What They Say:
The Kitana and Mileena saga continues as the two sisters bond in the best way sisters can: by beating the crap out of each other. They train under the watchful eye of Shao Kahn and soon are sent out on missions to kill anyone who opposes him, particularly a certain king who managed to escape when his kingdom was invaded. But can Kitana really kill King Jerrod? Will she remember that the man is actually her father?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The episode picks up right where the previous one left off and — thank goodness — the brutal training between the girls is not reduced to that animation style from the last episode. But fear not! More of that animation is coming, a whole lot more of it that’ll probably piss you off.
But more on that later.
Kitana and Mileena train together and what I like about this sequence is that the young girls deliver their punches just as hard as any of the guys, maybe even harder. I have a fondness for female characters who can dish it out and take it as much as any male character can. There’s no crying, no hesitating, just straight up fighting that’s full of blood, bruises, everything you’d expect from the women of Mortal Kombat. Kitana ends up besting Mileena and we get a glimpse of those lovely Tarkatan teeth which makes me wonder… does Kitana know what Mileena really is? Does she know that she can kill a man with just her teeth alone? I don’t think she does since Mileena keeps her pretty face the entire time, but she does have long cuts on the side of her mouth — you wanna know how I got these scars? Yeah yeah, Dark Knight reference, moving on.
We find out that Shao Kahn is sending the girls on missions to kill anyone who opposes him, but he’s especially looking for King Jerrod since he has the potential to expose him for the lying sack of human waste that he is. And now… animated sequences! I wouldn’t be so urked about them if they would just STOP randomly using them, or if they didn’t use them to cut out the live action sequences I really want to see. Like… Kitana slicing mo-fos with her fan. I want to see that for real! I thought the point of this being a web series was for all of the violence to remain in tact, I mean, in episode two we saw Jax punch Kano’s eye out! Do we just… not get anymore of that? Is it all going to be animated from here?
When the two sisters find the former king he instantly recognizes his daughter, but before he can properly tell her the truth Mileena kills him from behind. In his last dying breath he reveals his true identity to Kitana who decides to seek the truth. She returns to the ruins of the Edenian palace which triggers a series of vivid images of Shao Kahn’s evil tyranny, making her realize the true nature of her “father.” The episode ends with Shao Kahn announcing his plans to take over the Earthrealm, both Kitana and Mileena awaiting their orders. Though fans of the game know that Kitana eventually sides with the warriors of Earth, now it’s a matter of seeing when it happens.
In Summary:
I cannot stress enough how irritating these animated sequences are. In the last episode it felt like a trick the director had just discovered and wanted to play with. Now it feels like a total cop out. Where’s the overly violent Mortal Kombat series that started a couple of weeks ago? You know the one where Jax, Sonya, and Kano had a huge shootout that led to Kano’s eyes flying out of its socket? And it’s not like the moves Kitana and Mileena were doing were overly complicated. In the last episode Mileena ripped a guy’s neck apart with her teeth, which was animated. I can maybe, maybe let that slide if I let myself believe that it was too difficult to try and attempt in a nine minute webisode. But in this episode she… throws her sais in a guy’s back. How complicated is that? I want to see these girls be assassins, and not just in some quick animated cutscene. I said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re going to animate so much of an episode then just animate the whole frickin’ thing!
Story wise the episode was terrific. Having Kitana’s own sister — sinister clone or not — kill her father is much more heartbreaking than the story in the game: Shao Kahn killing him. Add in the fact that King Jerrod fell at Kitana’s feet and you’ve got yourself a dramatic scene. Now you can feel her hatred when she looks at Shao Kahn. She knows the truth, and she’s going to make him suffer somehow.
The relationship between Kitana and Mileena is much more established than it was in the games. In the games, Mileena was already far gone and Kitana treated her like a vile step-sister who needed to be put down. In this series, the girls have grown up together, trained together, and have gone on missions together as deadly twin assassins. I don’t feel like they hate each other, but I don’t think they love each other either since Shao Kahn keeps pitting them against each other in training. Even if/when Kitana turns her back to Shao Kahn, you know that it’ll be hard for her to turn away from Mileena since there’s history between them. It’s not just the pretty princess and her sick clone, these two girls are actually sisters.
With five episodes out of the way I can’t help but wonder what else is in store for the series, especially if characters keep getting two part episodes. Who else are we going to meet? Liu Kang? Scorpion? Sub-Zero? And is there going to be a tournament, or will it end with everyone standing at Outworld’s front door, waiting to fight? I guess we will see as Mortal Kombat continues.
