Sonic the Hedgehog Volume 4: Infection Review

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Sonic The Hedgehog has been delivering a ton of awesome comics in this run and this volume is no exception. While the series transitions to the next big arc this is more of a setup volume but we still get some fun action scenes here. Sonic is a great main character as always and there’s just a lot to enjoy in every aspect of the volume. The series is really in good hands right now.

The volume mainly starts off with Sonic finally finding out that Eggman has really returned. No more Mr. Tinker alias or anything like that. Granted, Sonic does toy with a few ideas of what could be happening other than Eggman turning evil again but his friends point out that it’s pretty unlikely and he really has to agree. It’s just tough to realize that Eggman’s out there again. What he doesn’t yet know is that Eggman has a new ally in Dr. Starline who is a cut above Eggman’s usual help. They are developing a metal virus that can absorb and assimilate into any creature. If this gets to Sonic then all hope might be lost.

It’s a pretty solid plot since a widespread virus like this can really be difficult to deal with. Starline is also an interesting new villain. I wouldn’t say he stands out too much yet but Eggman should watch his back. I can absolutely picture Starline deciding to take him out at some point since Eggman seems to have a little more mercy and compassion than this guy. Starline really seems to look up to Eggman but I can see him being disillusioned soon. Who knows maybe Eggman will get the drop on him but he does have a tendency to be betrayed so I wouldn’t be surprised if he went down.

In the second issue we get the first big fight of the volume with Sonic and Silver teaming up to take on Starline and Metal Sonic. You’d think this would be an easy fight for the heroes right? Sonic can handle Metal while Silver beats up on Starline? Well unfortunately Silver is really just a burden in this fight as he can’t seem to keep up at all and is constantly on the defensive. Seriously I was expecting a whole lot more from that guy but it feels like he hasn’t kept up with his training or something. I have not been as impressed with Silver in the comics as I was in the 2006 game but maybe he can make a comeback.

Starline and Metal Sonic do make for a good combination to deal with though as the genius teleporting technology plus Metal Sonic’s speed is really lethal. I do miss Metal Sonic being able to talk though so hopefully he can get that back at some point. Definitely a really solid battle all throughout and the issue goes by in a snap. I love high speed battles like that and it also shows how Metal Sonic is still a threat with how fast he moves. It’s fair to say Sonic will always have the edge but when it’s 2 on 1 then he does struggle which makes sense.

Then we have Sonic’s team up with Amy against Rough and Tumble. Always good to see those guys returning. They may not be the most powerful villains but they’re actually rather enjoyable characters. I think their humor moments work rather well and it’s not like they are complete pushovers. Then with the metal mode they actually can do some real damage. The issue plays out as part mystery with the heroes learning more about Eggman’s plans and we see jut how far he is willing to take this. Right now you could even say he has the edge since he’s got this whole grand master plan going and nobody really knows what he is going to do next. Sonic is putting out the fires but nobody knows how to find and stop him just yet.

After that the final issue is more low key as the heroes try to figure out how this zombie virus works and how to stop it. The cliffhanger is pretty intense as it sets the stage for what will happen next. The heroes have a lot of resources around and their own resident genius in Tails so you figure things will work out. The comics have done a good job so far of making these big threats even while the heroes are so stacked in every area though. Right now the writing’s really been on point and Eggman has to cover a lot of ground since the heroes have really set up shop all around the planet. I suspect he is slowly going to start taking down the allies as he gets closer to Sonic.

Naturally the artwork here is top tier as always. I really like the bright art and the streamlined colors for all the characters. The high speed fights actually feel quick and all of the characters look like their video game counterparts. There are no cut corners here or low budget moments, everything is drawn with care. Mix that in with the solid writing and that’s why the comic is great. It really has no weak points that I can see and even the original comic characters for the series like the new doctor have worked out nicely. The continuity really feels tight which is massive.

Overall, This was definitely another great volume of the Sonic adventures. We got a good blend of action and the plot moving forward. It’s going to be tough to top the Neo Metal Sonic arc but this one already has a lot of players involved so I’m ready to see how it goes. Mainly we just need Shadow to make an appearance and then things will really start to get intense. As always I look forward to the next volume!

Overall 8/10

Kickboxer 2 Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

I wasn’t a big fan of the first Kickboxing film and unfortunately the sequel also gets a thumbs down too. I would say it is an improvement over the first but not enough so where I would be able to defend it. It suffers from a lot of serious plot issues like adding a sour note to the first film and overall just going for maximum edge there. It doesn’t even have the solid ost from the first film so things get tricky here.

The movie starts off by introducing us to David, another brother related to the main characters from the first film. He has skill in close quarters combat but isn’t quite as strong as the earlier two. He doesn’t fight anymore, however his gym isn’t doing well so he is forced to unretire. He’s still good enough to win his fights but the main problem is Tong Po has returned. It turns out that he murdered the main characters from the first film including the heroine and now he’s here for David. He has his goons murder a child and then they murder David’s protégé. Now the lead has to fight him but does he have the skills to beat this fighter?

The whole plot feels like something out of an edgy fanfic. “Yo what if…..the villain from the first film got better and murdered everybody!!” I mean cmon now, I know a villain can have a revenge story too but having the heroes lose so cheaply off screen is rough. We see someone get shot so it seems like Tong Po just used underhanded tactics to win. He would have needed to since the last main character heavily surpassed him by the end of the first film. It makes a very strong argument for why you need to completely bump off the villain after a point. Letting him stay alive just opened the door for things to go south.

It’s just such a bad plot point though. Then for extra edge we have the whole kid thing. So there are a bunch of kids that look up to David and want to get stronger. One in particular had a bit of a bad attitude but he was trying his best. Well, a group of fighters attack in the night and when burning down the dojo they take out a kid too. It’s clear this is for maximum drama and edge but the film really didn’t need that. I would argue if anything it’s actually a net negative. The kids didn’t need to be here and surely having his brothers murdered is already enough of a motivation for David.

The edgy backstory also hurts some characters. Namely Xian because with his daughter dead the guy should be out for blood right? He’s an expert fighter to the point where he is the world’s best coach so why not take down Tong Po himself? I never get why the masters can get so complacent when the stakes are this level of personal. Instead he’ll train David and said he will sacrifice the guy if necessary. That’s great, but go handle your business. He should have absolutely been doing whatever it takes to bring that guy down instead of just waiting until David was forced into the action.

It doesn’t make any sense. What else doesn’t make sense? Everyone sitting by as Tong Po shows up and murdered someone in the ring. This isn’t Thailand this time. It’s taking place in the US and yet the villains still have enough clout to break all of the rules as often as they want and get away with literal murder? I don’t care how rich the villains are, that doesn’t make any sense. If the protégé was smart he would have taken the tournament crown by default since the opponent wasn’t smart. Even then he should have won the fight early on when Tong Po was clearly cheating. The ref would call it out each time but not do anything about it so what’s the point there? It’s just a really bad look all around and it’s why the film’s plot is so forced.

I feel like the writers had the dilemma they wanted to get to and knew the conclusion but didn’t know how to organically get the plot there. As a result it’s all rather contrived and the film feels very try-hardish. David’s a decent main character but it would be nice if he could have stepped up a bit sooner. A really rough moment was when the invaders attacked at night. David’s an expert hand to hand fighter so couldn’t he have fought back at least a little bit rather than going down immediately and getting beaten up so badly? I didn’t like how easily he went down there, night or not.

Tong Po also doesn’t look as impressive here for obvious reasons. He claims to want honor yet he goes around taking down stronger opponents with guns? Then in the final fight he is only able to do well when there is a hostage at stake. The instant David can fight the guy goes down like a sack of bricks. It’s like he can’t fight at a very high level at all. In the first film at least it was clear that he was still an incredibly difficult opponent to take down. He would cheat for sure but the guy legitimately did have a lot of skills at his disposal. Here he’s just a chump.

Also while the final fight is fairly long, the power levels don’t make a lot of sense. Put it this way, David is getting completely smashed throughout the whole fight. He’s got tons of broken bones and is coughing up blood since he was told not to fight back due to the hostage stuff going on. So finally when they tell him to fight, he’s able to crush Tong Po just like that? People underestimate how bad those injuries will be acting up while you’re fighting. There’s no way you’re going to just be able to keep fighting as if you’re going into the battle fresh. At best it means Tong Po is just incredibly weak but that’s not possible from what we saw. At least not to that extent so the film overplayed its hand in trying to make the stakes high. Again it’s just not great writing.

Overall, Kickboxer 2 may have beaten the first film but that’s not saying a whole lot. It’s still got huge chronic problems all throughout. In general the kids weren’t needed as their scenes don’t even fit in with the rest of the film. The film’s rather serious and dark while their moments are trying to be a little too upbeat. Perhaps it could work if the film was written better but it wasn’t built for this. In the end I would say to just avoid this film. As bad as the first film was, at least the ending was satisfying but this film completely takes that away and makes it moot so it’s a double negative.

Overall 4/10

Starman Review

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Starman is one of those films that seemed a little iffy right out of the gate. The whole plot involves an alien impersonating Jenny’s husband and calling it a day. And this film is going to be part romance? Uh ohhhhhhhh. Yeah this is why the film was never going to get particularly far. Throw in that the pacing can be slow and the main character is super annoying and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

The film starts off with an alien crash landing to Earth after the government shot down his space ship. He has 7 orgs/magic spells at the ready and uses one to tell his people that Earth is dangerous. He then sees a widow named Jenny and decides to shapeshift into her dead husband. The alien is now “Scott” but he knows nothing about human customs, their ways, or even about talking. So he gets to work on learning all of this and until he does, he figures Jenny will be his prisoner. Jenny has to try and escape quickly before she falls victim to Stockholm syndrome. Will she be up to the task?

Yeah the romance here is just bad. Since her husband is dead, you would think that the last thing Jenny would tolerate is an alien shapeshifter. I would argue that a normal rebound is even better than this because at least it’s a different person. Choosing to get together with someone who looks like your husband but isn’t is just really eery and not something you should be doing. I would also argue that there is no reason for her to fall for him at all. He basically kidnapped her and then held her against her will for a long while. At what point would that really turn into some kind of admiration? I’m not buying it, no sirrrrrrrr. He basically got her pregnant through alien magic too and she was cool with it.

Jenny started out by being a tough character but started breaking down as the film went on. I would have preferred that she knocked “Scott” out early on and then escaped. She doesn’t have to help the government since those guys were real shady the whole time but not falling in love with this guy is the baseline requirement to being a really solid character here. The romance should have been cut out entirely.

It’s not even to say that “Scott” is a bad guy but I would still put him as more antagonistic than anything. While it takes him a while to learn the human customs so he isn’t intending to be a bad person, you can’t forget that he was completely threatening Jenny. This guy also seemed serious about it and while you know that he is changing, it’s not like you can just quickly see that and get together with him at the drop of a hat. It just doesn’t work like that by any stretch.

The film also suffers in large part due to “Scott” and how long it takes him to get used to Earth. It’s one of those tropes I’ve never been a big fan of where it takes him forever to understand what’s going on. So you see him make a lot of goofy faces, not know how to respond, etc. These scenes take forever and I just really prefer to have a character who is on the ball the whole time. Someone who knows what is going on and is ready to act. With his magic powers surely he could have used one of them to immediately understand human customs or something right? He comes far by the end but at first all of his scenes are absolutely brutal. You’ll be cringing a whole lot and that hurts the pacing.

Meanwhile the government makes for a decent villain but there isn’t a lot to them. They hire a freelancer to help out but that was the government’s mistake as he clearly had disdain for them from the start and instead of helping out he basically makes sure to get in their way the whole time. Seriously they would have been better off without him. In general while the government does get close at times, they rarely feel like much of a threat.

That’s why to add tension we see a deer die which was pretty regrettable. It’s a way for “Scott” to see how cruel the world is and how people hunt other animals. Fortunately he does use his abilities to revive it but it’s a scene that we didn’t really need. Still I wouldn’t say the film was ever aimless or anything. I wasn’t big on that scene of course but the film did have a plan the whole time and went ahead with it. You could easily transform this into a really fun film if you switch up the genre a bit. Have it be a thriller where “Scott” needs to evade the government until his backup arrives. Then we get a classic alien invasion film or something like that. You have to admit that would definitely be a lot of fun!

Of course if you really want to make this plot work, just don’t have Starman turn into her husband. Have him be an ordinary joe and gradually she falls for him. I think you’d still need to bypass all of the threats and such though for this to even be a conversation. Additionally it’s best for her to not even have a dead husband so that it’s not a big rebound like that. That would be an immediate upgrade to the plot and it’s not even that hard to pull off.

Overall, Starman isn’t a particularly good film. I would say that it starts off on the wrong foot with the romance right out of the gate. It’s just hard to get past that because it’s such a bad romance plot that only serves to actively harm the film. It’s hard to survive when one of your main genres is holding you back after all. There’s just no escape from that. Then mix in how Starman’s initial scenes really drag on and that doesn’t help either. To an extent it’s probably trying to be funny but give me the witty fast talking kind of humor over the slow on the uptake version any time. I’d say to avoid this film. The title sounds cool for sure but the actual film isn’t quite up to par.

Overall 3/10

Prophecy Review

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When you have a film about mutated animals running around often times it isn’t going to end well for the movie. This one was no exception as you’ll be shaking your head the whole time with the animal violence. The idea of the characters wandering into an area with a lot of radiation and creatures running around could be something more like Godzilla but that wasn’t the case here.

The movie starts off with Robert being asked to go look into a fight between some Native Americans and a lumber company. Robert asks why he would possibly be asked to do this and he’s basically just told to stop asking questions. Well, if he’s going to do this job then he’ll do it right and since he works for the EPA he looks into the radiation. Unfortunately this area is ignoring all environmental standards and toxic sludge is being tossed around. This sludge not only causes birth defects but seems to be triggering some kind of changes within the lifeforms around here. What can Robert do about this?

For the drama angle we have his wife Maggie who is pregnant with their future child and of course this is bad news for her. Any kind of birth complication would be particularly worrisome. Then there’s also the fact that Robert really doesn’t want kids. I forget if Maggie just forgot to use protection that time or if she just really wanted the kids, or if the film even addressed that. Either way she isn’t quite sure how to mention this to him so that causes a lot of tension.

Now if you are with someone who expressly says that they don’t want kids before you get married then you already know the score and shouldn’t try to mess with that. If it’s an accident then of course there’s nothing you can do about it so the context is important for this angle. Either way I wouldn’t say it adds a lot to the film since we’re here for the action, not for this romance plot which is definitely not the highlight anyway. Neither character ends up looking all that good by the end of that plot.

Maggie’s a bit too timid in bringing the topic up before it’s far too late. Once she was hearing about the sludge she should have let him know. Meanwhile Robert was so absorbed in what was going on that he didn’t pay her much attention at all. He at least tries to diffuse tensions within the camp but rarely does all that good a job of it. This guy’s a researcher, not a fighter so don’t expect him to get a ton of fight scenes.

Isely represents the company in this movie so naturally he is fairly corrupt and can’t really be reasoned with. When John and the tribe try to stop him from going further he nearly murders one of them. Of course he had to go through for his job and could have definitely knocked them around a bit but of course murdering them is never the answer. John is the leader of the tribe or at least the main acting member and he tries hard to protect the tribe’s interests but the plans aren’t always very well thought out. Standing in front of the jeep with the rest of the characters would just make it easy to be run over. Ultimately corporate would do that in order to save a few bucks.

Of course at the end of the day the movie is fairly standard in a lot of ways so it would have been fine without the animal angle. What really sinks it is what happens at that point. You have animals getting poisoned and dying out, being eaten, and then of course the final bear monster which looks incredibly deformed. It seems to be in pain just by existing. While the film’s about the Katahdin monster, it’s safe to say that this was still just an average bear. Even if it was film budget limitations that insisted on this, it doesn’t change that it wasn’t the big hyped hybrid.

Having a bear as the final boss is regrettable because of course that means the characters have to be attacking it even when it’s just trying to save its cub and take down the pesky humans. This is a problem all films involving antagonist animals have to deal with and it doesn’t leave the movie a lot of hope for making a comeback. Animal violence basically becomes unavoidable at that point.

It’s not like the film has any aspect that really sticks out to try and combat this either. It’s really a very standard film all things considered. There’s also one scene that will have you puzzled where John stays in the water for a very long time as the bear approaches. You fully expect it to pop out of the water and grab the guy but surprisingly in the 11th hour he manages to get up and run away. A bit of a pointless scene then right? Why was he even staying in the water? You can’t tell me he was so exhausted that he couldn’t move because adrenaline should take care of that real quick.

Overall, Prophecy is a title that probably won’t make you think about evil animals right away. Of course that is a bit misleading since it’s all the pollution’s fault. Not like the animals wanted to turn giant or deformed. That said, the movie ended up being pretty bad due in large parts to the very realistic effects for the deformed animals and the plot in general. It could be hard to look at the bear or the other animals directly in general. Throw in the romance plot that really didn’t add anything at all and this film was sliding downhill the whole time. I highly recommend avoiding this one and in general you will want to avoid films with an animal at the end like this. Trust me they aren’t going to stand out.

Overall 1/10

Junko Enoshima vs William Afton

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Suggested by Wat It’s time for a battle of psychopaths. Junko can talk anyone into suicide while William murders everyone in his way for fun. So can Junko actually get through to someone whose mind has long since broken? I’d say no, William’s definitely going to be determined to take Junko out the whole time and physically she’s not much of a fighter. She may be able to avoid him for a little while but he doesn’t get tired and will eventually catch her. Then it’s game over. William Afton wins.

Abhorash vs Venat

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Suggested by iKnowledge Abhorash is a powerful fighter with all kinds of dark arts at his disposal but they will not be enough to deal with Venat. Her holy spells will be too fast to block and they will deal a whole lot of damage due to his dark nature. If he had greater speed than he might have been able to dodge but as it stands he will be taking the full brunt of her attacks and that will be too much for him. He won’t be able to stay in the fight long enough to take her down. Venat wins.

Pokemon Go Update

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Feels like it’s pretty recent since my last Pokemon Go update but this summer has been solid for accomplishing! Got my next Platinum medal for beating 2000 Team Rocket members! Now I’m up to 39 Platinum Medals, still 27 to go so it’ll still take forever to get them all to Platinum but each one always feels like a good accomplishment. Not sure which one will be next, maybe Mega Evolving 1500-2500 Pokemon.

Platinum 39
Gold 12
Silver 11
Bronze 3
No Medal 1

Edgin Darvis vs Nemo

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This is a tribute to the Dungeons and Dragons film. Edgin Darvis is a solid main character. He may not be the strongest guy but he knows his limitations and how to use cunning to get the best of his opponents. You can never count the guy out and I think he would have fun taking Nemo down. Nemo just wouldn’t have many skills in the tank needed to take someone like this down. Edgin Darvis wins.

Kyrii vs Luke Benson

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This is a tribute to the Blame! movie. Ultimately Kyrii may be a man of few words but the villains definitely never forget this guy. His energy gun can take down tons of opponents all at once with minimal effort. Luke has a normal gun but not only will the bullets not do much of anything to Kyrii, but Luke isn’t fast enough to dodge any of the counter attacks. As a result he will definitely go down here. Kyrii wins.

Noah Diaz vs Howard Aguello

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This is a tribute to the latest Transformers movie. Noah Diaz ultimately stepped up and did his best to fight off the enemies. He may not have been the best character but I’ll give him points for effort. With his suit he should be able to easily dispatch Howard in any kind of fight. The guy just wouldn’t have the skills needed to really keep up with Noah for very long. Noah Diaz wins.