You can call me Anne! I'm rewatching slugterra for the first time in 6 years, and I have thoughts but was too embarrassed to put it on main, so sideblog be upon ye.
Basically, expect one post per episode as I watch them, some fanart, and long periods of radio silence.
Tags I Will Use:
#Rewatch Rambles for posts noting random interesting details in the rewatch.
#Anne's Art Cavern for MY fanart
#Slugterra Art Gallery for OTHERS' fanart that I reblog
#Anne's Adventure Log for textposts
Personal info under the cut if you care
About Me:
They/she, aroace, I'm an adult, but will never post nsfw
Anxious introvert with a job. If I don't respond, it's not you, it's me
I will generally keep shipping at arm's length for Slugterra. No hate to the people who enjoy it, but I always liked that it's a show with no romance and generally don't engage with shipping content.
Favorite character is Trixie, favorite slug is Rookie.
I'm not really expecting engagement, I just find articulating my thoughts comes easily in the form of tumblr posts. This is basically my personal slugterra notebook and if other people read it great I guess.
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The concept of Dr. Blakk implies that there is education above colleague in Slugterra and that Blakk has a doctorate in whatever speciality he studied for.
There's a fat chance he juggled his rivalry with Will and writing his thesis to get his degree "On dark water and their potential" or whatever. Later on he probably slugged a couple goons for calling him mr. and not dr.
The audacity
-Business/Economics. This is the funniest option because when you say "Dr." you tend to think of someone scientifically inclined, but Blakk is the C.E.O. of his own company that has a monopoly on the train lines and can seemingly dip its toes into any endeavor like sponsoring mecha beast racers. There are other more sciency options, but at his core, Blakk is a power hungry capitalist, so I like this one quite a lot.
-Chemistry. The image of him writing his thesis on potential uses for dark water is so viscerally accurate, and I can just imagine that he went to school specifically studying different chemical compounds and how he can unethically use them. Additionally, I think he was specifically studying pharmeceuticals and then pivoted, because---speaking from experience---people studying the sciences of drugs are always extremely curious and have done unspeakable things to lab rats about it, so I can see him picking up his willingness to ghoul slugs from that.
-Engineering. Again, Blakk's company owns the train lines, has it's fingers in other transportation options, and also specializes in mining. Not to mention some of the unhinged junk he makes to fight the Shane Gang (gatling gun, looking at you). Makes sense that Blakk knows his way around complex mechanics
-Crack option: He did do higher level study, but he dropped out or got expelled and then fabricated documents and just forces all his minions to call him "Dr."
Time for another installment in my slugterra rewatch where I note random details I found interesting! Previous episodes under my tag #Rewatch Rambles, and take a full series spoiler warning before continuing!
Oh my days he looks like a puppy! Generally you don't see that level of big-eyed excitement on anyone but the slugs. Nice to see the show's animation is comfortable pushing it's limits sometimes.
Anyway, remember what I said about how Eli, a kid who has been taking healthy amounts of Idiotic Heroic Courage vitamins, is a great fit for Slugterra's protector because he does not care about lethal danger? Yeah, that character trait is going to be a blessing and a curse throughout the series.
I also love that Kord seems to be the most careful of their group. Like. Pronto is a straight-up coward, but he's too dumb/impulsive/gullible for his cowardice to actually help reign Eli in. Trixie is more gaurded than Eli, but she's been getting herself involved in trouble since we met her. Kord is always the one who's like "what if we just took a day off and didn't do a crazy plan that gets us killed?" I'm actually curious to see if the company he keeps ever kills his self-preservation instinct.
It's also fascinating because between his mech expertise, how much he practices slinging, and the fact that he's just physically quite big (AND WEARS A HELMET LIKE A GOOD LITTLE CAVE TROLL), he's honestly got the most tools to survive the dumb stuff they get into (I mean minus Eli's plot armor, but that can't be helped).
"And remember if you lose limbs it's up to you to pick them up, unless you lose both arms in which case, no high-fives for you"
THAT'S KINDA GRAPHIC FOR A KIDS SHOW HOLY COW! This is not a criticism, I am being continually delighted by the lack of censorship when it comes to the violence in this show. This is at least half of why it seemed so fun when I was younger.
Tbh, I kinda love Sedo. Like, first of all, I love that of ALL the characters to get semi-consistent lore drops, it's Pronto. The character with a lifelong nemesis is not Trixie, the girl who left her home cavern to film the corruption of Blakk Industries and the general sorry state of the caverns. It's not Kord, the cave troll who left home because he didn't want to be a miner like the rest of his clan and was instead looking for adventure. It's not even Eli who is THE MAIN CHARACTER.
It's the freeloader they keep around out of. . . loyalty? Pity? Amusement? Probably all 3. It's just deeply amusing to me that Pronto has apparently had a very eventful life prior to this. For all his bluster, I do feel like the Shane Gang's shenanigans are practically a break for Pronto compared to some of the other stuff he seems to have gotten himself into. I honestly can't wait for Keys to the Kingdom.
Sedo also fulfills the important function of showing that Pronto being a bum has nothing to do with him being a molenoid. I appreciate when we get a lot of variety in fantasy species instead of them all being a monolith. And it's kinda fascinating because it shows everybody in the Shane Gang is basically an outcast from their culture. Kord, Pronto, and Trixie are all far bolder and ready for action than your average cave troll, molenoid, or teenage cavern-dweller, which goes a long way towards explaining why they let themselves get roped into Eli's nonsense so easily.
Also love Trixie farming Pronto's personal drama for content. Girl has NO mercy
Interesting things at the start of the race:
-Love that the announcer fired his blaster like you would a pistol with blanks for an irl race. That's an interesting application for floppers (since I'm assuming you can't dry fire a blaster anymore than you can dry fire a real gun)
-I'm fascinated by the NPC racers btw, if just because I love looking at their mechs. We've got a punk girl with a powerful but slightly worse-for-wear snake, a construction worker looking dude with a very well maintained wild boar, and a teenager with goggles and a busted malfunctioning chicken. I love that we can get little bits of personality for irrelevant characters through tiny tiny things like this. I'll bet you anything that the punk girl blew her life savings getting her own mech and loves it like a child, the construction guy services his own mech, and the goggle kid either built his by himself or touched up an old one because he's an *aspiring* mechanic.
One of these days, I wanna see a character on a mech that doesn't aesthetically match them because it was cheap or they inherited it from someone with a very different sense of style. I'd also love to see a well-functioning, well-maintained mech that's an absolutely lame animal. Slugterra runs on rule of cool, so it makes sense that all the "cool" characters with "cool" mechs get "cool" animals but I'd love to see a character who's clearly competent that just really loves. . . Idk, gerbils or something, and went out of their way to get a gerbil mech. I think it'd be a fun gag.
"Aren't you a little young to be in the slug run?"
"Are you kidding? I've been riding mechas since. . .wait. Has it really only been since January?"
"Want some advice newbie,"
"What, work on my racing banter?"
Two things:
-Implications of a timeline! Eli's birthday is in January, and it's been several months since he came to the caverns.
-I'm sorry, I'm just never getting over the fact that Eli religiously practices his sass. This is too funny. He heard people describe his father as a wise-cracking hero and took that so incredibly seriously. I hope this joke never ends
-LOVE how much more cautious Eli is around the Shadow Clan this time around. He's hard-headed, but experience is a brutal BRUTAL teacher.
-I love that Vance is genuinely an honorable person underneath the show-boating. It shows that Blakk still has an air of legitimacy to his business right now, and makes things like Trixie's filming very important.
-I'm extremely surprised that a race that's been running for at least 4 years hasn't had ANYBODY creatively interpret the no-slugging rule yet. I'm seriously shocked they haven't had people blasting rocks to make shortcuts or seal them off and stop other people from using them, or using frostcrawlers to make ice bridges. But maybe the no-slugging rule is a more recent addition.
Man, I kinda wish we got to see more horrifying slugterra wildlife like this crystal wyrm. The show mostly limits itself to actual physical obstacles like gorges or lava pits, and then slugs and ghouls. But every once in a while they drop these bits of cool wildlife or other sentient species, and I like thinking about the circumstances in any given cavern that might have caused that. I love the consistency in everything down here except for the humans being a burrower or a cave-dwelling creature by nature.
Also love this episode being the one to firmly establish that slugs get home or back to their slinger on their own. Dropping this kind of thing early sets us up for fun episodes like The Way Home, and it tells you it's okay to turn your brain off and stop wondering how everyone collects their one-of-a-kind ammo after a fight. The slug tunnels are genuinely such a brilliant bit of worldbuilding that solves that issue so well.
It's great that Eli doesn't win this race. He's an OP protagonist, but slug-whispering and leadership skills don't automatically translate to good mech racing skills. He's only allowed to be OP in the specific area of slug-slinging, which is a good way to keep things balanced.
Sedo asking "where have I heard that before" when he hears Pronto screaming and rumbling from underneath---I'm actually loving thinking about their previous encounters. Pronto needs to have about a million more noodle incidents that keep coming back to haunt him, because Pronto being forced to solo problems he caused a long time ago is much more entertaining than watching him create problems for other people.
KORD ACTUALLY EATS HIS WRENCH LMAO!!! Never let it be said he's not a man of his word
Kord and Trixie bantering with each other is really cute. I sometimes get the sense that they get to bond offscreen when Eli's doing something stupid, because they have a very particular dynamic of bullying each other into being better that reminds me of people who have known each other for much longer.
Hi I'm not dead, I just moved out of my parents house several months ago, which ate into my free time a LOT more than I expected! I did warn you about long periods of radio silence. Anyway, welcome back to my Slugterra rewatch where I go over random details I find interesting. Full series spoiler warning in effect! Previous installments can be found under my tag #Rewatch Rambles
Alright, let's actually break down this commercial monologue bit by bit:
"Do you spend hours on tedious dueling and your slugs still aren't learning new moves?"
-There are two ways to take this. The first is to believe the commercial and suddenly we know slugs work on Pokémon rules where they CAN be taught new moves deliberately, but they also just figure new ones out while working on basics.
-The second is to believe the commercial is being misleading, because the Pokémon game logic doesn't make a lot of sense compared to the rest of the show where training seems to be a very deliberate practice. You don't learn to do new archery tricks by shooting at the same targets over and over again, and you don't teach your dog new tricks by running them through the same old agility course.
-Given the outcome of this episode, I'm inclined to take the second route and say Skill Issue
"Are the other slingers gettin the best slugs leaving you with floppers?"
-Sir, that is a Flatulorhinkus you are holding, and as Pronto will demonstrate multiple times over in this series, it's actually very effective if you know how to use it (even if he constantly complains about Stinky being useless). False advertising.
"Tired of never knowing what slug to use or even if it's worth using at all?"
-This comment is par for the course culturally in the 99 Caverns, but SIR, Club Slug is literally just illegal steroids with bad side effects, how does that increase the SLINGER'S knowledge of which slugs are gonna be effective in which fight? I'm not even blaming the commercial, the people who buy this are dumb. Hence why Pronto buys it.
Also, OH MY GOSH you can tell the "satisfied customer" is being paid extra to do this and is not a trained actor, he sounds so tired and bored lol.
Fantastic terrible dumb commercial, good to know malevolent and bad advertising is a universal experience!
OH MY GOD I WAS WONDERING WHAT EPISODE THIS ONE WAS IN!!!
Eli and Kord PRACTICE their smack talk as religiously as they practice dueling. I think Trixie insulting Eli's one-liners in The Trade got to him more than he's letting in. This is the kind of absolute tomfoolery and cringe teenager behavior I LIVE for. And of course, Trixie OWNS them both because she is ACTUALLY cool while Eli and Kord just WISH they were.
Also, timeline! It has officially been A Few Months since the gang got together, which does a lot for justifying how skilled Eli (and everyone else) will be in these next episodes!
That actually makes me retract some previous statements about how fast Blakk has gotten his ghouls perfected and distributed. We now know that multiple weeks can be passing between these episodes!
Oh my gosh, Club Slug's THEME MUSIC even reeks of terrible exercise commercial. It sparks some deep internal inexplicable rage in me just from hearing it, this is fabulously awful
This whole opening scene actually has really great casual characterization. It's this kind of silliness that provides character depth that I feel has been lost in some modern TV shows. Trixie shows off that she's knowledgeable about Slugterran media and entertainment (makes sense given she's a vlogger), Kord shows that he's a bit jealous of Eli surpassing him, Pronto is impulsive and gullible and spent all their money without asking, and Eli is appropriately wary of something that sounds too good to be true! Good instincts buddy!
Speaking of money!
Eli: "We all worked hard for that gold Pronto"
YOU DID?! DO YOU HAVE A JOB?! HOW ARE YOU MAKING MONEY ELI SHANE, I NEED TO KNOW THIS?! WHERE IS IT COMING FROM?!
I think I've mentioned this before, but my current theory is that Trixie gets revenue from her Slugnet videos (and probably knows where to pick up odd jobs) and Kord makes money servicing mecha beasts for people, but I genuinely have no idea how Eli and Pronto are making money. Like even if Pronto took something with him in his self-imposed exile, it's definitely gone by now (hence his squatting in the Shane hideout), and Eli is waaaaaayyyyy too nice to ask for a tip when he saves people or does them favors. HOW are you not BROKE, boy, do NOT look me in the eyes and tell me you're working part time at 7/11!!!
Seriously though, WHY are the slugs so eager to get into the Illegal Stimulants machine? Does it smell yummy or something? Slugs---and especially slugs that choose to go with Eli---are genuinely very happy to train with a good slinger and become more powerful. It definitely seems fun for them. But this is very sketchy, and generally the slugs are good judges of character. What about this specific machine is throwing off their instincts? Even Burpy seems excited about this and he almost always knows a bad situation when he sees one.
Like I understand that this is the drug abuse metaphor episode, but you don't find drugs appealing and addictive before you even try them, you are wary and worried about the awful effects. It takes at least one use for them to start messing with your neurotransmitters and changing your brain chemistry.
Eli: "Did someone say duel? Count me in!"
I'd also like to add, I'm not surprised that Trixie goes for the machine, even though she's usually the type to be suspicious. She's NOT a traditionalist, and while she's skilled she doesn't have Eli's natural talent or understanding of slugs and how they work. This early in the series, she's still thinking of them more as tools than friends, and this seems like as good a way as any to sharpen her tools, while Eli is approaching this from the "I'm worried about my friends" angle.
Aaaaand there's that shonen braincell. Eli is much smarter and a better judge of character than your classic Goku archetype who is only focused on Food Fighting and Friendship, but he definitely has a similar priority list.
Sargeant Slug: "Takes a few rounds for them to get seasoned like Old Butch here"
CUT TO OLD BUTCH AND HIS SHADY YELLOW STONER EYEBALLS! They're really not being subtle on the drug abuse metaphor.
Also, more of Eli and Kord having a very sweet bromance where Eli is genuinely happy that Kord got one over on him, just confused on the method, and Kord is genuinely worried that he hurt Eli. UGH! FRIENDSHIP!
And! Eli's a graceful loser! This is more of what I'm talking about where he's just such a fundamentally good person. And while it is inspiring to some people, it's also ANNOYING AS HELL to others like the three extras in this episode, and honestly? Most of Slugterra, who have been conditioned for cynicism by the chaotic lawless lifestyle. It's why a lot of people aren't actually inclined to listen to him until he proves himself. He seems naive with how kind he is.
Even though Eli's been on top of his game for months now, he's still a beginner who makes dumb mistakes like firing Bolo straight into a Tornado. He's still got. What? 4 seasons and a couple movies to go before he's REALLY unbeatable!
A NEW ONE FOR THE BURPY LOSS COUNTER! Burpy does actually take a solid hint against one of the jacked up threshers.
Trixie is STILL dissing Eli's one-liners in this fjght and she's not even winning lol! Good job girlfriend, don't let his ego get too high just because he's right!
Side note about this whole episode, I love that Seargant Slug has nothing to do with Dr. Blakk, he's just a garden variety scammer doing dangerous stuff. Hammers home that ordinary people can be just as big of a problem as the big bad if nobody stops them, AND keeps Dr. Blakk from getting overexposure and losing his menace!
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My personal headcanons (mostly off the cuff, but I had fun writing these)
Grandmamma Shane: Jimmo's sister and Will's mom was a protector of the 99 caverns and got herself killed saving people from a fatal cavern collapse when Will was in his 20s
Grandpappy Shane: Not in the picture. Grandmamma had a number of whirlwind romances in her youth both on The Surface and in Slugterra, and while she has heavy suspicions, she could never confirm which man was Will's father and didn't want to complicate things by hunting the guy down. Will grew up with no dad and an Uncle Jimmo instead.
Maternal Grandparents: The fun whacky grandparents who aren't super involved. They've had a lifelong dream of traveling the globe and using their retirement to go on adventures together, so they haven't had a stable home base since their daughter moved out and started her own life. While this has always been a benign desire of theirs, I also sort of like to think there was a time in their life when they were participants in organized crime which is why they're so eager to be on the move and stay away from their daughter and her family. They don't want their past catching up with them or coming to bother her.
This is how I justify my headcanon that Eli's mom is In The Know about Slugterra despite being a surface girl. She's already very good at keeping secrets, and her parents raised her to be intelligent, wary, and badass (she shoots a real gun better than Will shoots a blaster and he fell for her when a series of misunderstandings made her think he was attempting to rob her and she beat him to hell, then apologized and bought him dinner when it was cleared up). She was very quick to learn that her new friend Will was keeping secrets that were dangerous for him and wanted to help, and Will decided he could trust her.
Anyway, Nana and Papa used to see Eli every 3 to 4 years at family reunions and would send him cool stuff for the holidays, but there's never been any question about them raising him because their general lifestyle and their sketchy past keeps them from being fit emergency guardians. Add in the whole Slugterra thing and Eli's parents were VERY adamant that should anything happen to them, Eli is to be raised by Great Uncle Jimmo.
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a frostcrawler/narwaddle, cause I get really tired and anxious basically whenever im in direct sunlight/heat, plus my eyes refuse to open in brightness either so...I think it would be nice to have a chill slug give me a little cloud/some snowflakes when it's too hot outside. It would probs make my quality of life improve dramatically lol. I hate the sun!!! I hate heat!
though a slyren would be cool. They move in perfect 5ths and remind me of pre-renaissance music, back before the church decided parallel fifths were demonic. A creature naturally singing parallel fifths in the real world would make some of the greatest historical music/mathematician purists drown themselves into the sea and it's great
ALSO a conversation I had with Goblin Brother that will certainly come up in my rewatch:
Eli is an extremely overpowered protagonist, which is normal for kids media and for chosen one characters. But he's a bit unique for two reasons:
1. While Eli does grow a LOT as the series progresses, he STARTS the show overpowered. He competes in a tournament with zero prior experience slug slinging and totally wins the whole thing, and he will only get more overpowered from there.
2. Despite this, His OP status doesn't feel at all un-earned or imbalanced, because it's not actually Eli himself that is OP, it's his SLUGS and his leadership skills. He uses his big brain and his ENORMOUS heart to get good allies that he trusts and listens to, and that he is absolutely ride-or-die with. Consequently, he has a small army of cool and powerful slugs that all adore him and would follow him anywhere, and that he's smart enough to know how to use in the best ways.
It's just a really elegant writing solution. Theoretically, anyone could be just as powerful as Eli. But they won't because having that kind of compassion and impulse to help people isn't something they've been culturally trained for, and even if it WAS a lot of people just still couldn't pull it off.
(Also Burpy is. . . Burpy, so that's helping a whole lot).
It lets us have all the fun of an OP protagonist with none of the drawbacks. I think it's genuinely so cool that by the end of the show, you can't fire most of Eli's slugs unless you have a good blaster because they're too powerful for the cheap kind. Even on Eli's extremely good blaster from RedHook, some of his moves like the double-barrel fusion shot STILL require a lengthy cool-down. That's just straight up awesome and I love it so much.
Hi! Sorry about the long wait, I've recently moved and am still settling in. I will most likely pick up episode breakdowns again tomorrow.
The GOOD news is that I have moved in with my brother who INTRODUCED me to Slugterra and we spent some time chit-chatting about it last night. He brought up something really interesting to me!
So we constantly talk about how weird it is that pretty much nobody names their slugs. Everyone (including the Shane Gang at first) thinks it's EXTREMELY weird that Eli does this, along with the fact that he does things like ask the slugs for opinions and advice, and just generally treats them like valuable sapient members of the team. Even the people who are good slingers who love their slugs think this is a weird thing to do.
As I rewatch the show, it's been difficult to find a comparison for how the rest of the caverns treats their slugs, but my dear beloved goblin brother finally found the perfect one:
The Slugs Are Livestock
Like livestock, they are extremely important to the day-to-day lives and livelihoods of pretty much everybody down there. Like livestock, they are treated much less as beings deserving of respect, and much more like *property.* Like livestock, some good slugslingers are extremely fond of their slugs and consider them beloved pets that they would never give up, while some good slingers are more cynical and detached. They want their slugs treated well, but they feel it's necessary to treat them as a resource, not as friends. Like livestock, the slugs are frequently traded as a kind of currency despite being living beings. And like livestock, there are PLENTY of terrible people who abuse their slugs and even do straight up crimes against nature on them because "they're just slugs" and it will make them more rich and powerful.
I still question HOW the Caverns got to the point where these obviously intelligent creatures who are the most important beings to the health of the caverns and some of whom are basically gods got to this point. That's a fanfic I'd be really interested in---the slow slide of public perception towards the slugs changing as more and more greedy and selfish people gain power and become the model for how to treat them. But this livestock analogy is gonna be great for me when trying to see through the eyes of an average cavern-dweller.
something i wanna know is does nobody in slugterra have parents? like why are there so many kids and teens ripping and running slinging slugs in the street. baby where’s your mom? don’t you have chores?
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Welcome to another slugterra rewatch where I point out random details I found interesting. Previous installments can be found under #Rewatch Rambles, and a Full Series Spoiler Warning is in effect!
The intro to this one cracked me up so bad. I don't usually go through the effort to get pictures for these, but I need you all to appreciate the body language happening in this encounter:
Kord: "How about we do that after we catch some [frostcrawler slugs]?"
Trixie: "I'll get the snares!"
Pronto: "I have the gloves!"
Eli: "Why don't we just talk to them?"
Eli looks relaxed and casual. The rest of the gang doesn't just look high strung, they look absolutely ridiculous. Remembering the slugs are intelligent and treating them with respect isn't just the morally correct choice---it's also so much easier in every way.
*Sighs.* Okay, this is how you DON'T do failure comedy with Pronto. He's allowed to create problems for them, but this feels like he's being an obtuse idiot for no reason. At least it's in character. He periodically demonstrates that he is the least compassionate towards his slugs---I'd even say he's less kind to them than average Slugterrans. Love-hate relationshiop is pretty much the only type he knows how to have.
Kord: "Your slugs have gotten too powerful for a blaster like that!"
Fascinating. Eli got that blaster from his dad's stuff. Does that mean that Eli's slugs are even more powerful than Will's? It's a possibility, but for now I'm assuming the hideout Eli found was more like a backup safehouse. With the exception of Eli's mecha Lucky (LKE), he wouldn't have been keeping very high quality stuff in there. Which also explains why it's not the most hidden thing in the world, and why nobody but Pronto took up residence there or tried to loot it.
Okay, I was gonna make fun of Eli for picking a high stakes fight with a broken blaster, but Billy's even dumber. We've established there are very few laws down here and even fewer enforcers. WHO would Eli have gone to if he DID claim he deserved a do-over? Nobody! This isn't a practicality thing, it's an ego thing---Billy is so full of himself that he's willing to remove the curb-stomp disadvantage Eli has just so Billy can prove he's better.
Kord is SO sweet. He's Eli's best friend and number one hype man, and it's too cute. He might be exasperated by Eli's impulsiveness, but he'll also be the first of any of them to sing his praises. I think a lot of the pride comes from the fact that he basically taught Eli to sling slugs, so this isn't just a testament to Eli's talent, it's also means he was LISTENING to Kord and proves Kord is and has been a great teacher to him.
Eli's had the frostcrawler for a few hours at most and it's ALREADY beating a tried and tested Flaringo. Another one of the advantages to ASKING if the slugs want to come is that it naturally selects for the most adventurous and tough slugs (as well as ones that like Eli and will bond fast with him).
Tbh I actually forgot that Doc used to belong to Billy. I also forgot just how awful the Hooligang was in their first appearance, since their later ones are far more comedic and light hearted. The slugs get threatened with ghouling on the daily, but it's very rare that anyone actually tries to KILL a slug. Early show Billy might take the cake for the most despicable enemy our heroes have.
Also, I LOVE how quiet and intense Eli's rage is when he BODY-SLAMS Billie and goes "Careful there. You almost stepped on that slug." If you've got a quiet Eli, you've got a PROBLEM.
No wait, that's a good question Pronto! Did he go by Red Hook before or after he got the hook? What do ya'll think? After makes more sense, but I like before better for the irony.
The redhook ebcounter IS how you do failure comedy with Pronto! Not no stakes, but lower stakes, and thers's immediate catharsis about it. You can buy that he IS actually trying to help in this situation and just isn't self aware enough to know he's doing the opposite of helping.
When Blakk raises his hand to grab Billy's slug, Billy startles and covers himself like he thinks he's going to be hit. Since Maurice had to introduce Billy, this is his first time meeting Blakk. Do we think hitting children is considered normal in Slugterra? Do we think Billy specifically has been surrounded by bad adults who hit him a lot and now he assumes all of them are like that? Or have Blakk's agents roughed him up before? All three seem equally plausible to me. It may even be all of them.
Alright, so between Blakk saying it's not surprising that Will has a son and Red Hook's teasing, amused inflection when he says he never knew Will had a kid, I think we can safely assume Will was the rakish hero archetype.
One of the awesome things about this series is that even the most serious fights aren't exempt from slapstick. They do a really good job of incorporating the characters' personalities and the slug's whacky powers into basically every single one. Which means we can get moments like Pronto successfully taking someone out by holding his gun backwards and firing THE WHOLE GUN at his opponent. And it doesn't make the fight feel lower stakes at all!
Ooh, and here we see another interesting difference between Eli and Trixie's approach to heroism. Trixie is really focused on recruiting the residents of the cavern so they can help them help themselves. She's way more frustrated by their spinelessness than the others. Because she's seen this happen over and over again---she stood up because nobody else would, and it's driving her a bit crazy because she didn't have anything special that made her a hero except willpower. Eli wants to keep them safe, and wants them to defend themselves too, but he's less aggravates by their passivity because he hasn't been stuck in the same situation Trixie's been in.
He doesn't understand how common of an occurrence this is and how difficult it is to get people to stand up to Blakk. It highlights Eli's hopefulness, but it also highlights Trixie's because it shows she's still going on and being a hero DESPITE her lack of success in inspiring others. It might also be why Trixie was drawn to him in the first place---Eli DOES find her inspiring and actually listens to her good advice.
And of course, when they're on the backfoot and Eli says they need to recruit the residents of the cavern, he's talking about the slugs, which is an oversight for Trixie. They complement each other. She's jaded but determined and more focused on the people, he's naive but a natural leader and more focused on the slugs.
The Small World of Voice Acting: Featuring My Childhood
Soooo, for yesterday's episode I noted that Brian Drummond absolutely brings the menace to a character with a name as dumb as Diablos Nacho.
That made me decide to look up the VA credits, which is always fun because voice acting is a small world. Before I get into the individual credits, I want it known that most of these people also worked on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Littlest Pet Shop, Barbie, and Ninjago, and most of them have seasoned careers dubbing anime. I don't watch much Anime, but some of these stood out even to me (almost all of them have been on Death Note for example).
Here's some of the cast and their voice roles that made me personally go "NO WAY," but I highly recommend going to their Wikipedia pages and taking a look for yourself!
Eli's VA: Sam Vincent---Also the voice of Lloyd Garmadon from Ninjago and Flim (of the Flim Flam duo) from MLP:FiM, Daffy and Bugs from Baby Loony Tunes and Jerry from the Tom and Jerry Show (which I didn't watch but I did watch the originals). . .And also Will Shane lol.
Trixie's VA: Shannon Chan-Kent---The singing voice of Pinkie Pie from MLP:FiM, Amy Rose in Sonic Prime, and then like a billion side characters in multiple barbie movies, littlest pet shop, and strawberry short cake. She's also been Belle in the Vancouver stage production of Beauty and the Beast.
Kord's VA: Andrew Francis---has had a long career of acting and voice acting, but the only one personally important to me is that he's Shining Armor on MLP:FiM, which is close enough to his Kord voice that I won't be able to unhear it.
Pronto's VA: Lee Tockar---who is also Bibble in the Barbie Fairytopia movies, Snips AND Steven Magnet from MLP, Bling-Bling Boy from Johnny Test (I was upset to be reminded that exists), Inky from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, and has also been some side characters from Dinosaur Train.
Dr. Blakk's VA: Mark Oliver---Doesn't have a wikipedia page because he mostly does bit parts. Key word being mostly---He's Lord Garmadon from Ninjago. I want you all to think about this for a second. Eli's VA is Lloyd Garmadon. Blakk's VA is Lord Garmadon. I am losing my mind. He's also HIM in Powerpuff Girls Z, and Hue the butterfly from Barbie Fairytopia.
Diablos Nacho's VA: Brian Drummond---Vegeta in the Ocean Group dub of Dragonball Z; Ryuk in the English dub of Death Note; a whole bunch of people on Dinosaur Train; a whole bunch of people on He-Man Masters of the Universe; Clyde from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures; Eddie Brock and Venom in Spiderman Unlimited; Dr. Eggman in Sonic Prime; Knuckles in Sonic Underground; Wolverine in Wolverine: Origin, Wolverine versus Sabretooth, and Wolverine: Weapon X; and in Slugterra itself he's also the voice of Redhook and a ton of one-off characters.
Twist's VA: David Kaye---Very very long list that had less properties I knew of. He's a whole bunch of people on Ben 10 which I didn't watch, and a recurring side voice for Scooby Doo (but nobody significant enough to make me double take). We do have some games I know though! He's Clank from Ratchet and Clank; Comissioner Gordon from Batman: Arkham City; and also Sesshomaru from Inuyasha which I didn't watch but have absorbed some things second-hand about.
Junjie's VA: Vincent Tong---Kai and apparently half the extras from Ninjago; Garble, Flash Sentry, and Sandbar from MLP (as well as a large number of bit parts like Doughnut Joe); and also Zuko in the Avatar video game Avatar The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance.
This all barely scratches the surface! I didn't look up most of the side characters! If any of you have an afternoon and would like your brain exploded, spend some time looking through the acting credits of all the minor characters. I think you'll have fun :)
