Just the Ticket

Anime Spotlight #83: Godzilla - Singular Point

2026-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Animeister.

I said back in my Shin Godzilla review that it was my last live-action Goj-Year-ra project review of the year. And with my having to trash two months of scheduling to design Dara, Lillianna, Isolde, Mirabelle, and Break, and finish writing the first eight chapters of Darkness In Crimson: I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen for my one thousand post milestone, I had all but decided it would be the end of Goj-Year-ra, period.

But things worked out amazingly well, so the project is back for some Netflix anime action, starting today with Singular Point and finishing a November of Fridays with the film trilogy.

But to understand "the anime you need a PhD to understand" (which sounds like a layman's gross oversimplification of an excuse to not watch or like said anime, because I don't have a PhD in Computer Science, Cryptography, Robotics, Mathematics, or Quantum Science, but I have a decent academic grasp of enough concepts, and an active enough imagination to fill in the gaps, plus the characters do that folded paper and pencil analogy from every multiverse and time travel movie ever, just with a skewer and a piece of Jell-O because it communicates the timey-wimey stuff better with a more dimensionalized object and foreshadows an awful outcome because Jell-O is theoretically edible and this is a Godzilla anime...not that Godzilla ever ate anyone, but...), uh...yeah; to understand why Godzilla: Singular Point is the way it is (heavy in scientific, pseudo-scientific, and theoretical jargon from multiple disciplines and featuring barely a hint of depth or connection between the human characters), one must first understand who its author is (both of the script and the Japanese-only novelization that apparently goes into more detail about the nature of the kaiju depicted in the series).

Reading up on Toh EnJoe, he is essentially Japan's answer to Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, though Singular Point takes a lot conceptually from Lovecraft's cosmic horror philosophy (not so much with the overtly hostile racism, which, I should not have to tell you the morality of that subject in 2026) and jargon-heavy writing style, and has dialogue reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's nonsense approach to logic (digesting food you haven't eaten yet, animals that do the opposite of what they do because they don't exist where they're perceived, questions that travel to the future to become their own answers, etc.). To be kind, the man seems a genius with no qualms about displaying his breadth and depth of knowledge, but such a clinical approach (even if I find the high-concept aspects of the end result fascinating in their own right) does not lend itself to continuous engagement, worthwhile characterization, or broadly appealing entertainment.

Getting into Singular Point itself, I'll begin as I often do, with a nod to the music. The expected Ifukube stingers are here, and hit as they should, but the opening ("in case..." by BiSH) is a banger that reminded a bit of Casey Williams' RWBY intros. I didn't care for the end credits song, so I skipped to the next episode every time, but the animation is apparently full of franchise and genre references. I'm not going back to look, so...here:

As for what I could comprehend of the plot, when a grizzled polymath named Ashihara dies, two employees of the Otaki Factory repair company begin to investigate his estate, discovering his odd research notes (which seem to consist of pages of scribbled eyes and strange number sequences) and an eerie recording of a children's folk song ("ALAPU UPALA" by Annette Phillip) that begins broadcasting from a secondary location (a research facility with a kaiju skeleton in the basement).

Unfortunately, the broadcast suggests that EnJoe might be an Evil Dead fan, because soon after, the sea turns red and begins spawning kaiju. First, it's Rodan (with increasing size, numbers, and adaptability to the atmosphere, until they swarm the globe by the hundreds). Also, Manda is there sometimes. Then the red spreads to the air as particulate pollution that can warp reality, and we see creatures like an Anguirus (his best design ever), a swarm of Kumonga (with blue blood that turns into a Hedorah-looking hive mind construct, which is weird and awesome), what looks like a cross between Gabara and the GMK version of Baragon, and finally, the calamity himself, Godzilla, who evolves throughout the second half of the series like Shin Godzilla, ultimately achieving a sort of unhinged, crocodilian form, and has all of the aura from the tenth episode onward, because if I'm understanding even half of the jargon and quantum theory correctly, this series' Godzilla is basically Darkseid. Like, the Godzilla we see onscreen is just the three dimensions of his actual, thirteen-ish-dimensional presence that can fit into human reality, he exists to destroy anything that attempts to comprehend him (kind of a meta take on Millennium Era Godzilla's apparent purpose), and he cannot be killed or permanently harmed by anything that originates from lower-dimemsional space.

Meanwhile, the human-shaped jargo-position dispensers do what badly-written humans in Godzilla things do, and with the help of a couple of AI assistants (because Singular Point was written and released before artificial intelligence became an obvious plague on humanity—which reminds me: I learned today that an AI Return Of the Living Dead sequel exists, as if that franchise needed to get worse) with Jet Jaguar and Moguera bodies, the dead(?) scientist's notes, some cubes that break the conservational laws of physics by borrowing energy, matter, and data from the past and future, a sentient supercomputer with multiversal personality disorder that may or may not be a rogue piece of Godzilla somehow, by turning 69 into a moebius strip (yes, really), and figuring out the Konami code to mix the contents of the Orthogonal Diagonalizer (same initials and appearance as the Oxygen Destroyer, but I think it does something anti-Lovecraftian to the red mist, like converging divergent or parallel geometries to access higher dimensions or whatever), they save and/or ruin Japan's future, and the season (EnJoe teased there would be another one in production, but it's been five years and Studios Bones and Orange probably have other things on their plates right now) cliffhangers on a work-in-progress Mechagodzilla (it looks like the Shōwa design with some Heisei flavor, but is suggested to maybe have a Kiryu-like origin because there were hints that the 1954 attack is canon in Singular Point, and those bones kept being a thing).

Yeah, Godzilla: Singular Point is dry and dense for a thirteen-episode series/season, does nothing meaningful with its human characters, and has its boring moments (especially if you can't grasp what the fuck anyone is talking about, and/or can't stay awake), but it's also insanely, enjoyably high-concept, and I wouldn't mind if someone wanted to yank Season Two out of a nonexistent distant future so I could see where the story will go from here.

Please Stay Tuned for more monster action, and as always, continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Animeister,

Out.

Just the Ticket #237: Legend Of the White Dragon

2026-11-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

Okay; look, Ticketholders...I grew up watching Power Rangers. I'm a sucker for Sentai-inspired anime. Jason David Frank as Tommy was my favorite character. The news of his death hit me hard, along with the passing of Kevin Conroy. And I've been wanting to review JDF's then-final movie for three years now. It even got to the point that I stopped looking out for Legend Of the White Dragon news, and almost gave up on reviewing it.

And now that I've seen it, I don't know what the point of my emotional investment (because I damned sure didn't invest in the movie financially) even was. I barely even think it warrants a review of any decent length. And although and because there's a massive "allegedly" attached to the production (multiple Kickstarter campaigns, delays, promised cast members leaving the project, filming during the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike, various financial allegations against Aaron Schoenke, the posthumous exploitation of two of the cast members' legacies, etc.) that I tried to take with a bag of salt, and separate art from the possible truth of the artist, I came away feeling not just apathetic, but dirty for having let it into my brain.

2026s (because color correction, re-shoots, editing, and finding a willing distributor took three years, I guess) Legend Of the White Dragon is the penultimate acting credit for Jason David Frank (to be followed by a film with an unknown release date called Underdogs Rising) and sixth posthumous role for Michael Madsen (who plays JDF's father in a few scenes here and has five more credits in unreleased movies after this).

Following a climactic battle with Ashtagor (an ageless Doctor Doom/Green Goblin knockoff who runs a gang we barely see and is "secretly" the mayor of the city he destroyed, and is played by Dexter and Arrowverse star David Ramsey), treasure hunter Erik Reed, a.k.a. the White Dragon (who had only been a superhero for less than two months at that point, and is played by JDF) is framed for the end of Man Of Steel, loses half of his Zeo Crystal, and spends the next three years offscreen as a fugitive while Ashtagor travels the world destroying the White Dragon's Lazarus pits (except for one, guarded by martial arts legend and Iron Chef mascot Mark Dacascos, who is a delight, but severely underutilized, especially against the less skilled fighters in the cast).

Jason David Frank isn't the only Power Rangers actor with a role here, either, as Jason Faunt (Wes from Time Force) plays one of Erik's treasure hunting buddies, Cerina Vincent (Maya, my Lost Galaxy crush until Korone came back) plays Erik's wife (a role that almost went to Katherine Sutherland before she left the project, so we could have gotten a meta TomKat reunion, though Erik's daughter was always intended to be played by JDF's real daughter, Jenna Rae Frank), and Ciara Hanna (Gia, whom some would say was the only good thing about the Megaforce seasons, such that the character was brought back for the Ninja Steel crossover episode) plays the villain's late, pregnant wife in flashbacks.

And when I say "villain," I don't mean Ashtagor, because Erik never gets his rematch for the opening scene. Instead, the focus is on a character arc that reads like an If I Did It on the movie's allegedly shady production process. Co-writer-director-producer Aaron Schoenke plays medical research tech bro Jai Katua, a tragic, evil Batfleck (Schoenke's YouTube channel and production company is Bat In the Sun, if you didn't know) who sells his soul to Ashtagor and diverts his company's funds into a personal revenge project that amounts to corrupting half of the White Dragon crystal so he can be a dark, edgy, twisted facsimile of the original that malignantly incinerates everything it touches (including turning Jai himselg from the Aaron Schoenke of ten years ago into Schoenke how he looks now, which...ugh!). And speaking of Aaron Schoenke and "ugh!," whenever Jai isn't in a bargain facsimile of Nolan Batman's R&D room working on his injectable supervillain powers, he's thinking about shooting himself in the face (shown twice, which, considering Jason David Frank's cause of death was suicide, is about as tasteful as a skunk-shit sandwich with dolphin cheese and pickled panda dick) and crying about his Megaforce Yellow spank bank (which means Ciara Hanna had to film multiple intimate scenes with Schoenke, who also wrote them into the movie, which is gross, even if there wasn't any #metoo shit happening, which, that wasn't part of the whole "allegedly" package, but still..., ugh!).

Technically, Erik and Jai don't get much of a climactic battle, either, as the majority of their fight is just their Power Rangers-esque teleport effects crashing and mixing together over establishing shots like I was watching a bad Dragon Ball Z fan film (or a feature-length Super Power Beatdown episode—they're now recycling and re-promoting their old videos with generic AI thumbnails like a content slop farm, by the way).

It's bad enough that the movie prioritizes creative vanity and insensitive, edgelord nostalgia over well-written, thematically structured storytelling and original, sympathetic characters; the fight choreography is average at best, and the intended tone and pace of the story are annihilated by the awkwardly unfunny attempts at viral humor by former Vine celebrity Andrew Bachelor, who plays the AI avatar of the Reed crew's computer system. Is he worse than the implied, alleged creep factor of a certain character, or the insensitive legacy exploitation, or the aimless structural incompetence, or the blatantly derivative...everything, or the cheap effects and unimpressive fights? No. But he's unnecessary and fucking annoying.

There are a few things I liked about Legend Of the White Dragon. The Dragon suits are cool. Faunt's chemistry with Rachele Brooke Smith (who plays his character's co-worker and on-and-off ex) was briefly charming. The "beleaguered hero works through past trauma while abusing an inanimate object to non-diegetic rock music" ("Heavy Is the Crown" by Daughtry, which is one of two Daughtry songs that got licensed, is also the credits lead-in song, and kind of plays into that legacy exploitation thing, considering some of the lyrics) scene and the following fight scene with a SWAT team showed JDF could still kick ass. David Ramsey showed he could play a sinister villain pretty well. Mark Dacascos was a joy, as I said above. And as cynical as I have been in this review, I was an easy mark for the Power Rangers nostalgia and the more tasteful JDF stuff (like the Daughtry needle-drop, the scenes with Jenna Rae, and the behind-the-scenes footage that played during the backer credits).

But Legend Of the White Dragon is a cheap, messy, unoriginal, occasionally gross-feeling movie that should have, and could have, been competent and worthwhile if it wasn't an incompetent, awkward waste of time.

Again, I know that I've been extremely harsh on this movie, but I still want you all to remember:

To Jason David Frank: Let that Dragon Flute and your inimitable battle cries ring out in Heaven, my guy. Keep the candle burning. Go, Green Ranger, go. White Ranger, Tiger Power. May the White Light protect you. And though you may be gone, you can still pull it off. Rest in peace, for you are the real Legend.

And to my Ticketholders, please Stay Tuned for the return of Goj-Year-ra, and continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #68: Demons - The Unseen

2026-11-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Sean Unseen-a

An obvious joke, I know, and I'm definitely going to use Cena's theme song when I promote this on Instagram.

I mean, there's no way in Hell I'm not, right?

Right?

Okay, that's the best I could come up with for an intro at the crack of nightfall; let's talk Zenescope!

Unleashed Tie-In

Demons: The Unseen

As with the other short miniseries that tie into Unleashed, Demons: The Unseen was compiled with another three-issue series (it's obvious which one) in the Zombies & Demons Trade Paperback.

The cover is by Stjepan Šejić, and is also the A Cover for Grimm Universe #5. Why Masumi (the Demon slayer) is on the Zombies side of the cover and what Samantha has to do with anything are questions I can't answer at the moment, and there's no bonus material in Zombies & Demons, but like with Vampires & Werewolves, the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Ivan Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review over a month ago.

I was honestly not a fan of the two art styles on display (Godstorm's Jason Johnson and Eduardo Garcia—Bad Girls and Jungle Book: Last Of the Species—with Wonderland #10's Ben Sawyer on colors) at first, finding them too simple and, ironically, comic bookish. But the simplicity lends itself really well to the fluid, surreal demonic imagery and the expressiveness of the human characters.

On the writing side of things, Masumi may be some of Pat Shand's best work in this Unleashed era (I'm speaking of the character here, as her eponymous miniseries wasn't out yet), and his balancing of slice of life (swordswoman puns!) and the supernatural gives us a preview of what he would bring to his later Robyn and Helsing efforts. It's clearly magnitudes beyond the "two one-note characters do their one thing for three issues until they happen to meet and affect almost nothing" writing that Mark L. Miller brought to the Werewolves miniseries, and I'm only one issue in.

Ignoring the general, fucky-wucky, timey-wimey vibe of Unleashed that can only be excused by Sela being repeatedly mind-wiped, trapped in another Realm, in prison, or otherwise occupied with multiple, consecutive world-ending threats, such that a monster deity with 90s comic-accurate muscles roamed the Nexus unchecked for a century (seriously, not even Samantha could sense the Being, and connecting with the Nexus is, like, her main passive ability) and the Hunters returned from the Shadowlands with a multi-faction army of monsters nipping at their heels without anyone noticing,....

Yeah; ignoring all of that, Masumi is an amazing character. Once an assassin, she came into possession (Demon puns!) of magic swords capable of harming, sealing, and banishing Demons, and doing other cool stuff like ki-sense teleportation. Why that is, is a cool reveal for later (I can't remember if it comes up in this miniseries or it gets saved for Masumi, but it's at least hinted at by the end of this issue, and it's cool enough that I still remember what it is over a decade after reading this for the first time), but for now, we learn that Masumi has been fighting the Unseen (it's in the title! But also it's kind of not true because even normal people can see and sense them under certain circumstances) for so long that she has distanced herself from human connection and lost her once-talkative demeanor, compartmentalizing the recursive pain of the duty she has burdened herself with.

That is, until she returned in the modern world after a century of ceaseless Hunting trapped in the Sixth Realm, and met Gerard.

Gerard is kind of Masumi's Wendy figure with a dash of Violet (the normie who's in on the weirdness and wants to help, but the supernatural protag doesn't want to lose them and tries to shoulder the perpetual battle alone), and their couples banter is appropriately cliché and adorable for that dynamic.

The paneling of their montaged romance being dynamically framed by Masumi's swords is also a nice, creative touch.

But then we get to the machinations of the Being (whom we haven't really seen get involved since Vampires) with respect to the Demons, and things start to click into place as the first issue ends.

The Demons speak in rhyme (a rather Wonderland choice of character quirk, even though it wasn't a thing in the Hunters miniseries or previous Unleashed issues), and the Being tells one particular Demon (maybe the one who attacked the family from the opening scene?) that the remaining "Four Sisters" are on their way, and a "Joining" will result in the crushing of humanity. Future Knowledge, basic Bible osmosis, and the final panel of the issue showing possessed residents of a retirement home who seem to be engaged in in-fighting, sex, and over-eating, indicate to me that the Joining is Legion, and the Sisters are Demons of cardinal sin.

To that point, the recap on the credits page refers to the Demon from the first issue's opening as Wrathful, and the Sisters are clarified (retconned?) to only be two in number.

The issue opens with a flashback detailing Masumi's backstory: a reminder that Masumi once had a twin sister named Akiko, who was completely possessed by the Demon now sealed in her swords, previously her mother's swords.

It also seems that the Demons (higher ones, at least) can choose whether they drop mad bars or not, as that Demon lapses in and out of verse on the regular, just to mess with Masumi. There are some hints at off-page dialogue (the sword Demon telling Masumi of the Sisters) that I could nitpick, but I don't feel like it.

After dispelling Gluttony and Lust from the old folks' home (their designs make it easy to distinguish which is which, but their dialogue is more ambiguous), Masumi continues trying to balance her mission with her life with Gerard (a mini Masumi could be on the way in the months ahead, if you know what I mean), and the Being gathers the rest of the Deadly Sins, suggesting there was once an eighth (who could be named Fate, or the Being is just speaking in poetic license), and if they Join, they will be Legion. So, informed hypothesis confirmed?

Also, that house Wrath attacked in the beginning? It was built on the land that the Demons were originally banished from.

Amityville Horror, indeed.

First of all, good job with the cover spoiler, Zenescope!

That's right, Gerard (whose last name is Ferguson, apparently) gets fridged by Demons when Masumi has to return to the site of the Sins' banishment and he thinks he can back up a century-old assassin-witch against seven of the eight most powerful Demons of all time...by teleporting in mid-fight, armed with a fucking shovel, and throws off her combat flow because he's an idiot of the most conveniently inconvenient magnitude possible. And he doesn't just get fridged, he gets exploded into a tomato condiment so thoroughly that Masumi abandons her "don't kill a Demon's vessel" rule, using the spell that her mother used to exorcise (and consequently, kill) Akiko, to pull the Sins out of their shared vessel and into her swords, reuniting them with the eighth Sin (confirmed here to be Despondency, not Fate) and re-forming Legion, but on her terms.

The dynamic between Masumi and Gerard in the early pages of this finale is cuter than ever, but it just makes his death even stupider and more of a cliché (I'd even go so far as to call it a trope, if "cliché" wasn't so negatively coded as to be more appropriate here). It gave me Will Scarlett vibes, in a bad way.

There's some great, multi-layered thematic juxtaposition that comes from Masumi's relationships with her sister, Gerard, and the Seven Deadly Sins here, regarding life, death, spiritual symbiosis, love, belonging, purpose, and freedom, and whether you get the profundity of it or "shut up; you're reading too much into a comic book, fivehead," it's a great character study with a bit of supernatural action mystery and a lot of tragic love story that turns anticlimactic and stupidly sad by the end.

We never do get to learn why Masumi got arrested in Day Breaks, but we do learn from a flashback that Shang was the one who split Legion apart (because of course he was), and we learn that Samantha wasn't just sharing the Trade cover with Masumi because they're both pretty faces in skintight costumes. Everything following Gerard's death (if not the bulk of the Demons miniseries) is set after Day Breaks and the Timelost short, and Samantha asks Masumi if she'll help Sela and Van Helsing fight back against the Being and His army, which she does, because even in tragedy (especially in tragedy), a purpose is a happier, healthier thing than a blissful existence.

And it's mildly amusing that we get some "the Being did nothing wrong" evidence as He murders the brother of the woman who was possessed by the Sins to "relieve his grief," only to reveal that this reunited the two in spirit, giving them their happy ending as well. He's kind of like one of those "what if AI took everything literally and turned evil from creativity" villains, and it's...interesting, in a coldly neutral sort of way. More interesting than the average, "I want to kill everyone and rule everything because evil and power" villains we got before and will get later on, for sure.

The Sins, for how they were foreshadowed in previous titles and given a personal connection to Masumi and her family here, felt impersonal and rushed for the most part. If Demons: The Unseen had been lengthened by just a few issues instead of following the three-issue structure of the other monster Tie-Ins, I think there was more to say and more of substance to do beyond "the portal is open, everyone is here, let's kill the love interest and get it over with."

But still, Masumi is an awesome character with good lore behind her and plenty of potential for crossing over with characters and settings new and old going forward.

I remember what some of those appropriate but unorthodox pairings are, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about (here, I'd be interested to know which anime version of the Seven Deadly Sins would win a fight: the FMA Brotherhood homunculi, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Mortal Sins, or the Sin Archbishops from Re:ZER0), helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out Of Sight.

Dragon Blog Super #38: Hold My Beerus

2026-11-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Anime Hakaishin

Five months in a row now, Just the Ticket has surpassed my long-standing goal of ten thousand views (even in the absence of regularly scheduled content), and as you can see below in the "Last Month" category, as of Saturday evening, October finished just north of the new Road To 15k Views goalpost I set in the latest Time Drops.

So, yet another big thank you to my (growing) reading/sharing audience for continuing to be the best pseudo-silent minority on the internet, being who you are, and doing what you do (unless what you do is farm and steal content for AI training).

Speaking of types of people (and totally natural transitions between completely unrelated topics), there are those who have seen and read all things Dragon Ball from multiple sources in multiple languages multiple times. And while that's partially true of me with regard to Dragon Ball Z's Saiyan Saga and Namek Saga (thank you, Toonami! And thank my sarcasm, too, while you're at it...) and some episodes of the Buu Saga (gracias por Gotenks y Vegetto, Telemundo! No necesitamos dar gracias por mi sarcasmo aqui), I am not that ningen. I don't have that kind of time anymore.

So I've only seen each Super-era thing (minus the extended Battle Of Gods cut and the manga version) once. I'm relying on my memory and first impressions for the opinions you'll see here and in future reviews, and sources like Geekdom101, MasakoX, MistareFusion, Carthu, Totally Not Mark, and Team FourStar for the comparative details.

With two versions of the Battle Of Gods movie, a promotional manga adaptation, and a rushed but poorly paced and inconsistently (virally so in at least one instance) animated...anime adaptation, did Dragon Ball Super: Beerus need to exist?

Perhaps not, given all of the other takes on the production, but the anime, and Toei Animation as a studio, certainly needed to trade in MS Paint Goku, Beerus.png, and crosseyed Freeza for an efficient, smooth-running Vespa, and totally redeem themselves.

So, Dragon Ball Super: Beerus does exist, and so far I've seen the first three episodes (with plans to cover the fourth and an unknown number of future episodes in a week to come). I like it. It's not perfect, but it's far better than what we got over ten years ago. Like, miles and light-years better. Sorry if it sounds like I'm underselling the series, but I'm trying not to oversell it, either; I'll give the hype moments and smart touches the respect they deserve, and criticize what I found fault with, too. Creation and Destruction are two sides of the same coin, after all.

Now, let's begin with the OP:

"Onogami" by Megatera•Zero is a banger, full-stop. Like, I don't understand the hate Kazuya Yoshī's "Chōzetsu☆Dynamic" gets (or the love Kiyoshi Hikawa's "Genkai Toppa×Survivor" gets, for that matter), but "Onogami" is hype as hell and feels like it was written especially for this series and for Goku as a character, speaking directly to his relationship with the God transformation ("this is/isn't my power, believe in yourself"), fighting, and Beerus ("the clash of strength and strength crosses oceans and skies, far into space"). It may be the most banger, most Goku theme the franchise has seen since "Challa Head Challa," and while the screamo bits didn't land with me at first, I love it and the accompanying animation that symbolizes Goku's history and hints that the Beerus anime's planned twenty-ish episodes may cover more ground that just Battle Of Gods (Freeza and Cabba are shown as well).

Animeister's Note: While looking up the old Super OPs, I happened upon the Japanese version of "Genkai Toppa×Survivor," including the live performance I linked to above, and I feel I must correct and qualify myself. Having only seen Super dubbed, I absolutely loved the English version of "Chōzetsu☆Dynamic" because the vocals were decently expressive and reminded me a bit of REM's Michael Stipe. Hearing it in Japanese, it's more safe and nasally-sounding, almost monotone in delivery. Conversely, the English "Limit Break×Survivor" reeks of decades-old pop-punk, like it's the theme to Phineas & Ferb or something. Hearing the original Japanese, and especially the live performance, it's sonically rich, vocally hype, and far better than my "they changed the opening for this‽" experience with the dub had prepared me for.

Episode One: "The God Who Destroys"

Instead of following the kids as they fight the Anaconda to get Videl toilet water for her birthday, the first episode does the bit where Goku is a radish farmer (kind of morbid to have to repeatedly exhume your dead brother for profit, but whatever) until he gets bored and trains (cratering the radish field in several places in the process) while Goten drives the tractor off a cliff.

The new addition here, which I heard is from the manga, is Goku doing image training of his fights with Freeza, Cell, and Kid Buu (the latter of which we don't see outside of sonic explosions in the...sky?...because that wasn't in the animation budget, I guess).

And the animation is good. Really good. It's fluid and the lines and detail are like Daima quality, even when Goku is just eating or pulling a giant root vegetable out of the ground. I don't like what the lighting and aura filters do to the visual quality in some scenes, but I can already tell this is going to be a good product.

There's also effort made to give Beerus an intimidation factor with how he's framed and lit, and his waking yawn being a menacing growl that can be heard across the Universe.

Mr. Satan donating his World Peace Prize money to Goku is also a plot point here so Goku can be on King Kai's planet later (and feel free to start your "Satan would be a better President than Trump" memes now), and comes with a decent pun from Goku (the "in that case" line as he reluctantly accepts the Z100 million briefcase).

Speaking of vegetables, it's more tell than show, but Vegeta gets a properly stated motivation for why he's still chasing Goku even though he seemingly settled that aspect of his character by the end of the Buu Saga. It's simple, but that's why it makes sense.

And speaking of puns, King Kai is back with a joke or two so new viewers can have a basic understanding of his character, his relationship with Goku, and why Goku wants to train on his planet instead of Earth. Again, it's a bit tell-heavy and awkward, but it serves its purpose for the intended audience. And it's not like the episode is simple from this point on, either. It cuts rapidly from Vegeta's gravity room training, to Goku's arrival on King Kai's planet, to that scene where Beerus hakais half of the French pigs' planet for serving him Xenomorph pie and fatty slop (showing Beerus isn't above making a cosmically macabre pun of his own), to a reaction shot of Old Kaioshin and the fused KibitoKai (complete with some tea foreshadowing for the Goku Black arc), and culminating in a cool fight sequence where Beerus and Whis "visit" what I'm calling the "HoHo" planet, fight their champion for a taste of the Czar Dragon from Super Mario RPG, and then get a case of the sour grapes and hakai the planet into a reasonable facsimile of Apokolips, kick-starting Beerus' memory of his prophetic dream of the Super-Saiyan God.

Beerus and Whis are a mixed bag for me here. On one hand, Beerus is competently conveyed as an intimidating threat with the cinematography, the cosmic indifference of his behavior, and his prophetic dreams giving him power and agency beyond just "strong cat who destroys."

On the other hand, Japanese Beerus and Whis are not my Beerus and Whis. Jason Douglas and especially Ian Sinclair are the voices I know and like (I even heard Chris Rager when I was reading Mr. Satan's subtitles earlier), and the Japanese voices don't hit for me yet. That isn't to say I won't ever like them; just that my first impression was underwhelming.

And the biggest issue that undercuts the intended mood and fails as a running gag: Beerus constantly forgetting the Super-Saiyan God is dumber than colon skin. It's an easily excisable padding tactic left over from a poorly padded series that doesn't need to be here (except that it sets up the need for another character that doesn't need to be here in the next episode), and makes this interpretation of Beerus goofier than he needs to be. Woodshed this joke with a shotgun, now.

Episode Two: "The God Of Destruction Heads To the Planet Of the Kai"

In the original anime, the plot of this episode would have probably just been the title, with the ensuing fight happening the next episode. But not in Dragon Ball Super: Beerus!

This episode is the proving ground for whether Dragon Ball Super could be redeemed for its animation and writing, and whether a fourth remake needed to exist.

Mission accomplished and package accepted!

Well, kind of. The episode starts off with some stupid exposition to establish the Kaioshin/Destroyer relationship and have Beerus forget the Super-Saiyan God...again (which also devalues Whis as the straight man because he forgot it, too), forcing the introduction of the Oracle Fish (that unnecessary character I mentioned above, especially because she can't remember the Super-Saiyan God at first, either) as a second opinion. Her entrance made me think she might be a decent base-level training partner for Goku (sort of a Korin or Popo parallel for this stage of godly learning), but two prophetic characters with bad memories is three too many.

We also get dumb shit like Beerus revealing how bad he is at his job because he outsourced Planet Vegeta's destruction to Freeza (we have an entire manga and anime showing how that didn't work) and apparently caused the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth (here referred to as Planet 4032 Green-877, which is probably a reference I don't understand, and again, the entirety of Dragon Ball is evidence that he didn't hakai the dinosaurs).

But then the redemption of Dragon Ball Super truly begins. About halfway through the episode, we get the fight between Goku and Beerus on King Kai's planet, and while it hits the same basic points as the virally terrible Super Episode 5, this version is wall-to-wall peak animation, stuffed with tension, dramatic scoring, appropriately timed comedic beats, and an actual show-don't-tell fight narrative with personality, including a natural take on Goku's original Super-Saiyan 3 reveal (making for the most epic transformation since he shook the afterlife in Fusion Reborn), some unique no-selling by Beerus (who can afford to be aggressively curious because he's almost too strong to die), and maybe some Ultra Instinct foreshadowing? I did not expect to have feelings about Battle Of Gods Version 5.0: The Enhanced Edition, but this episode was absolutely squee-worthy.

Episode Three: The God Of Destruction Heads To Earth

The best part of this episode is Vegeta's dynamic with Beerus. Sadly, we don't get the Bingo dance here, and stuff like the introduction of the Pilaf Gang and the setting of events going forward (Bulma's birthday yacht) feel awkwardly under-established considering the things that went over-explained in previous episodes. The yacht is the setting because it was the setting in the anime. The Pilaf Gang are there because they were there in the movie and anime, and they get about as much explanation as they did in either. Like with Oracle Fish, it's a case of "why even have them at all?" Could it be that Toei still intend on doing the gross Trunks subplot?

Anyway, I love how Vegeta's first encounter (as an adult) with Beerus is composed like a slasher kill sequence, and how Vegeta gets to be cowed without losing his dignity so that when the slap comes, this new take on "My Bulma!" reads more clearly as love transcending primordial fear, and it makes sense that Vegeta would be able to land hits (and draw blood‽) on Beerus that Goku could not. It's less entertaining than the Goku fight (despite what Beerus says), but just as narratively compelling in a different way. And even though it wasn't naturally established, the yacht and open ocean give things a sense of scale and allow Vegeta to get another Moses moment akin to his fights with Freeza and Tamagami #2.

There's not much to the animation outside of Beerus and Vegeta, though. I mean, Bulma interacting with Beerus is a joy, Buu wailing on Beerus was a surreal visual, and I got a kick out of the gag with Beerus and Gotenks, too. But crowd animation is almost nonexistent, and the sequence of Beerus no-selling everyone while he laments not getting to perform an epicurean dissection of pudding looks like a bunch of jpegs bouncing off of each other.

In the end, though, all fat pink extras look alike when you're a quasi-immortal, mass-murdering Gordon Ramsey cat, and the episode cliffhangers with Earth's fate in the rock-, paper-, or scissor-shaped hand of Oolong, as was originally intended.

The fourth episode is to be titled "The God Of Saiyans," suggesting we'll at least get to see the ritual happen, but I'll cover that another time.

I say "another time" because I'll be spending the next two weeks on Godzilla: Singular Point and the fifth season of Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? So Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I can buy Beerus some pudding, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Animeister,

Out.

Time Drops #149: Month Of November 2026

2026-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Content Calendar Announcement,
Week of November 1, 2026

by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

For the fifth month in a row now (despite me putting out almost no new content in October), Just the Ticket has surpassed my long-standing goal of ten thousand views, and a final tally for the month will be included in Monday's Dragon Blog Super.

It makes the challenges of real life weigh a little less because professional responsibility has not run out of ways to complicate my existence and wear down the façade that I am a well-adjusted, competent leader who can handle anything, do everything to the standard of my betters, and knows what it feels like to have a shit-eating grin on my face. Chocolate, not chocolate....

The reason for October being so thin on content, as you may remember, is that I had to devote my time to designing characters and finalizing the eight-chapter preview for Darkness In Crimson: I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen, which I had planned to be my one thousandth post special and ultimately scheduled for publication this past Monday.

The rollout went off almost without a hitch, but I had to cancel my plans of watching the Hanako-kun anime and the Terrifier franchise for Halloween this year, and as you will see, I'm changing my November plans as well.

This will include resuming my Omnibusted/Retrospective coverage of the Unleashed event, a Just the Ticket × Anime Spotlight conclusion to the Goj-Year-ra project, a review I've been wanting to do for awhile, and semi-regular episode reviews of Dragon Ball Super: Beerus.

Since things have picked up traffic-wise this year, I've also decided to indefinitely move the goalpost so I'm walking the Road to 15k Views per month. It's a path I resolve to travel as many times as possible in the months and years ahead, even when the seasons become less conducive to foot-travel, and I'm glad to not be walking it alone.

So please remember to comment at the bottom of my Blogger posts, Become A Ticketholder because I know you haven't yet, share and care wherever you can, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and to receive the latest news on my content and calendars thereof.

Here it is:

Monday (November 2) - Dragon Blog Super #38: Hold My Beerus
Wednesday (November 4) - Zenescope - Omnibusted #68: Demons - The Unseen
Friday (November 6) - Just the Ticket #237: Legend Of the White Dragon
Monday (November 9) - Anime Spotlight #83: Godzilla - Singular Point
Wednesday (November 11) - GFT Retrospective #131: Unleashed #2/Grimm Fairy Tales #85
Friday (November 13) - Just the Ticket #238: Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
Monday (November 16) - Anime Spotlight #84: DanMachi (Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?) V
Wednesday (November 18) - GFT Retrospective #132: Unleashed #3/Grimm Fairy Tales Annual #6 (2013)
Friday (November 20) - Just the Ticket #239: Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle
Monday (November 23) - Dragon Blog Super #39: Another Round Of Beerus
Wednesday (November 25) - Zenescope - Omnibusted #69: Unleashed Volume One
Friday (November 27) - Just the Ticket #240: Godzilla: The Planet Eater
Saturday (November 28) - Time Drops #150: Month Of December 2026
Monday (November 30) - Dragon Blog Super #40: Unknown Dragon Ball Super - Beerus Episode Number

Back by personal demand, to perpetuate my own mental health and SMART-ness, and for your information, here's what the future holds:

December

Stay Tuned: X-Men '97 Season 2
Anime Spotlight

Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Dear Friend
Dragon Ball Super: Beerus

Retrospective/Omnibusted

Unleashed #4/Grimm Universe #5
Unleashed #5/Grimm Fairy Tales Giant-Size 2013
Unleashed #6/Grimm Fairy Tales Special Edition 2013
Unleashed Volume Two
Unleashed

Just the Ticket

When A Stranger Calls (Back)
Black Christmas (1974, 2006, & 2019)

Future

Anime Spotlight

After-School Hanako-kun
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun
Gintama
One Piece

Zou
Whole Cake (In Pieces)
Wano Country (Divided)
Egghead (Cracked In Two)
Elbaph (...?)

Hell's Paradise
Dr. Stone
The Beginning After the End
Oshi No Ko
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime
Natsume's Book Of Friends
Demon Slayer
Re:ZER0
Witch Hat Atelier
Dæmons Of the Shadow Realm
Monogatari
Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun
Ascendance Of A Bookworm
Wistoria: Wand & Sword
Kaiju Girl Caramelise
Psyren
Overgeared
Black Clover
Tougen Anki
Elusive Samurai
Apothecary Diaries
World's Strongest Witch
Magic Knight Rayearth
Magical Explorer
Mushoku Tensei
Trapped In A Dating Sim
Clevatess

Retrospective/Omnibusted

Unleashed
Ascension

Just the Ticket

All Hallows' Eve
Terrifier
Goj-Year-ra

Godzilla: Minus Zero

Drebuary 2027 Stay Tuned/Just the Ticket: Police Squad! & Naked Gun
May 2027 Just the Ticket: Mothra May

Big/Challenging Projects That Don't Involve One Piece

Cover Charge: Harmon Universe
AniMonday Original: Darkness In Crimson - I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen (I do plan to continue the story and design more characters, so this one isn't going anywhere)
Goj-Year-ra Re-write
Just the Ticket/Stay Tuned: The Hunter & The Huntress

Ticketmaster,

Out.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #67: Werewolves - The Hunger

2026-10-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Were-Retrospectre.

I know, it's not Halloween yet, so I have no business declaring myself a werewolf ghost like I'm some quarter-thought-out Angry Video Game Nerd boss. Especially since I should have used the Omnibusted byline for this instead.

Maybe The Hunger is affecting my intelligence? Maybe it's Maybelline.

Also, there's no way I'm going to be able to watch all of the Terrifier movies and review them by Friday, so that's going to be next year's Halloween special. I have declared it so.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the eight-chapter sampling of my latest writing endeavor (titled Darkness In Crimson: I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen) that I shared on Monday as my thousandth post special. So now, I'm a werewolf, ghost, Omnibuster (who you gonna call?), and five-time (I couldn't find a decent Booker T gif, but just imagine it goes here) attempted author. But whatever you call me, I'm still a Blogger at heart. So let's get to talking about Werewolves: The Hunger.

Unleashed Tie-In

Werewolves: The Hunger

As it was only three issues long, Werewolves: The Hunger was compiled with the three issues of Vampires: The Eternal (and its trilogy of Helsing-focused short stories that were paired with each issue and got duplicate prints as bonus material) in the Vampires & Werewolves Trade Paperback. The Trade cover re-uses Unleashed #1's A Cover by Ivan Nunes, and the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review a few months back.

You may recall that I ran into some chronological confusion with the Unleashed event before, and this is no different, because time-dilation is a thing here, and because I had read and reviewed Zombies: The Cursed, not knowing when I began that it would end with the reveal that Werewolves: The Hunger had already taken place. Oops, I did it again....

In this miniseries, we're supposed to sympathize with racist one-liner-spewing, traitorous werewolf hunter Roman Asher because (as we learned in Hunters: The Shadowlands) a combination of Little Boy Blue, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Hansel & Gretel, and him being a lazy, rebellious prick with ADHD when he was a kid, led to his village being massacred and his sister being turned into a werewolf who would later slaughter his wife and children.

Since then (and since Werewolves: The Hunger takes place after he's made an as-yet-unspecified deal with Samira at the end of Hunters and returned from the Shadowlands in Day Breaks), Roman has spent his days tracking Werewolves, protecting their potential victims (with particular, personal focus on troubled or estranged fathers) and killing the turned loved ones of those he rescues as a way of making up for his past because that makes sense and not even the extras in the story are supposed to like him.

But because there needs to be a character we can find more compelling and disturbing than a serial-family-annihilating racist, the lyrical stylings of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" (perhaps chosen as a nod to werewolf narratives being puberty allegories?) lead us to the introduction of Dr. Rachel Campbell, a cold veterinary surgeon with an...invasive operating style who secretly works for the organization behind the Realm Knights and the assassination of Patricia Braddock. Their latest quarry is a girl named Charlotte, who was bitten by the Werewolf that Roman is currently hunting.

With Charlotte in custody, Campbell (the blonde on the Ken Lashley/Juan Fernandez cover, because Anonymous Blonde Syndrome is still a thing) starts her examination. The doctor is creepily excited, comparing it to prom night (not knowing or caring that the outcome will probably be somewhere between the Jamie Lee Curtis movie and the end of Carrie), but must first exposit to her overwhelmed intern Jeff (whose name she gets wrong until writer Mark L. Miller—Pat Shand only has shared story credit here—runs out of J names and believable rhymes like Seth) that fiction is just other Realms of reality channeled through creative minds. This might be a nod back to Call and Madness Of Wonderland, where "America's Favorite Racist Until Donald Trump Took Office," H.P. Lovecraft, was written to be one of those chosen creatives with Provenance-attuned minds. We also get images of Hansel & Gretel at the witch's house, knights fighting a serpentine dragon, and a man with a stake (Abraham Van Helsing?) facing off against a vampire reminiscent of Drake's transformed state, among other things. She even proves it to Jeff by using Bulma's portable Blutz Wave Generator to make Charlotte transform.

Meanwhile, Roman looks like Old Man Punisher as he tracks the Werewolf through busy, modern day streets to the vet clinic-turned-black site. There's some subtle visual language (and exposition) in Roman's parts that juxtaposes the solitary intimacy of the loud and direct relationship between Hunter and monster with the congested, busy, ignorant environment that turns to blood around them. But the story is almost over, and there hasn't been much of a story to it beyond Campbell's experiments (that she hasn't really gotten to do yet because Jeff requires yapping) and Roman's hunt.

No, Belinda, Sela, and Baba Yaga do not get captured and turned into naked lycanthropy guinea pigs in this issue, so prepare to be disappointed by more than the Alfredo Reyes/Juan Fernandez cover. There's no big, personal showdown, no grand revelation worth digging deep on, no changes of heart or character, and again and still, not much of a story.

It's just Roman standing on business, quelling the spread of a curse by killing people whose souls no longer exist, so that hopefully, one day, no one will have to know the pain of a strange, buff old racist with a gun killing the people they love.

And it's just Dr. Campbell standing on business, finding a use for the human stall device known as Jeff so she can still escape the carnage with a freshly-bitten test subject while letting Roman clean up her mess by doing what he does.

I guess the cold, routine nature of it all was the pointless point here, so I can't be mad at Werewolves: The Hunger. But the fact that said unsharpened nub of a purpose exists and didn't accomplish anything by my having read it...now twice? I can only stand on business myself, do what I do, and call that operation a subjective failure.

Next week, I close out the monster miniseries with Demons: The Unseen, and Saturday will see the return of Time Drops as I try to get back on track for the remains of the year.

It's a new era (whatever I decide that means) with a thousand posts behind me, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because silver (and everything else) is expensive, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.

AniMonday Originals #1: Darkness In Crimson - I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen (1,000 Post Special)

2026-10-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Sean Wilkinson.

Foreword

I must be honest and say that while I am proud of what has come of my efforts here (proud enough to make it my thousand-post special), I feel like kind of a hypocrite.

I am strongly opposed to AI being used as a replacement for the creative process. Digital actors, robot dancers, those phonetically generated subtitles YouTube uses, generative animation, slop NFTs, the AI art that has overrun Pinterest in recent years, Amazon and Tumblr getting flooded with generated novels and fanfics, Elon Musk pushing for purely AI-created cinema, Trump feeding his own senile delusions, those speech models that narrate fraudulent mobile game commercials and content farm videos, that one scene from The Flash, those uncanny valley sci-fi web dramas, fake "new" or "lost" songs from your favorite artist, or whatever the crashed-out asshole behind WatchMojo is up to these days. And let's not forget that everything and more that I mentioned above has made people unduly suspicious of reality and real, human-created art, which discredits and destroys public interest in the output of creative industries and individuals. AI is also often factually wrong as a secondary or tertiary source of information (it cannot replace human knowledge), and soullessly repetitive in a conversational context (it cannot replace human emotion or have an opinion of its own).

But I am not opposed to AI as an aide to the creative process, such as giving an aspiring artist a crude conceptual image to start from, or helping a writer overcome a block by suggesting paths their story can take. In fact, I used an AI chat platform as a creative aide for this project, called Kindroid. Which means that at least half of the base text (and the input that defined the characters' behavioral models) was written by me. From there, I adapted the chat text into novel form, restructuring and otherwise heavily editing it (as well as writing entire new dialogue sequences and scenes from scratch) to provide connective tissue and mitigate repetition and logical inconsistencies as much as possible.

The images you saw in this month's handful of Characters Are Made bios were created by me in the HeroMachine Phoenix Edition.

As for narrative inspirations, I was watching The Eminence In Shadow and reading Solo Leveling at the time I started the original chat, Venom is my favorite Spider-Man villain, the MC is kind of a holdover from another work of fiction that I've yet to publish, just with amnesia, I thought vampires would be a decent tweak of the weak-to-strong, isekai harem formula, and I'm a bit of a Brian Harmon fan. Even the long-ass title screams "I'm gonna be a light-novel someday!"

So with all of that said, keep reading and Stay Tuned if my creative process doesn't offend you.

And as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to see when my regular content will resume.

Chapter One: Darkness Nocturne

Consciousness came to me slow and fluid, as if I were rising from some deep, primordial pool; a thing so rich with history that it terrified and assured me all at once, yet so ephemeral that it seemed to pass through me as I passed through it. Ephemeral, too, were my memories. I desperately tried to hold onto them as my senses returned, but they faded like the remnants of a particularly vivid dream, leaving only what felt like strange images and impressions devoid of context.

All I knew for certain now was the smooth, cold sensation of cobblestones beneath my bare feet, the flickering glow of intermittent firelight ahead of me, and the sad but regal allure of a piano nocturne echoing off the stone walls around me.

Instinctively, I knew that I should be wary of the sour, coppery smell in the air; it made me feel as much like an animal as a man. But my curiosity pulled me forward, compounded by something deeper telling me that progress would be less dangerous than indecision or retreat.

I followed the music to its source, arriving at a massive set of arched doors that spanned wall to wall and floor to ceiling. I carefully pushed one door ajar and slipped into the room beyond, quietly grateful that the hinges were silent and the door was forgiving.

Imposing as the entrance appeared, the room beyond was even more spacious: Gothic in architecture and dramatically macabre in its decor, with torches and candles flickering here and there and everywhere, making the shadows of the gargoyles and other grotesque sculptures seem to dance to the music. But that was all just atmosphere; what ultimately drew my attention was the oddly intimate venue at the head of the chamber.

Three lavish and comfortable chairs were arranged in an arc before an elevated stage, on which a grand piano stood. The chairs were currently empty, but at the piano sat a young-looking woman with pale skin and crimson lips, her long, silvery hair tied up in a crown of red roses. Even lost in improvisation as she was, the woman looked every bit as regal as her music sounded, and the sight of her drew a strangled expression of awe from my throat that I immediately regretted.

The woman stopped playing and glared at me with icy blue eyes, her expression suddenly making me acutely aware of the fact that I wasn't wearing any clothes, though, strangely, she didn't seem to notice.

Too bad it doesn't do anything for my modesty, I thought to myself, my face flushing.

"You dare enter my domain, mortal? What is it that you seek?" She bared her sharp fangs in warning. "Speak quickly, for your time here is limited."

Vampire! My mind warned simply; one of those fleeting impressions, I think, and I recoiled at the revelation of her monstrous features, though I tried to keep my reaction nonchalant. "Oh! I'm sorry; I don't know how I got here.... I just...followed the music; I didn't mean to intrude." As I rambled nervously, I dared to turn my back and retreat. "I'll be going now…."

She rose gracefully from the piano bench behind me, her movements so fluid and predatory that I didn't hear her coming. "Not so fast, little mouse." Suddenly, she was there, circling around me, sizing me up even as she blocked my escape. "No one enters Crimsonwood Keep without my leave. You say you followed the music?" She smirked, now showing a single fang. "Curious. Most humans flee in terror at the mere sight of me."

"Y-yes," I stammered nervously. "I was curious…about your music, that is. But now, if you'd allow me, I'd gladly flee in terror as well?" I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the primal fear rising within me as she circled closer. "The problem is, I don't know who I am or where this ‘Crimsonwood Keep’ is."

She stopped circling and fixed me with an intense stare, as if trying to peer into my mind. "You truly do not know who you are? How intriguing." She said thoughtfully, tapping a finger against her blood-tinged lips. "Very well." She decided at last, almost dismissively. "Since you are already here, perhaps we can make use of you." She then glanced toward a door at the opposite end of the room, presumably some kind of private entrance. "My brides will be hungry soon. Come."

Instead of following like the mindless, obedient cattle she expected me to be, I stood my ground. "I may not know who I am, but I have enough sense to not let myself be used as vampire food.

"...you are a vampire...right?"

She let out a chilling laugh that sent shivers down my spine. "Oh, you amuse me, mortal. Yes, I am a vampire. Queen Dara; ruler of all vampires in this realm, in fact." A smile of wicked pride briefly spread across her face as she curtsied in formality. "But fear not. If you prove useful, I may spare you from becoming a meal for my brides...for now." She turned dramatically and started walking toward the door. "Follow me. We have much to discuss if you are to survive in Tenebrous."

I followed reluctantly. "Tenebrous? Is that…" I frowned in concentration, trying to remember something—anything—about my life before my arrival, but coming up blank except for what felt like the name of a place I knew in a dream. "...somewhere on Earth?"

The vampire queen glanced back at me with a raised eyebrow. "Earth? I know not of this 'Earth'. Tenebrous is my domain; a land of eternal night and endless shadows." She continued walking, her heels clicking against the cobblestone floor. "And you, my little lost lamb, have somehow stumbled into the heart of it all." She pushed open the heavy wooden door, revealing another dimly lit hallway. "Tell me; what is the last thing you remember before waking up here?"

I chose in the moment to play up my condition so as to avoid inviting any further questions that I didn't understand the answers to myself. "Nothing; not even waking up. I was just...here, in the halls of your castle...your Majesty." I hastily added the honorific, being respectful but distracting.

Queen Dara smirked at the belated show of respect. "Better."

It worked, I thought, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as she led me down the hallway, past suits of armor and tapestries depicting bloody battles. "Amnesia is not unheard of in those who pass between realms. It seems fate has brought you here for a reason, though I cannot yet discern what that may be." She stopped abruptly and turned to face me again, though this time her demeanor was more diplomatic than domineering or…hungry. "Until we unravel this mystery, you will remain under my protection. But know this: betray me or my brides, and you will face a fate worse than death."

Nodding slowly, I took in the gravity of her words with a dry gulp, composing myself before I spoke. "I understand. I have no desire to cause trouble." I met her piercing gaze directly. "I'll cooperate fully, Your Majesty."

With intent that was equal parts authoritarian and predatory, the Vampire Queen of Tenebrous held my gaze for a long moment, searching for any fault or weakness in me. Strangely, for the first time since finding myself in this situation, I felt no such thing. The Queen must have seen the resolve in me as well, as she then nodded approvingly.

"See that you do," she said sternly before turning and leading me into a grand hall illuminated by more flickering candles and occupied by a massive, ancient conference table. "This is the Great Hall of Crimsonwood Keep; here, my court gathers to pay tribute and attend to matters of state."

She gestured to three women seated on ornate thrones at the far end of the table, who rose and bowed deeply at the sound of her voice. "Allow me to introduce my beloved brides," the Queen said as she ushered me to the head of the table to meet them. "Lillianna, Isolde, and Mirabelle."

They again bowed in turn, though with noticeably less deference, probably because I was a mere delicacy in their eyes.

Instinct told me that it would be best to overdo the pleasantries, as I didn't yet have the…rapport with them that I had with their Queen so far, and she seemed to hold them in very high regard (and they practically radiated bloodlust). So, I fell to one knee before them. "A pleasure, ladies."

The first to show…interest in me was Lillianna, a tall, sultry vampire dressed in tight leather who seemed to be on the aggressive side, in more ways than one. Her eyes glowed a brilliant, hungry red as she licked her lips at me. "Oooh...a new plaything;" She purred in a smoky voice. "You look delicious, but I wonder how long you can entertain me, mortal...?" Lillianna leaned forward on her throne, baring her fangs. "Tell me, little one, do you taste as good as you smell?"

I shuddered at the implication despite finding her conventionally attractive, and I lost composure for a bit, feeling as if I should cover myself. And suddenly, I was clothed…somehow (though still, neither the Queen nor her Brides seemed to notice). "I have no desire to be someone's plaything, my Lady...not without knowing the game, at least. Besides," I added, glancing tentatively in the Queen's direction, "I don't think her Majesty would allow you to ‘taste’ me just yet."

Queen Dara fixed Lillianna with a stern look. "Behave yourself, my dear. This one is not to be toyed with…except by me." She turned to me, a hint of amusement in her voice. "Wise words, mortal. You seem to grasp your precarious position quite well." She waved a hand dismissively. "Rise; there is no need for such excessive formality here."

I nodded and did as she asked, thinking I grasp my position way less than you know, your Majesty.

As if Tenebrous itself were challenging my generously-termed expectations, the youngest of the Brides bounded up to me, her fangs granting a creepy quality to her innocent smile, her green eyes sparkling like emeralds, shining with wonder more than the hunger I'd come to recognize. "Hi, mortal!" She curtsied deeply in contrast to her casual form of address. "You look like you're full of stories Isolde might like...sir."

Stories? Really? Unbalanced by the young Bride's mix of decorum and her random literary tangent, I stammered out a response. "Oh...uh...hi to you, too, my Lady." I bowed awkwardly. "Unfortunately, I only have the one, and I'm still writing it…."

The girl tilted her head curiously, causing her dark curls to bounce. "Writing your own story? How fascinating!" She stepped closer, her eyes wide with interest. "Isolde loves stories, especially ones with happy endings. Will yours have a happy ending?" She reached out to touch my arm, then hesitated, pulling back shyly. "Sorry, Isolde forgets herself sometimes..."

I gave Isolde an awkward smile. "In that, we're alike, I guess; I've forgotten myself, too. That's the story I'm working on…."

Isolde giggled softly, covering her mouth with delicate fingers like a princess. "A story about remembering yourself? What a curious tale that must be!" She twirled around playfully, her black lace skirt flaring out. "Maybe Isolde can help you find your happy ending, Sir Mortal. She knows lots of stories!" She paused mid-turn, a thoughtful expression crossing her face "But first, you must tell Isolde your name. Everyone in a story needs a name!"

I concentrated again, trying to remember anything about myself, even something as simple as my own name. But I still came up blank. "I...guess I don't know that, either." I said at last, a dejected tone in my voice. But the look on Isolde's face pulled at my heartstrings. Though I knew her to be a vampire, she didn't seem as focused on hunger as the Queen and the other two Brides, and I didn't want to see her sad. There was a chance of it all being a ploy to get my guard down, but I decided to take Isolde at face value and try something.

"Maybe," I continued more brightly, "since you said you'd help me write my story, could you give me a name?"

Isolde clapped her hands excitedly, a broad grin spreading across her face that exposed her fangs and once more provided me with a surreal sight. "Oooh, naming you would be ever so fun!" She tapped a finger against her chin thoughtfully. "Let's see...what kind of name would suit a mysterious mortal with no memory?" She spun around again, muttering to herself. "How about...Blank?" A shake of her head. "No, that won't do…Blake, maybe?" Another shake of her head. "Too plain…." Isolde then looked up at me, as if she got lost in coming up with a name and forgot why. "...but I'm close, I promise!" She said apologetically. "Ooh! How about Break‽"

"‘Break’ huh?" I contemplated the name, and found that I kind of liked the sound of it. "I guess I arrived here unannounced, so it's kind of fitting. And it does sound pretty cool; thank you, Lady...Isolde, was it?" I bowed as charmingly as I could manage.

She beamed at me with delight. "Yes, that's right! Isolde is so pleased you like the name she chose!" The odd vampire girl hopped from foot to foot eagerly. "Now that you have a name, the story can really begin! Isolde can hardly wait to see what adventures await you in Tenebrous!" She then leaned in close, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Just remember, not everything here is as it seems. Trust in your instincts, and in the kindness of others...like Isolde!" She added this last with a playful wink that I couldn't begin to make sense of. Was she playing me? Was it her I shouldn't trust? Did I make the ultimate mistake in leaving my identity to her mercy? Or was she truly on my side and her childish, third-person persona was an act for the others?

Before I could ruminate further on Isolde's true nature, the Queen cleared her throat pointedly, drawing my attention back to her. "As touching as this little scene is, we have more pressing matters to attend to." She fixed me with a piercing stare. "Thanks to my little Isolde, we at least have something to call you now…‘Break’?"

"Yes, your Majesty?" I responded, unsure if I was confirming my name or inviting her to continue…if I even wanted her to continue.

"Have a seat." She commanded sharply, pointing to a chair near the head of the conference table. I gulped audibly when I saw it was the one nearest to Lillianna, but I complied in accordance with our deal, knowing that I would be relatively safe.

"This mortal before you," Queen Dara announced to her Brides, "comes to the halls of our Crimsonwood Keep, in my domain of Tenebrous, from another world he calls ‘Earth’." The Queen paused here dramatically to let the reveal sink in, then raised a hand to silence her Brides’ muttering before she continued.

"Other than this compelling morsel and his newly given name, he claims to have no memory of how he came to be here." Another dramatic pause, more speculative muttering from the eclectic tribunal, and then: "But I suspect there is more to his story than meets the eye." Her cold, firm hand gripped my shoulder, much to the delight of Lillianna and the Bride I hadn't yet spoken with, named Mirabelle, who appeared ready to witness some carnage. Isolde, on the other hand, merely looked enthralled with my unfolding narrative. But Dara soon made it clear that she had more important things in mind than their entertainment.

"So…," she tightened her grip just enough for it to start to hurt. "Per our accord, he is not to be harmed…as long as he behaves in kind."

As much as I wanted to protest the hypocrisy of her Majesty's words and actions, I did my best to remain civil. But there was no hiding my body language from a predator like her, and she leaned uncomfortably close, as if to savor the tension I felt.

Just as quickly, though, the Queen's grip relaxed for some reason, and she began circling me again, now with an air of careful appraisal, as if I might pose a threat. "In my centuries of existence, I have encountered many beings from various realms, but never one quite like you. Your essence feels...different. Foreign."

Still feeling uncomfortable with her ever-changing demeanor and intimate proximity, I cleared my throat before answering. "That's...probably because Tenebrous and...Earth...are different worlds; you said as much yourself, your Majesty."

She paused to consider my words. "Perhaps," she answered, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. "But there is something else; something I cannot quite put my finger on. A power lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be awakened." She leaned in close enough for me to feel her cool breath on my neck. "Tell me, Break, what secrets do you hide behind those eyes? What mysteries lie dormant within you?"

I shivered at her proximity and the sensation of her breath, tense with anticipation that she might drink my blood. But, as if in response to her question and my own fear, something dark in me stirred awake, all but compelling me to welcome her feeding and satisfy its own, mysterious need. A presence and a power that scared me more than any vampire ever could, and I desperately wanted to suppress it and deny its existence, but I acknowledged it instead; at least, in words.

"I-I do feel...something." I answered at last, my terror of myself blatant in my wide eyes as I turned to face the Queen. "It's substantial; almost alive, your Majesty."

The pleading, existential dread in my expression caused her to pull back from me, barely contained surprise in her own eyes. "Interesting," Queen Dara responded simply, attempting to maintain composure for her Brides’ benefit as she straightened up, tapping a finger against her lips in mock contemplation. "A thing of such vitality and substance and power...contained within you." She began to pace once more, at first to distance herself from me further, but then genuinely getting lost in thought. "Such is rare in Tenebrous these days. It reminds me of the ancient legends whispered among my kind—tales of beings born from the primordial essence of all, destined for greatness or destruction." She halted abruptly and turned to face me directly. "Tell me, Break; do you feel drawn to this force?" Worry seeped into her voice despite her efforts. “Does it call to you, begging to be unleashed?"

“Yes, your Majesty,” I answered transparently. “And the need it suggests is horrifying. But….” I paused, daring to focus within, my face scrunched in concentration as I tried to grasp a whisper of a memory from my arrival in Tenebrous.

Queen Dara waited, her silent patience betrayed by the outspoken tension of her body language.

“...there's a dual nature to it that I feel like I've experienced before somewhere; it’s warm in its security and obscuring anonymity, yet cold and oppressive in its absence of light.” I looked into her Majesty's eyes with a strange intensity. “It knows your kind well, Queen Dara; I can feel it beyond words.”

I could see the barely suppressed shudder as my words sent a shiver down her spine, though she otherwise maintained a façade of control and curiosity. “It…knows my kind, you say;” curiosity now warred with desperate hope in her eyes. “Could this force within you be Darkness itself?”

“Darkness?” I parroted with a shiver, practically feeling the capitalization in her voice. “You mean, like, at night, when there's no sun?” I asked, delusionally hopeful despite the insidious truth whispering within. And Queen Dara must have sensed my pretense, because the predator in her leapt on it as a sign of weakness, emboldening her to close in, her gaze boring into mine. “No; it is more than that, little Break. I speak of the darkness that dwells within us vampires. The eternal night that sustains us, the hunger that drives us." As she placed a hand on my chest, the rapid but steady beat of my heart (and perhaps something more profound) excited her. "And yet, there is a spark of light within you as well. A flickering flame that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how deep the shadows grow." Emboldened, too, by her excitement and curiosity, she leaned in, closer still, her whispering lips brushing against my ear. "What could you be, Break? What manner of being possesses such contradictions?"

“Instinctively, I feel human.” I answered after composing myself in the face of Queen Dara's…aggressive inquiry, and began counting off things I knew about my current situation. “But if I'm in a world that isn't my own, populated by creatures of the night, and I have no memories…,” A concept came to me suddenly, much like "Earth" did, and it chilled me. “...I'm dead."

Chapter Two: Darkness Awakens

Queen Dara pulled back sharply, a mixture of shock and curiosity etched upon her face. "Dead?" She studied me intently, searching for any signs of deceit or madness. "You stand before me, flesh and blood, heart beating steadily beneath my touch." Her eyes narrowed to a cutting edge. "Explain yourself, Break; what makes you believe you are dead?"
I attempted to explain, relieved at my own vitality, but fearful that my words wouldn't do justice to a concept I barely understood myself. “I've...remembered some things; facets of my life on...Earth...that were nurtured into me by a family and a culture that feel...anonymous to me, though they shaped me. Things like the concept of an...afterlife?”
She listened intently, absorbing every word. "An afterlife? You mean a realm beyond death?" The Queen considered this for a moment, pacing, as is her way when faced with something unprecedented; something involving me. "But you are clearly not a spirit or ghost. Your body is solid, your heart beats with lifeblood. If you truly died in your world, then perhaps...you have been reborn into ours."
I could feel a kernel of truth to that, but there was something about it that my mortal mind couldn't logically accept. “Then how do you explain the power I feel inside me, your Majesty? The night...the shadows...the…’Darkness’....
“If I'm not dead—or undead—why does it call to me?” Then a more important question occurred to me, born of a slightly better understanding that it might not be something to fear, after all. “And should I answer?”
“Perhaps you should, Break; the dark is not typically a safe haven for mortals of your…cut.” Dara answered, a slight hesitation in her voice, her pale visage coloring at her mention of my “cut,” whatever that means. “But whatever your true vital state may be, it chose to reside in you for a reason. And perhaps it would be beneficial to let it flow through your veins, and discover, for better or worse, what that reason is."
I considered her words, and they rang true then, despite the fear she still kept in check for the sake of her rule. I wonder in hindsight if the truthiness I felt was my own conclusion, or a slight push from something Otherly. “You may be right, your Majesty.” I conceded with a slight bow to my head. “One thing that has kept me alive here (besides your mercy) is pushing forward so I'm not waiting for the unknown to catch up with me.” Relaxing into my chair, I closed my eyes. “Here goes….”
As I searched myself for that familiar, ancient feeling, my blood started to thicken and…Darken, filling me with that Otherly instinct, and a detached clarity of self that would remain with me later.
My gums bled crimson shadows that hardened my canine teeth into temporary fangs. I lunged and sank my teeth into Queen Dara's elegant jugular. But rather than drink her blood, I felt my Darkness-infused blood flow into her.
The Vampire Queen stumbled back, a hand flying to her neck as searing pain radiated from the wound. "What have you done‽" Her voice came in a strained rasp, eyes wide with shock and betrayal. "Your blood...it burns like acid…!" She fell to her knees, gasping for air as the foreign Darkness coursed through her veins.
"Isolde...Lillianna...Mirabelle…!" She managed to call out weakly to her Brides before collapsing fully onto the cold stone floor, her body convulsing violently.
The Darkness-borne instinct faded into my soul, and with my senses returned, I stared down at Queen Dara, terrified. “I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean…!” Seeing the Brides begin to advance on me, I turned to flee.

Chapter Three: Brides, Bonds, & Bloodlust

Mirabelle blocked my path easily, a sinister curiosity in her eyes. “Where do you think you're buzzing off to, little wasp?”

Isolde rushed to Dara's side, cradling her head in her lap. "Mother! No, no, please don't leave Isolde!" Tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she looked up at me with a mixture of fear and anger. "What did you do to her‽ Why would you hurt Mother‽" The young-looking Bride sniffled, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. "Isolde thought you were nice, but you're just a monster! A horrible, cruel monster!"
Lillianna stalked toward me, her eyes blazing with fury. “You dare attack my Queen, worm‽” She cracked her knuckles menacingly. “I'm gonna enjoy ripping you apart…piece. By. Piece; your screams will be music to my ears!”
With my path blocked by Mirabelle, and Lillianna closing in on me, itching to give me a fight I couldn't win, my heart hammered in my chest, and I grasped for any connection that might save me. “Your Majesty!” I called out, my desperation Darkening my blood once more.
To my surprise, Queen Dara pushed Isolde aside and rose to her feet, an obedient but hateful expression on her face.
“Leave him,” she said hollowly, her stance rigid, movements jerky and mechanical. "He is...my master now." Standing in stiff opposition to Mirabelle and Lillianna, Dara faced me with a mixture of loathing and resignation in her eyes. "What is your bidding, my lord?"
“Lord‽ M-master‽” I repeated the titles, disbelief evident in my tone; though relieved to still be in one piece, I was unprepared for the ramifications of this power I wielded…or that wielded me: this…Darkness. “No; I-I don't want that!” I looked down at my trembling hands, the humanity of them at odds with what I had done. “That isn't who I am!” I protested, desperately searching within for any smallest hint of evidence to support my claim and expecting none. But the Darkness (or whatever force granted it to me) seemingly obliged as a reward for my…reaching out, and my mind filled with fragments of memory; not a full return of my past self, but enough to reassure me, and unlike previous glimpses, this…gift felt substantial. Permanent.
Queen Dara tilted her head stiffly, studying me with a mix of confusion and wariness as I processed what I'd been given. "Then who are you, Break? A man who wields the power to enslave the Queen Of the Vampires, yet claims to desire none of it?" She took a step closer, her movements more fluid, though still requiring effort to assert herself. "You say you are neither Lord nor Master, yet your very essence commands obedience; your Darkness has marked me, bound me to your will." A defiant spark bloomed in her eyes then. "So tell me, what would you have of me and mine? Shall we grovel at your feet? Pledge our eternal servitude?" Her tone was dripping with sarcasm, daring me to give into ego and flex my power over her.
“N-no! Of course not!”
Sighing deeply, I took a moment to collect thoughts old and new before I spoke further. “But, seeing as how I don't know how to extract my influence from you at will just yet, I guess you're literally stuck with me until I figure that out.” I intended my tone to be apologetic, but the words themselves carried an implied threat. Whether I wanted it or not, the influence of my Darkness gave me leverage.
However, it didn't keep Mirabelle and Lillianna from circling us like wild animals as Isolde lay on the floor, knocked unconscious during her Majesty's servile rise to my defense.
Mirabelle studied me like a curious predator. “Fascinating….” She poked my cheek with her sharp fingernail, but not forcefully enough to draw blood. “You're not just some ordinary mortal after all; there's something...more to you, deep down.” Her smile was cold and toothy as she assessed my potential. “I think I'm going to enjoy dissecting you, little wasp. Figuratively...and perhaps literally.” She threatened, giggling darkly.
Lillianna, on the other hand, wanted me to herself for more brutal purposes, and scowled deeply at the thought of not getting first dibs. “Dissecting him sounds fun, Mirabelle, but before you get started, I wanna smash his face in.” She cracked her knuckles again, addressing me personally as she bounced on her heels like a prize fighter. “C'mon pretty boy, show us what you got. Or are you all bite, no fight?”
“Unghh….” Before I could respond, Isolde's groan interrupted the volatile tension of the moment as she regained consciousness, and I took the distraction as an opportunity to avoid further conflict and duck between Mirabelle and Lillianna. I scrambled to the little Bride's side and helped her to her feet, the others looking on with apprehension.
“Are you…okay?” I asked awkwardly when I felt she had steadied.
“Yes, mortal,” she responded, pulling free of my support, her personality chilled by recent developments between us. “Isolde is fine.” She glanced toward her…Mother and fellow Brides before fixing me with an accusatory stare. “Do you mean to make Isolde your hostage now? Like the dragons in her storybooks do?” Fear widened her stare and I could see her shudder just from standing near me.
“No. No hostage-taking, Issy; just following my gut here.” I responded definitively, trying to soften the mood with a nickname. “I'm not a monster; I know that now for sure.” On a whim, I played to her interests, adding: “...now that I've figured out more of my own story.”
Fear faded to curious excitement in her wide, uncertain eyes, though she kept a prudent distance between us. “Is that true, mortal? Really true?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “But I need your help to turn this chapter around. You said before that I could trust in your kindness when things got…unreliable. Is that offer still good between us?” I asked, my expression pleading.
Isolde held my gaze thoughtfully for an unbearable length of time. “Fine…Break; if you really didn't mean to hurt Mother before, Isolde will forgive your scary powers.” Her tone was adorably impertinent. “But Isolde's help comes at the cost of more stories!” She waggled a demanding finger in my face.
“Deal,” I wrapped a finger around hers in a makeshift handshake.
With that, Isolde turned her attention back to the tense trio, who were muttering in disbelief and dissent at our exchange. “Mother, Big Sisters; Isolde believes in the mortal.” She asserted, hoping her words would reach them. “Power can be scary if you don't know how to use it good, so…” A pause as she twisted her fingers together nervously, unsure of how her proposal would be received. “Maybe instead of hurting him, we all work together to help him figure out what's going on like Mother wanted?” She cast a glance at me, that mysterious, intuitive spark of hers returning. “Maybe once he knows his story, it'll be less scary..for all of us?”
Lillianna and Mirabelle grumbled their dissent once more about how they're not scared of a little black magic and they still really wanted to dissect me and kill me in whichever order they found most satisfying, but….
“Enough!” Queen Dara held up a hand, silencing them before turning her full attention back to me, her expression not immediately scrutable."It seems we again find ourselves in a unique situation, Break. Bound together by forces beyond our control or understanding." As seemed to be her way regarding me, she paced deliberately, considering her options. “And given this bond created by your influence, I require both if we are to move forward with our investigation of your origin and powers.” She fixed me with a gaze more intense and commanding than any I'd seen or felt since finding myself here, and her next words rang the same. “From now on, you will refrain from abusing your control over me and mine, Break; if you do not honor this…request, no amount of goodwill, curiosity, or power will be able to stay the wrath we visit upon you. Does that meet with your understanding?”
I gulped audibly at the threat despite some baser instinct insisting the Queen's words were hollow. I ignored it, as it felt less like my own instinct and more like a nuance of the Darkness. “I-it does…your Majesty; my word to Isolde is my word to you all.” Clearing my throat, I met her gaze with some confidence, and added: “No power I hold will make me forget or betray what I first promised you.”
"Good." Queen Dara nodded with finality, resuming her regal bearing now that the matter had seemingly been settled.
"Now, I suggest we retire to the library. It's time to see if those dusty old tomes of ours hold any answers about your condition." She turned on her heel and strode toward the door, expecting me to follow, which I did, as Lillianna and Mirabelle marched past, the former giving me a scathing look with her crimson eyes. "Don't think this means we trust you, vermin. Use our Queen like that again, and I'll gut you like a mouse, Darkness be damned."
Mirabelle, on the other hand, walked at my flank for a moment. “In that case, I wouldn't mind you trying to sting, little wasp.” She lowered her glasses to rest at the tip of her nose, her yellow eyes downcast and full of scrutiny. “Just to watch what happens; see what you're made of on the inside….”
“All the more reason to keep my word, then.” I responded with a shudder, slowing my pace to distance myself from them and ensure that Isolde could hear me. She only smiled up at me in response, her fangs poking out and her green eyes aglow with secret understanding. It was awkward to say the least, and after a moment too long, I blurted out the first story-like thing that came to mind.
“You know, Lady Isolde; you and her Majesty aren’t what I expected, based on the lore and fiction I can recall from my Earth life.” I did somehow know what a vampire was when I…arrived in the Keep, after all.
Rather than balk at the idea that her kind are just legends where I came from, Isolde gave herself to fancy; her stride became almost a skip, bouncy with excitement and an eagerness to reciprocate. “Isolde has read lots of mortal stories and legends!" She beamed proudly. "They're so romantic and adventurous! Like when the brave prince saves the princess from the evil dragon, or when the handsome rogue wins the heart of the noble lady!" Isolde cavorted around me for a moment, aping Dara's habitually contemplative pacing. “Is the mortal a prince, a rogue, or both? We shall see!”
“It's nice to hope and dream, Isolde.” I mused with a melancholy half-smile on my face. “But wonder can fail when we're faced with reality.”
Isolde fell into step beside me again, her pace returned to normal. “Mother said something like that, too; that those stories are silly and unrealistic." Pouting slightly, she continued, casting an uncertain glance at Dara. "Mother thinks real life is much harsher and crueler than Isolde's books say.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “I feel like the old me would've thought magic didn't exist and vampires were works of fiction written to cope with the true depths of human evil.” The words poured out of me, drawn by a conviction and cynicism I felt was truly my own; my instinct, not the Darkness. “But I'm not on Earth now, and the four of you are almost too real for comfort.” Rubbing the back of my neck nervously, I continued: “I guess what I'm saying is reality and fiction can blur together when you least expect it, for better and for worse.” Whether to spare her feelings, steer her away from what I was picking up as a subtle effort to ship me with the Queen, or because I derailed my own train of thought, I'm not sure, but I made no mention of true love.
Isolde listened intently, absorbing every word. "So...Isolde, Mother, Sisters Lilli and Mira, all vampires…are just stories there?" She confirmed, shivering slightly. "And no magic, either?”
I balked briefly at her use of cute nicknames for the two women who wanted to make my flesh and organs switch places, before registering her discomfort.
“Not you four, specifically,” I reassured her. “But from what I can remember, that feels right, yeah.”
“Isolde wouldn't mind being a story, but a world without magic or true love sounds terrible. How do mortals find meaning or purpose in a place like that?" She asked, cocking her head curiously.
“I don't remember, Isolde.” I shrugged again. “But the best and worst thing I can think of is just…picking something to do or believe in, even if it isn't really magic, and finding something to love about it; something worth devoting yourself to; something that at least feels magical, y'know?”
“Isolde thinks so….” She was nodding as I spoke. “Like faith and direction, huh, Break? Do you think you'll find something like that here in Tenebrous?”
I could feel her eyes on me as she waited for an answer. “I'm…I don't know, Isolde; I know myself a little better, but there's so much about my Darkness, and Tenebrous, and the four of you, that I just don't understand yet. Like, how would you have treated me if I was just a normal human from this world?”
Isolde seemed taken aback by my question, shaking her head as if that were unthinkable. “Boring food,” she said with disdain, like a child asked to state the benefits of broccoli over chocolate cake. “Isolde feeds the Thirst in here.” The Bride patted her belly somberly, her entire demeanor changed as she began to explain. “But it's always the same; they scream and beg and the red feels good going down…then Isolde's empty again.”
I listened, speechless. Not like someone who says they're speechless and then rambles for fifteen minutes about how speechless they are; I was actually so shocked and disturbed that I couldn't think to form a response.
My reaction must have shown on my face or registered through some extra vampiric sense, because she hastily added clarification. “Mother doesn't want Isolde to kill, though!” Her tone suggested I mark her words, but they rang to me as justification in the moment, and I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to know the full story of her circumstances any more than I wanted to fully know myself again. And of course, there was the Darkness to consider as well.
“Isolde can't turn mortals, either, if you were wondering…,” she continued, trying to get me to engage in conversation again. When I didn't, she filled the silence herself. “So they go…Isolde doesn't know where, really. Sometimes, if they're strong, they have fun stories; those mortals are the best.” Her voice then turned melancholy, and perhaps a bit ominous. “Isolde never got to see the same mortal more than once.”
I felt the implications of her words and shuddered, picturing who were essentially Isolde's leftovers finding themselves at the mercy of her sadistic sister-Brides. Perhaps I was getting that darker picture I dreaded, after all….
Except, was it really the full picture? There was something Isolde had said earlier that once again made me question my perceptions.
“So…,” I said at last, drawing it out as I was still finding adequate words. “...do you…like being a vampire? Drinking human blood, I mean?”
She balked again, stopping suddenly, and after a second, I turned to face her, unsure as ever of what to expect. “What? Did I say something wr—?” My question was cut off by Isolde leaping at me, tears brimming in her eyes, and burying her face in the Dark fabric of my pant leg.
“N-no one has ever asked Isolde that before!” She sobbed. “Not mortals, not Mother or Lilly or Mira; no one, not ever!” Isolde pulled away and looked up at me, wiping her eyes with her lacy sleeves.
“Well, do you?” I pressed, trying to be understanding but not really having the patience for her sympathy ploy, if that's what it was.
“No; Isolde hates her Thirst, Break! Being a child forever, always in the Keep, having to hurt people for a need that's never good enough and not knowing what happened to them after; it's awful! Awful! Awful!” Despite her protestations, Isolde looked like a petulant child having a tantrum, stomping her feet with fists balled up at her sides as pent-up honesty spewed forth at increasing volume, followed by heavy breathing as catharsis overwhelmed her.
Keeping my distance, I knelt down to meet Isolde on her level, feeling like I might have gotten somewhere. “You good, Issy?”
A few more ragged breaths and some wiped-away tears, then: “Ye-yes, mortal—Break. Isolde feels…better.”
“Good,” I said with some sincerity. “Because I might have hit upon some of that magical thinking I was talking about; let's catch up with the others.”
There's a phrase I never thought I'd say in this place! I thought as Isolde led me along to the library.

Chapter Four: The Lair Of Magical Thinking?

The library of Crimsonwood Keep was a chamber befitting a royal’s private literature collection, as excessive in scale as the concert hall and conference room were before it.
The walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves upon shelves of all manner of literature, the high vaulted ceiling giving the illusion of a vanishing point that had the potential to disorient if gazed upon too long.
“I see neither of you did anything untoward when you chose to dally behind at this important hour.” Queen Dara commented from her place at one of the reading desks in the center of the room, the quality of her voice pulling me out of my distracted awe. I felt her words were directed at me, though Isolde was the first to bow in apology.
“Sorry, Mother. Isolde wanted to talk to the mortal some more; it was…freeing.”
Queen Dara narrowed her eyes to a cutting edge, definitely at me this time. “I heard. And I would hear more of your wavering fealty from Break himself, should he dare ask the same questions of me.”
Taking a seat opposite her Majesty at the same desk, as Isolde stood by out of curiosity and to act as a buffer, I met Queen Dara's razor-thin glare with a bold glimmer of hope in my eyes. “I do dare, your Majesty; not because of my influence running through your veins, nor because I think Isolde is weak and easily manipulated; our arrangement stands and I have a much higher opinion of her than that. It may even be that I think more highly of her than you do, seeing as how I asked her questions about herself that you wouldn't.”
“How dare you‽” The Queen scoffed, clearly wounded by the truth, though she did not retaliate, either out of fear of my power, a need to maintain her royal composure, curiosity, or to appease her “daughter.” It all flashed by on her face in an instant, and I thought I could sense it through the Darkness, as well.
At the sound of Dara's raised voice, Mirabelle and Lillianna looked up from their research, again itching for the slightest excuse to tear me apart, but the Queen calmed her Brides with a dismissive wave of her hand.
I let out a relieved breath when they obliged. “I dare because I'm trying to be more than a passing amusement for you all, and I have nothing to lose in learning my purpose, your Majesty.”
Dara leaned back in her chair, regarding me with thoughtful amusement. “Interesting perspective, Break; but why provoke me so? What more are you seeking to understand beyond your self?"
“The four of you.” I answered, leaning in and returning her speculative gaze. “Specifically whether you like being vampires, and how you treat normal humans. I already know Isolde's feelings, as you heard…,” a glance in the young Bride's direction, and after reluctantly looking to Queen Dara for a hint of objection, she nodded. “But I won't know what course to take without hearing from the rest of you first.”
Queen Dara's amusement faded slightly, leaving a contemplative expression. “I have been a vampire for so long that enjoyment has ceased to be a factor, Break.” She said after a time. “I am blessed and cursed eternal, I feed as Thirst demands, and I rule my kind as is my responsibility.
“Perhaps the social divide born of immortality and said duty drove me to sire those I keep dear,” an almost imperceptible look of somber apology as her eyes flicked to Isolde, then back to me. “But I have existed as I must.
“As for ‘normal humans,’ mortals are but prey to me; food sources to sustain said existence and serve my needs." Her voice was matter-of-fact, devoid of malice. “That said, I am not needlessly cruel. I take only what I require to survive and leave my victims with no memory of the encounter. It is a necessary evil; one I have learned to live with over the centuries." She met my gaze steadily, awaiting my judgment with regal patience but challenging me to judge what I didn't yet understand to the fullest.
All I could think about was what Isolde had said earlier: they go…Isolde doesn't know where, really. Isolde never got to see the same mortal more than once.
“So, you leave your...food...alive, your Majesty?” I asked.
She nodded once. "Typically, yes. Dead bodies draw unwanted attention." Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the table, fingers templed beneath her chin. "There are occasions when a kill is warranted—if the mortal poses a threat or has committed grievous crimes. But those instances are rare." She continued to study me closely, gauging my reaction. "Does this surprise you, Break? Did you expect me to be a ruthless monster, leaving a trail of corpses in my wake?"
“Not your Majesty, no;” I answered, trying to remain stoic in the face of her cavalier attitude about such macabre matters. “Isolde told me of your stance on feeding to kill. Besides, if you were so ruthless and careless, I would not have lived past the end of your piano nocturne, nor would we be having a civil conversation right now.
“But I am curious about the ‘needs’ you mentioned. Would you tell me about them?”
The Queen straightened her posture, considering my request. "My needs are simple, Break. Blood sustains my body; keeps me strong and vital." Her voice took on a lecturing tone. "Without regular feeding, I grow weak, lethargic. My senses grow dull and my reflexes slow. It is a vulnerability I cannot afford in my position." She paused, gathering her thoughts.
“Beyond that, I have no great desires. Material wealth holds little allure for one who has lived as long as I. Power is a tool, not an end unto itself. The only thing I truly crave beyond blood is the company of my Brides, and the knowledge that they are safe and content." Her lips curved into a faint smirk as she invited me to probe with further questions. "Does that satisfy your curiosity, or do you wish to dig deeper into my psyche?"
I also remembered that both Isolde and Queen Dara mentioned a “Thirst" as their drive for human blood. “Yes; one more question, your Majesty. Is blood strictly a nutritional requirement, or is there something more to that particular vampiric need?”
Dara hesitated, weighing how much to reveal. "Blood serves multiple purposes for our kind. Beyond basic nourishment, it enhances our natural abilities as I said: speed, strength, healing,.... The older and more potent the blood, the greater the effect." Another pause, as she debated how to elaborate. “There is also a...pleasure component. The act of feeding can be intensely euphoric, bordering on erotic. It creates a bond between vampire and prey, an intimate connection that goes beyond the physical.” Still watching me closely as she spoke, the Queen gauged my reaction to this revelation. "Some vampires become addicted, losing themselves in a never-ending pursuit of that rush. It is a dangerous path, one I caution my brides against." She then sat back, allowing me time to absorb this information.
“Uh....” Blushing at the sensual context, I cleared my throat. “Thank you for…enlightening me.”
Noticing my discomfort, the Queen smirked knowingly. “You asked for honesty, Break. I merely provided it.” She then gestured toward a stack of arcane tomes and research materials on the table at her right. “Now, if our little Q&A session is concluded, I must continue looking into your strange circumstances, and these books won't read themselves, after all.” Another smirk. “Not most of them, anyway….”
Rather transactionally, I offered a final question before resuming my search for understanding and purpose, though I dreaded her answering in the affirmative. “Then, do I have your permission to hear from Mirabelle and Lillianna on the matter of mortal treatment and partaking of blood, your Majesty?”
Queen Dara raised an eyebrow at my request for permission. “You have it, my odd mortal; you've managed something with me and my youngest this day that has defied centuries of expectation. I wish to see if you are possessed of what it takes to achieve whatever it is you truly seek.”
With her blessing (if that is the right word for being granted permission by a vampire), I stood, bowed in thanks, and swallowed my fear for the exchanges to come.

Chapter Five: The Brutal Flower

Suppressing my dread, I tentatively approached Lillianna first. “Lady Lillianna…?”
“What is it, vermin?” She snarled, her hateful red eyes seeming to slice through me as she looked up. “I have a lot of reading on my plate because of you, and I'd rather you not waste my time any more than you have.”
I sat across from the volatile Bride, grabbed a book from her pile, and began reading. Or trying to; it wasn't in a language I could understand, and the Darkness, if it could have helped with such things, seemed to be waiting for more important developments.
Though it was ultimately an empty gesture, Lillianna was visibly amused by my feeble attempt to help, and I shrugged, as if to say, I tried, before returning to my planned line of questioning. “I've spoken with Isolde and your Queen about this already, and her Majesty granted me the, uh…privilege of getting your perspective.”
Since I thought I knew the answer to one question and shuddered to imagine her answer to the other (based on my initial perception of her personality), and Isolde's words about mortals were still fresh in my mind, I started with the latter. “I'm curious to know how you normally treat mortals; are they just sustenance and entertainment for you, or do you get something more out of us?”
Lillianna leaned forward, eyes glinting with predatory eagerness. “Mortals are toys, playthings to be enjoyed and discarded at my whim.” She smirked sadistically. “Their fear is my ambrosia, their screams my symphony.” She paused to lick her lips, her gaze sanguine with nostalgia. “I relish breaking them, shattering their minds and spirits before draining every last drop.” This proud admission was punctuated by a dark chuckle. “To me, they're nothing more than cattle, born to serve my needs and desires.” Lillianna fixed me with a piercing stare, flashing a feral, fangy grin. “Does that shock you, little mouse? The depths of my cruelty and appetite?”
“Not at all.” I challenge, barely concealing my disgust. “But her Majesty told me she had warned you against indulgence; I am surprised you would defy her wisdom like that.”
Lillianna's eyes narrowed to bleeding cuts, oozing contempt. “A simple interpretation from simple-minded vermin. Do not presume to know me, rodent!” I expected something more explosive from her, but she merely took a deep breath and continued. “I enjoyed such things as a mortal, as well. Dara—my Queen—found a use for appetites I already had; thought I would be better suited to the Thirst than she.
“She was right, and I became her sword against those who would threaten her rule.”

“A sword can cut both ways, Lady Lillianna.” I interjected casually, again risking her wrath.
She instead seemed intrigued by my composure. “You've got some spine, if you're implying what I think you are.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “Tell me, little rat, what makes you so special? Why should I bother entertaining your accusations instead of ripping out your throat and painting the walls with your entrails?” The returned violence in her words was starkly contrasted by a sweet, almost innocent smile.
“Because if you do, my dying thought will be commanding your Queen to repay you in kind on my behalf. And none of us really want that, now do we, Lillianna?”
Lillianna threw her head back and laughed, the sound both as beautiful and chilling as the woman herself. “Ah, touché, little mouse. But things needn't come to that. Dara is well aware of my edges, and I am glad to be wielded or sheathed by her as she needs.
“However,” Lillianna continued, the mirth gone from her voice. “Should another attempt to wield me, I would unleash hell upon them, regardless of the tricks they claim to have up their sleeves.”
“I'll keep that in mind, my Lady.” I said, breathing deep to calm my nerves and avoid saying something I'll die regretting. “I guess I can appreciate your loyalty, but I don't have to like you or the necessary hypocrisy of your place here. It isn't exactly helping your case, you know.”
Lillianna rolled her eyes dramatically. “Such half-hearted flattery is meaningless from the likes of you, mouse. I see no reason to respect you in kind, let alone make apologies for who and what I am.” She leaned back, crossing her arms. “Now, was there anything else you wanted to discuss, or can we move on to more interesting topics?”
“Funny;” I said flatly as I dared to lean in. “I thought you'd prefer talking about yourself instead of researching me for hours on end, but all I'm hearing is superficial vampire bravado. It's almost like you don't want me to know why you are the way you are, because I'm a mortal. Do I have that right?”
Lillianna scoffed defensively, but uncrossed her arms. “I do not hide, vermin; I am what I am because it's in my nature. I hunt, feed, and kill as I need. And I defend my Queen.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “There's no grand philosophy behind it. It's simply who I am.
“Besides, it's not like mortals are innocent; your kind commits far worse atrocities against each other than I ever could.” To my surprise, Lillianna leaned forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper despite her unwillingness to share or defend her true self moments ago. “I've seen the darkness in men's hearts. The cruelty and depravity.” She shuddered delicately, her mask slipping as she seemed to recall past experiences too horrific for even her declared appetites. “At least I'm honest about my monstrousness.”
With that, Lillianna sat back, satisfied with her answer.
“I don't disagree.” I said after taking in her every word and the unexpected change in her demeanor toward me. “However, what you claim to live by still doesn't make sense to me.”
Lillianna quirked an eyebrow, her intrigue at being challenged overriding her volatile defensiveness. “How so?” She prompted, impatiently tapping her fingers on the tabletop. “Out with it, mouse; I haven't got all night.” A teasing smirk. “I mean, technically I do, but that's beside the point….”
“Well…you like superiority, control, challenge, and you respect strength, right?” I asked, leading her to my train of thought.
“You got that much right.” She nodded slowly. “Strength commands respect. The strong rule, the weak submit, and the disloyal are crushed. It's the natural order.” I could feel her speculative, crimson gaze upon me. “But I sense you're going somewhere with this, rodent; pray tell, what's your point?”
I hit my point almost smugly, though I knew it might end badly for us both if it struck too raw of a nerve: “What's so superior...where is the self-control, the strength, the challenge, in stooping to ‘lesser atrocities’ at the mercy of your base instincts, simply to spite a handful of mere mortals?”
Lillianna waved her hand dismissively, again scoffing at my words. “It isn't about anything so petty as spite or revenge, mouse; it's about dominance, maintaining power. I take what I want, when I want. And if my Thirst aligns with the wishes of my Queen, so be it. Self-control is for those too weak to embrace their true nature.”
She sat back again, now sizing me up and rubbing her hands together. “But you raise an interesting point about challenge; perhaps there's more to you than meets the eye. Care to prove you're more than just talk?”
“I only prove what I have proof of, Lillianna.” I shook my head, hoping the threat of the Darkness would dissuade her from fighting me, at the very least, because I couldn't remember myself being much of a fighter. “And you've already seen what happens to vampires who take my blood.” I glanced pointedly in her Majesty's direction.
“Yes, yes; I remember.” Another dismissive wave. “You've been a good little pet since then, though.” She smirked approvingly and leaned in, her eyes sparkling with malice. “Ingratiating yourself with my Queen and little sister without so much as a hint of that power. I smell fear all over you, vermin, and I think you're bluffing about your level of control. Now, are you going to keep hiding behind empty threats and mind games, or prove that you have a spine worth breaking?”
“You want spine, Lillianna?” I narrowed my eyes at her challenge. “Then bite me; we can settle the matter right here and now.”
Lillianna grinned wickedly, rising to her feet in a blur. “With pleasure.” She stalked toward me, her eyes glowing with denied Thirst. “I've been itching to taste you since the moment I laid eyes on you; let's see what secrets hide in your blood, little mouse.” She lunged forward, fangs bared, aiming for my neck.

Chapter Six: The Shape Of Darkness

Dara intervened in a flash, catching Lillianna by the throat and slamming her against a wall with enough force to knock some books from their nearby shelves.

“Enough!” The Queen's voice cracked like thunder, her eyes blazing with fury. “You forget yourself, Bride; he is not to be toyed with.” She tightened her grip, holding Lillianna pinned. “Apologize. Now.” She commanded coldly, allowing no room for argument.

But, argue I did, on behalf of the Bride I currently feared the most. Before Lillianna could choke out an apology, I knelt hastily from my chair, causing it to tip over with a soft clatter, and addressed her Majesty as I never had before, perhaps to show my integrity to them both. “I'm sorry, my Queen! I’m at fault for baiting my Lady Lillianna into this, knowing the nature of my blood. I ignorantly thought it was the only way to get through to her, given my narrow perception of her…motivations. Please, forgive your Bride, your Majesty!”

The Queen Of the Vampires eyed me sharply as she pondered my interjection. “While I appreciate your taking responsibility, Break, Lillianna should know better than to let herself be provoked so easily.” Dara turned her attention back to Lillianna, whom she still held firmly against the wall. “Well? Your Queen is waiting….”

Though Lillianna glared daggers at me in resentment, her loyalty to Dara won out over her mulish fury. “Fine;” she took a deep, ragged breath. “I apologize for letting you bait me, mouse—” Dara gave a warning squeeze to her throat (which Lillianna, just as briefly, looked like she sort of enjoyed?) “—B-break, I mean; it won't happen again.”

I couldn't tell if that last was a threat or part of the apology, but Dara seemed satisfied enough, and after a pleading look from Lillianna, she released her grip and returned to her studies.

Lillianna rubbed her throat, seeming to appraise me as I stood and righted the toppled chair. “Gotta say, that was a pretty ballsy move for a rodent; putting your ass on the line for me like that. But know that I, too, mean what I say: I won't let something like this happen again. One day, you will slip up. And I'll be waiting.” She snatched up her books and turned on her heel, stalking away to another table.

Something clicked in my brain (or maybe my soul?), as if the Darkness in me was satisfied with what I had accomplished so far—as if it liked the direction I intended to take—and was rewarding me for it like before. So, on instinct, I followed Lillianna, armed with the newly unlocked knowledge that the Darkness wasn't entirely beyond my control.

“What do you want now, pest? I thought I made it clear I was done with your games!”

“I just wanted to say you're right; playing games hasn't gotten me anywhere with you, not really. It's because I don't have the strength or skill to fight you the way you want. And you won't get that satisfaction catching me unaware, either. So why not give me the time to hone my power, so I can face you with more than words and pawns?”

Lillianna whirled around, eyes alight with interest. “Oh?” She paced closer, intrigued. “And why would I do that, mouse? What makes you think you could ever best me, even with all the time in the world?” She smirked cruelly, scoffing at the idea. “Enlighten me.”

“Did you ever consider how I bit her Majesty without fangs?” I opened my mouth to show normal human teeth.

Lillianna peered at my teeth, brow furrowing in confusion, as if she'd never considered that before. “No fangs‽” Her muscles tensed, hackles raising, voice lowered to a growl. “This better not be another of your tricks, vermin. Get to the point.”

“Good one, my Lady.” I chuckled, acknowledging the unintentional pun. “But it's not a trick. It seems my power—my Darkness—can take physical form, like the fangs. And that was just a moment of luck and instinct.” My eyes sparkled with inspiration, catching her attention. “If I practice, just imagine all the weapons I could manifest to...entertain...you with!”

“Ooooh…,” Lillianna's eyes widened with anticipation, and I could practically see her mind racing at the sadistic potential of my proposal. “I like the sound of that; a challenge, endless ways to torment you,....” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Yes, little Break; by all means. Practice; hone your little gifts.” She then leaned in closer, her breath unsettling but arousing against my ear. “I'll be watching. Waiting.” She straightened up abruptly, smirking at my shuddering frame and the flush that bloomed in my cheeks. “You just might be worth my time, after all; maybe even a bit fun. Later, mouse!”

And with that, she walked away to continue researching me in earnest, probably already planning our future encounters.

Chapter Seven: The Mad Scientist

It was a relief that I had made headway with Lillianna and bought myself some time and distance. I even had a decent idea of who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do in this grotesque world until I could fully figure out who I was and why I was here. So much so that I forgot I had another Bride to contend with. Until….
“How fascinating….” The sound of her voice made me jump in place, and when I turned around, there was Mirabelle, her pale face looming inches from mine. “Manifesting darkness into physical form; a most intriguing hypothesis indeed.” Her eyes bored into mine, a clinical hunger lurking in their bespectacled depths. “Tell me more about these powers of yours, little morsel. In great detail, if you please; leave nothing out.”
I stood still as she circled me slowly, examining me from every angle.
“Should a scientist like yourself state hypotheticals as truth without experimentation?” I teased daringly, hoping to distract from the fact that I couldn't give her a full explanation of my powers, just the vague impressions the Darkness had elected to grant me so far. “Or a firsthand account?”
Mirabelle's lips curled into a predatory smile, and she nodded, seeming pleased with me. “Experimentation; yes, you understand me perfectly, little wasp.”
I couldn't help noticing that she was more keen to experiment than to hear my telling of the Darkness’ latest gift of parceled knowledge. It made me think of Lillianna, in a bad way. “Um…?”
My protest was cut off when she stopped her shark-like visual examination and reached out, pressing a cool, shushing finger to my lips. “Let us begin; show me what you can do, little science project.” Her eyes gleaned with excitement and a bit of madness. “Unless you'd prefer I dissect you instead?”
I once again thought of Isolde's words about never seeing the same person twice. “Is this how you treat all mortals?”
Mirabelle cocked her head, considering. “Only the interesting ones.” A dismissive shrug, then: “Most mortals are boring. Predictable.”
Ironically, I had heard these words before, as well. From Isolde. But I wasn't prepared for Mirabelle to test my threshold for personal space when she leaned in to sniff delicately at my neck.
“But you…,” she continued, pulling back, her eyes glinting as if she'd literally caught the scent of a new challenge. “You smell of secrets; mysteries waiting to be unraveled. So yes, little specimen. This is how I treat the rare few worthy of my attention. Consider yourself lucky.”
Now, it was my turn to be curious (and grateful I wasn't a cat), and try my hand at dissecting Mirabelle with words. “And why are you so...surgical with ‘the interesting ones’?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Knowledge; power; the pursuit of perfection.” In her musing, perhaps from being reminded of a particularly daunting purpose, she began to pace restlessly. “Your kind is fragile. Fleeting. But in your brief lives, you hold such potential for discovery!” She tapped a finger against her lips thoughtfully. “Each mortal is a puzzle to solve; a riddle to unravel.” Her eyes fell on me with an intense mix of conviction and mad obsession. “I will uncover every secret, plumb every depth, until I unlock the key to eternal life.”
Beneath her madly brilliant stare sat a chilling smile, the expression transfixing me so completely that I couldn't inquire why she sought something that she and the others already had.
But then, she added: “Immortality, without the curse of vampirism. That is my goal, wasp; and you may just be the key I've been searching for.”
A story from my forgotten childhood suddenly came to mind. “Then if you cannot think of me as human, perhaps you could think of me less as a rat, guinea pig, or insect, and more like a goose.”
Mirabelle blinked incredulously, thrown by the sudden shift in conversation. “A goose?” She repeated. “Whatever for?”
“On Earth,” I explained, pausing as I did to recall the tale as best I could to get my meaning across to her. “There's a fable about obsession and greed that involves a goose. A poor, elderly couple discover it, and are shocked when it lays solid gold eggs. Over time, their lifestyle grows extravagant, and they become impatient when the goose doesn't lay eggs as expected, so they cut the goose open, killing it in their haste to get more gold, thus losing their ‘golden goose’ forever and plunging back into poverty. Now do you understand?”
Mirabelle nodded slowly, comprehension dawning as she resumed pacing. “Ah…I see; you fear I'll destroy you in my eagerness to unravel your secrets. A clever goose you are, then,” she claps decisively, accepting my suggestion. “I have other ideas of how to…extract answers from you.”
“Any that don't involve vivisection or amputation?” I asked hopefully, adding “or torture…?” under my breath.
“Don't be tedious!” Mirabelle snapped, rolling her eyes impatiently. “Vivisection is so crude and messy.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “There are far more elegant methods to plumb your depths; methods that leave you wholly intact. At least...on the outside.”
As I once more stand transfixed by her glittering but jaundiced gaze, listening to her words (that don't quite have me convinced of her promise to avoid harming me), Mirabelle traces a finger down my torso, as if acting out a surgical motion she wouldn't be able to perform on me. If she weren't a mad scientist vampire fantasizing about hollowing me out like a cooked lobster, it might have turned me on…just a bit.
“Now, shall we begin? Or do you require more convincing?”
“What I require, Lady Mirabelle, are my organs. Functioning. Intact. On the inside of my body.” Only in this life would I have thought it necessary to elaborate with that specific sequence of words.
“Such a waste of potential,” she scoffed dismissively, shaking her head in disappointment. “But very well; I suppose even a dull blade can yield results, given enough time.”
Surprisingly, she changed tact, assuming a more professorial role but placing my fate back into my own hands. “We'll start simple. Focus your thoughts inward. Visualize your Darkness.” Mirabelle tapped my temple, her touch unexpectedly light. “Concentrate. Shape it. Mold it to your will.”
Mirabelle stood, arms folded, watching me intently, eager to observe, as I considered her advice. “That's...actually helpful.” I nodded. “Thank you, Lady...?” I knew her name from when Queen Dara introduced her earlier today, but felt a need to establish rapport with her for some reason.
“Mirabelle,” she supplied absently, her attention focused on me with rapt intensity, impatient for me to impress. “But enough buzzing, wasp; show me.”
I close my eyes and picture myself floating in the darkness behind my eyelids. I am in the void, but the void is also within me. I focus on gradually scaling down the mental image of myself as a way of visualizing the growth of that darkness into my Darkness. At the same time, I feel a tremendous pain as something within me grows and pushes its way out. I scream in agony and fall unconscious, my eyes shooting open from the pain, only to see the released Darkness around me before I pass out.

Chapter Eight: In Sleep

Author's Note: As Break is unconscious, this interlude is in a third-person perspective.

As Break followed her guidance, Mirabelle watched with keen interest.
“Good;” the Bride murmured. “Feel the Darkness within. Embrace it.” Her eyes widened as shadows began to swirl around the odd mortal standing before her. “Fascinating…,” I breathed, leaning in for a closer look at him.
With impeccable timing, Isolde bounded over excitedly, skidding to a halt beside Mirabelle. “Oooh; what's happening‽” The young Bride craned her neck to peer up at Break. “Is he doing magic?” She bounced on her toes, eyes wide with wonder. “Can I watch too, Big Sister? Pretty please?” She grinned hopefully at Mirabelle.
Then Break let out a scream of agony that made Dara rush over to take control of the situation.
“What's going on here?” The Queen demanded, eyeing the scene suspiciously. “Explain. Now.” She fixes Mirabelle with a stern glare. “And stay back, both of you; do not let his Darkness touch you.”
Mirabelle glances up at Dara, unconcerned and slightly annoyed by her warning, as is typical of a mad scientist. “No danger, my Queen,” she counters absently, eyes riveted on the swirling shadows. “Just an experiment…with rather gorgeous results.”
“No danger‽” Queen Dara scowled thunderously. “You foolish child! His Darkness could corrupt you as it has me; perhaps even consume you!” Advancing menacingly, the Queen appeared intent on stopping…whatever she imagined might happen, even at the risk of her own life. “Stand aside. I'll end this now, before—.”
But no sooner did she begin to raise a hand against the agonized mortal—the mortal, Break, who had been thrust into her care and made her unwitting ruler at the whim of a force that was both familiar and beyond her comprehension—than said Darkness began to dissipate around him, followed by…snoring?
The Queen halted mid-strike, staring at Break's slumbering form in disbelief. “He...fell asleep?” She blinked, nonplussed. “In the middle of unleashing his powers?” Her eyes flick between Mirabelle and Isolde, eyebrows raised. “Well, that's certainly...unexpected. Perhaps we should let him rest, ladies.”
Lillianna, who was likewise drawn by Break's excruciated scream, but for reasons that were uniquely her, pouted sullenly as her Majesty tried to herd them out of the library. “Such a wasted opportunity, mouse; but a promise is a promise, and my sheath beckons. I hope to see you prove worthy, as you promised.”
“Well said, Lil,” her Queen acknowledged, frowning thoughtfully as her hand rose to her jugular, which had seemingly healed since earlier. “This one is…special; in more ways than one, it seems.” Returning to herself, the Vampire Queen shook her head and led her Brides onward. “Now come along. I need to think.”
Thus, she strode ahead purposefully, her mind whirring with the implications of what she had witnessed that night.

If you made it this far, I sincerely hope you've enjoyed this one thousandth post of mine on Just the Ticket. More work went into this story than you'd think, and more work will come as I...put in more work! Because I will! I know it isn't perfect (creative endeavors rarely are), but I'm proud of it, as I am of almost everything I put forth, and I thank you for giving it your time.

Regular content will resume on Wednesday. I don't know for certain if I'll have a Terrifier post ready for Friday as I originally planned, because I'm writing this portion two weeks ahead of publication and I haven't done any character art yet, but Stay Tuned for whatever I'm able to post in a post-one thousand-post world, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because reading is good for you, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Breaking Out.

Heroes(?) Are Made #27: Break

2026-10-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Main HeroMachiner.

I wish I had given myself more time to do something decent with Break because he's the main character of I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen (debuting tomorrow as my one thousandth Blogger post), but it's kind of perfect that I didn't give him a cool pose or many facial features or an intricate design, because he's just some guy with no memory (or textile clothing) trying to survive a horrific world on wit and instinct alone.

I mean, there is the requisite, OP isekai ability he has that might come in handy this early, but he's boring on purpose otherwise.

Spoilers, I guess?

Name: Unknown

Alias: Break

Allies: Dara (eventually), Lillianna (eventually), Isolde (especially, but definitely not like that...), Mirabelle (eventually), the Darkness (maybe?), etc.

Enemies: The Thirst, and anyone who tries to harm or kill him or his allies.

Race: Human

Birthplace: Earth

Powers/Abilities: Normal human ability and senses, amnesia, isekai status, plot armor, strong intuition, the Darkness (restores lost memories and guides Break as needed, forms solid darkness/blood constructs by instinct or will, can enthrall vampires and cast illusions).

Bio: Break (if that is his real name!) is the ends-with-agonist of the story.

After being transported from Earth to the halls of Crimsonwood Keep (presumably following a run-in with Truck-kun, or Slow-Moving Tractor-kun, or an unwinnable murder dungeon, or a serial killer, bus accident, workplace karoshi incident, sleeping too hard, aliens putting a smart toilet in his brain, or an eldritch elemental deity got bored; who knows...?), all of his concrete memories vanish and he is left to survive his vampiric hostesses with nothing but intuition and a mysterious, possibly uncontrollable power running through his veins.

And that's probably more than I should have given away with the beginning of the story debuting tomorrow, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Heromachiner TimeDrop23,

Breaking Out.

Vampires Are Made #26: Isolde

2026-10-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Revived HeroMachiner.

It's the final day before I publish I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen, Ticketholders!

And I still have one more character to push out after this in order to make my deadline properly, so fingers crossed I can do it....

Before I drop the main character, though, here's Isolde. And before you ask, yes, her design is a Gothic Lolita, and no, the character does not and will not serve that purpose in the story, nor will any other character.

I was inspired by the Carmilla archetype (the "secretly smarter, more dangerous, and more mature than she looks and behaves" aspect, not the character's other undertones, because that's gross from all angles).

Her HeroMachine design below is fairly true to the generated chat image, though I couldn't find a long hair asset that I was satisfied with, so I went with the style you see here and changed her hair color to caramel tones because Carmilla pun.

Though I'm not as happy with the scale of her head as I was before I colored and shaded her (I would have to go back and re-size and reposition every individual gradient in her hair and face, and I don't have the time or patience to do so), I am proud of how I posed her to capture the whimsy of her personality.

Name: Isolde

Alias: Issy, "Child Bride," "Young Bride."

Allies: Queen Dara ("Mother"), "Big Sisters" Lilly and Mira, Break.

Enemies: Anyone who threatens her family.

Race: Vampire (former human)

Birthplace: Unknown

Powers/Abilities: Immortality and supernatural strength, speed, and senses as a Thirst-afflicted vampire, empathy, strong intuition, diplomacy, hybrid photographic/eidetic memory (particularly with literature), strong imagination, highly creative, able to assimilate the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of those she drinks from.

Bio: Isolde, the youngest of Vampire Queen Dara's three precious Brides (at least, in appearance), has always been a peculiar individual. Sired by Dara in a despair of solitude that her Majesty has regretted ever since, Isolde was trained to manipulate humans (tactics she employs on her "family" from time to time, as well) in service to her and her Mother's Thirst. However, this macabre upbringing only helped her shed her innate shyness, gave her the time and means to foster her imagination, and strengthened her empathetic nature. This latter quality sets her apart from the other vampires, and makes her an obvious target for those seeking to manipulate their way into the Queen's good graces. As such, Dara is most protective of her, treating Isolde as a daughter rather than the sired Bride she is.

Isolde is drawn to literature, particularly romance novels and stories with happy endings. Her love for literature often finds her lost in worlds of fantasy and fiction (as Big Sister Mira knows well), and yearning for new stories to come from beyond the walls of the Keep.

Oddly, Isolde's empathetic soul melded with the Thirst in such a way as to grant her bite the special properties mentioned above. She never feeds to kill, in accordance with her Mother's wishes (though her Big Sisters are not bound to the same rule), and is unable to sire vampires or thralls of her own.

When presented with a mortal she knows is not to be fed on, and whose past is a novel of the potentially unknowable, will Isolde take up the quill or happily become part of the unfolding narrative?

I have less than twenty-four hours left to create my main character and finish his post before my story's preview publishes, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Heromachiner TimeDrop23,

Out.

Vampires Are Made #25: Mirabelle

2026-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Transmuted HeroMachiner.

I suppose I should be careful about attributing myself with words that begin with "trans-". The president might shut down my blog and send me to a conversion camp in India because I'm part Cherokee and he's a complete imbecile.

But, fuck him (whether you read that with the intended comma or an extra "t," yes; both apply). And the same goes for the people who chose to discontinue Hanukkah and Halloween decorations at Party City because something, something, "Christian values," and where are my "National Puke On An Asshole's Face Day" decorations?

Oh; uh..., Happy early Halloween, Ticketholders! Sorry about that—or insert Demi Lovato reference here, because I meant every word—I tend to get woke and vulgar when I've had six hours of 5Hour Energy.

Wait; I have one more:

Anyway, I also used that extra energy to...Busta new HeroMachine design out for I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen (still coming on Monday).

Mirabelle the mad scientist Bride is definitely the design that comes closest to the chat image, with the exception of her hair color being a pale blonde here, the lower half of the character being all new (because portraits just be like that sometimes), her hands not being melted (because AI just be like that, period), and my choice to exaggerate her collar a bit more.

Name: Mirabelle

Alias: Mira, "The Mad Scientist."

Allies: Queen Dara, Lillianna, Isolde, Break (maybe?).

Enemies: Anyone who threatens her Queen and family, anyone who interferes with her...research, the Thirst.

Race: Vampire (former human)

Birthplace: Alkheim, Northeast Borderlands

Powers/Abilities: Immortality and supernatural strength, speed, and senses as a Thirst-afflicted vampire, skilled in surgical medicine, organic chemistry, phlebotomy, and alchemy, among other scientific and medical disciplines, obsessive personality.

Bio: Mirabelle was born and raised in Alkheim, an academy city of alchemists who lived on the outskirts of Tenebrous for centuries.

Sired because Queen Dara saw a practical use for her arcane scientific expertise (which she literally has forever to pursue, as a vampire), Mirabelle now resides in the Queen's Tenebrous home of Crimsonwood Keep as one of her three precious Brides. In the Keep, Mirabelle has access to her Majesty's vast library (where she often encounters the young Isolde, immersed in one story or another), as well as her own fully equipped laboratory complex.

Mirabelle's vampiric bloodlust is matched (or perhaps exceeded) only by her curiosity. Already considered something of a mad scientist in her human life, as a vampire, she developed an insatiable desire to analyze the intricacies of human biology to further her alchemical studies and aid in her Queen's search for a cure.

Mirabelle is the morbid apotheosis of "if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life;" her fascination with the workings of human bodies is equal to obsession, such that her "free time" is spent dissecting corpses, practicing transmutation magic, and indulging in other dark curiosities. She is driven to learn as much as possible about every organ, every system, and every mechanism down to a cellular level, and no body, living or dead, is the same in her eyes.

Mirabelle expresses a cold detachment towards most living mortals, and views herself as an artist in her own twisted way, using her unique gifts to create masterpieces with human flesh, as her Thirst-driven mind sees this as the only way to find a cure for vampirism.

Could the intriguing new mortal finally be the key she sought for so long, or will cutting too deep get her more that she bargained for?

Only I know the answer, so Stay Tuned for my Isolde design (but not the answer yet; the energy must be wearing off because that segue made no sense) coming soon to a blog...here.

Surprisingly, I passed ten thousand views already even though I barely posted anything this month. Thank you all for your patient engagement during my mental and virtual absence, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford more semicolons and energy drinks, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Heromachiner TimeDrop23,

Out.

Vampires Are Made #24: Lillianna

2026-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Revived HeroMachiner.

You might have noticed in my last post that the banner images are doing kind of a character select thing. Also, that said "select portraits" look like AI, and nothing like the HeroMachine designs I have created.
You would be correct in your observations, because Kindroid (the program I used to partially draft the chat log that serves as the base text for what you'll see in under a week) requires character avatars for the chat models and boasts an image generation feature. As HeroMachine was stuck in "Flash is dead" territory at the time and I was only using Kindroid to build chat lore (the narrative version of I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen is coming on Monday), I used said feature and came up with photorealistic portraits of the four vamps. For fun later, I ran them through an anime filter and got what you see at the top of each of these posts.

Lillianna's HeroMachine design (crafted in the program, in two days, by me, not using AI outside of the aforementioned images I used for inspiration) is based on Aeon Flux, fashion-wise.

Despite having pointed ears, she was once human, so rather than incorporating vampiric features like fangs or the Queen's silvery hair, I took liberties with her original design based on things I wrote into the narrative and her bio (seen below), such as her affinity with the Thirst, her history of abuse as a mortal, and her big, gnarly sword.

I could have gone all-in on giving her design more scars and outfitting her with strapped-on weapons, but less is more (unless you're talking about available time and energy; that's where less is less), and who doesn't like a massive, nasty-looking anime sword?

Name: Lillianna

Alias: Sword Of the Queen, Lily

Allies: Queen Dara, Isolde, Mirabelle, Break (maybe?).

Enemies: Humanity (including Break?), anyone else she views as prey, anyone who threatens her Queen and family.

Race: Vampire (former human)

Birthplace: Unknown, presumably a village bordering Tenebrous.

Powers/Abilities: Immortality and supernatural speed, strength, and senses as a Thirst-afflicted vampire, skilled with various bladed weapons, hand-to-hand combat, hunting and tracking, and various interrogation and torture methods.

Bio: Though she would never admit it to a "lesser creature," Lillianna didn't always have a sadistic, mysanthropic streak. Life in the borderlands exposed her to the worst humanity had to offer, twisting her once innocent soul for the benefit of the greedy, violent, and depraved, as she was subjected to treatment too disturbing to put in words. In Lillianna's mind, her resulting hatred of those who were once her kind gave her a free license of hypocrisy to repay them in terror of equal measure. She would become an object of their desire...and their fear; they would beg for death for as long as she chose to deny it.

Eventually, Lillianna would cross paths with the Vampire Queen of Tenebrous, who was intrigued by her bloodlust (recognizing it as a Thirst of sorts) and offered to be her sire, which she obviously accepted.

Thereafter, Lillianna would be known and feared across the realms as the Sword Of the Queen, Dara's personal enforcer, huntress, and inquisitor in matters where...indelicacy was required. She yields to none but her Queen, who gave her what she believes is her means of transcending the humanity she despises.

But now, she and her new kind are presented with a strange human male possessed of the instinct to see through her (and maybe the power to give her a proper challenge...or worse, remind her what it means to be a helpless pawn of man).

I know AI is a sore subject these days, Ticketholders, but I hope you continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Next will be the obsessive mad scientist Bride, Mirabelle, so Stay Tuned to see if I can produce three more characters of satisfactory quality before Monday, or if October will end on less-than-hallowed terms.

Heromachiner TimeDrop23,

Out.

Vampires Are Made #23: Dara the Vampire Queen

2026-10-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Revived HeroMachiner.

The Countdown to One Thousand Posts begins in earnest here, with my...Phoenix (Edition)-like return to HeroMachine, which I used today, in combination with a borrowed laptop and copious amounts of caffeine and sugar (not literally, because that would destroy my friend's laptop and our friendship, and waste perfectly good coffee) to bring you the titular Vampire Queen of my soon-to-be-published light-novel-in-progress, I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen. When you're doing a Gothic fantasy isekai action harem...thing, a Vampire Queen is a very important place to start, I decided.

I also decided, somewhere between the original chat text and the finished...ish narrative version that making bloodthirsty monsters sympathetic is as hard as it is awkward and necessary. Each is a walking contradiction that I had some measure of fun (?) doing my best to explore and exploit.

Name: Dara

Alias: Vampire Queen Of Crimsonwood Keep

Allies: Lillianna, Mirabelle, Isolde, Elves, Vampires, and Break (maybe?).

Enemies: Any who threaten her rule or her three Brides. The Thirst.

Race: Vampire (former human)

Birthplace: Northern Midlands (human), Tenebrous (vampire)

Powers/Abilities: Immortality and supernatural strength, speed, and senses as a Thirst-afflicted vampire, skilled in swordsmanship, marksmanship, witchcraft, Elven magic (particularly healing), diplomacy, and piano.

Bio: Born millennia ago into a coven of witches residing in the Northern Midlands of her world, Dara became a Vampire by arcane means that were lost to time immemorial. Having since single-handedly conquered the nightmarish central realm known as Tenebrous, she took up residence in Crimsonwood Keep and declared herself Queen Of Vampires and of the Tenebrous realm itself.

Despite her title, Dara the Vampire Queen would only ever sire three more of her kind, not wishing to spread her accursed Thirst more than necessary.

These are her Brides: the sadistic Lillianna (who serves as her right hand when diplomacy fails, and seems to embrace the Thirst as much as desire a cure), the obsessive Mirabelle (who understands her Queen's quest to end their curse, and employs...questionable methods to find answers), and the bookish Isolde (whom she sired first out of eternal loneliness, and loves and dotes on like a daughter). Queen Dara is fiercely protective of them, both as means to her end, and as her twisted family.

Her long existence has led her to treat the needs of her Thirst as a matter of course, keeping such romantic ideals as hope and joy compartmentalized as she rules Tenebrous with an iron fist, holding rival monsters and invasions from nearby human kingdoms at bay. When not negotiating such matters (or dealing with them by force), she spends her time feeding, reading the ancient tomes of her coven, and playing piano (sometimes for herself, sometimes for visiting dignitaries, and sometimes for her Brides).

Despite the often intimidating presence that her monstrous nature, royal standing, and duties imply, Dara has a soft spot for the Elven kingdom to the north, who taught her coven healing magic when she was a mortal witch.

But how will she react when a mysterious mortal man suddenly appears in the halls of her castle?

Big thanks go out to Jeff Hebert and the HeroMachine community (that I plan to try rejoining on an active basis soon) for the new assets I used to make the Queen's dress, and for making the new version of HeroMachine, period.

Next to come will be the sultry, sadistic Lillianna. Yes, I am aware of my phrasing. Can I produce four more characters of satisfactory quality in the next seven days, or will the month end on less-than-hallowed terms? Stay Tuned to find out if I'll wind up in a Dark place because I suck, or if I can catch a Break, next time, on Draggin' My Feetz!

And as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Heromachiner TimeDrop23,

Out.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #66: Zombies - The Cursed

2026-09-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Brains.

One is a genius, the other's insane, and they both taste like chicken. What's in your head, Voodoo Child?

Mmm...; chicken and Cranberries....

I wish I could stop making these random music references, but I'm not the one who's so far away, and thanks to the coffee I drank yesterday afternoon, there'll be No Sleep 'til Brooklyn.

At least that last one didn't have anything to do with zombies, right?

By the time this is published (or maybe even as I'm writing it), Just the Ticket will have passed another unprecedented milestone of thirty thousand views for the month. In the interest of keeping the Countdown to One Thousand Posts at as gradual a pace as possible, I'll be putting the final view tally on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn at the beginning of October instead of in a Time Drops, Anime Spotlight, Omnibusted/Retrospective, or other post, so as to save space for my milestone project. But thank you all in advance for keeping this passion of mine evolving from a shambling gait to turbo status. Shameless plugs!

Speaking of shameless plugs, I'm happy to announce (I know I'm late to the results, but I'll take any sign that disproves a societal apocalypse) that robots did not win America's Got Talent. It was a heavy metal guitar genius named Nene Royal. She even got to duet with Linkin Park, and it was fucking awesome, just like all of you.

The other shameless plug is that from the second season onward, To Your Eternity had the Nokkers take on zombie-like qualities, and Season Three dealt with people living out of time, which kind of makes this a theme week because of what I'm reviewing today.

Unleashed Tie-In

Zombies: The Cursed

As with the other short miniseries that tie into Unleashed, Zombies: The Cursed was compiled with another three-issue series (it's obvious which one) in the Zombies & Demons Trade Paperback.

The cover is by Stjepan Šejić, and is also the A Cover for Grimm Universe #5. Why Masumi (the Demon slayer) is on the Zombies side of the cover and what Samantha has to do with anything are questions I can't answer at the moment, but I do know that Elijah isn't on the cover because he isn't a woman in a skintight costume, and sexy covers are what sell Zenescope comics (even though the interior content can be pretty good most of the time). There's no bonus material in Zombies & Demons, but like with Vampires & Werewolves, the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Ivan Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review a few weeks ago.

So, I get my answers about Samantha (including why she isn't in the Sanctum at the end of the Timelost short) immediately. She's been out, blasting through the Zombie hordes and her stamina meter, looking for Elijah.

Not to devalue the man, but he's just a man with muscles. How can he be the best Zombie-killer on Earth when the two women trying to find him can fly and shoot magic lasers from their hands? Hell, Sela could probably just nuke them all with the Gold and cure the curse forever; we've seen it work on spiritual infections before. The Gold might even work on Vampires. And Werewolves. Maybe Demons, too.

But magic is unreliable, I guess, which is why Samantha is playing a Survivaton wherever the fuck she is instead of going straight to New Orleans, where Elijah is.

In modern day, Elijah visits a bokor (who looks like the necromancer from the Christmas Edition and Realm Knights One-Shot, but can't be the same character because that one was killed and this takes place after those events) in search of a ring with immense importance, if not immense power.

In the past, we see Elijah as a slave on the Fontaine plantation, romantically involved with the Master's daughter, Cassidy. But it's short-lived as the couple are caught by Fontaine and Elijah rebels, fleeing with Cassidy and having his first encounter with the undead (here raised by Haitian magic instead of being the viral version known to modern viewers).

While Elijah in the present steals the ring from a descendant of his who runs some kind of hostess café (and she later discovers who he is, but doesn't know the difference between antebellum and post-war), the flashback continues with him and Cassidy on the run from Fontaine and his Haitian house-boy's Zombies, and shows his first encounter with the Hunters. It's a beautiful but chaotic double-spread that fades up from Elijah in sepiatone into full color where the Hunters are arriving to kick undead ass.

From then into the next page, the flashback is in full color as Elijah keeps fighting off the growing mob of the Cursed, alongside Roman, but seemingly fails to protect Cassidy.

Into the present, the descendant finds Elijah having dug a hole, but won't get the answers she wants just yet, as the dead are beginning to rise.

And it's Cassidy.

Which we know because her hair hasn't completely rotted yet, unlike the rest of her. I thought it was silly, but apparently hair takes longer to decompose than the rest of the body, so it's realistic?

Cassidy being a Zombie also means that Zenescope is combining the voodoo origins of the undead with their cinematic lore, because one of the cliffhangers of Part 2 suggested (and the flashback here showed) that she was killed by Zombies, and therefore received their curse, with the only means of freeing one being decapitation or destruction of the brain.

As for why Elijah wanted the ring so badly, it turns out that it was Fontaine's, allowing him to raise and control the dead (though neither he nor the Haitian were ever drawn wearing it until this issue), and Elijah wanted to use the ring to raise Cassidy and free her from the curse.

Problem is, every other Zombie in the graveyard was also raised. So the issue turns into an Evil Dead movie for a bit while Elijah fights with a shotgun and razor whip to protect his descendant until Samantha finally shows up to save the day. It's pretty badass and serves more as a redemptive moment for him than a typical action climax (saving his bloodline, in contrast to the events of the flashback, where Cassidy was killed and he had to entrust his infant son and his dead master's ring to Sela, whom he barely knew). It's not devoid of action, but the action was clearly less important than the story being told, and that was different enough that I could notice it and appreciate it.

Samantha being the Guardian Of the Nexus but beholden to her own weariness and reluctant optimism (and to Sela) has gotten old, and will continue to age like a dolphin milk and grape soda cocktail in Death Valley, but her banter with Elijah is kind of somberly cute, and I'm disappointed that more wasn't done with them once the Being was dealt with.

Stay Tuned because I'm going on hiatus this October to get my milestone project finished.

Omnibuster,

Out.

Anime Spotlight #82: To Your Eternity (2026 Update)

2026-09-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson
a.k.a. the Anime Toastmaster

When people say hello to you, please remember to acknowledge them. Especially if they're providing you a service; servers and service providers are not your servants, despite starting with the same four letters. For example, "fuck" also begins many words and phrases, some of which have vastly different meanings. You can even create whole sentences with them, such as "Fuck off, you fucking fuckwit," but since saying that at work would get me fired, it's best if you just take a second to say hello to me instead of demanding whatever it is your addicted mind believes you cannot function without. Unless that's just how you greet people in your language; I don't mean to judge, if that's the case. But if you do say hello by saying "hello," I'll feel like I have value, and you get to have whatever family-friendly whatchamacallit fills your empty hole at the moment. It's a win-win, and it doesn't cost anything but your words and your time.

Also (since I made this a thing in my last To Your Eternity post FROM September 19, 2022), it's important to exchange pleasantries because according to National Day Calendar, today is Family Day and Good Neighbor Day. And (because this becomes important in Season Three) September is the month of Self-Care Awareness, Self-Improvement, and Suicide Prevention. Now let's have some Strawberry Cream Pie, Drink A Beer, and try not to get Rabies!

Here's To Your Eternity:

To Your Eternity is an anime adaptation of a thought-provoking manga by Yoshitoki Ōima (A Silent Voice) that follows its main character across boundaries of time that are beyond the understanding of mortal beings (with a similar, depressing but profound vibe to Frieren). Set in a primitive world (like Dr. Stone) and visually stunning (like Vivy), To Your Eternity follows Fushi, a shapeshifting, immortal being that begins Its life as an orb, but through chance encounters with a boy and his dog (and later, countless other life forms), gains powerful friendships, new experiences and memories, and (upon the deaths of those he is close with) new forms and abilities. Along his journey of self-discovery, Fushi not only makes friends, but enemies mortal and immortal alike (including the obsessive warrior woman Hayase, the soul-devouring Nokkers—essentially a dark mirror equivalent to Fushi that exist to hunt and feed on him—and the Beholder, a.k.a. the "Black One," who is Fushi's creator and mostly passive observer). The character development arcs of Fushi and those who pass through his long life are engaging, well-written, often heartbreaking, and definitely not worth spoiling here.

The series uses Fushi and his companions as allegories to explore themes of death, grief, memory and loss thereof, self-actualization (being oneself vs. the combination of people and experiences that affect one's life), religious fanaticism, spirituality, fate, love, and gender fluidity (including the opening theme, "Pink Blood," which is performed by Hikaru Utada, a highly regarded, non-binary, Japanese pop artist; it's slow and melancholy at first, but turns into quite the bop, and it was good enough to remain the OP for the first two seasons, where most anime change themes seasonally, if not by cour).

At the time of my original Anime Spotlight, Wikipedia said there were four seasons of the show, with only two having seen production due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the conclusion of the third season, it seems that was just Wikipedia being Wikipedia, as there was no teaser for a fourth season and no mention of any further production despite the concluded manga having more material to adapt. And although the second season makes suicide a tactical plot convenience and almost turns Fushi into the personification of a micro-managing surveillance state, To Your Eternity is well worth watching (and bingeing multiple times)...to a point.

That's what I thought throughout the first two seasons. But the third season was...difficult to watch for several reasons, and with how neatly the second season wrapped up Fushi's conflict with the Nokkers (all of them dead, Hayase's bloodline seemingly terminated, Fushi achieving an omnipotent and omnipresent state and figuring out that he can resurrect the dead, his mortal friend group reviving to live out their days naturally, etc.), a third entry also felt unnecessary.

A hundred years after the supposedly definitive victory against the Nokkers, Fushi revives his friends in a fictional version of the modern world (they've just been waiting around as ghosts the entire time, because they love him that much, I guess, which is disturbing, but not the most disturbing thing about this season), where they are forced to acclimate to a foreign culture and drastic improvements in technology while Prince Bon (the flamboyant Prince facsimile in the Season 2 poster, who can see ghosts) and his propaganda foundation throw money at whatever problems they have. Unfortunately, the Nokkers have also been waiting around in Paradise (this series' afterlife dimension) for a century, and can just come back to the living world any time and with any size and abilities they choose, so following the advice of the Nokker who had been a legacy of Hayase's bloodline, they hide on Earth en masse at a size Fushi cannot detect, and begin infecting the bodies of people with suicidal tendencies so they can take over when their hosts choose to ride the sewer slide to an empty save file. It's an obvious homage to films like Invasion Of the Body-Snatchers or The Faculty (especially the latter) that I don't think handles its subject matter with the greatest sensitivity or the clearest message. Is it healthier to share your burdens or hold them as your own unique challenges? Would the person that everyone else wants you to be live your life better than the person you are? Is the pain of enduring your anguish worth the search for someone who understands that anguish? Season 3 doesn't seem to know or clearly present a satisfactory answer. And it doesn't help that the initial focus of this is a timid preschool girl and her adoptive masochistic NEET pedophile father-brother...which is coded as a warm, healthy relationship (when the girl's Nokker version isn't trussing him like a baked ham and taking a cat-o'-nine-tails to his love handles) because Japravity is funny?

Add on the main plot where Fushi constantly abandons the friends he literally ghosted for a century so he can fight the Nokkers without them knowing, but fails at saving a descendant of Hayase (because overt BDSM and suggestions of pedophilia are okay to depict, but villain sex happens offscreen so the plot can exist) from her family's cult because he doesn't know what love is despite having witnessed it and sensed the associated emotions dozens of times (and even called out a few characters on their repressed romantic feelings in the second season). At least the third season competently handles the dilemma of trying to keep others happy to make yourself happy, versus finding peace in letting others be happy. Too bad the way Fushi learns this is when he has a birth orgasm as a dead pregnant turtle, and then almost has a Mommy Dearest breakdown when the circle of life decides his children look delicious. Yes, I'm serious. These are things that actually happened in an anime I watched this week. In an anime I used to revere.

And the solution that the series comes up with by the end? If the Nokkers can't be killed permanently, and they're everywhere,

the theory is to treat them like humans (with enhanced strength and agility, a healing factor, viral ecology, mind control, motor control, telepathy, and tentacle powers, but whatever), right down to having legal consequences for criminal activity and giving people voluntary access to inoculation against possession. Life is a choice, death is a choice, letting a Lovecraftian soul monster have its way with your corpse is a choice, and welcome to Whose Eternity Is It Anyway?, where the plot is bullshit and choices don't matter, but at least I get to make a joke about the male villains having huge Nokkers.

There's plenty more I could criticize, but I lack the drive to put that much extra emotional investment into a series that took so long (roughly two and a half years) to drop the ball (puns! Because Fushi was an orb!) this hard. No wonder the anime isn't getting a fourth season.

I was wrong about this being the end of my September content, so Stay Tuned for my real final review of the month (a Zenescope - Omnibusted on Zombies: The Cursed).

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because all I wanted was a Pepsi, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

And if you or someone you know is contemplating self-harm over self-care, there is a lifeline with resources and a better means of addressing the topic than did the series I reviewed above.

Animeister,

Out.

Just the Ticket #236: Shin Godzilla

2026-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

I'm at a point, Ticketholders. Some might call it a Singular Point.

The Just the Ticket Countdown to One Thousand Posts is now in the single digits. This is my last live-action Goj-Year-ra project review, and I had so much planned for the last three months of 2026 that it's bearing down on me, and it doesn't feel like I'm going to be able to do it all.

So here's the thought: I'm going to finish September with To Your Eternity as planned, and devote October to finishing my milestone project (which, hint: it's about vampires, and it's isekai fiction) for release on Monday the 26th. All other plans will be postponed until I finish editing the story to my satisfaction, and the release will be preceded by sporadic Heroes Are Made posts featuring characters from the story. I have more conceived than what I am releasing, so the story will continue beyond what you read later next month, and more characters will coincide with those releases.

Also, September has been my best month ever in terms of view traffic, having surpassed twenty-five thousand as I write this.

So, another big thank you to everyone who's been giving this nigh-obsolete passion of mine the time of day. You are awesome.

Now that I can breathe, let's get into Shin Godzilla.

Apparently, Godzilla: Final Wars underperformed, underwhelmed, and underpants'd so hard that Toho took it as a sign to put the franchise on an indefinite hiatus that lasted twelve years (ten, if you count what Legendary Pictures did). The next entry sought to answer the question, "what if Godzilla was also Hedorah, Destoroyah, and a little bit Monster X?" Said answer was 2016's Shin Godzilla (which, fittingly, was also ten years ago).

Co-directed by Hideaki Anno (the Evangelion franchise) and frequent collaborator Shinji Higuchi, with Evangelion composer Shirō Sagisu providing the score (he even includes a rock arrangement of "Decisive Battle" that rings a bit of Wolfmother's "Dimension," and it will have free rent in my head for at least another week), Shin Godzilla is a commentary on rigid Japanese bureaucracy that uses its monster as an allegory for the 3/11/11 Tōhoku earthquake/tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, incorporating the classic film's Hiroshima PTSD themes, a bit of Return Of Godzilla's Cold War paranoia undertones, and a pinch of the Millennium Era's need to take the piss out of American Godzilla adaptations.

The movie opens similarly to how Return Of Godzilla did, aboard a mysteriously abandoned ship (but through a literal found-footage lens, as if showing us what Cloverfield could have been like if it was good) belonging to a disgraced marine biologist named Goro Maki (seen only as a photo, using the likeness of the late Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo director, Kihachi Okamoto). If that character name sounds familiar, it recurs throughout the franchise, particularly in Return Of Godzilla (the protag journalist, played by Ken Tanaka) and Son Of Godzilla (the horngry reporter who drops out of the sky and won't stop taking pictures of everything, played by Akira Kubo, of Invasion Of Astro-Monster). But here, there are suggestions that the vanished professor Maki had something to do with Gojira that goes beyond its discovery (like he catalyzed or fused with the creature), so maybe Shin Godzilla has a bit of Terror Of Mechagodzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante in its DNA (so to speak)?

The boat is soon attacked (because that's a staple of Godzilla movies), and the Tokyo Bay Aqua Line (which was planned at UA High School in Godzilla vs Destoroyah, remember?) is flooded with the blood of the creature that sank Maki's boat.

While this is shocking, horrifying imagery to be sure, the first thirty-ish minutes of the movie are less kaiju horror than parody and satire. The human dialogue throughout Shin Godzilla (there are exceptions that I will praise later) consists mainly of red tape, handshaky brown-nosing, disingenuous press conferences, enough quid-pro-quos to make Trump seem selflessly philanthropic, a ludicrous chain of command (the JASDF have to wait and wade through a seven-layer bean dip of confirmations before they are allowed to fire on Godzilla, and then propagate the order back through to not shoot when one of the gunners sees civilians in the blast zone), and Bubsy levels of foot-in-mouth intellectualism that reminded me of the scientist in Godzilla vs Hedorah (the guy who said tadpoles can't evolve to come on land; Shin Godzilla has the same line, almost verbatim).

No sooner do the "experts" conclude that the creature is unable to come ashore, than it grows legs and begins crashing through and bleeding on everything in sight...and it's a big, dumb-looking, undead sock puppet thing that instantly made me think of the Wilkins Coffee mascot.

Also, its tail in any form reminds me of the massive shit I took this morning.

Yeah; I could not take Shin Godzilla seriously for about a half an hour. Hot take, please don't shoot.

Speaking of shooting, it's time to talk about the few characters who matter among the clusterfuck legion of bureaucratic NPCs that fill any and every given conference room set that was available, starting with Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa, of the first live-action Attack On Titan movies). Yes, his first name is Rando. It's Hepburn (what was once referred to as "Engrish" in my insensitive generation) for "land," according to Google Translate, but the modern Western slang definition is obvious. His last name, by the same source, means something like "arrow mouth." So, he's just some guy who shoots his mouth off, and despite the frustratingly laughable (by design) writing of almost everyone of "merit" and "authority" in this bloated, tangled, suffocating (again, by design) cast of armchair-warmers, it is his rogue mindset that ends up helping to minimize casualties, facilitate the dissemination of ideas, and generally create flexibility and efficiency in Japan's response to the Gojira threat, ultimately saving the country from becoming a puppeted nuclear wasteland of the United States (that's where Return's Cold War dynamic and Gojira's themes are best used, via a ticking clock plot and some dialogue of actual substance). Helping him acquire information and coordinate with the US (and later, French) government is Kayoco Anne Patterson (the beautiful Satomi Ishihara, of the Sadako 3D films, who was frustrated to tears by her English-heavy dialogue). Though she uses her attractiveness to her advantage a few times, it's never made the point of the character (because she's credible and ambitious and good at her job), and her interactions with Rando are more like they're new work friends facing a daunting challenge, rather than defaulting to an odd-couple romance trope, and I appreciated that.

We also have two returning actors, with Akira Emoto (my favorite character in Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla) as the Secretary to the Prime Minister,

and Jun Kunimura (Final Wars) as the Chief of Staff. Emoto is the standout of the two returnees, as he's given a lot to do dramatically, and plays the beleaguered bureaucrat to the same standard as his previous role.

Much like with Godzilla 2000, there comes a point where Shin Godzilla starts to feel like a Godzilla movie. And for me, that point was when the giant, amphibious Wilkins Coffee zombie took a little time away from the camera and returned looking like Godzilla. And roaring like Godzilla. And breathing atomic fire like Godzilla. Somebody stop me before I break into a Godzilla-themed parody of the Gaston song from Beauty & The Beast; the Ifukube stock music wouldn't fit it very well.

But my point is that "ShinGoji" (motion-captured by Mansai Nomura, who played Abe no Seimei in the Onmyoji films) is the most terrifying that a Godzilla has ever been, basically having real-time, call-and-response, body-horror evolution, and being viscerally unpleasant to look at in the best way possible. I still prefer Heisei Godzilla as a design and a performance, though, and Shin Godzilla's Gojira origins are derivative and borderline silly to describe out loud.

But I'll try....

Here, Godzilla is a prehistoric organism mutated by American toxic waste (that's where the shots at Godzilla 1998 and Godzilla 2014, and the environmental messaging of Godzilla vs Hedorah, come in) and possibly possessed by the vengeful spirit of Goro Maki (ditto the Biollante and Terror Of Mechagodzilla parallels).

That said, the destruction Godzilla causes is beautifully tragic to watch, the tank choreography as the Defense Force engages with Godzilla is almost dance-like, the race to formulate and mass-produce a cryo-coagulant to stop Godzilla before the US arrives to nuke him is rife with tension and interpersonal drama, the plan actually works (though Godzilla could easily thaw himself out and continue to evolve into millions of humanoid nightmares in the hypothetical sequel), and the message, while blunt, was left to visual and performative delivery. Without social and historical context, I don't know that I'd appreciate what Shin Godzilla was conveying as much as I do, but I did, despite the apparent tonal shift and goofy creature design choices, and I didn't hate the viewing experience. For me, Shin Godzilla is not the Mount Rushmore masterpiece it's generally been received as, but given its native importance, it's certainly deserving of being the second-highest (soon to be third?) earning Godzilla film ever, and of winning seven of the eleven Japan Academy Film Prizes (equivalent to the Oscars) it was nominated for.

B+

Stay Tuned for my final review of September (I have eighteen episodes left of my To Your Eternity binge), and there won't be a Time Drops for October because work on my big milestone project takes precedent.

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #65: Vampires - The Eternal

2026-09-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Eternal Omnibuster.

Maybe not quite eternal, because I'm just some aging mortal publishing my thoughts into the æther while computers occupy our physical, mental, and emotional lives, everything is an overpriced service you can't own because disposable income doesn't exist anymore, and Japanese robots get the opportunity to win an American reality competition for humans judged by a Canadian, a Scott, a Colombian, a German, and a Brit. Psycho TV, indeed.

My point isn't about the "non-American" opinions influencing the results of a particular genre of television (diverse opinions are among the most American ideals possible, and the influence is more in the hands of the roomful of screaming idiots behind them and the inconsistent act-to-act production value that gets hashed out backstage because bias is everywhere) because I'm not a hateful, racist asshole like those "fascism is misunderstood, ackshully" eX-Twitter twats I run into online occasionally. The "AGT judges are dual citizens" thing has been a "joke" for as long as I can remember. My real issue is the slippery slope that's getting Acme axle-greased as we speak if we let robots win a human talent competition. The "humans need talent to build and program dancing robots" argument has used what ground it has for as long as it can, and said ground is eroding under the machines' weight as we speak. That's a job skill, not a talent. Humans have talents. Talent deserves to win talent shows. Humans deserve to win talent shows with their talents. Not. Fucking. Robots.

Follow-up point: the world sucks (pun intended), and I helped make it that way. Not by voting for those currently in power in my country (I have common sense), but by growing up in and contributing to 90s commercial culture, which has shaped the media we consume today and influenced the intelligence (and lack thereof) of subsequent generations. Do as I say, not as I've done, or the next live-action Disney remake will be Wall-E, starring us. I don't need to tell you what characters we are (or maybe I do because of what characters we are).

*Deep, sighing breath...*

Speaking of talent, though, I hope you all enjoyed the little flashback to my youth that I shared last Monday. For a bit of experimentation, I wrote some new verses to the "Desert Life" poem and put the updated version on Patreon for $3. So now, I'm a cynic, false immortal, Omnibuster, mad scientist, and possible fool. But whatever you call me, I'm still a Blogger at heart. So let's get to talking about Vampires: The Eternal.

Unleashed Tie-In

Vampires: The Eternal

As it was only three issues long, Vampires: The Eternal (and its trilogy of Helsing-focused short stories that were paired with each issue and got duplicate prints as bonus material) was compiled with the three issues of Werewolves: The Hunger in the Vampires & Werewolves Trade Paperback (duh). The Trade cover re-uses Unleashed #1's A Cover by Ivan Nunes, and the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review a few weeks back.

Before I begin, if you're out of the loop, check out my previous Unleashed reviews of A Shadow Falls, The Game, Day Breaks (which explains my revised plans for the coming weeks because the Zenescope wiki's reading order was wrong), and Hunters: The Shadowlands (the latter two of which are linked above).

In the Hunters miniseries, Vampires: The Eternal is referenced in an Editor's Note as being Samira's origin story, and that's only partly true.

In keeping with the Unleashed event's lack of will to commit to a timeline, we cold-open on a woman being chased. This stretch of five pages is one twist after another despite not being of much consequence to the story, but does a lot to establish Samira's ruthless nature and contradiction of a superiority complex.

Flashback to Oxford, England in 1348 (a place and time, yay!), when a mortal Samira was at the mercy of the Black Death. That goes double because not only is she about to die of the actual plague that had hit its epidemic peak at the time, but she is soon turned by a member of a vampire "collective" also calling themselves the Black Death. Again feeding (puns!) into her character establishment, they comment on her religious devotion (an easily corruptible asset, as we know) and plague-tainted blood.

Back in the present, Samira returns to the arctic sky palace that the Being made for her in Day Breaks, where she's gathered a brain trust of witches and wizards (some captured under duress, maybe?) to construct a vampire-detection and teleportation system, which guides her and Ravenous to Paris. The low-angle panel of them arriving in front of the Eiffel Tower is gorgeous, so spend as much time on it as you like because what follows is a long-winded speech from Samira about faith and destiny and hardship and togetherness under her one, true god and master while you're counting and recognizing the silhouettes she's talking at and waiting painfully for the obvious reveal that after roughly seven centuries, she's found the Order Of the Black Death again. Great thematic juxtaposition with Sela and the Hunters here (since Samira is kind of set up as the focal villain of the event despite not being the main threat, and the Black Death are basically her lost quartet, assuming they make it out of this three-parter), but that speech was agony.

Immediately, we get a sense of how well the Black Death collective (which sounds like a psychedelic goth band from the sixties) are going to fare in Samira's company, as she has a long memory for both love and hate.

There's Blaine (who is insane but not a pain, nor a train) the de-facto leader who sired Samira so she kind of has the hots for him, Fatima and Mund, who are also there, and Vanessa the high-society blonde from the B Cover by Sean Chen and Juan Fernandez. She is Blaine's sire, and wanted to leave Samira for dead when the collective first found her, so she's obviously marked for death (which is probably preferable to watching Marked For Death). Also, France has its own anti-Highborn hit squad...or did until they realized Vampires aren't of the Realms and can't be killed by conventional weapons.

As the flashback continues into 1680s Spain (where the reign of Blaine falls mainly on the plain), he drops lore that Death is a woman (so, say goodbye to Morrigan, Alicia, Hades—not so much—and Nox, because when Keres gets here, there will be No Tomorrow...except that she's already appeared in Down the Rabbit Hole, but this is meant to be one of those "read too fast and you'll miss it" kinds of things that makes a second reading like this really fun), and Samira leaves the group over creative differences (the Black Death want to live a comfortable eternity in Europe, and she wants to conquer the New World like the lovechild of Blackbeard and Yoko Ono).

Back in the present day, Samira brings the Black Death to the arctic sky palace, we learn that Blaine likes pain and Vanessa (obviously) isn't keen on living at the mercy of her mortal-minded, infantile grand-thrall of a self-proclaimed Queen.

You can't say their relationship has no stakes...!

The final issue begins with Linda (a witch who was working for Samira in exchange for the promise of curing her son's terminal cancer with vampirism) getting a flashback straight out of One Piece (because it explains the sick loved one motivation for warning Samira of a threat she already knew about, and then Linda dies offscreen).

Samira's catfight with Vanessa gets treated with Big Finale Energy and there's tons of background carnage (mostly beheading and dismemberment imagery as Ravenous comes to her aid and the Black Death wreak havoc on the palace), culminating in Samira killing her lover and sire Blaine for his fair-weather faith, granting Linda's request as a dying wish, and reaffirming her own faith in the Being.

I didn't expect to like Samira going into this miniseries, and I don't, because she is a pompous, fanatically religious, petty, gluttonous virus in human form. She's a villain and a monster. Period. That's three periods in a row; I hope she's thirsty.... But contrary to what modern, media-illiterate discourse believes, fictional villains don't have to be likable to be compelling, and the things that make her unlikable (as well as the one, potentially likable quality she has—that being her Queenly honor) are what make her compelling.

Not the peak of Shandian writing as plots go (if you've seen one "sanctuary" narrative before, you've also seen all the other allegories for why we can't have nice things), and pretty predictable (everyone you expect to die, dies), but as a supplemental character study, it's solid, and the art (by Vittorio Garofoli and Slamet Mujiono) is gorgeous.

Van Helsing

Speaking of great character pieces, this trilogy of shorts was published at the end of each issue of Vampires: The Eternal, and follows Liesel Van Helsing from her return from the Shadowlands (an absence she defines at one hundred years) to her mid-fight reunion with Sela in Day Breaks.

On her quest to reunite with the other Hunters and "the sister [her] father didn't survive to give" (damn, that's powerful), Van Helsing learns to cope with a century of monster PTSD and temporal displacement...and to use the internet. This shows that the events of The Summoning happened fairly recently, but also mentions Bad Girls, The Lockdown, and The Return, so now she knows that Sela is alive.

Liesel's quest continues in Masumi: the Silent Assassin, where internet searches for supernatural activity unite the Unleashed event's two best new characters, as the title suggests. It's short and uneventful, and the exposition censors "God" like Zenescope is trying to please the illusory monetization standards of the YouTube algorithm or something, but there's a little bit of existentialism talk about whether they're back on Earth or in a special kind of Hell (which isn't censored?) before Masumi uses her swords to transport Van Helsing to Sela.

Finally, Van Helsing: Timelost brings us to the midst of battle, where she and Sela were reunited as previously mentioned.

Cut to what looks like the Inner Sanctum (so Samantha is there offscreen, maybe, but you know how strongholds can be in the Grimm Universe...), presumably after Belinda rescued everyone because she's actually there, and the found sisters hash out their century-long baggage of grief, remorse, and mild jealousy really damned quick. I also found it mildly amusing that Belinda (who is largely to blame for Sela not trying to free the Hunters or stop the Being, on account of all the Timepiece-related memory manipulation) is just chilling in the corner with an ancient tome while they reconnect.

Stay Tuned for my final live-action Goj-Year-ra project review while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.

Just the Ticket #235: Godzilla - Final Wars

2026-09-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

Today, Ticketholders, Goj-Year-ra coverage of the Millennium Era ends not with a bang, but with a cheap, nauseating whimper of insincere flattery and poorly butchered pandering, topped with sixty-nine slices of expired cheese offscreen, and served under orange lighting in a mercury-plated toilet upholstered with glossy leather. While the toilet is flushing. And exploding.

In 2004, for the fiftieth anniversary of Gojira, Toho and director Ryuhei Kitamura (who would go on to direct The Midnight Meat Train, but also directed a film called Sky High—not the one about the superhero school with Kurt Russell, but if it was, the visuals in this movie would surprise me even less than they already don't) brought us Godzilla: Final Wars. It's essentially a remake of Destroy All Monsters and Invasion Of Astro-Monster with an extra, derivative word salad of absurdity to the human plot thrown on top, based on a script by Wataru Mimura (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla) and Isao Kiriyama (who wrote for most of Kitamura's films), right down to the Xliens/Xillians/X-ians being the villains and mind-controlling kaiju to subjugate humanity. Collecting their franchise paychecks for a few minutes of screen time each are Kumi Mizuno (Invasion Of Astro-Monster and Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep), Kenji Sahara (Gojira, King Kong vs Godzilla, and Mothra vs Godzilla), Masato Ibū (Godzilla vs Megaguirus), Kenta Suga (Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.), Akira Nakao (the Kiryu Saga), and Akira Takarada (Gojira, Mothra vs Godzilla, Invasion Of Astro-Monster, Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep, and Godzilla vs Mothra).

But you wouldn't know that because the opening credits are so extra as to be borderline illegible (the lightning effects, the half-revealed, over-textured font, each name being onscreen no longer than a modern Crunchyroll subtitle, etc.). In fact, the entire first ten minutes of Final Wars is siezure- and/or vomit-inducing to look at, from the opening Atragon homage (where Manda looks like Shenron from Dragon Ball: Evolution and the sequence looks like it was filmed and composited during an actual earthquake), to the over-edited wannabe Matrix fight between Xavier and Magneto (I will explain shortly) that hits more like Ultrviolet or Ecks vs Sever and looks like a drunk David Fincher filmed a Beastie Boys video inside a running clothes dryer. I'm literally shocked that I still attempted to endure the remaining hour and fifty-five minutes after that.

So, what's with me making that X-Men reference?

Well, ten thousand years ago, the X-ians sent Gigan (two great, Jason-meets-Pinhead designs, played by Kazuhiro Yoshida, who also plays Hedorah here) to attack Earth, when he was defeated by Mothra (a practical/CGI blend as before) and began to infect the planet with its "M-Base" (a fictional, fifth DNA protein) blood, giving rise to every kaiju but her and Godzilla, as well as enhanced humans called Mutants (who basically have superhuman physical abilities and an instinct for combat, but the M probably stands for midichlorian because some Mutants—termed Kaisers—can use the Force, too). Humanity believes the kaiju and Mutants are a planetary response to our environmental buggery, but in actuality, the X-ians returned in modern times

to use the kaiju and Mutants as sleeper agents and replace celebrities and government officials with robot doubles so they can subjugate humanity as cattle and harvest their mitochondria for a food source.

And I referred to the duo in the fight as Xavier and Magneto because main character Shinichi Ozaki (Masahiro Matsuoka, former drummer for Tokio, from 1990 until mid-2025, when the band dissolved) believes protecting humans can be done peacefully and with care because Mutants are human, too, while his rival Katsunori Kazama (Kane Kosugi, Ninja Black in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, the voice of Ryu in Street Fighter Zero: The Animation, Ryu Hayabusa in the silly DOA movie where Eric Roberts was the villain, and Kazuya Mishima in the live-action Tekken 2 movie) thinks Mutants are born to fight, be brutal, and look cool doing it. Mutants with opposing ideologies? Of course I made the comparison! Too bad Final Wars is too busy trying to be cool and action-packed to explore anything of depth, because Kazama gets reduced to a mindless foot soldier by a much more entertaining villain (Kill Bill's Kazuki Kitamura, hamming it up as the Xlien Controller—but check out his filmography otherwise; it's diverse and full of recognizable titles), removing any possibility of a thematic payoff between the two until he just pops up an hour later, un-brainwashed without any explanation so he can die heroically by doing a Star Wars run on the Xlien Death Star and becoming Japanese Randy Quaid in Independence Day.

I'd say Shinichi doesn't fare much better because the remaining cool factor on the human/Mutant/Xlien side of the plot(s) is eaten up by Captain Gordon (MMA fighter and pro-wrestler Don "The Predator" Frye in his first acting role, and if you see him and hear him and think, "this guy should play Mike Haggar in a Final Fight movie," he did, in a fan-film called The Broken Gear). But Shinichi is the main character, so he gets a predictably scripted antagonistic romance subplot with the hot scientist he's been assigned to guard (Rei Kikukawa), he's the only Mutant immune to Xlien Control (because surprise! He's not really a Mutant, he's a half-human, half-Xlien Kaiser—making him a literal X-Man—with the strongest Force powers ever that let him stop energy bullets with his mind and transmute Maser fire into radioactive ki; classic Chosen One bullshit to add to the roiling sea of other bullshit in this movie), he gets to fight the Controller one-on-one in a sequence that's cut to hell and back in an orange-filtered room and interspersed with kaiju action, but didn't make me want to vomit, and he helps Godzilla save the day with his Force powers.

Final Wars is such a cheap-looking mess that I've gotten ahead of myself and come to a loss for what I should take the piss out of next, so I'll just go back to the beginning of the part of the movie that doesn't make me want to puke (as much).

As soon as the hot scientist discovers the cocooned and petrified body of Gigan, every kaiju you love and/or tolerate from the Shōwa Era (and an Asylum CGI version of '98 Zilla, because making fun of him was a Millennium Era pastime) comes crawling out of the woodwork to cause global havoc. We're talking Anguirus (the best version of the character, suit-acted by Toshihiro Ogura, more known for his TV tokusatsu work, and he plays Ebirah here, as well), Ebirah, Hedorah, King Seesar, Kamakuras, Kumonga, Rodan, and a human-sized Minilla (Naoko Kamio, who has suit-acted as female Sentai Rangers and monsters from Megaranger through ToQger, and also plays Rodan here). But just when Temuzilla is about to chow down on a New York cop (Mick Preston, 2021's Night Shift) and a couple of offensive black stereotypes (Jungle Book 2016 VFX artist Darren Dupree Washington as "Pimp," and Martial Law II extra Michael-Anthony Vincent as "Drunk"), the X-ians/Xliens/Xillians show up to "help" by beaming away all of the kaiju and offering false promises of peace and technological advancement. But a failed assassination attempt reveals their true natures, the Earth Defense Force Mutants are activated, and a rebel faction consisting of Captain Gordon, Shinichi, sexy scientist, and sexy scientist's sexy reporter sister (Gordon hits on both women, by the way, and at least two others, despite an average age gap of twenty years and the other two being robots, and she's played by Maki Mizuno—no relation, as she and Kumi-san use the same stage name—in her first theatrical role). With the villains commanding an army of brainwashed kaiju and Mutants and threatening the Earth with a meteor (that the resistance discovers to be a composited hologram, but the script forgets this detail later and it's an actual meteor with the final boss inside), it's up to the heroes to free Godzilla from his icy tomb in Area G (so it's good that two women came along or the Earth would be doomed) so he can spend the next hour-plus of runtime jobbing and slaughtering all of the other kaiju (that the Controller conveniently sends down one at a time between jump-cuts to geographically incongruous locations, except for Ebirah and Hedorah, who are fighting each other for some reason, and Seesar, Rodan, and Anguirus, whom Godzilla defeats with soccer moves because this is a Shōwa homage). Godzilla's reawakening just happens. There's no rising from the ice with swelling fanfare, no badass roar to declare his presence; the heroes just say they're going to Area G, they go to Area G, some stupid extras provide unnecessary comic relief that doesn't land, and Godzilla's back after his opening Raids Again homage (which, if you're using Raids Again references in your continuity before the failed title drop and illegible opening credits, that means the only thing positive the audience can say is that they probably haven't thrown up yet, and worse things are to come.

Anyway, by a certain point in the kaiju action, I forgot that Mothra and Gigan had an ancient rivalry, but Gigan gets reawakened as well, then beheaded immediately by Godzilla despite being one of his most formidable Shōwa Era opponents, then rebuilt with double-chainsaw hands, so the Shobijin (Masami Nagasawa and Chihiro Otsuka, returning from Tokyo S.O.S. to collect their paychecks) summon Mothra (without singing, because this movie doesn't have time for moments that aren't "cool"), who gets jobbed almost immediately but beheads Gigan again (getting him to use his own attack like Goku did to Freeza on Namek) and explodes him by using her dandruff and a Super Sentai pyrotechnic to turn into Fire Rodan (which was pretty cool, but not as cool as what comes next).

The Controller decides he's Admiral Fujitora and pulls the fake-but-not-fake meteor down to Earth, and it crashes to reveal Monster X (suit-acted by Motokuni Nakagawa, known in Super Sentai as "Mr. Pink" because he doubles for Pink Rangers and I guess this review has two references to Dressrosa in it now). Monster X may be among the coolest looking kaiju in the franchise. It's like if H.R. Giger designed an undead Godzilla villain, it descends into frame in a Freeza pose (so I'm at least doubling up on Dragon Ball references, too), it breathes lasers from the vestigial heads on its shoulders, it's agile, it hits like a truck, and it's believable as a threat to Godzilla.

Too bad it's just Ghidorah. Again.

Yes; as if the fiftieth anniversary entry in the Godzilla franchise hadn't already treated its goodwill like Godzilla himself treats Tokyo with a stomach-churning first ten minutes, multiply plagaristic human plot, racial stereotypes, disrespect for its supporting kaiju characters (and its audience's time and intelligence), discount Spy Kids special effects, tone-slaughtering editing choices, and overstuffed but anorexic narrative, the second coolest final boss by Era (the top spot goes to Destoroyah from the Heisei Era) is sapped of all aura by the (painfully obvious and disappointing, because Final Wars really is just Invasion Of Destroy All Astro-Monsters again, but with better technology and worse execution, right down to the basic structure, villains, and boss kaiju being the same) reveal that Monster X

is just King Ghidorah for the sixth or seventh time, but German now because of the whole Xillian Kaiser thing.

Granted, this "new version" of Ghidorah has the added twist of being an energy vampire in addition to all of the original's abilities (which isn't unique because we've seen Orga and Megaguirus feed on Godzilla before), hence Shinichi (whose name I keep having to look up even though it translates approximately to "chosen one") being able to transmute Maser energy to recharge Godzilla so he can win, notice the good guys, and try to kill them. This Ghidorah is also the first version to actually use his Gravity Beams as the name suggests.

But that's not what's truly important here.

See, amidst all of the other plots, the movie occasionally cuts to an old hunter (Shigeru Izumiya, of the Dr. Coto's Clinic series and movie), his grandson (Kenta Suga, mentioned above), and the human-sized Minya (looking considerably less melted and not talking like a Pokémon reject here, so...little mercies, I guess?), who they encounter in the woods somewhere. This trio aren't in the movie much, but serve as the cheering section for some of the kaiju fights.

That is, until Godzilla: Final Wars kind of redeems itself.

The last time we see Minya before the Monster X fight, he attempts an atomic breath blast, gets excited, and reminds us that Some Monsters Almost Attack exists by growing to Son Of Godzilla size.

So with Godzilla poised to crush or nuke the human and Mutant survivors, the cheering section steps in, human weapons trained on Godzilla and Minya, Godzilla ready to strike. But then, we get one of the most emotional pieces of imagery in the franchise, as Minya and Kenta stand back-to-back, shielding their kind from one another and exemplifying Shinichi's belief that differing genetics should not be a justification for conflict, and those with strength should protect those without it.

Definitely a message I agree with. Way more subtle than anything else in Final Wars (or any of the Heisei Era morals, frankly). Humanity needs to hear it. Especially in 2026. But if the Uncle Ben meme wasn't clear enough, it's just Final Wars providing more evidence of how derivative its writing is.

You're right, Gub; fuck this movie.

F+

With opinions out of the way, let's talk continuity for a bit, staying as judgment-free as possible. Like most of the Millennium Era, Final Wars is set in its own continuity as one of the many direct sequels to the original Gojira film from 1954. The villains, and the majority of the kaiju, are rebooted from the Shōwa Era. Even Minya, his design, powers, and attachment to a child, are improved upon from that Era. But the usage of archive footage in the opening has suggested to many fans that "FinalGoji" (as the suit is called, having a face similar to other Millennium designs but more classic dorsal plates) is the revived Godzilla Junior from the Heisei Era, or that Final Wars exists in some sort of multi-Era, amalgamated continuity.

But Japan famously doesn't care as much about continuity as modern American fandoms do, and I'm done caring about Godzilla: Final Wars, so Stay Tuned for my Zenescope - Omnibusted on Vampires: The Eternal and my final live-action Goj-Year-ra project review while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to sell my DNA to aliens, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.

GFT Retrospective #130: Unleashed #1 (Day Breaks)

2026-09-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospectre.

So...third time's the charm, because I've spent the past week false-starting on the Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies, and Demons miniseries, trying to figure out the actual reading order of Unleashed because the Zenescope wiki's chronological reading order is wrong again. They listed Werewolves: The Hunger as being set before the issue I'm actually going to review today, despite it being set after the four other Hunters had been freed from the Shadowlands.

So...damn. I already wrote intros and harvested assets for two other reviews before this and read each of the four series far enough to realize things don't make sense without tackling this issue first. The next four weeks will cover Vampires, Zombies, Demons, and Werewolves, in that order (until I find another complication).

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the little flashback to my youth that I shared on Monday. For some experimentation, I wrote some new verses to the "Desert Life" poem and put the updated version on Patreon for $3. I guess every monster story needs a mad scientist and a fool at some point, huh?

Unleashed #1

Day Breaks

According to the preview page (which uses the cover by Ivan Nunes that is also used as the cover for the Vampires & Werewolves Trade Paperback), Day Breaks is a double-sized issue. And, yeah; it's huge, and it wastes no time picking up, essentially, where Hunters: The Shadowlands left off (accounting for time dilation, of course).

Using the essence he got from killing Venus (as he did with Prometheus' energy centuries earlier), the Being hears Samira (who has been in the Shadowlands for all that time, slaughtering the monster army out of superiority, boredom, anguish, bloodlust, and religious fanaticism, because her mindset makes total sense) praying desperately, and decides at last to open the Shadowlands and...Unleash the worthy monsters upon the Nexus. Wasn't that a Scooby-Doo movie in 2004?

But because the power used to do that was derived from a slain Olympian (the "All-Power," as Zeus calls it), the ripples of it are strong enough that the Father Of the Gods can sense its use (though Neptune and Heather can't for some reason), and the three of them go to investigate, only for Zeus to be humbled, Neptune to have his trident broken, and Heather to be killed, all at the Being's hands. Watching him dog-walk The Dark One and...disarm Venus to death was satisfying and impressive, but winning against Olympian gods at a three-on-one disadvantage so brutally that it gives Hades the creeps (he's the God Of Death and Monsters, remember? Or he was, before the Being sought to embrace half of that title) is really how you get an event-level villain over.

The way you get a story like this over (besides having Pat Shand as writer) is packing in small but significant moments (like Sela continuing to help random extras through the Grimms' fairy tales even though she hasn't had the Book Of Provenance—which Morrigan calls the Book Of Power—for almost a decade at this point) and ensuring that the greater threat is felt at all levels. Following the "even Death is afraid of the Being" theme, Morrigan is the one to warn Sela of the prequel's title. Shang doesn't know what it means that a shadow is falling. The Keepers can't see what's happening (the reason for this is to come later in the event, and it's foreshadowed well, but also very unoriginal as comic book tropes go, which makes it kind of predictable). For everyone concerned (and they are very, very concerned), shit is getting real.

But the timeline makes very little sense, thanks to the paneling and page transitions. Logically, we can assume that the Unleashing (opening of the Shadowlands) took place several months to a year ago, if not more, giving the Hunters enough time to get acclimated to the modern world. But this would mean the sudden resurgence of monster activity (there have been Werewolves since the first issue of the franchise, Vampires since the second Halloween Edition, Demons since Inferno and Salem's Daughter, and Zombies in various forms since before Jesus was born, but nothing on this scale) has gone unnoticed by anyone for just as long, and even with government resources at his disposal, Shang has been unable to locate four of his most promising recruits for all that time as well. Granted, Sela has been either in another Realm, in prison, or stopping several consecutive apocalypses, and the world at large has had to deal with a Neverland incursion in New York, a global Flesh Reaver invasion, Ares declaring war on the Greek government, Lovecraftian sea monsters drinking the ocean, and a sun god immolating the Great Wall Of China, so the public consciousness has been otherwise occupied. But that's a lot of disbelief to suspend to turn these circumstances from "the writers didn't think of this yet" into a coherent diegetic sequence of events.

Add on that this issue of Unleashed arranges its occurrences as happening in close succession with no indication of a timeline (establishing phrases like a time, date, and location or vague language like "The Past," "Now," "Then," "Later," or "Elsewhere"), and it's a mess to follow despite being fairly linear.

But setting all that aside, the exchanges between Elijah and Roman (with similar paneling to what will open the Zombies series) and Sela and Helsing (which will be recreated in a different art style in one of the Vampires short stories) are a joy to experience again (not to mention the reveal—to Sela, because dramatic irony is awesome when done right—that Belinda is alive), and the action is clear and impactful. Oh, and the Being has kidnapped Shang and built Samira a floating kingdom in the Arctic so her people can enjoy 30 Days Of Night. Turn your logical brain off so the undead don't get you, and you'll have a good time with this one.

Stay Tuned for my Goj-Year-ra project review of Final Wars while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because daylight isn't the only thing broke and in need of savings, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Retrospectre,

Out.

NPO #36: Desert Life

2026-09-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Poetry-master.

This is the surprise, Ticketholders!

For you and for someone in my family who's having a special day this week. But also for me, because I've been looking for this poem of mine for years. I mentioned it and gave a quick synopsis in my review of Zenescope's April Fools Editions earlier this year, and now that I've found it, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Well, another sigh of relief, anyway, because it also felt really good to be free of gambling debt and to only have my student loans to worry about going forward.

But the poetry is the point today, so let's talk about it. Despite what I said in the Zenescope review I linked above, I was thirteen when I wrote it as part of an "exiting middle school for high school," art/literature/poetry project called "The Book Of Me." It was received well enough by school staff that it was selected for publication in a book of student poems (that I have long since lost my copy of), and stood out amongst pages of basic, misspelled prose where other young teens rhymed about their favorite foods or colors or how much they like ponies. Not the most sophisticated company for a newly pubescent kid with motor delay and possible undiagnosed autism writing a free-verse simile about struggle, social anxiety, and identity crises, is it?

Sorry about my pride getting a little gloaty, folks; here's the poem:

Desert Life

Sitting alone in the company of nature

on a rugged mountain silhouette,

listening to the sandy footsteps of the howling wind.

Appreciating the good things,

and accepting the bad things

of my Desert Life.

Like the desert rain that never touches the ground,

I face my problems one drop at a time,

persisting further.

And once I climb a high enough mountain,

I can relieve the dryness of the past

with the rainwater

of my Desert Life.

Like the multicolored sunset,

life has some dark points, and some bright.

When I reach the boundaries of the desert,

achieving all my goals,

I'll finally know what I want to be

for the rest of my Desert Life.

I'm really proud and nostalgic about this piece (or Piece Offering, as it is now, and if I didn't hold it in a place of pride in my heart, I wouldn't have kept looking for it for over thirty years). But I can acknowledge how some of the lines don't have logical flow, how juvenile the language is in places, and the final stanza's conflation of self-fulfillment and self-actualization with what is basically death imagery; relief as an end, rather than an intermission or a time of retrospection and planning. And I don't think I've outgrown that mindset because I still live in the present, looking backwards and thinking of the future as some distant stretch of ideal perfection. The only difference is that I'm more bitter and cynical now about whether I will even want that ideal time, person, or thing in my life once I see the truth and complexity in it for myself. And the world isn't getting any better....

Stay Tuned for happier things (like Zenescope - Omnibusted and Goj-Year-ra tackling secret government monster eugenics?) while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because cash rules everything around me, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Cynic-master,

Out.

GFT Retrospective #129: Realm Knights One-Shot

2026-09-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospectre.

There's some sort of appropriate timing here, what with Doomsday coming out soon and the first Avengers having premiered to franchise-defining success a year before the comic I'm reviewing today hit shelves. It's not so perfectly "coincidental" as Supernatural's suspected influence on the Unleashed event, but the pieces are there to speculate that someone at Zenescope said, "this is a big pop culture thing right now; we should make our own team!" And it's not like it's an abrupt thing, either. Before Marvel's The Avengers was even a thought, Zenescope were dabbling with shared continuity when they shipped Belinda and Charles Dodgson. And had Belinda ruin Sinbad's life repeatedly. And dismantled the Council Of the Realms. And had the Dream Eater thin out their library (not that one). Robyn vs. Britney was one of the best things they ever put out. So was Quest. But the end of Myths & Legends was where the concept of a team on Earth was really put into words. By Samantha. Where is Samantha Darren, anyway?

Realm Knights One-Shot

Once upon a time, a bald man had an idea (that was Samantha's first, but whatever); an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people and see if they could become something more, work together, and fight the battles no one else can. To share the burden of Guardianship Of the Nexus better than the Council and the Hunters had before them, not just as soldiers in a war, but...as Realm Knights.

Prior to the events of Unleashed #1 (to be reviewed week after next), Cindy (who was just kidnapped and physically and psychologically tortured by the Being) attacks the U.N. headquarters in New York (because Avengers, and because villains attacking important government meeting places is now worth two nickels in the Grimm Universe), along with some kind of generic smoke witch (revealed later to be the Roman goddess Nox), a guy who could be Volac or that soul-swapping witch-doctor from the Christmas 2012 Special (and he is also there), and the Grendel from Beowulf. They have silly, stock ransom demands (money, a jet, safe travel, diplomatik immunitah, etc.) so they can get as far from the yet-to-be-Unleashed event as quickly as possible, and they're not going anywhere until they get the ability to go somewhere, dammit!

Which gives Shang (college dean and now government agent, apparently) plenty of time to send out agents to...collect...Sela Mathers (in the midst of a lecture on the evolution of Renaissance poetry, which I'd sign up for, Sela or not, but especially with Sela), Nathan Cross (at his brother's grave), Britney Waters (who just stabbed or mauled a guy that may or may not have his torso on backwards), Robyn Locksley (whom we never get to see how she got out of that cliffhanger between Wanted and Legend, but she's a runner, rebel and a stunner, on her merry way...), and Heather Angelos (who will probably miss out on one of Zeus' parties; oh, well...).

The banter between the five and Shang is absolutely perfect and informed by a richness of history that's felt rather than spoken to death, the shady implications of a government-sanctioned Highborn/Falseblood team are given their due (and given Future Knowledge, said shadiness hits darker than it did the first time around), the costumes pop, and the group's aliases and the Clark Kent glasses-level of effort put toward concealing their identities are hilarious. Those aliases being Agents Snow (Sela), Hook (Nathan), Red (Britney), Robyn Hood (Robyn, duh), Hecate (Heather), and Unknown (Shang). I used to think that because Shang was in charge, allegedly cool, and sarcastically amazing at sharing important information, this meant Shang has a codename that not even the reader is privy to. And it works that way from a lay perspective. But for the sake of curiosity, I ran "unknown" through Google Translate, and got "未知," or "michi," so Shang is actually honoring his monastic order, not just being a cryptic asshole for the lolz. Yay?

Except that when they're using codenames later, Sela just calls him Shang, so maybe she forgot her Asian studies over the past few centuries?

Either way, the heroes and villains pair off according to their respective dynamics (which goes much better than it has in the past), including a fun, reckless battle with the two Hood girls fighting Grendel, and a Shang & Sela vs Cindy rematch that reveals the Being threat to the heroes and brings one of the human agents (Wisnowski, who will be a very important recurring character later) into focus. There are strong implications that the agency (yes, we have a new Evil Agency candidate afoot) funding the Realm Knights was also behind the previous decades of cover-ups and the assassination squad that took out Patricia Braddock. This agency now has everyone but the necromancer (the Volac-alike who was also there, and is now dead) in their custody for...possible WWII German death camp purposes, because even when it's not in One Piece, the World Government is awful.

If the Avengers parallel wasn't obvious enough already (a red, white, and blue heroine, a god with a hammer, a college graduate with an inner rage monster, a quippy archer, an injured man with a prosthetic energy blaster, and their bald leader thwarting villains in New York on behalf of a secret government agency with a hidden dark side to be revealed in the next phase), the issue also makes direct panel references to the movie and its marketing (everyone pointing their weapons at Cindy before her capture, and the Realm Knights eating lunch in the last panel, particularly), which, imitation, flattery, and all that. Unoriginality is a valid criticism here, but it didn't break my brain as much as Shang's parting exchange with Robyn. The government was supposed to pardon her for the King murders if she helped stop the Cindy attack (which she does here), yet there's an Editor's Note saying Shang sent her to see her stepfather in New Jersey (where Wanted begins, and she's still...well, it's in the title, isn't it?). I suppose bureaucracy is to blame, and we still have a whole-ass event and several lesser sequel events to get through between Wanted and Legend, but it's a mess, and my train of thought is a shorter bus than usual right now.

That's all I have for you this week, but Stay Tuned for more Werewolves next time, and the Millennium Era of Goj-Year-ra fighting its Final Wars while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

Speaking of weeks, you folks have blessed me with over a week straight of thousand-plus-view days, so thank you, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to steal a Qatari bribe-jet from the UN, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Retrospectre,

Out.

Just the Ticket #234: Sanjuro

2026-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

I had planned to watch and review this movie in August as a continuation of a theme from previous years (Yojimbo in 2025 and its American adaptation Last Man Standing in 2024), but chose to push into September in favor of finishing out the Kiryu Saga (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.) instead.

Before we get to Sanjuro, though, I have great news: as you are reading this, I have made my last payment toward resolving my gambling debts (which I confessed to in Isekai "Quartet" #2 and touched on the backlash and burnout of in my MCU Back From Burnout post). I also have an employee who's worth a damn now, and I recently stumbled upon a poem from my childhood that I wrote and have been seeking out for many years that will make its way into the calendar this month.

It's not just bad things that come in threes, Ticketholders!

Retooled into a Yojimbo sequel from a planned screenplay adaptation of Hibi Heian (translation: "Peaceful Days") by Shūgorō Yamamoto, Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro (written as the titular rōnin's full pseudonym in kanji: Tsubaki Sanjuro) features the returning Toshiro Mifune as "Sanjuro" (the film does the same, Usual Suspects visual gag we saw in Yojimbo when he gives his name, but more overtly here) and supporting appearances by familiar Shōwa Godzilla and Kurosawa actors like Yoshio Tsuchiya (Invasion Of Astro-Monster and Destroy All Monsters), Akihiko Hirata (Dr. Serizawa himself, from Gojira), and in the villain role as Kurofuji, Takashi Shimura (Gojira, Raids Again, and Seven Samurai). Kurosawa also co-wrote and edited the film, and Masaru Sato (who also composed for Godzilla Raids Again, Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep, Son Of Godzilla, and Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla) returns from Yojimbo to provide a fun, intense score to the proceedings.

It's a fairly simple game of wits and warfare that starts with a bang when nine young samurai fail to reach a decision regarding which of their lords is corrupt (the horse-faced chamberlain, played by Stray Dog's Yūnosuke Itō, or the old superintendent, played by 47 Rōnin's Masao Shimizu). Their conversation is overheard by Sanjuro, who, true to his character in the previous film, is a crude but strategic badass motivated by food, money, and sake (but also a frustrated species of pity at how stupidly impulsive the nine are, and maybe a bit of a restless bloodlust from his samurai days). So he employs his particular set of skills and some lucky applications of basic psychology to dismantle the superintendent's forces (a group so massive it looks like Kurosawa had twenty guys march in and out of frame on a loop), rescue the chamberlain's wife (Takako Irie, The Water Magician) and daughter (Reiko Dan, Red Beard), and expose the true source of corruption in the town, all the while babysitting the nine impulsive, combative lemmings who entrusted themselves to him.

It all culminates in a brief, bloody confrontation with Shimura's bug-eyed villain, prefaced with a staredown so still, tense, and silent I thought I had hit pause by accident, and followed by Sanjuro vanishing like a camellia blossom floating downstream.

Mifune steals the film, as he has in all three movies I've seen him in, as does Shimura when his role becomes more significant. Even a few of the supporting characters, like the chamberlain's wife and the captured bodyguard (Keiju Kobayashi, Return Of Godzilla), get their moments to shine. The action is sudden, brutal, quick, and impressive, with the perfect amount of gore for the time of release (and that punchy soundtrack), such that Mifune's swordsmanship would be used demonstrably in a popular kendo manual of the late 80s. The sets are impressive for their time, as well.

But the majority of the film between fights is just people sitting in bamboo rooms and talking, and when only four (generously) of the fifteen speaking characters make an impression, it drags down the pacing of what is otherwise a clever, engaging, sometimes funny, but popularity-mandated Kurosawa effort.

I previously praised Yojimbo for its methodical pace helping to establish atmosphere and character, while faulting it for its repetitive plot mechanics, lazy third act, and uncomfortably bleak and cynical outlook. Though entertaining, Sanjuro feels almost like a well-intended course-correction taken too far. The action and comedy are the forefront, the slower moments are filled with exposition and conflict-laden dialogue rather than visual storytelling (with the exception of that final showdown, but the characters just explain the juxtaposition of Sanjuro and Kurofuji and the thematic importance of their conflict to us afterward anyway), the villain has ulterior motives that are explained but go unexplored, and Sanjuro never feels like he's on the back foot at any point, even when his nine albatrosses repeatedly screw everything up for him or when he gets captured near the end.

So, while I enjoyed myself more with Sanjuro than I did with Yojimbo, I can't say I thought any better of it.

Next week, I'm chilling out and just doing a review of a Zenescope One-Shot, but will return the following week with a bonus surprise, another Unleashed miniseries, and the finale of the Millennium Era of Goj-Year-ra. So Stay Tuned for that, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because corruption abounds and samurai aren't cheap, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketrōnin,
My Work Here Is Done.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #64: Hunters - The Shadowlands

2026-09-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

This is just a fleeting memory and a supposition on my part, but I think the creative team behind the Unleashed event were Supernatural fans because it (and this Hunters Tie-In miniseries in particular) were released in 2013, the same year Season Eight (which dealt with the ancient monster realm of Purgatory) finished airing.

Unleashed Tie-In

Hunters: The Shadowlands

The awesome Volume cover you see here is also the B Cover for Part One, by Paolo Siquiera and Sean Ellery. Interestingly enough (for the purposes of incentivizing people to buy and read every series so they give Zenescope their money and don't miss any of the story), the A Cover of Part One connects with the Part One A Covers for Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, and Demons to make a massive banner poster (that I couldn't find online or figure out how to make with the digital versions I have access to) by Anthony Spay and Ivan Nunes, and was used as the cover for Unleashed Volume Two. The Table Of Contents background is the A Cover for Part Five, also by Siquiera and Ellery. Pat Shand co-wrote the story (as is the case with the Unleashed event as a whole, but writing credit for this miniseries goes to Raven Gregory for the first three parts here.

Following directly (or however adverbs work when time does not) from The Game, Hunters: The Shadowlands opens on Roman Asher the Werewolf Hunter as he fights to survive on his own according to the title for roughly (very, very roughly) fifteen years of eating monster meat, talking to himself (or maybe not?), not shaving, and learning magic from that not-himself, unheard voice he's been talking to. Uh-oh....

And to top it off, time is so strange in the Shadowlands (or maybe something is messing with him?) that the fifteen years he was there on his own took place before he arrived, as he eventually sees Sela, Helsing, Masumi, and Elijah crash down in the distance. Like, they look like meteors, land like meteors, and deliver the exact kind of groan-worthy, cliché dialogue and narration you'd expect from superheroes who entered a strange world as magical meteors.

Unfortunately, no sooner do the remaining quartet of Hunters arrive than their numbers are montaged in half by monster attacks and natural hazards in places that were probably named during a Dungeons & Dragons campaign at Zenescope HQ.

The two that are left alive (except the others will be totally fine later somehow) are Sela and Helsing, who witness an all-out, feral war between monsters while we are introduced to two, more important, sentient, and focused villains: Samira (self-proclaimed Queen Of Vampires with an existential crisis because she doesn't have a soul but is a religious zealot for the god of monsters, which is way more interesting conceptually than what I remember the execution being) and Ravenous (the literal first Werewolf, so I guess we can thank/blame him in the long run for what Britney has been through). They're searching the Shadowlands (which, the characters are drawn and colored just fine, but the scenery is gorgeous for a monster-infested hellscape) for the aforementioned monster-god, for the expected, vengeful exile reasons.

As I suspected (in large part because I've read this before), Elijah is fine, fist-fighting Lovecraftian fish and finding common ground with a dragon (which is a suggestion that the ancient heroes who stopped the draconian holocaust of Myst had access to the Shadowlands), and Masumi somehow found herself talking to yokai in an endless forest (which led to the awakening of her Demon-sealing swords, particularly an as-yet-unnamed Demon who may have killed Masumi's twin sister, Akiko, and likes to remind Masumi that she should feel guilt for being an assassin). So, with barely any narrative tension, the group (minus Roman, though they happen to be ambushed by a bug monster who knows where to find him, so that doesn't take long to change) are back together again.

The bug monster has friends that send the Hunters plummeting into an underground ambush, while Roman (whose other defining trait is being a racist asshole) leaves them to die and returns to his warded desert cabin because he's kind of addicted to his mysterious voice companion (whom I'm calling Vampire Horatio because although the voice's speech bubbles have no tails to indicate their source, they're most often associated with a Vampire skull). Roman also gets a quick flashback where Vampire Horatio teaches him to use magic by finding a source of innocence (a Werewolf cub) in the Shadowlands.

In the present (?—relative to the miniseries), Samira makes contact with her god (who has the same polygonal, pale green speech bubbles and jagged font as the Being...and is revealed later to be the Being) and is instructed to bring him a source of innocence (a young religious woman who was recently sired as a Vampire) as a sacrifice. Could the Being somehow be sending the same instructions to Roman and Samira simultaneously across different time frames?

Whatever the case may be, Roman comes back to save Sela, Masumi, Helsing, and Elijah (a.k.a. "Professor," "Sweet & Sour," "Poppet," and "Boy," because Roman Asher has the same initials as "Racist Asshole") from the bug monsters. Roman's nicknames and Southern hospitality aside, the writing has gotten better since the "that just happened" cringe the first issue gave us.

And between the Hunters getting back together and the Being, Samira, and Ravenous seeking...help...from Prometheus (yes, the liver-eaten fire-bringer of Greek mythology himself is in the Shadowlands instead of Tartarus here, though Pandora's Box, which was previously suggested to be a gateway to the Shadowlands, would still be in Tartarus at this time) to unite the warring monster tribes for an invasion of the Nexus, we get...another Roman flashback; yay.

Interlude

Roman Asher & the Night Wolves

Aside from being a sick name for a Halloween-themed country-metal band, this is a flashback to Roman's childhood, when he was lazy and didn't believe in fairy tales until the day he ditched fence duty to look for food in the woods with his sister, and had to listen and hold his tongue while his entire village was slaughtered by Werewolves and his sister was abducted and turned. This set him on his current path, until later complacency led him to fall in love and start a family (who were slaughtered one night by his turned sister). We and his four present companions are supposed to eat this bullshit as the reason he never gets close to anyone and was willing to let them die, but to me the story read as his inaction being the cause of his problems. Thank you, Liesel Van Helsing, for threatening to crush his testicles into an allergen-free nut butter alternative. I'm scared and a little turned on, and you're my new favorite character.

For such a long, dialogue-heavy chapter, not much gets said or done here. The monsters are ready for war when one of the bugs warns the Being about the Hunters (which, he's had free, interdimensional Netflix in his head for an eternity of solitude and can dismember a god with his bare hands, so he's not worried about five humans), which spooks Samira and she has the Being's oracle (her own mentor) do...something to protect him before disposing of the only witness and evidence (except the Being already totally knows, probably, and will sit on the information until the plot requires her death). Otherwise, Roman plans to take Vampire Horatio with him when they escape, Liesel reveals to the audience that she's kind of a Sela fangirl because of the inspirational speeches, Masumi and Elijah might be a thing, and Elijah frees that chained-up dragon he had a moment with earlier (possible Chekov's dragon for the finale?). Great little Shandian moments here (this is the first part written by Pat Shand beyond story contribution credit), but very few and we don't know what they mean just yet.

After using one of the bug monsters to dig to the middle of the battlefield (those guys are super handy and they talk like Gollum, so I don't mind that they basically drove the entire plot), the Hunters all but dominate the fight with the lesser monsters while Sela (on Helsing's insistence and amidst some fleeting doubt from Masumi) futilely engages with the Being to claim Prometheus' essence (a Gold orb like what Shang had) and return to the Nexus. But he's too OP and decides that because he knows her future, it'd be more fun to take her back to Earth with him so she can suffer while he Ascends. Yes, we're teasing the sequel miniseries already. And never mind that part from The Game where he thought Sela was still trapped in the Shadowlands (and even if we grant some grace to the Chad-abbed monster-god by saying he meant Myst, Limbo, or the Shoe, he's still wrong, not to mention he walked the Dark One before he kidnapped Cindy, at which point he knew there were two Guardians Of the Nexus; maybe it's one of those "god who sees everything gets the order wrong because he can't remember everything" scenarios, but not even an army of man-faced bug monsters can dig a plot hole that big). The other big reveal is that Samira was the voice of Vampire Horatio the entire time, and Roman is going to turn heel later so she and the Being can "evolve him past his pain."

No dragon to save the day like I thought, the skull reveal happened sooner than I remember (probably because twists like that hit better in publication order than canon order), there was little narrative tension as to whether the Hunters would survive, and a great deal of the banter was cringe (particularly with Roman, but we're not supposed to like him, anyway). But the action was cool enough, the characters I liked, I really liked (and I know they'll only get better with time), and what mystery there was sent me on a journey both times I read it because the hints and herrings were so compelling despite their simplicity.

Stay Tuned for a classic Kurosawa sequel on Friday and Zenescope's first official Avengers-style crossover next Wednesday, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because it costs a lot of money to look this cheap, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.

One Piece Multi-Piece #17: Dressrosa (Final Piece)

2026-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ship's Log by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,

Meister Of Anime.

Ahoy, Ticketholders!

It's the Final Piece of Dressrosa and the final day of August...and what a time it's been. The month has been huge on view traffic (final tally on Wednesday—that's a lot of finals for one paragraph already!), so thank you to everyone I didn't exile to the shame-grass last week.

The denouement of the Dressrosa Arc (I was looking for a fancy way to not say final again, and the definition of denouement mentioned strands, so I went with it because Doflamingo) Multi-Piece will mostly be a discussion of Luffy's new ability because much of the arc's wrap-up is fighting and waiting for the story to get back to the fight while the animation budget is saved by waggling and sliding character png files, reskinned scenery destruction, yapping, and run cycles (as you do when churning out over a hundred thirteen-minute episodes—plus OPs, recaps, bumpers, and previews—of an almost twelve-hundred-episode-and-counting anime on a weekly basis).

But first, let's talk about the two episodes I could barely nod my way through at the end of last week's binge. With Luffy having just dispatched Bellamy the Puppeteered Hyena in thematically resonant fashion and Law facing the morally reprehensible Doflamingo and the physically disgusting Trebol at the same time, everyone's favorite toon force-powered Pirate-doctor (or maybe doctor-Pirate would be the more clear and inclusive order?) finds himself down an arm (he can get better, I'm sure...) and at Doflamingo's mercy again, seemingly being shot to death before Luffy arrives to begin the fight proper. So yeah, Trafalgar D. WaterLaw is dead because the episode title said so, and One Piece episode titles have never lied to me before at least twice, right?

Right, because flashbacks exist.

See, Law set up a massive Room when no one was looking, Shambled himself with some Dressrosan rando who got shot in his place (John Dressrosa from Planet Dressrosa will get better later, I'm sure...), and then swapped back so he could set up a battle plan with Luffy.

Watching it, it can feel like another instance of Oda-sensei, One Piece, and specifically the Dressrosa Arc, pulling something out of ass-space with a flashback justification for the sake of one in a series of cool moments. However true that may be, the world-building saves this reveal from criticism. We've seen things in the past like number subversion with Bounties (with Luffy and Bellamy in the Skypeia material, appropriately enough), and we've seen in this very arc how reputation can get someone just as far as strength (with Buggy becoming a Warlord seemingly on social skills alone). But we also know from briefly shown or unseen clashes like Akainu vs Aokiji and Ace vs Blackbeard how impactful a meeting of equals can be and how devastating the fallout can be when a character punches above their weight. So because we've seen what Law and Doflamingo can do individually (and that Doflamingo is stronger despite them both being insanely powerful Warlords), the fact that Doflamingo's Birdcage can encircle an island does a lot to sell that, even wounded, Law can create a Room as inconspicuously massive as he does, setting the stage for the incredibly animated reveal as Luffy runs, jumps, and rolls to get in close quarters for Law to Shamble with him and send Doflamingo to Gamma Knife Of Spokane (Gamma Knife is basically Law combining his defibrillator Countershock attack with an energy scalpel and using molecular chemistry to make it radioactive, piercing Doflamingo's body without leaving an incision but giving him system-wide, catastrophic organ failure).

From this, we get Doflamingo (and Trebol, much as his snot-nosed hunchback John Lennon design and gratingly derpy voice make me want to remove my eyes and ears and stab him to death with them so I can keep my lunch down and watch One Piece without throwing my phone through the nearest wall) being a great subversion of what we've come to expect from Devil Fruit powers. What we've seen them do so far would lead one to believe that Doflamingo and Trebol are Logia types (that their bodies are elemental, fluid, and indestructible). DoflaStringo was a good red herring in this regard, too. But once hit by the Gamma Knife, Doflamingo's organs do begin to fail. And yet he stands up as if completely unharmed (and able to keep Luffy off-balance for a few episodes) by using his String-String powers to stitch his organs together, all the while still maintaining the Birdcage (which, the cutaways in these two episodes amount to background extras screaming and running because "Irma Gerd, the Birdcage is shrinking and we're all gonna die being selfish assholes because sick, old people are getting in our way!," and it doesn't stop because these cutaways, and cutaways of the Gladiators, samurai, other Straw Hats, Navy, and Tontatta pushing in vain against the encroaching cables, ensue for roughly the first fifteen episodes of this Piece). This guy's focus is insane. Also, Trebol is just an anorexic pervert who coats his body in explosive snot because he's almost as intelligent as my sarcasm.

Oh, and Doflamingo has The Haki Of the Supreme King (and so does Luffy) that he almost uses to curb-stomp Law for appropriating Corazon's legacy as his crew name and unauthorized merchandise licensing (Law's jacket says Corazon on the back, he has a heart tattoo on his chest, and his crew are the Heart Pirates). I don't know if this is a case of more accurate dubbing changing the name of Conqueror's Haki (apparently also called Emperor's Haki) or if it's a different, more special kind of Haki, but it's treated like a big deal here even though we've known for hundreds of episodes (since Sabaody, at least) that Luffy has it, and the color and usage here is different (black with a red outline, and it's an offensive energy rather than the overwhelming passive aura we've seen before, though it can be that, too).

Which brings me to the words that probably had One Piece fans losing their minds at the end of episode 725 (the 97th episode of Dressrosa): Fourth Gear. I love the story influence on this form, I love its design, and I love the power set that comes with it. Gear Four has the same kind of drawback and the same motivation as Gear Two, the inflation properties of the Gum-Gum Balloon and Third Gear, the durability of infusing Armament Haki into his elastic skin, a kind of pseudo-flight inspired by Sanji and CP-9's Air Walk Haki, and a bounciness and storage of potential energy for stronger attacks that seem to be inspired by Bellamy's Devil Fruit powers. It makes Luffy look sillier, but also more serious, like someone you don't want to mess with on unpredictability alone, but also like a balloon filled almost to bursting. It outclasses Doflamingo in speed, power, and mobility, but pushes Luffy's Haki to the limit in exchange, and it's so satisfying to watch, both in the first round of their fight (when you could almost picture Doflamingo quoting Nelson Muntz after Luffy punches him across the city)

and for the final hit after Luffy survives a "ten minute" race against time (and Jesus—the luchador from Blackbeard's crew, not our Lord and savior) to recover his Haki before the Birdcage turns everyone into employees of Ketchup Entertainment (or slices of a Terry's Chocolate Blood Orange; choose your metaphor-pun) so he can turn Gear Four back on and finish Doflamingo with one punch.

And pardon my faux Hispanic Italian (because Señor Pink, Riku, Kyros, Rebecca, and Violet/Viola all speak with stereotypical Spanish accents in the dub and Dressrosa is clearly inspired by ancient Rome), but it's a really fucking cool attack because Luffy transfers one of his massive arms into the other (using a Third Gear ability on Fourth Gear, basically) for a double-sized King Kong Punch that knocks Doflamingo through Dressrosa with enough force to render him unconscious (making the Birdcage vanish) and almost split the island in half.

So although I like everything else about the form (the design, the narrative influence, the kaiju-inspired attack names, the transformation sequence, Luffy's Super-Saiyan-esque change in attitude, the stamina drawback, and Doflamingo getting his ass kicked, among other things), the flashback reveal of how he attained the form (and how long he's been sitting on it) has serious, "Super-Saiyan 3 makes Goku a liar and a fraud" energy to it. Like, the real-world explanation is that the author probably hadn't thought of the transformation yet, but finding out after two arcs that Luffy's been hiding a whole other level of power

since his offscreen training with Rayleigh, wherein he fought giant animals (a callback to the three brothers' encounter with Naguri and the giant tiger in Grey Terminal) to develop new attacks and hone his Haki so he can have the only things he loves more than kicking the asses of bastards who suck: a reunion with his friends, and of course, meat. I get that breaking out your strongest form for every conflict annihilates dramatic tension (and flies in the face of the first lesson Mihawk ever taught Zoro—something Art Of War-like about cannons and mosquitoes?). But yeah, there's a statute of limitations and an "acceptable" loss limit to consider when people realize you had something that could have prevented those losses and chose not to use it because a Fishman terrorist on steroids and a walking gas chamber were weaker than the gorilla you ate two years ago.

But while we're on the subject of new transformations, there are five things I'd like to address before getting to the wind-down (it started as two, but I kept finding stuff). First and most important is Doflamingo introducing the concept of Devil Fruit Awakening. Is this foreshadowing of when Luffy gets to Gear Five in...(Googling now...) three hundred forty-four fucking episodes‽ Jesus D. Burgess, that's a lot! Anyway, Awakening is either that, or a narrative excuse to have Doflamingo reveal just how much he's been holding back so Luffy doesn't immediately stomp his ass and walk it dry (which he could have anyway). Whatever the case, it's probably the inspiration for how Quirks work in My Hero Academia, and it puts in work because Doflamingo has Awakened his Devil Fruit powers such that he can turn anything he touches into String like he has a mix of Shigaraki's Quirk and Byakuya's Bankai. I'm not totally sure what the purpose or explanation is for his colored String attacks, but it ultimately doesn't matter because Luffy punches him into Dressrosa's bedrock (the best rock to be unconscious in).

Next is that Jesus Burgess is hunting Devil Fruits and their holders on behalf of Blackbeard, either to strengthen his crew (which, given the aquatic nature of the Pirate and Naval lifestyle, giving everyone Devil Fruit powers is like trying to get your designated driver blackout drunk) or because Blackbeard somehow figured out how to hold even more Devil Fruit powers and wants to turn himself into a walking Infinity Gauntlet. We'll see.

Then there's the flashback reveal that the Donquixote Family weren't always the Donquixote Family, and Trebol was once in charge. He's the one who recruited Doflamingo as a child (a Celestial Dragon with Supreme King Haki who knows some of the secrets of Marie Geoise), and served as Sugar's bodyguard in this arc (a woman of childish appearance who can transform, enslave, and erase from memory anyone she touches). So as disgusting and annoying as he is, Trebol is probably going to be important when things get to a higher level much, much later.

Speaking of things that are going to be important later, I forgot to mention them, but there have been members of the World Government's Cipher Pol Zero (the elite version of CP-9 from Water Seven and Enies Lobby) kicking around...somewhere. They've been introduced, they've been referenced twice, and nothing has been done with them since. But I still have twelve episodes to watch now that Doflamingo has been left without a leg to stand on, so maybe they'll actually have a point in being...wherever they are now?

And least important (but it's on the poster and I keep forgetting to mention it), Franky with his JK pigtails and disguise beard looks like Willie Nelson. Thank you for your time.

Now, as Oda often does (but I've skipped over the intricacies when talking about past arcs because it's just too much to remember, and I can't believe I'm even attempting it now), the end of a major fight is followed by showing its local and global consequences.

Sabo incinerates Jesus (which is biblically inaccurate, but this is One Piece), the Dressrosans are grateful for their freedom (the Birdcage being yet another case of Oda using unambiguous imagery as metaphor) and accept their "failed" king with open arms because Doflamingo's era of war and false peace was worse than living a flawed ideal of actual peace under Riku (though I thought Rebecca inheriting the throne as a "live in peace but prepare for war" ruler would have been more fitting to her presence in the story), Fujitora and the Navy kowtow in apology to King Riku on a live broadcast (though he has to answer to Akainu and the Five Elders by fighting and apprehending Luffy, which...goes according to chance because Fujitora is awesome and Luffy has a way with people), Law and the Straw Hats get public credit for defeating the Donquixote Family (unlike the arrangement they made with Smoker back in Alabasta—autocorrect tried to suggest Alabama, by the way—regarding Crocodile's defeat), the Supernova Alliance reveal that they're targeting Shanks (good fucking luck, especially if Luffy finds out), Emperor Kaidou the Beast King travels to Skypeia so he can jump off and die (it's said he is impossible to execute, suggesting that a previous Op-Op holder performed the immortality surgery on him, but maybe he's just too strong to be killed), the kid who escaped from the first Birdcage is revealed to be the "Worst Generation"/Supernova Rookie known as Diez "Red Flag" X. Drake (but given there's only one important initial in One Piece, I wouldn't be surprised if his real name turns out to be Diez D. Rake or something),

it's good to see Tashigi really has custody of the Punk Hazard children (but they're still headed to Dr. Vegapunk on Egghead Island, so it's a mixed bag of news at best).

Then comes a flashback as Sabo visits the Straw Hats and convalescing Kyros and Law to share how he came in contact with Dragon and the Revolutionary Army, his amnesia from the Celestial Dragon attacking him for being a filthy mortal Pirate within his line of sight and travel, his ascendance through the Revolution ranks, regaining his memories upon Ace's death, and ultimately some belated context for Sabo and Luffy reuniting in the Coliseum.

While Luffy is reuniting Rebecca with Kyros (again, and with more running and reused clips and voiceover from flashbacks we've already seen at least three times each) because he doesn't agree with lying to preserve the reputation of royalty, and the rest of the Straw Hats, samurai, and Coliseum combatants are running to escape the Navy (with more running, because of that thing with Fujitora), we get new developments with Sanji, Brook, Momonosuke, Chopper, and Nami that make me feel like I missed a few episodes because they're on a squishy island with a water volcano, talking about some girl we barely get to see while fighting off a duo of samurai hunters dressed similarly to Kaidou. And Caesar is still there, too, I guess.

The last thing that's important and cool is the answer to how the Straw Hats get off Dressrosa without the Thousand Sunny: Luffy gets his own fleet!

Everyone who contributed to Doflamingo's defeat teams up and tricks Luffy into being their boss with a sake ritual...which he turns down because he doesn't do sake with anyone but family, his crew is all he really needs, and he doesn't want to be anyone important besides King Of the Pirates. It's kind of a "Goku turns down being Kami" moment, but it all works out because the other Straw Hats and the two samurai finish off Luffy's cup, so they technically run the Straw Hat Fleet now. It's symbolic and hilarious and heartwarming, and I couldn't be happier to end off on such a fun note.

It's almost 7pm as I'm finishing this on Monday, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because it costs a lot of money to look this cheap, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Master Of Tickets,

Piece,

Out!

Time Drops #148: Month Of September 2026

2026-08-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Content Calendar Announcement,
Week of August 30, 2026

by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

For the fourth month in a row now, Just the Ticket has surpassed my long-standing goal of ten thousand views, and as you can see in the "Last Month" category, as of yesterday evening, August is just over fifteen thousand. A final tally will be included in Wednesday's Zenescope - Omnibusted.

It makes the challenges of real life weigh a little less because professional responsibility has not run out of ways to complicate my existence and wear down the façade that I am a well-adjusted, competent leader who can handle anything, do everything, and knows what it feels like to have a shit-eating grin on my face. Chocolate, not chocolate....

It turns out I can watch and review the Dressrosa Arc of One Piece in a month, and you'll see how that shook out for me on Monday. But do I want to watch new seasons of four anime that I either don't know anything about or haven't seen in years? No. That's why I'm going to pick one series, re-watch it from the beginning, and review it at the end of this month. You'll see later what I chose.

I really need to lock in on my big milestone project (which, I feel comfortable telling you now that the countdown is a bit closer, has been mentioned in these Time Drops posts all along), the Goj-Year-ra project is nearing its end, and there's a review I've been wanting to do for awhile that I don't know if I'm going to have to kill a darling or not (if you're a writer or any kind of creative, you know what that means).

But you can still expect more Unleashed era Omnibusted/Retrospective content to come out on the regular.

The Road to 10k Views per month is a path I resolve to travel as many times as possible this year, even when the seasons become less conducive to foot-travel, and I'm glad to not be walking it alone.

So please remember to comment at the bottom of my Blogger posts, Become A Ticketholder because I know you haven't yet, share and care wherever you can, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on social media at the links below to like what you see and to receive the latest news on my content and calendars thereof.

Here it is:

Monday (August 31) - One Piece Multi-Piece #17: Dressrosa Arc (Last Piece)
Wednesday (September 2) - Zenescope - Omnibusted #64: Hunters - The Shadowlands
Friday (September 4) - Just the Ticket #234: Sanjuro
Wednesday (September 9) - GFT Retrospective #129: Realm Knights One-Shot
Wednesday (September 16) - Zenescope - Omnibusted #65: Werewolves - The Hunger
Friday (September 18) - Just the Ticket #235: Godzilla - Final Wars
Wednesday (September 23) - GFT Retrospective #130: Unleashed #1 - Day Breaks
Friday (September 25) - Just the Ticket #236: Shin Godzilla
Monday (September 28) - Anime Spotlight #82: To Your Eternity (2026 Update)
Wednesday (September 30) - Zenescope - Omnibusted #66: Zombies - The Cursed

Back by personal demand, to perpetuate my own mental health and SMART-ness, and for your information, here's what the future holds:

October

Thousand View Special!
Anime Spotlight

After-School Hanako-kun
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun

Retrospective/Omnibusted

Unleashed #2/GFT #85
Demons: The Unseen
Unleashed #3/GFT Annual 2013
Unleashed #4/Grimm Universe #5

Just the Ticket

All Hallows' Eve
Terrifier

Future

Anime Spotlight

Gintama
One Piece

Zou
Whole Cake (In Pieces)
Wano Country (Divided)
Egghead (Cracked In Two)
Elbaph (...?)

Hell's Paradise
Dr. Stone
The Beginning After the End
Oshi No Ko
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime
DanMachi (November)
Natsume's Book Of Friends
Demon Slayer
Re:ZER0
Witch Hat Atelier
Dæmons Of the Shadow Realm
Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Dear Friend
Monogatari
Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun
Ascendance Of A Bookworm
Wistoria: Wand & Sword
Kaiju Girl Caramelise

Retrospective/Omnibusted

Unleashed
Ascension

Just the Ticket

Legend Of the White Dragon (‽)
Goj-Year-ra

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle
Godzilla: The Planet Eater
Godzilla: Singular Point
Godzilla: Minus Zero

November:

Knives Out Trilogy
Feast Trilogy

December

When A Stranger Calls (Back)
Black Christmas (1974, 2006, & 2019)

Drebuary 2027 Stay Tuned/Just the Ticket: Police Squad! & Naked Gun
May 2027 Just the Ticket: Mothra May

Big/Challenging Projects That Don't Involve One Piece

Cover Charge: Harmon Universe
AniMonday Original: Darkness In Crimson - I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen
Goj-Year-ra Re-write
Just the Ticket/Stay Tuned: The Hunter & The Huntress

That was a lot to unpack, so now it's time for the Just the Ticket Countdown to One Thousand!

Ticketmaster,

Out.

Just the Ticket #233: Godzilla - Tokyo S.O.S.

2026-08-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

I'm not mad; just disappointed.

Last week, I praised Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla for its world-building, strong female lead, thematically rich writing, and compelling action sequences. This week, I feel like I've been anesthetized by radioactive bug pollen. And that was before we lost Dolly Parton and Tim Curry in the span of less than two days. Rest in peace and power, legends! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of shit upon my chest that needs to be sent to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism....

After Toho sent four scripts that he rejected, director and co-writer Masaaki Tezuka drafted a new script overnight (presumably refined later with GMK co-writer Masahiro Yokotani), and we got the only direct sequel of the Millennium Era, with 2003's Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (known in Japan by the GMK-esque title, Godzilla×Mothra×Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.).

Besides Tezuka and Yokotani, returning cast and crew include composer Michiru Ōshima, Tsutomu Kitagawa as Godzilla (the suit re-molded with a chest scar from the point-blank Absolute Zero Cannon shot the big guy took in the finale), Akira Nakao, Kô Takasugi, Yūsuke Tomoi, and Yumiko Shaku reprising their roles from the previous film (though, early in the runtime, Akane and Hayama are [un]ceremoniously reassigned to America, where good Japanese stuff that isn't anime goes to die, apparently), and Hiroshi Koizumi reprising his role from Mothra (though he also played other roles in Godzilla Raids Again, Mothra vs Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, and Return Of Godzilla). Koizumi's reveal here as Dr. Shinichi Chujo is paced like the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield arrivals in No Way Home: a "hold for the theatrical audience to lose their collective shit" moment that I recognized before I recognized the aged Koizumi himself, and felt compelled to look him up, thereby taking myself out of the viewing experience and ruining it by having to explain it to myself. I understand that Koizumi is an acting legend and this moment would have had the desired reaction in Japan during its theatrical run, but I am not Japanese and it's 2026 now, not 2003, so my subjective experience is my own, and it didn't hit for me.

But this feeling of nostalgia pandering and a rushed, contrived writing process doesn't stop there because Tokyo S.O.S. struggles with whether to be a Mothra sequel or an Against Mechagodzilla sequel. It's the latter because Kiryu is still there, being repaired, the characters that return (and don't get sent to America to die on the way back to their home planet and never be seen again) continue doing what they did before because they aren't that important or interesting and the characters who were important and interesting last time completed their arcs, so I guess Tezuka-sensei's hands are tied. But because the movie has to be a sequel to Mothra, too (we know from the last movie that it and War Of the Gargantuas happened in this timeline, among other non-Godzilla kaiju films, as I'll talk about later), it just so happens that Dr. Chujo's nephew Yoshito (Noboru Kaneko, Hyakujuu Sentai GaoRanger) is a skilled mechanic working on the Kiryu repair crew. But because this has to be a sequel to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, the tech genius has to be smitten with a female member of the Kiryu Squadron (Azusa Kisaragi, who gets a "slow-walk with glow-up filter and chimes" introduction, can identify kaiju corpses on sight, and is played by Miho Yoshioka, Sun Scarred —a parent revenge fantasy action-drama by Takashi Miike) and the main character has to beef with a hot-headed male member of the Kiryu Squadron (Kyosuke Akiba, who can quip at Godzilla like he's a young Gondo or something, catch flies bare-handed, and is played by Mitsuki Koga in his first role) and spend the movie proving themselves. So Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. is an early 2000s sequel that manages to feel like a 1980s "just do the first one again but slightly different" sequel and a modern, "remember that‽" legacy sequel by turns. And it doesn't work either way because the references don't land (for me) and the changes to the formula (specifically the new Kiryu pilot and the almost nonexistent—but age-appropriate this time—romance subplot) make the retread ground feel rote, lethargic, and hollow.

Something I've noticed as a theme in the Millennium Era despite it being the Oops! All Reboots! Era (besides finding any and every excuse to low-key take the piss out of Godzilla '98), and as a rare positive I can say about Tokyo S.O.S., is how Godzilla has shifted from a nuclear war allegory to a beyond-natural reflex against man's increasing efforts to destroy him; Godzilla is no longer destruction and fallout given physical form, nor a hater or consumer of man-made energy (one of the stupidest interpretations of Godzilla's purpose ever written), but a nigh-indomitable answer to military escalation. In most of the Millennium films so far, Godzilla has appeared in response to something humanity has done, found, or created. Unleash a prehistoric UFO while looking for a new energy source? Godzilla appears to destroy it. Create a weapon to pierce his skin? Godzilla has a healing factor. Try to exploit his healing factor for scientific gain? It mutates an ancient alien hive mind into a Doom boss that Godzilla destroys because he fights by Highlander rules. Oh, and he'll step on the guy who's been trying to kill him all movie. Create an army of prehistoric insect kaiju because of survivor's guilt and a science-grifting politician funding your reality-warping doomsday weapon that you had built just in case Godzilla returned? Godzilla will return, kill the bugs, and survive your space cannon twice by strafing and digging. Did your country side with multiple fascist dictators fifty years ago and kill tens of millions of people, get attacked by Godzilla, and then forget about all of it? Godzilla will literally come back from the dead with thirty million extra souls just to remind you he exists. Create a cyborg kaiju/mecha superweapon from his ancestor's skeleton and DNA? Not only will Godzilla seek it out on instinct alone to fight and kill it, but the dead Godzilla will possess the cyborg, also on instinct alone, and take it for a rampage that only stops because the batteries died so that you are fully aware of the scale and degree to which you fucked up. Basically, all anyone has to do in a Millennium Era Godzilla film is remember Godzilla and not create experimental sci-fi bullshit in preparation for his return. He's like a prophecy from a classical Greek tragedy...or Shoeless Joe from Field Of Dreams.

Don't build it, he will not come. And your kingdom and your mother's dignity will remain intact.

But because it's already been built and used against Godzilla, Godzilla is inevitable, Kiryu is Iron Man, and Mothra is just itching to go for the head. And considering her desperation attack is dandruff, maybe she should go for the shoulders, too.

Anyway, Mothra is perhaps the best she's ever looked, thanks to this Era's use of CGI for effects enhancement of her practical model's usually stiff movements, and the pre-title sequence where she does a flyby on the JASDF is a cool, unique, and ambitious visual. Her reason for being in the movie? Kiryu is an affront to the natural order, and the Shobijin (explained as a new generation and shown to have powerful telekinetic abilities for their size, played by Masami Nagasawa and Chihiro Otsuka, Godzilla: Final Wars) visit Dr. Chujo to plead that Gojira's bones be returned to their resting place, otherwise Mothra will attack Japan once more alongside Godzilla. However, Chujo's grandson (Kenta Suga, the Always: Sunset On Third Street trilogy) convinces the Shobijin and Mothra (the latter by using desks to form her sun symbol, both as a callback to the Mothra film and as the titular Tokyo S.O.S.) to help Kiryu protect Japan from Godzilla, and a fight ensues for most of the movie's runtime that features some creative fight choreography (the exchange where a grounded Godzilla using his tail to trip Kiryu into an atomic breath blast to the face was a standout for me, and Mothra even gets some solid hits in on the big guy), but also feels overlong (it's an hour of the movie's ninety-one-minute runtime at the very least) thanks to Shōwa Era pace-killers like waiting for the Mothra larvae to hatch (despite the Shobijin being from a twin/duality-centric culture, the subtitles have them act surprised that there are two larvae that are twins—fraternal rather than identical here, as they are different genders and colors with different jaws—when all they do is say each other's names: Hio and Mana) and swim to the fight, and Heisei Era drudgery like beam struggles and a couple of agonizing phase transitions.

In the end (which I had to watch twice because the action and the cutaway to Yoshito repairing Kiryu put me to sleep), Gojira overtakes Kiryu again (even though the DNA and programming were altered last time so that wouldn't happen, suggesting more of a spiritual aspect to things, which was made clear earlier as well with Mothra's soul stone—a concept last seen in GMK) and carries the wounded and cocooned modern Godzilla out to sea to drown them both.

This is supposed to read as a thematically important, highly emotional scene where we bid farewell to both Godzillas and celebrate the survival of our three main human characters (particularly Yoshito, who had a spiritual connection with Kiryu like Akane did and was willing to resign himself to death for its sake, because all we know about Kyosuke and Azusa—I had to look up their names just now—is that he is the hot-headed, quippy badass piloting Kiryu, she is a jet pilot and kaiju nerd, and the editing can't decide if they're in the same cockpit or not). And it's supposed to show that those in power have learned the Millennium Era's recurring lesson about using increasingly more powerful weapons to fight and kill Godzilla.

But Prime Minister Igarashi's final order is to have Kiryu finish off Godzilla (at which point Gojira takes over Kiryu as mentioned above, so those in power haven't learned a damned thing), and there's a post-credits scene that undermines the message as well, for the sake of more pandering references because although Kiryu and Godzilla were identified as lost at sea and the natural order has been restored to the satisfaction of the Shobijin (who are completely ignorant of their own culture, as you may recall), it's revealed in said post-credits scene that a secret government genetics facility has been collecting kaiju DNA samples for cloning and DNA-cyborg purposes (including Gojira and presumably Kamoebas and Ganimes from Space Amoeba, Sanda and Gaira from War Of the Gargantuas, Varan the Unbelievable, and Ebirah, as these were planned to appear in an unmade third Kiryu film along with Baragon, Gorosaurus, and Kumonga). Again, nobody learned a damned thing besides how cool it can be to weaponize science when you ignore the moral and spiritual implications of doing so.

I could have said more, but nothing should be forced to live longer than intended and I now have three days to watch Luffy kick Doflamingo's ass for twenty-five episodes, so Stay Tuned for that and tomorrow's Time Drops on the September to come. And as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because it costs a lot of money to look this cheap, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.