Comic Review: gen:LOCK “the:END”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chase takes over narration duties again for the first half the final issue, remarking that he felt lost after having lost his body, family, and Miranda, which is what made him easy to be manipulated by Sycorax, but his new team found him again in the end. But they still need to finish off the Shogunate, which won’t be easy as it overpowers each of their Holons and has Sycorax’s collective brainpower hooked up to the Siege game online. So, Cammie decides to break out a file that would destroy the game (apparently a major sacrifice for her), thereby removing Sycorax’s mind and leaving all that’s left within the mech ready to be taken out. With that, Yaz coordinates the remaining Polity and Union forces to fire on the Shogunate, crippling it.

OUR TAKE

Only one half issue remains in this series, so it would make sense that we do the climax to the battle in this first half, focusing mainly on Chase’s re-resolving that he’s better with his friends and Cammie getting rid of her favorite game in order to take Sycorax down. And to both I would say the word to attribute to them is “disproportionate”. I haven’t gone back over the rest of the issues yet (though I will when the final chapter comes out) but I don’t remember there being much of a spotlight on Chase feeling a disconnect from his fellow pilots due to his now digital existence, or at least not enough to make it seem like joining Sycorax was a reasonable option for him. So all of this talk about feeling like an artifact who could be convinced of anything seems pretty at odds with what we were shown of him in this comic. Which is unfortunately also accurate to the show it’s based on, because Chase’s unique situation was ALSO played concerningly blasé up until it became serious…but then it was serious about things that didn’t really matter.

Same could be said about Cammie and her relationship with Siege over the course of this comic. It’s at first treated like a coping mechanism for her to manage the trauma of last season, but ends up being a seriously useful tool for uncovering what was going on with Sycorax…only for it to then be treated like some sort of addiction she has to give up. Which she DOESN’T because she’s busy using it to investigate things, so that drama is pretty much a non-issue. And then we come to THIS moment where her giving it up is seemingly meant to be some big step forward for her, but really all she did was get rid of a game she had fun with that can probably be totally recreated later in order to get rid of some weirdos who were hanging out in it. Much like Chase giving up his useless pickle jar body in the season finale, did Cammie really sacrifice anything here? And if not, then why is it written like it is?

Ah well, one more issue of this and we can all forget it ever happened. Although it is kind of humourously ironic that Sycorax rants that everyone else will be buried and forgotten when this is coming from a bunch of characters who will likely never be acknowledged after the final issue goes out. See ya then!