Fuzors, Summaries: Episode 16 - A New Friend
Screenshot Gallery - My ThoughtsWe begin at Mach Storm's base, with Hop typing sleepily. RD's been gone for three whole days, and Hop's wondering where he's gone. Sigma starts off sympathetic, for once, but Amy thinks he's playing for pity to get out of work. After this prompts Sigma to jokingly demand a chunk of his paycheck if they have to pick up the slack, Sweet gets cross, slamming her coffee down on the table and chewing the others out. RD's their friend, she says, and they should be out there looking for him, not insulting him.
The scene cuts to RD out in the wilderness, as now-voiceover Sweet finishes by remarking how he hasn't been the same since he lost the Fire Phoenix...and how Mach Storm just isn't the same without him either. The Liger Zero sits (actually sits) beside him, watching the same sky with an equally mopey expression. A hawk flies overhead, screeching, and RD jumps up, thinking he's heard the Phoenix. There's no Zoid there, no bird there—but there is a girl, dressed in orange and gold and wearing a few feathers in her hair. She's staring at him with big bluey-green eyes, and smiles happily upon being noticed. At least she isn't going on about silver beast machine gods and calling him awesome ♥.
Title screen time gets us a still of Liger Zero Falcon. Subtle!
A Hel Digunner shimmies through the desert, its walk far more like a monitor lizard than any series before. Matt and Dan are on their way to a forest named something that sounds like "Irca", no doubt the same one RD's chosen for his mope. It's sacred ground, Dan exposits, protected and watched over (by?) Zoids for years—in other words, the perfect place to find things like a new partner for RD. He's hopeful, Matt's hopeful (when is Matt anything but?), and the Heldy stomps on.
Meanwhile, mysterious girl has found RD a nice watering hole to drink from. Standing water of dubious quality, tasty~. She introduces herself as Venus, and wants to know if RD's going to live in Irca Forest with her. RD says he's not made up his mind yet, but he's going to look around for a while. Venus bounces cheerily and stops by his ear, leaning in as if to tell him a secret while he blushes. "Closerrr..." she says, and then grabs his face, stretching it into several odd expressions before running off, hiding by the Zero's paw. "Gotcha!"
RD flails, but Venus says she was just playing with him...right, Zero? RD wonders how she knew his Zoid's name, and she says the Liger "told me so!" The Zero purrs happily, leaning down to say hello. RD's a bit surprised the Liger actually gets along with someone else.
"I guess you never know where you're going to find a new friend..."
Burton, meanwhile, is less than pleased: Sandra wants Blake. Back at the base, that is. And Blake, conveniently enough, has buggered off to play around with his shiny new Zoid in Irca Forest. This leaves Burton fetching him with the Lord Gale, because I guess Blake never answers his voicemail. (Maybe he can't work out the settings and is too ashamed to ask Luke?)
"I don't get it, why is Sandra so hung up on him anyway?" Burton gripes, and we move to Blake demonstrating his POWER...
...by picking on a bunch of wild Rev Raptors. As we know, anime!Rev Raptors crumple if you sneeze, which the Gairyuuki demonstrates by crushing one's head. The animators just stretch the CGI model before cutting to shatter-damage so it looks more like he's got himself a silly-putty Raptor, but it intimidates the others well enough, and Blake urges Smushyourface McGuyRicky to finish them off. Elsewhere, we get a brief shot of Matt and Dan and their better-animated Heldy, with Matt thinking he heard "something in the forest".
Night falls, and the Zero is curled up by a fire along with its pilot, who's fallen asleep still sitting up. AUGH, RD SNORES. He also dream-flashbacks to Blake's killing the Fire Phoenix last episode, with his crying after the Phoenix actually better (re)written this time around. Jolting awake, he finds Venus watching. She can tell RD misses his friend, she says...and the Zero's sad too. "And he's worried about you!"
"Zero? Have you really been worried about me?" RD asks, and the Liger rumbles in reply. Apparently calmed a bit, he gets back to sleep, waking in the morning to Venus having a chat with his Zoid. All RD catches besides concerned growls is "He'll be fine, you'll see!", and Venus won't tell what they were plotting. It's kinda a secret, she says, and they need to get going. "It's up there, you know?" she says as she points up the mountain, not even explaining what "it" is. Hard to argue, though, when your Liger agrees and a girl's dragging you by the arm.
Matt and Dan are still Heldying along (where did they sleep? when did they sleep?), this time followed by our favorite sinister binocular elf, Burton. He figures whatever they're up to, it's a lot more interesting than searching for Blake. They reach a roadblock left by a landslide, but before they get too discouraged, Matt notices one of the rock formations is less than ordinary. In fact, it's Zoid-shaped. Zoid-on-an-altar shaped, and the signal still coming from its core is transmitting on the same frequency as the Fire Phoenix.
Burton interrupts, offering to "help" with their excavation and showing off the Savage Hammer decal on his Lord Gale (which...vanishes immediately after, much as the Mach Storm markings). Matt, being almost as simple-minded as he is optimistic, blurts out "No way! You're not touching that Zoid! It might be able to fuse together with Liger Zero!", further encouraging Burton's want to get frisky with his Gale's stabby bits and the Zoid-shaped ruins. Whoopsie.
RD and Venus plod through the forest elsewhere, seated on the Zero's face in the little dented-in bit on the forehead. She's directing them based on what the Liger says, though RD fears getting lost:
"Are you sure you really know what the Liger's been saying to you?"
"Oh yeah! He's my friend."
"Okay then, as long as you're not imagining it."
Their trusting-but-crazy moment ends as Venus stiffens in fear, sensing...something. A tree comes down, revealing the Gairyuuki, which advances menacingly to the accompaniment of Blake's usual dodgy verbal posturing.
"You're a long, long way from home. What's wrong, you lost? This must be my lucky day."
Back at the ruins, Burton's lemme-stab-you-darling is cut off by more of the Rev Raptors, blasting with tacked-on peashooters and hissing (they're apparently very territorial—no, really). Burton urges them to come and GET IT if they want some o' this, and Dan and Matt use the distraction to head for cover. The Raptors go down easily, and Burton looks up to see our plots and camerawork meet: the Zero streaks by on a ridge, closely followed by Blake and the Gairyuuki.
RD's running, and only running: he doesn't want to fight, not after what he saw happen to the Fire Phoenix. Fighting's too risky, he tells an upset Venus, and that's why they're going to run. She tells him he can't, the partner he lost would never want to see him say something like that. He never backed down before, no matter who he was fighting. "Yeah, well what do you know?" RD interrupts, and before he can consider this the Gairyuuki bobs into view dead ahead.
"End of the line, RD!"
Tailwhip, and the Zero's on the ground, legs sparking. The Lord Gale lands between them, Burton offering to finish RD instead if Blake's so bored. Venus spots the same ruins as Matt and Dan ("Jet Falcon!"), but frozen and staring at the Gairyuuki in unseen flashback, RD leaves the Zero where it fell. The Gale advances, lances charged...and then its side lights up with cannonfire. It's the Heldigunner, Matt and Dan here to save the day with a cry of "BLAST 'EM, HELDY!"
Burton will have nothing of their wannabe heroics and backhands poor Heldy aside—and off a smallish cliff, as Matt and Dan scream. The Lord Gale follows through with a second slap to the Zero. RD wobbles (as does the Zero's animation model) until Venus verbally knocks some sense into him.
"Stop them, fight back! Do it for Mach Storm, you know they're counting on you! Do it for your partner."
With a speech like that, who wouldn't get back up? The Zero staggers to its feet, roaring as foldy bits light up—LASER CLAW STRIKE ATTACK, with none of the silly leadin. RD means business, and after tearing through the Gale's lances (again!), he moves right on to Blake. "So, you still wanna play?" Blake taunts, and the Zero and Gairyuuki exchange a series of electrified snaps and lunges. Seeing an opening as RD talks to himself, Blake tailswats the Zero up into the air. It...hover-flips oddly, landing on its feet as cats do.
"I've been afraid to fight on my own...but not any more. I've got the best partner in the world with me!"
The Zero roars in agreement, and back up on the rock-face, the ancient Zoid's eyes spwoing, lighting up through now-cracking layers of rock. Human and Zoid minds are meeting, through battle as always happens in shounen series. Dan thinks it's an earthquake, but Matt spotted the glowy...and that Zoid and the rocks have stopped doing their thing as quickly as it began.
Blake and the Gairyuuki taunt RD some more as Venus prayer-urges them the ancient Zoid to please come out... And guess who listens? Not the ancient Zoid, not the Zero, but Matt, who runs up to the extremely unstable rock formation, saying he heard a girl's voice (please, show yourself...). Finding a control panel with a single red button (Please...you must come out and help RD and Liger Zero!), he does the only logical thing: smashes it in with a big fucking rock. The glowy comes back, and how, lighting up the entire rock formation in lines of electric blue before exploding it all, leaving Matt unharmed and exposing the ancient Zoid.
It is, of course, Jet Falcon, in brilliant color: silvergrey, blue, yellow, and red. Feathers flip out, boosters burn, and the Falcon takes off without pause, heading straight for the Zero. Matt re-identifies it as the Jet Falcon and the Zero's new Fuzor partner for Dan and the audience, still sharing an inexplicable link with its mind and the marketing department. Before long it's buzzing the Gairyuuki, buffeting it with shockwaves in a repeat of the Phoenix's debut...and RD's computer displays the telltale CHECKED UP wireframes. Are you ready, Liger Zero?
RD's glove flashes, for a moment showing the Phoenix—and then the sequence begins, air whipping around the Zero and twisting into a teal-white cyclone with (vague, but nonetheless amusing) shades of Final Fusion. Armor comes off, bits of Falcon go on: first legs, then head, finally birdy backpack. The twister dies down, the Zero bursting out in mid-air and galloping toward the Gairyuuki.
Yes, galloping. The Liger Zero Falcon doesn't just fly, it runs in the air. There is no other way to describe it, but it looks like something more suiting an Orudios...or Binky. Of course, it also looks cool, so that may be the only explanation we need. Blake calls it iiiinteresting and lights up the ol' CPC, operating on the "shoot it after it combines" principle. RD counters with his own glowy-zap, firing a pair of blue laser thingos from the Zero Falcon's buster claws. The blasts meet in the middle, Beam War happens, and the Gairyuuki loses. It doesn't just lose, in fact, it gets sent sailing off a cliff after its beam's pushed back, impacting somewhere in the forest below. Ah, Zoids, where would you be without your wanton destruction of unusually large trees?
Matt and Dan cheer, and RD thinks to the Phoenix that he did it. I always knew you would, RD, Venus thinks in response, somehow picking up on RD's thought-to-self. The Falcon sails off into the sky a brief time later, leaving RD and Venus standing in front of the Zero. She says she hopes he's happy now, and RD says he is. He knows he won't be alone any more, he's got friends all around him. Elsewhere in the forest, the Guy Ricky is less pleased: it's flopped on the forest floor, a few bits sparking dangerously. Blake is stuck in Angry Mode too, maybe channeling a bit of Shatner as he joins in the Thoughts Voiceover ending: "Next time...you'll run out of luck...RD!"
RD takes Venus to the nearest bit of city, asking if she's sure she wants him to just leave her there. She chirps that she'll be fine and bounces off before he can ponder how odd all this was. RD looks down after waving goodbye, noticing Venus dropped her feathers. He even calls them "a phoenix feather" as he picks them up, but still ponders if it's possible Venus was...no, couldn't have been. It's been a long day, he tells the Zero. "What do you say we head back to base?"
My Thoughts
As far as mid-show upgrade stories go, I'd say this mini-arc is quite good. RD has to sober up some from his action series angst-funk, and it takes more than one episode. I also dig the setting (though I'd like to have seen the trees get involved in the actual fights), the chasing around the forest/across rocks and the two groups of plot meeting each other is some decent direction/cutting for Zoids.
While the Gairyuuki has wobble-wibble problems, the Zero's animation model gets put into some unique poses, the animators making the wise decision not to hand draw the various sitting and hello-there bits. Heldy is adorable and monitor-tastic, and I wish it had showed up more than once. Surely Dan didn't leave it in the forest!
Speaking of things left in the forest...how the hell did Burton and Blake get back to Blue City, considering Sandra had to send a Zoid after Blake in the first place? Yeah, that's gonna be one long walk, unless Luke can find them or RD decides to drop off a note.
Previously: Lost Wings
Next: Nightmare in the Sky
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