天下制覇

Maaaan, what the hell, DC?

It’s time for another one of those oh so very loved Western OVAs! But hey, it’s a Wednesday.

Impressions:

This did not start… well. The first thing after the generic intro montage was a Daily Planet floozy talking about some guy’s dick, followed by Jimmy Olsen walking into the room in drag, then Luthor explaining how there’s a 9 minute lag between his control of some bioweapon on a spaceship cutting to said bioweapon reacting immediately and fighting Superman. This was then followed by Superman generating bioenergy to tow the ship away (giving him supercancer in the process). And this is the first five minutes. We then move to Superman hitting on Lois with his team of numbered robot Superbutlers, encouraging her to shower in the same room as him, and feeding his pet CRAWLING TERROR stars, and then wears a cloak to dinner. At this point, Lois convinces herself that Superman’s plan is to make her the mother of Superchildren, and has to stop him, so goes to a door that has a paper sign saying "Keep Out!! Superman At Work" and shoots him, so he gives her a serum that gives her super powers so they can go out on the town and flirt with Samson and Atlas, and he solves the Ultra-Sphinx’s unsolvable riddle thanks to a car advertisement he read moments ago. In the center of the Earth. Given to him by a time traveller.

It really only gets worse from there, becoming increasingly disjointed and chaotic as it bounces around. Here’s some evil Krypton conquerors, wait, nope, they have space AIDS. That entire sequence takes place over about five minutes. The biggest sin comes from the awful acting and direction though. This is meant to be an emotional take on Superman’s final moments and his humanity as he dies, so why why does everybody look and sound like they couldn’t care less? Beyond that, the characters are bullheadedly moronic. Luthor can’t figure out that he’s not the UNLIMITED ENERGY that Parasite is after while Clark is ‘stealthily’ freezing (and murdering!) groups of convicts and causing earthquakes while Lois refuses to believe that Kent is Superman after the reveal right up until he finally actually dies.

In brief, this was pretty terrible. The DCAU stuff is relatively hit or miss in general, but this is definitely somewhere in the bottom of the barrel, and even moreso if you haven’t touched the source material it’s based on to begin with. Even Apocalypse at least had some good fight scenes to make up for its insipid plot, but it’s been nothing but pretty awful since Crisis on Two Earths and Red Hood. This is an attempt to show an emotional look at Superman with absolutely no emotion whatsoever and often veering towards ridiculously silly. Way to miss the entire point, guys.