All Iron Man needs is a couple of rocket boosters and it’s to infinity and beyond…
What They Say:
Outbreak – An outbreak at the Arc Station leads to Tony and Nagato Sakurai working together.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After an episode that did a nice job of exploring the origin of Iron Man in this incarnation of the character, which mirrored the live action movie for the most part while introducing some flavor of it’s own, the series continues to work well in putting Tony in Japan as he tries to figure out how to exist without the Iron Man suit yet continually finding need to wear it. His regular testing and trial runs of different experiments that require the suit doesn’t help him kick the habit either. It’s kind of amusing in how he goes on at different points in the series about being done with it but can’t seem to really stay away from it.
This episode takes a different turn with things as something is causing a sickness with various people that are near the Arc Station. It’s a pretty icky thing with the blue splotches and what they hurl up. Because of it, the Ministry of Health ends up putting the station on lockdown with Tony inside, even though Tony’s discovered that it’s not anything within the station itself that’s causing the problem. And even others are seeing it as well, though there’s no changing the Ministry’s mind at this point. What does come from it though is an uneasy working alliance with Nagato from the special SDF group that he’s run against before. He can’t complain too much as Nagato has brought some key info showing what’s going up in orbit with the satellites that requires the Iron Man suit, tweaked, so it can deal with getting up there.
One of the things that has admittedly annoyed me over the years with Iron Man is brought into play here as well, where there are endless configurations of the suit that allows him to do whatever he needs to. On the one hand, I can understand it as a part of Tony’s genius and ability as well as his drive. But it’s also bothersome in the same way that they make endless types of Batman action figures. You get so many suits and so many easy coincidences that it strains credibility. Putting a special set of rocket boosters on the suit with a prototype coating to protect him from the cosmic radiation lets the story move forward and shows just how good he is as an inventor, but it just feels like too much with him achieving orbit.
In Summary:
While the suit side of the episode bothers me, and has for years with other incarnations of the character, there is a lot to like here, especially once he does get into space. Sometimes he doesn’t think of the basics and figuring out how to maneuver in the suit in space doesn’t work as easily as he thought it might. The thing he has to face off of in orbit is another essentially faceless enemy which is the main problem with the series at this point in that we don’t have anyone that we can really focus on as the enemy that’s orchestrating everything. Zodiac is just too ill defined at this point, though events here are getting Tony more focused on taking it down considering the sickness that it was causing to people, friends included. It’s an awkward episode in a couple of ways but it’s also got its moments where it’s just plain fun.
Content Grade: B
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
