From one end of the country to the next, Sam and Dean
Winchester are on the hunt for things that go bump in the night. But that isn’t their only mission. John Winchester, their father, is still
missing and his absence is starting to weigh on Dean. Meanwhile, Sam reminisces about the love he
lost that started him on the path of hunting again. No matter the burdens of their pasts, Sam and
Dean will have to put that to the side if theyre going to survive battles with
Vampires, vengeful spirits…and the demon that’s haunted the Winchester Family
for decades.
Supernatural’s trek through the realm of Anime continues
this week. While the season long foe is
introduced, along with a couple of familiar faces (kind of), this weeks set of
all original episodes did a good job to remind us that not all of the monsters
The Winchesters hunt have fangs and glowing black eyes. Sometimes the darkest evil can be humanity
itself.
That point above is something the TV Series has touched
on dozens of times. Heck, even Sam and
Dean have become some form of the monsters they hunt since they’ve chased after
the darkness for so long. It can blind
anyone to the fact that, even in a world of Vampires, Werewolves and Bloody
Mary (Man am I gonna have nightmares over her), things aren’t always black and
white. Two tales this week highlighted
this. The first was Dean bonding with a
young boy who was the offspring of Vampires.
Turns out the kid and his dad were doing their best to continue not
harming humans to feed, instead wrestling down cows and feeding on them (that
image of a Vampire wrestling a cow is funnier than I think intended). No the real monster of that story was the
rabid Vampire hunter who killed the mother of the family cause he enjoys his
work. And Dean still convinced the
Vampire father to spare the jerk after Sam took him down…humanity, even if it
doesn’t look the same, can still find a way.
The second instance is one a bit more familiar: a Doctor trying to keep
his long past dead wife alive by making her a Frankenstein style monster on the
inside. I’m all for love never dying but
this was taking things wayyyyy too far and way too creepy. It’s also one of the few instances where
science and medicine were more the weapon of destruction than anything
supernatural.
This week also saw us delving a bit into some Winchester
history in order to set up the arrival of Yellow Eyes. For the first time, we saw an event never
really touched on in the TV Series: How Sam met his fiancée Jessica and fell in
love. It’s a clever story, bringing her
into Sam’s world and also including Dean and Papa John Winchester without them
actually interacting (since if events are similar to that of the TV Series,
Dean never met Jessica until right before she died, when he came to tell Sam about
their dad going MIA). I liked Sam and
Jess’ little romance, Jess herself had a cute character design too. It was sweet and innocent enough. So much so, im surprised Sam isn’t more angry
all the time after losing her. Granted
that anger did surface when Yellow Eyes did appear, possessing the body of a
mother trying to save her dying daughter.
Yellow Eyes’ character design is simple but effective and still scary,
the light of his signature eyes pierces the soul more than his TV
counterpart. And while his presence was
minimal, it was still felt and sets him up nicely for events to come.
What didn’t fare so well this week was the introduction
of popular series character Bobby Singer.
In the TV Series, Bobby is a grizzled old hunter veteran who’s a jack of
all trades, infinite knowledge bank and the closest thing the Winchesters have
to family after all this time. Bobby is
the definitive cool father figure…and the Anime kind of ruins him by changing a
lot of his personality and his terrible character design. Bobby sounds like an ex-mob enforcer/gangster
who happens to be a hunter rather than a bad ass who would’ve done well in the
old west. It also hurts that Jim Beaver,
Bobby’s actor from the Series, isn’t doing his voice (in the same vein Jeffery
Dean Morgan also isn’t voicing John Winchester). I get that this is supposed to all be an
alternate take on Supernatural but somethings should look about the same: Sam,
Dean, The Impala. Bobby should be on
that list, it’s one of the shows major failings at this point. Gotta say too, the seemingly singular musical
track they play during the action scenes got old after Episode 2…why is there
no music in this series besides “Carry on My Wayward Son”? How could would it be to hear more classic
rock tunes just like on the TV Series or even some JRock?
All in all, this week might have had some shortcomings
but it succeeded when showing that the creative staff has the power to create
its own stories in the Supernatural Universe and even expand on unknown eras of
the Winchesters history. I still like
this series, I just wish Bobby felt more like Bobby. We’ll be hitting the halfway mark next week
and thankfully the Impala looks like it still has plenty of gas for the long
trip. See ya next week.
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