#its glowy and techy and dark

[emioliravioli]

Oh yeah lumi blaze is the current egg character in speed sim

WHAT.

SO WAS ANYONE GOING TO TELL ME ABOUT THIS COSTUME OR WAS I JUST SUPPOSED TO KNOW??

[moonlightreal]

Winx Club season 8/26

In which we get one last surprise retcon.

26 Written in the Stars

Recap says the last prime star is the “star of brotherly love.”  Were the other stars “of” things?  I totally missed that.

Valtor’s asteroid!  ...wait, what’s this?  Valtor is having a chat with a bunch of unforeshadowed Shadowy Figures he calls “my brothers of the darkness dimension.”  Valtor gathered the prime stars to free them and they’re getting impatient.

Gee, this series already dropped one big fat surprise motive, I was not expecting another one in the very last episode!

So Valtor wants to be a powerful sorcerer so he can unseal the darkness dimension and free his buddies.  Whaaaaaat even is this?  Valtor’s not from some weird dimension, he was created by the Three Ancestors!  His backstory is what made him cool, and “buddies in the dark dimension’ is so uninspired!

Season 8, whaddaya doing to me?  -_-

Alfea at sunrise! they’re squeezing the best gorgeous Alfea shots out of their software for this last episode and I am here for it.  Upgraded Alfea is just the greatest.

Kiko rocks on with headphones.  The Trix walk in behind him.  How did they get iiiiiin?! Into the Winx common room, past the school barrier and all the students and teachers.

Kiko sees the Trix and freaks out.  Icy knows the bunny’s name, which is kinda sweet. Knowing your enemies’ pets!  Kiko pelts the Trix with apples from an apparently infinite fruit bowl.  The Winx wake up and find witches dodging apples.

Badass Bloom: “I don’t know how you got here, but I know how you’re gonna leave!”

The Trix turn out to be Stella, Flora and Aisha transformed.  Not bad, writers. Professor Wizgiz made the spell for them for Bloom’s plan to get into Valtor’s asteroid.  Flora says it’ll be dangerous and Aisha sounds kind of fed up when she says, ‘Ok, Flora, but don’t worry too much.”

Bloom’s phone rings, it’s Sky with a be-careful call.

The star box poofs in.  “The goal of your venture will not slip away, but listen carefully to what I’m going to say...”  I assume she’s telling them where Valtor’s asteroid is.  The Wishing Star would know, and I don’t see how else the Winx would.

We cut to the real Trix walking down a dark blue and purple corridor.  Icy is keen to challenge Valtor, she thinks their prime star will give them enough of an advantage.  Darcy and Stormy are not so confidant.  Stormy sensibly suggests they just take their freedom and clear out.

Icy: ‘because right now we’re standing on the needle of a scale.  A scale that will tip in our favor when we take Valtor’s three stars.  We’ll have the power of the wishing star all to ourselves.”  Icy wants to break the spell on Sapphire.  Stormy wants them to be undisputed queens of the magic universe.  Darcy’s dream is to “overturn the law of nature itself.  A world of illusion, can you imagine?”  Ok, they’ll try attacking Valtor with Icy.

Wow, and Icy says, ‘If things go bad, run, and leave me to my fate.”  so Icy is putting it on the line not just for Sapphire but for Darcy and Stormy, which is remarkably honorable, for Icy.  They hug, and it’s sweet.  Then they enter the throne room!

Valtor’s just done chatting with his shadow buddies I guess.  Icy starts to say something, I think she’s going to bluff that they couldn’t get the star, when the room shakes and rocks fall from the ceiling. Thunder.

Stormy: ‘don’t look at me, I didn’t do it.”  Heh.  Valtor orders the Trix outside to check it out.

Outside, it’s Bloom,  Tec and Musa who’s hitting the building with “sonic shake” I think meant to draw their enemies out.  And it worked!

The Trix are happy to have a fight, even though this would be the perfect time for Icy to do a little “enemy of my enemy” stuff.  But the Trix just like fighting the Winx I guess.  It’s their hobby.

Inside, fake-Trix walk along the corridor and Aisha-as-darcy nearly falls over because her shoes are too tight.  it’s an illusion spell, why are you wearing Trix shoes?  Flora suggests they fly instead.

Fake-trix sneak into the throne room.  Valtor is back to taking to his shadow buddies and he explains his whole plan before turning and seeing the fake-Trix.  Stella is kinda hilarious doing the whole, ‘prime star? Oh, um, didn’t you have it?” thing as Icy.  She says it might be in her pocket and Valtor reminds them they have no pockets.  Pffffft. Seriously, Valtor is dumb as a doorknob not to realize.

The real Trix and Bloom bust in through the roof and Valtor is momentarily confused before the Winx all turn back into themselves.  

Valtor demands the star from Icy.  Stella says, ‘don’t give it to him!” and spills Valtor’s plan to release his shadow buddies.  Valtor tries activating his mark on the Trix but surprise, it’s gone!  

Bloom does a little speech about “if you give it to Valtor it will be the end of everything, the magic universe will cease to exist, is that really whet you want?”  and “On Dyamond I realized there is love in you.”  Bloom doesn’t know about Sapphire, remember, she just knows Icy likes cute baby animals.  

Valtor blasts Bloom and reminds Icy that the Winx are their worst enemies and that they’ll be rich and powerful beyond imagining if they help him out! Then he blasts Bloom again, but she shields herself, lights up, and says, “In your heart you know there’s only one thing to do.”

But Valtor evil-lights up.  

The Winx and Trix know a bad thing when they see it and fly away.

The whole castle busts open and there’s a gargoyle with Valtor’s mark across its chest.  It doesn’t look or sound like Valtor at all, but I guess that’s him.  Giant gargoyle goes after the Winx.  It throws blast after blast of dark magic at them and the girls raise their shields. Rainbow put in a little detail, Tec’s is green and techy, Aisha’s is morphix.  But they can’t hold out for too long.

Here come the Specialists in their ship!  It flies back and forth distracting the gargoyle.

Back on the asteroid, Darcy and Stormy want to skip town, leave the Winx to deal with the giant monster.  But Icy does not want the magic universe destroyed!  Darcy and stormy plead with her, Let’s just save ourselves!”

Flashback to Princess Icy on the overlook, vowing to save her sister.  Young Icy raises glowing hands to her hair, smoothing the yellow frizz into sleek silver, and conjuring the tall thingy Icy uses to hold up her ponytail.  “So, sis… Icy.”  Like she’s embracing the darker possibilities of her name.

Present time Icy: ‘I watched a world crumble before.  I won’t let it happen again. we’ll face this threat!”  The other two go with her.

Valtor at first thinks they’re on his side, but then Icy gives the star to Bloom! She puts it in the star case and the other three fly out of the castle and go into the case as well.  We fade into magc-space and the Wishing Star gets herself back together!

“Yes Winx, you’ve achieved your goal, and I am free.  To make your greatest dream a reality.”

Stella’s stoked. Wishes!  But the others realize they have to ask for something that’s good for everybody.  Bloom knows what they should wish for!

Bloom: “Our wish is to be able to protect the magic universe.  We want to preserve it in harmony, now and forever.”

The star: ‘so be it, Winx.  My brave and generous fairies of light.”

The star sends her light to the Winx and they all glow golden.

Valtor gargoyle tells the Trix this is all their fault.

But before he can bring the violence the glowy Winx all blast him and he is swallowed up in light.  The asteroid disappears, leaving empty space. In the spaceship, Sky cheers.

The Trix realize there’s nothing else for them here, and head off to their next scheme.  Before she does, Icy and Bloom look at each other and share a moment of understanding.

Ok, I think that was a dumb wish.  The Winx protect the magic dimension already!  If you get a wish, you should save it for something you can’t accomplish with the powers you already have!  Maybe they couldn’t have defeated Valtor without lighting up, but they defeated him last time without star power.  I  would’ve liked it better if the Winx had been zapping and then the Trix had to join in to defeat Valtor, or some other use of having three sides in this fight.

I’m also so sure that Bloom would have used the wish to save Dyamond if she’d heard the story about Icy’s sister.  Bloom’s a softie anyway, and she literally suffered the same thing herself.  They could’ve used the wish without powering Icy up further… sigh. it’s such a weird skipping of such an obvious plot.

The Wishing star flies off, and we see her pass the star ship Purripla.  The nautical lumens are happy.  The star visits the cave lumens, unilumens, surf lumens, and then we see Twinkle fly into the throne room on Lumenia. ‘The Winx have won, my queen!  The Wishing Star is back!”  Time for a party on Lumenia, but Twinkle is more interested in the one at Alfea.

Where they’re having a concert, of course.  This song’s a bit livelier than some. The minor fairies, the boys, teachers and Knut, a couple of lumens, and Twinkle and Lumilla are there.  They are my OTP!  I scan the crowd for Orion, but he doesn’t seem to have made it.

In the sky the Wishing Star zooms past, drawing a W between six stars.  It’s the Winx constellation!

And that’s season 8!

But you’re not getting out of here without more ponderings!

It occurs to me that the Winx know—or at least Bloom thinks she knows—that Icy is capable of love, but they know nothing about what the white fox really is.  In the real world where things don’t end after 26 episodes the next thing Bloom would want to do is go back to Dyamond and figure everything out.  Making Icy stop being a threat to the magic dimension would be a huge win.  Although… Icy has spent ten-ish years doing really awful things, she’s not a good person. She’s a terrible person who loves her sister, and if Sapphire regained human form Icy would be… still a terrible person, just one with a human sister.  it’s hard to imagine Icy just returning to being princess of Dyamond and doing a good job.  Or even enjoying it.

I do wonder if we’ll see Sapphire again.  I guessed this is setup for movie 4, it could also be setup for season 9 or it could just disappear like the fairy animals from season 7 just disappeared.

Some thoughts:

The art bugged me less than I thought it would, I honestly stopped noticing after a few episodes.  Even the boys… still looked weird, but my brain didn’t remind me loudly just how weird they look.

Musa/Riven, why must you be so bad as to force me to take a side in a fandom I don’t want to take sides in? -_-  

Liked seeing Knut and the Alfea teachers again, and I’m glad they took the time to bring the minor fairies along to the new art style.  Of course it was all made very confusing since some parts of the world seem to have gone back in time and others don’t.  Mielle looked much younger but was described as being still a teenager.  

All in all, I liked this season!  I will have at least one more post of afterthoughts, and maybe a deep-dive into Icy’s past.  The official Winx youtube channel has a video about it that I haven’t watched since I didn’t want to spoil myself.  We’ll see.  Depending on just how unemployed I turn out to be and how hard I’m working on my fanfics, I may have plenty of time to write about Winx!

[satireknight]

TMNT S02E13 - Return of the Technodrome

It’s been a whole season - not a long one, but a season - since the Technodrome went sailing into Dimension X, and Shredder had to spend several episodes trying desperately to impress Krang into helping him.

So whatcha say that giant white ball cause more trouble?

It’s a slow day at Channel 6, which basically means that there hasn’t been a world-threatening crisis in the past six hours, and Burne Thompson is probably threatening to fire everything in the building, including his potted plant. You know, the staff at this building must have pure Valium running through their veins, or they’d constantly be on the verge of nervous collapse.

Burne demands that April go out and “make” news, whatever that means. Should she somehow produce a natural disaster? Commit a crime?

Irma reeeeeaaally wants to see the Turtles again, implicitly because they’re male and didn’t run at the sight of her. April tries to brush her off despite Irma having actually collaborated with them in the last episode. “Irma, the Turtles are NOT the most exciting thing in my life!” Yes, they are. 

Meanwhile, Splinter is going off on a retreat, and Donatello is wearing pink for some reason.

April pops in to ask if there’s anything interesting happening that she can exploit, and she’s so desperate that she even asks if Splinter leaving is something newsworthy.

Meanwhile, Krang has finally had enough of Shredder’s screwups, and is preparing to invade Earth. Wait, why does he want to invade Earth? I thought his priority at the end of last season was to conquer Dimension X, and it was SHREDDER who wanted to conquer Earth. Did Krang already do that, and now he wants a fresh challenge?

He sends Shredder a gadget intended to direct Niagara Falls’ energy towards opening a dimensional portal. And despite whining for one more chance to kill the Turtles a few minutes ago, Shredder is now ecstatic about the Technodrome’s return.

Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady all arrive at the power station, and the portal starts opening in the sky.

Meanwhile, the Turtles say goodbye to Master Splinter for the next few days, and it’s hard not to notice something odd about Donatello.

Yep, for most of this episode he doesn’t have his wristbands on. No reason is ever given, and it’s more consistent than just an occasional animation error; it’s almost all the time. So we should just assume that he’s shamelessly flaunting his naked wrists at us.

But just as they’re about to head home, two things happen: April calls, and Leonardo gains fifty pounds in his gut.

They immediately deduce that the massive power outage in New York is actually the work of Shredder... which really doesn’t take much effort, since he is the main villain of the series. 

The Technodrome is rapidly charging up, and Krang decides to be uncharacteristically nice and send Shredder some Foot Soldiers and Rock Soldiers. Did someone slip him some antidepressants?

Meanwhile, Donatello apparently hacks into Shredder’s communicator at long-distance with one little knob. If you need proof of technical genius, this is it. Also, no wristbands.

And despite saying he can’t make out the transmission, he manages to hear EVERYTHING they say. They charge out of there on the Turtle Blimp, and Leonardo argues that they shouldn’t disturb Splinter because he’s been training them for this sort of crisis. True, but considering the importance of what’s going on, methinks he wouldn’t mind THAT much.

And it’s all moot anyway, as Splinter senses the whole mess and sets out to investigate.

And since the Turtles use the stealthiest of means to sneak in - a blimp with their name on it - Bebop spots them and shoots down the glider. 

They land right near the falls and are about to go over when Donatello uses a remote control function to lower the blimp towards them.

They manage to grab the one rope dangling from it, and be deposited on the shore. Bebop and the Foot Soldiers are completely missing from the shore now, which is a little weird. But that’s so Splinter can pop out of nowhere and greet them, and point out the giant glowy portal in mid-air.

Donatello comes up with a plan to cut off the power from the river/falls, and April’s idea for distracting the rock/Foot soldiers is... the sexy lady gambit. I’m not even kidding.

Even they look baffled by the idea. Donatello and Michelangelo attack and almost get squelched, but April manages to distract the easily redirected enemies. Again. For the second time in a minute.

Meanwhile, Leonardo and Raphael take on Rocksteady and yet more Foot/Rock Soldiers,

And this is Leonardo in full “you’re my bitch now” mode. Rocksteady throws him off and charges at the two Turtles, only to get a faceful of insta-sleep-stuff from Splinter.

And a layering issue too.

Donatello somehow manages to shut down the entire river... don’t ask me how... which cuts off the power to the portal. Krang has to compensate with extra power from his end, and the Technodrome heads right through towards Earth.

Krang immediately deploys more soldiers and vehicles to attack and surround the Turtles, who don’t have the faintest idea what they can do to save themselves.

Krang decides he wants to shoot the Turtles himself, using the Technodrome’s weaponry, and aims a giant laser at them... only for it to putter out without firing. While Krang swears that this has never happened before and he definitely doesn’t need pills, it turns out that he’s drained the Technodrome to the point where the weapons don’t work.

Also, that army there a few minutes ago? Gone now.

As they’re chased down by Bebop and Co, Leonardo (or Donatello, it’s hard to tell when the voices get switched) summons the blimp yet again.

And remember how earlier Bebop was able to bring down the glider with one shot? Now he and the Foot Soldiers can’t shoot the ENTIRE BLIMP with multiple shots.

“They’ve escaped again! Oh, this is getting VERY monotonous!” Shredder really calmed down fast there. Krang sucks in more of that sweet hydroelectric power, and reveals that he’s planning to create seismic events that will lead to New York being evacuated, then taking over it when everyone is gone and using it as a base of operations to conquer everything else.

He broadcasts a message commanding everyone to leave the city, and threatens a stronger quake that will level every building. As the Turtles rush out, Splinter says portentously, “And so begins the final battle.” Oh, you wish, Splinter. This show has six more seasons of battling these guys, plus a vacation side-season.

The Turtles track down the Technodrome once again, and we get an idea of just how huge it is.

Donatello blasts a hole in the Technodrome’s armor (after another I-swear-this-has-never-happened-before moment) and they head inside. Donatello is focused on stopping the earthquakes, but Splinter is busy having a Jedi moment.

Shredder also senses Splinter, and the two of them head off to fight. 

Donatello finds the control center and starts rewiring everything in it, while the other Turtles have to fight Rocksteady, Bebop and a bunch of Foot Soldiers.

“Hamato Yoshi is no longer. There is only Splinter.” I love consistent characterization. That wasn’t sarcasm; I love this moment. 

Back in the control room, the lights go out and there’s a bunch of fighting in the dark, and Donatello isn’t entirely sure he managed to fix the problem. Of course, he should have had plenty of time based on what happened to their foes.

Why did they tie up the Foot Soldiers? They’re robots. Just smash ‘em.

The city hasn’t been evacuated, so Krang tries to set off another earthquake. All that happens is that a giant laser blasts the bridge that Splinter and Shredder are standing on... 

... which forces Splinter to crawl up the platform vertically, and leaves Shredder hanging by his cape. That is the worst place for a laser EVER.

The Turtles have just escaped from the Technodrome when they realize that Splinter is still inside... how do they keep forgetting that?... just as their master comes springing out.

It turns out that Donatello’s rewiring has led to the Technodrome sinking right through the Earth’s crust, and Krang has no way to actually stop it.

I’m pretty sure landing in lava would melt it, but who cares? Krang is busy screaming that this is all Shredder’s fault (though I’m not sure how) as they float downstream on the magma.

VERDICT:

This is a nice solid episode with a heavy emphasis on action. It basically does what its title promises, returning the Technodrome while focusing on the Turtles’ efforts to stop it from conquering the Earth. So there’s a good failure/success balance for the Turtles here, with them encountering obstacles along the way that they aren’t entirely successful in dealing with - they don’t stop the Technodrome’s return, but they do manage to keep it from conquering the world.

So it’s a good episode for lots of fighting, lots of confrontations with Rocksteady and Bebop (who are actually pretty intimidating here), and Donatello doing techie stuff. I felt a little let down by the lack of a real fight between Splinter and Shredder at the end, but I guess there wasn’t really time for that.

It also establishes the new status quo for the series. After Shredder being on his own and the Technodrome and Krang being safely off in another dimension, now it’s immobilized down in the depths of the Earth, and Shredder has Krang in the same general area... you know, despite Krang not being very happy with him, but what else is new? From now on, these two are a package deal, wherever the Technodrome happens to be located (and it’s going to get complicated). 

One thing that was a little distracting was the animation flubs. I only touched on those, but certain scenes made the Turtles look either tubby or kinda childish. I’m still not sure why Donatello’s frequently-missing wristbands are an issue too, since this is rarely an issue in other episodes. Let’s just assume he accidentally splashed tomato sauce on them, and they’re in the wash.

Grade: B+