One Piece 1028 Review: Dinosaurs Don't Work Like That

One Piece, Chapter 1028: Brachiosnakeus

Sometimes I wonder just how much fun it is to be in the same room as Eiichiro Oda when he thinks up of weird stuff like this. This chapter's really fun! The first two pages focuses on CP0, where Lucci talks with the still-unnamed CP0 guys on Wano about a contingency plan in case Kaido loses. In what's perhaps something that's easily a lesser priority compared to everything else going on, they know that a second dragon is rampaging around and it's a matter of time before they connect the dots with Vegapunk's missing artificial Devil Fruit. 

More importantly, though, we're getting the One Piece world of gunboat diplomacy, where the World Government's fleet is heading to Wano in order to place it under the Government's direct control. With a lot of people already getting parallels between Wano and the real-life Sakoku Edict of 1635, many people theorize that the Marines or Blackbeard will take the role of the USA to use force in order to open Wano to the rest of the world, but not by their own terms. In a way, this is a bigger 'tragedy', I feel, than just a simple loss to Kaidou in combat. 

Oh, and Lucci wants CP0 to bring back Nico Robin, because of course they do. Robin's up and about again, and Brook is with her, and... I don't know. Is this going to be Brook's huge moment? Because I really don't think we're going to get Enies' Lobby Redux, as much as the post-timeskip stories have been parallels to the pre-timeskip stories. 

Yamato, meanwhile, leaves Momonosuke to deal with the flame clouds all on his own, because she wants to go off and defuse the bombs in Onigashima. Not too much to say here, I feel, other than we get a full look of Yamato's beast mode.

The main part of this chapter, and easily the best part? Sanji's fight with Queen. We start off with pretty standard stuff -- Queen continues with his Brachio-pun attacks (none of which, I must say, translates easily into English). Lasers, Diable Jambe attacks, sword attacks... pretty basic stuff as far as these two characters are concerned. Queen is pretty intent on forcing Sanji to use the Germa 66 Raid Suit, and... I guess he wants to compare his own technology with that of Judge's? 

And then we have this, which Queen describes as "the true power of the ancient dinosaurs":

I dare any of you who claim that you didn't have to do a double-take on what the fuck is going on here. This makes helicopter Triceratops Sasaki look positively mundane in comparison. This makes pasta machine giraffe Kaku look pedestrian. Somehow (well, we know it's due to cybernetic enhancements) Queen is able to separate the entirety of his dinosaur spine from tail to neck and launch it like a goddamn snake to crush Sanji. 

And... and I have no words as to how ridiculous this whole thing is. Look at the reactions of everyone! Look at Marco and Izo -- those two travelled the world with Whitebeard, and even they have never seen such ridiculousness before. 

Queen's 'Brachiocoilus' attack causes his whole snake-body to crush Sanji, and apparently many masters of Armament Haki has fallen to this trick. And then... we get probably another comedic highlight in this fight, with Queen talking about how he has equipped his 'otherwise useless' brachio-body with brachio-launchers, which are triggered when he says the words 'brachio-launchers'... which means that his body missile-shoots Queen's head twice in quick succession.

God damn, this manga is dumb and I love it so much. 

The big revelation, of course, happens in the final two pages. Sanji's bones are utterly shattered and bent in terrifying angles, but he just flexes and everything snaps back into place, and when Queen swings a sword at him, the blade shatters. Sanji informs us that his own personal worst-case scenario has happened -- his latent 'modified human' genes or lineage factor or whatever term this setting substitutes for DNA has finally activated, and he's getting perhaps one of the biggest power-ups our heroes are getting. 

But you know what? Between the huge revelations of Sanji's modified human Kamen Rider body, the order to catch Nico Robin, Yamato's wolf form, the World Government about to annex Wano... none of those revelations can really top the sheer ridiculousness of the Brachiosnakeus. God bless this manga and how ridiculous it can get. 

One Piece 1027 Review: Dragon Wars

One Piece, Chapter 1027: An Unbelievable Disaster

Feeling a little burnt out in general, so I think I'll be taking things a bit slowly over the next couple of months. I still have some articles I have scheduled to pop up, and I think I'll still be doing the One Piece manga and some Kamen Rider stuff, but I think I want to sit down and just... enjoy some TV shows and video games without having to review them. I just figured that I'll tack this on here instead of making a whole new post of its own. I'll probably come back with some 'entire season' reviews of some shows I'm planning to watch.

Not sure about reviewing monsters -- none of the games I'm currently playing (am replaying Mass Effect 2 and experiencing Deus Ex for the first time) really has a particularly fun bestiary to talk about. 

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Anyway, this chapter picks up after the previous one, and it feels very much a set-up. It's kind of needed in-between larger hype chapters, of course. We check in a bit with the Minks, a little bit with the Luffy/Kaidou fight, and a bunch of other random places in Onigashima, but I really don't think there's a huge focus anywhere in this chapter. 

Turns out that Yamato's nowhere as closely matched with Kaido as the manga sets her up to be -- she's starting to feel the after-effects of Kaido's repeated Thunder Bagua attacks. I know that the power-scaling members of the fanbase is getting so much material to discuss with the whole Luffy/Kaido/Yamato trifecta, but I think the previous chapters have been pretty clear how Kaido still overpowers Yamato in terms of strength and skill.  

I do really like that Momonosuke still retains his child-like mind, and that the writer is really conscious how unrealistic it would be if Momonosuke suddenly became super-duper-badass like the adults after a literal magical shortcut. After all, it's just his body that got a growth spurt, not his mind. To really emphasize on the Luffy/Kaido 1-v-1, Yamato decides to protect Momonosuke while he goes off to hold Onigashima. Chunks of the chapter kind of function as Yamato acting as a tutorial for a dragon's flame-cloud walking ability. 

Yamato and Momonosuke observe that the floating Onigashima is beginning to crumble, noting that Kaido's powers and focus are weakening. And considering that not only has he fought non-stop throughout the battle (against the Scabbards, then against the five supernovas, then against Luffy, then against Yamato, then against Luffy/Yamato/Dragon-Momo) in addition to keeping the island up? I guess Kaido's stamina and durability are starting to slowly weaken. There's a neat discussion on the multiple different worst-case scenarios -- Yamato points out that if Kaido gets knocked out, Onigashima will plummet down onto the capital. And either way, Onigashima has enough gunpowder and explosives inside of it to cause one hell of an explosion even if the whole 'giant meteor' thing isn't enough. Of course, it's all just a bunch of set-up for Momonosuke's 'hour of legends', which the previous chapter has been pretty transparent about, but the elaboration is pretty neat. 

The rest of the chapter shows the King/Zoro fight, and I guess we're not going to get the tag-team as the previous chapter has kind of set up. We get to see King's hybrid form with his arms remaining as giant blade-like wings. Kind of reminds me of Rodan! Franky gets a bit of a brief cameo, but Zoro, of course, brushes off any help. King's just unleashing these giant air-blades all over the location, while Zoro manages to crack King's mask -- something that causes King to be furious. I admittedly don't particularly care all that much about the whole Lunarian thing, but I do like how it's slowly being teased and built up over King's numerous appearances.

They clash for a bit and we get a couple of named attacks, but ultimately the two of them end up outside of the giant dome -- King's mask is cracked enough to show some of his hair and forehead, while Zoro complains about nearly falling to his death, and how that kind of a 'stunt' is unforgivable. Pretty neat stuff, although I really do wish that we get a bit more out of King as a character in the next chapter. He's so much of a cipher, I really want to know what he's all about. 

One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 931-940

Yet another batch of episodes of my watch-through of the Wano arc of One Piece! Extremely enjoying this a lot, and, as I keep saying, I really do feel like the anime does actually feel like it adds so much to the very rapid pacing of the manga!

Again, it's less of a review of episodes, but more of me commenting on the differences of the manga and the anime and my reactions to the scenes that are extended and stuff. 

Episode 931:

• Knowing that we'll get the whole gladiatorial combat thing later on, it does admittedly make Babanuki and Daifugo stopping Luffy and Hyo's escape feel like extra-padding. It's the natural part of the story to extend, though, admittedly. 
• Also, because this is the One Piece anime, of course the other scene that got a fair chunk of screentime is the bath house scene... though they also use it to extend the backstories of Shinobu, Hyogoro and Fukurokuju, so it's not entirely for the benefit of fanservice.  
• Having actual scenes to flesh it out instead of one-off panels does make scenes like Law, Usopp and Franky hanging out with Tonoyasu; or Raizou's little side-plot, feel like they actually matter. 
• Zoro getting his sword stolen still felt tacked-on, though! You'd think that they would at least give us a short scene foreshadowing this. 

Episode 932:

• 
  Conqueror's Haki! It's already cool in the manga, but the anime definitely makes great use of bright red colours to really emphasize the impact of the ability. 
• Robin sprouting an eye in Shinobu's hair is such a cool little usage of her ability. 
• Oh, right, Drake has a weakness for naked people. We all do, Drake, we all do. He didn't even see Nami naked, unlike Hawkins and Sanji!
• Drake and Hawkins also fanboy over Germa 66's Stealth Black. They added little blush effects on their cheeks! It's fucking adorable is what it is. SASUGA STEALTH BLACK!
• Bepo, Shachi and Penguin being captured is also a scene that I felt like the anime could've actually shown. 
• It's thematic and the animation is pretty, but I felt like Luffy having a flashback to his fight with Kaidou went on for t a bit too long. 

Episode 933:

• The voice actors for Big Mom and Tama, and the animation team, really try their best to make their scene work, but honestly, compared to the Luffy-in-the-prison or Zoro-vs-Gyukimaru story, the episode felt so much less interesting when they are exploring this side of the story. Still not a huge fan of how the amnesiac Big Mom bit played out, for sure. 
• That frog's eyeball animation did crack me up. 
• The anime brings back Batman and Gazelleman from earlier in the arc as participants in the Sumo Inferno, and we get another reminder of the Gifters subgroup. Pretty cool addition, for sure! It's exactly this sort of filler action scene where our heroes get to show off a bit more against named but ultimately inconsequential characters. 
• The fight against the two Gifters also shows Luffy more explicitly trying to mimic Rayleigh's scene from Ruskaina where he knocks down an elephant-beast with Armament Haki. 
• You really have to feel sorry for Zoro! He won Shusui fair and square, but how do you even explain the whole concept of Gekko Moria's Kage Kage no Mi to people in Wano?
• God damn Ryuma one-shotting that dragon in that flashback is a very pretty shot. 
• We get an extra bit of emphasis when Gyukimaru talks about how Shusui is forged as a black blade, and Zoro flashes back to Dressrosa when he used Armament Haki on his swords to cut down Mountain Pica. 
• Kamazou vs Zoro, part one! Yeah, the animators really loved this scene. The dynamic and manic expressions for Kamazou in particular are nice, but they really got a bunch of extra budget for the flying sword-slashes. 

Episode 934:

• 
  Zoro vs. Kamazou! This was the fight a lot of my friends showed me to get me to basically sit down and decide to properly watch the Wano arc of the anime. Such a beautiful fight.
• So Kamazou can create tornadoes with his scythes! That's not something he did in the manga!
• Some really nice black-and-white effects with only red blood when Kamazou stabs Zoro in the shoulder. Very old-school samurai movie!
• Also, the colour turning red when we zoom into Zoro's grin? Beautiful. 
• Zoro exploding with purple aura when he bites down on the scythe for a 'three sword style'? With the glowing eye? Marvelous. And then when everything just explodes when Zoro says "RENGOKU!"
• There is admittedly a lot of explosions that turn the terrain into giant cubes, but god damn if it didn't make the impact of Zoro's finishing slice look so badass.
• There's a slight usage of brief black-and-white-ing that the Wano team like a lot in action scenes, and it looks pretty cool, too.
• Why, yes, I am fanboying over this fight.
• It's a lot more obvious in the anime that Kamazou is giggling like a lunatic. I'm not sure if back in 2019 or whatever I pieced together that Kamazou has some sort of connection to Toko, Yasu and the rest of the laughing people in Ebisu. But I guess thanks to the pacing of the manga these side-characters really didn't have time to really settle in my head in their first appearances. 
• Luffy gets to fight a giant green bear Gifter with the face of a cute plush-toy bear called Bearman. He's original to the anime, I believe! His human face is within the plush-like bear mouth. 
• The music in this episode to play as the background for the Zoro and Luffy fights back-to-back is also quite a banger!
• Presumably to save budget on the fight scene, this episode did noticeably have a lot of flashbacks that play out a bit longer than they should -- showing Hawkins and Drake fanboying over Germa 66; Sanji peeking on the girls; as well as Kyoshiro slicing Komurasaki. It's thematic to the scenes, sure, but it's also kind of noticeable. 

Episode 935:

• Luffy fights Alpacaman and Armadilloman here! It's something that happens in the manga, too, but here it's extended and the two even get a little combination technique. 
• I genuinely forgot that this Sumo Inferno thing actually foreshadows Queen being a horrible boss who doesn't care about his subordinates. I kept remembering it as Queen just being a melodramatic villain who just likes sadistic entertainment, but this episode makes it absolutely clear that Queen knows damn well that people like Alpacaman and Madilloman stand no chance against Luffy. 
• Alpacaman is given Armament Haki spit in the anime. Okay, sure, I guess all the Gifters can use rudimentary Armament Haki in the anime? I don't know. It's kind of different when they're giving it to random Gifters compared to, say, Big Mom's children or whoever...
• Madilloman has a cute little armadillo that sprouts out of the back of his head and protects his skull. That's so adorable.
• The return of Usopp's Toad Oil! Even Zoro is amused. 
• New opening! This is the infamously spoiler-heavy one. Like... good lord, I think the opening spoiled some stuff that isn't even out in the manga at the time of airing, didn't it? 

Episode 936:

• Don't really have much to say about this episode, it's mostly just a relatively faithful adaptation of the events as they take place in the manga. I guess they added more blatant foreshadowing to the 'Oden in a pot' thing, and actually showed scenes of what would eventually be the Oden flashback, but otherwise... 
• God damn Kawamatsu's backstory is depressing. Like, I get that everything turned out okay in the end, but god damn, how terrible must he have felt when Hiyori disappeared?

Episode 937:

• Some neat (I think) anime-exclusive Gifters briefly show up to get beaten up by Luffy after he defeats Madillo-man. 
• They really didn't give Yasu too many additional scenes, but I really do feel like he has so much more of a presence in the anime. Maybe it's because I know what's going to happen so I know he's important? Or maybe it's just the anime expanding his scenes. Either way. 
• I still really find Shinobu and Kanjurou's "um, we don't actually know who he is." moment very funny. 
• That is an unreasonably epic animation of Conqueror's Haki that Luffy just used to knock out the guards. 
• Luffy blindly trusting Caribou and Caribou being super-paranoid that "it's too easy, wtf is this a trap" is also pretty fun.
• Ah yes, Caribou gives Luffy food with his swamp-swamp fruit powers. Sound familiar? 

Episode 938:

• We briefly get a scene of Yasu being interrogated by Fukurokuju, who realizes his true identity when his hair spills out. Not too important, but I felt like it makes the sequence of events flow so much better. 
• I never noticed it when I read the manga, but, yeah, Orochi realizing that Tonoyasu is alive would definitely cause him to freak out, huh? If Tonoyasu's alive, the chances that all the Scabbards are alive too would cause him to really piss his pants. 
• The anime makes it a bit more clear that Kyoshiro going along with Orochi's plan with a smile is actually not something that he does happily, and that he's actually seething inside. It does make his allegiance a bit more transparent this early on, but it also makes him retroactively more sympathetic. 
• Holdem's group fighting against Ashura Doji's bandits and the Minks witnessing this does, again, add a bit more of an oomph to this side-plot of the Minks causing these two factions to fight each other. Didn't expect Holdem to actually get an action scene, too, using his chainsword thing to burn Atamayama to the ground. Kind of a good usage of an earlier fodder villain by the anime staff, actually!

Episode 939:

• We get some early-bird cameo of Oden in Yasu's flashbacks, and... it's definitely a lot more clear what he looks like and what his colour scheme is. On the other hand, though, it's not like revealing most of Oden's appearance a bit earlier realistically changes too much. 
• They obviously don't do anything significant, but we get to see Usopp, Nami and Robin help out the Ebisu Town villagers in taking down a bunch of the guards so they can get to the town square. Neat that they're being heroic!
  

Episode 940:

• The plotline actually went a bit too quickly in the manga, but giving more time for the other sub-plots (like the Ashura Doji one, Komurasaki's reveal and Luffy's prison training) to breathe makes the Yasu story actually hit so much more just how smart of a move Yasu basically making a fool out of Orochi is throughout his entire speech -- really makes for a good excuse as to why he could discredit Orochi as being a paranoid. 
• I never realized that the people carrying Orochi's palanquins are all satyr-style Gifters. 
• Yeah, that shot of Oden when Yasuie recites the poem is pretty much just a full-on reveal of what he looks like. 
• God damn Yasu's death was very well-animated. It's censored, obviously, since it's modern One Piece, but I feel like the red background that constantly glitches in and out as Yasu fades in and out of consciousness, plus how limp Yasu's hands slowly become, pack more of a punch compared to the alternative, which would be some half-assed censorship. The petals are a clever way of actually showing Yasu being shot without actually visually showing it.
• Considering how blatant they were in showing past Oden, it's a bit weird that Denjiro's just a Detective Conan style black silhouette, and Kawamatsu's a hilarious doodle. 
• (Oh, hey, Izo! You're in the flashback!)
• Yeah, Yasu's death is a lot more emotional here. More than any other death in this arc, I really, really hope that Yasu's is permanent. 
• As expected, all the people from Ebisu Town laughing at Yasu's execution while being actually sad and terrified is so much more unsettling in the anime. They didn't go particularly over-the-top with it, but the effect's definitely there. 

This is a nice place to stop off, I think! I think I'll do 10-15 episodes at a time for these One Piece watch-throughs, so that it's a bit tidier in the titles. 

Kamen Rider Revice E01-04 Review

Kamen Rider Revice, Episodes 1-4

Okay, yeah. New year, new Kamen Rider show. I... I didn't realize that Revice is also an anniversary show, so it has homages to previous Rider designs in its forms -- although not quite as blatantly done as Decade or Zi-O. To prevent burning out too much, I basically decided to take a step back and do batch reviews of the third entry in the Reiwa era of Kamen Rider shows, so these will be a lot shorter and less in-depth than my previous forays into show reviews. 

Episode 1: Family! Contract! The Devil Whispers!

As with most Kamen Rider shows, the first episode is really intent on making a bombastic first impression. And I do feel like this quasi-sci-fi vibe fits the franchise a lot more compared to the very fantasy-based Saber? Anyway, it's a mixture of tropes we've seen before in Kamen Rider -- the bad guys are unleashed from Kuuga-esque enigmatic ruins (this time from South America), while the Rider technology is developed by a secret science-quasi-military organization called Fenix, who had been combatting the monsters.. They even have their own Helicarrier! We also very quickly see the Deadmans' leaders -- a trio of colourful peeps who dress in Mexican outfit that, uh, work in some sort of nightclub? All of this information is given to us over the course of less than three minutes, which has got to be some sort of record in exposition. 

The rest of the episode involves the introduction of our main character and his quirky, loud family, who runs a hot springs. Our main character Igarashi Ikki is the eldest son, and... okay, I really didn't care too much for any of the loud comedy between the Igarashis and their customers, but I also started off disliking Hiden Aruto's jokes and really loved him at the end of the show, so maybe it'll grow on me. More importantly, Ikki's younger brother Daiji is promoted to being a captain in Fenix, which is where the two sides of the cast are conjoined. Throughout it all, though, Ikki keeps seeing a mysterious, floating 'inner demon', Vice. Vice is going to be our Momotaros equivalent, although he's not as instantly-nice as Momotaros is. 

During a huge ceremony held by Fenix that celebrates the promotion of their new members (including Daiji), we get a bit more exposition about the Vistamps, only for the Deadmans to attack. One of the Fenix commanders attempts to use the Revice Driver, but the Driver rejects him and instead creates a new monster. Daiji also gets cold feet at using the Driver. Which, of course, is where our hero comes in. Vice quickly rattles off how Ikki needs to make a contract with him to save his family (Ikki's mom actually gets tossed around and bloodied up a little!) but when Ikki's contract causes Vice to manifest in the real world, he proceeds to get ready to consume Ikki's mother himself. I actually really like this -- I'm sure Vice will be lovable later down the line, but I'm happy that he's actually nominally evil in the beginning. 

So, of course, Ikki uses the belt to transform -- Ikki turns into Kamen Rider Revi, and Vice turns into Kamen Rider Vice. They're pink! The fight is pretty high-quality, although all first episodes always are. We quickly establish some ground rules, like how Vice will die if Ikki dies. We get the two Kamen Riders using their new weapon, Vice apparently likes to make fourth-wall-breaking jokes, and they do a double-stamping kick to blow up the Rex and Mammoth Deadmans... but afterwards, Ikki immediately gives back the Driver, not wanting to have anything to do with the crazy superhero world. 

I actually like this twist a lot -- that for the first couple of episodes, Ikki really doesn't want anything to do with all this nonsense. I don't think we ever really had a reluctant main Kamen Rider outside of Faiz? But while everything did feel a bit rushed and all the side-characters do feel like ciphers, I do like the dynamic between Ikki and Vice, and how they're not actually buddies by the end of the first episode, but are more like reluctant allies. Pretty neat. 

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Episode 2:The Devil is Just a Bad Guy!?

The main conflict of this episode is whether Ikki wants to actually become a Kamen Rider or not -- and, understandably, he still is very leery of Vice. We do get something that we haven't really seen too much of in the past couple of series, in a victim-of-the-week whose negative desires end up being the catalyst for a monster creation. Olteca of the Deadmans ends up escalating the conflict between an aggressive golfer and his caddie, causing the creation of the Kamakiri and Megalodon Deadmans over the course of the episode. 

Ikki is very much reluctant to sign the contract that Daiji brings to him, but when someone is in trouble, the brothers go out to help. Except, of course, the team-up between Ikki and Vice are... not very smooth, shall we say. Vice tries to attack bystanders halfway through the fight and later also ends up egging the golfer victim on, and it's only with the aid of a power-up device -- the Eagle Vistamp -- that Ikki is able to drag Vice back into fighting alongside him. The Eagle Vistamp transforms both Riders into a new form (based on Kamen Rider W), which proceeds to combine into... well, a rather terrible 'eagle' form that's obviously just two men stacked on top of each other. At multiple points in the fight the CGI is blindingly obvious. 

In the final fight of this episode Ikki outright rebuffs Daiji and Vice, fighting Deadman grunts without transforming, essentially refusing to use his transformation powers if it means that innocents will get hurt. Vice ends up getting so frustrated at seeing Ikki get harmed that he makes a contract with Ikki to not hurt humans -- a bit of a simpler way to force the evil teammate to do good things, but eh. This time, they turn into a bad CGI T-Rex that's still obviously two men stacked on each other. At least the rex does a rider stamp? 

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Episode 3: Hostage Trouble, What To Do Brother!? 

This one focuses a bit more on Daiji, which I do like a lot -- he's essentially upstaged by his older brother in terms of being able to protect the world from the Deadmans, but Ikki is extremely reluctant to actually do the whole superheroing business. Their younger sister Sakura and her friend Ayaka gets kidnapped by the villain-of-the-week, a hired gun who wants to use Ayaka to demand random from her rich mother. All this is done thanks to the plan of the Deadman Julio, a.k.a. the hat one. 

I do like just how utterly angry Ikki is throughout this episode -- he's so pissed that his family is being hurt! We do get a bunch of neat action sequences, but ultimately the focus of the episode are Daiji and Sakura. While Ikki and Vice mostly just fights the bad guys, Daiji struggles with what he can do to protect his little sister -- though I'm a bit baffled that he manages to teleport from the hostage situation to the Not-Helicarrier and then back again in the timespan of Revice fighting against Julio. 

Daiji's solution is to actually hand over a Vistamp. And when the bad guys betray them, Daiji tosses a new power-up to Ikki. This is the Mammoth Vistamp, representing Kamen Rider Den-O. They sure turn into a CGI mammoth on CGI train tracks. Meanwhile, Sakura manages to escape from her bonds all on her own, karate-beatdownsthe hired gun, and escape with Ayaka. Unfortunately, all of this ends up building up Daiji's own self-image issues, because it really didn't feel like a victory for the middle sibling. Nice usage of the side-characters. 

There's a bit of a weird, irrelevant subplot of someone trying to buy and demolish the Igarashi bathhouse? Didn't care about that. Did like the obvious but well-done twist that the hired gun isn't the actual Deadman 'host', but it's the angry Ayaka, who's full of resentment against her mother. Typical Sentai/Rider twist, but it's done well. 

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Episode 4: Not Enough Love! A Dangerous Devil is Born! 

Probably the episode that got me sitting down and going "well, Revice is really off to a great start". One of the biggest problems that I had with many of the newer Kamen Rider shows is that the main character often-times feels... flat. Like, okay, generically heroic, protecting everyone's dreams or smiles and whatnot. (Aruto's probably the one exception to this among most recent riders) There are exceptions to this, of course, but generally? Yeah. But I really do like how Revice plays with the twist of an old formula of conflict from Faiz... the hero doesn't really care about being a Kamen Rider, not really. And this episode doesn't quite have a perfectly written conclusion (everything does end up a bit convenient) but Daiji's argument with Ikki does really make a lot of sense. Ikki's happy-go-lucky nature and his 'bathhouse first' laid-back mentality drives Daiji up the wall because, well, Ikki's the only person that can transform and protect people from the Deadmans. Toss in some internalized projecting on Daiji's part because he can't transform and is basically treated as an errand boy, and the conflict between the brothers is actually well done. Some pretty great raw-emotion acting, too. 

Admittedly, I really do think that the episode does make Daiji's faults a bit more prominent compared to Ikki's, but perhaps that's because I agree with Daiji's point-of-view a lot more. 

The main villain of the story follows up well from episode 3, with Sakura's friend Ayaka being the true host of the Kong Vistamp, and Aguilera and her cronies are trying to set her up as one of many sacrifices to unseal their lord Gifu. Again, the familial conflict here is really well-done, and conflicts very neatly with Ikki/Daiji's own sibling rivalry without being a way-too-obvious parallel. Ayaka's story as the unfavourite of two daughters is done amazingly well in the relatively short period of time she shows up in, and you can believe that her frustrations would cause her to snap and become a full-on monster after her mother literally brushes off her kidnapping. This is still a Rider show, so Kamen Rider Revice ends up literally rider-kicking the corruption out of her... but not before an actual tearful confrontation with her mom. 

Overall, pretty cool episode. The whole fact that the episode really emphasizes "LOVE!" is kind of on-the-nose, but par the course for the heavy Den-O energy that the Ikki/Vice pairing has. (Oh, and the Pteranodon/Faiz form makes its debut here, it kind of just shows up) Not often that the hero's shonen-protagonist actually gets challenged and actually deconstructed. 

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Anyway, that's it for my review of the first four episodes of Revice. I was a bit mouthy, despite my efforts not to, but since this involves me talking a lot about first impressions and whatnot, I suppose I could cut myself some slack. I'll try to do anywhere between 4-6 episodes in every review, depending on the amount of stuff I have to talk about. 

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Random Notes:

• 
  The Fenix members are all kind of one-note at this point, although they have been peppering in some potential character arcs in the future. The most prominent non-Daiji member is George Karikazi, the main researcher who really likes peppering in English words into his dialogue. We've got the stern leader Wakabayashi Yujiro (played by Fukuda from Amazons) and the captain that screwed up in episode 1, Kadota Hiromi. 
• I didn't quite get the actually pretty cool conceptual flourish of having the monsters of the show be devils that like making contracts, while the gimmick device for the series are stamps -- i.e. the type you use to close contracts with. It's not until episode 4 when Ikki stamps the contract with Fenix that I really got it. 
• Revice is so gloriously bubblegum-coloured, I like it. 
• Does the jingle make by the Revice Driver remind anyone of Geiz Revive? It's not just me, is it? The finishers give a Zero-One vibe, though. 
• I do like that his 'motorbike' is initially just a bicycle possessed by Vice in episode 2. 
• Something that they had in the early parts of Zi-O and they dropped without explanation was that Sougo would mangle the catchphrases of the riders he's homaging. Now it's Vice's turn -- we'll see how long he lasts. 
• Okay, Revi's Eagle/Double form is clean as all hell. I also like Vice's Mammoth/Den-O form. 
• Yeah, the CGI-combined Buddy Up forms really don't look good at all, I'm sorry. I have a very high tolerance for bad CGI in tokusatsu shows, but I guess the combined forms in and of itself already doesn't look particularly convincing? Ayaka's Deadman form jumping around the city in episode 4 is also kind of distracting. 
• I definitely appreciate toning down the amount of Kamen Riders we get early on. Sure, there's a lot of toys thanks to each form giving us a Revi and a Vice form, but keeping the focus mostly on the Igarashi family does make these earlier episodes feel a lot less erratic compared to Saber's.
• Episode four shows off a gigantic amount of Kamen Rider merchandise in George's lab. I don't really know what this means -- if it's just shameless product placement, a nod to the fact that all of Revice's forms are Rider-based, or how it even relates to the other Rider series (surely Zero-One and Build in particular can't exist in the same universe as this one) but we'll just handwave it as our regularly-scheduled wacky Decade-caused multiversal clash. 
• The final episode of Saber acts as a rather light-hearted epilogue, where Revice shows up for a brief cameo. I wanted to do a separate segment for it, but really didn't have much to say about it -- it features a Batta Deadman, plus Revice's Megalodon (a.k.a. Decade) form. A lot of Mei/Rintarou shipping gags there, but otherwise not very notable.  
• Yeah, this is a much nicer way to review the series! Hopefully I won't get quite as burnt-out as I was with Saber. 

Series Review: Kamen Rider Build

Kamen Rider Build [2017-2018]

"Rabbit. Tank. Are you ready? Hagane no moonsault! RABBIT TANK!"

This was the second Kamen Rider show that I watched, and it's... it's kind of interesting because of how utterly different Kamen Rider Build is. Alongside Gaim and Ex-Aid, I had considered for the longest time of doing an episode-by-episode review of this show on this blog, but I just never quite had the energy to do so... hence why their series reviews were so late compared to every other Heisei-era Kamen Rider series. 

Build is perhaps a bit of an anomaly among the Kamen Rider shows at how strikingly serialized it feels. Throughout the Heisei era, every single one of the shows has a long-running plot of some kind, although some shows like Fourze, Wizard and especially Den-O didn't focus too heavily on their major plots. With Build, it seems like things ratcheted up to the opposite, where we don't quite have the standard two-parter formula that was so common in that period of time.

I was admittedly very taken in with Build's first episode, and since this was my second Kamen Rider show, it didn't take until quite some time to appreciate just how different it was. Unlike other Kamen Rider shows, Build doesn't take place in 'regular Japan, but with monsters and maybe a bit of magic'. No, the world of Build is established to have a completely different backstory. Ten years prior to the events of Build, an expedition to the planet Mars ended up returning with an enigmatic cube-like artifact called the Pandora's Box. The accidental activation of the relic ended up creating a gigantic wall called the 'Skywall', splitting Japan into three sub-nations -- Seito, Hokuto and Touto. And that's where we get to our present-day hero, the self-proclaimed genius physicist Kiryu Sento from Touto (the main 'nation' we're focusing at) who gets tapped by the government to unlock the secrets of the box. 

Kiryu Sento himself is an interesting protagonist. He's not our first amnesiac protagonist -- in Heisei alone that honour goes to Kamen Rider Agito, and that's not counting various other secondary characters over the years. But the way the show would handle the amnesia is an interesting one. Kiryu Sento has vague memories of his past -- he was experimented upon by a mysterious organization called Faust; and that ended up giving him the ability to transform into Kamen Rider Build. Oh, and he's also working as a vigilante in his Kamen Rider identity, giving us a rare Batman-esque Kamen Rider that's hunted down by both the villains and the authorities. 

I admit that the whole idea of a set of 'full bottles' that the hero has to shake is a bit bizarre as far as gimmicks go, but I absolutely love how this gets incorporated into Build's transformations and fighting scenes. I think Build still has my favourite slew of alternate forms shown to the audience in the first act of the show, with so many bizarre and odd combinations of two 'halves' of the Build suit. With each transformation involving an organic and an inorganic fullbottle, Kamen Rider Build's basic red-and-blue form of 'Rabbit Tank' is bizarre enough the first time I saw it... let alone when he does his finishing kick, where he summons and traces a giant physics graph of motion. Later on we get even more ridiculous forms as our heroes collect more and more of the gimmicks. Among my favourites include 'Rocket Panda', 'Ninja Comic', 'Tiger UFO', 'Lion Vacuum' and 'Wolf Smartphone'. Additionally, Build's belt has some of the most glorious sounds. 

The series basically starts off with Kiryu Sento encountering fugitive and ex-boxer Banjou Ryuuga, the first lead that Sento has to uncovering his past and unraveling the many conspiracies that the three nations of Japan has brewing under the surface. Rounding up the cast is the perpetually-tired and irritated Isurugi Misora, daughter of the cafe owner Soichi where Kiryu Sento works in. 

While its predecessor show Ex-Aid almost immediately starts off by introducing many other Kamen Riders, Build is a bit more content to take it a bit slower. Yes, by the time the show has concluded the amount of Kamen Riders does rival Ex-Aid, but unlike the former they really did keep it to mostly just Sento and Banjou in the beginning. The focus of the show's early stages is mostly on the growing relationship between Sento, Banjou and Misora, as well as the running themes of trying to figure out what the government and Faust are hiding. The fact that this is an 'alternate history' world means that the slow drip of exposition of the politics between Touto, Hokuto and Seito (and later on when we meet characters from there) ends up feeling earned. 

The side cast that slowly grows into main cast status is also quite great. Early on the cast is rounded out by Kiryu Sento's boss, the military-minded Himuro Gentoku; Misora's kooky dad Isurugi Soichi and intrepid reporter Takigawa Sawa. There are also two mysterious Kamen-Rider-esque figures called Blood Stalk and Night Rogue serving as the 'face' of Faust, and the first arc of Kamen Rider Build ends up revolving around the true identity of Night Rogue and Blood Stalk, the true identity of Kiryu Sento (and whether he's actually a villain in his previous persona) and the truth of what happened ten years ago in Mars.

And this show does feel like a truly arc-driven show that sets it apart from every other Kamen Rider show in Heisei. Without spoiling too much, the revelations in the first act end up with the stage for the second act leading to what's essentially an all-out war across the three Japanese nations, with the three top politicians of the nations having their own agendas for Pandora's Box and the collection of all the fullbottles. This leads us to the introduction of Sawatari Kazumi, or Kamen Rider Grease, and his three sidekicks, the 'Three Crows' of Hokuto. While it all devolves into a fight between Kamen Riders Build, Grease and Rogue, the fact that there are definitely parts of this show that involves a straight-up war and a fair amount of espionage and subterfuge does give Build a unique vibe that sets it apart from a lot of the other Rider shows. 

One of the running themes that I felt was done the most well is the idea of Kiryu Sento being an inventor who constantly improves on his combat capabilities... but when said weaponry is turned upon fellow humans, it's pretty damning for our poor protagonist. While earlier in the show Sento's inventions just mostly focus on wacky things like making a comic-book sword for his Ninja Comic form, things take a darker turn when Sento's prior title of "Devil Scientist" leads to him creating his Build Hazard form. A 'berserk' form is a bit of a tired trope in Kamen Rider, but perhaps I was so tired of it because my very first berserking Kamen Rider was Build's Hazard form... who straight-up kills one of the secondary cast members in his rage. This leads to a fair amount of angst not only revolving around Kiryu's status as a weapons inventor, but also the whole fact that, for a couple of episodes, the war escalated even more when the friends of the man Kiryu kills understandably seeks vengeance. 

Again, explaining every single character's motivations and character development would take a bit too much time, but while there are other side-characters that show up here like the (very flat and unmemorable) Hell Bros, the rather hilarious Utsumi "Kamen Rider Mad Rogue" Nariaki and one of my favourite recurring antagonists Juzaburou Namba, all the revelations and the eventual elevation of Gentoku, Sawa and Kazumi into main cast status end up with a whole slew of memorable characters. And it's the handling of these secondary characters that I feel deserves praise -- they start off as recurring aspects of the show that slowly get more and more screentime, and when they end up finally joining the main cast, they end up feel utterly right at home. None of them feel wasted, and while neither one of the girls ended up as riders, I do really feel like both of them added something significant to the show that many other Rider supporting cast members don't quite do. 

The final arc of Build does admittedly end up being mostly just tying up all the plot threads it had introduced, and as such I did feel like it's perhaps the least interesting part of the show... but don't let that statement fool you into thinking that Build didn't stick the landing. A lot of Kamen Rider shows really do have trouble sticking the landing, but Build isn't one of them -- after the true nature of Mars and Pandora's Box is revealed, our main villain Kamen Rider Evol (or just "Evolt") serves as a great and consistent threat throughout the final parts of the show. The in-fighting between the three nations also works in this favour as Evolt merrily manipulates the politicians around. Evolt himself is quite fun as an utterly charismatic villain that strides the line between likable and deplorable very, very well -- and in a rather refreshing twist, despite being such a major character, there was no moment in the show's run that Evolt was actually talked into becoming redeemable and an ally. (The New World spinoff is technically a different Evolt)

There are some revelations (which I am deliberately keeping vague) near the end that did make me raise my eyebrows, but it's honestly par the course for a Kamen Rider show. What I felt was important was that the show itself didn't feel like it forced any of these huge revelations. Hell, all this talking about Build really does get me somewhat interested to do an episodic review at some point. Oh well, maybe in the future. 

One thing that I do have to emphasize is that despite its seriousness and how dark it can get at times, Kamen Rider Build is still a Kamen Rider show, and for the most part it's still happy to have some moments of levity to not make the entire show a serious sci-fi show. The show's tongue-in-cheek and fourth-wall-breaking openings are one of the best features in a show I already really like, but Kiryu, Banjou and Misora all have their character quirks that make them lovable. Kiryu is arrogantly cocky, Banjou is a lovable dumb meathead, and while she does admittedly get a bit shafted in favour of the Kiryu/Banjou pair, the moments when Misora gets to say one of her funny lines are always memorable. When they join the main cast, both Kazumi and Gentoku also show that despite their super-serious first impression, they also do have a fair amount of hilarity to them. Admittedly somewhat forced in Gentoku's case, but by the time the show ends you don't really question it too much. 

With all the praise I'm heaping on Build, I'd be remiss not to mention Build's weaknesses as a show. As much as I did enjoy it, and as much as it did contribute to developing Kiryu and Banjou as characters, the first batch of episodes did feel particularly heavy in trying to aggressively market the many, many forms that Build's base belt can access. For every well-done side character, there are ones like the Hell Bros or Vernage that feel under-baked and when their story are done all they elicited from me is a 'huh'. And not all the revelations are to everyone's taste, particularly approaching the end. And I definitely felt like the post-show "NEW WORLD" spinoffs end up diminishing the impact of the show instead of enhancing it like Gaim, Ex-Aid or Zero-One's respective spinoffs did. 

Still, that's not enough to make me say that Build is anything but one of the better shows in the Kamen Rider franchise. I would wholeheartedly recommend this show to anyone checking out the franchise. If nothing else, it's a very solidly-paced show that's extremely entertaining from start to finish, and I really did feel like the story was told the way the storytellers wanted it to.

The Flash, Season 7 Review: Episodes 1-11

The Flash, Season 7 [2020-2021]

It's been a while. I took a long, long sabbatical from watching superhero TV shows, not just because of burnout but also because... well, I decided to review these shows in seasonal blocks or in half-seasonal blocks. It takes a while for me to watch the episodes in the first place. We're back with The Flash, and... I'm not sure how this page will turn out, really, since season seven of The Flash is a weird one. The 2020-2021 CW seasons are weird overall because of how the pandemic have truncated the previous season, and I imagine the storylines for this year's seasons have to be changed as well. Take Hartley Sawyer leaving The Flash due to some real-life drama, and... I particularly can't imagine how this would change Batwoman, who lost its leading actress. 

Anyway, a bunch of people online divided this season's episodes up into arcs, and that's how we'll cover things here. This review will cover the first half of the show. 

"Arc 1": Episodes 1-3

Episode one, "All's Well That Ends Wells", is... it's kind of a weird 'where we are now' episode. Which is fair because of the gap between seasons 6 and 7. Half the cast is absent (they handwave Ralph and Sue as 'being in hiding'), Iris is still in the mirror dimension doing the B-plot of this episode, and Eva McCulloch is reveling in her new mirror powers while the Flash has a limited amount of speed left. This episode essentially focuses on giving Flash his speed back with some technobabble mumbo-jumbo that they do in order to create an artificial speed force... but really, it's just basically a huge way to give Nash Wells an exit. At the time of watching, I didn't know this, but... well, essentially throughout the entire episode Nash dies and sacrifices himself in order to power up the artificial speed force. It's actually a wonderfully acted moment by Tom Cavanagh, giving the Nash version of Wells some pretty great character moment -- he gets to interact with Harry Wells and his sort-of daughter Allegra in a pretty good way. It's just that the only people to really witness this exit are Barry, Allegra and Chester, and that does make the episode's huge moment feel just a bit hollow. 

The episode also gives us the almost casually tacked-on reveal that the Eva McCulloch we've been following is actually a mirror duplicate, which... sure? Okay? She's basically going around blowing up Black Hole installments, including one ran by the second season's Mirror Master and the Top. Presumably they weren't able to get Sam Scudder's actor back because he died without any fanfare. But we do get Cecile interrogating the Top. It's kind of cool how they handled the revelation that the Top is actually the brains in the operation, and that she's actually in league with Eva all along, but I'd honestly have appreciated it a bit more if the show gave us a bit more time reminding us who these characters were, because I genuinely forgot we had these guys in the show. Still, while perhaps not the most exciting season premiere the show has had, this one is a solid episode. It's just that the show really has to go through some changes, and I don't envy the show-writers that have to juggle them all. It's basically setting up the new state of the show, while also trying to wrap up the huge Mirror Master cliffhanger from the previous season. 

Episode two, "The Speed of Thought" is... it's another episode that feels pretty solid as far as being an episode with a pretty neat self-contained story. It also feels kind of rushed, though, and I genuinely wonder just how much of the writing staff had to rewrite and change when these three episodes were pushed from being the closing episodes of the previous season and into the opening act of this one. Which is why the Eva McCulloch story feels so much... in the background? Sure, we get that a scene of her fighting against Killer Frost, and a scene of her talking with one of her light-themed metahuman goon squad, but everything about her feels like it's happening in the background. The huge revelation about her being a mirror-verse creature happened offhandedly in the epilogue of the previous episode, and the way our heroes find about it isn't treated as a particularly huge event. And then Barry just casually breaks this news to the whole world, and the next we see of her, she's just rocking in her office going a bit insane before enacting her huge plan. I just really feel like we could've had so much more with her. 

The rest of the episode deals with Barry Allen slowly getting super-speed thinking, solving every problem our heroes have before the other sidekicks can even verbalize the problem. And then this ends up becoming slowly into Barry losing his emotions and becoming robotic, culminating into him making decisions entirely based on mechanical logic -- like preparing to sacrifice Singh and Kamilla to get Iris back. But not out of love, just out of practicality since she's the only one with useful intel. Some pretty neat acting from Gustin and Valdez, even if I'm not a huge fan of the climax (Killer Frost using superspeed feels honestly kind of random). It's a pretty solid story even if it's one that I feel we've seen multiple times in the CW superhero shows. And if nothing else, the cliffhanger is well-done, with Iris dragged through the portal and convulsing (because of her resistance?) while the rest of Team Flash have been knocked out by Barry's little rampage. 

Episode two was a solid episode on its own, but I really did feel like we're focusing on the wrong things. Iris, Kamila and Signh's mirrorverse story was barely even touched upon and we don't even get an obligatory Iris emotion moment, and Eva McCulloch being a mirror person feels more like a weird plot twist afterthought that isn't being explored. 

And episode three, "Mother", completes the Mirror Master arc, 'ends' the sixth season's storyline, in a fashion. Barry's back to normal, Iris is in a coma, and, off-screen, Eva has been doing some sort of massive mirror-replacement scheme because she went mad in the background of the previous episode. It really is kind of annoying that a character is established with a motivation and then to basically be rewritten with no real preamble, yeah? Eva went from 'righteous vengeance' to an honestly generic 'I will replace everything with my children'. And we didn't get a proper episode to show that change in mindset, too. Kind of a shame. 

We get things that play out in... ways that might actually be good if they were executed well, but they aren't. Not really -- everything just feels rushed, and the scripting feels kind of hollow. Eva gives a speech which causes Barry to brood. Earth-1's Harrison Wells comes back because of multiversal nonsense at the post-credits scene of the previous episode, giving us a very forced 'run Barry run' reprise. Turns out something something love is the answer, and Barry and Iris's love is so powerful that it preserves the Speed Force or something. It's... it's corny as hell, and maybe in a better episode where they actually let Grant Gustin and Candice Patton act the scene out, I might've rolled my eyes and went 'oh, that's cute', but the way this episode handled it? It just felt corny and tacked-on. 

Oh yeah, Elongated Man gets a 'melted face' handwave for the recast -- which I'm fine with, but I really would've rather had it be the B-plot for any of the other two previous episodes, which aren't that busy? Or save it for the next arc, because neither Sue nor Ralph did jack-all this episode, before leaving at the end? Also, Iris randomly gets and loses mirror powers? And Harrison Wells comes back, but not really, but he leaves immediately after? 

And then we get the climax, and it's... it's just there. It's a bit of a jittery action scene with Flash, Vibe and Killer Frost fighting against a bunch of Mirror Masters-es (or Mirror Monarches, as Eva calls herself) and it's... it's honestly kind of disappointing. Iris gives a motivational speech to Not-Eva, and she decides to give up and everyone holds hands to reverse the doomsday plot. Again, done well, I might care about this, but I'm not sure if it's the rushed writing due to real-life issues, or just some pretty terrible decisions. I don't know. I tend to tolerate a lot of the more cornier aspects of CW's work, but this one didn't even give me the 'awww' feelings that earlier seasons of Flash or Supergirl did. It's just... there. Ultimately, it was... it was a pretty disappointing ending. I kind of wonder if it would've been better shuffling some plot points around, and even if they had wanted to end with this story, to actually explore the plot points they wanted to explore? Ultimately, not a fan of this episode at all -- it's like they really rushed through the conclusion of this one without thinking through it. 

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"Arc 2": Episodes 4-11: "God Complex"

Episode 4, "Central City Strong", sort of kick-starts this arc that goes for around a half-dozen episodes. It's also one that feels more or less self-contained, like it was intentionally a 'breather' episode between the hectic climax of the Eva McCulloch story and the next arc. And it's... it's there, I suppose. The Flash has never been a subtle show, but this one was particularly in-your-face about the fact that 'people need to heal from their trauma'. Barry still suffers from his trauma of being duped by Mirror Iris. Iris has to show up to therapy to deal with the fact that she's running away from confronting her trauma. Even Abra Kadabra, who returns to die in this episode, is rewritten to be driven by the trauma of getting back his pre-Crisis memories. At least this one is consistent in its themes, making the Speech-no-Jutsu trick that Barry pulls on Abra Kadabra feel less like an ass-pull as the previous episode. 

And... and that's kind of what this entire episode is all about? Part of me is still salty any time that they introduce a classic DC character and rewrite it in a way that's relatively unrecognizable. I'm still kind of sad that we never got a full Rogues team with CW's versions of Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Abra Kadabra and so on, but I also know that any kind of comics-accuracy at this point is just never going to really happen. There are a couple of neat bits building up for future sequences -- which, unlike Eva's complete character rewriting, are things that you can do in the background! Like Caitlin and Killer Frost splitting up; the random introduction of green She-Hulk Fuerza; or the weirdness going on with ARGUS. Not the best episode, but a neatly solid one by CW standards. 

Episode 5, "Fear Me", sort of eases us in into the whole 'God Complex' arc. Or, well, Fuerza kind of did, but she was such a random and minor part of the previous episode. This one is a bit more like it, even if Psych ultimately felt like a pretty one-note villain. He's a fear-inducing villain, and he wears a funny mask! This episode basically goes through most of what you'd expect from a superhero show dealing with a one-note metahuman villain. Psych just uses his fear-inducing powers to make people see things they're afraid of. Our heroes hook Cecile up into a ripoff Cerebro Thinker's chair and have her fight Psych's purple beam superpower blast with a yellow superpower blast. Oh, and a typical motivational speech™, because every single episode of this season of The Flash needed it, apparently. Not too much to complain about, this one was pretty standard. 

It also does a pretty decent job at stringing along the sub-plots, too. The Speed Force showing up as a wounded Nora (Barry's mom, not his now-ret-gone'd daughter) is a bit random and treated as a bit of a low-key event, but she (it?) isn't really the focus of the episode until the big revelation that both Fuerza and Psych are powered by 'similar entities' as her. We get the bit with Caitlin and Killer Frost being separated, it tying into the whole 'fear' theme, and them making up as sisters. I've seen this show reinvent the Frost/Caitlin dynamic three or four times already, and I genuinely just wished they'd stop and pick one, so this one earned a shrug from me. At least this one felt like a natural progression of both characters. Oh, and we get the set-up of the 'the government wants to arrest Killer Frost' plot here. I admit that I've been finding that plot to be pretty eye-rolling, but at least it's a pretty decent B-plot. 

Episode 6, "The One With The Nineties", is... okay, maybe I'm just tapped out on 'hey, let's homage this certain period of time' with WandaVision and Legends of Tomorrow, but I didn't really care for this episode too much at all. I guess actually having lived through the nineties, it doesn't quite have that same oomph to me? At least Cisco and Chester look like they're having fun, although Chester's inspirational story with his dad is far, far more impactful than anything else the episode has to offer. We go through half an episode's worth of 90's references, then a motivational speech by Chester's dad, then surprise surprise, out of the random background characters, it's the jock that's the host to the Still Force. I did like that Chester's attempt to give an inspirational speech didn't exactly talk the villain down -- three episodes (almost) in a row would be too much. Everything in this episode is so... basic, but at least it gives Chester something. The poor dude's been so irrelevant throughout the past episodes that at least he's got a basic backstory to his name. 

There's a vague B-plot about Iris talking to Nora-Speed-Force, but in honesty I really have a hard time caring for the personification of the Speed Force when all she's allowed to do is to act confused. At least someone acknowledges what a terribly emotionally manipulative thing that she/it did by taking over the form of Nora Allen, but Iris... approves of it? Because she's like a security blanket? Um, what? Yeah, I don't buy that, and thankfully neither does Barry. 

Episode 7, "Growing Pains", is the first of what's basically the Killer Frost two-parter. It's not the most interesting storyline, I admit, but it's... all right? Everything's built up rather competently, and I actually do sympathize a bit with Kristen Kramer, the very hot-blooded investigator hunting her down. We like Frost and we want her to be safe, but I do understand why Kramer went out of her way to blindside Joe West and the other cops because, well, she's not entirely wrong that Joe is aiding and abetting a criminal. And while it's a bit frustrating (Allegra makes a good point about jails not helping people), Frost does also have a point that she hasn't really paid for the crimes she did as a supervillain. Which apparently still happened, despite all the retconnings and new timelines and whatnot? I honestly lost track. 

The main plot of the episode isn't super-complex. A new ice killer is in town, and the over-the-top fanservice bartender that Killer Frost met in her solo investigation turns out to be Chillblaine, a scientist obsessed with the powers of ice. Very comic-book-y, and while the final confrontation is a bit eye-roll inducing with the 'ha ha they get into dance positions', I did enjoy this for the most part. Again, after she beats Chillblaine, everything plays out relatively simply, with Frost eventually surrendering to the police.

The B-plot is something I actually like a bit, and extends the previous episode's rather bizarre 'moral' in a logical way. No, just because the Speed Force (who I also refuse to call 'Nora' because that's the name of two different characters) is on their side and is learning to be a person, doesn't really mean that she can walk around as Barry's dead mother without Barry feeling some kind of way. The episode basically has the two of them sort of... bury the hatchet? The Speed Force is a bit too excited in wanting to help out Team Flash, but ends up short-circuiting Barry's powers all the time. I agree with treating Speed Force as a person instead of holding a grudge on her/it (or her/its past incarnation... timeline resets are confusing) but it's still kind of bizarre. 

Episode 8, "The People v. Killer Frost" is... okay, I have to admit. I really never cared for trial episodes in... pretty much any show I watch. The best I tend to be about them is tolerate them if they tie into the story well, which is how I felt about most Daredevil episodes. This one, though, just feels like it drags on. Officer Kramer finally makes her huge case to detain Killer Frost and charge her, and the episode ends up becoming something similar to the plot of many X-Men stories -- being forced to take the metahuman cure. Which is unequivocally bad since it infringes on personal rights. Things go from bad to worse when Caitlin, Cisco and Allegra try to sabotage the cure itself. And then Kramer turns out to have a vendetta against all metahumans because, conveniently, her squad got betrayed by a metahuman masquerading as a hero before. A lot of great moments from Danielle Panabaker, who had to do double duty as Caitlin and Frost in these episodes, but ultimately I felt kind of bored throughout most of the episode. The ending did kind of surprise me, with Frost receiving a life sentence without parole. 

The B-plot involves Flash and the Speed Force's manifestation trying to find out who Fuerza is, and turns out that it really is a Hulk situation. Mild-mannered ex-addict Alexa is working as a volunteer health worker when she became host to the Strength Force, and she went berserk when Abra Kadabra blew parts of the city in episode four. The Flash manages to get her to cooperate in submitting to tests, but when turns out that she is Fuerza, turns out that the Speed Force isn't really interested in helping Barry out moreso than to force Barry to work to protect her regardless of who must fall. Which means murdering Alexa. I've never really cared for the Speed Force's personification as an ally, but as a villain, I can kind of get behind that. It's a plot twist that I admit that I kind of didn't see coming mostly because the past couple episodes had been pretty much intended to shove "Nora" down our throats, but her as this odd deity-given-flesh as an antagonistic figure, I can definitely get behind. 

Episode 9, "Timeless" is... again, the "Forces" bit really hasn't feel like they've been pushed as a proper main plot. They've really felt more like the side-story so far while we dealt with Killer Frost. And we've also spent so much time with the personification of the Speed Force that I really couldn't get myself invested with the arguments on whether they should treat "Nora" as a friend. I'm not debating that she is a real person, but she's also, you know... pretty much a lunatic? And this episode really did hammer this fact home. Both Barry and Iris really do act like idiots in this episode, with Iris insisting that they can just talk things out with Nora, and Barry literally doing one of the most stupid things he's ever done... go back in time (for the umpteenth time) to change things in the past. 

There's a heavy subplot of 'we can't judge our children for who they are' theme going on, and... anything out of Papa Joe West's mouth is super-wise. And the Wally West example is definitely good. But Deon, Psych and (the dead and randomly revived) Alexa aren't exactly children per se. Perhaps a better comparison would've been taking away their powers -- like the Frost trial? I don't know. They bring back "Timeless" Wells as a cameo to help this out, and ultimately, Barry decides not to go through with the whole thing. Both Deon and Psych also have roles in this episode, though Deon just feels confused, yelling that he's a god while not really doing anything; while Psych is clearly just a lunatic.

There's also a B-plot with Cisco not sure what he's going to do, and ultimately he decides to leave Central City with Kamilla (oh yeah, she exists). Actor Carlos Valdez has really been sort of in and out of the show for the past couple of seasons, I feel, with multiple mini-exits for his character. But I guess between him and Tom Cavanagh (who's essentially reduced to cameos, I guess) , the show's cast really is getting a fair amount of trim-down? Yeah. Anyway, not the biggest fan of this one. A lot of the arguments in this one felt like it didn't land, and we get a bunch of honestly rather odd metaphors that I felt didn't really apply to the situation. It's nowhere as messy as episode 3 of this season, but I'm not a huge fan. 

Episodes 10-11, "Family Matters", is a two-parter that acts as the mid-season finale. And it's... it's there, for sure. It's nowhere as messy as episode three, that acted as the season finale for the Eva McCulloch storyline. But, again, maybe it's just me really not feeling the whole 'these random people fused with Forces that Barry and Iris created are now their children' vibe, which just felt so, so weird. This isn't really anything like Nora West-Allen when Barry finds out that she's got a time-travelling adult daughter. This is just three other people who got infected with variations of the Speed Force, plus a reborn, psychotic Speed Force. 

"Family Matters, Part 1", feels like it's trying a bit too hard to shoehorn the parent/child vibe down our throats and I really don't feel like it's working. Alexa/Fuerza is resurrected and Barry's idea at any problem, be it Speed Force or Psych's new pink psionic tentacles, is to toss Fuerza at them. Predictably, Barry's forced attempts to train Alexa despite her repeated reluctance ends up with her going Hulk and rampaging. And then they remembered that Caitlin and Killer Frost used to share the same mind, so they lend Alexa/Fuerza the same doohickey that Caitlin used before. Okay, that really felt kind of dumb. 

Psych gets to be the focus of this episode, so we learn his backstory -- he's a rich kid who kept being abandoned by other people, but turns out that he kept pushing people who wanted to help him away. Flash and Fuerza beat down Psych and force him to listen, and, again, we get the 'sibling' thing shoehorned down us again. At least Psych is a straight-up comic-book character who talks about how tasty fear is and whatnot, so the dialogue felt a bit more natural coming out from his mouth. Speed Force and Deon, meanwhile, have teamed up, and show up at the end of this episode to zap Iris, Psych and Alexa. Whoops!

Except that in 'Part Two', it's revealed that Psych had an illusion up the whole time. And... I'm genuinely not sure what's going on and I'm just shrugging because... even when I'm not invested in the 'family' side of the story, I expected something more coherent than this. But no, things just happen at random. Flash brings Iris, Alexa and Psych into a part of the Speed Force. He also tries to get Deon to help. But then Deon decides (rightfully) that he doesn't trust Flash and bounces off, while Alexa and Psych steal Iris's plot device to fight the Speed Force themselves. There's a bizarre bit where the Speed Force shows up in goth makeup and declares that the other Forces have been behind the earthquakes and stuff going on, they are the bad guys! And then after a 'family' speech from Joe, somehow the three Force 'children' decide to play nice with Barry.

And then we get the climax as some huge CGI lightning storm threatens to engulf Central City. At least there's a huge climactic fight, isn't it? There's almost the beginnings of a satisfying conclusion if you ignore the breakneck side-changing by the under-written trio of Alexa, Bashir and Deon. But then it all boils down to a brief combination of powers to stop time, show the Speed Force the spooky future timeline where she's all alone, and then somehow she sees the error of her ways. Also, somehow despite all three of the others being humans with lives before, they decide to hang out with fake Nora in the Speed Force dimension being a family. What? I kind of get Bashir, who's looking for a family, but the rest? It's honestly kind of a stupid ending, and I've been through a lot of different CW superhero shows to know that this isn't particularly satisfying. It would've been contentious even if the buildup for the characters is done well enough, but no one here feels like they're a character I care about. 

There's a B-plot running through Part One of Kramer bringing in metahuman-cure guns, which leads Joe to quit in protest. And then he spends Part Two angsting about not having anything to do, until he remembers he can give motivational speeches. Oh, and we keep getting more and more "Cisco wants to leave STAR Labs" waved in our face, though at least he's angsting about it? It just kind of feels repetitive. Oh, and after no one mentioning that Frost is locked up for life, turns out in Part Two she fights Chillblaine during an Iron Heights breakout, and gets a pardon because of that. Uhh... okay? That feels like all that effort in those two episodes focusing on her just got thrown out of the window off-handedly, making those two episodes feel particularly pointless. 

I don't know. There is still half a season to go, and I did enjoy some of the standalone episodes, but man it's really hard for me to find too many positive things about this conclusion...

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Overall... yeah. The way that the storylines for season six ended was pretty butchered. I get that they were forced to write Ralph Dibny (and Harrison Wells?) out and there really was no organic way to do it, but at the same time, the random rewriting done to Eva McCulloch really robbed the final two episodes of what I felt could've been a pretty strong ending to that season. The "God Complex" episodes were mostly pretty great standalone episodes building up the other Forces, but in typical CW superhero fashion I kind of felt like they didn't focus on what made this storyline so much more interesting in a comic-book concept and focused on different subplots instead. 

Oh well, I think this is how I'll handle reviewing superhero show seasons? Ten or so episodes in a single review? Because I definitely don't have enough to fit in a full review for an episode that's just solid, but I do want to talk about the season as a whole. 

One Piece 1026 Review: Splitting the Sky

One Piece, Chapter 1026: Pivotal Clash

Okay, this one is a pretty hype one! It starts off with a brief check-in with the civilians in the Flower Capital, before cutting away to the rooftop battle. It's pretty interesting that at some point, a random Mary got to the rooftop and started giving commentary on the dragon battle to the rest of the combatants. 

I do like that the exchange of attacks at this point isn't anything quite as action-packed as the previous chapter, but it's more about Luffy motivating Momonosuke to get over his fear. In-between Elephant Guns, Luffy manages to convince Momo to do just one thing -- bite Kaidou. After a flashback to his dead parents and how Kaidou strangled him back in the past, Momonosuke decides to fly in and chomp down on Kaidou. It really doesn't look like anything too damaging -- Kaidou really is someone who makes the 'surprised when someone lands a hit' face a lot of times. But I do really like the growing character growth for Momonosuke over this arc, and I really cannot believe I'm saying this considering how much I was irritated by this brat in the Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs. Between the huge 'sunacchi' chapter and this moment of him glaring at Kaidou through his fear, good old Momonosuke has grown so much. 

All of this turns out to just be Luffy trying to get Momonosuke to have enough of a confidence to use the storm-clouds to lift up Onigashima. After all, if Momonosuke already has the balls to bite down on the scariest person in the world -- a Yonkou -- surely he wouldn't be afraid of something like this? 

Meanwhile, as all of this is going on, we cut away to two of the secondary fights that we haven't dealt with yet, and as I noted in the previous chapter, looks like we're wrapping all of these up. Both Jack and Perospero have the advantage against Inuarashi and Nekomamushi respectively, because the moon gets covered and the Minks were knocked out of their Sulong transformations.

Meanwhile, as Luffy is giving his dramatic speech that all of his allies in Onigashima can hear, we get him clashing with Kaidou, fist-against-fist with the Haki lightning all around them, we get this glorious two-page-spread of the heavens parting, a huge, badass moment that actually took me by surprise because I really didn't expect this to happen in this fight. It's the same thing that happened when Shanks faced off against Whitebeard so many chapters ago, and... it is pretty badass. 

Just to add even more impact, the parting clouds in the sky reveal the moon long enough for Inuarashi and Nekomamushi to go Sulong one last time, and then one-shot Jack and Perospero respectively. The chapter ends with Orochi (who's of course alive) witnessing this from behind a sliding door. 

So... yeah. Pretty hype stuff, and I really do like that Luffy's cloud-splitting act is tied into the victories of his allies. I still do find Luffy's newfound moxie a bit questionable -- probably the only weak link in this whole Onigashima Raid arc, I feel. In-between Kaidou tossing Luffy off of Onigashima and him getting ready to fight Kaidou again, I feel like we're kind of missing a character beat between the two? Unless the idea is just that 'Luffy never gives up' like what he says in this chapter and that's the simple answer. I don't know -- I really kind of felt like whether it's from an anime-superpower standpoint or from a personality standpoint, this could've been smoothed up a bit better with a better transition. Still, overall a pretty fun chapter!

Random Notes:

• Yeah, the manga is pretty much telegraphing that we're getting a parallel of Oden lifting the giant bowl with his Scabbards, with whatever Momo is going to do with Onigashima, so I'm definitely looking forward to it. 
• I, for one, am very happy that Momonosuke doesn't have instant mastery of all his dragon abilities, and that his child mind is still coming to grips with all that's happening to him. 
• It gets a bit lost with all the dragon-wars stuff going on, but Jack's hybrid form is actually a mammoth-centaur! That's actually pretty damn cool, shame it only shows up for like, three panels. 
• Perospero's candy arm gets absolutely shattered by Nekomamushi's blow. Actually, speaking of him, Perospero has been around for far, far longer than I would've thought him possible. I know he's not the villain trope that most people find to be cool, but I do respect him for lasting this long. 
• My guess is that Denjirou's going to be the one that deals with Orochi. In an ideal world, Hiyori or Momonosuke would be the best ones to do this, but other than them, Denjirou's probably the one with the biggest narrative connection with Orochi.