Iron Fist S01E10 Review: Two-Handed

Iron Fist, Season 1, Episode 10: Black Tiger Steals Heart

"Wow, you're the worst Iron Fist ever." 

Well, maybe not the worst Iron Fist -- mostly because I've never read a comic book with Iron Fist in it my entire life -- but I do know that everything that's been going on with this show has gone from 'hey, this might have potential' to 'okay this is just stupid'. It's a leg up from the previous episode, of course, but then very few things would be. There are some genuinely great fighting scenes between the characters involved -- Danny versus Bakuto in the computer room, and the huge brawl that Danny and Davos has against the large army of Bakuto's troops are well done. 

But really, while the revelation that Bakuto and Colleen are not the Chaste but rather a rival faction within the Hand was mildly surprising, it's still not quite enough. We're only three episodes off from the end of the season, and we haven't even really had any answers regarding K'un Lun, the specifics of Danny's oath or why he left. Information about the first two can be inferred from Danny's ramblings -- he's supposed to guard the passageway between K'un Lun and the real world, and he abandoned it -- but the whys and wherefores still elude me. Is it to be a billionaire? He sure has no idea what to do with his position, and if nothing else fucked his company hard. Is it out of rejection of his duty as the Iron Fist? He certainly wasted no time in fighting the Hand the moment he sees them like it's his god-given duty. Honestly, I don't mind storytelling that doesn't spoon-feed details to us. But at some point we do kind of need answers. Season one of Daredevil and Luke Cage both had flashback-centric episodes around the mid-point of the season. Daredevil's second season had Punisher give us his backstory for context near the halfway point, and Elektra slightly after that. Jessica Jones had multiple flashbacks over the first half of the season that slowly reveal her connections to Luke and Killgrave. It's a bit too late for any answers to appear in the last two or three episodes. It's not bad to keep some secrets for us to find out later, but so much scant details about Danny's life in K'un Lun that it's not until this episode that we find out that Danny doesn't actually know how to properly use the Iron Fist powers. And if we learn earlier that Danny's just a novice running around with a power he barely understands, maybe it'll make us more understanding of his earlier antics this season? I dunno. 

And honestly, another big problem with Iron Fist is that, well, Danny behaves as a child. A lot of what he's doing can be shrugged off as a child acting out, and that's mostly a problem of the scripting than anything -- as I've complained these past two episodes, nothing about what Danny Rand does really makes sense, and I'm struggling to honestly root for him. This isn't a race problem either -- my complaints about this writing is going to be the same regardless of Danny's ethnicity, because this angry confused kid just isn't being very appealing. It's also not until relatively late in this season, too, that we learn how much stunted Danny's mental growth is, but it honestly doesn't excuse a lot of the nonsensical bullshit he did for a good chunk of the series' earlier episodes. 

Also, why the fuck would Danny still trust Harold? He knows that Harold's been working with Gao, and yes, Harold was trying to undermine Gao, but Gao did tell Danny that Harold was part of the Hand's machinations. Unless Danny thinks everything Gao says is a lie?

Danny is introduced to this college-esque location by Colleen and Bakuto, who notes that it's some kind of school for the lost, and Danny quickly points out the similarities of the place to a cult. One way or another, she discovers Gao being kept, and Colleen reveals that they are the Hand. Danny absolutely loses his shit, but again, instead of portraying someone genuinely betrayed (Daredevil-Elektra is a very good example of this done right) he comes off like a kid who didn't get to watch a cartoon. Danny's arguments, are, as always, one-sided and bull-headed. "The Hand is evil and you're brainwashed because you grew here!" Colleen gives the very, very good counter-argument that Danny himself has been brainwashed by the secular monks in K'un Lun, but Danny's answer? It basically amounts to "well, I'm right, and you're not! So there!" I mean, it's not that I disagree with the fact that the Hand is evil no matter what (not in the least because Bakuto proceeds to be a villain afterwards) but he honestly was a bit of a little shit to poor Colleen. 

Bakuto himself is... okay as a villain, I guess? He tries to sell himself as this zen master and ally to Danny, even showing footage of a 1940's incarnation of the Iron Fist to justify his interest in the mythical immortal weapon, but it doesn't take much for Bakuto to reveal that he's taking over what Madame Gao left behind, basically putting Harold under his thumb, fighting Danny in the computer room and all that. But he's shown up so little and has so little screentime before this that I just can't really care all that much about him.

Still, I have just realized that Bakuto is played by Ramon Rodriguez, a.k.a. Leo from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a.k.a. that annoying roommate character that screams in every single scene he's in. I couldn't have told that! Bakuto's a pretty awesome and smooth-talking character, and definitely as far removed from Leo as you can get. 

Colleen's conflicted, obviously, though I guess seeing her entire community bullrush and attempt to beat up and capture Danny put doubts in her head which Danny raised, causing her to betray the Hand and let Danny out.

Oh, and Danny's rescued by this very awesome kung fu dude Davos, who I think was mentioned a grand total of once in one of Danny's talks about K'un Lun. Also shows up last episode as this enigmatic nameless dude, but since we've never seen Davos before last episode he's just this very weird distraction. Davos was sent by their master Lei Kung (which I'm assuming was the ghostly Jedi kung fu master from before) to bring Danny back because no one's guarding K'un Lun. And, well, Davos maakes some really good arguments that Danny himself can't really argue against, because he's lost his sense of superiority against an equal like Davos. Davos has the authority to call Danny Rand out on his bullshit (and he has a literal mountain of bullshit) and he's not afraid to do so. Hell, even the Iron Fist itself agrees on Davos with that, because it plain refuses to be used in the battle. So Danny might have to go back to K'un Lun to actually learn to, y'know, use the Iron Fist. 

The Meachums have... some... bullshit plot that I honestly can't bring myself to care about. Joy and Harold work with each other, but Harold's still keeping most of the Hand stuff away from Joy, instead focusing on retaking the company. Harold thinks he's free, but Bakuto shows up and throws his weight around. Harold engineers the suicide of board boss Lawrence so Joy (who doesn't know about the truth regarding who killed Lawrence) can take over and be the saviour of Rand Corporations. Oh and Harold wants to kill Bakuto. And he gets pissed at one point because Joy refuses to have a toast with him. 

Oh, and having Harold pave the way for the takeover of Rand Corporations means that Danny'll later end up taking it over by himself without having to put in any effort about learning how to be a proper entrepreneur, isn't it? Or at least be a team player that stops Rand from doing anything overtly evil. Jeez, I really, really pity the rest of the board for having to keep up with Danny Rand for the rest of their careers. 

Overall, while the episode had a fair amount of good points -- the fight scenes, in particular, but also performances from Davos and Colleen -- it has too much going against it, the least of all being Danny Rand is a childish, petulant little shit, that I still find myself not really enjoying this episode. 

Legends of Tomorrow S02E16 Review: Bond Villain Stupidity

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 16: Doomworld

It's probably a definite improvement over last season's climax leadup (not helped by the flimsy repeating of the generally trite Vandal Savage/Hawks plot), but that's mostly due to the strength of the cast and the dialogue writing instead of actual goodness of the episode. Which, let me be clear -- the cast this time around delivered an absolutely spectacular performance. Thawne, Merlyn, Darhk and Snart are glorious hammy villains, Amaya and Sara get to be an evil assassin duo for a bit, Mick gets some of the best character moments he's ever gotten, Nate and Ray are at their most dorkiest, Jax gets to let loose with something that he's not used to when he plays Stein's angry jerk boss, Stein gets some really awesome moments, Rip Hunter gets to bake a cake...

But honestly, the same problems that plague the Flashpoint episodes in the Flash also plague this episode. Sure, it's arguably a bigger change than Flashpoint did, which was just moving some pieces around Earth-2 style. We've got Sara and Amaya as hired guns working for the bad guys, murdering vigilante!Felicity in a pretty brutal outing, which is definitely a very strong start... but other than that, it's very, very quick to snowball into a 'wake up from this dream!' story, with Mick deciding to pick the side of the Legends and everything's just a great coincidence afterwards. Of course Ray retains enough of his old identity to make a handy-dandy memory-restoration gun. Of course Nate shows up at Thawne's office just when Mick's around. Of course Mick somehow is able to memorize the Aramaic chant to activate the Spear of Destiny. And while I don't mind the fact that the stakes here aren't real and anyone can guess that this Doomworld universe will be retconned out of existence and repaired at the end of the season, it doesn't mean that the show can't actually have some tension.

The thing is, there really wasn't. Sure, there was some tension at seeing Mick adapt to this more flat villain Leonard Snart, how he's torn between his newer friends, the Legends, and this old, pre-character-development Snart that clearly respects him little more than an attack dog. Likewise, killing Amaya (that's not going to stick for obvious reasons) was a pretty cool moment, and I can't really blame the huge brawl at the end, which was entertaining as we moved from Darhk-vs-Nate to Sara-vs-Damien to Reverse-Flash just zooming around knocking everyone around...

But at the same time, for being such a powerful Spear of Destiny, it's pretty ineffective in delivering the Legion of Doom what they truly wanted. Why is the Black Flash still alive? Yes, he's imprisoned, but why is Eobard keeping him around? Also, why is Eobard in the present day considering one of his main goals in his home series is to return to the 25th century? Why is the Legion of Doom so nonchalant in killing the entire casts of Arrow and Flash, but keep the Legends of Tomorrow around as trophies? You'd think Merlyn and Thawne in particular would be more than a little obsessed with tormenting Oliver and Barry more than they do the Legends. Yes, Mick's request was what saved the Legends from being instantly killed during the wish, but that really doesn't explain why Reverse-Flash doesn't do what he does best and vibrate-hand the entire Legends team during the final battle. Even if he doesn't want to kill his old Legion buddies (which I don't buy at all) him not killing the Legends due to wanting to gloat like a Bond villain is just rather silly. And after Darhk and Snart realizes that, hey, they should've listened to Malcolm and killed the Legends... they only really went for the throat with one of them.

And yes, in a sense, the episode does acknowledge how Bond villain-y the Legion of Doom are behaving, with Snart and Malcolm lampshading how Damien Darhk is giving a 'bad guy monologue' (it was a good bad guy monologue, according to Malcolm) but there's honestly a line when hamminess and pettiness give way to simple stupidity.

Still, on the bright side, once you ignore the rather... stupid decisions that people make in this episode, it's still highly entertaining. We've got some genuinely great lines from literally every member of the Legion of Doom. The final battle, with Darhk and Nate accidentally whacking Reverse-Flash across the huge room with the Spear of Destiny, and both of them just forgetting they're fighting and going 'oh ho HO!' and almost high-fiving each other is absolutely hilarious. The aforementioned "bad guy monologue" exchange between Darhk, Snart and Malcolm is absolutely hilarious. And Mick's turmoil gets to be emotionally touching without going into eye-rolling self-loathing bullshit that Arrow, Flash and Supergirl are so guilty of. Oh, and Rip Hunter making fucking cakes is actually pretty hilarious.

But, again, the fact that there's some genuinely wasted potential here is a bit amiss. Why couldn't we have gotten some of the things foreshadowed across the season? What if Malcolm brought Laurel back to tempt Sara with letting this new reality stand? What if Reverse-Flash actually followed actually became the Flash, like the impetus of him gaining super-speed in his origin story? What about the talk last episode about Mick wanting to see his family alive again? Why didn't we see the casts of Arrow and Flash trapped in their own personal hell? (Okay, that last bit might just be because the studio can't afford so many actors, but still).

Honestly, I really ranted a lot in this episode, don't I? The thing is, I truly enjoyed this episode. The dialogue was funny, Mick was great, the Legion was hammy and it fits very well with the show's lighter-hearted tone. But at the same time, we really had a lot of wasted potential as far as how the rewritten universe was, and there were some really glaring problems with the bad guys' badass decay, and Amaya's death felt just done for shock value.

Also -- someone's totally going to spring the Black Flash from his prison to eat Eobard's face, yeah?

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Obviously, the Legion of Doom's new base is a floating Darth Vader esque skull dome, which is, of course, inspired by the Hall of Doom from Challenge of the Super Friends.
• A bunch of callbacks to our villains' roles in the revised world, which saw them in positions resembling how they were during their height of power. Eobard Thawne is the head of a now huge STAR Labs with more staff than the skeleton crew it's reduced to in the Flash, and it's the position he enjoyed in his Harrison Wells guise in season one of the Flash. Damien Darhk is the mayor of Star City, which was one of his plans (albeit his wife was the mayor) in Arrow's fourth season. Malcolm Merlyn has his family and wealth back, which was how he was during Arrow's first season. Captain Cold and Heat Wave are a duo of thieves robbing banks, which was how they were during their Rogue days in the Flash.
• Felicity here uses her old college-hacker-era Goth look.
• In addition to the cameos by the masks of a good chunk of the Arrow/Flash cast, we also get name-drops of Tommy Merlyn, Rebecca Merlyn and Nyssa al Ghul, though understandably they do not show up. 

Teen Titans S04E02 Review: Wax On Wax Off

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 2: The Quest

After being neglected for a good chunk of seasons two and three, existing for 'team leader' purposes and to ship with Starfire, Robin finally gets a spotlight episode! And... it's absolutely generic. I'm sorry, but it's another episode that feels like it's regurgitated from the bag of 'episode plot you can reuse for any cartoon'. Robin heads off to a Chinese temple to learn kung fu, and is humble and everything, and he learns that the journey is the training. The moral is decent, but being placed so late in the series felt awkward. It really felt like it should be an episode featured in season one or season two where the Titans are still learning their identities as superheroes and trying to figure out their place in the world, but here it just feels weird. The multiple fights against the animal people, and the utterly insipid and forgettable villain (whose name I forgot, and I watched the episode two minutes ago) makes the episode a very predictable one. The action scenes were at least decent and cool enough to grab your attention.

But honestly, the best parts about this episode is the other Titans wearing Robin's costume and pretending to be Robin. Raven wearing Robin's costume fits so well!

But overall, it's a pretty perfunctory episode that honestly feels generic considering what we know Teen Titans is capable of doing when it wants to really make a good episode.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Beast Boy, while dressed up as Robin, bursts through a paper-hoop in an imitation of Robin's debut on the covers of Detective Comics waaaay back in -googles- 1940.

Supergirl S02E17 Review: Staple Gun

Supergirl, Season 2, Episode 17: Distant Sun

How much you enjoy this episode depends solely on how much you enjoy Mon-El as a character. Rather surprisingly for someone who mainly functinos a love interest, I don't really mind Mon-El, and his whole 'torn between love and duty to his asshole royal family' storyline is at least somewhat decent. It also helps that his actor has enough charisma to make his crappier lines sound likable instead of douchebaggy.

But at the same time, the storyline that he's gotten has honestly dragged on so much, and there's only so much you can do with Mon-El without adding anything new. There is a vocal minority in discussion forums or whatever who really would want nothing more than for Mon-El to just leave with his parents and be written out of the show. And the thing is, with Mon-El's parents (or one of them, at least) being really set up to be the main antagonists of the season, it's not looking very likely, so we're stuck with an episode that more or less repeats the 'do you trust me yes no?' relationship problems between Mon-El and Kara. Yes, they're in a much more healthier place than they were thanks to a musical crossover episode in Flash, but at the same time spending yet another episode focusing on their love life isn't something that's particularly engaging.

Queen Rhea basically turns from a slightly-bigoted and controlling mother-queen into a psychotic card-carrying villain, whose plan to get his son back is to send bounty hunters to murder his son's girlfriend. Which, even if it works, probably won't cause Mon-El to come running back to his parents. If they're going to use force, why not just send the Daxamite troops down to Earth to apprehend Mon-El forcibly? And Mon-El isn't stupid and calls his parents out on doing it almost immediately. And even when Mon-El has finally agreed to go along with his parents to stop Rhea from murdering Supergirl with a Kryptonite sai, Rhea just decides to lock Mon-El in a cell for four years because he's spouting all kinds of non-Daxamite views. It's kind of messy writing all around, just to shove it in our face that, yes, Rhea is evil.

The first half of the episode is a pretty humdrum episode with bounty hunters going after Supergirl, with a laser-eyed creep and this very creepy bald dude with a pulsating skull that mind-controls Mon-El for a moment (why not fucking mind-control Supergirl to choke herself to death, dumbass bald man?), but while those are somewhat cool, it's also just a bunch of action scenes that mean nothing with a bunch of throwaway villains. And while the bald mind-controlling alien was decent (Winn's staple gun moment was golden), the first laser-eyed alien had some obviously unfinished CGI that made the fight laughably bad, even by TV standards.

Also can I just say how hilarious it is for Guardian to show up, get his ass knocked out with a single punch, and then literally disappear for the entire episode? The show doesn't know what to do with Guardian at all, really, which is just fine. Turn James Olsen back into a journalist photographer.

Sure, the fight on the spaceship seems cool enough, with one of those rare outings of the Martian Manhunter beating the ever-loving crap out of the Daxamite bodyguards, but at the same time it kind of lacks depth. Swap out Mon-El's parents with the alien slavers or the Dominators, and you'll still have more or less the same plot -- the transition of Rhea from control freak helicopter parent into a generic villain is definitely not to the show's better. The climax is more or less going through the motions because the threat of Mon-El actually being taken to Daxam wasn't something I felt. At least Rhea is embracing her new role as a psychotic alien villain, though killing Lar Gand seemed pretty random and just childlishly 'mwa ha ha I'm evil'. Rhea isn't quite as annoying as Astra and Non just yet, but jeez.

Oh, and the dialogue between Mon-El, Rhea, Kara and Lar Gand are very, very clunky in this episode. The actors are charismatic enough to make the episode bearable to watch, but still, the drop in dialogue quality can definitely be felt.

And the B-plot of this episode was absolutely turd. Like, I have no qualms about Alex and Maggie being in a relationship. But having Alex and Maggie struggle with Maggie's ex returning to town is like the least interesting sub-plot ever, and it probably is less interesting than a lot of the weaker season one Cat Grant subplots. In addition to the whole subplot being unnecessary and distracting from the alien stuff (and the screentime could have been given to make Mon-El's story progress more organically, or focus more on Supergirl's moments of unable to help out) it also makes absolutely no sense. Why is Alex so randomly obsessed with forcing Maggie to get closure with her ex? Why is Alex so obsessed with confronting Maggie's ex at her hotel? It's just absolutely dumb. Give Alex and Maggie some screentime, sure, but not moronic ones like this.

Oh and there's a subplot about J'onn disobeying the president's orders and engaging the Daxamite ship, and we get a reminder that the president is a shapeshifting alien. I'm not sure if she's actually meant to be a White Martian or not, though, because the character model's slightly different, but that would definitely be a great subplot to pursue, not, y'know, freaking Maggie Sawyer's ex.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Some internal continuity notes. Winn mentions that he rebuilt the portal from "Supergirl Lives", and President Wonder Woman Marsdin and her secret identity as an alien was from "Welcome to Earth".
• The alien bounty hunter with a laser-shooting eyepatch is identified as an Amalak, and the telepath is from the Alcorian system. I don't think Alcoria exists in DC lore, but Amalak is the name of a space-pirate-style alien that menaced Superman and Supergirl in the comics... albeit Amalak is the name of the character instead of the race.

Teen Titans S04E01 Review: How Much Meta is Too Meta

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 1: Episode 256-494

Some episodes and creative teams like to go full meta and just absolutely insane, referencing a gajilion amount of things at once. Its own continuity, things from the comic or novel it's based on, pop culture, something about its actors or production that tickles the producers' fancy. And it's all fine... as long as the references don't drown out the actual plotline being told. This episode stars the return of Control Freak as he apparently gains some weird powers to physically run around in TV shows and change what's going on in the program, which makes as much sense as anything going on in this show, I suppose. Season four of Teen Titans is infamous for having the darkest episodes (we explore Raven's daddy issues which I'm surprised was even allowed) and the absurdly most bonkers one. Maybe they were trying to allay complaints that season three tried to take itself seriously with the Brother Blood plot? Going full-on mental isn't quite the answer, I think.

And while I'm an advocate of fun episodes... this one just didn't click for me. The episode tries to stuff in as much references to all sorts of TV shows ranging from Star Wars to Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter to Dr. Seuss to Bill Cosby to Highlander, but it's just a big huge mess. Which I guess is expected for an episode with Control Freak in it, I guess. You either like it or dislike it. I don't like it.... the visuals aren't quite engaging enough to get invested in the action, and Control Freak is such an annoying little twat compared to other 'let's have some wacky fun' villains like Mumbo Jumbo or Mad Mod, that I find myself not liking this episode. At all. The Wild E. Coyote segment was the only one that's actually funny, while all the other attempts at jokes feels like it's trying too hard.

Teen Titans S04E00 Review: Random Bonus Episode

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 0: The Lost Episode

Oh hey it's April. Time for me to crank out Teen Titans episode reviews, then.

Before we start reviewing the fourth season of Teen Titans, there's this little bonus episode that was released prior to the fourth season when you buy... something or other, I don't care. It runs for 11 minutes, which is like half of a normal episode... and, wow, there's very little in here. There's not much to talk about. The Titans fight a new villain, Punk Rocket, who's this British fellow that likes rock music. The episode even notes how Punk Rocket is "one-note". There's absolutely nothing overtly interesting about Punk Rocket after the novelty of a rockstar villain with a posh accent wears off... which happens within like ten seconds. The Titans themselves are also very bland in this episode, with the running gag of Beast Boy being playing loud music and pissing the other Titans off being absolutely obnoxious, even moreso than his normal antics -- Beast Boy is normally tolerable since he swaps in and out of different joke material, but here it's just bland.

All right, that's all I can say about it. For a 'Lost' episode, it really didn't add anything much to the show. Not even the action scenes are anything special.

One Piece 861 Review: NOT THE DOOR

One Piece, Chapter 861: Good Acting

Gonna be a bit late on other kinds of reviews. I haven't watched any of the superhero stuff for this week, and Hearthstone's Un'Goro card talk is going to take a fair amount of time to write. But hey, that was an absolutely fun stream.

Enough about site stuff, though -- One Piece! Which is going to be on hiatus next week. Aww. This one's more of another 'set the mood' chapter. The Fire Tank Pirates are looking into what's going on in the party, Luffy and company are sleeping (of course), and the living door that's just looking at them increasingly grows more and more flustered every panel when she puts together that Capone Bege and his people are planning to do something dastardly. I'm not sure if Big Mom already knows or if she has some kind of telepathic connection to her Homies or whatever, but she's definitely not talking to anyone. Been lots of deaths of minor nameless characters in One Piece lately -- that panel with the sliced-up halves of the door's face clattering to the ground is uncharacteristically graphic, even if it is just a door. Capone's cool, isn't he? He even gets a pretty cool one-liners. "Of course they're talking. They've got ears and mouths, don't they?" "Loose lips sink ships."

We also got a couple of other characters, like the first daughter, the Minister of Fruits, Compote -- who looks like a female Igram and definitely takes on her mother's appearance. Other children that are apparently are comparable to the other strong dudes we've seen before like Katakuri and Smoothie are the third son, Daifuku (we don't get to see much of him) and the 4th son, Oven, whose hair is splayed out around his head like a cross. 

We also get to see the picture of Mother Carmel, who's literally just an ornate photograph with a nun holding a cigarette with a wild grin. Big Mom notes how Carmel is their mother. One unfortunate dude asks the question we're all begging to know -- who is this mother fellow? Big Mom gets absolutely pissed off and we get a nightmare face from her, and the dude just gets Conqueror's Haki'd the fuck out. 

We've also got the Tamatebako brought in by Big Mom alongside the large amount of dowry presents in treasure boxes. Jinbe's betrayal or not, Fishman Island is well and truly fucked, isn't it? Looks like the shark lady's prediction is going to come true, albeit in a pretty roundabout way. 

Capone, as flustered as he is with Luffy's sleeping, discusses things with Caesar "Gastino" Clown about how the Straw Hats are troublesome. Caesar is in charge of supplying the mirror for Luffy's getaway, so, uh, we're going to have some Starscreaming going on.

Oh, and I can't believe that I missed last week that the leader of the news organization, which employs News Coos, is a giant News Coo himself. Whoops. 

Meanwhile, Pudding and Sanji. We actually don't get any monologues on Sanji's part, but some on Pudding's part where her thoughts to herself establishes that she, at the very least, hates Sanji and wants to stab him in the face and it's not just a super-elaborate ruse playing both Big Mom and the Straw Hats -- which would be my preferred choice simply because it'd be interesting especially for someone with such a uniquely powerful memory memory fruit. Sanji is in full pervert-gentleman Sanji, although it doesn't hurt that Pudding is acting like ultra-waifu material. Sanji makes such hilariously stupid faces, and Capone's taken aback, noting how much 'into the role' Sanji got into.

The two big two-page spreads at the end are ultimately just mood-setters, just this whimsical wacky weird tea party with flying clouds and animal people and talking food, but we all know things are just waiting to blow up. Literally, in the case of the Tamatebako. Shame next week's on break -- really curious to see what the Straw Hats have got planned.