BEM #03 — Pro Gamers

July 28th, 2019

 

I like how the cop lady character showed up just to collect the VA's paycheck for the episode.

Ones Within's episode today was godawful, so I'm content to throw in the towel on it. The whole sleeping pills thing was drawn out across the whole episode and just Jesus going "I care about everyone." Meanwhile, the 'game' of the week was actually a game of the fortnite. 15 minutes into the episode and they were still reviewing the rules, which could be summarized by "rescue kidnapped girls from a dungeon." It would take until the end of the episode for anybody to be kidnapped, so the damn thing won't even start until next week. 

Impressions:

This episode wasn't much better though, and it was easily the weakest of the three character introduction episodes, but I'm really hoping we can move on to something of a little more substance now that they're out of the way. The big issue is that it was a parade of people offering up vague platitudes. I'm going to make the world better. I'm going to help the illuminati rule the world. I'm going to take over making the world better and helping the illuminati rule the world. Each one in turn was met with a goofy ninja assassination, one even off-screen. Give me some meat. Not just "rarr, he wants good things, but we're bad." And especially don't just repeat it. Then it got weird for the last one because it was like "He's also bad, but we're badder-er."

It probably didn't help that the not-friend of the week was all over the place too. He's a super arrogant jackass gamer world champion because his father is the world's richest bodyguard, and also wants to be good for good's sake, and so is going around… looking for pro gamers in random arcades? Taking on contracts to chase away the locals so high school e-sports teams don't have to be around them? It really doesn't feel like they had a good idea what they were doing with him. Hell, I think his last words in the episode were "Why are you naked?" You'd think there'd be a tagline about his (not really) idealism being twisted but we're going out on "Why are you naked?"

   

Posted in Bem | 2 Comments »

2 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Desty says:
    July 29, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    Sometimes I think that this show is trying too hard to be “DARK” when it should have been more lighthearted and fun. So far the monsters they have fought have been somewhat goofy and silly. First we got the water monster, then it started to get crazy with the bowling guy and now in this episode we got a shadow Ninja that goes “nin!” every so often and he got a pet hampster?!. To really top it off we learned at the end of this episode that there is a Villains Bar somewhere where the bad guys hang out and the 3 guys defeated so far apparently was frequenting that place too? Oh and to be certain that the silly fights will continue one of the villains there was a catgirl that is sure to fight Bela in the future. Its like the story writer is trying to make a dark and gritty story but the character designer is trying to make colorful and wacky fight scenes.

    • Aroduc says:
      July 29, 2019 at 5:01 pm

      Its original form (and the second time it got an adaptation) was more of a goofy Jump-like thing where these monster designs would be more at home, but this is definitely trying to be grittier and more serious, but doesn’t seem willing to leave those designs behind. They could’ve just gone the furniture-horror route that shows like Garou seem to favor, which are objectively silly looking, but not like they fell out of a completely different show entirely.