English Dub Review: The Reflection “Lisa”

Yay! Roadtrip!

Spoilers Below

Courtesy: Funimation

Eleanor’s searching through traffic camera databases has turned up some interesting information. One, she’s spotted the mysterious Raise. Second, she’s found out that everywhere this knock-off band of evil mutants shows up, some girl goes missing. As she tries to dig for more, her apartment goes up in flames. It must be the work of Flaming Fury! Eleanor knows she was onto something now, but with nowhere to hide, her only choice is to stay on the move. With a little convincing, she gets X-On to take their little mutant sideshow on the road in her beat up truck. They head off to get more clues at Raise’s last seen whereabouts, and manage to locate the camera they saw him from. Problem is, Eleanor is not the most attentive driver and hits a girl in a wheelchair! She takes her to the hospital, but X-On is nowhere to be seen. He spotted a mysterious figure and is off to follow. This Steel Ruler, whose power is to control metal. And he just confronted her in a junkyard. So, he isn’t the smartest hero. He survives the fight but loses track of the evil mutant. Yes, I’m calling them mutants. That’s what they are, no matter how this series tries to brand them.

Courtesy: Funimation

Back with Eleanor, the girl is just fine. Her overprotective father, however, is one irked cop. He gives Ellie a hard time, but Lisa jumps to her defense and calls her a friend. After Lisa feeds her dinner and chats about her dreams of freedom and flying, her father makes his apologies for his rude treatment of the teleporting girl. Eleanor leaves with X-On, and the two discuss his findings. They realize that the evil dudes must be after mutants that haven’t discovered their powers. For some reason, they deduce that the target in this town must be Lisa! They head back to Lisa’s house to discover the place a mess. After a quick call to someone, X-On figures out the enemy is in an aerial museum. The heroes rush to Lisa’s rescue, but Eleanor is no combatant. With X-On occupied with Steel Ruler, there isn’t anyone to keep her buddy from attacking the girls. Just as things look the most bleak, Lisa discovers her power. She turns her wheelchair into a mecha and blasts the baddie to bits. Steel Ruler runs off, but Lisa realizes that the longer she sticks around, the more danger her father would be in. She leaves with her new heroic friends.

Okay, I’m going to save us all a paragraph on the technicals. The art is garbage, the animation is garbage, the voice acting is garbage. This isn’t likely to change. Let’s just talk about the only thing this show is good for: its story. Note, I don’t say the writing. The writing isn’t that amazing either, and there’s tons of dead space of characters just staring at each other. I do enjoy the general plot, though. This feels like it could be one of those stories you could read in the early days of the X-Men. Mutants running around, discovering each other and their powers. Like Static Shock, there was a singular event that created all these mutants, and a definite logic to who got what powers and why. Those that were touched by the black smoke of the Reflection became monsters, and have become aggressive. On the other hand, those that have been touched by the light look just the same as they always did. They just have powers. Those affected by the event have no memory of which they got touched by but… With those rules, couldn’t you tell? Yeah, you’re a bat monster, it must have been the smoke.

Lisa is just cool. I love how she can morph the wheelchair/robot in all sorts of different ways. She’s the only one that seems original in this bunch. Not that I’m dinging these characters for being ripoffs, but their power sets are all ones we’ve seen before. Eleanor is Nightcrawler, Steel Ruler is Magneto, Putrid looked like he was The Blob, but is really more like Gluttony from Fullmetal Alchemist. You’d think that X-On is Rogue, with her ability to absorb other powers. The difference is, he gets to keep those powers. So… Who is he like?

Yeah. That. Megaman X, if you didn’t know. He copies enemy powers and doesn’t afraid of anything. I like X-On as a hero. He’s got that Spider Man attitude, but he also has a professional hit-man vibe. What’s great about that is he learns to use them in combination with each other. He does have a certain level of taste when it comes to his power library, as he has no intention of absorbing Putrid’s powers. I’d like to see if there’s some sort of limit as to the powers he can possess. I hope that Eleanor can start using her powers more effectively soon, and can maybe be a better combatant. The baddies have some purpose behind awakening the Reflecteds, enough that they don’t care what happens to them after these new mutants have awakened. Just on to the next.

In summary, the production value on this show is high school level, and the characters aren’t the most original, but the story is interesting and loaded with mysteries. Because of that, it is saved from the junk bin. I give this episode six mecha via wheelchairs out of ten.

SCORE
6.0/10