#just a throwaway means to start the anime and hint at Father

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

I didn't need to have been previously familiar with Brotherhood's story to immediately understand that McDougal was correct for directly attacking Central. Seeing him go up against all the primary and secondary state alchemists as a means of introducing the protagonists (our "morally upright" leads) even though he was absolutely correct for identifying the locus of power of the nation as an oppressive force that must be destroyed was a harbinger for the reformist pro-state, pro-military bullshit that acts as the bedrock of Brotherhood's entire story.

[takaraphoenix]

Question- I got the feeling from one of your asks you dislike Frozen. Can I ask why? I know I dislike it now because it got beat to utter death in terms of popularity and such. It was cute the first time for me... less so the hundreds of times after.

Oh, dislike is too weak a word. I absolutely hate everything (aside from Sven) about this gods damn movie and its gods damn badly built world. ^^°°°

Now, I already wrote a rather elaborate journal entry about that back in 2015. But I feel like that’s a thing I should also have on here and that rant is also 4 years old, so I’ll copy/paste and edit and add some.

Don’t read if you think Fr0zen is peak perfection. For everyone else, in this 3.5k word essay I will elaborate why Fr0zen is definitely not the peak of Disney animation and story-telling.

So, this is a long overdue rant about why Fr0zen is the worst animated movie I've ever seen in my entire life and why Elsa and Anna are horrible characters.

There are many factors that play into why I hate this movie, so let’s structure this a little bit and start off with the characters.

Elsa and the glorification of that character. Back in the day, I found awfully unfitting comparisons between Elsa and Elphaba from the Wicked series and it pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter, because somehow, Elsa is a celebrated strong female character, while... that’s more than undeserved.I mean, Elsa is a supposed queen. She's different from others and decides to hide it. And then she runs and hides in a castle in the mountains because she's too afraid that others may perhaps judge her for being different. A queen. Abandoning her kingdom without as much as a second thought, just to go and pout and brood alone. What I love about Disney princesses is that they usually put others first before themselves. Not her though, no, when madam needs to angst alone, she’ll just freeze over the entire country and build herself a castle.Elphaba has been different all her life and LIVED with the ACTUAL judgement of others for as long. She NEVER hid who she was. She always stood strong. Yes, she too hid in a castle in the mountains - after she co-led a revolutionary army against what can only be called the Nazis of Oz to prevent a genocide and lost the love of her life and father of her unborn child in the process.Putting Elsa as Elphaba's equal insults Elphaba so much that it makes me, as a fangirl, so ragingly mad, especially since it just doesn’t hold true. Elphaba spent most of her life trying to make the country better, trying to help those who are helpless, while all Elsa did all of her life was hide away in her bedroom and then run away to her castle...Another reason for my deeply seated hatred are the fans. Well, like the ones who think Elsa is in any way, form or shape qualified to be Elphaba's equal. There were so many posts pretending like Fr0zen is somehow revolutionary because it‘s about sisterly love instead of romance (like Lilo & Stitch doesn‘t exist) and other such claims that just completely ignored some of Disney’s biggest hits - not even the deep digs, they entirely disregarded very popular and widely known movies and instead pretended like this here was the very first time such amazing things happend! No. It’s just a repetition of tropes and writing that Disney’s been doing for decades.It's like Fr0zen drew in people who have legitimately never seen a Disney movie before in their entire lives.Then there's the whole feminist-thing where they act like Anna or Elsa are good role-models to little girls. The fuck they are. I mean, I've mentioned it before, but I'll gladly get back to it. It's good to vent and let the bad feelings go, eh?Granted, blaming Elsa and Anna entirely is probably a bad move. We need to start with their dumbass parents. Worst movie parents ever.The magical troll TELLS them explicitly that Elsa's biggest weakness is fear. The logical course of action when one of my children has a supernatural and possibly dangerous power is to explain it to her - since they seemed pretty chill about it, like it's a regular thing in their family to be born with some kind of weird powers. To teach her, maybe make her go and visit the trolls once a week for training. SOMETHING. Anything but locking her up in her room where she learns to hate and FEAR her powers, which, obviously grow with age. So by the time she's really powerful, she won't have the faintest clue how to handle them. Worst. Parents. Ever.Then there is Elsa, who has magical powers that she loves. But hey, Anna got a little hurt so let's be afraid of them forever. It's like riding a bike. When you fall and get hurt, you NEVER EVER get on a bike again. Wait, what do you mean that's not the case?

She proceeds to become the queen and seems to be aware that it's a lot of responsibility and that she's now, duh, the queen. So packing it all up and running away at the faintest sign of trouble for her is a totally legitimate queen-move. Instead of handling the situation like a grown up and facing it, she runs away and hides in a castle of ice. Because why should she care about the kingdom that SHE caused the biggestest crisis in probably its whole history? Naw, letting it go and hiding up there is way better. How does that move and that song teach children and little girls to be good? It basically teaches them to run from their problems when something happens that you're uncomfortable with, because you are the only person who should matter to you, especially when you're a queen. Not your family, friends (not that she had those) or the kingdom you rule. As long as YOU are comfortable and happy, it's totally fine. There's not an ounce of bravery, honor or even common sense that Elsa portraits. It’s completely selfishly motivated and while sure, being selfish to a degree, can be a good thing and there are people who need to learn it... to just straight-up abandon everyone who relies on you just because you have been inconvenienced is... not a good lesson?

That super big song is an awful lesson. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me”... yeah, great, love when that’s the lesson my kids learn from a Disney movie. It’s so unnecessarily dramatic and so intensely selfish. Usually the main song of a Disney princess is empowering and encouraging. Not telling you to basically fuck the rules and do whatever you want.

Then there's the whole lazy-ass character design of the white-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, blue-dressed ice-controller. As seen in Rise of the Guardians with Jack Frost one year prior, as seen in Tinkerbell with Periwinkle (getting to that later) also one year prior and literally as seen by Bertier in Sailor Moon, who even has the same braid thrown over her shoulder, for heaven's sake. And granted, yes, you can‘t just fault Disney for that. Everybody who has an ice-controler loves to fall back to those cliche character design elements, but... this is Disney. They are big and they usually care about their character design, but here they were simply the laziest they could be. Not to mention that dress. Oh sure, Disney has always liked to over-sexualize certain characters, but here they did it in an era-breaking way - her dress does not even remotely fit into the overall setting of the movie, which only makes it look even more like some character-designer really just wanted to get off to Elsa...

Not to mention the even lazier design of her powers. She controls snow and ice. So... her magical ice can corrupt a heart and freeze them for good. Oooh and it can create sentinent life as seen by Olaf and that giant-ass monster. And she makes fancy ice-clothes that are not see-through but come it different shades of blue and move like proper clothes would! ...Where exactly are her powers? What CAN she do? Because it's obviously not just ice. It's convenient "She does what we need her to do". Driven even more home by that ridiculous short where she suddenly also has spring-powers. Because sure, why the fuck not.

Usually, princesses have clearly defined abilities. Moana controls the water because she has a bond with the ocean and she gets them from being chosen by the ocean. Rapunzel has healing powers because her mother digested a healing plant while pregnant.

There's no explanation whatsoever to Elsa’s powers. The king and queen are acting all casual about Elsa being born with those powers, but there's not even the hint of an explanation as to WHY she was born with those very random powers. Her parents and sister sure don’t have any powers. And even though they know about them and seem to not be concerned that she has those powers, they are very much at a loss as to how to deal with them. So you’re not actually familiar with them, then why are you not surprised by them...?

They have magical stone-trolls. Why do they have magical stone-trolls? Again, king and queen are totally casual about the magical stone-trolls like they're something completely obvious that is in every kingdom. But where do they come from and how are they linked to the princess’ random magic? Who knows? Certainly not the viewer of this movie, because jackshit about the world-building is actually explained in it.

They're not even attempting to tie in the magic or make it logical in this world. It's there. It's strange and weird. The rulers know about it, but... does the common folk? I guess not, because even Anna was shocked about them. So how did the king and queen know?

Unlike the usual, they’re not even attempting a coherent world-building. Something as simple as “it’s in the royal blood, every firstborn has those powers, king’s older sister had them too”, or whatever, literally any throwaway half-way thought-through explanation would have sufficed instead of “LOL they’re there we dunno how or why and they just do what they we need them to do!”...

Anyway, enough about Elsa. Let’s move on to little Miss Dumbass. The girl without common sense. I'm aware that Disney was trying to be self-ironic with the whole love song under the moon and "I wanna marry him!" thing, but Anna went farther than that. When her sister decides to let it go and run away, she becomes the default leader of the country. As that I totally run after my sister during the biggest crisis of the kingdom. And yes, maybe because she's just a naive kid and loves her sister who hasn't talked to her in like ten years so-so-so much, that sister had priority. Okay, I'll buy it, I guess. That still doesn't change that Anna leaves the kingdom in the hands of the dude she's known for like an hour instead of the generals and advisers who must have ruled while Elsa was busy playing emo in her bedroom for the last ten years. Someone qualified who knows the kingdom and knows how to handle it. Nope, let’s throw caution and common sense out of the window because I REALLY LOVE HIM!!!... And I am also genuinely tired of Disney making fun of themselves and belittling their old movies, to be quite honest. It was a fun joke when they did it the first time in Enchanted, but at this point it’s quite frankly just insulting the movies that came before and... how about not??Now for one of the most important reasons why I hate this movie; they fucked Hans Christian Andersen. The only thing this has to do with his Snow Queen is that there's a queen who controls ice.

I know Disney has been painfully lazy this century.

They've always twisted the fairy tales to make them more friendly for kids, but the core of the real fairy tale remained - Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, well I'm assuming you've heard of them and know where I'm getting with this. They make it less brutal and more child-friendly, but the heart of the story remains the same. Then this century hit and it must have hit them upside the head because they forgot how to adapt a source material.

I liked Princess and the Frog. It was funny, she was a strong character with development, the animal sidekicks were cute. And it's dismissal of the fairy tale is even semi-explained in canon where she points to the actual fairy tale and says it's "like" the tale. Not it is the tale. They weren't even trying to adapt the fairy tale with this one, so it gets a pass, even though I am still peeved that they didn’t actually do an adaptation of either the Frog King or the Frog Princess, because both are great fairy tales that would have deserved to become Disney movies too.

Then there was Tangled, which... was trying to adapt Rapunzel and kept some of the key-elements while striking out other important things - like where she got her name, for example, I mean, really? Though I did like that wink to the real fairy tale at the end when her magical tears healed him. That was a piece of illogical magic in the fairy tale and the whole flower-thing in Tangled, well, it at least tried to make it logical.

But Fr0zen? There is nothing that this has to do with the actual fairy tale and when it was first announced, I was looking forward to another fairy tale adaptation, instead I got a pile of bullshit they placed on HCA's grave.Now, my last point on this agenda - because I could nitpick every single second of that movie, but even I'm not patient enough and it would mean I'd have to rewatch it to actually make it every single second accurately and that is never going to happen. Ever - is that it's a cheap rip-off.

Disney doesn't really do the whole original routine. Their movies are based on fairy tales and books and plays. And they occasionally get lazy and re-use things from their old stuff. But Fr0zen is such a copy of even one of their own movies.The movie I'm talking about here is Tinkerbell: Secret of the Wings. Yes, it's not even one of their big hits or a fairy tale movie. It's like the third sequel to the spin-off of a book-adaptation.

Let's see...

We got two sisters. Check. Anna and Elsa. Tinkerbell and Periwinkle.

One of them is naive, yet optimistic and good-natured and easy-going. Check. Anna and Tinkerbell.

The other is pale, blue-eyed, white-haired and has ice-controlling powers. Check. Elsa and Periwinkle.

But our main protagonist isn't the powerful one, it's the naive goody-two-shoes one. Also check.

The two sisters were separated for a long time. Check. By locking herself into a room versus by being in another realm.

Reunited at a late teenage-age and realizing wow, we got some stuff in common. Check.

There's the matter of the ice harming the naive one. Check. Anna gets hurt as a little girl and Tinkerbell catches a cold when she's first in the winter wonderland.

This harming is cause for a separation, because finding a way around the pain is too easy and we need drama. Check.

Winter takes over the kingdom. Double-check on that one.

The sisters need to find a way to work together to save their kingdom from eternal winter, but that's hard because the ice once again harmed the naive one. Check, with Anna's frozen heart and Tinkerbell's broken wing.

Dramatic moment, because the naive one seems in a dire situation without any way out, but there is a weird sister-love-magic going on that totally solves that problem! Check. Elsa kissing Anna and making it better, while Periwinkle's wings can heal Tinkerbell's wings via twin-wing-magic.

And the kingdom is saved and they lived happily ever after, finding a way to see each other and be best sisters forever! Also check. The end.

It's just embarrassing to rip yourself off like that. Seriously, borrowing some elements of a movie you have done before is one thing (like Maleficent shamelessly “borrowing” from Fr0zen). But the extend to which the plots of those two movies align is ridiculous.

Not to mention the internet going nuts over Elsa like she's the best thing since sliced bread. All the J€lsa everywhere still makes my stomach turn. How does the internet see two characters who dress the same, look the same, have the same powers AND the same fears and think "My, those two characters who are basically twins, I'd like to see them make out!".

Which also plays heavily into why I don’t just dislike the movie is that it is mercilessly shoved down your throat at every turn. You go to a regular groceries store? Here are the Fr0zen plates and band-aids and toothbrushes and what not! No other Disney movie has ever been commercialized to that degree, it really doesn’t matter what type of store you enter, there will be merch for this blasted movie. You literally couldn’t escape it. And if you don’t like a thing but at every turn, it is shoved into your face, then your dislike tends to grow.

Another huge point in that regard is that stupid ““short movie”“ they aired before Coco.Those two movies were in such different settings that the disconnect actually threw you off, seriously I had a hard time getting into Coco for the first 20 minutes or so because I had just been in an entirely different place, story-wise, setting-wise, heck even climate wise. To go from white wonderland Christmas special to Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico?? That’s literally as far apart as you could get...

And it was just too long. If you put a short movie before a movie, make it actually short. The five minute ones, as was the usual. That is fun, that is nice. This one was twenty minutes long.

Again, a part where the fans piss me off because they bitch that people shouldn’t complain about it, they “didn’t have to see it”. Bitch, no. For one, I do not know how long this movie is when I sit in cinema and am suddenly hit outta left field by there even being a short-movie. So why would I leave? Is it 5 minutes? 10 minutes? If I stay outside the cinema too long, I will actually miss the beginning of the movie I came and paid for.

And I’m a grown adult. The situation with kids is far different. Every single kid in the theater with me was absolutely confused and asked every two minutes “Why is that on? Are we in the wrong theater? When will the movie start?”, multiple ones leaving... and not returning at all, because they thought they indeed were in the wrong movie. And even then... there is a reason a children’s movie is roughly an hour to an hour and a half. Because of a child’s attention span. Now if you pack a nearly half hour long ““short film”“ in front of a one and a half hour long actual film and after another half hour of trailers and ads, you have forced those four to ten year olds through a total of two and a half hours. Heck, me as an adult I got a hard time with that length. But among the kids who actually stayed and didn’t leave because of the short, most - especially the younger ones - got really cranky toward the end of Coco, obviously, logically.

So, aside from being a horrible movie (seriously, it’s just one song after the other and the other and the other and focusing on the solely worst part of this franchise, Olaf), it was also forced upon people. Not like other random spin-off shorts to their movies that just air on TV and you can watch them if you like them. Nope. You wanna see this beautiful masterpiece about the Day of the Dead? You gotta watch this Fr0zen short before!

There’s more things (like the just mentioned fact that I think the obnoxious, unfunny and unexplained magic snowman was the worst thing), like I mentioned above I genuinely could nitpick every second of it if I would want to, but this is already long enough with the big bullet points.

TL;DR: It’s just too much, it is forced upon people, it has lazy world-building and character design, it has a horrible message, it is constantly treated like it’s in any way or shape revolutionary when it brought literally not a single new thing to the table, it has nothing to do with the fairy tale it was first announced to be an adaptation of and a huge chunk of its fans are really freaking obnoxious.

[atamascolily]

Episode Review - Sinbad 2x16 - “The Gryphon’s Tale”

In which Sinbad meets up with another old girlfriend and gets dragged behind a cart. Also, there is some pretty good CGI, Bryn gets something to do this episode, Dermott is once again underused, and Firouz saves the day with more explosive weaponry.

(Photos from Far Far Away.)

We open on the boat, en route to a harvest festival and feast and a rendezvous with Deanna, another old flame of Sinbad. So, something for everyone, really.

The festival is to honor the local deity, the Great Gryphon, a statue of which can be seen in the background. For once, the villagers are happy to see them, including the dude in red, Deanna’s father Toren, the village elder. Apparently, the festival means you get to wear hats.

Meanwhile, a big game hunter is leading a crew of torch-carrying minions, and trying to feed drugged meat to a baby gryphon.

Right now, the baby is sleeping. Aww. This is pretty good CGI, as the show goes. (The gryphon really does look like Dermott. Bet he was a model for the CGI animators)

Deanna's happy to see Sinbad...

...though that doesn't stop her from slapping him in the face. “That’s for standing me up in Basra.”

Poor Sinbad: “I can explain.... I think. Give me a minute. Look, there were these harpies... REALLY! Are you listening?”

“Not really. ... I bet they were all female, too.”

Toren is not about to let a little romantic awkwardness get in the way of the feast, though!

Cut to the big game hunter in the cave again. The baby gryphon woke up, and so it ends up getting stabbed before it’s drugged into sleep. The big game hunter is very unhappy about damaging his prize, and grumps about it. Then he stabs the villager who betrayed his people by taking the hunter to the gryphon’s cave. His minions load the baby gryphon into a cage on a wagon and cart it off. This will end well.

Doubar is recounting the battle from "The Vengeance of Rumina" to rapt attention....

until Bryn starts mumbling "No". "Bryn, you weren't even there!" - and you're interrupting my story! Doubar protests, but Bryn is possessed again.

Sadly, Sinbad's makeout heart to heart with Deanna gets interrupted by Bryn's trance.

There's a lot of screeching and Bryn yells "SHE'S COMING!" and another village runs past shouting about intruders and Sinbad starts to run off, onle to be stopped by another screech. Toren thinks it's the Great Gryphon... and this is not good.

Anyway. the big game hunter is leading a convoy of men, including the wagon with the caged baby gryphon.

Too bad Sinbad is leading a mob of confused villagers right in his way!

Our antagonist solves this by trying to run everybody down and kidnapping Deanna.

So Sinbad starts chasing after them.

He actually gets pretty far, and had he been able to open the cage, this episode would be very, very short. However, the baby gryphon wakes up, snaps at his arm, and he falls off the cart and gets left behind. Ow.

Happily, Doubar and Rongar show up on horseback to rescue him.

Okay, so I'd been quietly nursing a Sinbad/Rongar crack ship based on their scenes together this season, so this just makes me CRACK UP. Rongar is so good at getting shit done. The two hottest male characters on the show getting together? If there weren't such a tiny fandom, (or if there was any hint of canonical support), I'd be surprised this pairing wasn't more popular.

Back in the village, everybody's trying to figure out what to do when the mother gryphon attacks.

Rongar saves someone from being swept away by the force of the gryphon's wings.

Well, that was freaky. Guess gryphons are real after all, says the resident skeptic-turned-magizoologist.

Eventually, the gryphon flies away, but everyone gets the message that she's seriously pissed.

Between Bryn's magical link with the mother gryphon and what Sinbad saw in the cage, the crew figures out that they need to retrieve the baby gryphon for the mother to calm down and not destroy the village. Okay!

... so Sinbad takes Bryn and Rongar with him, while Firouz and Doubar get to stay behind and take care of the villagers. Oh, and mind the hawk.

Sinbad is so overprotective of Dermott now that Maeve is gone. A side effect of this treatment is that Dermott is tragically underused, and functions mostly as a living accessory for Bryn rather than an actual characters, credits notwithstanding.

(I was really hoping Dermott would have a special bond with the gryphon, but no dice.)

Our mysterious antagonist kidnapped Deanna mostly to as a hostage in case the villagers try to rescue the gryphon. When she protests that Sinbad will rescue her anyway, he mentions he's always wanted to fight "the legendary creature" Sinbad. Tee hee. This will end well.

Malek orders a hapless lackey into the gryphon's cage to clean its wound. The poor dude gets eaten instead. Malek's not terribly disappointed by this, but everybody else looks grim.

Malek sends a decoy cart along the main roads to the pasha's big city, where he's taking the gryphon to sell to the ruler's zoo. Sinbad correctly deduces that it could be a trap but runs off to investigate anyway.

Meanwhile, Firouz and Dermott are standing lookout, waiting for the mother gryphon to return and kill everybody.

Deanna is taking a sponge bath at the stream, when Malek comes to talk to her. He talks like he wants to seduce her, but it's mostly just to brag about his plans to sell the gryphon to the pasha’s zoo and how she can't do anything to stop him. Super creepy.

Also he brags about what a good hunter he is: "Elephants in Mombasa, dragons in China, a sphinx in Egypt."

... WAIT. THERE ARE CANONICAL DRAGONS. WHY CAN'T WE SEE THEM??

Sinbad, Rongar and Bryn find the decoy caravan. How does Rongar decide when to throw a dirk versus swinging the sword or punching people? It seems kinda random.

Bryn discovers the cart is empty just as the mother gryphon attacks. Our heroes flee for the woods, but Malek's goons aren't so lucky. Happily for Sinbad, the goons reveal their true destination before they die.

Dermott shows up just in time for Sinbad to write the name of their destination on a scrap of parchment to take to Doubar and Firouz back in the village. Sinbad really talks down to Dermott, and Dermott refuses to take the message until Bryn offers it to him. This is going to be so awkward when Dermott's true nature is revealed.

The pasha's city, Inkra, is basically the same as Baghdad from 1x01. There's even a guy wearing the same outfit as Prince Casib. Apparently, lavender never goes out of style. 

Anyway, Malek and his goons have to hang out in the marketplace with the caged gryphon until the pasha arrives. He's late because he has to put on his special dress outfit. Malek is not pleased with the delay. 

Malek lets Deanna go, but threatens to kill her if she tries to free the gryphon or otherwise interfere with him.

No one can recognize our heroes now!

Sinbad looks so cool and casual eating an apple he totally stole.

... but subtle is not his style.

Deanna tries to run to free the gryphon, but of course gets trapped. Fortunately, Rongar throws a dirk and gets Malek to drop his sword and let her go. I think the dirk bounces off Malek's armor so it doesn't kill him, sadly. (That's Sinbad's job.)

Nothing like a fight to get the crowd excited.

Sinbad knows he looks good.

This being Sinbad, there's an inevitable rooftop chase sequence.

Rongar and Bryn are ambushed by Malek's remaining minions before they can open the cage to free the gryphon. They are rescued by Firouz, who has a fucking BAZOOKA! (Or at least the shoulder-mounted version of his cannon from 1x22.)

I think we can all agree that Firouz is never more in his element than when he's blowing stuff up. At least the crew never makes fun of him for it.

"Science, I love it," he says as he hoists it off his shoulder. Don't we all?

He then proceeds to use it as a weapon to BLOCK SWORDS which is a) awesome and b) so damn impractical because I know it would be damaged from impact. Who does the metalworking/gunsmithing in this universe, anyway? I think about this, but I don't actually care because THIS IS AWESOME and I want a gifset of it.

Doubar opens the cage with his super-strength. Suddenly, Firouz is face to face with an angry gryphon. Firouz just stands there - in a spirit of scientific curiosity, no doubt - while the baby gryphon snaps and roars at him. It takes him a moment to realize he should duck. I love Firouz so much.

The baby gryphon flies away and is reunited with its mother. Aww. Peace is restored to the land.

Meanwhile, in the rooftop battle, Sinbad uses the whip to hold himself up while he flings Malek into the air. Malek is impaled on a spike. Ouch.

Quoth Deanna, That's SO hot.

Not ever pictured: the pasha, showing up late in his party outfit, wondering where the hell his gryphon is. At least everybody in the marketplace got a great show!

Back on the boat, Doubar teases Sinbad about Deanna, but Sinbad is so not interested in going along with it. Note Rongar's expression in the background, clearly trying not to laugh.

...Welp, that was awkward. Time to chat with Bryn!

Bryn is a little jealous of the gryphons for having a family and for belonging, since she has no memories of either. "Well, you could always stay behind with the gryphons," Sinbad teases. "Thank you, Mr. Sentiment," Bryn laughs.

Okay. Um. I get that Sinbad is often uncomfortable with deep emotional topics and reverts to humor as a way of getting out of it, but here is the part where you could SUGGEST THE CREW COULD BE FAMILY TO HER. You know, the way you guys did in 1x10 when Rongar was Scratch's prisoner. This could have been a totally poignant moment instead of a throwaway joke, I'm just saying.

So, overall, this was a "meh" episode for me. The gryphons were cool, but something just didn't work for me in the way the story was set up and structured. Also, I'm annoyed by the missed opportunity for emotional connection at the end. BUT FIROUZ HAS A FRIKKIN' BAZOOKA, so it's definitely not all bad.