Iron Fist S02E02 Review: Gang Wars

Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 2: This City's Not For Burning

A bit of a slower episode that I don't really have a lot to talk about. Again, it's still a huge, huge improvement over Iron Fist's first season in that it's not utter dog turd, but it's still not quite as engaging as most of Marvel/Netflix's output.

If nothing else, at least this episode manages to deliver what the entirety of the first season couldn't have, and that's some actual martial arts fighting with the flashback to the actual battle of the right to inherit the Iron Fist between Danny and Davos in the past. Sure, the white-and-yellow comic book homage costume looks hilariously low budget, but I do like how the scene is shot to be deliberately ambiguous if Danny won straight and fair (he did play possum for a bit, and the Thunderer definitely stopped the fight before the yield-or-death conditions) or if Davos was being petty and salty over not being chosen (it's clear that from Davos' point of view the fight's not over). Plus, whether Danny's tricks of playing possum or blinding Davos with sunlight are dishonourable methods or pragmatic ones that a sufficiently experienced warrior would've been able to guard against is genuinely a gray area on whether Danny truly earned the Fist. Honestly, with the lack of goodwill I have towards Danny and the lack of outright malice I have towards Davos, the flashback certainly ends up causing Davos to feel a lot more sympathetic.

The rest of the present day storyline is kind of just moving along at a slower pace that all the Netflix shows have in their earlier episodes. We've got obligatory scenes of Ward Meachum trying to make sense of his lief and his brief attempt to reconcile with Joy. We've got scenes building up and highlighting this Mary fellow that seems to have fallen for Danny, and I think her gimmick is that she's got multiple personalities or something? She's definitely creepy, and Alice Eve manages to steal scenes in her brief bits. Colleen Wing does that whole nice friendly neighbourhood peacemaker thing in offering help for the bunch of random thugs that attacked the restaurant in the previous episode.

Also, see how much nicer and mystical K'un Lun ends up being when it's not just a blurry old man in a vaguely-maybe-Chinese stage? We get an actual proper fighting hall and while it's not as impressive as it should be, it's at least not just a blurry, badly-rendered dojo.

The two big storylines in this episode are definitely Danny and Colleen going to try to investigate and prevent the Hatchets/Tigers gang war from spinning out of control, with Danny talking unsuccessfully to recurring character Hai-Qing Yang, and Colleen managing to get through via Yang's wife, who coincidentally is a major player in Colleen's community shelter. And tragically, just as Yang was about to have a proper sit down for the sake of peace, the fact that he reneges on the deal with Davos causes him to get eliminated by the Steel Serpent.

Joy and Davos, meanwhile, go off to an auction for antiquities in order to obtain some presumably magical bowl, and Joy stops Davos from stabbing the auctioneer in the neck and instead manages to convince Davos to... seduce the lady? By just glowering and letting the lady strip him? Okay, yeah. I'm genuinely not sure what the fuck that was all about. I'm also not quite sure just why Davos is going on with all this. S'weird, especially since the final scene of the episode shows that he has some magic kung fu pressure point near-instant death finger poke skill that he used to kill Yang.

Overall, though, it's got a lot of weaker moments and some obviously filler moments, but it doesn't want to make me whack my face against my desk the way the first season does.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The bowl that Joy and Davos are attempting to acquire is noted to come from the Erskine collection, presumably a reference to... dr. Abraham Erskine from Captain America: The First Avenger? I'm not familiar with the comic-book version of the character, but I genuinely find it rather surprising that this WWII-era scientist apparently collected presumably K'un-Lun flavoured artifacts.
• The getup worn by Danny and Davos (yellow mask, white clothes) resembles Iron Fist's white costume from the comics.
• Hai-Qing Yang's brief alliance with Danny against the Hand in Iron Fist's first season is brought up. Yang and his Hatchets gang have shown up in both Iron Fist's first season and Luke Cage's second season. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E03 Review: Masters of Evil - Civil War

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 3: Acts of Vengeance

Well, this is a surprisingly darker episode! We get a proper follow-up to the Masters of Evil subplot that was sort of dropped halfway through the season one finale -- and with all the Loki and Nine Realms stuff going on, it's not hard to see why the storywriters decided to drop the Masters of Evil. Some clarification on the part of the two main players -- Zemo and Enchantress -- would definitely be far more preferable during the season one finale, though, for sure. The simple answer to their predicament, though, is that they've all survived... but the Enchantress is not happy. And it's an interesting nod to Zemo and Enchantress's dynamic throughout season one. Sure, Zemo might posture and call all the shots, but ultimately at the end of the day the entire group was just brought together as pawns by the Enchantress.

A very angry Enchantress, at this point, who is pretty dang pissed that Zemo did the whole "tried to betray her" thing. And as this episode starts off, the Enchantress and the Exeuctioner (who now dual-wields shotguns!) are going around hunting down every single member of the Masters of Evil, straight-up killing them off one by one as she works her way up the ladder. Well, maybe not kill them outright -- still a cartoon meant for kids, after all -- but god damn if the scenes that showed the Enchantress doing horrible things to the villains aren't pretty final-looking until some character off-handedly notes that "yeah, they're still alive. In a sense."

The one we get to spend the most time with is poor Chemistro, who's just a costumed dude in a gun, and gets turned into pure gold by the Enchantress as an 'ironic' death. We also get to see the aftermath of poor Living Laser, who is trapped in a weird, nightmarish 'frozen' form that seems to be mid-transmission. And then we get to see an encounter between the Enchantress and Arnim Zola. Poor Doughboy dies, and Arnim Zola is last seen smashed onto the ceiling and we never actually get the confirmation that "he's alive, kinda" by anyone in the cast.

The remaining Masters of Evil -- although at this point it's basically just Zemo, Abomination and Wonder Man -- end up asking the Avengers for protection. Iron Man is happy to build up a plan that involves using Zemo as bait to lure the Enchantress into some magic-nullifying device. Hulk is just happy to punch the Abomination in the face, leading to a fun background event while the big boys scheme and parley. There's actually a darkly hilarious bit at this point when Zemo reveals that he's left Crimson Dynamo to literally buy some time with his life to distract the Enchantress and Executioner. What's a team for, right? Iron Man and Hawkeye end up going off to some ice-covered wasteland to rescue Dynamo, and we get some of my favourite action scenes in this episode.

The episode's heavy with character moments, too, with a nice bit of Black Panther and Wonder Man continuing their talk about how Wonder Man could definitely try and be good and not rely on Zemo, especially since the Avengers are offering an alternative. Zemo himself also gets a fair bit of character moments, with Zemo agreeing to be used as bait only so long as Captain America is the one holding the trigger, noting that his old nemesis is the only one honourable enough to do so. Of course, Zemo didn't quite reckon with the fact that Captain America has been replaced with a green-skinned shape-shifting alien, but how would he be able to know? The Enchantress arrive, and while the other Avengers manage to hold back the Executioner, Amora ends up confronting Zemo... and SkrullCap refuses to actually rescue Zemo.

This ends up with Zemo to pull out his last resort -- the ninth Norn Stone, corresponding to Muspelheim, something that scares even the Enchantress. And while SkrullCap isn't quite happy to assist Zemo, the arrival of Iron Man, Hawkeye and Dynamo end up turning the tides in the good guys' favour. The Enchantress is subdued... but Zemo immediately orders the Masters of Evil to attack the Avengers. That is honestly kinda dumb, considering the Enchantress isn't fully subdued, but I guess Zemo's super-disappointed that Captain America has changed? Also there's the interesting bit where Crimson Dynamo doesn't actually betray Zemo even though Zemo basically left him to die.

The resulting firefight ends up freeing the Enchantress, and throughout the ensuing scuffle, we get the unexpected heroic sacrifice by Wonder Man, who straight-up blows up and seems to take out both the Norn Stone and the Enchantress with him. It's a final, heroic act by Wonder Man, and it's genuinely surprising for me to learn that Wonder Man actually dies in this episode and doesn't reform (in both meanings of the word) later in the series. Zemo, meanwhile, gets a brief acknowledgement with SkrullCap that he's not the man he once knew before being bopped in the head.

Oh, and by the way, there's a brief scene earlier in the episode showing Thor and Heimdall reacting to the Seal of Realms being broken, causing Thor to be unable to join the battles on Earth. This seems to just be a handwave and some ominous foreshadowing, which ends up ending up being relevant to the final scene of this episode -- the Enchantress being held in the palm of the Fire Giant Surtr of Muspelheim, the only realm that Loki did not list in his conquest in season one, and the bringer of Ragnarok for any of you that know about Norse mythology (or Marvel mythology).

Great stuff in this episode, lots of great character moments, some of the most exciting fights I've seen in a while, and it even leads with introducing a bigger threat for the future! This does mark the end of the Masters of Evil as a group, though, as the second season moves towards bigger things in the Marvel universe, and while I'm glad for the rising stakes, I admit that I'll miss the fun competent-Team-Rocket-esque quality of the Masters of Evil. 

Iron Fist S02E01 Review: Danny Bland

Iron Fist, Season 2, Episode 1: The Fury of Iron Fist

Mmm, I was initially unsure if I was going to do just a single review for the entirety of Iron Fist season two, or if I would do it per episode... and then I watched the first episode and realized that there was no way I was going to watch it all in a single sitting (or several sittings, anyway). The thing is that without other characters to play off of, the character of Iron Fist as he is in Marvel's Netflix series is pretty shit. Finn Jones is an amazingly charismatic actor and probably the only reason why the character feels like a bumbling idiot with a huge inflated sense of ego, but ultimately with a good heart instead of a pompous jerkwad. I could be here all day shit-talking Iron Fist's first season and how badly it's stacked up -- if I ever bother to revisit the first season of Iron Fist I would have a lot more vitriol and a lot stronger language to throw in this show's way. 

And honestly, as someone who was outright offended by the sheer lack of cultural insensitivity that Iron Fist's first season has, the news about a change in direction and Finn Jones' performance in both Defenders and Luke Cage has caused me to give this show a second chance...

And... and it's still pretty fucking bland. No, it's nowhere as mind-bogglingly banal as the first season, thank god, but it's honestly nothing particularly new. The fact that we're actually going back to Danny's utterly insipid self-indulgent attempts to balance "something that matter" and working as a high-ranking member of Rand Industries that doesn't want or care to learn about the responsibilities that it entails and just brainlessly throw in the towel with any decision that 'feels' good honestly isn't something that is a charming trait at all. No wonder poor Ward Meachum has to go to therapy! (The Meachums are also a lot less bizarre than their first season counterparts, definitely a plus)

At least this time around, the show seems to want to challenge that aspect of Danny Rand, accepting huge responsibilities like being the main shareholder of Rand Industries or the bearer of the Iron Fist without actually doing anything meaningful about it and kind of running around being naive. So kudos for that. And seeing Danny actually struggle to maintain the idealistic lifestyle is a lot far easier to root for than the moron we've seen in season one that throws tantrums whenever everything totally doesn't go the way he wants to. 

The show quickly establishes that the power vacuum left by the hand has caused the gangs and triads to get more brutal in enforcing protection money, with the return of recurring minor villains the Hatchet gang. We also get a subplot starring Colleen Wing discovering a mysterious box with her family sigil on it, and her search for answers ended up throwing her and Danny smack dab in the middle of the triad war. 

The other plotline is the vague thing that Davos and Joy Meachum are cooking up. Joy buys out of Rand Industries, with the ever-gullible Danny falling for it (and presumably going to be punished for it, yay!) while Davos is going around beating up Hatchet goons and shit-talking the air of corruption in New York City. Davos ends up meeting up Danny at the end of the episode, getting a conversation about Danny, again, abandoning his post and leading to K'un Lun to be destroyed. Thank god the writers actually allowed Davos to actually sound reasonable instead of just twisting the not-Danny side to just being "but you kill people, so you are evil FULL STOP". 

Oh, and there's this one photographer lady that kind of gets a scene with Danny, and then gets another scene where she goes insane. Totally going to be important in some way. 

There's definitely improvements in a lot of things -- we're thrown straight into the story instead of spending an episode in an asylum for no goddamn reason at all. The action scenes look a lot better from the brief kung fu bit we have between Davos and Danny, and the bit with Danny punching a truck at the beginning of the episode is definitely welcome after the first season of Iron Fist went for an utter tragedy of the "less is more" approach. Both Colleen and Davos are definitely a lot more intriguing than Danny, though, and I still feel that's easily the weakest part of the show. Still, it has a wee bit more potential than I would've given it credit for... but it's still the first episode. So. 

One Piece 918 Review: Gravestones

One Piece, Chapter 918: Luffytaro Repays the Favor

Apologies for the lateness of the manga reviews -- I've been super sick these past few days, which is why things haven't been updating properly. Good thing I've got some episodes of Overlord and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes ready!

Anyway, chapter 918 of One Piece is.... it's okay, although it's kind of a "things happen" chapter. After Luffy one-shots Holdem, things just got of kind of haywire and chaotic, with Luffy and O-Tama managing to take control of Speed by feeding her one of Tama's mochi balls. I'm not sure if this is just a gag of how weird Speed personally is, or if Tama's balls will  actually work on all Zoan-type Devil Fruits... or at least artificial Smiles. 

Also interesting is the brief but pretty cool confrontation between Hawkins and Law. We get hints of Law's "plan", which, of course, has been shot all to hell as one of said plan's objectives is to not take down Holdem. We also get Hawkins basically realizing who Law is immediately by the tattoos and the power. We get a cool bit of Law teleporting himself next to Hawkins within the Room, Hawkins deflecting the damage, but that's about it before Law breaks off the fight to meet up with Luffy and Zoro and get pretty angry. 

We then get Luffy and Zoro giving the food and a bunch of clean water to the villagers, and the brief return of that one Smile dude that's got a gigantic bunny face made out of his manly beard. We get a bunch of Tama being reminded of Ace any time she sees Luffy does a cool thing. This segment of the Wano arc seems to be drawing into a close, with Luffy and company attracting a whole lot of attention from Jack and/or Kaido to set up whatever else is to come. 

Law then steers the plot into far more interesting things after we've wet out feet with this starter quest, and notes that they're going to go to the ruins of Oden's Castle, where they are going to meet, and I quote, the "ghosts of the Wano country", where apparently there are gravestones of Kouzuki Oden, Kouzuki Momonosuke, Kin'emon, Kanjuro, Raizo and a bunch of others... so are the people we've been meeting all these while ghosts of some sort? Or did they just fake their deaths? The former feels a wee bit too ludicrous of a plot twist if not done properly, and the latter feels like such a bland one that it doesn't really even count as a cliffhanger. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E02 Review: I Am Iron Man?

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 2: Alone Against AIM

A bit of an interesting episode that focuses a fair bit more on Iron man. Apparently AIM, now led by some bloke called the Scientist Supreme, survived the battle against Hydra in the previous season, and now seeks vengeance towards Iron Man! They seek vengeance against Tony Stark, who, in turn, is without his armour as he takes meetings with Pepper Potts, his shareholders and later on with Maria Hill. It's a fun bit as Stark shows off his swagger and his devil-may-care attitude, but at the same time it's also clear that he's not the best at multi-managing, because he's definitely super-distracted about the meetings and is far more interested in creating the hard-light shield for (Skrull!) Captain America. We get a rare appearance from Pepper where she admonishes Tony for being so distracted, and again by Maria Hill, who's mellowed out since her last appearance and isn't in "arrest everyone on sight" mode... but still demands that the Avengers work for SHIELD.  

It's at this point, though, that AIM decides to strike. The Scientist Supreme unleashes some monstrous robot-worm-eel-lamprey thing called the Technovore that exists only to devour Stark's reactor technology, who goes absolutely wild, while AIM takes Pepper and the rest of the Stark board members hostage. It's definitely interesting that the ones doing this to Tony isn't some huge big-name villain like Loki, the Mandarin or Thanos, but just a bunch of lowly AIM mooks, a decision that I'm sure was deliberate. 

And if a bunch of the supporting cast weren't around, it'd actually be pretty bad for Tony and his company. Maria Hill and Tony Stark end up mounting enough of a resistance against the Technovore with guns and the hard-light Captain America shield, whereas Black Panther and Skrull-Cap are visiting Colonel Rhodey... who dons his War Machine armour for the first time in this series and unleashes an insane amount of explosions. Again, it's pretty interesting that Skrull-Cap is definitely playing along with everything for a while, and is being genuinely heroic and helpful... but the audience is just anticipating for the shoe to drop. 

Meanwhile, Stark and Hill end up figuring AIM's plan in no small part thanks to Pepper being a badass hostage, and the two work their way to escape the Technovore and get to the main AIM soldiers. We do get a fun bit when the Technovore gets distracted by the War Machine suit coming online, leaving Stark behind to go after poor Rhodey. Iron Man suits up, SkrullCap gets a new mighty shield, and they blow up the Technovore by having it feed on the central arc reactor of the building. AIM's Scientist Supreme gets his ass handed to him by Pepper, again, as a badass hostage, and after all the talk about how AIM has obtained all of Stark industries' data... it falls into SkrullCap's hands. Interesting, since we never see SkrullCap give it back to any of the good guys. Is this the evil thing that SkrullCap's going to do this episode? Or is it just a red herring?

In either case, though, the focus of this episode is still definitely Tony Stark and humanizing him, and getting him to see Maria Hill's point -- which is a lot more sane now that she's actually having a proper conversation with Stark instead of just frothing at the mouth demanding they REGISTER. The two at least respect each other a lot more now, but neither are going to budge on the whole registration deal, which will  lead to a very different Civil War if we're ever  going to adopt that comic book arc. Overall, definitely a better outing for Maria Hill than her previous outing. It's overall a bit of a lower-stakes episode, honestly, but definitely one that was well-scripted and animated. 

Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E01 Review: Bow Before Doom

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 1: The Private War of Dr. Doom

Welcome to our coverage of the second season of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! I covered the first season a couple of months back, and it's time for the second season... and boy, what a pretty huge episode to start off, huh? Living in a time where some parts of the live-action Marvel universe are semi-exorcised from each other, it's genuinely easy for me to forget that the Fantastic Four -- and their infamous nemesis, Dr. Doom -- were once the headliners of the Marvel Universe. Right now they're just sort of famous for having pretty bad live-action adaptations. But my first real exposure to the larger world of the Marvel comics (outside of Spider-Man and the X-Men) is the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance video game, and that's a video game that starred a whole lot of Dr. Doom. And he was gloriously hammy as all get-out. As much as I don't really care that much about the Fantastic Four, I was a huge, huge fan of Dr. Doom. He's a dude in a suit of armour and a hood! He's the ruler of a country! His design is pretty damn badass, and his name is legally Victor von Doom. Yeah, that's the sort of name that makes you obliged to speak in the third person, isn't it?

With that little fanboying session out of the way, though, this episode is pretty neat. It serves as a bit of a re-introduction to the Avengers, and also notes that two Avengesr are absent -- Thor's stayed behind in Asgard, which is pretty understandable, but apparently no one's heard from Ant-Man in weeks. The rest of the team doesn't seem to mind, though. Hawkeye, Hulk, Black Panther and Captain America are happy to just play poker with the Thing and Human Torch. And, yes, we do get a pretty damn cool guest-star episode which involves a significant portion of the cast just playing cards. Oh, and lest we forget, Captain America is now a Skrull -- he's swapped his costume for a more modernized version (the "Ultimate" version, I believe, is the proper term?) with more muted colours, and he's trying to cover by 'forgetting' some aspects of the other superheroes.

Meanwhile, Iron Man and the Wasp head over to the Baxter Building where Tony flirts with the Invisible Woman before having a fairly long talk about science with Reed Richards, who is as distracted and distant as ever, but ends up delivering some of the episode's best snarky lines. It's also fun to see Wasp and Invisible Woman sort of trade some girl talk before the inevitable supervillain attack happens. 

Dr. Doom's Doombots attack both Avengers Mansion and the Baxter Building, but practically everyone realizes that it's nothing but a distraction. We do get some pretty fun superhero smashy-smash, including a fun sequence of Reed using his elongated body to crush some Doombots, and Hulk using the Thing as a bludgeon to beat up some robots. And as the Doombots turn into bombs that threaten to blow up the city, Dr. Doom's lieutenant Lucia von Bardas (who showed up in season one's premiere!) kidnaps Wasp and Invisible Woman. 

After averting the crisis of the city-bomb, we then have a fun little discussion between the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, showing just how different the tone of both superhero teams are. Human Torch and Thing just wants to charge in and grab their allies back, because the Fantastic Four is a family first and a superhero team second. The Avengers? They have a bit of a cold feet thanks to the whole "we'll attack another sovereign nation and cause a war" deal. Of course our superheroes attack anyway -- Avengers EMH isn't that dark that they'd abandon two of their own to a supervillain -- but it's a neat sign of maturity.

We do get a fun little conversation between Wasp and Dr. Doom, where Wasp's taunts are just shut down in a pretty epic "stop embarrassing yourself" rant from Doom. Whatever Doom is trying to do as he scans Wasp and Invisible Woman isn't made clear until the final part of the episode, although the machines they're trapped in and the fact that, y'know, it's Dr. Doom does mean that everyone assumes the worst. The Avengers and Fantastic Four try to do a weird feint attack thing, but it eventually devolves into a brawl... a brawl that Dr. Doom surprisingly excels in, including a sequence where he straight-up boxes the Hulk and wins. Dr. Doom is absolutely victorious over both teams, despite Reed freeing the captured heroes, but then Doom lets them go.

The superheroes leave after a battle won, and to a majority of them it's just another superhero-vs-supervillain fight. But Reed has fought Doom for so long that he knows that everything Doom does has a reason. In this case, as the final scene shows Dr. Doom in his laboratory, we see that he already knows about the Skrull invasion enough to scan the heroes, and his scans tell us that Invisible Woman is a Skrull (and Wasp isn't, but we, the audience, already know who the infiltrator among the Avengers are). It actually plays in pretty beautifully to the chatter earlier in the episode, with "Susan" complaining to Wasp and Iron Man about Reed being distant, something that the two of them, familiar with Hank Pym, are predisposed to believe. But at the same time, Reed himself also mentions how distant Susan has been lately, and it's actually a neat clue to "Susan's" true identity.

Overall, while the episode sort of really serves up the "Dr. Doom is awesome" bandwagon, it's a decent enough opening sequence that sets up a far bigger universe that involves Marvel's other characters, as well as building up to the honestly quite interesting Skrull war. It is unfortunate that the cast members seem to take a hit with Thor and Ant-Man being absent, and Captain America technically being a Skrull, but we'll see if the payoff is worth it.

Kaiji S02E26 Review: Victory...?

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 26: The Future Is In Our Hands...

The final episode of Kaiji's second season is a fun enough conclusion. We get a scene of the Teiai company goons taking in Ichijou instead, and Kaiji, I guess, is a more decent person than I am because he tells Ichijou to "claw back up" and fight him again, Shonen-style, because he sees Ichijou as a rival and enough of a conniving asshole to survive the Teiai underground. Does this mean that Ichijou's going to be an Endou-style ally some time in the future? Eh.

The rest of the episode is the huge celebration of the 729 million yen that Kaiji, Endou and Sakazaki won, and a brief bit of accounting as we tick off all the hideously large amounts of debt that the three of them have. Kaiji pays his debt, Endou's loan and interest are paid back, and the money that Sakazaki took from the safe. I'm not quite sure why Kaiji doesn't immediately pay for the Forty-Fivers right then and there, though. I know why from a narrative standpoint, because we need it for the huge revelation and emotional moment at the end, but I felt like that was a weird sequence of events and it really clues me in that the story will sucker-punch me somehow.

Each of the three co-conspirators basically take back 189 million, and Kaiji gives this speech about how after he uses his share to pay for the rest of his friends in the underground, he plans to split the rest of his winnings equally because he's betting with all of his friends' money. Okay, then? Endou notes that Kaiji is too soft, Sakazaki goes through this whole drunken talk about telling Kaiji to take his daughter (like the season ending hallucination-sequence)...  and then Endou betrays them both, knocking them out with a sedative.

Surprisingly, though, Endou doesn't steal all the money,  because he's not that much of an asshole. He's enough of an asshole, though, to put in a stipulation in the deal that he had Kaiji sign in the bathroom a while back that entitles Endou to a huge chunk of Kaiji's money. Well... okay? As Endou notes in his letter, there really isn't much Kaiji can do to really complain about that, because they did sign an agreement and as douchey as it is, it is kind of something that Kaiji can't really complain about. Sakazaki just sort of backs away with his money to "return what he took" from his boss, but it's clear that Sakazaki doesn't want anything to do with Kaiji begging him for more money.

It's a nice enough plot twist to kick Kaiji and make this not a all sunshines ending while also not being too mean to him. Kaiji then goes on a "I have faith in humanity" bit, and tells the Teiai people to, of course, free the other Forty-Fivers... and then uses the rest of his meager money as well as the ones that the other Forty-Fivers have -- and only if they all agree -- to free Ishida Junior.

And then Kaiji loses the 100K yen he got to regular pachinko machines, which is just hilarious... and we get a fun little heartwarming moment as one of the random Teiai men in black gives Kaiji a brief loan so he can celebrate and eat some good food with freed friends. It's a nice way to end, and an optimistic enough and clean enough ending to close out this story, whether or not Kaiji gets a third season.

Overall, it's been a huge blast of a show, and I really enjoyed going through it. It's certainly a show that's outside of my normal comfort zone of tending to just watch fantasy and sci-fi shows and not really ever getting into "harder", pulpy fiction. This one's a fun series to watch! I'm not 100% sure how things will go for me, anime-wise. I've been watching a lot of Gundam but I don't think I have enough energy to review each episode of Iron-Blooded Orphans because there tends to be a bit too much to analyze in each episode. Maybe I'll do Overlord? Eh, we'll see.