Things can change greatly when one is open enough to see the truth.
As the episode’s TV spot promoted (as with earlier TV spots for the season in general), it’s time for the Scotsman episode of Season 5! Enough said.
NOW, as the Scotsman proclaimed, “NOW we... CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!”
This’s the first episode in Season 5 to be rated TV-PG-V (for “moderate” violence), although it’s not really that violent. It clearly could be TV-Y7-FV, but I guess that Cartoon Network is concerned about easily imitable violence such as kicking and punching (unlike Disney Channel/Disney XD), so it may never be TV-Y7 again.
NOTE: Obviously, I started working on this post on Memorial Day of 2020 in honor of our dear Scotsman. Anyway, I’m curious as to what was going on with the Scotsman’s family and what they were plotting, during the time that we’re focusing on Jack and Ashi... but we still have 40 episodes to come until the series is complete. I was too busy or lazy to finish the post before the end of the day or month (for that matter, I was mostly inactive on it for 6 months), but I’m slowly back on it, so WACH’OUT!
We start with Aku’s place... which appears much more barren than it was in EPISODE I. The episode is another Andrews-Tartakovsky duo-boarding. Just the sound of wind, but no mist full of demons for some reason. Perhaps some bombing or missile attack cleared Aku’s yard?
A tank rolls over to the edge of Aku’s yard. A soldier within signals the other tanks to advance with his horn. These tanks are designed by the late and great Chris Reccardi and @heydusty.
The camera streaks further back to reveal another army of men riding a 20-legged, rhino-like creature, in armor similar to the exterior of the tanks. He signals his army with his horn, too.
How about another army, then?
Signaled by a woman with her bagpipes, she leads her army...
a whole army of women
Talk about girl power... compared to The Powerpuff Girls, which stopped in 2019 and wasn’t nostalgically correct enough for the last 3 seasons anyway.
Whichever one I find most attractive all depends on which hairstyle looks most attractive... like the one in the bottom right corner. Aside from that, they pretty much all look and sound the same.
The sound of wheels grows audible. Who is that man in the wheelchair?
He has a machine gun for his left leg. Slowly, the camera, defocused except on his leg, eases out.
“Ha ha! We found him!”
It is, indeed, the Scotsman. The hype-inducing Scotsman!
And he’s pretty much ready to fight!
Well... except for one thing...
“I take you out for a day of battle, and you’re dressed like you’re goin’ dancin’!”
She’s kind of bashful. Isn’t she, Scotsman?
Flora was apparently out of appropriate uniform... not that it’s the time for dancing, or dance-fighting, however they intended to take Aku down face-to-face. She looks kind of hot, but this’s not the time to be thinking about fashion or a sultry appearance.
“That goes for all of you.”
“Cover yourself!” the Scotsman yells; “You’ll catch your death of cold!” He definitely cares about his daughters--I know not how many he has, but it’s an army’s worth--but I don’t think that they’re really cold at all.
What season is it, anyway?
(Oh, and, for the shot above, Flora has tiny dot eyes X3)
“Now”, the Scotsman proclaims, “we... CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!”
“EYAAAAHHHHH” he shouts excitedly, as Flora drives him into battle.
The Scotsman’s army rolls into battle, firing with some nicely-colored smoke.
*p-powaa-p-p-powaa-powaa-p-powaa-aa*
Yep. There’s that more familiar Universal/Hanna-Barbera explosion, like one would hear in Seasons 1-6 of The Powerpuff Girls, serving as the sole sound effect for this shot and repeating itself. Joel Valentine’s uses of these classic explosions are probably different from those on Sound Ideas’ Universal & H-B sound libraries as these’re cleaner in quality.
The armored creatures apparently shoot some pretty hot snot out of their trunks, leaving us to wonder what this particular animal ultimately is. That classic Anime whistle (kind of sounds like “SHELL SCREAMING WHINE DOWN”) becomes audible as the bunch of hot snot falls toward Aku’s place.
“It seems we are under attack”, Aku overhears. “Under attack?” Aku highlights, beginning to consider use for this opportunity as he slowly stretches his beard. Aku takes a peek at the war through his own kind of TV or something. “Perhaps annihilating this scum will break me out of my...
me-lai-i-i-i-i-se.” Aku streak immediately upward.
Meanwhile, the Scotsman was firing HIS LEG gun... (footage that the last TV spot advertised for the coming of Season 5 in March, well before this episode itself was advertised, also showing the same footage)
Not sure at what HIS LEG gun was firing, since Aku wasn’t out, until...
*bwssss! wb-wb-wb-wb!*
...Aku rockets out of his place...
...trailing blazing fire as he turns into a giant ball...
...bowling his way over all of the tanks. The armored creatures on which 1/3 of the army rides are next!
“You know what?” The Scotsman said, come to his senses. “This was a bad idea! Time to go, girls.” Protective of his many daughters, the Scotsman knew what to do in such a disastrous moment: “I’ll stall him while you escape.”
“I’m sorry, old man; I think you are lost.”
Just as Aku was about to make the annihilation complete, a voice froze him: “Hold it! You’re not goin’ anywhere, you big buffoon”. Not knowing who this guy was at all, Aku looked down upon him... and he seemed pretty serious, even though he met not this guy before at all.
“The samurai is still out there, inspirin’ people by the thousands!”
“I ain’t lost, y’ tree ogre!” The Scotsman talked back, pushing his insults further and further. “After all these years, you’re powerless against him... afraid to show yourself ‘cause you know he’s out there, and you can’t do anything about it!”
“Ah ha ha! You’re just a big baby! Why don’t you go cry to your mama--”
Aku was not in the mood for being “roasted”.
*wshiiiiiing*
A third of a sword flung out of the explosion.
Aku burned him.
*psst*
Aku burned him good.
Those catchlight-y eyes don’t lie, Flora.
OK; “highlights” would be the more common term.
This’s why I began writing this post on Memorial Day 2020.
When you roast Aku, Aku roasts you back.
“Why did he bring, up, the samurai?”
A relative question: If Aku cares no longer, what else has Aku to do with his life? Must he be evil? Some centuries worth since he started ruling... I guess that the Scotsman was just trying to make Aku upset, when he could speak a better conversation than mostly insult him.
Flora stabs the remainder of the sword into the ground by his ashes. There is some inscription on it that should be interesting to decode. I wonder if there’s an Easter egg in its words...
“I be back--and in me prime, no less!”
BOOM! Souls don’t die! Of course, rather than probably being in Heaven, he’s more of a ghost who’s still able and willing... by Celtic magic, which apparently connects to the inscription on his very sacred sword. “We’ll find Jack” he plots, “and finally defeat that BIG BABY!”
Anyways... one night, probably very far away from wherever Aku’s place is, Ashi was doing some thinking.
She grew up with her mom, who claimed that Aku created everything, but now she met Jack, who told her that Aku had the world ravaged.
Ashi was raised to believe that “The samurai is the poison killing the land”... as if Aku even cared at that point; she never even met Aku. Jack’s wisdom begat conflict in her mind: “If you... let go of (your) hate, you will see the truth.”
At least it’s an otherwise peacful night.
Well. It was.
“I have questions, mother.”
Ashi began to hallucinate (or it was some kind of weird fever dream... I know not) as the moon turned into her mother’s mask. “The samurai sleeps”, she slips through her mouth. “Kill him in his slumber before he wakes!”
“How DARE you?!”
I suppose this’s what comes of wishing for the moon.
Ashi was not ready to act on instinct as this samurai saved her life, but her vision was merciless. She had questions (and had the... moon failed??? Well not the moon, just her mom), and frankly one could question if she or her mother knew who exactly the samurai was and what he looked like. She was apparently secluded from the rest of society and we know little of her life growing up, so of course she’d have questions.
From there, that very island, Ashi’s journey began, and the next morning Jack found a sea dragon to continue the journey.
Although the dolphin chirps act as a faint, echo-y sound in the scene, they stand out as more unique recording than the stereotypical Hollywood Edge recordings one would hear pretty much everywhere else, like in Spongebob or whatever.
The sea dragon submerges into the ocean and makes a giant leap into the sky! Not sure why, but it probably got them closer to land.
ANIME LINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It might not seem too noticeable, but the animation right here looks a bit... tight/slow-paced or whatever. Korean animation’s been thinning out on ln-betweens since, like 2016 for some reason, but they still put more effort on this Cartoon Network Studios project than most right now.
“I shall not forget your kindness.”
The sea dragon gives him a snort and a roar of... gratitude?
Jack and Ashi finally made it to a bigger land (and probably not just a bigger island). Now where would they go from here?
“Goodbye.”
It looks like Jack was just going to part ways.
I’ll continue working on this post later, preferably/almost daily if not weekly. (I’ve just been very slow mentally and more autistic this year than I ever realized)
STORY: JODY LEHEUP & SEBASTIAN GIRNER
ART: NIL VENDRELL & MIKE SPICER
COVER A: ANDREW ROBINSON
COVER B: SHELDON VELLA
COVER C: JACOB CHABOT
AUGUST 23 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99
The mighty Shirtless is in the clutches of Fuzzy Wipes(TM) CEO Jaxson Logger, and it’s up to rogue FBI agent Suzie Silva to bust him out! Don’t miss bear-brawls, golden toilets, and…BETRAYAL in SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER #3!
