Pop☆Step Gets her Big Break!
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Ep 10
Plenty of people want to be famous for something, but few ever do. They might not have the talent they need to stand out, or they don’t get the right chances to stand out. Pop☆Step has had plenty of chances to stand out and she has the talent, but she can’t keep doing street performances forever. So when an opportunity to build her reputation comes her way, she’s facing her biggest hurdle yet: her own insecurities.
Knuckleduster Has a Soft Side
This episode of Vigilantes doesn’t focus on one plot, but two, each one taking up half of the episode as a whole. And both plots are focused on the other two members of the Naruhata Vigilantes, Knuckleduster and Pop☆Step. In the first half of the episode, Knuckle, through the now-reformed Soga, is continuing his search for Kuin Hachisuka, AKA Queen Bee, AKA the girl with the bee quirk. His search almost gets him killed, though, when a student under her control sics her bees on him. It’s a moment made scarier considering how the bees come out from underneath the girl’s skirt. The implications of where they were hiding are very unsettling!
Knuckleduster is Closing in on Queen Bee
The experience isn’t a total loss, though. Knuckleduster is able to use the information to help his investigation of Hachisuka, who he’s shown to be very focused on tracking down. At the same time, though, we see that there is a softer side to him: he has a wife. She’s in the hospital and left in a catatonic state, courtesy of Queen Bee, but he’s still there for her. Showing that he’s caring enough to have a wife demonstrates that he is, in fact, more than the trigger-happy vigilante he tends to be. He’s like a version of Batman that’s fallen on hard times, but strives to keep doing the right thing.
As if to emphasize that point further, we get a scene of him training, and it feels like it was taken straight from Batman’s own training montage from Batman vs. Superman. Say what you want about that film, but that moment showed why Batman is the peak of human physical strength. Unfortunately, we don’t see his confrontation with Queen Bee until the next episode.
The real focus, though, is on Pop☆Step, who might be getting her big break.
Pop☆Step Gets her Big Break
During Captain Celebrity’s fight with that Kaiju-sized villain, several buildings in Naruhata got damaged. One of them, the Marukane Department Store, is undergoing renovations before reopening, and theyre promoting it by hiring new talent to perform. And Pop☆Step has been invited to do just that.
Despite how used Pop☆Step is to performing in front of crowds, this marks the first time she’ll be performing in front of a large group. In addition, she’ll be performing alongside other people. With how insecure she is, this is her toughest battle yet. And since Koichi is lacking in the ability to provide emotional support, he calls in someone who can actually help her: Makoto!
After the incident with the cat bus exposed Koichi’s secret identity to her, it didn’t take long for Makoto to figure out that Kazuho is Pop☆Step. Despite her jealousy over seeing the older woman as competition for Koichi, though, Pop☆Step can’t afford to let this help go to waste. And not only is Makoto a good choice due to her organizational skills, she also agrees to keep Kazuho’s vigilantism a secret. Pop may not like Makoto, but there can be no denying that she’s trustworthy.
Go, Pop☆Step!
So, thanks to Makoto, Pop☆Step is able to move forward with participating in the upcoming Narufest. She’ll go out there and sing the Marukane Department Store’s theme song alongside some other artists, and Makoto even got Captain Celebrity to make an appearance. All told, this looks like it could be Pop’s big break!
Assuming that the Bee Girl doesn’t show up to wreck everything. Which we know she will try to do!
This was a quiet episode overall, but not every episode needs to be a banger. Pop☆Step, knock them dead!
I Give “Event Announcement”
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Easter is Skewered by Rick and Morty
Rick and Morty S8 EP 4 Review
For a show mainly focused on sci-fi adventures, Rick and Morty manages to have a lot of holiday episodes. The Christmas episodes can be some of the best in the entire series, and the Thanksgiving episode was insane. When the first teaser for Season 8 revealed that we’d be getting an Easter episode, though, I’ll admit I was skeptical. How could a special about Easter end up being as crazy as what fans have come to expect? As it turns out, all it took was Jerry, a few movie references, and the not-so-wholesome origins behind Easter icons like the bunny and eggs.
Easter Ruined by Jerry
It all starts a few days before Easter Sunday, and while Jerry is wholeheartedly embracing the holiday, his family couldn’t care less. Until Jerry accidentally runs over and, apparently, kills the Easter Bunny. This curses him to transform into a were-rabbit in a plot straight out of The Santa Clause, forcing Rick and Morty to go in search of a cure. In doing so, they uncover the true meaning of Easter: it’s a war between aliens.
Someone on the Rick and Morty team must have thought it would’ve been funny to satirize the entirety of Easter, because this episode doesn’t hold anything back. The opening has Jerry acting like Easter is Christmas, complete with hanging up decorations and singing a retooled version of “Deck the Halls.” At first, it looks like he’s just being overly into the holiday, the show wastes no time in having his family call him out for his love being based on shallow commercialism. The fact that he can’t even name what day Easter is only cements this. That’s a big jab at how capitalism has turned the holiday into one less about Christ or pre-Christian traditions, and more about selling candy. The show’s not wrong, either. Unless you’re a kid looking forward to the candy and eggs, or are actively religious, most people have no reason to care about Easter.
The satirization goes even further, though, as the main plot of the episode tackles the opposing aspects of the holiday. And it does it through aliens.
Easter Ruined by Aliens
Like several other major holidays, Easter started as a pre-Christian celebration. In this case, it celebrated the arrival of spring, with the rabbit and eggs serving as symbols of fertility and renewal. Christianity co-opted it like it did with Christmas and made it into a more wholesome holiday. And as Rick and Morty discover, the reason for these different versions of the holiday are because of interference from aliens.
It turns out, the Easter Bunny is an alien sent by other aliens to act as a living aphrodisiac. This would compel a population to breed until overpopulation brought about their collapse, with Earth being one of their targets. The Easter Aliens rivals opposed this by sending their best warrior to kill the Bunny on Earth, only for him to get crucified as Jesus and start Christianity.
That’s not even the craziest part. While the Easter aliens (who look like Easter Island heads with bodies) are never given a motivation, the Christian aliens reason for oppossing them is because…they don’t like s**. They think it’s gross and hate it.
The Less you Know about Some Holidays, the better
Honestly, this is a hilarious take on the different versions of Easter. The idea of two alien races fighting a war over chastity vs lust for the sake of it is so dumb, it’s funny. Rick and Morty sum up how the show wants the audience to react when they acknowledge how dumb it is. And by the time they manage to stop the Easter curse, the entire family is dissillusioned with Easter altogether. As the last Christian alien crawls away missing half their body, Morty tells his mom that it’s not worth knowing. What it does do, though is lead the family to spend the rest of the year destroying decorations for all holidays. And somehow, they forgot about Summer, forcing her to spend the last eight months on Spring Break!
If last week’s episode was the best-written episode of the season right now, then I think that this episode is the funniest. It’s stupid, nonsensical, and completely skewers Easter as a holiday. I loved it, and my only regret is that it didn’t release around actual Easter. I’m going to have rewatch it next year when the time comes!
I Give “The Last Temptation of Jerry” a 4.5/5
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Putting the “Pop” in Pop Culture!
