Just the Ticket

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.

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 like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

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.

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).

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.

GFT Retrospective #128: Unleashed #0 - The Game

2026-08-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospectre.

I suppose that when you're playing a Game of any kind, turnabout is fair play. So because last week, I reviewed (as much as I could, given its length) the A Shadow Falls prelude to Unleashed (which was first included with four seemingly random reprints as part of the Best Of Zenescope Special Edition) as an Omnibusted post, I'm reprinting that review, along with my thoughts on Unleashed #0: The Game, as a Retrospective post today.

Unleashed

Volume One

Unleashed is the second largest of the three Zenescope events I have read before (The Dream Eater Saga was a straightforward enough twelve-issue series with a few One-Shots, and that was it, while the Age Of Darkness will have more content to it than the Being has torso muscles), with several short stories and crossover issues, and five Tie-In comic series, as well as an intervening One-Shot that I'll probably get to next month, and a huge batch of character bios.

The cover for Volume One is the A Cover for Unleashed #0 by Anthony Spay and Nei Ruffino, the Table Of Contents background is a joining of Unleashed #1's B Cover and Unleashed #2's A Cover, both by Jamie Tyndall and Ula Moś (with a quote from The Being that we'd later see used by Slappy/Kanduu in the first season of Goosebumps), and A Shadow Falls got a special title page in the Trade Paperback version based on Unleashed #1's C Cover by Stjepan Šejić.

Unleashed

A Shadow Falls

Insert Double Dragon Animated Series meme here.

But also, insert the new roll call format that I think we also saw in The Summoning when Sela showed up with Marcus, and at the end of Wonderland #10. It's basically the entirety of A Shadow Falls, showing Sela (looking at a picture of Venus playing with Ilys), Ilys herself (mourning Venus after the events of Godstorm), Shang (having just returned from the grave at the end of The Summoning), Belinda (whom we haven't seen since her brief reveal in Quest), Robyn and Britney (sparring), Zeus (having gathered Heather, Athena, Neptune, and Hades in response to Godstorm, suspecting—correctly—that Venus is partnered with a greater threat), and Cindy and the Dark One (who are preparing to summon minions from Myst because even though every failure is part of the plan, the plan itself has become a failure in the face of increasing complications and stronger emerging threats). Unfortunately, the Being and his exposed brain have been observing them all with godlike omnipotence, and faster than Cindy can say "klaatu barada necktie," he shows up to kill all of the summons and kidnap her in the name of education, spreading word of a new world order, and...Himself, really.

There's nothing truly eventful going on in these six pages beyond naming the major players in the coming Game that is to be Unleashed, and even less for me to say, except that it somewhat reminds me of the Pawns Short Story from way back.

Unleashed #0

The Game

The event proper opens on the Being playing the titular Game (one he invented that has only three pieces, each of a different color, a board with limited, almost linear movement possibility, and only two players, but he can play it by himself, so it's exactly the kind of nonsensical bullshit a god would invent to cure His boredom and annoy lesser lifeforms) with Cindy, who still thinks she stands a chance against a...man who humbled her demon boyfriend, yeeted Death to another country with one hand, and murdered a goddess by ripping off her arms before he slaughtered an entire army by entering a room and easily kidnapped her. Considering what Cindy lives through later in Zenescope’s history, I like her chances, but fights aren't the important thing here. It's The Game that matters, and more than that, the story Being told during The Game.

Some time in Sela's distant past (after the Wild Hunt, because glasses), in addition to everything else we've seen her do, she was a Power Ranger.

Not literally (although that would be a cool crossover to read if it were to ever exist), but she has a Sword Of Power and led a team of five monster-slayers with attitude, so the joke stands. This team was known as the Hunters (also featured in the Hunters: The Shadowlands Tie-In series that I will get to next week), and in a time when monsters and humans shared the Nexus (and possibly the Realms Of Power as well), they protected the world against Demons (The Unseen), Vampires (The Eternal), Werewolves (The Hunger), and Zombies (The Cursed), each of which got their own Tie-In miniseries and short story that I will cover as the weeks pass.

In addition to Sela, there was Liesel Van Helsing (daughter of the vampire hunter from multimedia Dracula lore, who has multiple miniseries and crossover appearances, particularly on the street-level side of the Grimm Universe, and received her own very, very loose TV series adaptation that ran for five seasons on the SYFY Channel), Roman Asher (a brutal werewolf hunter), Masumi Yamamoto (an assassin skilled in magic and the demonic arts who will get her own miniseries and a crossover or two later, but has more narrative potential than I remember her getting), and Elijah (a former slave and zombie hunter with possible ties to Letitia from Salem's Daughter). Shang is also there, and seems to be denying my fraud allegations for a few pages (and for once in his Being-damned life) by actually guiding, protecting, and helping Sela like a good mentor and surrogate father should (I haven't mentioned it yet, but Pat Shand is writing this event). The Being says Shang has the Key, which will be important shortly and later in the event.

When the monsters gather together and decide to summon their god to Earth (who may or may not actually be the Being), the Hunters take the ritual as an opportunity to shoot all their caviar in one basket-barrel, and against Shang's advice, Sela uses the Key (basically a GS Ball of Provenance magic) to open a portal to the Shadowlands (which is implied at the beginning of the issue to be the interior of Pandora's Box), sucking the monsters, their god, and the Hunters (including Sela, which is a solid, "find out how she escaped...next time on Dragon Ball Z!" cliffhanger for the flashback) into the strange dimension.

Back in the present, the Being reveals his ambition of...being...an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, fascist god to the masses, and sends a humbled and traumatized Cindy back to the Dark One with a message...as a message: "a shadow is falling."

The Game issue also featured character bios for the huge cast of Hunters, Monsters, Gods, Highborns, and Falsebloods who feature in the Unleashed event (printed again at the end of Volume One), as well as an issue release timeline (but not a canon chronology) that spanned from April to September 2013 across six issues and five miniseries. The art this issue (drawn and colored by Nei Ruffino) is the best interior work I've seen in a while, and Shand's writing is to the standard you'd expect, with deep, efficient exposition and quippy, personality-rich dialogue (Cindy, Shang, and Van Helsing being the standouts so far).

Stay Tuned for Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., the September Time Drops calendar, and next week, the Final Piece of Dressrosa. And 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, 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.

One Piece Multi-Piece #16: Dressrosa Arc (Fourth Piece)

2026-08-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ship's Log by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,

Meister Of Anime.

Ahoy, Ticketholders!

Friday ended up being my first thousand-plus-view day in awhile (since 2024, I think). In One Piece Pirate fashion, I'd like to say that if you're actually a human reading what I write (or at least giving me clicks out of pity because I'm still bothering to blog in 2026), thank you very much.

But if you're just following me on social media to farm my content for AI training, unfollow me immediately, go to an actual farm, touch grass until you find a particularly tall patch of it, and hide therein while you go fuck yourself.

When we last left things, Trafalgar Law was in a rematch with Donquixote Doflamingo while Luffy was stuck between a String double of Doflamingo and a puppeteered Bellamy the Hyena.

And because the Dressrosa Arc in particular (though it's happened before on a smaller scale in shorter arcs) likes to ruin the pacing of its fights and the impact of its big moments with cutaways and flashbacks (some of which feel like they were included for the sake of their own inclusion), this week's Fourth Piece of Dressrosa begins with Law getting a childhood flashback, in which Doflamingo gets his own flashback via dream sequence like One Piece is suddenly Inception or something.

As we've seen so far, the Celestial Dragons think themselves gods in the flesh, and so enslave, kidnap, assault, and murder members of the "lesser races" like humans and Fishmen according to whatever whim excites or offends their "sensibilities" at any given moment. So attempting to humanize someone like Doflamingo with a "traumatic" flashback where he (child version voiced by Brittany Karbowski in the dub) experiences his family being tortured after they surrender their Celestial Dragon status to live fuller lives among humans is an exercise in wasting everyone's time (unless you're an internet chud who thinks all fictional villainy can be justified on the basis of psychology and social fluidity, then I refer you back to my opening statements).

As for Law (full name revealed here as Trafalgar D. WaterLaw), his past is actually sympathetic because he was the child of a doctor in the affluent town of Flevance, which became known as White Town (so he can never be "Your Woman") following the release of a white lead deposit beneath it that was made widespread commercial use of in the town and abroad. And if you know anything about real-world white lead and/or how the World Government operates in One Piece, you'll quickly guess correctly that everyone in Flevance died of lead poisoning (both the literal and mafia slang varieties) or were executed by sanitation squads when it was put on lockdown under the false narrative that White Town was a contagion zone. So it stands to whatever passes for reason in the mind of a child with survivor's guilt that he would come to the realization that people suck and people in power suck more, and that he would seek kinship among seemingly like-minded, nihilistic individuals like the Donquixote Family (the younger designs for whom are similar enough that you aren't confused at who's who, yet different enough from the modern versions that you can see their progression and that Oda-sensei puts effort into character-based "show, don't tell"). The sequence where the Family casually massacres a town while lamenting the tragic, cruel hypocrisy of the Flevance incident is masterfully hypocritical in its own right (I mean that as a positive for the storytelling here, by the way).

But the heart and heartlessness (and puns!) of the flashback are strongest in the relationship between Law, Doflamingo, and Doflamingo's "kid-hating" brother Rosinante, a.k.a. Corazon. The twists with them are the best-handled, most emotional in the arc so far, and because One Piece is as dense and epic as it is, spoiling any of them would not only spoil them all, but rob the experience of its very soul. Just know that there's a reason Law is so personally invested in Doflamingo's defeat, there's a reason Corazon isn't around anymore, and that Law survived his white lead poisoning by removing it from himself after eating the Op-Op Fruit. Also, the Navy rescued a child escapee from Doflamingo's first(?) Birdcage attack who didn't get a name but will probably be someone important later because One Piece is like that.

Back in the present, all of the fights (and "fights") continue.

In addition to the main Doflamingo fight (where he finally releases Bellamy from his puppeteering and Luffy dismembers the String double with a Red Hawk Blast/Jet Gattling combo), the other fights are as follows:

Zoro vs Pica: for a fight featuring the second-strongest Straw Hat and an earth-moving giant with functional teleportation, this is drawn-out, repetitive, and often visually uninteresting. Pica laughing like a Pikachu and Zoro poking fun at his "soprano man" voice as a psychological tactic are just about the only things that don't overstay their welcome. There's some deep, long-term narrative stuff with Zoro and his rivalry/training with Mihawk that feeds into the final strike against Pica and feels more satisfying than the fight itself, but that, too, loses its impact because we've known since the Monet fight in Punk Hazard (a far more narratively rich and better-looking conflict for Zoro) that our potential World's Greatest Swordsman can use Haki, and I was pretty much looking at my watch since last week to see why he didn't just use it already.
Luffy vs. Bellamy the Hyena: Even half-dead and deemed useless by Doflamingo, Bellamy still tries to prove his worth against Luffy...by bouncing around the palace for three fucking weeks while Luffy stands there taking his shots and yelling at him to stop. It's again repetitive and visually boring, but the narrative is stronger because of the history between the two characters directly involved in the fight, the relevant flashbacks to Skypeia that don't overstay their welcome, and the doubled callback imagery of Luffy's one and final punch.
Nico Robin, Rebecca, and Kyros vs Diamante: between Brad Hawkins (VR Troopers) hamming it up in a good Jason Douglas (Dragon Ball Super) approximation with some of the most homicidally cliché villain lines ever and the literal flexibility of Diamante's power set (and of course, the powerful emotional history between him and the two former Dressrosa nobles), this is the fight to watch before the fight to watch. The choreography isn't anything to die on a hill for (too soon? Too soon...), and Rebecca and Robin are just there as hostage and defender, respectively, but I found it narratively compelling.
Franky vs Señor Pink is boring, absurd, depraved, and repetitive, and should not exist. There's an attempt at saving the narrative with a sympathy flashback for Señor Pink, but fuck this "fight" in a hazmat suit.
Chin Jao vs Lao G: two old man martial artists beating the shit out of each other, exploiting every conceivable tasteful cliché (and more than a little ageism for comedic effect) that this particular character trope has to offer. The visuals are fun and the choreography is creative for what it is, and Chin Jao and his family are pretty endearing macho characters.
Sai vs Baby 5: That continues here. Baby 5 was established in Punk Hazard as a needy, desperately gullible to the point of darkness simp, and Sai (Chin Jao's son and apprentice) has been fighting her for several episodes of minimal exposure, all the while ignorantly regaling her with tastefully romantic double-entendre lines as they clash blades. This is honestly a masterpiece of comedic writing by One Piece standards (I'd even generously place it a little classier than that), and leads to the most unique means of passively defeating an enemy general that the series has ever conceived.
"Destruction Fist" Ideo (a Long-Arm tribesman who's basically Chad from Bleach as a One Piece character with guyliner), Elizabello (the king who looks like a Punch Out! character and lost in the Coliseum after whiffing his one, good attack), Bartolomeo, and Cavendish/Hakuba vs Dellinger (a queer half-Fishman, which is interesting, and they fight with Haki and a mixed martial arts style that's visually cool for a third-string villain in One Piece) and Gladius (a steampunk guy with a cool design who can make anything he touches into an explosive balloon): This is a messy lineup of a bunch of supporting characters and motive-less villains who weave in and out of each other's fights, and the more important ones mentioned above, until Cavendish falls asleep again and his evil side comes out to slaughter for some more convenient cleanup. Meh.
Hajrudin vs Machvise: this could barely be considered a fight, but it's a definite "wow!" moment in the arc. Machvise is a fat biker beard design who possibly has the same Devil Fruit powers as Miss Valentine from Baroque Works, and his one joke is teachING the children in the audience (of this attention span-defyING series with murder, blood, existential horror, fanservice, PG-13 cursING, slavery, and sex crimes) about gerunds (Lao G: "that's gerunds. With a capital...G!!!!") by sayING them in a French accent. And Hajrudin is a giant (with a capital...G!!!!) voiced by Overlord's Chris Guerrero (with a literally capital...G!!!!) who sacrifices half of his body uppercutting Machvise into space despite the man crushING him with ten thousand tons from roughly a mile in the sky. It was short and predictable, but also very, very hype.

Which brings this Fourth Piece of the Dressrosa Arc review to a close. With all of the Donquixote Family's Executives and pawns defeated or otherwise engaged (puns!), the Doflamingo fight (and that snot guy who is too gross to be allowed a continued existence, but is still alive because that's the point of him) is all that's left. I tried getting through the last three episodes I assigned myself (one of which is just people all across Dressrosa screaming about the Birdcage shrinking because this arc is Under the Dome now, and the other two are actual fight episodes with recycled flashback scenes peppered throughout and Luffy reminding us of Doflamingo's name at the highest volume barely tolerable), but I decided to put off the big action until next week to give the full fight my uninterrupted, conscious attention.

Stay Tuned for a new Gear and my plans for September. But first, let The Game begin, and Tokyo sends an S.O.S. to the world. And if you're not currently doing something indecent to yourself in the tall grass, 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 shoestring budgets can be dangerous, 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!

Just the Ticket #232: Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

2026-08-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

August is looking like a high-traffic month, as we're just past the halfway point and Just the Ticket is already over ten thousand views, making it the fourth month in a row to do so. And speaking of things happening four times in a row, today's Goj-Year-ra entry is the fourth continuity reboot of the Millennium Era.

For the third and last time (for now) that we will have to deal with the confusion of which Mechagodzilla film we're talking about, 2002 saw the return of director Masaaki Tezuka, screenwriter Wataru Mimura, composer Michiru Ōshima, and the Millennium Godzilla suit (though I think this or the Megaguirus appearance was a new casting from the same mold, and is once more worn and performed by Tsutomu Kitagawa) for Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (stylized with the "×" symbol as seen on the banner and poster). As stated above, it is the fourth instance of the Millennium Era rebooting continuity to only acknowledge the 1954 Gojira film.

However, it does something rare and compelling that pretty much none of the reboots have before it when faced with an elastic timeline: instead of treating the gap since Godzilla's first attack as "Godzilla hasn't appeared in x amount of years, but we know he will, so we've been building weapons this whole time" (that end up not working because of thick skin, regeneration, internal body temperature, Godzilla being a ghost, or any number of other reasons) "just in case," or having Godzilla appear suddenly and sporadically as a solitary threat to drive human desperation and bad choices that make things worse (like in Godzilla vs Megaguirus), or mentioning other kaiju appearances without naming or showing them (like with GMK), Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla weaves the appearances of other kaiju into the history and development of the JSDF (later the JXSDF, with the X standing for Xenomorph, so there's another movie crossover that would be cool to see...) and the AMF (the Anti-Megalosaur Force, who will have 4,072 members for exactly as long as the screen tells us that, because Godzilla can subtract), actually showing us the organization dealing with 1961 Mothra and "Bigfoot Gaira" from War Of the Gargantuas (suggesting that Frankenstein vs Baragon also happened in this timeline). There are other nods to where this movie's world is going that I will touch on as the review progresses, but something as simple as showing flashback footage during narrexposiation really made me feel like the fictional world being presented was rich and sensible (relative to a Godzilla movie, but you know what I mean...).

In 1999, AMF Maser gunner Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku, who voiced Joanna in Perfect Dark: Zero) panicks during a Godzilla attack, causing the deaths of her colleagues (one played by Olympic gymnast Shinji Morisue). After three and a half years as a military librarian (during which time she montages her way into being swole for active duty as well), Akane is approached by the leader of the Kiryu Squadron (Kô Takasugi, of the Tax G-Men TV film series) to pilot their Mechagodzilla (referred to mostly as Kiryu, a portmanteau meaning "machine dragon" that could also be written as "air dragon," "breath dragon," or "soul dragon," which is really clever foreshadowing, and the suit is worn by Hirofumi Ishigaki, who had been suit-acting in tokusatsu TV since the 80s and began serving as an action director for Super Sentai the year this movie released). Literally and metaphorically haunted by her past, as most of Kiryu Squadron (particularly Kamen Rider's Yūsuke Tomoi as Hayama, whose older brother died in the 1999 attack) don't trust her with their lives, Akane aims to prove herself against the monster who killed her comrades and ultimately learns the importance of life and the strength of the heart. I've heard her be compared to Tsujimori as motivations go, but that seems like a misunderstanding of both characters because Akane is not driven exclusively by grief and revenge, but also by pride and a need to belong, despite her claim that she is "someone who should not exist." Tsujimori is Godzilla Must Die: The Person. Akane is both not that and so much more (and attractive, to boot).

Which brings us to her three partners in the story: Kiryu themselves, their creator Tokumitsu Yuhara (Shin Takuma, Return Of Godzilla), and Tokumitsu's daughter Sara (Kana Onodera, in her only known acting credit).

Consensus seems to be that Kiryu is the best Mechagodzilla in terms of design, story, and effectiveness. And although the original's "fake Godzilla" reveal is among my favorite narrative moments in the franchise, I otherwise agree. The idea of Kiryu takes that "robot wearing a skin of Godzilla" concept and inverts it, using the skeleton of the 1954 Godzilla as the chassis for the Mechagodzilla shell (which is armed with shoulder- and wrist-mounted missile launchers, a Maser breath cannon, and an absolute zero cannon embedded in its chest) and an operating system that executes Godzilla's genome as DNA computer code (so there comes a point where the DNA, if not the soul, of the first Godzilla takes over Kiryu and it goes on a rampage until its battery drains like Serpentera from Power Rangers). In the finale, the spiritual aspect becomes more clear as Akane is forced to pilot Kiryu manually like a Zord, bonding with it through the power of will and kinship, and putting herself on the Mount Rushmore of badass Godzilla characters in perhaps the best final fight setpiece in franchise history, aided by a nigh-seamless blend of suitmation and CGI, peak choreography, and an emotional roller-coaster of visual and performative storytelling. Kiryu is amazing, everything surrounding it is amazing (including the trilobite prototype hinting that, had the Millennium Era been more consistently profitable, we might have seen a version of Destoroyah in this timeline), and if not for the twenty-plus episodes of One Piece I have to watch by Monday, I'd say I can't wait to see how the sequel unfolds.

As for the Yuhara family, Tokumitsu is the creator of Kiryu's DNA computer OS and the biological endosketon cyborg process, and his chief character traits are single father, scientist, and unfiltered simp (the latter of which is gross because he's almost thirty years older than Akane, who may or may not also carry the souls of his dead wife and miscarried first child as part of that "I'm someone who should not exist" thing). For being the kid in the movie, Sara is the more influential and compelling character of the father/daughter dynamic. Living with survivor's guilt over the deaths of her older sibling and mother (both in childbirth), she carries around a Touch-Me-Not plant that she believes is possessed by the spirit of her mother (possible hint at an unrealized Biollante reboot?), and has derived a childish spirit of optimism from the darkness in her young life that proves crucial in how Akane interacts with Kiryu, Godzilla, and her Squadron-mates in the finale. I don't like the reveal that she's helping her father hook up with a woman who's young enough to be her older sister, but her impact on the story is otherwise greatly felt.

Speaking of references to possible Heisei Era reboots and big narrative implications, I love how dark the politics are in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. The Heisei Era films rarely addressed how disturbing it was that Japan had a UN-sanctioned military task force with a flying fortress with space-age weaponry, a series of giant robots, a school for psychic child soldiers, access to future technology, and a genetics division that created no less than two potentially world-ending threats on accident. But enter Prime Minister Igarashi (Akira Nakao, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II), successor to Machiko Tsugue (Kumi Mizuno, Invasion Of Astro-Monster and Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep), and the logistics of fighting Godzilla with a giant robot Godzilla become publicly unfavorable, to be simple and kind about it. Not only is the Kiryu project a financial drain as a tax-funded government expenditure (not to mention the entire country has to be blacked out to power the thing at one point in the finale), but should Kiryu succeed in destroying Godzilla, the Japanese government will have a beyond-military-grade kaiju cyborg weapon that it can use to subjugate its people or disrupt the global balance of power in its favor (so, is this a shifted version of the global superpower future from Godzilla vs King Ghidorah?). And though the story given the most importance is Akane's redemption and triumph (an ultimately optimistic character arc), this political subtext colors the movie's implications a very dark shade throughout without someone expositing the moral directly at the camera. Great job, team!

The pacing of the human plots can be a drag (especially when Tokumitsu and Akane are sharing awkward screentime), and the early kaiju action has that mid-Heisei Era, stop-and-start feel to it, but the franchise nods gave me food for thought, Akane and Kiryu were the peak of cool, and I enjoyed myself.

A-

Just ignore the uneven tense of that last paragraph, Ticketholders; I are smart and I knew what I am did. Next week, more Dressrosa, let The Game begin, and Tokyo sends an S.O.S. to the world. Stay Tuned and 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 the government is using my taxes for evil, 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.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #63: Best Of Zenescope Special Edition

2026-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

I'm taking some liberties here by calling this an Omnibusted review because, while Best Of Zenescope: Special Edition is a Trade Paperback collection celebrating eight years of the company's existence, I'll only be talking at length about one of the stories in this seemingly completely random assortment of issues. The rest, you can follow the links I'll provide later to see my thoughts on them.

Best Of Zenescope

Special Edition

The cover (which I also used for my banner) is by Alfredo Reyes with colors by Ylenia DiNapoli. There's a rare exclusive cover by Anthony Spay and Ula Moś that you'll see when I get to talking about the Unleashed prelude later, but first, those other four issues bear some discussion. Some. Like I said, they have no connection to one another or Unleashed, so I'm not going to bother reprinting my reviews of them here.

Grimm Fairy Tales #8: Jack and the Beanstalk - I kind of see why this was chosen because Sela's parting line about things you can't put a price on (or shouldn't, really), along with the Rumpelstiltskin issue, is an early hint at her characterization and more recently important motivations.
Return To Wonderland and Neverland #0 - I likewise understand the inclusion of these two. Wonderland is a massive and massively popular ongoing franchise for Zenescope, and Neverland will continue to pop up in crossovers and get miniseries going forward, and both franchises have agency and history with the main series.
Sinbad #0 - This is the one I'm most cynical about regarding its inclusion. Yes, it was once Zenescope's longest-running spinoff title. It's rooted in Belinda's mostly unexplored history. The art style is unique. It got a crossover trilogy and participated in Zenescope’s first real event series. But it is also the company's biggest source of failed ambition from its early days, and never appeared again after the Dream Eater Saga.

Unleashed:

A Shadow Falls

Insert Double Dragon Animated Series meme here.

Next week, said Game begins after I review more Dressrosa, and I follow it up by finishing up the Kiryu Saga that I'll review the first part of on Friday. Stay Tuned and 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 a shadow has already fallen, 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 #15: Dressrosa Arc (Third Piece)

2026-08-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ship's Log by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,

Meister Of Anime.

Ahoy, Ticketholders!

Usopp in One Piece has gone on a huge journey, not just from Syrup Village in East Blue through the Grand Line insanity and being trapped on a giant carnivorous flower for two years, and now into the New World; but from being a liar and coward to just a coward, to a strategic coward and makeshift shipwright who wants to be a Brave Warrior Of the Sea, to someone who can stand toe-to-toe with Luffy, to a revolution-igniting superhero who can befriend giants and emotionally scar ghosts, to a man driven by survival to become the peak physical version of himself. His cowardice has always been a part of his character, but as the story has gone on, it's become less of a "this is this person's one defining trait" situation, and more of a...power-dampener for Eiichiro Oda-sensei to figure out ways to write Usopp as a character who is powerful in ways that don't require strength: using strategy, psychological warfare, ingenuity, resourcefulness, absurdity, and social capital to whittle down strong foes and endear himself to strong friends. Usopp has been my favorite Straw Hat (besides Luffy and Robin) since the very beginning.

But as of last week's crop of episodes, it seems Usopp has regressed back to having Why Does It Have To Be Me? Disease.

Another character who comes to mind as being rich in social capital is Buggy. Like Usopp, I didn't care for him in the beginning. But through unlikely friendships he made in Impel Down and the cult-like following he acquired during the early Marineford material, Buggy became one of the Seven Warlords. He was a villain, he lied, he let people believe what they wanted to believe, and he achieved success because of it.

Now, we get back to Usopp. On Green Bit, he managed to exploit the Tontatta's gullibility (a trait they probably share at the expense of Oda making a bilingual Gulliver's Travels pun?) and the conveniently-shaped helmet he's wearing this arc to convince them that he is a descendant of their legendary "Big People" hero, Nolan the Liar (a decent way of bringing the joke about Luffy confusing the two full-circle from the Skypeia preamble). And instead of keeping that ingenuity track going to the point that lies become truth through his actions (Usopp's purpose for joining the Straw Hats, for challenging himself as he has, and doing the things he has done so far, was to have true stories of his Pirate exploits to share with Miss Kaya when he returns home), the Dressrosa Arc focuses on how much Usopp is letting the pressure of maintaining his lie overwhelm him and how he didn't sign up for any of this (he literally did, almost six hundred seventy episodes ago) and wants to run away. He was once inspired by Giants to become more than he was, and now that he is the inspirational giant in comparison to those who believe in him, all he can think to do is run away and leave them to die. He literally had the solution to their problems in the palm of his hand at one point (a legally distinct Tabasco sauce pellet that looks like a grape because of the purple anime food trope and is the size of Usopp's Star ammo, so again, he could have just popped it into his Kabuto and shot it into Sugar's mouth, saving me a week of rage and the Tontatta hundreds of fictional near-deaths because almost no one actually dies in One Piece—autocorrect tried to brainrot me into picking Ohio, by the way), and said, "nah, I want you guys to do it instead...for your self-esteem."

He ultimately does come back to save the Tontatta after ignoring their many, many, many expressions of faith and pleas for help, and his intervention does lead to the use of the fake grape in emotionally scarring Sugar into unconsciousness, but like I said at the end of last week's review, common sense took an unnecessary backseat (and was shredded on the pavement when it fell out of the car at double the speed limit, metaphorically speaking) to unfunny, superficial, for-its-own-sake, subversive humor.

And because Buggy has achieved his goals for now, his character arc from prior story arcs is later foisted upon Pumpkin Usopp "the God" (so, is "Pumpkin" Usopp's last name?), and circumstances beyond his control result in physical harm and his...failure?

What's the message here?

Are we supposed to recognize Usopp's guilt over lying as a sign that he is a good person (who would abandon hundreds of people to enslavement and death out of selfish cowardice)? Or are we supposed to understand that committing to the lie unconditionally is how you achieve greatness? I mean, it seems to have worked out for the man destroying my country at the moment...right?

It's amazing what a little context and a week of simmering retrospection can do for my eloquence, because the above is what I wanted to say at the end of the previous One Piece Multi-Piece, but all I felt was "Usopp fucking sucks now, and I want him to die several horrible deaths while eating shit." I think I expressed myself far better here than there, and I'm as eager as anyone can be after watching what I saw last week to find out where this week's doubled dozen of Dressrosa derring-do dares to dally, dammit!

With Sugar now unconscious, the toys revert back into humans (and a Sea King-sized gorilla, elephant, and lion, among other creatures we see later), and everyone's memories of them return, which Oda has the insight to explore all of the possible dynamics of, including the restored people's responses to infidelity and the collective horror of realizing the depths of (one of) the atrocities Doflamingo is willing to stoop to for the sake of his rule. It's a really powerful emotional start to this week's episodes (especially Rebecca remembering Kyros and learning that he was watching over her the entire time), and I almost forgot about how badly Usopp has been written here. I also like the animation variety on display as the people and animals transform back. Some just pop from toy to human amid yellow sparkles, and others get full, elasticized, cartoon body horror sequences. But Robin and Kyros (the latter while singing his "This Toy Soldier" theme) get magical girl henshins, and I love it.

The kingdom-wide revolution doesn't last much longer, though, as we see Doflamingo's composure start to crack, and he traps the entirety of Dressrosa in a cage of razor thread, puppeteering some Marines and armed citizens to kill the others as he did to the former king, and to the Navy at the end of Punk Hazard. The only way to be set free, according to him, is to kill a Straw Hat, a member of the Revolutionary Army (because Sabo is there, and we find out that Robin knows him from her "Friends' Whereabouts" episodes, but may not have made the connection that Sabo and Luffy are sake brothers just yet), or a member of the old royal family.

So, while Luffy attempts to rescue Law from Doflamingo (after a crazy fight the two Warlords had earlier that destroyed half of Green Bit and pushed Law to his limits) and evade the criminal fodder that are trying to collect his bounty, the other Straw Hats and supporting characters fight their own battles, as is the style of One Piece arcs.

Apparently, the response to Usopp having Doflamingo's highest bounty was a misdirect, and so we get a thematic callback to arcs like Impel Down and Marineford, with the freed Coliseum participants (especially fanboy Bartolomeo and the arrogant Cavendish) choosing to put their grudges aside to support Luffy, and the freed Smile factory workers doing the same on God Usopp's behalf, which was nice even though most of them end up as fodder for the lesser Executives. Perhaps the most fun of these is the fight between Chin Jao and the old Super Sentai man whose one joke is teaching the children in the audience (of this attention span-defying series with murder, blood, existential horror, fanservice, PG-13 cursing, slavery, and sex crimes) about words that start with the letter G, like geriatric, goon, grandpa, gangster, and Godzilla.

Zoro fights the Donquixote Family's Logia-powered Spade Executive, who can reshape entire land masses with his stone-manipulation abilities and his one joke is being a huge guy with a squeaky voice who wants to murder anyone who draws attention to it. Zoro is cool here, using psychological tactics in addition to his sword skills. And like with Franky during his fight (which I will get out of the way shortly), the score brings back his pre-skip individual bumper theme at a key moment, and I appreciated the hell out of it. I don't recall if any of the other Straw Hats' themes returned just yet, but Zoro's and Franky's stood out to me.

As for Franky's fight, he hugs and kisses a woman without her consent and spends far too long German suplexing and punching it out with the macho incel man-baby pervert, Señor Pink, and I eventually just started skipping his cutaways altogether because there were better narrative ways to fill my eyeballs and earholes.

Things like Kyros reuniting with Rebecca on Flower Hill and saving her from a repeat of the past at Diamante's hand (the Diamond Executive who shot and killed her mother). Things like Sabo and Fujitora (the blind Navy Admiral with gravity powers) coming to very destructive blows as they fight casually (recall how when Akainu and Aokiji fought seriously, they rewrote the ecosystem of an entire island prior to the last arc) to learn if each other's convictions align or not. Fujitora is my new favorite Navy character, and even with how poorly Sabo was introduced as a tournament replacement for Luffy, he's a badass here, thanks in part to Bosch's dub performance.

Speaking of better things to watch and characters redeeming their shitty writing, when Luffy and a freed Law (Doflamingo had him in Sea Prism handcuffs and part of this batch of episodes' yap & run action was about getting the key to Luffy before they reached the villain for their literal runback fight) were almost to the top of Doflamingo's...restructured tower palace (because a multi-ranked concurrent battle structure that gives everyone something to do while Luffy takes a direct course toward launching the source of the conflict into the Endless Vearth with his fists is also a staple of One Piece arcs, and I've referred to such a plot structure as a "tower entry" format in the past even when the literal structure in question isn't a tower, which it very much is here), the reveal came that Sugar was conscious again (not much of a reveal, considering Robin, Bartolomeo, and Cavendish spent two episodes fighting giant zombie nutcracker toys beforehand, but then again, Dressrosa has been a far from masterful arc at paying off its twists with any kind of timing or impact, but can be a powerhouse of emotion more often than not), and Usopp got his own runback opportunity with the help of former Princess Viola (the flamenco dancer who seduced Sanji in the First Piece of Dressrosa) and that missing samurai Kin'Emon has been loudly searching for.

I'll get back to Usopp in a minute, but I need to detour for a look at said samurai. His name is Kanjuro, he looks like a dour kabuki performer, and he has Devil Fruit powers that let him give life to anything he draws...except that his one joke is he's a terrible artist and everyone shames him for it; isn't that funny.

Anyway, using Kanjuro's...skill, Usopp has an image of his own face 3D-printed and wraps it up in a huge Green Star ammo ball (along with improvised, time-release, dual thruster rocket technology he made himself using incendiary Star ammo), then launches it with pinpoint accuracy from a distance that requires two-stage propulsion to clear, using Princess Viola's Glare-Glare powers (which probably could have just been a high-level affinity for Observation Haki if it wasn't a Devil Fruit, but maybe she's going to have a greater role later in the series?) as an enhanced imagery targeting system. This is the kind of Usopp writing I love, and the pressure of the situation helps him unlock his own flavor of Observation Haki that functions like a mix of ki-sense and Predator vision. There may be a prognostication component to it, too (that's the formula of Copium I'm choosing to take, anyway), as the episode focusing on this features an All Is Lost fakeout where Usopp's grip slips, he misses his shot, and Sugar turns Luffy into a toy. It's cheap, it's yet another thing this arc ruins the impact of through odd timing and editing, it didn't need to exist, and if it was Usopp foreseeing a bad future, I don't know how it would be possible to predict an event that would make you forget itself. However, Usopp does hit his mark as previously stated, traumatizing the chuni sociopath into unconsciousness yet again, redeeming himself, earning a new power, and giving his Captain and ally the opening they need to get to their fight with Doflamingo. So hype!

And the fight is, too. Doflamingo's mind games and power set (everything you can imagine being done with string, thread, wires, etc., taken beyond its logical limits, plus Armament Haki), clashing with what we've seen from Luffy and Law thus far, is rich in emotion and a feast for the eyes.

Of course, none of the fights mentioned here (nor any of the ones I neglected because of how huge and dense this arc is) are going to conclude anytime soon, it'll be interesting to see how Luffy and the others will get to Zou without the Sunny (I literally forgot that half of the Crew left last week as I was writing this), and it wouldn't be the Dressrosa Arc if there weren't at least one more reveal thrown in to disrupt the flow of the action so the characters can learn something the audience knew six dozen episodes ago: Doflamingo reveals to Luffy that the Donquixote Family are Celestial Dragons, which Law already knew and didn't bother to share earlier because "our alliance is dissolved and we're enemies now, even though we still both want the same thing," or some such bullshit.

And speaking of Trafalgar Law and reveals, there are two more regarding him, which seem like they're going to be handled with narrative competency in the future. First is the true, full potential of his Devil Fruit. It's revealed that the Op-Op Fruit has a secret technique that allows the user to grant immortality at the immediate cost of their own life. Considering that normal uses of the Devil Fruit's Room space include swapping souls, removing organs and diseases, disassembling and reconfiguring conscious living bodies, teleportation, and the general warping of biological and non-biological reality, and considering that Devil Fruits reappear when the previous user dies, it's easy to assume the technique might have some reincarnation aspect to it, or that the surgery might entail transferring the Devil Fruit itself to a new user. This, of course, begs the question of whether Law aided Blackbeard in acquiring Whitebeard's power, and why. Then there's the Op-Op Fruit's connection to the Celestial Dragon homeland of Marie Geoise to consider, as it's said to be tied to a national treasure there that's strongly suggested to be something like the three God weapons mentioned in the poneglyphs. Huge long-term implications with this one, obviously.

The other revelation with Law (and Doflamingo, really) is more immediate and personal, and regards the four Suit Executive seats. We've seen that the Spade, Diamond, and Club seats are filled by Pica (the Stone-Stone Chad with the squeaky voice), Diamante, and Trebol (the disgusting, derpy snot guy who guarded Sugar), respectively, and it was mentioned offhand earlier in the arc that Vergo (the Marine double-agent with food stuck to his face who died when Caesar's Punk Hazard lab exploded) occupied the Heart seat. But before him? There was the aptly named Corazon, Doflamingo's younger brother, whom he killed because Donquixote Doflamingo is a heartless (appropriate puns!), anarchistic, nihilistic, Celestial Dragon asshole who's begging for a beating. But we won't learn anything more about Donquixote Corazon until Law has a flashback...next time!

Oh, and I should also mention that once One Piece hits Episode 687 (where Sabo and Fujitora start fighting), the OP changes to "Hard Knock Days" by GENERATIONS From EXILE TRIBE.

The accompanying animation is more in line with the events and character designs we've seen in the arc so far, and it's more of a driving rock banger than the uplifting pop track we got before, but still brings the hype.

Until next week, please Stay Tuned for The Best Of Zenescope and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. Also, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because the real paying the bills is not the Crew we met along the way, 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!

Just the Ticket #231: GMK - Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

2026-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

As of this writing, I am exhausted and stressed out from work, and really wish people would stop being pyromaniac assholes because my job isn't the only reason I can't breathe or sleep or gather the energy to produce and promote content in a timely fashion lately.

Regardless of how I feel, though, you all are still turning out the views, no paid SEO service required. So thank you. Let's get into this week's Goj-Year-ra project review.

Released theatrically in 2001 but set in 2004 (given that everyone says the events of Gojira took place fifty years ago), the mouthful of a title that is Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Miss GMK, if you're nasty) was directed and co-written by Shusuke Kaneko (on the heels of directing the Heisei Era Gamera Trilogy, and he would go on to direct the live-action Death Note films) in partnership with Keiichi Hasegawa (the Ultraman franchise and the Gridman Universe) and Masahiro Yokotani (Re:ZER0 and the Rascal franchise, minus Santa Claus). Composer Kow Otani reunited with Kaneko after the Gamera Trilogy to provide the score here. Special effects were led by Makoto Kamiya (the CG animated Resident Evil films, Degeneration and Damnation) with suits designed by Fuyuki Shinada.

For better and for worse (subjectively, it didn't entirely connect with me a hundred percent of the time because of a few fanciful leaps in logic, tonal shifts, and the liberties taken with some of the kaiju, but I still had fun), GMK employs the high-concept strengths of its writing team, and the cohesion of its crew in general, toward a more spiritual plot.

My head canon for this movie is that Godzilla (suit-acted by Mizuho Yoshida, of the first two Rebirth Of Mothra films, in a new, more villainous-looking, larger suit designed specifically for GMK) was killed in accordance with the events of the original film, and combined with the souls of all those killed in the Pacific Theatre of World War II to become a corporeal, vengeful "spirit of the will to survive" (several characters in the movie use this phrase to describe Godzilla), returning amidst a global resurgence of kaiju (including early mention of the 1998 'Zilla attack on New York, suggesting that Godzilla: The Series may also be canon here, and 'Zilla's son is out there dealing with the other monsters while GMK focuses on Japanese events) to remind then-modern people (including a biker gang and some sociopathic assholes who smother, bludgeon, and drown a dog for barking...I think; it's hard to tell early on if those were Godzilla attacks or the other titular monsters being awakened—I think a news broadcast suggested the dog-killers were offed by Mothra) that Godzilla is terrifying. It works a little too well on some of the extras, who seem to have gone to the same school of physical acting as Matthew Perry and every silent era comedian ever, making what should be horrifying scenes of destruction and mass death look unintentionally hilarious.

The heart of the movie rests with three characters, though (and I don't mean the kaiju), who both ground the plot in compelling, charming ways and participate in the action when things aren't quite so grounded.

First, there are the Tachibanas. Tied in with the spiritual angle of the plot is Yuri Tachibana (Chiharu Niiyama, Ju-On 2), the face of a cheap, Ghost Hunters-like "news" show called BS Digital Q (yes, really), who sees the appearance of Godzilla, and subsequently, the "Guardian Monsters" Baragon (Rie Ôta), Mothra (who looks like a gold Ectomorphicon from the Power Rangers movie of six years prior when she's CGI and not a stiff puppet that just looks like dated CGI), and Ghidorah (who is just Yamata no Orochi now with five heads missing, growls "help" when he's awakened for some reason, and looks like a bad pachinko/slot machine win animation going Super-Saiyan when he's not suit-acted by Akira Ohashi, of Gamera 2 and 3), as her key to transitioning into serious documentary journalism. She's an emotional, strong-willed female character who's treated with dignity and sympathy for once (unlike Tsujimori in Godzilla vs Megaguirus), and her character arc is actually visible throughout the runtime, which is rare for commentator/cheering section characters in this franchise.

Her father, Taizō Tachibana (actor, musician, and composer Ryudo Uzaki, formerly of the Down Town Boogie-Woogie Band), is the opposite of Yuri in terms of personality: a stern but progressively traditional Japanese military dad tasked with leading the maritime division of the JSDF, carrying on the legacy it established fifty years prior in response to Godzilla, and ultimately landing the finishing blow against this Godzilla. He's critical but supportive of his daughter, shares her fearless tenacity, and Uzaki's performance is like the high art version of aging action hero cool.

The third is Mitsuaki Takeda (Masahiro Kobayashi, a.k.a. Ryid Uruk and Barret Wallace in the Final Fantasy series), Yuri's "not-a-boyfriend" colleague who is a novelist and sometimes holds the camera for her. He's kind of an "also there" character, but supports Yuri and cares for her more than the movie lets on, so he's worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning is Hirotoshi Isayama (Hideyo Amamoto, the toymaker from Some Monsters Almost Attack), an old man who wrote a book on the three Guardian Monsters and is trying to re-awaken Baragon, Mothra, and Ghidorah (the latter two of whom were originally going to be Varan and Anguirus, but...)

in response to Godzilla's return (not that one), and may be more than he appears.

And for no other reason than I spent the back half of the movie calling him Japanese Robert Patrick, I'd like to give a shoutout to Shinya Owada. He gives a small but solid dramatic performance as JSDF Lt. General Katsumasa Mikumo, making him the standout bureaucrat character of the film. Not often I get to say that....

While stripping Mothra and Ghidorah of their foundational lore (I can't speak to Baragon's adaptation, having not seen his original film) was certainly...a choice—no twins, Ghidorah just being Orochi and a heroic character—their presence, along with Baragon (a super-expressive, lion-guardian-inspired design like King Seesar, he provides the best "Godzilla versus quadruped" fight in the series so far, incorporating burrowing tactics like Megalon and the Ground MOGUERA to get the drop on the big guy a few times before being handily dispatched) do a lot to demonstrate just how formidable this version of Godzilla is, right up until they all pull an Alec Guinness on him at the last minute

so Taizō can deliver the finishing blow Fantastic Voyage-style and make Godzilla breathe atomic fire from places that shouldn't breathe anything until he's just a beating heart at the bottom of the ocean.

Unfortunately, there was no talk or official action toward a sequel despite this teaser ending, possibly due to creative differences between Kaneko and Toho, and much like with Yoshimitsu Banno in the wake of Godzilla vs Hedorah, he was never asked to direct an entry in the franchise again (ensuring that a Godzilla vs Gamera crossover would remain fodder for video games and Death Battles only).

Before I reveal my verdict, I thought a bit of trivia was in order: GMK is the first entry where Godzilla's atomic breath makes a mushroom cloud on impact (later seen in Godzilla Minus One, as well).

My issues with Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack are few in number and previously stated (the dated effects, the unintentional physical humor, the kaiju liberties, the general spiritual angle), but the human leads are among the best written and acted in the franchise, the kaiju action was creative and physical (even Ghidorah got to fight worth a damn this time, and a human character got to survive killing Godzilla, which is worth at least two nickels by itself), and despite not connecting with the spirituality of it all, I had fun.

B+

Next week, the Millennium Era reboots yet again by pitting Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla...yet again! So please Stay Tuned for that, as well as more Dressrosa and The Best Of Zenescope. Also, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can stop breathing fire in strange places, 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.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #62: Godstorm

2026-08-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

Normally, when I'd review a miniseries like this that has lore behind it, the post would include reprints of my old reviews as well (particularly with things like Myths & Legends). But in cases like my Dream Eater Saga reviews, some characters and IPs had so much lore behind them that I merely linked to my relevant reviews instead. Godstorm is one of these latter cases. So, here we go!

Grimm Fairy Tales #54: The Grateful Beasts (first appearance of Ares, and Greco-Roman deities, in general, in the Grimm Universe)
Goddess (first appearance of Venus, and the final Short Story)
Grimm Fairy Tales #58-62: Mother Nature (Druanna, a.k.a. the Titan Gaia, is introduced for the first time)
Grimm Fairy Tales #68: The Immortals (first bit of lore on the Greco-Roman pantheon in the Grimm Universe)
Myths & Legends: The Gathering (origin story of the sun Titan Helios in the Grimm Universe, Venus claims the Beast)
Grimm Fairy Tales 2012 Annual and Grimm Universe: Angel One-Shot (Introduction of modern Zeus, Hades, Ares, Neptune, and Angel/Hecate)
Myths & Legends: The Summoning (Helios unleashed)
Grimm Universe #1: Eye Of the Storm (Neptune tries to destroy the world with aquatic Titans from Pandora's Box, which ends up with Hades)

If I listed everything with Venus in it, I'd be as late with this as I was with my second part of the Dressrosa Arc review on Monday. But I'm not down for that again, so new content it is!

Godstorm Volume One

The cover of the Godstorm Volume One Trade Paperback is the same as the zero issue's A Cover by Eric Basaldua and Ivan Nunes. The Table Of Contents page is a double-spread from the third issue by Jason Johnson and Ben Sawyer. The bonus material consists of an "exclusive sneak preview" of the GFT 2012 Annual at the end of the zero issue, and a "bonus sneak preview" of Grimm Universe #1: Eye Of the Storm at the end of the Volume.

The zero issue doesn't have much going on besides expanding on modern Zeus (Gregor Brontios) as a businessman and prolific artist looking back on his...distant relationships with his Falseblood children; in particular, Hecate, Perseus, Hercules, and Zagreus (whom he once threw off a cliff like a troublesome Mishima baby).

When high-class drug dealer and nightclub owner Eugene Sharp moves in on minor New Jersey dealer Tony Santinello's turf, Tony's childhood friend and enforcer, Julian, evens the odds at the cost of one of Tony's underlings being shot. And the two have kind of a Lenny & George-meet-the Babbitt brothers dynamic (minus the insensitive portrayals of spectral intelligence, of course) that starts to get on Julian's nerves after one "loving" insult too many. It all comes to a head when Sharp attacks Julian out of desperation and stabs him (subtle), leading to Julian choking Sharp...and electrocuting him dead and skinless with his bare hands.

Unfortunately, Venus and a mysterious partner with red eyes and jagged speech bubbles sense the awakening of Julian's power.

Julian tries to tell Tony about his powers and Sharp's death, only to get bitch-slapped for it. Shortly after, Venus arrives, disguising herself amongst a gaggle of "new talent" (read: hookers) at an exhibition of Tony's...expanded business model, and the sadistic Jersey scumbag further humiliates Julian, soon leading to our focal muscle man electrocuting Tony's eyes out of his mouth and teaming up with Venus, who is only identifiable by her speech font because this series' art style is simple, ugly, jagged ass.

And that's the only thing of critical note I've had to say, or probably will have to say, about this story because I've already done my research thing on the gods in previous posts, and this story is shaping up to be the most "goon doesn't want to be a goon, so he becomes a villain by being tricked into being a goon for a villain" thing of all time. Usually, I have something of note to say, but it just feels like I've been recapping the plot so far...because I have.

That kind of changes and kind of doesn't in this issue, because Venus pulls the old, "stop feeling how you've been told you should feel, and just be honest with yourself" thing, right before sending Julius after Neptune, who calls him Zagreus on sight.

Mythological Zagreus, you might recall, is a minor basket of spiders to figure out, so it's no wonder Zenescope just went with the "son of Zeus with Zeus powers" oversimplification here. Even his name, Julian, is a reference to Zeus' Roman name, from which we get the month of July, words like "jovial" and "juvenile," and the name of one of the most famous Roman emperors of all time, Julius Caesar (who, ironically, met his end in a similar way to the Western son of God, Jesus Christ).

Anyway, Julian's fight with Neptune starts unlocking his memories in a more fractured way than Heather Angelos/Hecate/Angel got from Zeus, so he's still a bit on the unhinged side and ends up "killing" Neptune (it's the full-body, lighting coming out of every orifice kind of shock that he gave Tony and Sharp, but Neptune still has his skin, and Julian doesn't even bother to confirm the kill before dumping the god of the sea into the ocean, which is kind of like chopping Godzilla into pieces and throwing them into a nuclear reactor; they're going to come back) while Venus is dragged back home for some scolding by her mysterious partner because she tried to kill Neptune when Zagreus was supposed to.

So now, it's time to face Zeus himself as the finale approaches.

Zeus starts things off by undoing Venus' glamour (which amounts to a change of clothes and some magic concealer to hide the Two-Face-esque burn scar that Helios gave her, because Venus is too vain to disguise herself as anyone else and too slutty to wear much of anything), but Julian doesn't care what she looks like (and frankly, with how shitty the art style is in regard to any detail, her facial burn scars barely registered with me, so the reading audience probably won't care, either). She showed him what power felt like and gave him permission to be himself (which is two people because of the reincarnation/past life memories thing that has been happening with Zeus' children so far), so he decided to be himself by giving in to his deadbeat daddy issues from both of his lives and being who Venus wants him to be, but it's his choice, because Saturday morning cartoon villain mind games make sense and I'm not bored enough yet.

In fact, I've been finding it very hard to believe up to this point that Pat Shand wrote this. Again, the art style drags the reading experience into the pits of tartar sauce (my high school mythology teacher mistakenly told us it got its name from Tartarus because it tastes like hell—it doesn't, and it isn't), but given how shallow and predictable the writing has been thus far (I suppose the zero issue is the exception, as it does give Zeus a brief but dramatic character exploration that demonstrates a rich history with minimal exposition, and Venus' shadowy accomplice provides a decent mystery throughout these following issues, but the rest has just been a boilerplate Zenescope villain origin story stretched beyond its means), I haven't felt the kind of magic here that something like The Game (we will see a Game of a very different kind shortly), Quest, or Robyn Hood had going for it.

Then Julian goes full Zagreus, and the gravitas of his combined history as both men comes to the fore. His hatred for Zeus (while predictable and petty as villain motivations go) leaps off the page, as does Zeus' complicated but unconditional love for him. Even in the Johnson/Sawyer art style, their brawl (culminating in Zagreus flipping the Mishima reference on Zeus and throwing his words of condemnation back in his face) is mythic and brutal to behold (but not as brutal as something I'll talk about shortly).

I also like how it isn't Zeus who beats sense into him, it's Heather. They've both been villains in the past. They're both cynical (at the very least) about having Zeus in their lives. But she's proof that people can change (especially given the convoluted lore they're both based on), and that she's great at Rock, Paper, Scissors, Hammer, Lightning.

The flashback explaining why Venus hates Zeus (the woman everyone wants to sleep with for some reason, spurned by the man who has slept with everyone else) is surprising, sad, and kind of hilarious. But before present Zeus can put an end to the eternal she-cuck, Venus is "rescued" by her mystery partner. And if you remember the shape, color, and font of their speech bubbles (I compared them to the bonus material, and it's a match) from Eye Of the Storm, it's...The Being! And he seems to be a proponent of life imitating art, because he rips off her arms! Decades later, this is the one image from this miniseries that I remember vividly. I also vaguely remember that she doesn't die from this immediately (and what happens to her later). I did not, however, remember (or realize the first time around) that The Being suggested he was behind The Gathering, Bad Girls, The Summoning, Angel, the 2012 Annual, and Eye Of the Storm. That was a cool reveal, and will have some big implications in Unleashed and beyond.

But the story isn't over yet because we get a nice, literally bookending epilogue (not that one) between Zeus, Neptune (I told you he'd get better), and Heather, where both men choose to let the past stay in the past (specifically, Zagreus murdering Salicia) and hope for a brighter future, and Zeus lets Heather into his hall of art.

I think I've made my thoughts and feelings clear on Godstorm, so let's end the review with a reminder of what I said in Cover Charge #3: Grimm Fairy Tales (FROM June 8, 2014): "I wasn't sure what to expect from this arc, but it didn't have that 'gotta read it!' factor that even The Library had going for it. A decent set-up for the Unleashed cycle, and at least Venus got her arms ripped off. I'm ready for my close-up, Ms. De Milo."

So, yeah; nailed it. My feelings haven't changed. I still want you all to Stay Tuned for my Goj-Year-ra on GMK, and 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 being someone's goon unfortunately pays better than being yourself in this economy, 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 #14: Dressrosa Arc (Second Piece)

2026-08-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ship's Log by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,

Meister Of Anime.

Ahoy, Ticketholders!

Just a friendly, hypothetical warning for you before we set sail for the Second Piece of the Dressrosa Arc: sometimes, being a team player means having to play as the team while they hide, complain, blame you for their failures, and act stupid (or are stupid) because they claim to have it harder than you, whatever "it" may be and whether or not "it" actually exists. Do what you can and what you know is right because regardless of the burden expected of you, that is really all you can do. Patience and right will prevail in the end. I hope.

When we last left the Dressrosa Arc, twenty-four episodes had elapsed, setting up the world-building, important characters, and plot points that could be relevant going forward.

One of the biggest was whether or not Doflamingo Donquixote is a Celestial Dragon, and it turns out that, yeah, he is. At least, by blood. And by actions, too, really. He may not be going around kidnapping harem wives off the street at random, riding senior citizens and fish-people through the streets, or torturing and killing anyone who touches him unprovoked (well, he does do that a few times...). But the enslavement of minorities to produce and weaponize artificial superpowers, the exploitation of criminals for public amusement with zero regard for anyone's life, and that thing where he framed an entire monarchy for its citizens' murders and destroyed their currency so he could seize the throne as the new hero king "makes up" for all the sick Celestial Dragon bullshit he didn't do. Yet.

Also, because he's a Celestial Dragon, the Navy has to cooperate with him and his organized crime family of wacky-looking murder-perverts (because One Piece), creating sort of a decent juxtaposition to how the Navy interacted with the Straw Hats on Punk Hazard. Then there's the lore drop that the Nefertari Family (Princess Vivi's family from Alabasta) were once Celestial Dragons as well. So, since the king of Alabasta knew about the poneglyph beneath his city and the existence of the three ancient weapons, does that mean one of the Shandian or Skypeian families, or Neptune's bloodline, were also among the twenty that formed the World Government eight hundred years ago? Since Sugar (I haven't talked about her yet because she hadn't been introduced until this Piece, but she's a de-aged chunibyo girl with the power to turn people into toys and bind them to an obedience contract) erases collective memories of those she transforms, could the Blind Century have been caused by a Devil Fruit power, too?

Now for the speculation I got right, which comes in three points that are really two points, only one of which I have anything of substance to say about, starting with the one-to-two that are more recent and kind of bare on discussion. The one-legged toy soldier is Rebecca's father, who escaped before Sugar could slap him with a contract. I guess the part where the person is forgotten happens automatically with the transformation into a toy, though. The part I didn't get right but probably should have because the hint didn't connect with me and I was busy thinking about poneglyphs at the time, is that he's also Kyros, the legendary gladiator with a thousand Coliseum victories whom Rebecca idolizes (I think she wears his helmet, too). There's also a bust statue of him that looks like it was cast (or maybe just drawn) by the same person who made the Nolan statue on Green Bit. Along with that, the old, masked gladiator is the former king in disguise, making him Rebecca's grandfather. That's it; just saying I called it. Maybe there will be more to him later in the arc, but that's all I have to say on that for now. Oh, and I didn't put together that the flamenco dancer is deposed royalty, too.

But now we get to the big one: Sabo is alive! He's grown up, obviously, has a bigger, steampunkier hat and fighting pipe, his face is always cropped out of frame like he's a parent in a Cartoon Network show, he's voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch in the dub, he suddenly appears out of nowhere without explanation, and his presence completely derails the established flow of the plot, as he takes Luffy's place in the Coliseum tournament. I keep talking about how much more thematically appropriate the Red Hawk Blast would have been in arcs besides Fishman Island (the most "the Straw Hats don't have the agency to be here" arc so far), and Dressrosa is another example. Imagine if Luffy had stayed in the tournament to the end, and won Ace's Flame-Flame Devil Fruit by knocking his opponent out with the Red Hawk Blast, carried the Devil Fruit with him into future arcs burdened by the choice of who to give it to (even considering learning how Blackbeard took Whitebeard's power without dying so Luffy could have Gum-Gum and Flame-Flame powers), until he encounters Sabo naturally later and the impact of their reunion and brotherhood could sit longer and mean more than it does here.

But because Luffy kicking 'Mingo's ass is more important overall than whether or not Ace's Fruit winds up in the right hands (and because it's easier to animate talking and run cycles for over a hundred episodes on a weekly release schedule than it is to deliver bombastic fight choreography, and because it's a common misconception in writing that subversion equals humor and One Piece is a literal cartoon most of the time), Sabo just shows up alive out of nowhere, he and Luffy switch disguises offscreen between episodes (later shown in flashback, but it gave me whiplash), and the Straw Hats do many episodes of running and yapping while there are occasional cuts back to the tournament where Sabo and four other minor characters (Rebecca, Bartolomeo, the wrestler guy from Blackbeard's crew, and the Donquixote Family executive who killed Rebecca's mother) with more easily animated powers try to get a treasure chest away from a man-eating fish. I am so hyped to barely see that.

The comedy relief fight aboard the Sunny (I have to specify the location because there's another one that bears bitching about later) does have some cool animation, as the woman Nami and Brook are "fighting" (Caesar and Momonosuke are also there, and the jokes haven't improved or otherwise changed, but Brook is actually strategic and helpful for once) can locally warp reality into impressionistic art. But they ultimately need Sanji to rescue them so more important things can be given focus elsewhere. Also, Big Mom's ship shows up, so Nami has to babysit three perverts and a whiny war criminal as they attempt to escape into the next arc (Zou) ahead of everyone else.

The other comedy relief "fight" is a mess of a thing where Franky no-sells the Navy and three Donquixote Family executives (one of whom is a middle-aged man who dresses like a baby, brushes his teeth with shoe brushes—yes, plural—wipes his face with his fangirls' bikini tops, rejects said fangirls for being too young, considers himself manly, and has the self-ignorat nerve to call other people perverts) as a distraction so the real plan (the Tontatta Revolution/rescue operation) can happen relatively unnoticed. But I have enough to say about that to want to save it for the end of this review. Just know that Franky's "fight" is boring and Japraved and nigh-pointless, and leave it at that.

First, let's get back to earlier in the tournament. The original focus of the tournament was supposed to be on the interactions of the minor and major characters, Luffy's impact on the existing Coliseum dynamic, and getting to (and through) Luffy's fights in Block C, because we know he's going to win as the main character (except for Sabaody, almost dying in Impel Down, and losing his brother and almost dying at Marineford). So it's disappointing that Rebecca, who is such a pivotal local character in the story with such a uniquely passive approach to combat, is treated so poorly when her time comes to shine in Block D. Not only is her presence diminished by having to follow Luffy's performance in Block C, the presence of Cavendish (who is driven by his vendetta against Luffy) diminishes her further, to the point that he literally hands her a mostly unearned victory in his sleep (another case of something important rendering itself confusing for no reason by happening offscreen and getting a flashback explanation in the next episode).

Deep breath.... Okay, let's talk about the clusterfuck of long-form subversion-as-comedy that is the Tontatta Revolution operation, because it pissed me off so, so much.

We have Usopp (the lying tactical genius who wants to be a Brave Warrior Of the Sea), Robin (who can fly, teleport, and make Cronenberg constructs with her Devil Fruit powers), the Soldier (a former undefeated gladiator and royal guard captain), and the Tontatta (a Liliputian army of elf/dwarf/raccoon people who can move faster than sound and create earthquakes by having temper tantrums). Their goal: infiltrate the Smile Factory, rescue the captive Tontatta slaves, and defeat Sugar (thereby reversing her toy curse). Their plan: feed Sugar a ball of fatally spicy hot sauce disguised as a grape. Said fake grape looks roughly the size and shape of Usopp's Star ammo. So what could possibly go wrong, right? Why could this have possibly pissed me off to the fuck and beyond? Well, instead of Usopp just waiting for the right moment and shooting the hot sauce ball down her throat when her mouth was open, he reverts to cowardice, gets overwhelmed by the pressure of being a hero to people smaller, stronger, faster, and braver than him because his lies snowballed beyond his control, and he sends the Tontatta to do his job for him, resulting in their further enslavement and mass casualties at the hands of Sugar and her insufferably disgusting snot-man bodyguard (plus Robin gets turned into a ragdoll). And this is dragged out for roughly twelve episodes! Great job, Usopp, you fucking asshole. Die, eat shit and die, then eat more shit. You are already dead.

Do I really have to binge this for three more weeks?

I said I do, so I guess I do. Stay Tuned for Godstorm and more Goj-Year-ra this week, though. And please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because it doesn't pay to be a team player, 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!

Just the Ticket #230: Godzilla vs Megaguirus

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

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

Today, the Goj-Year-ra project ends the first week of August with the second film, and second continuity reboot, of the Millennium Era, which the fandom often ranks with Some Monsters Almost Attack, Godzilla Raids Again, Godzilla '98, and Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep as among the franchise's worst entries.

I'm not quite so severe on it, but in contrast to Godzilla 2000 (which I reviewed last week), it gave me a strong first impression and spun into a rapid decline from there, for numerous reasons I will get into later.

Godzilla vs Megaguirus (released in 2000 under a Japanese title that translates as Godzilla×Megaguirus: The G Extermination Strategy, so I guess the multiplication symbol is a Millennium Era "versus" thing?) was the directorial debut of Masaaki Tezuka (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., a.k.a. "the Kiryu Saga") and written by the team of Hiroshi Kashiwabara (Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla) and Wataru Mimura (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II) with effects by Kenji Suzuki (Godzilla 2000) and a score by Michiru Ōshima (the Kiryu Saga).

As previously mentioned, Godzilla vs Megaguirus is the second reboot in the Millennium Era, and unlike Godzilla 2000, it begins by establishing agency with a version of Gojira '54 where the Oxygen Destroyer either failed or was not used, so that same Godzilla (now portrayed by Tsutomu Kitagawa in his second franchise appearance, and the film recreates some of the original's destruction scenes with a sepiatone filter and Kitagawa in the Millennium suit, which was a nice touch even though it most likely infuriated continuity hounds) is still alive to attack a nuclear plant twelve years later, leading to vehement discussion about abandoning nuclear energy in favor of a new power source. It's unclear how Godzilla was dealt with in the absence of the Oxygen Destroyer or how he was kept at bay (so to speak) throughout that twelve year period, but the capital was moved to Osaka during the post-'54 reconstruction of Tokyo, and would remain there through the next thirty years, when there is a scientific breakthrough in finding a clean, stable replacement for nuclear power: plasma energy (which is a real thing; just look at lightning, though I'm not scientifically knowledgeable enough to be able to say whether it could or has been used this way in real life; otherwise, we wouldn't still be using nuclear power so much). Heavy hydrogen (²H, an isotope you might recognize from its mention in Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep) is involved as a stabilizer somehow (again, I'm not a chemist or a physicist, so my understanding approaches zero). But Godzilla attacks a plasma reactor, too, so maybe the scientific breakthrough was just a bullshit political maneuver?

Anyway, the plasma reactor attack is grounds for a sick pre-title action sequence where the JSDF's elite unit (including immediately obvious focus character Kiriko Tsujimori, played by Misato Tanaka of Sadako vs Kayako) try and fail to stop Godzilla on foot with conventional, military-grade weapons. It's dumb as hell considering what we've seen every other Godzilla survive, but the combination of kaiju horror suspense and war movie action drama is near perfect at establishing Tsujimori's motivation for the path she takes in the movie going forward (a rote, simple quest to avenge her comrades and commanding officer that turns her into a flat, desperate, inferior version of Yuki from Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla).

Title-cut to 2001, and Tsujimori is now the captain of the JSDF special division, G-Graspers (which is the stupidest name for an organization in the franchise since...every group of evil aliens and humans ever, really, and makes her perfectly qualified to find G-Center—yes, I will milk that joke into the ground...). Using multiple scientific and military disciplines, they assist Tsujimori in her Ahab blood vendetta against Godzilla (whom almost no one in the movie calls Godzilla, instead referring to him by the code letter G, like there's suddenly a cap on the number of times you can say Godzilla in a Godzilla movie. Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla. Godzilla? Godzilla!

And everyone knows that when you're obsessed with hunting the great, green gorilla-whale, you need a harpoon of some quality.

Enter cocky, quirky inventor Hajime Kudo (Shōsuke Tanihara, Godzilla: Final Wars). He makes miniature robots to con children, whips up amphibious surveillance drones offscreen like he has Rick Sanchez living in his colonic hammerspace, and invented a proprietary AI operating system with an avatar (based on Tsujimori, by the way, because she recruited him for a special weapons project at G-Graspers, and they seem to have that kind of chemistry) that would make any turn-of-the-millennium computer explode like a Cybertruck in winter. He's fun. I like him.

Before we go from the fun and slightly disappointing to the aggravating, cheap, and batshit insane, though, it's important from a franchise legacy standpoint to note that Kudo's mentor, Yoshino Yoshizawa, is played by Yuriko Hoshi (Mothra vs Godzilla and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster). This is her third and final performance in the franchise, and she's...there. Her brief dynamics with Kudo are cute and heartwarming, and she has one dramatic scene revealing that she is a survivor of the pre-title plasma reactor attack, but that's about it.

So, what's this about Kudo helping Yoshikawa and the team design a metaphorical harpoon to slay Godzilla? Well, it's a perfectly sane plan to shoot Godzilla with a satellite that fires a two-meter-wide black hole toward the surface of the Earth. And the reason my sarcasm is perfectly sane is because a black hole the size of an atom can destroy the Earth, and now we're talking about a black hole that's four billion times that size being fired from orbit to the ground, consuming the atmosphere as it falls (plus the other consequences I'll get to in a bit), to kill a radioactive dinosaur (and we've seen what happens when black holes and Godzilla mix, thanks to Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla) who can just dig out of the way and be completely fine. Twice.

Yeah, a woman endangers the entire planet on three separate occasions (again, I'll get to the third one shortly) to avenge her war-daddy senpai because of Godzilla and survivor's guilt. Granted, plasma energy and heavy hydrogen draw out the black holes' Hawking radiation faster than they can consume matter because theoretical quantum physics and sci-fi bullshit make everything better or something, but even though she does cool, dangerous, badass stuff at several key points in the movie and she looks kind of hot in uniform, her "a black hole space cannon is the only way to kill Godzilla, and the only thing I want to do is kill Godzilla" plot/defining character trait made her likability fall off hard.

Which brings us to that third (sequentially the first) time she and G-Graspers endangered the Earth with the black hole cannon, and to a new contender for worst child character in the franchise. I hate Jun Hayasaka (Hiroyuki Suzuki, Haunted School). On his way to turn in his summer homework on insects, Jun witnesses G-Graspers testing the weapon, and even speaks to Tsujimori about whether he can keep it a secret. But when a spatial distortion left behind by the weapon test brings a prehistoric dragonfly kaiju (inspired by the meganeura, and identified as Meganula, so Rodan probably happened in this continuity, too) into the present day, Jun sees it and says nothing to anyone. Then he finds a strange egg that emits slime and water, and instead of trying to find Tsujimori and tell her about it, he...dumps it in the sewer and tells no one until it's too late, then we don't see him again for the rest of the movie (not counting the post-credits scene; yes, Godzilla vs Megaguirus has a post-credits scene) because he only exists to be hated by the audience for escalating the kaiju threat through cowardice, laziness, and stupidity, but I repeat myself. He's a poorly written plot device, not a character, and the movie suffers for it on both sides of the screen.

So now, Japan is infested with hundreds of thousands of power-, blood-, and ki-sucking insect monsters that turn Godzilla vs Megaguirus into a creature slasher for five minutes, the streets are flooded, and it's basically all Jun's fault. Fuck you, Jun! Dumbass kid....

There's also a giant Meganula egg at the bottom of the flood waters that all of the others start sacrificing their energy to so the rest of the effects budget can go to something cool, though, so there's that.

And this seems like a good time to talk about the designs, effects, and the final fight. Concluding the negatives, in addition to insane plot points, an unfocused script, and mostly unlikable human characters, Godzilla vs Megaguirus boasts (but why boast about this?) some of the worst digital effects in the franchise so far. Like, the CGI in Godzilla 2000 was laughable, but at least I could laugh. The compositing that's used here to accomplish what was previously done with model sets and rear projection (and looked goofily charming but impressive in previous decades) makes this Japanese cinematic blockbuster look like a straight-to-VHS SyFy Channel knockoff animated in Adobe Flash by a child smashing his Godzilla toys together and learning how to use a mouse for the first time. And the "slow motion" meant to simulate Megaguirus' hypersonic perspective of Godzilla looks like it belongs in the finale of The Longest Yard...from 1974.

That said, I think I've warmed up to the Millennium suit now that it's shown in more clear detail. I still don't like his frowny, lizard-Muppet mouth or how angular the face is, but there's something Asian dragon-ish about the lips and the texture language in the head that I can appreciate for what Godzilla is supposed to be. And the spines, irregular and shard-like as they are, do cut an intimidating profile when he's charging up his breath. So, yeah; I have my preference of what "the ideal Godzilla look" is (Heisei Era, hands down), but my "new thing sucks because new" feelings have tempered since last week. And because I like it when Godzilla faces a monster that's visually interesting and poses a genuine threat to him, I like Megaguirus. A rare, female kaiju (I think we've just had Mothra, Titanosaurus, and Biollante in the past, but let me know in the comments if there have been others), Megaguirus is a power-hungry, sometimes sadistic warrior-queen who makes Godzilla bleed several times in their big final fight with her claws, tail, and jaws (a fun, primal struggle when Suzuki isn't playing around with his new Adobe creative suite in post), sucks enough of his nuclear reserves to drain his atomic breath as he's firing it (I love the little heat effect it makes as it comes out of his mouth), which is something we haven't seen before, she knocks him out temporarily with an energy blast that's speculated (and adapted as such in video games and comics) to be Godzilla's own atomic power concentrated and fired back at him, and in a "this needed to happen because we forgot the humans had personal stakes, too" moment, her wings flapped with enough sonic force to disrupt the G-Graspers' computer system, trigger the black hole cannon's auto-firing sequence (meaning there was almost a fourth time that Tsujimori endangered the planet with her personal grudge against an animal too big to care about her existence), and send its orbiting satellite into free fall.

And her "based on a giant version of a real creature, but with draconic features" design reminds me of Battra a little, and you know I like the Battra design. So again, Megaguirus is a cool monster villain with an intimidating design and abilities, underrepresented in the franchise, stuck in an inferior movie, and I like her. Maybe too fragile as kaiju go, but her defeat was among the most brutal and spectacular in the series, fitting of her presence here.

There's also the human plot resolution where Tsujimori gets to do something heroic and awesome as a too-spectacular means of black holing Godzilla (which fails twice in this movie for the same reason, as previously mentioned), but I think I've said everything I wanted to say, and here's to Godzilla vs Megaguirus being more consequential and more fun at times than Godzilla 2000, but also worse in its technical execution.

Next week, it's more One Piece, more Zenescope, and more Goj-Year-ra. So please Stay Tuned for tomorrow's (belated push of) this month's Time Drops calendar, and continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to suck the existential, nuclear rage out of my soul, 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.

Zenescope - Omnibusted #61: Sleepy Hollow

2026-08-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

From what I recall, today's miniseries up for review has little or nothing to do with Zenescope's Grimm Fairy Tales canon beyond maybe having a mental gymnastics-heavy stretch of a connection to the Jack O' Lantern story from the 2012 Halloween Special (which is barely canon outside of a Dark One appearance anyway), and only features GFT branding for deceptively associative marketing purposes. I also recall from my first reading that its interior art was dark, dreary, unintelligible, joyless garbage. So why am I bothering with it again? Let's find out....

Sleepy Hollow

At the time I originally read this miniseries, my only vivid experiences with the Sleepy Hollow narrative were the Johnny Depp film and the supernatural procedural series from the 2010s where Ichabod Crane woke up in modern times to stop his cursed father from helping a secret society of Revolutionary War-era British proto-Nazis from reviving the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (the Headless Horseman was Death and Ichabod's father was War, by the way) for generic evil reasons. Also I think the series was canceled because half of the core dynamic was killed off and Crane spent the fourth season forcing a romance with a woman who was probably his dead partner/love interest sharing souls with their adult daughter or something. Even if I remember that wrong, I remember it feeling really gross and weird, and it made me drop off like everyone else did, especially after the first three seasons told such a satisfying and complete story.

But we're not here to talk about that; this is Zenescope - Omnibusted, people!

The cover for the Trade Paperback is also the A Cover for Part 2 by Marat Mychaels and Ivan Nunes, the credits page is an interior splash page from Part 3 by AC Osorio and Erick Arciniega (misspelled as "Arsiniega" on said page), and the Table Of Contents background is an earlier splash page from the same issue, both cropped and overlaid with the Trade's original in-between title pages to make them look extra-boned. Also, the bonus content consists of two first-issue previews: Madness Of Wonderland and Jungle Book: Last Of the Species, both of which I've previously reviewed.

In 1775 in Tarrytown, New York, British soldiers behead and discard the body of a Revolutionary named John, who may or may not become the Headless Horseman later, and it's treated as both a dream sequence and a historical flashback, jumpscaring us into modern day.

Meet American History Teaching Assistant Craig Marsters (who may or may not be a descendant of John's). He's late for a meeting with a student athlete at Tarrytown University, where it's apparently common practice for the jocks to buy test answers from the TAs because putting a ball in a net really good is more important than being smart. I love college.

Craig isn't as smart as he thinks, though, because he thinks it's okay to lecture his black roommate on the best way to stay off the streets, and Brian (the aforementioned student athlete who's too lazy and stupid—or maybe just knows his lane, because labels, even hurtful ones, have causes—to be both of those words at the same time) knows that Hessian is the word for both German mercenaries and a type of counterculture skateboarder, whereas Craig (or more correctly, the writer) conflates the Hesh shorthand slang with the full word and spells it as "Heshian" (which is not a thing).

Anyway, Craig is apparently such a workaholic geek that his girlfriend is thinking about committing suicide, and so principled about not taking a payoff that Brian and the rest of the basketball team (including Craig's roommate) decide to Snidely Whiplash him into the path of an oncoming train until he changes his mind (or loses his head; whichever comes first).

Well, even though the team chickens out, panicked shenanigans result in Craig still staring down the tracks, and it looks like a ladder; I mean, the latter.

So now, Sleepy Hollow is I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Yay.

Also, his girlfriend Katie wasn't going to kill herself, after all; she just copied Wendy O's suicide note from the internet for an assignment and he never got the chance to ask her about it because, you know, "death by choo-choo."

Also yay, this actually is canon because in addition to being the literature professor at a Boston prep school, Sela is also the Mythology & Folklore professor at Tarrytown University!

And the subject of today's lesson is the "local legend" of the Headless Horseman, as depicted in Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, but based on true events in-Universe that provide context for the opening sequence of the miniseries and mirror Craig's fate (John Marsters, and the Continental Army at large, was betrayed by his double-agent best friend, Abraham, for being a Revolutionary cuck).

So of course, now the team are all scared that Craig will come back from the dead for revenge.

Maybe they have a point?

And they definitely do. Or at least, a sharp edge.

His roommate (whose idea it was to tie Craig to the tracks—his name is even Ty—because they didn't expect that route to be in use that night and thought a blindfold scare would be enough) is dreaming about Craig and his girlfriend Katie having a sexy intellectual conversation about whether or not her Princess Bride fandom makes her a nerd, and if nerdiness has a positive connotation in the modern context, because supernatural guilt makes sense. And Ty reveals himself to be kind of a villainous asshole, like, Barry Cox but evil and worse. Also, one of the guys is found beheaded and ruled a suicide, and Brian seems to be next. That's it. Time for the finale issue already.

Every white guy looks the same in this art style, so it wasn't Brian, it was an extra named Steve. But that matters even less than the story as a whole, because the Horseman quickly works its way through the rest of the jocks from this point on. The only thing of note that could be considered remotely compelling is the reveal that Katie was in on the plan that led to Craig's death, and there was some decent foreshadowing throughout the previous issues. The art was also not as bad as I remember. But Sleepy Hollow is just a rapid-fire slasher movie in comic book form (akin to The Piper miniseries) with slow, plagaristic buildup and the barest justification for its own canon necessity.

Friday will apparently bring more crap to the table as I review Godzilla vs Megaguirus for Goj-Year-ra. Wish me luck, Stay Tuned, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to buy intelligence but already have enough of my own to know that you can't cheat your way to a better world, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest pieces of news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.

One Piece Multi-Piece #13: Dressrosa Arc (First Piece)

2026-08-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ship's Log by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,

Meister Of Anime.

Ahoy, Ticketholders!

It's been a long time since the One Piece Multi-Piece graced the waves with my look at the Punk Hazard Arc (a.k.a. the short "half" of the Dressrosa Saga, a.k.a. the One Piece Running Simulator Arc).

First up on the travel itinerary, even though I published it on Saturday, I chose to delay promoting the August Time Drops calendar so I could devote my time and energy to bingeing this week's chunk of the Dressrosa Arc, which, thanks to a decent portion of each episode being devoted to theme music (the high-energy "Wake Up" by AAA, accompanied by visuals of the Straw Hat Crew in flashy vacation attire fighting the massive supporting/fodder cast of Marines, gladiators, Pirates, and other villains, including an interlude dialogue exchange between Luffy and Blackbeard that may or may not actually impact the plot of the arc, but I don't know for sure yet), recaps, eyecatches (the same as we've seen in Fishman Island and Punk Hazard so far), and previews, was easily digestible.

If a refresher is in order, we last saw the Straw Hats form an alliance with Trafalgar Law (the Warlord surgeon Pirate who saved Luffy at Marineford—Part 1, Part 2—using the despicable and annoying war criminal Caesar Clown as a bargaining chip to strike a blow against Warlord Donquixote Doflamingo.

With Doflamingo seemingly having taken the bait, the Straw Hat Alliance sails to his island kingdom of Dressrosa to hand over Caesar to the Warlord, King, and possible Celestial Dragon (though I doubt this last because he isn't ugly enough) as a distraction while they destroy the Smile (artificial Devil Fruit) factory (and theoretically get Doflamingo arrested by the Navy now that his Warlord status has been surrendered, but this arc is over a hundred episodes long, so there has to be at least one complication to inflate and stretch out the plot like it's made of Luffy himself, right?).

In the first few episodes, we learn little bits of information about the world-building and the arc in particular.

Captain Kidd and at least two of the other Supernova Rookies from Sabaody have formed their own alliance and comnandeered Thriller Bark.

Also, we get verbal confirmation of the identities of six of the Seven Warlords Of the Sea (sorry): Mihawk, Doflamingo, Kuma, Hancock, Law, and Buggy (because Buggy from Impel Down onward is just the best), with the seventh Warlord simply being referred to as "the Other Guy."

And it's important to know for later that Doflamingo has four generals based on the suits in a deck of cards (because he's the King and the Joker), and for sooner that he is also in possession of Ace's Flame-Flame Devil Fruit (because when a person with Devil Fruit powers dies, their fruit respawns at random somewhere, and Doflamingo has crazy resources, so he found it offscreen).

As for complications, Law doesn't know where the Smile factory is, so the crew are forced to split up and explore Dressrosa. Law, Robin, and Usopp (I was today years old when I realized his fibbing nature and fascination with the giant land of Elbaph—I previously misspelled it with an "F"—are a reference to Æsop's fables, because autocorrect isn't entirely useless) escort Caesar to Green Bit (an island of giant vegetation and super-strong fairy/elf/dwarf people who worship Nolan the Liar as their legendary hero and serve as a Gulliver's Travels reference) for the handoff to Doflamingo that gets complicated by the reveal that he strategically faked his resignation, as well as the arrival of a blind Marine with Observation Haki and meteor-summoning/gravity-controlling Devil Fruit powers. Zoro loses his way (as Zoro always does) when his legendary sword is stolen by one of the little folk (the Tontatta). Sanji falls in love with a two-faced, psychic flamenco dancer, showcasing the best and worst aspects of his character as the moment requires. Brook, Chopper, and Nami remain behind to protect the Thousand Sunny and the perverted dragon-boy samurai Momonosuke from Donquixote Family goons. Franky befriends a sentient toy soldier with designs against Doflamingo and his family, and learns that all sentient toys on Dressrosa (yes, this arc has a society of mythical little people and an oppressed minority population of sentient toys) were once humans and have been scrubbed from the memories of their loved ones somehow. Kin'Emon runs around the city, yelling at the top of his lungs about the samurai he's going to rescue, even though everyone is supposed to be in disguise and act discreetly. Yeah, stupidity tries and fails to pass for comedy in this arc. As does introducing a metric vomitorium of new characters who each express their single personality trait with a single, ad nauseum joke that will never get old because my Sarcasm Haki is too powerful.

But the main focus of the beginning of the Dressrosa Arc is on Luffy (wearing gladiator armor and a fake Master Roshi beard under the "yes, Seven Deadly Sins ripped this off, too" alias of Lucy) fighting his way through a battle royale tournament (held in a Roman-style Coliseum, beneath which the Smile factory is revealed to be located) where Ace's Devil Fruit is the grand prize.

While there, he reunites with formerly minor antagonists he encountered in Mock Town, like Bellamy the Hyena (now looking more ripped and experienced, and with spring-limb powers) and some members of the Blackbeard Pirates, and clashes personalities and fists with several combatants who have grudges (or more...unusual relationships) with himself and his grandfather. These include Pirate Lord Cavendish (a self-absorbed pretty boy trope with a swashbuckler gimmick whose looks are like Conqueror's Haki that only works on women—and probably certain men, too—and he wants to kill Luffy for stealing his publicity), Chin Jao (an old martial artist Pirate with Armament and Conqueror's Haki who has a blood vendetta against Luffy for Garp flattening his head-spike when they were younger, but Luffy does the "Sanji kicks Duvall pretty" thing with an Elephant Gun punch, so all is forgiven and I could see the payoff of their fight coming from space), and Bartolomeo (a disgusting cannibal with barrier powers who saw Luffy's declaration at Loguetown and developed a yandere complex). Also of importance is Rebecca (a scantily clad gladiator who would've been right at home on Amazon Lily, though she is the granddaughter of the old king of Dressrosa, trained to fight by Franky's new toy Soldier friend—strongly suggested to be her father, though there is also a mysterious masked gladiator who could be her father or the king himself—to fight passively), who befriends Luffy (though the plot recycles the "female befriends, betrays, and is forgiven by a Straw Hat" thing that was done with Sanji and the flamenco dancer earlier, just without the #metoo Japravity because Luffy ain't about that life) and is among the many, many side characters who want Doflamingo DonaldTrump overthrown because every day is No Kings Day.

With an emphasis once more placed on fighting, the animation is back on another level this arc...at least, so far. There are several pacing issues (the flashbacks, the "minor character charges their best attack for two episodes, only to get eliminated when it whiffs" trope, waiting for the smoke to clear and reveal to the normies that the dead guy wasn't dead after all, the inane, pre-fight dialogue that renders the episode title a lie because there's no bloodshed and barely any fighting, etc.), and twenty-four episodes in, the fourth block of the first round of the tournament (where the four block winners face each other and the champions of the Donquixote Family for the Flame-Flame Fruit in the finals, I think) hasn't really begun yet. Still, Dressrosa is off to a good start, the new fantasy elements are mostly interesting, and if I wasn't pressed for time, I would have watched more to see how the tournament turned out.

That's going to be next week, though, as might the Tontatta Revolution and Blackbeard having more than a conversational presence in the story, but I need to focus on watching Godzilla vs Megaguirus and reading Sleepy Hollow comics for this week first. Wish me luck, Stay Tuned, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can one day move on from having to babysit the Worst Generation, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest pieces of news on my content.

Master Of Tickets,

Piece,

Out!