#slothcritic

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 10 Review

A satisfying conclusion with plenty of jabs, jibs and a ghost whatnow?

While The Punchline has been split up into three parts, I will be reviewing and judging all three parts as a single episode within a single review. I will be giving out scores for each part just for posterity however, but only the overall score will be considered this episode’s actual rating.

In the cold open, Vegeta is absolutely thrilled over snapping Nappa out of existence, and Goku asks Krillin and Gohan to retreat while he deals with Vegeta. Krillin is already gone, screaming and crying. Gohan and Goku have a brief conversation about putting dinner on, because he's hungry. There might be some reference I'm not getting here, or if it's really just a face-value scene, but I think it would've been funnier if the title sequence had begun just after Krillin is shown running (flying) away to safety.

[Title Sequence, Part 1]

Goku and Vegeta opt to find a new battlefield, as the one where Nappa decimated the Z Fighters is a little "corpsey." King Kai starts taking bets on which of them is going to win, and even the Narrator tries to get in on that, despite already knowing the outcome.

The delivery on Vegeta's lines early on is not promising. I'm not sure if it's poor audio quality caused by a crappy microphone or if Lanipator was struggling with some kind of throat infection while recording these lines, but it's noticeable as there's a long extended conversation with a voice that sounds like sandpaper to the ears. I actually went back to check on the previous episodes to see if I was taking crazy pills, and no, Vegeta sounded just fine before. I have no idea what the reason or cause of this change might be, whether it was a deliberately different delivery or if they were rushing to put this episode out, but Vegeta sounds consistently more raspy in this episode than the gravelly deadpan to which I've become accustomed. For all I know, yelling as Vegeta might just by taxing on his vocal chords.

Putting the voice issue aside, Goku's oblivious lack of understanding for the word "elite" and the back and forth between the two of them works on the whole as a great scene.

"I'm going to start beating you now. I don't know when I'll stop."

I can't remember whether or not that's a reference, but I love the delivery on it. Vegeta has just finished dealing with Nappa and now has absolutely zero patience for someone just as braindead.

Sure enough, after being taunted about a cave full of gumdrops and ice cream, Vegeta drops the "That's it! EVERYONE DIES!" which might be one of my favorite things said in this episode, but it’s followed closely by:

"Say goodbye to your planet, Kakarot." "Well that's not very nice." "OF COURSE NOT! I'M FUCKING EVIL!"

The dynamic here works astoundingly well. It's very different from Vegeta and Nappa's duo, but works on similar foundations. With Vegeta and Nappa, Nappa was the ridiculous one and Vegeta served as his anchor. With Vegeta and Goku, the roles are flipped and Vegeta is now the ridiculous one, screaming his head off in frustration and writhing around in the death throes of his pride, while Goku's complete obliviousness and innocence keeping him grounded as the anchor. Nappa was purposefully annoying because he was a bratty, childish mook, while Goku is just annoying by happenstance and being very, very hard to put down. It doesn't help that Vegeta actually wants to kill Goku, and unlike Nappa, he's having less than success with this one.

The overall production of the climatic beam struggle is surprisingly well executed, and is perhaps the best moment in this entire episode from a technical perspective. Goku speaking as he charges up the Kamehameha doesn't sound cheesy, canned or forced, and neither does Vegeta's delivery. The sound effects and music are also on point here. This is an important moment in the series and I'm glad they got it just right. I have no objections with anything here.

If anything, at about five and a half minutes in, the viewer has had enough time to adjust to Vegeta's new raspier voice and it no longer seems out of place. If he had been speaking "normally" up until this point, I probably would have criticized the delivery on these lines, but it almost feels like it fits on the whole now that this has been established as the "new normal" for the last five minutes. The main point I'm attempting and probably failing at making is that my original complaint was that the new voice took me out of the episode, but in this moment with the beam struggle, Vegeta's voice flows naturally and I honestly wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't just (as of now) dedicated two whole paragraphs of this review to JUST talking about how Vegeta sounds slightly different now.

Alright, now it's time to back up a tad, which isn't something I like to do a lot. Twice in this episode, Goku has used the Kaio-Ken and then the Kaio-Ken times three. The first time he used it, he seemed to at least match Vegeta. The second time he used it, he jobbed Vegeta straight into a rocky wall. But it's only good for a few seconds, so it has no sustain. It's essentially one really strong punch or a really quick beat down, but leaves Goku winded and struggling at the end of it.

The reason I didn't bring these up as they happened was because frankly the scenes didn't do enough for me to write about it. I write about what I feel is significant to my review to give context or explanation to my thought process, not to give a play by play. Simply put, they were funny, but nothing notable happened because of it. It was a quick skit, okay, move on. But it's now important to draw attention to those two moments, because while they did very little for me the first two times... Well, during this beam struggle, just as Vegeta feels like he’s gaining the upper hand, the dramatic music quiets to nothing but the sounds of the beams clashing, and all we hear is...

"Kaio-Ken..." Vegeta look on in horror.  "...No..." "Times..." "No no no..." "FOUR!"

Vegeta is sent skyward with a loud FFFFUUUUUU- and then twinkles like Team Rocket just blasted off again. Goku is the victor... of this fight at least.

Then there's an odd cutaway back to Roshi's island that's slow to start, but eventually got me to smile. It's all the characters from Dragon Ball reminiscing of times where they used to be relevant to the story. Guest appearance by Baba who almost doesn't appear in Z at all!

It initially felt like a bit of tone whiplash but it warmed up to me. And "Whatever happened to Launch?" actually got a laugh out of me. Seems like Toriyama isn't the only person who forgot about her.

I'm not sure what the point of this scene was, but I agree with the decision that after that climax, a break or calming down period in the tension it had built up was definitely necessary, even if the transition felt a little jarring at first.

"Meanwhile, back at the plot", which is an amazing segue, Vegeta gets off Mr Goku's Wild Ride and the beam continues on without him into the pink sky.

I don't think -UUUUUUCK! counts as an F-Bomb so it doesn't get censored. Booyah!

Vegeta then undergoes a post ass-kicking identity crisis. After devising a plan to turn into the mighty Ozaru, he then undergoes a where's-the-damned-moon crisis.

Good thing Blutz Waves are a thing. He yeets the artificial moon into the sky and boom, King Kong. The other King K attempts to coach Goku through dealing with this beast (that is canonically stronger than Captain Ginyu at this point) and advises Goku to find a safe, secluded location to charge up the Spirit Bomb.

Goku however decides to do it right out in the open. Just as Ape Vegeta's massive fist obliterates Goku, King Kai's crystal ball turns to static and gets the operator disconnected message. I think a dial tone would've been slightly funnier, but this has the same energy so I'll take it with no complaints. An excellent way to end the first part of this episode!

[Part 2]

This part begins with Goku hitting a rock so hard he thinks he's in Dragonball Evolution for a moment. After blinding Vegeta with a solar flare, which I'm still not entirely sure how that works or why people don't use it more often to get cheap surprise shots on blinded targets, Goku finds a quiet spot that he can use to charge the Spirit Bomb. He ends up borrowing so much energy from the planet that he may or may not have drained all the life from an old father deer. Dark, but morbidly hilarious.

Goku tries to fling the Spirit Bomb at Vegeta, but surprise: He's got a mouth laser! Knocks the Spirit Bomb right out of him and sends him tumbling against a rock.

"Hey Kakarot, what's the opposite of Christopher Walken?" "Huh?" "Christopher Reeves!"

CRUNCH! The giant monkey stomps down right on Goku's legs, crushing and immobilizing him.

This is such a bad, good joke. I still think about this one from time to time. And honestly, considering how I started binge-watching these in high school (where I more or less developed into an entirely different person), this joke here might very well be the genesis of my love for black humor. I'm fully willing to admit I'm biased on this, but I think this is one of the funniest dark jokes in DBZA, full stop. If not the whole series, then at least within Season 1. Don't care, evil.

Just as he's about to be crushed for good, Goku shoots a quick energy blast into Vegeta's eye, causing him to stagger backwards. This is where Goku makes his cunning escape, dodging, weaving and doing aerial acrobatics around the massive monkey man, accompanied by victorious fanfare. Or not. Goku's legs are still broken. But it's nice to just imagine how cool that would’ve looked, y’know?

Vegeta then decides he's just going to squeeze the life out of Goku, and his screams can be heard well into the distance, all the way to Krillin and Gohan.

The giant monkey keeps squeezing Goku until he squeaks like a rubber ducky, or a chew toy. He does it again, and another squeak.

"Oh my god, that's hilarious."

In the middle of squeaking Goku relentlessly, Gohan decides to make a stand, having blown back to fight Ape Vegeta. He gives a verbose speech that culminates in "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." and then strikes a fighting pose like his five year old ass is going to do anything against a fifty foot behemoth. Battle gong and everything playing in the background.

Vegeta just stares at Gohan, and then after a pause, squeaks Goku again. This has delightfully petty energy to it, especially coming from Vegeta.

While Gohan has caught Vegeta monologuing, Krillin attempts a sneak attack on Vegeta, but he effortlessly humiliates him and thwarts his efforts by simply hopping over the Kienzan that was coming from behind.

However, he couldn't anticipate two sneak attacks. That or Yajirobe was simply that unlikely of a hero, but here he comes sword and all to save literally everyone's lives as he slices Vegeta's tail clean off his rump.

With no more tail, Vegeta regresses to his original Saiyan form. He's no less dangerous, however, and just as Krillin tries to bring the hype, he gets immediately pinballed into the nearest rocky structure and the owned count strikes 9.

The writing on Vegeta's speech following this is actually quite good. "I thought I'd be angrier" is not a take I expected from someone who's had such major meltdowns and cataclysmic conniptions thus far. It does a good job of illustrating how far down the rabbit hole we've gone, to the point where he has become so angry that he's encountered a stack overflow.

Goku and Gohan have a touching moment, both broken, beaten and bloody, but as they share a heart to heart, and their hands extend towards one another's like a Michelangelo painting, Vegeta comes in like a good fiend and gives Goku a killer knee-shot to the ribs. You have to wait for the right moment!

They immediately cut away to an intermission, which they never do in any other episode, but honestly it fits here. The alternative would be to end the episode here and we've still got another three minutes and some change to go. It's an arbitrary production joke but it's necessary and well done for the scene as a whole so it gets a pass and then some from me.

When we resume, Vegeta and Gohan duke it out, which provides a convenient distraction for Goku to hand off part of the Spirit Bomb to Krillin. It turns out he'd been saving some of the earth juices from when he got the snot knocked out of him earlier, but only a little bit of it. Krillin is confused as to why Goku would trust him of all people with it, and Goku concedes that his back is kind of against the wall on this one.

With a yipee-kay-yay and a booyah motherfucker, Krillin lobs the Spirit Bomb Lite at Vegeta, who simply jumps Krillin’s attack for the second time. Maybe aim a little higher next time, or better yet don’t loudly announce your attacks. Not that anyone in this series would understand that concept anyways.

Now the Spirit Bomb is heading straight for Gohan. But it's okay because Gohan is a main character, so he just Uno Reverse Card’s the Spirit Bomb off his hands and it sproings upwards towards Vegeta once more.

Side note, I don't think it's ever explained, either in the abridged or the original series, how Goku is able to communicate telepathically with Gohan. Yes, Master Roshi says in Dragon Ball that "any highly skilled martial artist can read minds" but does that just mean reading minds or actually communicating between them? And if that's the case, why doesn't Goku use this more often? I could probably find at least one plot point that could've been avoided by this, but the answer is probably extremely simple. Goku is a moron. It's very easy to explain away forgetfulness or inconsistent writing when you can just default to saying that your main character is an idiot who forgot he could do those techniques that you forgot existed as a writer. Don't think about it too much I guess.

"What smells like deer?"

I’ve actually missed this joke every single time I've watched this episode so far, except for just now, when I watched it to write this review. The old father deer from before! That is such a cool and unexpected callback.

Anyways, Vegeta gets punked by the Diet Spirit Bomb and goes sailing into the sky. The Z Fighters - which is now just Goku, Gohan and Krillin - are ecstatic in celebration.

"It's been tough, but now, we'll never have to see that rotten Saiyan ever again."

Cue Vegeta's lifeless body ragdolling to the ground with a meaty thwap. Krillin tempts fate by approaching the body, and that goes as expected. Vegeta opens one eye and screams. Then the others all start screaming.

Very weird production mis-step or weird decision with the source footage here. Vegeta's face at least moves, but because all the others have panning shots, they freeze in weird, awkward positions. The action lines don't move, some characters aren't fully in frame, and it's very obviously a still image instead of  something like a loop. Maybe this is just what they had to work with. Still, very immersion breaking. Though honestly, I'm almost glad that if something like this had to happen in this part, it was at least in the last ten seconds.

Goku is confused because he can't move. I mean, they won right? Why is everyone screaming.

[Part 3]

This part begins immediately with Krillin getting bitch slapped, earning a 10/10 on the owned counter. Vegeta then decides he has had exactly enough of everyone and everything, and goes for the nuclear option.

Fortunately for our heroes, Vegeta has been so worn down, battered, sent through the ringer, and has suffered so much damage to that one eye in particular, that he doesn't have enough energy left to kill everyone all at once. Instead, he opts to get his hands dirty and cut them each of them down one at a time. Speaking of cut, here comes Yajirobe with his sword. It can pierce through Vegeta's armor, which is wonderful news but ultimately pointless. However, it serves as an excellent distraction.

Remember that fake moon? Remember how Vegeta only returned to normal form because his tail was amputated? Remember earlier how Piccolo had to destroy the Earth's actual moon because Gohan was a rampaging Donkey Kong lunatic? Well guess who just woke up staring right at that fake moon in the sky.

Lacking any barrels in the vicinity, Ape Gohan decides to throw around some rocks.

Goku, again, reaches to him telepathically and reminds him not to go on a rampage killing everyone.

"Remember Icarus? He did it."

Now, purely within this episode, this isn’t an issue. It’s a funny haha moment. However, this scene gets a little more irritating or perplexing once you’ve seen some of the DBZA movies. This knowledge did hamper my enjoyment of this scene on rewatch. However, that ultimately isn’t fair to this episode as a stand alone product, and my gut instinct of “My knowledge of episodes that came out well after this one retroactively makes this episode worse!” is also something I try tooth and nail to avoid. So I’m going to talk about this for a bit and get it out of my system so I can approach it fairly.

Simply put, Icarus is a headache. He's Gohan's friend and pet dragon of sorts, for like three random movies, some episodes of Z and then never gets mentioned again. Goku implies that Vegeta is responsible for Icarus' death, despite the fact that Icarus is still alive at some point after Goku defeats Freeza. I would normally take up the stance of “okay, let’s ignore the official canon / non-canon and just stick to DBZA” but he ALSO features in the DBZA movie Cooler’s Revenge, so this is multiple layers of crazy. 

I understand that DBZA exists primarily as a form of parody and thus prioritizes humor and “working with what you’ve got” over some things a harsh anal-retentive person might deflagrate them for (cough cough) and are not afraid to contradict themselves on points of little significance for the sake of humor. I also don’t think they had any long-standing plans to incorporate Icarus into Z at the time this episode was made - They may have simply wanted to make a joke about the DBZ equivalent of Poochie the Dog from Itchy & Scratchy.

Like I said, Icarus is headache. However, simply in this moment and nothing else, I do feel it works. It’s shows a cute dragon geting exploded. Who couldn’t feel bad for this poor random dragon that I totally haven’t ever seen before? It also works within the story itself -  Gohan gets sufficiently angry, and Vegeta starts treading the tightrope of desperation. 

Gohan's Ozaru form isn't long lived however, as Vegeta suddenly learns the Kienzan and slices his tail off with it. Small problem though, Gohan was airborne, and the regression back to a normal Saiyan form is not instantaneous. His massive body looms over him, and with a Big NO, Vegeta go splat.

He's down but not out. He at least has enough energy to call for his Space Uber to come and pick him up. As he's crawling hands and knees into his escape pod, Krillin suddenly decides he wants to be important, and appears with Yajirobe's sword, poised to strike. 

Vegeta is understandably terrified, because after the day Krillin's had, he's gone full ride or die mode and isn't about to wait on an invitation to go full Thanksgiving turkey on this maniac.

However, Goku wants the pacifist ending and gives a very simplified version of the original speech to Krillin. If he's sorry, we have to let him leave. Because that's what being a good boy is all about. It's noteworthy that one of my all-time favorite Vegeta quotes happens right here in the original dub.

"When I come back to this planet, you're all going to suffer. And when you beg me for mercy, I'll stare into your eyes as I crush the life out of you."

However in this version, we're treated to "Yes, I'm very very sorry. Sorry that you're all still alive, suckers!"

And honestly, both versions are fitting for their respective interpretations of Vegeta.

As we pan out, the narrator waxes on the victory of the heroes and how he made bank from his bet with King Kai. Next time, don't make bets with the narrator you stupid idiot. Big dumb idiot god. 

I'm writing this at close to 4am if you couldn't tell. Scheduled uploads!

"Has anyone really not seen this show already? Find out in the next season of Dragon Ball Z Abridged!"

And that's it folks! Well, almost. We have one final scene to go through first.

Vegeta is hurdling through space in his Saiyan pod, lamenting his laundry list of losses and failures, but at least concedes that his situation cannot get worse. But we all know what happens to people who tempt fate.

"Vegeta... VEGEEEEEETA..." "Wh-What?" *DING* "I'm haunting you."

And thus, we've reached the end of Season 1! The Ghost Nappa song plays and the outro credits roll.

Conclusion

First off, definitely a longer review than I'm used to writing. Secondly, this was a great three-parter. I wasn't sure if the format would hold up like it does for single segment episodes, but it does. Now I'm sure there are bad episodes to come in the future, but for now I'm happy that the last three or four episodes have all scored relatively high. TFS is going into Season 2 with some great foundations built upon their older, more crude material, and they still have a lot of room yet to improve. I should consider being more critical with this next season as the expectations will be higher!

There’s one noteworthy gripe I have with each of these three parts, but only one worth writing about. -Vegeta suddenly sounding different, as if I didn't talk about that enough. I swear I'm not taking crazy pills. -Weird freeze frames at the end of Part 2. -Icarus, simply because he messes with me on a personal level. This fucking dragon doesn't make any god damned sense.

Other than that, I liked it. I don't know if I'd say "I loved it" but for the series as a whole, we're getting there at breakneck speed.

The first part had some great back and forth interactions with Goku and Vegeta, both the dialogues and the beam struggle, while the second part had more stand-out moments with just Vegeta, from the squeaking Goku, to the "I thought I'd be angrier" speech, his perfectly timed knee to ribs, and the famous last words "What smells like deer?"

The last part... didn't actually have much of this. I didn't find the talk about Vegeta’s father to be terribly funny and nothing else he said was extremely stand-out like in the previous two parts. This part didn't so much have humor as it was the "let's wrap things up" segment. Most of the noteworthy moments happen close to the tail end. I will admit, even ten years later, I still got a little sentimental hearing that outro from LK, and let's not sleep on Ghost Nappa. They may have done you dirty in Kai 3 but we still love you!

Overall, I'm happy that this was as good as I remembered it. I found jokes I didn't pick up the first few times, flaws that I didn't know existed, and a new appreciation for some subtle details that may have glossed over me while I was busy laughing about Christopher Reeves.

Part 1: 75 Part 2: 78 Part 3: 72

Score: 75

Passing Thoughts

"Kaio-Ken!" "Kaio-What?"

Small error on my part - Piccolo blows up the moon in Episode 4, and in my review of that episode, I mistakenly attribute a scene from this episode to DBZ Kai Abridged.

"I'm going to enjoy this far more than I should." - And like that, Vegeta has suddenly become relatable.

"Thank God, I thought he meant penis!"

"Time to crush you like an Arlian." "A what?" "Exactly."

"I haven't killed a damned thing since I got to this god-forsaken planet! Not for lack of trying mind you."

[slothcritic1]

Changing Blogs

This blog has always been a “secondary blog” to my own personal blog. I wish to change that. However, there is presently no way of changing this blog into a primary blog with Tumblr’s current infrastructure. This means I will be creating a new account with this page as the primary blog.

Posting on THIS page is now discontinued, but slothcritic blogs will continue as normal. For all your slothy needs, please see the new blog located at slothcritic.tumblr.com 

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 8 Review

Consistent yet lackluster, this is a good episode that doesn’t really stand out.

The title sequence for Nappa's Best Day Ever should've started after Cadaverrific! which I think is a wonderful bit of black humor. But the following scene just felt like another "ha ha bulma is a loose woman" joke. This scene might've been funnier with better voice acting. I wouldn't say the scene did nothing for me, but it did very little.

Also “Mr Kent” - Is that a Superman reference or am I taking crazy pills?

[Title Sequence]

With Yamcha gone, the mantle of series buttmonkey falls to Krillin. He has his big damn hero moment, when he Limit Breaks the stuffing out of three Saibamen, but it's frankly disregarded in favor of Piccolo using a god damned mouth-laser to annihilate the last one.

With no more Saibamen left to toy with, it falls upon the two Saiyans to get their hands dirty. Or rather, for Nappa to get his hands dirty while Vegeta sits back and watches. Nappa is no less full of whipshot non-sequiturs in this episode than he was in the previous. After some banter about teaching the Z Fighters a lesson, he gives new meaning to the word "punchline" and amputates Tien's arm.

Compared to a lot of other voice actors, Ganxingba (Tien) actually does a decent scream here. Most of the other screams so far have either been laid on too thick, or done way too close so it peaks their potato microphones, or it’s just super disingenuous. But right here, Tien’s scream is actually really convincing and doesn’t make me feel like someone is stabbing knives into my ears.

The quiet breeze after Vegeta makes a corny pun (Looks like he's been... disarmed!) sells the joke. Nappa’s follow-up seems more like an in-character necessity for him than it seems like a part of the joke.

Ever apparent that fighting Nappa would be completely beyond their capabilities, Chiaotzu decides to blow himself up and take Nappa with him.

"You can just wish me back with the Dragon Balls!" "We already wished you back with the Dragon Balls! We can't do it twice!" "...Wait, wha--?"

KABOOM. Okay, that got a chuckle out of me. This is also the first time the respawn limit of the Dragon Balls has been mentioned. Simply put, everybody gets one.

Krillin's comment on Chiaotzu's death is really bland and lazily written, but prompts a little more character insight to Tien.

"I loved him." "As a memorial to Yamcha... Gay."

I didn't like it when Yamcha first said it, but being referenced in this macabre fashion does something for me. I won't claim it's clever or witty but I personally find it funny.

Nappa then reveals that Chiaotzu's sacrifice had absolutely no effect on him, which naturally enrages Tien. He goes on to get the stuffing knocked out of him, and Gohan ponders if they should help him instead of just standing around.

Piccolo explains that Tien is in a battle to honor his friend’s death, and he wouldn’t dare besmirch the man’s pride by interrupting his heroic last stand. 

This immediately cuts to Tien screaming for help.

I can't tell if the smirk when Piccolo says "Like a hero" is a visual edit or actually existed in the source material, but it's use here is amazing. The look on his face makes him seem like a sadist who's enjoying this, and that's honestly not too far off from how Piccolo has been depicted so far. He's the Demon King who wants to take over the world and couldn't care less about these humans.

After being reprimanded by Gohan, Piccolo and Krillin finally get the lead out and agree to team up against Nappa. They get some surprise slaps on him, and Piccolo yells for Gohan to shoot him with everything he's got before he has time to DODGE.

This triggers a Pavlovian response and Gohan immediately runs for cover, which means Piccolo and Krillin are just going to have to fight Nappa the old fashioned way: By using the Kagebunshin no Jutsu.

"I can't... believe it."

The Naruto skit is creative and risable in its own right but not exactly gut-busting. What's a whole lot funnier is the notion that Nappa's incredible mental discipline is derived entirely from him playing "Patty Cake, Patty Cake" in his head.

Each of Krillin's shadow clones gets their own notch on the owned counter, bringing the score up to 7.

Nappa then commends their effort and tells them, hey at least you didn't kill yourself using a single useless attack, like Chiaotzu did. Tien then proceeds to do that exact same thing: He fires a Kikoho at Nappa and then dies.

It's given a bit more cause for worry in the original show, where Vegeta states that it very well could have killed Nappa if he didn't guard against it at the last second, but in this series he's given no such credit. Nappa just laughs and says "Pointless."

Just before he goes in for the kill on Krillin, he's stopped mid-air by a stunning realization. He can fly. Vegeta is too flabbergasted to argue this and simply agrees.

After pitching a fit about wanting Goku to watch him murder the Z Fighters, Vegeta obliges Nappa and agrees to wait three hours for Goku to arrive.

I half-expected, half-wanted them to make a fake girlfriend reference with Goku here.

Vegeta - "So this friend of yours, that you SAY is coming, is somehow stronger than all of you combined, yet didn't show up here to fight us, and you're only just now telling us this after two of your friends have died?"

Krillin - "You wouldn't know him, he goes to a different school."

Thirty seconds into their three hour wait time, Nappa starts up the "Is he here yet?" bit. Vegeta shoos him off and tells him to go have fun and occupy himself in any way he sees fit.

This begins a well-timed, well-edited musical number of Nappa systematically dismantling the naval and air forces of what I assume is the World Government.

And this whole time while Nappa is enjoying himself to the sounds of musical splendor, crashing metal, and explosions, Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan are just standing still in a morosely quiet semi-circle. For the entire three hours I'm guessing. Vegeta's scouter alarm goes off, which means time is up and they're all going to die. Nappa suddenly returns without his shirt and elbows Piccolo in the head so hard it changes the color of the sky from blue to pink.

Not the most clean or graceful cutaway scene, but it sells itself regardless. The stinger is a stronger finish than it had any right to be, as a callback and apparent closure to the most esoteric joke in this series. RIP Whales.

Conclusion

This was a plateau of an episode. Whereas the last episode had constant peaks and kept your interest, this one was steady and consistent throughout in a less remarkable way. Most of the factors that go into making or breaking an episode seemed to have hit a comfortable resting point. That or I've just finally become numb to the questionable microphone quality.

I feel like this episode almost lands in the twilight zone of "It's bad, so let me reach to say something positive about it" and "It's good, so let me reach to say something negative about it." that just coalesces into me not having much of anything to say about it. I’m uncertain whether or not this constitutes a failure on my part as a critic, or if this episode really is just that comparatively monotonous.

The word mediocre is often used to mean bad or poor, which I don't feel fits this episode, but it certainly isn't a stand out. I really couldn't find much worthy of discussion here beyond face value.

The few jokes that struck me personally stop me from calling this episode boring, but I found myself repeatedly checking the time to see how much I still had left to watch. It had jokes that were definitely funny, but nothing here really kept my attention. Other lackluster episodes, even if they were not worth a rewatch, kept my interest because I'd latch onto things that were obvious and apparent as being poorly done. This one offered very little variance between the lowest it went and the peak its comedy or production.

If anything, this episode is saved from a lower score by its tail end. Nappa's patty cake joke and the eponymous "best day ever" scene really make up the majority of this episodes hard-hitting humor for me.

But it is important to note that this is still a good episode. It’s not a laugh riot episode and it’s probably not in anyone’s Top 5, but it’s a very comfortable middle ground between the worst this season has to offer and the very peaks.

As an important side note, I feel like we're just now encroaching upon what might be Nappa fatigue. I maintain my position that Nappa has yet to have a “do nothing” joke - all of his humor has been in a hit in some capacity - but it feels almost par for the course at this point. Nappa is definitely not overdone in this episode and he in fact caries it, but I feel like another episode of this style would tread tightly upon the expiration date of how much zaniness you can come to expect before it starts to feel samey. Nappa is in danger here of simply becoming too saturated within the show’s focus and would lose his simplistic, unique appeal that's the driving force behind his characterization. Which is well-timed because we all know what happens next episode...

While I don’t think this episode stands out as a whole, it definitely has some strongly quotable moments. Yeah, yeah, most of what Nappa said. But a series of hilariously derailing one-liners does not make for something remarkable on the whole, which to me just feels expected, stagnant and safe. The peaks are not enough to pull this episode further up, but I must say I’m still not fully confident in my assessment. This was definitely a weird episode to judge.

Score: 67

Passing Thoughts

“What the hell could someone like you possibly major in?” “Child psychology.” “Wow, that sounds really interesting.” “WITH A MINOR IN PAIN!”

"Nappa here is worth 5 Raditz, and I am worth 15 Raditz!" - Vegeta Accurate to the canon power levels!

Oolong saying "Get back to the fight!" sounds absolutely nothing like Oolong. In fact, Episode 1 Oolong sounds more like Oolong than this short cameo did.

"Dick move, guys."

"Good effort, but I'm the patty cake champion."

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 7 Review

Humor that doesn't let up. This episode is non-stop, action-packed, and delivers on everything it tries to do.

The cold open for Saiyans? On My Planet? (It's More Likely Than You Think) has a continuation to the "are we there yet?" skit, capped off with the Saiyans collapsing a building and cratering into the concrete, thus finally arriving on Earth. It's simple dialogue but the pacing, the delivery and the fact that it closes off a running joke makes it a wonderfully effective opener.

[Title Sequence]

Most of this scene has comedic and plot-relevant heft to it. Nappa glasses a city because he hates awkward silences and we as viewers are reminded that the Saiyans are here for the Dragon Balls. The "epic foreshadowing" joke however just feels needless and clunky. I wouldn't say it's out of character, Vegeta constantly begrudges Nappa's idiocy, but perhaps this line should've been written with less flashing bells and alarm signals reading "HEY GUYS, WE'RE MAKING A JOKE OVER HERE."

After a brief back-and-forth with Gohan and Piccolo, Krillin shows up, and... goodness me his voice is squeaky. Let me take a timeout from discussing this episode in a self-contained context. I'll criticize the microphone quality or the writing or the weaker visual gags or the editing missteps, but it's important to point out that not all of the show's improvements have been made through technical means. The cast has also improved personally as voice actors over the years. These contrasts are most notable in characters like Vegeta, Krillin and King Kai. Their modern voices are rounded out much better on delivery, whereas from the outset they're scratchy, unrefined, or even muddled. This also matters partially in-context of the episode itself, because goodness did that voice take me out of my viewing experience.

Krillin and Gohan catch up on how their respective year of training has been. While Gohan has no qualms about his stay with Piccolo, we're treated to distant laughter and an ominous pair of eyes in the background while Krillin undergoes what I can only assume is a PTSD-induced flashback.

One Fight Club reference later, the Saiyans finally meet the main ensemble of Piccolo, Gohan and Krillin.

"Hi."

Appreciating Nappa's role in this series is not exactly an uncommon or niche opinion, but I don't feel the urge to dismiss his humor or succinct, faithful-to-character writing just for the sake of being a contrarian or trying to get a reaction out of people.

I can see it now - "Nappa's characterization as a bumbling oaf is wildly inconsistent with the idea that he would've been a Saiyan General, or one of the most respected military mights in the universe. Vegeta would've been well aware of his character and annoying tendencies from a very young age and would've gotten the hell out of dodge the second he was capable. This depiction is nothing but a transparent flanderization of an originally unremarkable character created for the sole purpose of having a quotable, marketable personality with viral potential in a show that has so far been 'mildly entertaining' at it's peak."

Let me be clear. This is a parody. It’s meant to be pointlessly funny about certain topics. It’s meant to breathe life into creative interpretations of characters for the sake of humor. If I don’t think it’s funny, I will be critical of that. But I see no point in disliking something that I think is funny purely because it is either “popular” or, dare I say it, a “mainstream” opinion.

Vegeta is the kind of person who needs a strong sidekick who's subservient, loyal, and doesn't question orders. Nappa checks most of those boxes across both the original series and this one. Additionally, unlike a lot of other jokes or attempts at humor in this series, Nappa's very simple writing has consistently been a hit. Aside from the Arlia montage with no music, I can't think of a single line of dialogue or joke that Nappa has said that was a complete, useless dud. If it works, it works.

"So, you guys are the Saiyans?" "No."

I want to put on the record that I paused the episode after Nappa said "Hi", wrote for ten minutes on that, then resumed the episode and this line played. I immediately had to pause it again because I was laughing. Just the sheer childishness or petty playfulness that constantly surrounds Nappa and his counter-play with Vegeta injects something completely new and wonderful into this series.

The jokes don't stop after this one. This skit continues with the rule of threes, a callback to Vegeta being a prison bitch, a nerd joke, a eunuch joke, and more. I don't want to talk about all of these individually or I'll be here all day, but let's put a bookend where Nappa reads their power levels. These are all excellent jokes that keep up with the consistently funny pace set by Nappa's introduction. Perhaps the weakest skit is the two Saiyans snickering at Piccolo. It would probably work better if redone now, but the delivery on the laughter isn't entirely convincing enough to flow like everything else does. That said, the joke that an asexual race wouldn't have genitals lands pretty neatly within Nappa's ballpark of humor.

The idea that the Saiyan's power levels are measured based on units of Raditz, and the notion that they can actually grow beings with the same power level as Raditz, is hilarious. Nappa's "Taa-daa" after the Saibamen are revealed is like icing on a very dramatic cake.

I've gotta say I'm with Tien on this one - As someone who grew up in the city where they filmed the Fraggles, I take offense to the implication that they're obscure!

"More bald people!" - I have no idea what Toriyama has against drawing hair (let alone facial hair), but this is a very recurring trend in his art style and I'm glad TFS made fun of it. A cameraman earlier had made the same joke, but it wasn't Nappa saying it, so it was automatically less funny.

Another extremely iconic scene, and at the time a complex visual gag for what the series has done so far, is when Nappa throws the Pokeball at Chiaotzu. The fact that Vegeta deals with so much of Nappa's annoying shit but plays along here just makes this scene so much better.

"That's because you have to damage it first."

This joke has questionable veracity with only Nappa and his “lul so random” take on Chiaotzu’s appearance, but these concerns are immediately dashed by Vegeta, and this is why the dynamic works - Nappa on his own would just be too much stupidity, but Vegeta's deadpan counterbalance provides a nice anchor to reality and solidifies this joke even if Nappa is the one carrying it.

I'm actually rather surprised they didn't draw any comparisons to the Saibamen being Pokemon either. There's six of them, they're all vaguely creature-like beings of adequately short stature, and could quite literally be described as pocket monsters because they can be grown by seeds you keep on your person.

Yamcha lands on the scene with his big damn hero speech, and then immediately one of the Saibaman uses Self Destruct on him. No fight scene, no escalation, just immediate death for you good sir. The scene lingers on Yamcha's corpse while Krillin sheepishly cheers in the background, and that's where the outro plays.

Conclusion

Holy hell this was a good episode, even in retrospect. Almost all of the jokes landed, the pacing and consistency was on point, and we finally have some dramatic gravitas with the Saiyans arriving on Earth. A lot of this episode disappears fast because of how much it draws you in with the interactions and back-and-forth between all of the characters. It's succinct, it's well-written, and the balance and coordination of different kinds of humor play into each other wonderfully here.

If I had to say anything negative about this episode at all, it might be that some scenes played out for too long. While the "humor floor" and "humor ceiling" are definitely a lot higher in this episode than in almost every other episode, there is some variation in joke quality. As I said, nearly every joke in this episode works, but how much does it work? We've reached the point where if the jokes were athletes in a 100m dash, they're no longer breaking both of their legs at the start, but someone still has to cross the finish line first and last. This is also a very dialogue-heavy episode. That can be a good thing, but there's little attention elsewhere in the production of this episode. Things like non-obligatory or joke-dependent sound design come to mind. The video quality is also rather poor. KaiserNeko does switch over to high quality footage for Season 2 and onward, but in Season 1 it's very easy to see the frames shaking or jerking as they spice entire scenes back and forth for their lip flaps. Everyone still has cheap mics.

With that said, I feel like this is a landmark episode for TFS finding their style and settling into a confident stride for the rest of the series.

Score: 80

Passing Thoughts

"You're a prince?" "No." "Fuck you Nappa."

"Oh my god, he blew up the cargo robot. AND THE CARGO WAS PEOPLE!"

"Those readings are useless." "You mean like YouTube friends?" - OOF. That was a great line in 2008, and I personally still think it is, but does YouTube even have a friend system anymore? Or did that get integrated by some other Google platform?

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 9 Review

Consistently funny. The weak points do not drag this episode down.

The Set Up begins with a great cold open. Piccolo is drop-dead unconscious on the ground, Gohan is desperately trying to wake him up, and Krillin is anxiously awaiting for Goku to show up. After all, he’s their friend who would never let them down right? Meanwhile... Goku is busy eating at Jadoshin's palace. Even as a departure from the original series, I like the idea that the two of them made up and are friends now. Jadoshin, however, has to remind Goku about the Saiyans. Goku then runs out in a panic.

[Title Sequence]

Piccolo isn't getting up and Nappa needs a new toy. He chooses Gohan seemingly at random from the two remaining, and floors him in one kick.

"Wooo! Not me!"

When Krillin isn't being the resident Milhouse, he's the rimshot comedian. The joy doesn't last for much longer though, as Gohan stays down.

Nappa is about to tear Krillin a new one, when the bald monk suddenly screams out that it's his turn. And for some glorious reason, this actually works on Nappa. This is some straight up Looney Tunes, "Duck Season, Fire!" type tomfoolery.

Vegeta does not handle Nappa's stupidity very well, and in his anger does a fourth wall break where he references a timestamp in the video. This is kind of clever and a bit of a break from the other fourth wall jokes that they've done so far, but I feel like it could lose its charm if it's done more than once. As for the timestamp itself, which is at 9:18 in the video... we'll get to that later.

Krillin decides to use the Destructo-Kienzan, and Vegeta shouts a warning to Nappa that it's a trick.

"But Vegeta... tricks are for kids."

The tense background music just completely stops here, but you can still hear the vibrations of the kienzan in the background. Great sound design. The long pause afterwards is also well timed, and Vegeta takes up the "fuck it, you wanna die, then die." mentality with Nappa. This skit is succinct, well paced and well editied.

Nappa receives a deep cut to the face for his troubles, as it just nearly takes his head off. Nappa laments his modeling career, and the scene cuts to a photoshopped rendition of Nappa on Vogue magazine. The bald, beautiful Saiyan, and his 10 tips on being a better lover!

This might have been a joke before its time, or perhaps the intention was different while writing this in 2009, but Nappa shows us all what a "nice guy" he was trying to be during all of this, and now decides "okay, full ultra-violence it is!" and fades Krillin with a white sparkly angel dust attack. I'm sure it has an actual cool sounding name (Like "Galaxy Breaker" or something) but I'm going to keep calling it the white sparkly angel dust attack. The owned counter ticks up to 8 here, but it doesn't feel deserved.

Piccolo jumps up with an "I'm back" and shoots Nappa... in the back. He sees what you did there. Just as Piccolo and Nappa are about to throw down, Gohan appears out of nowhere and roundhouse kicks him through a boulder. More indication that Gohan has some incredible hidden power inside of him. This surprises Piccolo, and Gohan is initially apologetic, but Piccolo begs for him to stay angry before Nappa just as quickly hops back to his feet.

It turns out Gohan hit Nappa so hard that he turned Italian. Seems a little out of left field, but why not. The "I'm a firing my laser" reference is perhaps the most dated thing I've seen since Episode 1. Would this even count as a meme? Wasn't "Firin Mah Laser" something that came out before the word meme even became popular as a way of describing internet fads, jokes, templates and trends? Back when Demotivational Posters and I Can Haz Cheeseburger ruled the internet? Truthfully, I loved this joke when it came out, but now all it does is remind me of the proto-internet days. And part of me feels weird for being nostalgic about that, because I just know someone in their 30's is going to read this and roll their eyes saying "Oh God, I'm getting old", in much the same way I'll feel horrified when people start to become nostalgic for Fortnite in the next 10 or 20 years.

Back to the episode, Piccolo's sacrifice happens right about here, and the scene does a good job of pointing out a plot contrivance in the source material. Piccolo could have just grabbed Gohan and moved out of the way. Though the scene plays up the amount of time Piccolo had to work with, there was still nothing stopping him from just grabbing him and chucking him like a bag of potatoes out of the way, even in the original. However, if Piccolo doesn't die, there's no real reason to go to Namek. What I think might be a more practical reason is that, this is a turning point for Piccolo as a character where he starts thinking emotionally. It's no real secret across both the canon and the abridged material that Piccolo is actually a pretty decent parent. So this right here is the idea of Piccolo more or less abandoning rational thought and considered only protecting Gohan. That contrasts a little with the ruthless, methodical, cunning, intelligent character he's been shown to be, just to throw that all away to save him, but the contrivance definitely becomes less egregious when you consider these factors.

However you want to address it, then end result is that Piccolo sacrifices himself to protect Gohan. In the original this is capped off with Piccolo comparing Gohan to his son, which is what Gohan begins to explain before Piccolo calls him a nerd. In this series however, Piccolo laments one final time:

"Why... didn't you... DODGE!!!"

Bleh. And with Piccolo's death, Kami is soon to follow. He explains the Namekian Dragon Balls to Mr Popo, and the long (very long) journey that must be undertook in order to revive everyone, but Mr Popo outright refuses and simply reminds Kami of the pecking order. Kami dies, and thus the Dragon Balls become inert.

Back at the battlefield, Vegeta was busy reading an issue of that very same Vogue magazine with Nappa on the cover and thus didn't see him kill Piccolo, like a mother three sangria's deep at her kid's soccer practice.

I've never much cared for Gohan's exasperated expletives in this or any scene in DBZA. This one in particular doesn't sit well with me simply because they went to the effort of being purposefully verbose but then still chose to use the word "condom" over "contraceptive" - A condom is made of latex, whereas a contraceptive is any kind of device at all that prevents pregnancy. As an example, some of the first contraceptives in history were made from linen and animal intestines, while the condom itself wasn't invented until 1855. Gohan specifically saying he's going to use Nappa's intestines as a condom serves the same purpose either way, but “contraceptive” would’ve been more technically accurate, in a bit of dialogue that is purposefully trying to be technically accurate. I wouldn't be picking on the semantics so much if that weren't the express purpose of this entire scene. Also it has more syllables and therefore sounds more smarterer.

Nappa gives this scene the backhand and the "bitch please" it deserves and we're done with that.

"Everyone important to you is dead." "Hey I'm still alive--" "EVERYONE important." "...Damn it."

See, this is where the Krillin Owned count should have gone up.

After Nappa doesn't smash, Goku appears on the battlefield. His reaction to showing up too late and everyone being dead is uncharacteristically deadpan, and it's hilarious. He asks where Chiaotzu is, and Krillin gives him the Achmed the Dead Terrorist explanation. Over there, over there, and up there. I'm not actually sure if this episode predates Jeff Dunham or not, but I enjoy both, both used the same joke at least once, and both make me laugh so I'm drawing the comparison anyways.

Goku asks why everyone is dead and Nappa immediately and without hesitation calls dibs. This leads into one of most famous and iconic scenes, if only for meme reasons, in all of DBZ.

"Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power level?" "It's... 1006." "Wha-- Really?" "Yeah. Kick his ass, Nappa!"

Not gonna lie, this genuinely made me burst into laughter the first time I saw it. I don't know if it was just shock value or what, but it doesn't have the same effect now that I know it's coming every time I rewatch this episode. I just love the idea of the scouter being upside-down and Vegeta not questioning it. An even better headcanon is that the scouter was never upside-down, Vegeta was just getting tired of Nappa's bullshit and just decided to send him into an ass-kicking anyways.

We're treated to a solid 15 seconds of Nappa getting completely curbstomped while the various characters look on in shock and awe, until Nappa gets dumped at Vegeta's feet.

It's also here that Vegeta finally learns that Piccolo's life is directly intertwined with the Dragon Balls. I believe this was already established in the original series, but no such conversation ever occurred here. Vegeta has quite simply lost his chance at immortality and it’s all because of Nappa.

I actually wonder how an immortal Saiyan would work. They receive a Zenkai boost, which makes them stronger when they almost die, but if you can't ever die, you can't ever “almost” die either, so you wouldn't get the Zenkai boost and your power wouldn't increase that way. Then again, most expectations of logic or consistency within Dragon Ball are pretty much always doomed.

Speaking of doomed, remember that timestamp at 9:18 that Vegeta referenced earlier? Because Vegeta certainly does, and with both the camel’s and Nappa's back having officially been broken, Nappa is sent to the shadow realm in a blinding flash of light and a massive explosion.

Vegeta's smirk is all we needed to close out this episode. There is no stinger.

Conclusion

Really good episode, actually. I wouldn't consider it as strong as Episode 7, but it definitely holds the same energy throughout. There are more high quality comedic moments in this episode than I could count on both hands. At worst some of the dialogue was uninteresting, pointless or overproduced, but the average pace of this episode rests rather highly compared to its valleys.

Microphone quality and sound mixing on some pieces of dialogue is still meh. Krillin's first line in this episode peaks the audio or something similar, because it takes me out for a hot second just because it's so sudden and emphatic.

We also see a slight evolution in the dynamic between Vegeta and Nappa which keeps things fresh. This is becoming less of a deadpan snarker and over the top clown, treads more into the ticking time bomb territory which is great for slowly building tension, and not unjustly as it has a satisfying payoff.

Plot holes in the original are addressed and lampooned here, creative jokes such as the Vogue Nappa and “1006″ are present and accounted for, and on the whole there's a lot of very on the mark humor, and only some of it is overdone. The story for this episode also holds significant weight and momentum, and it all blends together quite well with an above-average script and some great visual and audio edits.

Score: 77

Passing Thoughts

"Riiiiiicola!" - Oh hey, it's this again.

"Oh and I totally killed that guy. Oh well, at least we still had fun getting here, right Vegeta? Vegeta? Remember the bug planet? Vegeta? Vegeta? Vegeta? Vegeta? Vegeta? Vegeta? Vege-- AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!"

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and The Princesses Of Power - Episode 4 Review

Not incredibly impactful, but campy, fun, and has respectable progression.

Adora gets sucked into a death pit of pillows, which explodes after she fusses with it too much. I guess she’s more used to a stone cot or some equally minimalistic piece of furniture.

I also figured she would’ve changed out of her horde shirt at literally any point up to this moment. Like, even after gaining Brightmoon’s trust. But that doesn’t look like its changing.

Back in the danger zone, we get a bit more development on Skincrawler, or whatever Little Miss Power Ranger Villain of the Week’s actual name is. Hordak, her superior, seems entirely indifferent to Adora defecting and I actually really like this strictly-business attitude. It’s one grunt. Hordak has an entire faction to oversee. But for some reason this grates Darkheart in a particularly unpleasant way, and it seems she might be a little too obsessive for her own good. 

Also, Kyle’s here. What’s up, Kyle?

Adora, Glimmer and Beau are sent to the Kingdom of Vegans to help with this episode’s crisis, and during most of the this episode, Adora takes on the form of She-Ra, and helps the flower folk with their problems. Adora also seems wildly uncomfortable with the praise that’s being doled out to her as She-Ra, because bow howdy they make sure to lay it on thick to really outline the contrast in how she’s treated as normal old Adora, you know, the BAD GUY agent of the evil horde, compared to the Hero Of Us All.

They need her to fix the Tree Of Life, and Adora gives it her best, but nothing doing. Suddenly, She-Ra doesn’t look so hot to trot. People even begin to boo her when she poofs out of She-Ra form and admits that she’s pretty new to pretty much everything people are asking of her.

Throughout this whole episode however, there’s ominous smoke in the distance. Very visible. Everyone notices it. No one really decides to follow up on it until near the end when She-Ra is just unable to magic the tree back to health. The Vegans are, unsurprisingly, very combat shy. They’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas, man.

The wonder trio follows the smoke to a, you guessed it, horde outpost, that appears to be injecting some kind of poison into the ground. They firmly persuade a squadron of guards to part with their armor, and Mission Impossible their way into the facility.

Point of consistency here - Adora’s sword pops in and out of existence once again. Glimmer also has a markedly different build and overall silhouette when she changes clothes here. I’m not sure if her wide-set build gets squished inside of horde armor or what, but she gets skinnier when she wears it.

Without much issue, they manage to wreck the machine, and just as they’re about to leave, some guards stop them. Adora, being a former horde agent, has this in the bag, and gives them a password to let them know it’s all clear.

Bad news, Adora is using the old password. They’ve changed passwords since she’d left. Whoops. Though I love this touch of realism in the show, it does lead to a shoot-out and fight scene with three kids against a series of armed soldiers.

Adora goes Super Saiyan once more and I have to wonder if the Raditz hair is really necessary every time this happens. You could probably choke someone to death with all that hair. Use it like a garotte wire or just smother them with it. Yeesh.

The wonder trio, even with She-Ra, seems to be having difficulties with the guards, until the vegans learn how to punch people. Imagine getting laid out by a flower. Catch these hands? Nah, you’re gonna catch these petals.

The Queen of the Vegans is extremely grateful for She-Ra stopping the poison, which thus returns their special tree back to full bloom, and as a bonus, they learned how to stand up for themselves, and everyone has a renewed sense of confidence. Flower Princess joins the alliance.

At the very end, Adora gets the bed of her dreams (a stone cot!) and bunks with Glimmer since she’s not used to sleeping alone. Slumber party!

Conclusion

This felt like a fun, campy episode. Some of it was laid on thick. Some of it was very clearly done because there are certain milestones or checklists on the narrative that need to be addressed. Their approach to these, and the dynamic between themes and characters in this episode, was at least interesting. This also reeks of series progression to me. Recruiting the flower princess doesn’t just seem like a one-off. Which princess are we going after next? What will happen when all of this culminates? And that sequence with Shadowstalker leaves me wondering what’s in store her for down the line.

This episode is very light-hearted and has a very self-contained arc, but I liked it. It was enjoyable, direct, provided personal growth for the characters, and we’re seeing a change in interactions across the story, from Hordak and Moonlord, to the The Queen, She-Ra, and Flower Princess.

However, because it’s light-hearted, it doesn’t have any resounding BANG to the overall story. It’s the set-up before the bang. There’s nothing here that leaves on you a cliffhanger or anxious or curious for more, or anything extremely gripping or interesting. It’s a gentle episode, and almost seems like a slice of life series of episodes are lined up for the next few weeks. There are still blunders with keeping the sword consistently drawn.

Score: 69

Passing Thoughts

Nice.

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 4 Review

Hit-or-miss introduction makes way for some golden moments.

The opening skit for Snakeway to Heaven has a satisfactory comedic weight to it, though upon re-watching it for this review, I noticed an editing mistake I had never noticed before, despite becoming a fan of the series in 2012. When Goku falls off Snake Way, the scene actually freezes on that frame. It wouldn't be noticeable if the truck itself hadn't frozen as well. Small gripe but I thought it was an interesting observation to share.

[Title Sequence]

Goku's scream carries over into the first few seconds of the intro and resumes near the last few seconds, which I found to be a well played editing decision.

Once Goku has stopped falling, we're treated to an amusing take on the filler ogres from hell. The blue one is given the Swedish Hansel-und-Gretel accent while the red one speaks like a German or Austrian. And puritan as ever, KaiserNeko made sure to use the original, unedited footage. It would’ve been funny to see them maybe have a scene or two with the ogres wearing their different HFIL shirts, or maybe a bit more fun poked at the Ocean Dub, but no such luck in this scene.

TFS doesn't spend too much time on this scene at all, really. It’s filler, and so nothing here really matters to the story aside from laugh-factor. The comedic nature of this first scene is that it’s rushed. Goku swindles the two ogres out of a fight, like he’s trying to swindle the show into skipping this filler arc, as he immediately guns it for the exit... and then stops?

It would've been a much more emphatic punchline if the scene had changed right here. Instead we have an awkward stop-and-go motion to the scene they're trying to orchestrate and it feels stilted. A lot of this scene after Goku finds the exit I find to be entirely unneeded. Raditz has already been established as being in Other World so the callback here wasn't necessary, the special King Yemma fruit could be argued for having no plot relevance as it never existed in the manga, and we didn't really need that post-Goku scene to get the hint that these ogres were very chummy with each other when it came to subjects like oil wrestling and speedos.

But then, where would they put that great joke about the Blood Fountain? And the small dialogue about Dabura I did find risible as a fan of the original DBZ, despite my usual curmudgeonly take on yet-to-be-established jokes. Like many things, this does get much better as the series continues, eventually turning some moments of sequence-breaking into moments of well-crafted foreshadowing. This is just a funny pointless joke, and a nod to fans of DBZ, that has no impact on the actual story of DBZA itself.

Again, this isn't too much of a big deal. Just a whole work-with-what-you've-got bizarre scenario likely due to bizarre source material. Yet this was all deemed funny enough to edit, voice and keep in the episode instead of trimming it out like the other 90% of this mini-arc. I'm not convinced the presentation was done to par, but I do feel that the inclusion of "Goku in Hell" is necessary for the sake of tying loose ends together. Also, it would've been a far more egregious decision to have that cold open end in a do-nothing cliff hanger. So, a goofy scene and perhaps iffy writing, but not terrible.

We then return to the person who has so far been the breadwinner of the series, and Piccolo hasn't let up on either the humor or Gohan. Kind of a contrast to how somber he is in the show. It's not whack-a-doodle humor, it's exaggerated frustration and exasperation, which lands almost dead-center on my humor nexus.

But even better than Piccolo has to be this next scene - Debatably the first "meme" or seriously quotable moment in the show's history: Popo's Pecking Order.

On paper this doesn't look like it'd be necessarily funny, but when you attach to it a very do-nothing character like Mr Popo and turn him into a sadistic dictator, combined with the special emphasis and excellent delivery of the line, it's simply outstanding, and raises the bar for this entire episode.

Now I've said before that the source material of Z shouldn't factor into the end product that is DBZA. If I were to show this episode to my mother, I shouldn't have to show her all 291 episodes of Z so she can understand it. The show should be able stand on its own. That's not to say parody should have zero factor in the writing of this, or that there should be zero references at all, ever. By god what a silly thing to imply. But people can still enjoy Spaceballs even if they haven't seen Star Wars.

However, in the case of Mr Popo, DBZA does a good job of setting up Popo in the same way Z does. He initially speaks in a low, subdued tone, and is spoken of by Kami as some kind of adviser, or perhaps a respected peer, but as someone who is indirectly and respectfully implied to be below him. After all, it's called Kami's Lookout, not Popo's Lookout, and Kami is literally regarded as "The Guardian of Earth" while Popo just appears to be... there.

That all changes the second Kami leaves the outdoor area and Popo is entrusted with the reigns of the new Z Fighters. LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS!

The Krillin Owned Count also chimes three in this scene, and shows its first signs of picking up momentum.

Back on Snake Way, Goku gets eaten by the head of snake way, which leads into Jadoshin's palace. This is such a quick, cheesy, quirky but funny edit that I'm not sure what to say beyond I enjoyed it. It just hits you and then boom, you're in her castle.

The joke of Jadoshin being voiced by Solid Snake (Princess Snake, Solid Snake, on Snake Way) seems like a bold strategy but I think it's one of the better jokes they've committed to that ended up being really good, at least this early on. The voice even lends itself to the awkward dialogue that would've simply lost its charm or fallen flat otherwise.

Unrelated, but one of my favorite lines from the dub happens in this scene, where Jadoshin's attendant simply says "I've got something to show you. And it's my gun.", and then kills herself with it. I didn't expect to see that in this scene, but a small part of me did hope.

When Goku finishes up in the hot springs (with a Metal Gear Solid box gag to boot) and tries to leave, Jadoshin then states that she wants Goku inside her. Goku is confused, of course, and smash cut to Goku flying for his life from a massive green fire-breathing snake trying to eat him.

Jadoshin however still has the voice of Solid Snake even in this form, complete with periodic grunts as they maneuver through the air. This eventually transitions into Jadoshin saying waka-waka, and the backdrop changes into a Pac-Man map. The Pac-Man skit was perhaps a bit overdone, with Goku finding meat instead of the normal fruit, but on the whole this was a very "solid" scene.

During the Ozaru scene, I feel like Piccolo just screaming "MOOOOOOOON!" in the DBZA Kai version is funnier than the "Stop mocking me!" we got in DBZA proper. Also, donkey kong barrel, really? It's not bad, but it's an "oh, brother" moment, like hearing a very bad pun.

When Gohan transforms back into his human (or Half-Saiyan technically) form, his junk is censored with a Dragon Ball. This is an interesting contrast in philosophy over the years, as KaiserNeko explained the decision "to not censor baby dicks" in a Episode Breakdown livestream on the Broly Abdridged movie, where Broly's baby wiener can be seen uncensored in a few scenes of that movie.

The episode ends with Goku continuing down Snake Way, having tied Jadoshin up into a tangled ball, prompted the GAME OVER screen and someone yelling "Princess Snaaaaaake!"

Conclusion

Despite my lackluster thoughts on how Hell was handled, this episode had a lot going for it compared to it's predecessors! Most of the episode was spent on two strong scenes, and while I didn't think the Ozaru scene was anything special, it didn't feel out of place or off-kilter, but provided more insight and I suppose world-building into the relationship between Piccolo and Gohan and the constant reminder that they're training to eventually face off against the Saiyans. This is further reinforced by Stinger #2 with Nappa and Vegeta en route to Earth.

This was almost opposite to Episode 3, which I felt had strong bookends. While I didn't find the end of this episode to be bad, it was simply "alright" when compared to the Popo and Jadoshin scenes. Characters are starting to have stronger internal identities instead of simply being parodies of their original counterparts. Though it is noteworthy, and rather obvious, that this only applies to characters with speaking lines. Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu made their first appearances but had nothing to say. Maybe it would have been cluttered or detracted from the pacing of the Popo scene, but it may prove challenging to properly attach sentimentality to these characters in the short few episodes they have before the inevitable happens. 

Because y'know, nobody watched Dragon Ball.

Score: 73

Passing Thoughts

I liked that Stinger #1 dealt with the actual ramifications of DESTROYING THE MOON unlike the series proper did. I guess it was just no diff for the Dragon Ball world?

"He made a horrible mess of the blood fountain." "Looks fine to me." "IT USED TO BE WATER!"

"I killed everything here with my bare hands. Including the bear hands." -Pictured in the top left of the frame are actual bear hands.

"Stop grunting, it's creepy!"

"CLOTHES BEAM!" and “That is easily my most metro attack.”

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 5 Review

Weird yet creative cutaways with strong overarching momentum.

Vegeta: Kills Bugs Dead opens with Goku finally reaching the end of Snake Way and the end of his journey to reach King Kai. The "nice job, jackass" as Goku literally craters into the planet sets the tone for this character in a big way. We're also treated to the incredible hijinks of Vegeta and Nappa.

[Title Sequence]

The pit-stop at Arlia at least receives a well-fitted and rather hilarious incarnation in this series. Even though the episode alternates its focus between King Kai and Arlia, I'm going to talk at length about Arlia first, and then move onto the King Kai segments.

I'm already going into this scene with some personal bias, as the "stronger guy playing along with the weaker guy because it'd be funny" trope is one of my favorites. And here we have exactly this. Vegeta and Nappa allow themselves to be captured and thrown in jail by the Arlians, where they meet an assortment of varied bug characters.

"Don't drop the soap" seems a little outdated for the modern style of TFS, as I feel they've leaned away from really older, cruder, less PC subject matters like calling someone retarded or insinuating prison rape, etc, but it fits Nappa's character completely as someone who is childish, crass, annoying for the sake of being annoying, and kind of a jerk. TFS has at least acknowledged the idea of possibly re-dubbing Season 1 with better equipment and perhaps a more refined script, and I dearly hope they keep this line unedited simply for the sake of nailing Nappa’s character identity.

After very nearly becoming a prison bitch, Vegeta decides he's had enough and promptly kabooms his way out of prison, landing smack-dab in the middle of a coliseum with the king of Arlia and his queen.

Nappa's blunt manner of introducing himself with simply "Hi." will never age.

It’s noteworthy that scene is also the first moment we get a good look at Vegeta as a character. Nappa was firmly established as the goofball from the start, but Vegeta's portrayal has more depth to it than could be conveyed in one-liners. Most of which is just sass, smug pride, and anger, but still.

It's also made clear very quickly that despite their bantering idiocy and gruff talk that they're not just for show, as Nappa no-diff's the thirteen elite Arlian guards with a massive shock wave that we later see level a city.

The king and queen are then more or less blackmailed into fucking. Nappa's eager fascination during this whole scene, the descriptions, visual edits and sound design are... Well, there's no other way to put it, it's fucked up. And it is hilarious! These are some very creative takes and decisions that were made entirely for internal experience of the show itself rather than as a parody of something else. Nappa even takes a photograph of it and sends it to Vegeta, since he's abstained from watching.

The comedic jabs don't stop there either, as Nappa tries to adopt the Arlian Rancor, but just like the kid who can't sit still, Nappa ends up breaking everything he plays with. Just as Vegeta is about to kill the king, rocks begin flying around the coliseum.

"What are you doing?"

Vegeta smirks. "I'm about to rock you, like a hurricane." And then boom, he hurls a rock into the king and kills him. Let's put a pin in that brick joke for later.

The long flashback scene doesn't play any music, which feels like a weird editing misstep after a series of home runs. They leave the planet as heroes, and Nappa sets Vegeta up for another predictable bit of mood whiplash, where Vegeta obliterates the entire planet. This is a huge escalation in power scale compared to everything else we have seen thus far. But then, this is Dragon Ball Z. We've already reached “destroying planets” at only the fifth episode, and everyone knows that it only goes well past 11 on the dial from here on out.

Granted, there is controversy in the official version about whether or not this would’ve been possible for Saiyan Saga Vegeta, considering Arlia is not canon, but I will not be considering that simply because DBZA contains no filler. Everything shown in the flagship series (not counting movies, DBZA Kai, or other shorts) is presented as being canon to DBZA. Also, Vegeta and Nappa are shown standing outside of their pods... in the vacuum of space. Series veterans will understand the massive can of worms this opens. I'm looking at you, Battle of Gods.

Once everyone, including the people that they JUST SAVED from a tyrannical king, have been reduced to space dust, Nappa closes off this scene nicely.

Now that we've discussed Arlia, let's focus on King Kai's role in the episode.

He explains to Goku that the planet has high gravity due to it's small size. Gregory from off-screen pipes up that this doesn't make any sense. I suppose "higher planet density" wasn't considered when writing the script - or perhaps it was, and they just decided that the easy answer wasn't the funniest one. Maybe “there’s an incredibly powerful pirate trapped in the core of the planet, which is why the gravity is so strong" was deemed better for a parody.

Honestly, I agree. Bojack works as an in-the-know reference, and is also fleshed out enough within the show that a newcomer would understand what's being discussed.

At the time of this review, the Bojack Abridged movie has not yet been released, but this is easily one of the longest brick jokes in all of DBZA, since Episode 5 was released in 2008 and it is my expectation that Bojack Abridged will be released within the year, leaving in its wake an 11 year old callback.

When King Kai asks Goku why he had been sought out, Goku explains that the Saiyans are coming to Earth and he requires training. Excellent fade-in and musical choice for Goku's uncharacteristically serious speech to King Kai.

Of course, it gets cut off at the peak swell with King Kai's indifferent "sure", leaving Goku gobsmacked.

In this series, King Kai's indifference and easy acceptance of Goku is attributed to the mind-numbing loneliness of only having a monkey and a grasshopper (cricket, sorry) to talk to for the last 500 years. Goku agrees, as he couldn't imagine anything more boring.

Major flash-forward to Namek. Just this scene being here at all is a major instance of a sequence break. But it is the introduction of another exceptionally interesting character in the series.

In terms of placement, this works as a long-term cutaway gag and reminiscent humor but not much else. We're still about half a season away from even considering Namek within the story, and the Saiyans haven't even arrived on Earth yet. The decision to slide this segment into the middle of this episode leaves some serious questions in my mind. But at face value, it's not that bad.

We're treated to a solid ten seconds of just staring at a massive fat green alien while birds chirp in the background. We hear a fish go "plonk!" in the water, and Lord Guru calls for someone named Nail, who looks a lot like Piccolo, to approach him.

"I saw a fish. That was all, you can go back outside now." 

Definitely reinforces the point of boring. And while Nail is lamenting how boring his job is, Lord Guru tells him that he saw a bird and then promptly instructs him to "kick its ass."

But we’re not Nail, are we? We’re the viewer, and for some reason in the human mind, segments of extremely boring content usually pique our interest even more, because we have it drilled into our psyche that something is going to happen to break the tension sooner or later. That notion, the idea of slowly leaning closer to the monitor during the ten long seconds of a single still image, both conveys the boring tone of Namek, but also leaves the reader waiting in anticipation long enough for these dull scenes to just fade from their perspective and only latch onto the climatic moment. In this case, Guru commanding his apparent servant/bodyguard to assault a fish.

Not to overstate the obvious, but if it’s not the viewer’s own sense of tension and curiosity, it’s the pure absurdism and characterization of Guru that carries this scene. Disregarding source material, the design of Guru is meant to make him look old, wise and compassionate. Making him a lazy, annoying, verbally violent fatass is a near-infinite cash cow of writing material. It’s very difficult for me to judge this scene unbiased, knowing what comes next, but I imagine this would be a tryhard non-sequitur at worst, or promising potential for the future at best, with regards to this scene on its own, within the context of this episode and nothing more.

This episode also saw the genesis of perhaps not the first, but one of the most popular jokes in all of DBZA: Piccolo just jobbing the shit out of Gohan. DODGE! The scenes chosen and the delivery are outstanding compliments to this cheesy, simplistic joke. At this point I feel it's important to address that my editorial reflections or descriptions of these skits are relative to the context of these episodes. Even with the best of what this episode has to offer, we're still in peak 2008 internet humor era. The use of the word "outstanding" here will not carry a similar significance should I use it to describe a later episode.

Also the most random cutaway in all of DBZA, full-stop, is the brief look into the Hall of Justice, as Superman, Batman and Aquaman debate how they will stop the approaching Saiyans. This is humorous only in its absurdity, but less-endearingly than Guru was. Even if this scene makes zero sense, and relies upon an almost lower form of comedy than slapstick, Aquaman's voice is still just Krillin's voice. At least Superman and Batman sound different than the main cast. I'm really tempted to dislike this more, but the lackadaisical attitude and context of the whole scene definitely draws your eye more than a lot of the sensible but base-line plot progression of the story. I don't know if it belongs. To me, this scene just screams out that TFS is flinging spaghetti wildly at the wall, any and everything that might be funny, and while some of it sticks for one reason or another, (Jadoshin as Solid Snake, Antics on Arlia, even Guru's abrupt cameo) some of it flops. If anything, this show builds upon the corpses of its failures, and learns what works and what doesn't work surprisingly quickly.

Conclusion

Bizarre, but I liked it. Nothing in this episode that's bad is memorable. I might criticize the Namek cutaway for being out of place, but after letting this review sit for a few days, I just remember Goku saying "Man, nothing could be more boring than that!" and the immediate cut to Namek, and Nail pleading for the love of his sanity for something to happen. I might criticize the Justice League cutaway for being wildly out of the place, but I just remember "WHAAAAAALES!"

The meat of the episode was also decent, as it establishes Goku training under King Kai, and Piccolo's continued training of Gohan, the origin of DODGE! and the realization that Gohan can transform into an Ozaru. And you can nod your head and say that these may be necessary to the story all day, but they're also presented with... let's call it a clumsy grace. It's not bad, but it's miles away from official dub quality. This is in essence what the benchmark or gold standard was for early abridging back in 2008. The quality that TFS will continue to evolve the series into simply defies all logic or explanation, and in comparison makes these episodes look downright crude. 

But let's face it, if Episode 1 began with a person lying on the ground and shot in both kneecaps, Episode 5 shows that same person at least hobbling down the street to the hospital. 

It might not look pretty on the whole, and some of the dialogue might be clunky, but it seems like a lot of the flaws in this episode are simply caused by being products of their time.

Whether we're looking at Namek or The Hall of Justice, even the most outlandish oddities of this episode have still made me laugh. That's really the end of it.

Score: 75

Passing Thoughts

"I hope something exciting happens around here soon. I don't care what it is." - Ominous!

"You're surrounded by my thirteen elite *KABOOM* ...dead guards."

"SUMMON THE RANCOR!"

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Episode 3 Review

Grandma is the only interesting part of this episode.

Alright, so we know that Adora has joined the side of good. Glimmer knows that, Beau knows that... Everyone else, not so much.This means that when Glimmer brings her back to her casa, there's a slight possibility that everyone at Brightmoon may want to kill her.

Glimmer makes a lot of assumptions that are at least done in earnest, like all Adora has to do is transform into She-Ra and boom no worries, until we realize the sword doesn’t exactly work on command. She’s left swinging it around in a field, hoping for something magical to happen, and of course, something does. The nearby horse gets poofed into a... magic horse, one with rainbow wings and a unicorn forehead ornament. 

The horse is quite startled by this development, which ultimately leads to Adora being attacked and hunted by the people of Brightmoon. Probably would have been a good idea to change out of your evil horde uniform while staying in the magical princess kingdom.

After running into the forest, we find the friendly neighborhood crazy grandma who keeps referring to her as Mara. There’s some indescriminate mumbo-jumbo here that I didn’t find all too important, but what’s special about this is during this acid trip of a scene, Adora is lead to a massive shiny pillar of awesome magic thing. And let me tell you, grandma got moves, because she’s able to scale this thing with trivial effort.

However, Adora get shocked or overwhelmed in some capacity and passes out. She wakes up in a place that is definitely not where she passed out. And my first thought here is to look for the sword. 

I’m an easily distracted person. If I blink the wrong way in the morning I’ll forget my phone, wallet and keys. So my first reaction here is to look for the sword. No sword. 

This was quite concerning to me, until I realized that she actually does have the sword. It just... wasn’t drawn. Now, I try to be a keen viewer as much as I can, but that right there is a big problem. If I notice sword is missing, it’s clearly not on her back or anywhere on her person, and then in the next scene it’s suddenly attached to her back when she needs it, that’s a huge point of inconsistency and betrays the viewer’s attention to detail. This is the first serious issue I have with the show.

Crazy grandma then informs Adora that the totally not a my little pony does actually have a name, Swift Wind. Which... kind of fits the artsy, pretentious, high-fantasy theme of the entire show, so while I’m not a huge fan of it, I can’t say it isn’t tonally inappropriate.

With a renewed sense of confidence, or whatever, She-Ra is able to appear and makes everything neat and tidy within this episode’s story line. The concerns about the horde infiltrator are put to rest, Glimmer is vindicated, and the queen begrudgingly accepts Adora’s help as She-Ra.

Also, we get Nightwhisper at the very end of the episode, in the middle of another drama queen coniption, and we have our first look at the mastermind behind everything horde: Lord Hordak, aka Mecha Nosferatu.

Conclusion

Small single-episode arc to get Adora introduced to the city is a nice idea but seems unfocused and chaotic from a plot perspective. Nothing in this episode really cares about grabbing your attention. I understand it’s necessary, and relegating it to only one episode was a good decision, but out of all the directions they could have pushed this story into, this one felt very off the beaten path. Like the actual plot of this episode is that what’s actually supposed to be the main plot takes a back seat to Grandma’s Wild Forest Adventure.

Grandma is funny. Horse is kind of cool but seems distracting and spontaneous, and ultimately of little relevance to this particular episode. I’m sure this matters later on in the story, and I’m certain I’ll appreciate some details more now that they’ve been established, but the handling of all this just felt like juggling several different ideas, trying to cram in as much foreshadowing as you can, and then remembering 20 minutes into the episode “Oh right, the plot! Shit!”

The solution seems sudden, but honestly there was hardly another way this could go - The second She-Ra appears on the scene, there would be no more miscommunications, and it feels like they had to pull an entire episode out of that notion of “Waiting for Goku She-Ra to show up.”

The queen is very dense and doesn’t seem to listen to or respect Glimmer at all, but everybody gangster until an 8 foot tall alien avatar of righteous might squares up at the throne room after class.

The episode was fine to watch and ended with a sense of meaningful plot progression, but a lot of decisions leave me wondering “Why?” and I’m not sure how much of that is just genuine curiosity or administrative criticism. This show may not know how to handle its own quirkiness yet.

Score: 65

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 6 Review

Middling setup episode with inconsistent but mostly bad writing.

No One Ever Listens To The Magical Dragon starts off on a promising note with another reference to Popo's Pecking Order, but from there it's a long slide downhill.

The Saiyan scene inside of Kami's lookout is pretty weird and a rather unremarkable. There's a Hurricane Katrina joke that I didn't find terribly clever, but after Chiaotzu gets his butt kicked by a Protoss, Tien and Yamcha have some back and forth. And a lot of the connections made here become much more reminiscent and almost nostalgic when compared to later episodes of the show, but to analyze these decisions from their origin, some of them are very experimental and unfortunately lackluster.

I feel like Yamcha's "hah, gay" quip rests its full weight on Tien's delivery of the previous line. It's really unnecessary otherwise. I feel like most of the TFS cast looking at that dialogue on a script nowadays would cringe at the sight of it. I mean, if they were originally trying to paint Yamcha as someone who's an extremely immature jock, then that makes sense. But they definitely don't stick with this character decision for very long, even if they make callbacks to it - which I will speak on later, as they come up.

Yamcha is essentially a lesser Krillin. He's the reluctant hero who's the butt of a lot of jokes, and most of the time it's not without good reason. But I do want to stress that he is a hero. He jumps into danger even if he knows it'll kick his ass. Hey, not everyone can be Goku, but at least Krillin gets Android 18 in the end. Yamcha gets... Well, nothing. He has his friends but nothing improves for him. Perhaps this is karmic justice for being a massive pervert and tryhard ladykiller. Even his morals and general discipline in life are lesser to Krillin's.

But the line about Yamcha "actually getting pussy" to me seems either like lightning in a bottle or accidental genius. It's cringey, but I feel like, in retrospect at the very least, it really fits Yamcha's awkward, bumbling personality. He's someone who spends nearly his entire stay in this series treading a tightrope between bravado and humiliation. This characterization, this moment of his smart-aleck mouth or leap-before-you-look mindset backfiring on him ultimately becomes his destiny of character.

The only other noteworthy part after this is that Krillin has a great scream and the owned counter ticks up to four. After a montage of everyone dying, they return to the tower and Popo congratulates them. But he has some bad news.

"You're going back." "Wh... What?" "BYE."

This just felt fiendishly dark to me, and though I find overuse of the word "schadenfreude" to be pretentious, it does very well to describe how I feel when I’m watching this. This is honestly a wonderful punctuation to an otherwise below-average scene.

On King Kai's planet, I love the notion of Goku going smack-happy with the mallet like an unattended child, while King Kai just lets him get it out of his system. This isn't even part of his training, this is just Goku fuckin' around. He even smacks through the planet and dings Bojack, which gets another "Shut up, Bojack" from King Kai. Nothing to write home about but it's a scene with charm. Also, the Bardock reference was neat.

Back on Earth, oh hey! First use of the eponymous Dragon Balls in the series! Shenron suggests that instead of wishing Goku back to life, they should wish the Saiyans would fly into an asteroid field. I'm not sure how this would work in the series proper, or if it's even possible since Shenron wouldn't have the power to "make them go away" however you want to interpret that, but I'm ultimately tickled by the idea that in this series, such a thing is actually possible but the main ensemble is just too stupid to realize that. It's also kind of established that Shenron just does his own thing.

The episode ends with King Kai having taught Goku the Kaio-Ken and Spirit Bomb off-screen (which I have a lot to say about) and then booting Goku off his planet. He immediately realizes his mistake once he discovers that he's all alone again... except for Bubbles, Gregory and the main man Bojack himself, and promptly tells them all to SHUT UP! This gag doesn't have as much going for it the third time around, but it's the closer for the episode and the end of the "Training at King Kai's" mini-arc, so it still manages to hold potency.

Conclusion

I feel like that last episode might've spoiled people off of this one. Even if we go by the inevitable philosophy that there will always be highs and lows in any episodic medium, a lot of the negatives of this episode (and there are a lot) are due to just poor writing. Poor choices in dialogue, poor choices in jokes, questionable scene direction, and odd bits and ends that don't belong. I would've considered this a strong follow-up to Episode 1, but it's a sharp drop down from Episode 5.

Initially, I felt that gimping out on Goku learning the Kaio-Ken and Spirit Bomb cheapened this episode. After all, was it really necessary to abridge HFIL, but then not abridge Goku learning some of his most iconic moves in the series?

But to the credit of TFS, they do rectify this with their Make A Man Out Of You parody, which I feel is an appropriate and deserved representation or summary of the scene in question, so that alleviates my complaints about that entirely. 

Even though it’s not an actual episode, Make A Man Out Of You is treated as canon to the DBZA series. For that reason, I feel it amends the issue of the scene not being done justice. 

However, it does not fix this episode specifically, and does not change the fact that it is glossed over in this episode. If anything, the fact that Goku now just has these abilities is treated like it’s not important in this episode. Perhaps TFS were purposefully saving it for where they thought it would be better used, like in the musical number.

This creates a tough decision for me, since I have to be very distinct here.

If I say that the musical montage retroactively makes this episode better, that’s not fair to this episode as a self-contained product. 

But if I say that this episode should have included the Kaio-Ken/Spirit Bomb scenes, even though I feel it’s given a very satisfactory and deserved treatment in Make A Man Out Of You, that implies that I would’ve desired perhaps an inferior version of that same scene within this episode purely for semantic reasons, which ultimately feels hypocritical to me.

However, I must stick to my guns here and evaluate this episode solely based upon itself and nothing else. So even though Make A Man Out Of You does my complaints justice, it’s unfortunately too little too late, even if it was for a good reason. I purposefully want to avoid having my final scores consider retroactive decisions made after a product has been released, unless it specifically changes the product itself. This is more prevalent in remasters or games (bug fixes, patches, etc) instead of just making extraneous content like sequels.

Getting back to the rest of this episode, the high points of this episode were in fact good. I liked how they finally explored the other characters in this episode. Tien, Chiaotzu, Yamcha, and Shenron all have their first spoken lines of dialogue in this episode. Of course, there was going to be no way around that if they wanted to do those two scenes at all. Necessary world-building elements take place with their own unique twists to show the progress of events and make the final result feel earned, but not much else to discuss. This episode was largely unremarkable, with maybe one or two moments that anyone would remember a week later.

Score: 49

Passing Thoughts

It's interesting to see how King Kai's voice has evolved over the series. In this episode, some of his lines are so nasally that I can hardly understand him.

"This can't possibly get any worse!" "Hi."

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

I’m not going to review Make A Man Out Of You, but at a quick glance I would probably give it a score in the 70′s. The production is pretty good all things considered, and it still holds up even though it was made in 2008.

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Episode 1 Review

What the heck is that sword?

I have a good friend of mine who is into some… varied interests that I would not necessarily partake in on my own. She is responsible for introducing me to shows that I love such as Legend of Korra and Steven Universe, shows that I would have otherwise entirely ignored if not for her insistence on sharing them with me and having us watch them together.

So when she suggested watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together… Well, I considered for a moment how I knew absolutely nothing about this show, and then immediately after, I thought of this blog. Going in completely blind does seem like a good opportunity to tackle something new to review.

So, forewarning: I know nothing about this show.

I have no spoilers. I have no context or frame of reference. They mention the word “grayskull” which I believe is a He-Man reference, but I didn’t even watch THAT series, so I’m doubly in the dark for whatever possible tie-ins or references there may be to She-Ra. What you are about to read are my thoughts on a per-episode basis for what I’ve just watched.

With that said, we watched the first episode and I took some brief notes on my first impressions.

My most immediate observation was that these characters definitely have a strong sense of personality and spunk. Perhaps laid on a bit thick, but to be honest, I’m happy there’s at least something to grab onto that isn’t just a dull grey chess piece for exposition.

The series also strikes me as moderately pretentious. It feels too into itself, and I felt the presentation was a little suffocating. The initial mood and tone of the show feels like you’re already armpit-deep in some edgy dystopian fanfiction made by someone who spends way too much time on DeviantArt, complete with cat people and everything. But in spite of that, the animation seems graceful enough and the characters manage to have a distinct style without being painful to look at. Regardless, they definitely set up the first episode like you’re cannon-balling straight into the the deep end of a story that started long before the cameras began rolling.

The character darkshadow or whatever their name is didn’t strike me as anything special, besides serving as the “vaguely ominous mentor figure” - I’m guessing this is some kind of Professor Snape deal. It’s very obvious they want us to feel like Nightmare Jones over here is some kind of dark brooding figure but whether this is a subversion (like Snape) or just face value remains to be seen.

Somewhere not where the main characters are, there’s some kind of queen and her thick-set commander, who is also her daughter. This queen person annoyed me and this entire interaction felt very “young adult novel”, a real eye-roller. I got major Steven Universe vibes here. Not just because of the slightly reminiscent character designs (granted, I do feel this show has a better art style) or because of the color palettes, but because this is just the Diamonds all over again. I found this scene hard to enjoy in earnest or with a straight face, in contrast to the comparatively interesting scene with “blonde main character” and Catra.

No idea if Catra is a pre-existing character from another related series or anything, but… really? You name the cat-alien-monster-species girl Catra? What’s next? A moth-alien-monster-species named Mothra– Oh.

The spooky woods reminded me of Harry Potter. Though I found the claim of “no squad has ever made it out there!!” falls a little flat when three under-prepared children can just wander through it like it’s no big deal. I mean, okay, maybe a little deal. Maybe having your rank-and-file blonde soldier girl undergo a magical girl transformation to become an ancient Aryan goddess helps your chances of survival. Because seriously, am I the only one who noticed the blue eyes and blonde hair right away? Ubermensch, more like uberwomensch.

The plot and world building has a good hook but some lines of dialogue or phrasings are incredibly generic.

You are the chosen one! Yes, you! Completely random person! You must journey through the sacred unicorn forests and unite the magical elements of harmony across the land in order to restore balance to the universe and defeat the evil empire once and for all…

Though to be fair - I thought the opening crawl for Undertale was painfully generic the first time I played it, and that game ended being one of my all time favorites. So a generic, done to death a million times choice of words does not a bad story make.

What draws my attention most about this first episode, especially as we get closer to the credits, is the sword. That’s intentional, and it works. The story doesn’t show its hand right away but gives you enough clues to start making plausible guesses. There’s some idea of unity here or people being connected across vast distances with the help of this sword that I can get behind.

Conclusion

The story as a whole seems fine enough, but there’s no punch to the gut that gets me invested in it yet. My policy is that I give any show five episodes to make me want to continue watching it. For reference: One Piece, my current favorite anime, took five episodes. Doctor Who (Ninth Doctor) took five minutes.

Now, the first episode of any show is generally the hardest to get started with and the one of which I’m often the most critical. Who are all these new characters? What attachment do I have to them? Why should I care? Questions like that become easier to answer as the characters become more strongly identifiable in the next few episodes. It is not impossible for some shows to knock it out of the park on the first episode. This show did not do that.

Episode 1 doesn’t exactly have me foaming at the mouth waiting for Episode 2, but at least I have certain hopes and points of interest to keep an eye out for in the next one. The intrigue of the plot saves this episode from a lower score.

Score: 66

Passing Thoughts

I like Catra. She seems well defined and very clearly executed as a character. Not so much blonde main character girl.

I definitely missed a lot of stuff here.

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 3 Review

A lot happening with little payoff or explanation.

Happily Ever Afterlife has a strong opening, with a grateful Roshi lamenting Goku's necessary sacrifice to save the planet from Raditz.

The scouter attached to a dead Raditz suddenly goes off, and we hear two strangers (at this point within the story, they're basically strangers) discussing plans to come to Earth themselves. The dialogue is on-the-nose and the joke itself is the exposition being whipped through in this exchange.

So if it took the world’s strongest fighter DYING just to kill Raditz... and there's now TWO of these guys who are both stronger than he was...

Roshi sums it up nicely

[Title Sequence]

While Piccolo plans to use Gohan's hidden power to take over the world, a much older looking Piccolo (Kami has not been explained yet) is with Goku in Dragon Ball Heaven.

Due to the likely limited voice cast this early into the series, some of the voices are good and some of them are bad, and the microphone quality doesn't help either. However, I find King Yemma's voice to be very suiting. It's gruff, burly and fits the shaggy-haired, massive character. And we immediately see the dynamic here with King Yemma trouncing on this green messenger.

Kami brings up that he's the Guardian of Earth, and King Yemma counters with the fact that he's "the closest thing to a god in this show" - for now, at least. I only need point to Dragon Ball Super to showcase how screwy the pantheon gets. And DBZA, in later episodes, would generously poke fun at this.

Yemma eventually concedes (through being lost in thought over his desk) to let Goku see King Kai, but to do so, he travel along Snake Way. The booming tone, the name, and the suspenseful music blasting in the background during the post-scene does a lazy but quick job of conveying to the viewer "Hey, this is a big, scary deal."

We're also treated to a bit of creative closure with Raditz that didn't exist in the original DBZ. After arriving in Other World, Raditz apparently kicked Yemma in the balls and is now on the loose. So that's a fun thought.

As Goku departs, Yemma tells Goku "see you next time you die" - which just seems like foreshadowing for the sake of foreshadowing. It's a throwaway line that doesn't really belong in this scene, and King Yemma has no reason to believe Goku will even make it to the end of Snake Way (which only King Kai had ever done), or that he would in fact be wished back to life to die again. I might be going a bit too much into the anal-retentive "science" of it rather than the "it was funny" approach, but it just didn't seem to fit. I didn't find it terribly funny, though it might elicit a knowing nod from series veterans.

Back of Earth, we're given Chi-Chi's first appearance. While Hnilmik remains, in my opinion, one of the best Chi-Chi voice actors I've heard (including the dubs and especially including Super), her microphone in this video is awful. I pick on microphones of this series a lot, and I'm going to keep doing that, because every time I hear something that sounds like it was recorded on a toaster, it immediately breaks my immersion and makes my ears whine.

If this was anyone else I would say her character interpretation was edgelordy at best, but the whole "castrate the messenger with a rusty carving knife" is kind of appropriate. She's the mama bear, and her going overboard is both canon and something that anyone with a sense of humor would like to milk. I'm also happy that the scene did not overstay its welcome, as it seems like a balance of "just right for just as long" - anything extra might've worn out the joke.

Now, we have a scene that really shows the episodes age, and how much TeamFourStar's style has changed since 2008. We have Bulma not wearing a scouter, cut to Krillin, and then Bulma wearing a scouter. My guess, it was the only other suitable scene of just Bulma inside Kame House. Cheesy text "Where'd that scouter come from?" scrolls across the bottom of the screen. This is capped off with KaiserNeko shrugging, the screen freezing, and the studio audience laughing while Seinfeld music plays in the background.

I wouldn't say this is a deep issue - It's either reflective of the poor source material or the pre-editing era of TeamFourStar. But objectively, it's still inconsistent and a glaring beacon to the amateur nature of the show at this point. I say amateur with regards to what it has become now, instead of in comparison to all other abridged series' back in 2008. Think of a huge pair of airquotes.

Now, onto something far more enjoyable, the first real moment Gohan and Piccolo have together. After calling him a nerd, Piccolo explains that he's just going to beat the stuffing out of Gohan and eventually his survival instinct will kick in, forcing his hidden power to reveal itself.

So he throws him at a mountain. In the actual series, Gohan activates hero mode and completely obliterates the mountain, which baffles Piccolo. In the abridged series, Piccolo expects him to do something similar, however he does no such thing, and splats into a mushy, crying paste against the mountain.

Goku is introduced to Snake Way and is told not to fall off, and Mr Popo is informed by Kami that a new batch of recruits has arrived at their outpost (the Z Warriors that Krillin had gathered).

Ah yes, the premiere of Mr Popo. His debut is simple and effective, and arguably one of the best voices in the series so far. This makes a decent cliffhanger for the episode.

Conclusion

This is very much a "setup" episode, but not in the same way I would regard later episodes of a similar style. Not a lot actually happens, but at the same time a lot is supposed to happen soon, and the gears are set in motion for something happen soon... just not now.

More expansion on the story as a whole, with explanations of after life, the pantheon, some mysterious person who will train Goku, Krillin partaking in squad goals, and what Piccolo has in store for Gohan.

Some characters are still not properly explained. I feel the need to reaffirm; it’s important for the sake of storytelling to convey who these are without relying on your viewership being in-the-know about who each of these characters are instantly.

Microphone issues, but what else is new.

The only strong parts I would say are the beginning and the end (also including the first half of the King Yemma scene and the second Piccolo/Gohan scene) , everything else falls in a squishy middle ground of "okay" to "how about no"

Score: 63

Passing Thoughts

"Mahogany" - The stinger is a welcome addition to an earlier out-of-the-blue joke. I feel like if this had featured in the episode proper, it would have been too much, but here it works better where it's considered almost like a "blooper" or out-take, while still providing us with the laughs.

Krillin's crying when running away from Chi Chi.

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 1

Rocky start. Piccolo is the only saving grace of this episode.

Right, let’s get right into this one.

“The Return of Raditz! … Wait…” starts off with a standard “nature is beautiful” sequence that begs to be usurped in any non-documentary video. Record scratch, something crashes into the ground and scares the pink turkey chickens milling about. The farmer cries for his marijuana patch (which admittedly I find hilarious) but then corrects himself to say its actually totally just a carrot patch guys. But no one is around, so this feels more like a jab at the viewer, for the creators to say “Ah? Ah? You see that? We’re funny.”

After a pointless joke about arriving at Earth “with open bar” and a clumsy comparison to Sonic the Hedgehog, Raditz makes his appearance, and within his first line of dialogue mentions two characters that haven’t appeared yet. This creates a problem.

On the one hand, foreshadowing and inside jokes are awesome: Much later in the series, Goku references Goten and Vegeta references Tarble. These examples work... if you’ve seen the source content. Granted, it’s an “abridged” series, you might be thinking “well, who HASN’T seen the original DBZ?” and I can tell you that I specifically watched DBZ just so I would understand all the jokes from DBZA. I watched four episodes in, got annoyed with all the very obvious jokes and references I was missing out on, and binged the entire DBZ series over the summer. It’s also simply a matter of how well you can tell a story, and leaving out key plot points because you feel like your viewership is already “in the know” isolates outsiders.

I understand most of the references within DBZA (not all of them, the later episodes get incredibly subtle), but a fresh observer might not. So for someone who’s never seen DBZ, this is confusing and unnecessary. So it doesn’t work for them.

This specific example isn’t remarkable either for show-watchers. Raditz mentions Kakarot and Turles, and while the former works, the latter doesn’t. Turles is too inconsequential to the story and is completely removed from Raditz as a character. In my opinion, the two are only mentioned for their similar appearance and nothing beyond that. So it doesn’t work for them.

It just does not work.

After a relatively (and I strongly use the word “relatively” here) solid bit, Raditz mentions another yet-established and barely-related character.

After the title sequence, we’re introduced to a much more interesting character within his first few lines of dialogue, and that carries through to the MySpace joke. While this scene does not hold up to time (and dates the show immensely), I can vouch that this scene was good for its time, and puts us at the (contextually, not objectively) best joke of the episode thus far.

Presently though it’s only purpose is to show that Piccolo has only one friend because he’s lonely. For the very few who are not aware, Tom is the default friend you get just from opening an account.

After yelling (through a cheap microphone I might add) some in-your-face exposition, Raditz lands in front of Piccolo, who he had mistaken for Kakarot. Piccolo responds. “I’ve got green skin, pointy ears, and a turban. Oh yeah, I must look like so many other people.”

This line supersedes the episode.

The next scene is infamously iconic within the TFS fanbase and represents something bigger than its face value. The voice actors, shattering the fourth wall, get into a fight over the name of Raditz’s special attack, which results in Raditz being voiced by someone completely different for the rest of the show.

The most important thing about this scene is that is shows creativity, and represents the first breadcrumb in the trail for what TFS had in mind for the series back then. But if we regard “The Return of Raditz! … Wait…” as a standalone, and mark it objectively based on its self-contained qualities, it becomes apparent how much of a flop this is. It’s a pointless, do-nothing skit that has an arbitrary payoff. It also comes off as a little presumptuous, especially as the first episode of an abridged series, which back then were popping up like crazy. Remember when let’s plays and minecraft videos were booming? It was basically that. The voice actors are placing themselves on a pedestal mid-way through their first ever episode.

Moving on, girls just want to have fun and the blue-haired girl makes her first appearance. She’s meeting friends apparently, and upon introduction, she’s met with “Boobs! I mean Bulma.”

There’s a lot I could say about this. It could be a dig at how she’s the only female character in the main cast (arguably excluding Chi-Chi), or it could be a suggestion that Krillin has a crush on her, or that Krillin is just a pervert and that was the first thing he associates with Bulma. I’ll just say it’s a poor line and move on.

The next notable scene has a man in orange arriving at the island with a small child in his arms. Bulma calls him Goku and Krillin calls him Tail, a tongue-in-cheek riff on his "Boobs!" line and saves TFS a little face, though not enough to make worth the former.

Conversely, there's references to Dragon Ball here regarding their exposition, which is different from making references to yet-established parts of Dragon Ball Z. However, chances are if people watching this haven't seen DBZ, they're not going to have seen the original DB. Assuming the shows didn't exist and this was its own product, no one knows whats happening here. People might regard this as a place where show-savvy viewers get to laugh at inside jokes that need no explanation, but to those who haven't, it's... Well, no need to be repetitive.

Goku admits to having a son, and the characters begin to hint at "So, that means you had sex right?" Goku is completely oblivious: The first indication the viewer has that Goku might not be the sharpest knife in the crayon box. The effect of Roshi "whooshing" next to Goku catches my eye as good sound design, which while sparse in the early episodes becomes commonplace later in the series.

We learn that Goku's son is being groomed to be a scholar, rather than a fighter like his father, and that he has a powerful MacGuffin strapped to his head, making him a huge target for greedy villains.

When Goku feels a powerful energy level, he compares it to the biggest thing he can think of: Krillin's losing streak... in the first episode... with a character that's had less than ten seconds of screen time. We don't really know how big of a losing streak this is, so the remark itself loses a lot of potential power. It's only real merit is exposition; At least we get an idea here that Krillin the series butt monkey.

Raditz swoops in and drops some knowledge, about who Kakarot is, why Goku/Kakarot is on Earth, why HE is on Earth, and their fraternal relationship. It's dense, fast, and to anyone who didn't watch DBZ first, I pity you. None of it will make any sense. It's just something you've gotta "go with". He then uses his tail to smack Krillin into Kame House, thus christening the first notch on Krillin Owned Count. This works better as a running gag than it does in the first episode.

Goku shows more concern for the house than Krillin, and then explains the MacGuffin Dragon Balls in more detail: They can grant any wish you want, including immortality.

Cut to a random pig (Oolong) chiming in that you can also wish for Bulma's panties. Uh... What?

This is not necessarily wrong unlike the "Boobs!" line, considering Oolong does exactly this in DBZ, but this is the first time Oolong makes an appearance in "The Return of Raditz! … Wait…" It's a very abrupt appearance with no explanation. No one addresses him before or after this. His name isn’t even mentioned in the episode. And why is he inside when everyone else is outside?

Cut to Vegeta and Nappa who have apparently heard Goku through Raditz's scouter. Wait, that hasn't been explained yet either! We get the barest glimpse at Nappa's character while Vegeta is, well, there. Raditz explains they're going to kill everyone on the planet and sell it, Goku objects, and Raditz smacks him into the ground. He kidnaps Goku's son and then flies off, for perhaps no other reason than "Fuck you I'm evil" It all happens pretty quick.

Krillin, despite being "bitch slapped through a house", is unable to stop him and thus takes the blame, for no other reason than being the butt monkey.

Piccolo shows up and openly mocks Goku for having his shit shoved in and losing his son, further cementing him the most interesting character in this episode. Goku then convinces Piccolo to join forces with him to confront Raditz, and in exchange, he'll friend Piccolo on Myspace.

"Tom you've been replaced." is a relatively fullfilling wraparound and a good ending for a... well, bad episode.

Conclusion

It's bad. There's no way around it. Let me break down why if it hasn't already been made clear.

The characters: Raditz the Walking Exposition, Krillin the Butt Monkey, Goku the Idiot and Piccolo, that's it. Everyone else is a non-character at this point. Piccolo, though handled in a slightly clumsy fashion, is shown to be the most diverse character here. The snark, the "fuck it" attitude, and the going joke that he's lonely. Goku's character isn't well defined beyond what he is. He's a father, a fighter, a Saiyan, Raditz's brother, but those are all things that have nothing to do with his personality. All we really get aside from "he's dumb" is that he's just a vessel for the plot to move forward. Raditz is literally pure exposition. He has no character traits aside from being a dick. Krillin is given the Milhouse treatment.

The writing: What is going on here?

The production quality: Old grainy footage, fine I can deal with that. It's how the original DBZ looks. Most people would shit on this, and KaiserNeko (the lead editor) does switch over to higher quality source footage for Season 2, but I personally won't knock it. What I will knock is the microphone quality. This is most noticable when Raditz and Piccolo meet. Contextually, I get it. It's the first episode, everyone in the main cast is like 19-20 years old at this point, maybe still live with their parents, maybe just have a default headset mic, everyone knows what that's like. Objectively, it's still terrible.

Score: 35

Passing Thoughts

MasakoX does the voice for Master Roshi very early on, before Lanipator took over the role. I’ve always imagined early Roshi as more like a teddy bear, whereas Roshi 2.0 was definitely “lecherous old man” to a P.

"Holy black on a Popo!" - Hasn't been established yet, but I like it.

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Episode 5 Review

The episode features boats. And two new amazing characters!

With the Flower Power Princess in their alliance, Brightmoon now turns to the sea in the hopes of recruiting Netflix’s Ariel, the Little Mermaid, to their side. 

However, as expected of a mermaid, she lives in the ocean. This means that the wonder trio is in serious need of an experienced sea captain if they want to rock that boat.

The Queen explicitly requests no violence or collateral damage, so I get the feeling we all know how that’s going to pan out.

I feel like I’m slowly falling in love with Adora’s puffy-shoulders overcoat. I’m sure there’s an actual fashion name or term for that. But it looks cool.

When the wonder trio enters the briny fishy bar, they meet some rough looking characters, and at one point Beau’s voice breaks. Like the voice actor delivers a line and the voice just pitches through the ceiling. But you know, I think that really fits his character, so that’s probably why they left it in.

Among all the bruisers and rough-housing animal and fish people, we’re introduced to a suave, majestic debonair of a daredevil that looks like the offspring of Miguel from The Road to El Dorado and Varrick from The Legend of Korra. And boy howdy does the attitude match the appearance. 

He is exactly what they’re looking for, but he is not cheap, even by royal treasury standards. I can’t remember who it was, whether it was Glimmer, Beau, Adora or even Seahawk himself, but someone challenges someone to arm wrestle, and Adora squares up against this smooth talking snake-oil seas-man.

Right here, I wanted her to go She-Ra and just destroy him, but turns out she doesn’t even need the power-up and flexes on him without issue. 

Seahawk stammers and stumbles over his words for a moment before agreeing to help, and we get our first glimpse at the idea that Seahawk may not be all he claims to be.

Back at the danger zone, Demontwister is still extremely buttrumpled over Adora up and leaving, and sends Catra to dispatch her. After some back and forth sass, Deathwalker informs her that she will not be going alone. A massive, imposing shadow looms over Catra, and we see a pair of massive lobster claws emerge from the shadows...

Right before they hug her. This is Scorpia. She has lobster arms. Well, scorpion arms, because her name is Scorpia. That’s pretty cool. 

Scorpia, as it turns out, is an absolute delight of a character. They managed to make a zany, endearing character without making them “lul sO rAndOm!!” and her antics drive Catra up the wall. Catra is now the straight man in this duo, and this is a great change of pace from being the wild card to Adora’s straight man. It also doesn’t help that, hey, they’re also on a boat! And Catra, being part cat, hates water.

We’re sailing, sailing, sailing on the ocean blue. Seahawk almost sings a shanty several times, but keeps getting cut off for one reason or another. However, when he finally does pull it off, Beau is there to back him up with the violin.

Beau is really just the flow with it, be everyone’s friend character. Though considering this goofy scene more, I hope we see more out of Beau as a character than just being the amicable comedy relief and voice of reason. Some substance to his personality would be nice. It’s very easy to write the virtuous, pure of heart, yada yada character. It’s not an issue yet, after all we’re still only at Episode 5, I just have high hopes and expectations for his character development.

We’re here! No we’re not! It’s a sea serpent. Adora turns on the spotlights and dives bravado-first into the ocean to kill it. Bye She-Ra!

The more watch this show, the more I like its art style. I found it very pretty just in the first episode, but the longer I pay attention to how it’s drawn and how the animators move the characters, the more I just appreciate looking at it. It feels unique, but also refined, focused and not too dramatically exaggerated.

Granted, it’s still very basic. The drawings are simple and the art style lends itself to being quickly and easily animated. It’s not a master class of animation or anything, and the art style isn’t completely breathtaking, after all it’s mostly flat colors with limited shading, but I still like it because they were able to take something basic and present it with a neat bow on it. Perhaps I’ve just got Star Vs The Force of Evil and Steven Universe on the brain but this style just looks so much better than those. Maybe if I watched something else, like a bunch of Studio Ghibli movies right before diving into this, I’d have a much harsher opinion of the art in this series. But for a campy Saturday morning kids cartoon, I like it and I find it’s growing on me.

The wonder trio meets the water queen, a very no-nonsense, serious and drol woman. Seahawk, ever the extroverted and dramatic goofball, is madly infatuated with her. The clash here leaves a lot to be questioned. Princess Waterlily actually has the more interesting half of the relationship here. It’s not your typical, plastic writing for your everyday tsundere because it seems like a lot of the time she genuinely dislikes him. But certain situations leave her exasperated to explain why she’s still hanging out with him. It’s nothing explicitly stated, or inferred through omission, or even spoon fed to the viewers through contrarian yet obvious tropes, but more in the idea that they just keep showing up together for SOME reason.

Anyways, the crux of this episode is pretty much the same as the last. Go to new ally, use She-Ra powers to save them, they’re happy and join the Brightmoon alliance. Huzzah. Now, since the barrier is weak and on the verge of just breaking all together, all She-Ra has to do is save the damsel in distress and-- 

Ah, yes, this trope again.

It draws into question how useful these princesses might be to Brightmoon if they’re so inept on their own. Like, I know we’re gearing up for some Princess Battle Royale at some point in the future. That’s being telegraphed years in advance. I’m sure the princesses will kick ass when that happens, and it’ll be awesome. But are they just sitting on their hands right now, waiting for She-Ra or even just The Plot to come save them from their helpless predicaments? Isn’t Lady In The Lake badass enough on her own to be able to do something at all about her current situation? Anything at all? No?

Putting that aside for now, it goes without saying that wherever the main characters go, the horde is not far behind. Catra and Scorpia have a ship, which I’m certain has no innuendo, and any further shanties have been hereby banned. Beau boards the ship with ye old faithful CareBear bow, and of course Kyle gets shot.

While this scene plays out, Glimmer turns to Seahawk for his assistance and asks him to do the one thing he’s actually good at.

“Set your ship on fire!”

He gladly obliges and they kamikaze that son of a bitch right into the other player’s battleship. Don’t ask me why a flaming wooden dinky can completely sink a floating metal tank. Maybe that’s Seahawk’s special princess power.

During all of this She-Ra and Catra have been having some incredible sexual tension on the floating platform, where the shining goddess is attempting to use the power of magic and harmony and friendship or whatever to fix the rapidly eroding magical barrier around Misty’s Splash Mountain.

With the apparent defeat of a the horde for now, Catra just... backs off I guess. And they just let them.

Little Miss Seaworld is understandable thrilled that the wonder trio and yes even Seahawk have saved her kingdom, in her own lowkey and monotone way, and grudgingly thanks Seahawk for his contributions. As thanks, her butler provides a new ship for Seahawk, christening it with a bottle of wine and everything. 

“Try not to burn this one down too.”

“No promises!”

With that, we have Seahawk and Murmista joining the party!

Conclusion

Seahawk and Scorpia are amazing. This episode is in very good fun and the new characters provide some great humor. The last four episodes were a little slow to the punch, but I found it hard to find something to dislike about this episode. The forced helplessness of the princesses here is a little off-kilter but it didn’t seem off-pace for the series and only started to bug me when I really thought about it. Initial first viewing it damn near flew over my head.

If I had to nitpick beyond that, I don’t feel like they leaned into Seahawk’s character enough. Don’t get me wrong, he’s great, but I feel like he could’ve been better if they had committed more into him instead of keeping his personality light like La Croix. It is the first episode he appears in so I’m sure there’s more to him that we’ll discover, but it’s hard to say he isn’t a little one-dimensional in this specific episode. Just an endearing goofball with no real depth beyond comic relief. Scorpia on the other hand seems to have more potential at least from the outset. She appears to have a more diverse personality but we don’t get to see too much of it here.

Now, it would be fair to say that I’m basing almost my entire judgement of this episode upon the shoulders of two very campy new characters, and that would be an accurate assessment. It’s important to note that the primary purpose of a show like this must always be entertainment. You need to be entertained to want to keep watching. That can either be done through a gripping plot, tension, character development, emotional investment, or just through goofy, hilarious hijinks. At Episode 5, we’re too early into the series for pretty much anything on that list except for the last one.

This has also cinched that little itch in my back for me about “not being quite sold on the series yet” - Up to this point, it had simply been a point of curiosity, but now I feel like I actively want to keep watching just to see how these characters develop and what happens to them as the story unfolds.

Score: 75

Passing Thoughts

“Go fish” says the fishy dude.

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Episode 2 Review

Now with an intro! This episode answers questions left over from Episode 1 and leaves you curious for what happens next.

The Main Character feels the sword calling to her and leaves Catra behind at the danger zone while she goes to check it out. She happens upon it at the same time the goof troop of Wonder Boy and Miss Poofs-A-Lot magics their way into the forest, and both parties decide, yoink, my sword now.

A note from the first episode I wanted to include was that the spooky woods reminded me of Harry Potter. Though I found the claim of “no squad has ever made it out there!!” falls a little flat when three under-prepared children can just wander through it like it’s no big deal. I mean, okay, maybe a little deal. Maybe having your rank-and-file blonde soldier girl undergo a magical girl transformation to become an ancient Aryan goddess helps your chances of survival. Because seriously, am I the only one who noticed the blue eyes and blonde hair right away? Ubermensch, more like uberwomensch. 

The dialogue choices in the initial scuffle and rivalry between Big Pink and Tall, Blonde and Built make me angry. Perhaps that’s intentional. These people do not like each other in the slightest and are not in a hurry to change that. But because they’re in the spooky death forest, the setting necessitates some reluctant teamwork, which I actually think is a pretty cool and organic plot device. However, the match-up of Bob and Larry over here would be insufferable without the male archer being the only non-hysterical voice of reason.

Throughout the episode we see a slow evolution of character from almost everyone, which is terrific to see from a storytelling perspective. Everyone here feels like an actual person. And to be honest, I didn’t see “maybe we’re the bad guys” coming from a mile away, so I got to enjoy that dawning realization in the same shoes as Captain Miss America. She’d grown up being fed lies and propaganda and had genuinely believed she was doing the right thing working with the folks at the danger zone. It’s also mentioned that she was an orphan and they took her in and raised her from childhood. Shot in the dark, they destroyed her hometown and killed her family and claimed she had always been an orphan. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Meanwhile, Pretty Pink Princess has seen first hand what the literal “evil horde” has done to her people, and the complete disparity of perspective becomes increasingly narrower until Our Hero is struck by the revelation - Oh shit, we’re the bad guys.

Catra however seems to have a different perspective. Miss Pointy Shoulders was her best friend and now she’s gone rogue. Given how much they seem to like each other and how badly Catra misses her and wants her back, it seems entirely arbitrary for her to just stick with the bad guys instead of teaming up with her. I guess the plot just demanded a rival with a good backstory and motivation.

The in-universe justification for this, or however much of an asspull I can deduce, is that Catra eventually wants to take control of the entire faction with the help of Princess Charming. Then they can do whatever they like together. But Our Hero had a sudden awakening and a change of heart, and Catra does not seem to match her level of benevolence. Though if you don’t take my word for it, pretty much her first reaction to being told “hey we’re killing innocent people maybe we should stop” is to taser the crazy out of her best friend.

Nightstalker isn’t happy with Goldilocks defecting but feeling angry probably isn’t a huge change of pace for them.

Conclusion

Better! This episode offers more depth to the story and the characters. The reluctance and about-face from Dora The Teleporter regarding Evil Agent Who’s Actually The Good Girl feels earned and justified by their journey. 

This definitely feels like an Episode 1 Part 2 episode... which is a weird thing to say about “Episode 2″ I know, but it feels more like this episode finishes and wraps up on what Episode 1 left unresolved and just hanging by the cliff.

EDIT: Okay, after looking for a picture to use for this review, it turns out that Episode 2 IS IN FACT A PART 2 of Episode 1. Good to know.

Score: 70

Passing Thoughts

“You’re literally called the evil horde” “Who calls us that?!”

I like the fantasy element of the various non-human or hybrid races. It’s not really addressed in any way and I don’t think it needs to be. Just seems kind of cool and unique, and you’re not being beaten over the head with it.

[slothcritic]

Update

I’ve recently discovered the “schedule post” function here on Tumblr. Expect more consistent submissions in the near future. 

I will update this blog on Sundays at 2pm EST.