Friday, June 3, 2016

Excuse me, Episode 8 - Underworld Connections


Flame surfing is the new surfing.

Zelda and Link just should stop trying to kiss. Because whenever they are about to get close, something bad happens to interrupt them. I see a clear correlation here (called the "lazy comic relief writing" phenomenon) and maybe, if they just had no intentions of making out with each other, Hyrule would be safe for eternity. Maybe.

Anyway, today's episode's near-kiss lets some Vires appear, who show the audience, how Triforce Shards are actually made. It's very simple and anyone can do it: you just blow up the Triforce with a bomb. Genious! Well, here it only breaks into three shards instead of eight and for once in this show they really quest for "the three pieces of the Triforce", which got carried into the underworld by the Vires.

The shards do show some interesting connections. Link and Zelda have one piece left and its sides still are magically connected to the other two pieces. Link actually fires sword beams through it to kill the Vires and after the other pieces got dropped into water and into some hot volcanic area, the first piece has wet and hots sides. I have to give it to them that these ideas are pretty interesting, but the part, where the Triforce can be blown up with a bomb, is still very ridiculous.

The rest of the episodes went for the extremes. Link sets a record of saying "Excuse me" in one episode, I think he said it about five times, one time even after Zelda pushed him right down into the water. Besides endangering his life, she also saved his life twice in this episode, one time even with a risky stunt, and by now you're actually wondering, who of the two the real Hero of Hyrule is. Link on the other hand just enjoys to do crazy and dangerous things, like doing "The Walk" while sleeping and surfing on his shield over flames...

This is also the episode with Ganon maniacally teleporting all around the room after each sentence, which is pretty well known from the Nostalgia Critic Review and just absolutely hilarious. Attention teleportation disorder. Apropos Ganon, at the end he gets defeated by Zelda... with a Boomerang. Again! We really don't need Link in this, he's just there trying to get in Zelda's pants, while she does all the work. Nah, actually they work as a team with some fun dynamics, but usually it's Zelda who's finishing things.

But Link's the one, who gets shoved around by her and has to do the dangerous and dirty things. Like diving under water for a Triforce piece, where they took the "Aqua" in Aquamentus a little bit too literal. The classic first dungeon dragon really lives under water here and looks more like another unicorn Pegasus hybrid than a dragon. And I suppose that the dragon in the first episode wasn't Aquamentus after all... but whatever.

"Excuuuuse me again, princess." - Link

1 comment:

Eduardo Jencarelli said...

It's too bad this cartoon was made in the 1980's, so early in the game series. After Link's Awakening, Ocarina and Majora came out, the cast really increased in size, allowing for endless possibilities of secondary characters in the series such as Tingle, Malon, Kaepora Gaebora, Rauru, Richard, Skull Kid, etc.

And also, I can't help but wonder what would have been their take on foes like Redeads. Would they keep the paralysing scream? Bokoblins would make for interesting bumbling foes.