Review: Toonami: The Forge Episode 2

 

 

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

TOM awakens on the enemy ship, where a remote projection of SARA tells him what’s happened, including that the Clyde bots are dead. The enemy identifies the Vindication as the RVG7, apparently a coveted ship from a conflict known as the Gravity Wars. He and his collection of enslaved yellow TOM units will be taking it, but not if our TOM has anything to say about it. He soon escapes with SARA’s help, soon running into a yellow TOM that SARA helps become independent. With a new ally, the team plots its next strategy.

OUR TAKE

Kinda hard to talk a whole lot about five minutes of the story, hence why last week was so much context and backstory, but we’ve got four more weeks of this to go, so I’ll give it my best. The main developments this week are TOM learning of the full events of last week, as well as having a brief face-off with Beau Billingslea (whose character still has no name but has been dubbed “Booger” by TOM…which I really hope we aren’t sticking with). We get some confirmation of what the first episode seemed to imply, that being the TOM 5 units are from an assembly line which the TOM we know just happened to break away from. That does inform his character quite a bit, though what makes me scratch my head at that is the fact that, as far as we know, this isn’t OUR TOM’s first body. I mean, this would sure be a hell of a way to learn that TOM 5 is ALSO a separate character like TOM 4, but then that would beg the question of what happened to TOM 3 and I doubt we’re going to be getting into that anytime soon.

With the addition of yellow TOM, who I also hope gets a proper name before this is done, we also get our likely substitute for the Clyde bots (rest in peace…er, pieces). That should cover our major status quo shift for the event, since we can see him wandering around the ship or maybe even hosting for a bit, possibly giving gaming reviews. Unsurprisingly, he’s voiced by Steve Blum just like our TOM, just more docile and inquisitive, which plays off well with regular TOM’s independence and take-charge attitude. We’re not even halfway with the story, so we’ve got plenty of time to see them get to know each other and grow a dynamic. I also wonder if we’ll be getting into more about the Vindication’s back story since it was found buried in Shogo when TOM and SARA found it years ago. Kind of reminds me of the Mobile Armor in Gundam IBO, which I wouldn’t put past the creators to take some not so subtle inspiration from. And I would seriously like some further elaboration on the antagonist, like, for starters, A NAME. I know one of the antagonists of this was only called THE INTRUDER, but this guy can speak so let him say who he is!