English Dub Review: Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond “Get the Lock Out!!”

Your security system has a few bugs.

Overview (Spoilers)

Well, today could have been better for the heroes. To start off, some necessary components for a supercomputer are guarded by a pack of eyeless trolls. There’s a lot of them, and Leo’s eye jack powers don’t work on them. Zapp solves the issue by launching Leo headfirst into one of the trolls. He wakes up in the hospital. While there, he asks the doctors if there is any way to undo the spell that gave him his special sight while taking away his sister’s. They say that it is possible, but the arcane costs to Leo would be severe. He returns to the office, and the staff is in a tizzy. The supercomputer was needed to create an algorithm for figuring out where a bunch of terrorists was hiding out. If they don’t figure it out in time, a giant, planet-crushing demon will be summoned, landing on Hellsalem’s Lot. Gonna have to put a pin in that, though. An evil genius is smashing up stuff, and Starphase has to go take him down. His Ice powers are best for making sure the weirdo doesn’t regenerate himself out of this pickle. When everyone returns to the building, the entry elevator is missing, replaced with what normal people get when they open the door: some thug protecting a warehouse. Lockdown procedures have been initiated somehow! From everything they can tell, some sort of massive, hyper-evolving mosquitoes have infested the place, and have grown in intelligence enough that they can actually take control of the security system. The leader intends to stay inside until he evolves into godhood. This doesn’t work that well for Starphase since the computer is still crunching the algorithm. The situation spirals out of control, as the super-powered ladies of the group aren’t aware of the goings-on. Chain slams face first into the barrier while trying to enter with her usual jumps, and KK nearly fries the supercomputer with her lightning shots! As they talk, the earthshaker demon starts coming down, crushing a building as it does so. If they can’t get inside before it touches the ground, the planet is done-so. All of this is about to give Starphase an aneurysm. Finally, with the help of Leo’s eye jack, Klaus scales the building and takes advantage of a momentary hole in the barrier to take down the megabug. They run the algorithm, Chain and Starphase stop the Terrorists, and the Earthshaker goes wee-wee-wee all the way home. Go to bed, Steven. You deserve it.

Courtesy: Funimation

Our Take

Another adventure full of hilarity, style, and fun. Even though this episode was ostensible “The Steven Episode”, it didn’t really feel like it. Yes, Stevie ends up lending his ice-kicks to resolve most of the problems. Yes, he’s kinda in-control of the operation to suppress the Earthshaker. The events that go down, however, don’t sit there staring at him. The development of his story has been happening in little bits over the last few episodes, so this episode fixates more on his personality, and how he handles stress. Look at the picture above, and tell me how he handles stress. Yeah. Even then, the way the episode is written doesn’t make you feel like it was written for him. It feels more like it is written about the group. This is partly because we have so much time with Leo at the beginning, and partly because of the episode’s pacing. So much happens in such a short period of time that you can’t really see who the writers are focused on. The show leveraged its insanity to build a character episode that didn’t fall into the trope of a character-building episode, and it came off strong.

About that time with Leo, I liked those scenes. While it, yet again, talked about his primary motivation, we got a little deeper with his feelings about his sister. This is partly the theme of the episode, which makes an interesting counterpoint to Steven’s stress-a-palooza. Leo feels like he has failed her, but in seeing Klaus and Steven just keep fighting through their own issues, it gives him to resolve. These scenes also give us a bit more time with Dr. Estevez, which is a pleasure. I hope that the hospital will play a greater role as the season wears on.

The animation we get here is the “mid-level” quality for this show. Still, mid-level for this show is high-level for most other shows. The characters and backgrounds are detailed, cleanly drawn, and lacking in obvious errors. The best thing about this show is its style, which lends itself well to both high-octane action and hectic comedy. While we didn’t really get much more action than a couple uses of the characters’ super-moves, the frenetic pacing of the episode’s story turns the events and comedy into action all by themselves. And, speaking of the super-moves, I love that this show doesn’t use them as an excuse to use stock footage. Each time they use the moves, they get unique animation and cinematography, and at the level of animation, you’d expect from the stock footage super-moves.

So, let’s talk about these voice actors. The talent behind the talking has been working with these characters for a while, and know them like the back of their hands. Not a single line went spoken without a bucket of personality dumped over it. Nobody was blase, nothing lacked emotion, everyone had a unique attitude. The dialogue is punchy, and contains one of the best lines ever: “You are just one more thunder-fart in this $#!%-storm I don’t need!” I can use that at work. J. Michael Tatum delivered that line and all of Steven’s other nerve-rattled lines perfectly. I don’t really get Zapp’s obsession with calling Leo things revolving around pubes, but it’s the kind of idiotic, immature thing he would think is funny.

Score

Summary

For an episode about chaos breaking loose, the writers managed to wedge a good amount of character development into the middle. With animation most other animes can only hope they will grow up to have, there just isn't any stopping BBB&B. I give this episode nine giant mosquitos out of ten.

9.0/10