Review: Tigtone “Tigtone and the Screaming City”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Tigtone and Helpy experience one of their greatest and most dangerous conundrums when they come across a city that is victim to a deadly plague. However, this plague is far from regular since it manifests in the form of a constant string of screams from those that it afflicts. The strange source of this aural plague, as well as Tigtone’s immunity to it, leads Tigtone and Helpy on a quest that needs to be heard to be believed!

Our Take:

Tigtone is a series that has featured some very weird story and creatures, but “Tigtone and the Screaming City” begins with something truly surprising. Tigtone and Helpy continue on their journey and a moment of silence is experienced between the two of them, which feels so foreign in a series that’s as bold as Tigtone. This brief moment of solitude is more jarring and out of place than Tigtone’s usual spectacles like gratuitous bloodbaths and enormous and deadly monsters. This hushed tranquility is no coincidence and “Tigtone and the Screaming City” cleverly uses this temporary silence as a way to comment upon the series’ in your face nature.

Tigtone is already an extremely abrasive series and even the most subdued episode still feels like it’s turned things up to 12. However, “Tigtone and the Screaming City” is an episode that feels like it was conceived with the aim of figuring out what the most aggressive and annoying plot for an entry of Tigtone could be. Evidently, the answer to this is an episode where characters are required to constantly scream at the top of their lungs, lest they meet their grisly end and die.

Tigtone has no trouble with letting death and violence consume its narrative, but “Tigtone and the Screaming City” is an episode that feels the most like what a Cenobite would come up with if he was in the show’s writers’ room. The idea of a city where people are perpetually in pain and will actually die if they stop screaming (something that Helpy gets to repeatedly experience due to his healing factor) is an idea that’s so dark that it somehow becomes comical. All of this nihilism also nicely plays in contrast to how this screaming city is also encrusted in gold and gems, which turns it into an even more complex anomaly that mixes fortune with devastation. Everyone in this community is subjected to the strange rules that govern the land and their larynx, yet Tigtone remains the sole figure who’s able to avoid this fate.

“Tigtone and the Screaming City” is a strong follow-up to the season premiere and with both of these episodes airing back-to-back, they work even better as a distillation of the type of stories that Tigtone wants to tell. Both installments work with similar ideas and feature horrifying beasts, but “Screaming City” goes to a much more complex place. It features a quest that can’t just be accomplished by any hero, but Tigtone is instead the “chosen one” for this task. It also manages to showcase some legitimate teamwork from Tigtone and Helpy, which is a helpful reminder that as much as Tigtone’s sidekick is a source of constant abuse and a sponge for pain, he still does serve an important purpose. It’s just unlikely that Tigtone will ever admit to it.