveals that there is one more of their 'cohort', and brings in their sister, Enamorus... who's just... obedient to Cogita? The game did actually foreshadow Enamorus's existence, with Cogita mentioning that she was carried to the Celestica Ruins by a Pokemon she's coy about, plus the whole Pixie Plate thing. It's still kind of random and I kinda wished that we got a bit more story with these legendaries. That's been my running theme throughout this playthrough, I feel. Enamorus is the herald of spring, who isn't normally bad behaved... but instead of giving us Enamorus from the get-go, Cogita tells me to hunt down Enamorus in the Mirelands. 

Dang it. Okay, at least the Mirelands wouldn't have the water that I have to chase around Thundurus in. It's kind of neat that all three of the major maps have a genie associated to them, and as I covered in my "Review 'Em All" segment, the now-four Forces of Nature are based on the four guardian beasts of cardinal directions in Chinese and Japanese myths, so it's neat that the four of them are guarding the four directions with Mt. Coronet in the middle. Enamorus's tornadoes give the same effect as Cresselia's stunning thing, but... eventually I catch her? 

Yeah, Enamorus is kinda ugly. I've spoken about her at length in those Review 'Em All articles, and I'm not likely to change my opinion after seeing her here. Her signature move is Springtime Storm, which buffs her like Ancient Power. Neato. 

After catching her and completing her dex entry, I return to Cogita to show all four of the Forces of Nature, and she gives me the Reveal Glass after some brief talk about the Forces of Nature's true, well, nature. There's another bit from Cogita where she re-emphasizes that... yeah, my character is mortal but these legendary Pokemon aren't. They'll live for a much, much longer time than my character will be, isekai or not. She talks a bit about how she's interested to see how the future will go with people who 'stir the pot' like me and Enamorus. Okay, sure, Cynthia's grandma. 

And finally, finally I manage to catch the final Pokemon in the Hisui dex (not counting event Pokemon), Munchlax. To keep things in perspective, I basically did everything from the top of this page to the bottom while trying to do Munchlax... which included capturing all four Forces of Nature, trying to reset for the Magnemite space-time rift, hunting for Pichu and Bonsly, doing the entire Unown quest... and... yeah. Okay. Fuck you, Munchlax, is all I can say.

And, because Munchlax is a spiteful little shit, like... three or four trips to Jubilife City while I was going around looking for wisps, and a Munchlax outbreak happens in the Icelands. Of-fuckin'-course. 

Anyway, after all that, I decide to tackle the Spiritomb side-quest. 108 spirits, and all I have at the beginning of this is... 67? That's not actually bad, considering I'm just opportunistically trying to get whatever I can. Neat!