English Dub Review: Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond “Desperate Fight in the Macro Zone, Part 1”

Did you ever want to see Carnage fight against the Hulk?

Overview (Spoilers)

Unlucky Leo finds himself and one of his friends on the receiving end of a vicious mugging at the hands of a punk whose fists are so big, even THEY have fists! Leo’s buddy runs off on accounts of him being such a puny weakling, so the beating lands on the squinty wonder. Even after the savage mauling, the universe has one more insult for Mr. Watch. What looks like a kitbash of Gundam model parts drops out of the sky and smacks Leo in the back of his head. When both he and the pile of junk comes to, it introduces itself. No, it isn’t a toy. It’s a super-intelligent microbe in a flea-sized organic power armor piloting a highly-advanced ship on a mission of worldwide importance. One of his microbe race is bent on terrorism, using its genetic technology to turn an unsuspecting humanoid into a bioweapon. But who? While the Microbe fixes its ship’s weapon, which was damaged in the crash, Leo and Libra try to figure out who the target is. Their best clue is that someone threw Zapp out of a window and into traffic. Their next best clue is a rampaging monster that just trashed the mechanized police forces. After seeing a picture, Leo recognizes the monster: It’s his cowardly, scrawny buddy! And he grew! He went from being an Ood from Dr. Who to being Vilgax from Ben 10. With each injury he takes, his body increases its muscle mass and skeletal structure several fold. To add insult to injury, Klaus and Deldro are going mano-y-mano with the tentacle-faced bruiser. They were just on their way back from the museum for a new art exhibit. Deldro likes art. Deldro also likes to smash peoples’ faces off. Though Klaus manages to temporarily contain the monster, Deldro gives it a super punch for next week. This deals enough damage to turn the bioweapon into C’thuluzilla, taller than skyscrapers and very, very angry. How do they beat it? I don’t know, that’s for the next episode!

Our Take

We are now fully in the second half of this season, and it doesn’t seem like an overarching plotline is anywhere within view. We seem to have spent this season with all the kids at Libra, making them deeper and more interesting. I do enjoy the opportunity to get deeper into the characters. The second season is a great time to do this since we spent the first merely establishing the large array of characters. While it didn’t jump into its plot until near the end, it hinted at its existence for much longer. Some have complained like this season, like this episode, are much slower-feeling than season one’s frenetic pace. While I am waiting a while to give judgment on the season, the episode’s slower speed comes from being mostly exposition. That might sound like a bad thing. But, given this show’s zany universe and sense of humor, enough minor giggles and cute moments are shoved into the cracks to keep it more of a “meh” thing. We get a variety of tiny scenes in between what looks like a sparse plot, ranging from Deldro admiring art to Leo and Sonic rescuing a kitten, to Leo’s buddy tormenting his tormentors. It broke up the monotony of the exposition effectively, even if it did seem like there was a case of ADD in the script.

The animation on this show is always amazing. Not only do we have smooth movement throughout, but they put a lot of work into the growth of the monster. It begins in subtle amounts and speeds up as the show continues. The scene where it breaks out of Klaus’s sealing spell is loaded with crazy detail. Sonic is given plenty of great effort, and dramatic angles to make the critter’s running seem more action-y. The way they approached the movement of the ship and Dog (Deldro’s buddy) is interesting. It seems jerky, but that’s all intentional. It’s showing minuscule movements, and that lends even the most basic movements character and pizzazz.

Aaron Dismuke has gotten comfortable with portraying Leo, and his voice has many layers. I feel like he’s just so much more believable than the main characters in many other shows. The rest of the cast wasn’t quite on the same level, which is a bit of a problem, considering the amount of exposition in the episode.