I really hope that was just for background comic relief, because ew.
Impressions:
Yep. Nice’s arc is over, or at least on pause, and we move on to Electric Soul, who’s corporatized in a different way. Rather than being the product of marketing, he’s franchised. It’s not the most creative superhero origin stories of the dude playing a hero becoming one, and while sort of passable, the dude was a little too much sad sack for my tastes. This was well beyond Peter Parker levels of pathetic wallowing, and all the characters map very boringly to the standard Spiderman triangle. There’s even a Harry Osborn who will definitely not turn out to be the Green Goblin. Also, no big over the top action scene, and only the slightest big of 2D animation. The brawl was all right, but it wasn’t as ugly and visceral as it could’ve been, and there was definitely a chance to flex the 2D animation at least a little bit for the big punch moment.
There’s some other major faults besides the production too. First, there really should’ve been at least a quick montage of the guy going from passionate about being a hero to run down and depressed. The little kid sidekick says this, but why on earth would some ten year old have any idea about any of that? And why not just have him not ever having been inspiration instead of supposedly having lost that spark? And second, I have only the vaguest idea what on earth was going on with the whole franchising of Electric Soul impersonators. They hold an annual tournament of… impersonators? I expect eventually they’ll reveal that they just swap a new one out constantly, like Lassie, or… you know… Nice, but what was that tournament thing even about? And what were they being judged on? The guy was top three out of at least twentyish anyway, so it’s not even like he did poorly at… whatever they were judging.
