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Messages - pokepal148

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1
It all sounds like a load of horseshit to me. What a shitty situation.

2
Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 860: My Nintendo Burner Phone
« on: February 09, 2024, 01:35:49 PM »
I regret nothing.

3
Nintendo Gaming / Re: NSO November 2023! (AKA Not Another Forum Event!)
« on: November 17, 2023, 07:52:29 PM »
I really wanna do Amazing Mirror with some peeps.

4
Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 846: The Release Calendar
« on: November 01, 2023, 12:44:33 AM »
If only there was an article so I could read about why James's audio is messed up.

5
NWR Forums Discord / Re: I REMAIN YOUR GOD IN ABSTENTIA
« on: October 06, 2023, 08:59:42 PM »
USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST

6
NWR Forums Discord / This forum is a James Jones' "free zone."
« on: October 06, 2023, 06:51:46 PM »
Finally. With his tyranny.

7
RFNostradomus

8
TalkBack / Re: NACON RIG 600 Pro Headset Review
« on: September 18, 2023, 01:06:08 PM »
Not having an option for 3.5mm audio is a big turn off for me. I'd like to be able to use this for my 3DS and other older devices that don't have Bluetooth or USB C as well.

9
General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2023! (Forums Aren't Dead Yet?) Edition
« on: August 11, 2023, 01:48:07 AM »
Oh hai.

I see I have successfully scammed Khush into taking this over. How fun.

Baldur's Gate 3 is likely to become my main gaming obsession but I have started picking away at Tunic on my Switch so I'll probably keep picking away at that.

10
General Gaming / Re: Minecraft
« on: July 18, 2023, 06:59:39 PM »
It's only if you step on a specific snow block called powdered snow which causes you to fall into it and take damage. I'm not the biggest fan of it myself but you can use the blocks to convert a Skeleton farm into a Stray farm and get a bunch of Arrows of Slowness

11
NWR Forums Discord / Re: I want money
« on: February 17, 2023, 11:39:09 PM »
Yeah. Who would do such a thing?

12
Quote
These games (Fire Red and Leaf Green) are faithful to the original Red and Blue to a degree we won't see again for pokemon remakes for a long time. It is to the point where the game actively prevents you from evolving certain pokemon like Chansey and Golbat even if you meet the criteria to do so until the postgame. To be clear, Blissey and Crobat exist in the game. The games just refuse to let you have them until it arbitrarily decides you can.

It's funny you mention that because the Let's Go games are very similar in that regard. Any new evolution simply doesn't exist (Rhyperior, Tangrowth, Umbreon, etc.) in those games, which feels very weird. I would've hoped FRLG would've been the last games to be overly faithful, though, at the time, I don't think I minded too much. BDSP's dedication to faithfulness to the original was criminal.
It sucked that BDSP weren't willing to do more, but IMO BDSP benefited from being a remake of a significantly better set of games.

But FRLG has the better Nidoking sprite/model and that's what really matters in the end. Just look at what they did to my boy.


13
What made completing the pokedex a few years back so much fun was how it was a fun excuse to play through a bunch of older games. So I decided to do it again. I want to do a playthrough of the pokemon series, generally playing through one game to represent each region while also trying to get multiple games for each system from the GBA onwards. This also means I don't have to play the pokemon games that don't have running shoes which is nice. Those gameboy games have kind of not aged the greatest. I'll also be doing those weird Gamecube games because why not. There are a few regions that have more than one game representing them, namely Kanto and Unova, and a handful of games that I have never actually played to completion.

The games I'll be playing are as follows:

Pokemon Firered (GBA)
Pokemon Heartgold (DS)
Pokemon Emerald (GBA)
Pokemon Colosseum* (GCN)
Pokemon Platinum (DS)
Pokemon White (DS)
Pokemon Y (3DS)
Pokemon Ultra Sun (3DS)
Pokemon White 2* (DS)
Pokemon Sword (Switch)
Pokemon Legends Arceus (Switch)
Pokemon Scarlet (Switch)
Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness* (GCN)
Pokemon Let's Go Eevee* (Switch)

Games marked with an asterisk are games I haven't actually played to completion before.
 
I'll also be ranking the games when I finish and sharing what teams I used to finish them. I've found I have a hard time ranking the pokemon games relative to eachother so maybe this will help.

---

Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are an interesting beast. These 2003 remakes of the original Red and Blue offer the first standalone revisit of the Kanto region for a new generation of players nearly a decade after the originals came out. There is also the Let's Go games which are a 2018 reimagining of sorts of yellow but I wanted to start with something more traditional for this game.

These games are faithful to the original Red and Blue to a degree we won't see again for pokemon remakes for a long time. It is to the point where the game actively prevents you from evolving certain pokemon like Chansey and Golbat even if you meet the criteria to do so until the postgame. To be clear, Blissey and Crobat exist in the game. The games just refuse to let you have them until it arbitrarily decides you can.

Espeon and Umbreon are a special kind of hell to get in this game because you kind of just can't. You actually have to trade Eevee to Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald if you want Espeon and Umbreon. This is because FireRed and LeafGreen cartridges don't have any kind of internal clock system, probably because that would have made the cartridge more expensive to produce, and Eevee evolves into Espeon and Umbreon by getting friendship. If you do it during the day you get an Espeon while at night you get an Umbreon. Eevee isn't even available in Ruby and Sapphire and it wasn't added in Emerald either so you can only get eevee in FireRed and LeafGreen but you can only evolve it into Espeon and Umbreon by trading it to the games you can't get Eevee in. However you can't even trade between FRLG and Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald unless the FireRed or LeafGreen player has finished the postgame for that game. But also, just to rub salt into the wound, in order to access the postgame, you have to have caught at least 60 pokemon in the Kanto pokedex.

Getting back to the core game. They added alot of trainers that weren't in the original games so if you're like me and you like to fight every trainer the routes can become a bit of a slog but this does help alleviate some of the concerns with the game's level curve. However those concerns are still there and while the new VS Seeker item can help

I just don't find the new Sevii Islands that interesting. They feel like they lack identity and they blatantly only exist to give players access to some Gen 2 pokemon that weren't already available in Ruby and Sapphire. I honestly didn't even feel like fully exploring them. They look so similar to the already samey version of Kanto in this game and I'm honestly just sick of looking at this game with how samey the environments look.

The game just feels bland. A big part of it is that Pokemon has gotten better at creating interesting and varied locations for you to explore since Red and Blue but especially coming off of Ruby and Sapphire which offers a lot of variety in its locations it feels like more could have been done to bring this version of Kanto to life.

Anyways, since nobody asked what my team was, here it is:


Charizard is generally regarded as the worst of the 3 fully evolved starters. It certainly has the worst time at the beginning of the game. However my Charizard, which I nicknamed Blaze, made itself useful with a high special attack and speed stat and access to Flamethrower. This combination gave Charizard enough power to put a dent in almost anything in the game. This combined with the utility that comes with learning Fly, is legitimately all Charizard needed to justify a spot on my team.

Sadly Charizard's only non-fire special move is Dragon Claw. It comes in at victory road and gives Charizard an edge against Lance's Dragonair and Dragonite. It's worth the wait though. Between that and Flamethrower Charizard is capable of hitting anything in the game for at least neutral damage, which allows me to slap some HMs on instead of additional coverage which resulted in an ending moveset of Flamethrower, Dragon Claw, Cut, and Fly.


Spooner the Alakazam is a Psychic type in Kanto. Psychic was infamously overpowered in the original Red and Blue. Later games took measures to bring it down with things like the introduction of Dark and Steel types and changes to the ways types were balanced against eachother.

However alot of what made psychic so powerful for an ingame playthrough in the original Pokemon games was just the kinds of pokemon you face. Poison is by far one of the most common types of pokemon in Kanto and Alakazam can make mincemeat out of them. Meanwhile the only steel types are Magnemite and Magneton, Dark types don't exist until the postgame. Alakazam's main issue is its limited moveset but when you're a psychic type that hardly matters.

As a nice bonus, Abra comes with Teleport which is a nice fast travel option for the earlygame before you get Fly. I gave it Psychic, Shockwave, Flash, and Recover. It did well against Koga and most of Team Rocket's fodder and was generally just helpful to have throughout the game. All things considered, Alakazam is by far the best pokemon in the game for an ingame playthrough. It isn't even a contest. Alakazam was the MVP for this playthrough.


Spike the Nidoking suffered from not having moves that take advantage of it's poison and ground types. For those who don't know, using a move of the same type as the Pokemon using it gives that move a Same Type Attack Bonus or STAB. The Sludge Bomb TM which gives him his best poison move is postgame only and Earthquake isn't obtained until the last gym.

But what makes up for it is how early you can get Nidoking. Just grab one of the like 7 moon stones you can pick up in Mt. Moon, slap it on a Nidorino, and you have a fully evolved powerhouse before the secoond gym. They even have a tutor for Mega Punch outside of the cave so you can give it a decently powerful move to get you by until you get other options down the line.

It ended up with a moveset of Earthquake, Sludgebomb, Rock Slide, and Megahorn when I finished the game and did the postgame which is a powerful moveset, but I would have really liked Sludge Bomb to be a bit earlier in the game. There are only like 40 different kinds of poison types in Kanto. Let's maybe give them a move.


Kicks the Hitmonlee just hits hard. Alot of people argue that fighting types in this game aren't very good because they don't have good matchups against alot of major fights in FRLG. Its only real standout fight is against more than half of Lorelei's team and a small handful of other mons throughout the game that you probably have other options to deal with. I don't disagree with that assesment but Hitmonlee's high attack stat and decent speed more than compensates for it's shortcomings. I'm really happy I used it.

Hitmonlee's main issue is its lack of coverage moves. It only gets 3 notable TM and tutor moves in the form of Rock Slide, Earthquake, and Rock Tomb. Eagle eyed viewers may note that I already used the first 2 moves on that list on Nidoking which just leaves Rock Tomb. I did give it Bulk Up which is a decent move for it to build up its stats a bit with. This resulted in a final moveset of Bulk Up, Brick Break, Strength, and Rock Tomb.


Snorlax comes into the Kanto games ready to blast through the rest of the game with its high attack stat and Chunky was no exception. While it is slow, its special defense gives you an answer to Sabrina's psychic attacks and spending way too much time in the Game Corner gave it Shadow Ball, which allows it to hit psychic and ghost types for Super Effective damage. I ended up with a moveset of Return, Brick Break, Shadow Ball, and Rock Smash.


Shelly the Lapras came in pretty late. However it's monsterous stats along with the fact that it learns a wide variety of moves makes it the best water type available in the game. Water itself is an incredibly useful type but I also just rarely use the water starter because of how many other great water types are available. A moveset of Surf, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt (another Game Corner TM) and Psychic gives Lapras incredible coverage and versatility. It's just a matter of getting it caught up in terms of levels.

---

Overall, If I was asked to put this game on a tier list I'd put it in D. It is definitely one of the weakest games in the series imo, only really beating out the games it is meant to be a remake of and maybe X and Y.

Also, I am already sick of the game corner. I have 3 more games of that stupid place before it is excised from the series forever.

14
This is another filler episode but it is one I feel like I can talk about more quickly.  Especially since I don’t have to make my own screenshots anymore because I found a way to get them from the Wiki instead. For anyone who hasn’t tried to embed images directly from a wiki to the forums, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.



We start in Phobos’s throne room where Phobos and Cedric are chatting again. Cedric apparently sent a recon team through the veil to find out where Caleb is hiding on Earth. Phobos, not knowing the difference between past and present tense, tells Cedric to remind them to be careful.

Buddy, Cedric said “sent”. That means they’re already on Earth. Also, as we’ll later learn, the recon team is just a pair of lurdens. They’ll be lucky if the government doesn’t assume they’re aliens, capture them, and send them to Area 51 or something.  I don’t think I mentioned what lurdens are. These are Lurdens.


Talk about Incognito,

Phobos orders Cedric to eat because that’s apparently his fetish or something and we cut to the next scene. Will is getting yelled at by her mother about her grades. She is forbidden from going to a movie on the weekend. Cut to the next day when she’s with her friends and they are all getting hyped up for said movie. The movie stars Vance Micheal Justin who is a celebrity the girls all like. Will says she’s totally coming despite her mother’s wishes. The group mentions they’ll have to wait in a line for 6 hours.

We cut to Caleb who apparently got separated from Blunk while looking for a portal. He is unknowingly being followed by the recon squad that was mentioned earlier. He runs into Cornelia who is fawning over a poster of Vance. We get an amusing scene with them together where Caleb has no idea how to deal with the girl he likes being in love with a poster of a guy dressed like an elf. Cornelia says he’s part of “a tribe of incredibly good looking pixies.” who fight evil or something. She leaves and we find out what Blunk got up to.


Man, they’ll let anyone be an uber driver.

Caleb decides to try and take the taxi back to where Blunk got it only to find that he doesn’t know how to drive it. Despite this he is able to inadvertently use it to escape the recon squad. They return to Meridian and Phobos commands Cedric to send The Tracker through the portal. We get a scene where Hay Lin is trying to convince her parents to let her go to the premiere and we cut to Caleb just dumping the taxi in a convenient alleyway. A portal opens in front of them and the Tracker and his dog thing, the Sniffer emerge from the portal.



sometimes this show gets some pretty cool shots

Caleb and Blunk manage to elude the Tracker and tries to hide out at Irma’s place, where Irma got stuck babysitting her little brother and gleefully takes the opportunity to leave Caleb and Blunk in charge instead.

Hay Lin convinces her parents to let her go to the premiere and the girls set out to wait in line. The Heart of Plot Convenience Kandrakar lights up to notify them of the tracker’s presence and Will gives the cheesy line “It’s evil calling.” We cut to the tracker and sniffer picking up the scent of Blunk. We know this because the tracker apparently talks in this episode, which is something I will never speak of again.

Let’s talk about the Tracker for a second. He’s got a sick ass design as you can see above, he has a little dog called The Sniffer who helps him out, he has this green glowy ball and chain, some bats he can unleash from his cloak and most importantly he doesn’t fucking talk in 99% of the episodes he’s in. IMO it is a core part of what makes him a memorable part of Phobos’s little rogues gallery as opposed to someone like The Captain of the Guard from last episode who will never be seen again iirc or Raythor, who I’ve made a point to mention as much as possible as a bit of a meme despite the fact that his only accomplishment is getting dropped in a hole. And also because he comes back next season.


In the arms of an angel...

We’ve basically reached the action point of the episode and it is a neat setup. Basically one of the girls has to stay behind to hold their spot in line while the rest go to deal with the tracker. Sadly they need to bring Will along to transform so they can’t just leave the dead weight behind of they leave cornelia behind instead. However they later have to have someone swap with Cornelia so they can use her powers and it goes on like this for the whole sequence. It’s kind of fun. It almost makes you ignore the part where Irma’s voice comes out of Will’s mouth again at one point.

It also helps that this episode actually has a decent animation budget.

Yan Lin shows up at Irma’s place to warn Caleb, having been informed of the situation by Hay Lin. It’s a good thing too as the girls are ultimately unable to stop the tracker so Caleb is forced to take darastic measures and use a skateboard to get past the tracker and head back  downhill to the theater, which is where Blunk claims the portal is. You know things  We’re going to ignore the fact that they previously saw the Tracker come out of a different portal because I really like where they put this portal.


You know, I’ve seen dead pixels on IMAX screens before but this is ridiculous.

With Caleb able to lure the tracker down to the theater we get a big showdown between Caleb the Tracker in the theater itself, which everyone assumes is just some pre-show entertainment, although we got a cool cameo from Uriah and his gang. Caleb is able to get The Tracker through the portal and get back out before the girls seal it. They then un-transform to take their seats in the theater, only for everyone but Hay Lin to sleep through the movie, no doubt tuckered out from all the action scenes this episode had.

It’s especially amusing since Irma and Will’s mothers have found out that their children have gone against their wishes and attended the premiere. Fortunately for Irma, her relationship with her mother isn’t that much of a recurring plotline in this show. Will is not so lucky.

Wrap up / TLDR

This is another fun episode, even if it doesn’t really add much to the world of the show outside of introducing Irma’s comically bratty little brother and Hay Lin’s parents. It is nice to see the Tracker again though even with #speechgate. He gets much more time to shine than he did with the Labyrinth and despite a certain… mishap he makes good use of that time to establish himself more firmly as a memorable part of the show. It feels weird to say it but this is actually his last appearance for the season which IMO is a waste but we’ll get plenty more of him in season 2 when I get around to it in 2053.

I could harp on Caleb suddenly knowing how to use a skateboard but it actually kind of makes sense. That skiing episode showed that he is skilled at snowboarding and way back in episode 3 when he was talking to Aldarn about what he saw on Earth one of the first things he mentioned is that he saw a group of teens skateboarding. It’s a shame that the writers clearly don’t know that there’s a difference between snowboarding and skateboarding because I feel like there’s a fun episode they could have done with Caleb learning how to skateboard for himself.

Overall, this is the kind of filler that the season needs more of. Just some good old fashioned fun. We have one more fillery episode before things pick up again as I recall but after that the main plot for season 1 will finally start picking up.

15
I feel like mentioning something that doesn't really fit in the episode proper.

The show has dropped some hints already that Yan Lin has dealt with Phobos before but it has been really coy about giving any kind of details. Yan Lin clearly knows a lot about Phobos for someone who is from Earth while Phobos's dialogue during the first two episodes implied that Will's team is not the first set of guardians he's had rise against them.

This however raises the interesting question of where the other four guardians from Yan Lin's generation are. It's a mystery that the show subtly brings up by consistently hinting at Yan Lin's history with Phobos or hell, just by keeping her around despite the fact that her comic counterpart was written out of the main cast at literally the first opportunity once she gave them the portal map they got in the show a feel maps. The fact that Yan Lin continues to be a part of the show should theoretically give the girls a connection to her generation of guardians that their comic counterparts did not have. Which thus raises the question of why Yan Lin won’t contact them.

This is actually something that will eventually be addressed during the second season. One of the advantages that the TV show has over the comic is that the comic is multiple arcs ahead of the TV show. According to an archived TV.com forum thread I found here which features people that were involved with the show, when they started writing the second season they had access to everything up to the 27th issue of the comic which was midway through the third arc. I can infer that they at least had access to everything up to the 19th issue of the comic during the writing of the first season due to what I’ll call a very specific reference to something in that issue that was in one of the earlier episodes. I’ll explain what that reference is in about 30 years when we get to the episode where the significance of that reference is revealed.

In a nutshell: The writers know what's coming and they are absolutely setting up some stuff that won’t get paid off until Season 2 right under your nose. The fact that they are doing it as subtly as they are is absolutely incredible.

16
It's a good day to be a rebel on Meridian. Several of the supply convoys that Phobos's forces have been running got raided by rebel forces and they've made off with all sorts of food and supplies. It's really interesting to see the rebels in action. The show does a really good job depicting them.


It’s also dress like a pirate day for the rebellion.

The rebels return to their base in the Infinite City. I don't believe I talked about the Infinite City when it first appeared a few episodes back. It's this cool underground temple thing under Meridian that stretches out such a large distance that nobody actually knows how large it is, hence the name. Its entrances are also hidden and between that, the sheer size of the place and the fact that it has a bunch of hidden passages it's the perfect place for the rebels to hide out in. One of those passages was where the girls met the Ancient One. I didn't see the need to mention it then because in that episode it was just how the girls got to the ancient one and it only appeared for long enough that Caleb could give some exposition on it.

Either way it is where we find Caleb and the rest of the rebels sharing a bunch of food with his rebel friends. Caleb gives a motivational speech about how they will need many more victories like this one if they want to topple Phobos. Aldarn, who was Caleb's rebel friend from the first episode, asks if Caleb can return to Earth to collect more of that "chocolate" stuff for the little ones, and Caleb pledges to do so tomorrow as they continue their happy celebration.

Someone who isn't happy about all of this however is Phobos. With Cedric, his main source of competent help, spending a good portion of his time on Earth, the rebels have been free to pillage and plunder his convoys as much as they want. In addition, He and Cedric, despite having just dumped poor Raythor into the Abyss of Shadows a few episodes back, still suspect there may be a spy within the castle who is feeding the rebels information. While more than likely the spy is Vathek from a few episodes back, I'm still holding out hope that the spy turns out to be Donald Gleeson and we get to hear him randomly shout out "I'M THE SPY!" again with absolutely no build up or foreshadowing whatsoever.


I don't know why I even bothered embedding that. Nobody with a remotely modern browser can see it.

Because Phobos is seemingly incapable of coming up with his own ideas around here, Cedric proposes his own idea. Since the spy probably won't end up revealing himself as easily as General Hux did in the bad Star Wars movie, they should attempt to confirm the presence of a spy by spreading a false rumor that something of some kind of significance has been found. When a Rebel comes looking for it, they will have both a captured rebel and confirmation of the spy's existence. Phobos agrees to this plan and claims that he knows of just the item to spread a rumor abou- hold on a second?

Phobos is actually contributing to this week's evil plan? What madness is this? Could this be the beginning of Phobos beginning to come to his own as a villain instead of relying on the plans of poor Cedric, who is seemingly singlehandedly carrying the weight of Phobos's whole evil empire on his big muscular snake shoulders?


Cedric is in focus here because he is the real power behind Phobos’s throne.

We finally cut to Earth where the girls have reached the top of an apartment building where a portal formed. We get some character banter that mentions Taranee's fear of heights and Cornelia being annoyed they couldn't just fly to the top of the apartment and have to climb the metal fire exit thing on the side because of her decision to wear heels today. Caleb and Blunk come through the portal as they arrive. Caleb, whose mother didn't teach him that he should always look both ways before spouting exposition, lets slip that he's paying Blunk to find him portals right in front of the girls. Will is not happy about this and closes the portal despite Caleb's protests, trapping him on Earth.

I don't really have time to get into the Earth b-plot for this episode because, in something that is unusual for this show (at least in the first season) there is actually alot of important stuff going on or being set up in this episode. Long story short, Hay Lin signed the girls up to put on a play for the school's drama week or whatever. The theme for the play is supposed to be mythology so the girls have to choose a myth to make a play based on. Like I said, there's alot of stuff going on here. I already expect this whole thing to become even more of a wall of text that nobody is going to read than usual so I kind of wanna keep things moving.

We cut back to Meridian where Cedric has summoned the Captain of the Guard to deliver some good news: The Seal of Phobos has been found. We don't know what the Seal of Phobos is but based on the reactions of the captain and the men with him it seems to be super important. Cedric claims the Seal was found in a place called Torus Filney and gives very specific instructions that within 3 days a detachment of soldiers are to be sent to retrieve it. He also states specifically that this information is not to be allowed to become public knowledge.

So naturally everyone who is anyone is going to find out about this. We have Trill from a few episodes back gossiping about it with the other castle workers and, in a neat little bit of worldbuilding, we even get a cameo from Frost, a character who won't get properly introduced for another two episodes. One of the guards is sitting at a table with Vathek and feels particularly expositionary today. He claims that the Seal can open anything, including portals through the Veil. Vathek immediately leaves the castle to bring this information to the rebellion.


You would think the guy who clearly goes to the same tailor as Caleb does, doesn't bother to follow the castle's dress code, AND was a prime suspect the last time you all thought there was a spy would be your number one suspect this time

Back on Earth, the girls turn to Yan Lin, the show's resident Chinese stereotype, to see if she knows of any good myths. I'll be honest, I was expecting to come in here and take the opportunity to spit a bit of fire about Yan Lin and especially how her voice sounds like a super stereotypical impression of a Chinese woman but a quick google search reveals that her voice actress is actually Chinese American so that kind of puts a damper on that.

Either way, she lives up to her stereotype and pulls out this show's adapted version of the real world Chinese myth of the four dragons. TLDR: There were once four dragons who decided to use their power over the elements to save a bunch of people from a drought. Someone named the Jade Emperor got pissed about this and locked them in four mountains.

This version adds a Nymph named Xin Jing who joins her power with the power of the four dragons to create the jewel talisman that would eventually become the Heart of Kandrakar. In the comics this is only part of the origin of the girls' power but in the wild west anything goes world of Season 1 this seems to be the whole story for now, largely because of Kandrakar's reduced role in Season 1.


Like Will, The nymph Xin Jing is also pretty useless compared to her dragon powered friends.

As the girls set up the play, Blunk and Caleb meet in an alleyway. Blunk apparently learned offscreen that the Seal of Phobos was found. Caleb resolves to find the seal first and sets out to Meridian, but not before giving Blunk more exposition.

As was mentioned two episodes back, Phobos is searching for his younger sister. As a flashback starts playing, Caleb reveals that the person who took her from the castle in order to protect her was a woman who also stole the Seal of Phobos and used it to breach the veil and escape to Earth.


I'm sure we will never find out anything more about this character who is presumably still on Earth.

Strangely the woman is shown dropping the seal which ends up in a sewer grate. I'm sure that isn't something that will come up later in the season. After finishing the lore dump, Caleb departs leaving Blunk behind.

After a scene where the girls are rehearsing, we cut to Caleb climbing up a hill with a hooded figure. The figure of course is Cedric, who instead leads Caleb into a pit of quicksand before setting out to find the spy who is now confirmed to exist.


Cedric seen here in his Organization XIII cosplay.

Fortunately Caleb was smart enough to leave a note for Yan Lin explaining where she was. Given that Yan Lin has two functioning brain cells, she immediately deduces that this is a trap and informs the guardians. I actually really like her reasoning for assuming it is a trap. She knows that Phobos would not wait before retrieving the seal if there was any kind of indication that it was actually found.

However the girls are due onstage for the play so Yan Lin teaches Will how to create mystical doppelgangers of themselves called Astral Drops to fill in for them. The Astral Drops were used heavily in the early parts of the comics so the writers could handwave the girls being absent for long periods of time. It got to the point where the writers eventually wrote them out of the series which I suspect is in part because of how much they were overused. The TV show on the other hand goes out of its way to basically nerf them by making Astral Drops dumb as bricks. They also do not retain the memories of their creators and so are extremely limited in what they can do.

So basically the play is going to be a complete trainwreck and the girls should be thankful that the side plots on Earth have little to no continuity this season.

They set out to find Caleb and after reaching Meridian and flying over a run down looking village, they arrive at the sandpit. It attempts to grab Will's leg. The other guardians, aka the ones who are actually useful in a fight, manage to pull her out and a pair of children explain to deliver some exposition in this otherwise story-light episode.

Apparently the sandpit has been swallowing people from the village up. When Cornelia asks the obvious question of why they don't just rope it off or something the boy replies that it moves. The girls are able to get inside of the pit where they reach a cavern underneath it. There they find Caleb, along with one of the sand pit's less fortunate victims, which bear a striking resemblance to the redeads from Ocarina of Time.


Depicted: The one person who ever reads this thread patiently awaiting the next update.

The whole sand pit thing may seem kind of like a kind of eh thing to pad out the episode's runtime when you read about it but the whole thing is actually really well executed, especially considering the limited amount of time this part of the episode has left. It was legitimately one of the most memorable parts of the first season for me as a kid.

There's alot of stuff that isn't really explained about it which is refreshing given how otherwise exposition heavy this episode is. The sand pit has clearly been around for a while in this world but at the same time, while Phobos and Cedric make use of it in this episode, it doesn't seem to be something that they have any real control over. It is possible they created it given that Cedric knew of its existence and where to find it but it is just as likely that this is just something like the Abyss of Shadows that exists in Meridian and that they are aware of and willing to take advantage of.

What you do see of the sand pit is kind of dark, especially for a kids show. It appears to swallow its victims, trap them in the walls in the caverns beneath it, and let the victims slowly starve to death. It is possible that the sandpit is alive somehow and this is how it consumes its prey.

Taranee realizes that Disney's S&P office doesn't care if she fucks up a possibly sentient sandpit so after the girls free the people imprisoned inside of the cavern who are still alive, she lets loose with blasts of fire, absolutely trashing the interior of the cavern. Once the girls reach the surface she turns the surface level quicksand pit into glass.

With Caleb saved, the girls return to Earth to wrap up the earth subplot. Principal Knickerbocker gives a comical detention sentence that will never be talked about in the show again and all is well on Earth. All is not so well on Meridian however where Cedric has returned and summoned the captain of the guard to ask for the identities of everyone who left the castle in the past day. This scene takes place in the same alleyway where the woman who took the princess used the seal.

This is so the camera can pan down through the sewer grate to reveal that the Seal of Phobos is still down there, waiting to become relevant in a future episode.


After all these years, Phobos never thought to shine a light around the Seal’s last known location.

Wrap up / TLDR

I like that we got some degree of tension between the girls and Caleb. Caleb's desire to use the portals to help the rebels on Meridian has come into conflict with girls trying to keep the portals shut. It's an interesting dynamic and I wish the show would spend this half of the season before things pick up exploring that more.

Meanwhile Blunk's ability to sniff out portals makes him useful to Caleb so Caleb is willing to keep him around.

I really like this episode. I know I harped on it alot for having alot of exposition but the show is really good at making its exposition and worldbuilding interesting. It's just bad at evenly distributing it so we get alot of episodes like last week's year's where there's little to no world building and lore because it all got dumped here instead.

17
The only precedent for patches on previous nintendo eshops continuing to host patches is the Skyward Sword save channel on the Wii shop channel which I believe can still be downloaded for the first time today so there is some signs of encouragement there.

18
NWR Forums Discord / New official NWR Funhaus rule.
« on: December 18, 2022, 06:49:08 PM »
You may no longer link to the following sites:

The NWR Discord, Nintemple, Negative World, Pietriots, Reddit, Miiverse.

You may also no longer link to the following sections of the NWR forums or their child boards:

Talkback, Podcast Discussion, NWR Feedback, Announcements, General Gaming, Nintendo Gaming, and General Chat.

We thank you for your understanding.

19
General Gaming / Re: 2022 NWR Forum Awards - Best PlayStation Game
« on: December 09, 2022, 10:14:29 PM »
Stray is exclusive? *laughs in PC*

20
NWR Forums Discord / Delete this please.
« on: December 08, 2022, 11:30:50 PM »
It was a stupid joke anyways.

21
Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 798: That China Warrior Je Ne Sais Quoi
« on: November 30, 2022, 12:27:01 AM »
My opinion on controller layouts is that the Playstation layout is superior. The symmetry just makes sense to me.

At the same time Sony just sucks at making controllers. 8bitdo also adopted that standard for their pro controllers and that controller actually feels good in your hands. It also has a really good D-pad which Sony seems to refuse to put on their controllers.

But I'm an idiot who uses the 8bitdo Pro2 for both PC and the Switch. It's a really nice controller and it is easy to have it paired with multiple devices. At the same time that kind of just makes the transition between systems harder sometimes because I am literally using the same controller.

22
Nintendo Gaming / Re: Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet
« on: November 29, 2022, 07:38:28 PM »


This was the path I took through the game. You can tell I scrambled to get some gyms done between the 4th and 5th titans so I could nab the Iron Treads that appears after you beat the 4th titan in Violet.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Scarlet And Violet (Switch) Review
« on: November 29, 2022, 02:32:50 PM »
The Co-op is super fun. Just chilling in a Union Circle with 4 people is so much fun.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Scarlet And Violet (Switch) Review
« on: November 29, 2022, 12:31:33 PM »
I don't think the game explains it well at all but it does make sense and it does work as an incentive to do the gyms and keep your levels in check if you happen to know about it.

25
General Chat / Re: Um, Apple thread
« on: November 17, 2022, 03:17:58 PM »
My current laptop does something similar. Most laptops still have relatively large bezels so it is pretty easy to cram a bigger screen in there without making the laptop itself larger.

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