The further he gets into Madripoor, the more of its secrets are revealed.
What They Say:
Vadhaka – AIM sends an assassin statute from Madripoor after Logan.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Logan now having landed in Madripoor in his efforts to go after Mariko, he’s ended up with a bit of an ally with Min who has filled him in on how the place works with Kurohagi having inherited the ruling position there. While I’ve liked Madripoor from the comics realm before, it’s one of those areas that fits well but has some awkward feeling to it as well. The whole Kurohagi inheriting things kind of annoys me since it’s hard to imagine this place running like that, especially for someone like him, but it also lost me more when it had the giant statue like guy coming after Logan since it was all shades of Gantz and just not that interesting.
What it offers here is more of the same in a way as Logan has to go against him with a bit of help from both Min and Yukio. He’s just such a brick of a character, almost literally, that there’s little to it beyond grunting and groaning and trudging along to achieve its goal of killing Logan. Thankfully, it’s not the only thing that’s coming after Logan as the streets are filling with gun toting thugs that want to take him down. And even when he does end up with some friends, he’s not all that interested in that either. Min’s friends want to work with him in effort to get into the Dragon Palace so they can take down Kurohagi. But his loner side, especially when the pint sized young girl of Min is the seeming leader, doesn’t exactly allow him to go for that all that easily.
The real leader of the group does show though in the form of the old man named Kai, who wants to try and convince Logan to join their side. While he’s resistant, they do have some useful information for him that gets him interested, since they know the wedding is moving up and he’s going to need their help. Interestingly, there are ties here that go back to Shingen which surprises Logan. It covers some of the reasons why Kai has ended up on the outside and has his reasons for going up against Kurohagi beyond the way Madripoor is being run. What leaves you most curious though is seeing the elder Kurohagi and wondering how he could have ever tolerated what his son is like though.
In Summary:
While it has some action to it that isn’t all that engaging, this episode focuses largely on back story and connections as we see what the opposition to Kurohagi is really like and the deeper reasons among its leader for going against him. It does help to explain a lot of the bigger picture aspects of the series with Shingen and the way that Madripoor plays into heavily now. While there’s a decent amount of information offered here, it comes down to execution and pacing as it just doesn’t lay it out in an interesting way to make it work. The overall ideas are ones I like, but the structure of it is just slowing it down. The past does play well here though and starts to show the bigger side of what’s going on and it gives Logan the extra motivation he needs to actually work with others. For at least a little while.
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.