RETRO-SCRUTINY SRMTHFG EPISODE THIRTY-FIVE: Meet the Wigglenog

Greetings, one and all, to Retro-Scrutiny. My name is Kendall Charleswell and I am your host this evening.

 

(And I am Alexia Erizo, joining in today as Kendall’s co-host. Glad to see you’re back, Kendall.)

Thanks for taking over the last time, Alexia.

 

(Thanks for not leaving footprints on the ceiling anytime this week.)

No problem. Now, the last time we saw the monkey team, they were escaping a mutated monster world after fighting for their freedom. This time around, they’ll be escaping form a different kind of threat. It’s time for everybody to Meet the Wigglenog.

OVERVIEW

The episode begins with Gibson, Otto, and Chiro wearing chest gear and hauling around strange guns while looking for something.

 

(What are they looking for?)

The others, of course. Nova pops out of nowhere to shoot Otto with her own gun and take him out of the game. Yep, they’re playing laser tag. The game ends after Antauri cheats to take out the rest of Chiro’s team.

 

(Apparently, they’ve been playing this game for a while, since Antauri’s team has won a total of 346 times. No wonder Chiro’s bored. He wants some excitement!

 

And that’s when they’re invaded by random gun-toting soldier men.)

Chiro asks all the appropriate questions, such as, “Who are you?” and “What do you want?” and only gets the commander of the squad to say “The question is, ‘What do YOU want, Chiro?’”

 

(The team evades enemy fire and their toy blasters turn real. They still fight with their powers, because those aren’t broken or anything, so why not?)

After defeating the goons, said goons disappear in puffs of smoke. The leader avoids interrogation by turning into a squirrel. Otto chases after it and Antauri and Nova chase after him. The rest get locked in the room, but escape through a vent.

Otto and the others follow the squirrel, who is chewing wires (Bad squirrel! You don’t know what those do!) and get attacked by its exploding acorns. After tossing them around, the squirrel turns into a window, closes the blinds on itself, and disappears.

 

(A lot of things disappear in this episode, don’t they? Meanwhile, the boys have reached the Observation Deck and discover they’re trapped in a vast space anomaly. Sparks, however, gets distracted by a mermaid and ends up following it to the main room. This episode is getting weird…)

The mermaid tells him he can have anything he wants as long as he wishes for it before the rest of the team arrives. The mermaid then transforms into the Wigglenog, the most powerful nog in the galaxy.

It is here to grant the team three wishes- well, two since Chiro unknowingly already used their first wish.

The Wigglenog explains the rules of wishing: They can wish for anything except for more wishes and they cannot wish for the Nog to get hurt.

 

(While they team tries to decide what to do with their wishes, Gibson accidentally wishes that Otto wasn’t ‘such a colossal dunderhead’, causing the green monkey’s brain to grow comically out of his head and making Gibson feel stupid.)

The Wigglenog tries to get to Sparks and Chiro, using their desires against them, only for Antauri to bring them back to reality. The team decide to get rid of the space genie and Sparks breaks the rules by wishing for a giant anti-Wigglenog bazooka. That backfires and the Wigglenog is free to rule the cosmos.

The team attacks, but it doesn’t do a lick of good. Otto ends up deflecting to the Wigglenog’s side and is supersized in order to destroy his ex-teammates in ridiculous ways.

After being granted one free wish to finish the team, Otto wishes that they had never fallen into the space prison in the first place.

 

(GO OTTO! The Wigglenog is forced to grant the wish, rewinding the entire episode back to the end of the laser tag game. Right before Chiro can wish for something exciting to happen, Otto stops him, saying he has a weird feeling something crazy was about to happen.)

The episode ends with a the Wigglenog in his space prison, yelling and complaining at the Super Robot as it flies away in the opposite direction.

NEW CHARACTER(S):

THE WIGGLENOG (John Kassir): A crossbreed between Genie from Aladdin and Norm from the Fairy Oddparents, this…creature is fast paced, a bit annoying, and fun to watch as he spins circles around the team. He’s not very detailed, but he’s good for what we got.

UNANSWERED QUESTION(S):

1.  What other Nogs are there?
2. Why does the Wigglenog want to rule the universe?
3. Who put the Wigglenog in his space prison?
4. Does the Wigglenog remember that his plan was reversed entirely or is he mad because he the team was so close to releasing him again?

FINAL OPINIONS:

This episode is a weird sort of filler episode. The animation and humor are fairly decent, as always. But the plot is ridiculous and it ultimately means nothing in the grand scheme of the season. In fact, this episode basically didn’t happen and works in an alternate reality now.

(Stories with genies and magical wish granters are nothing new, especially since most of them have the same sort of wishing rules. But it’s the wish granter that’s usually the interesting part of the episode and the Wigglenog, as entertaining as he is, isn’t fleshed out outside of ‘this episode’s bad guy’, making him the biggest disappointment of the episode.

Other than that, we learn that Antauri cheats at games and we rehash some of Otto’s feelings about being ‘the dumb monkey’. That’s it.

No seriously, that’s it for this episode of Retro-Scrutiny.) 

Thank you all for being here today. Its always a pleasure. Tune in next time for more multicolored monkey madness with your favorite duo of Kendall and Alexia.

(Goodnight everybody!)

Episode Six: The Secret of the Sixth Monkey

Before we begin, we would like to apologize for this episode taking so long. There are no proper excuses- I was lazy and forgetful and distracted by a Let’s Play of Pikmin 2.

(And I’ve been preoccupied with other things, like my finals and a few questionable financial pop-ups.)

So, without further ado, we present to you: The Secret of the Sixth Monkey.

OVERVIEW

The team appears to be in the middle of a fight with a many horned floating eyeball and losing immensely. However, this turns out to be a recording of one of their battles- a training exercise of Antauri’s. While most of the monkeys humbly admit their failures, Chiro decides to show off the fact that he took the monster down with one blast.

(Well, in Chiro’s defense, he had the right idea. When in doubt, just use your biggest laser!)

Afterwards, the spiritual master monkey assigns everyone some homework: design and present one new battle move by the next day. Chiro is so full of himself that he decides he’s too good for the assignment.

While goofing off in his room, the boy hero discovers a secret compartment in his wall and finds a monkey helmet and glove. (He doesn’t question why they’re there, just thinks it’s like finding a ten dollar bill on the ground.) So he ends up sending some strange signal into some far spot in the galaxy and awakening someone being held in a prison cell… and steering the prison straight to Skeleton King…

The next day, the monkeys are showing off their new moves. Chiro arrives and proceeds to terrify the monkeys out of their fur with his new toy. And that leads to the reveal of our newest character- Mandarin.

(To fully explain Mandarin, Antauri downloads the backstory of their former leader into the kid’s head- with pictures and everything! Now, why doesn’t he do this more often? If the monkeys are the ones training their teenage leader how to save the universe, wouldn’t they want to do it as fast as possible?!?)

 

For those who decide not to watch the episode, Antauri says:

“Mandarin was the first of the Super Robot Monkeys created. By far, the wisest, smartest, and strongest, he was our leader. Though our mission was to protect Shuggazoom, Mandarin felt he was above serving his guardian. He wanted to rule; this, we could not let happen. As a last resort, we exiled him to an off world prison.”

(And speak of the devil, the Hostile Outlaw Observation Prison, with its singular prisoner, ends up arriving on the scene…)

Mandarin ends up taking out the entire team in a matter of two minutes. He decides to keep Chiro while he sends his ex-teammates to the Skeleton King. When Chiro wakes up, Mandarin gives him two choices- train under Mandarin and rule over Shuggazoom, or let the Skeleton King rule over Shuggazoom.

Chiro ends up escaping, however. Skeleton King, knowing the team will return to take back their home and kick Mandarin’s butt, gives the bad monkey a helpful little multicolored gift…

The Team returns and end up paired against the Hyper Formless, who have all the Monkey moves downloaded into them. (How?) So the team uses their new moves on them, only for Mandarin to remotely shut them down. After giving Chiro one last chance to join him, his ‘family’ comes back and kicks around a little more. Mandarin makes his escape, the city is freed. The last shot of the episode is of Mandarin pledging his allegiance to the Skeleton King…

MANDARIN: Arrogant, powerful, and able to hold of grudge for who knows how long! Mandarin may not be the first case of ‘rogue teammate’, but he’s a great example of one.  He left a big impression on the team before Chiro, and did so again when he returned.  I like the design of him as well.  The bandages and armor and lack of cybernetics make a good combination. I just wish we’d gotten to see him fight a bit more.

Mandarin is easily one of the season’s highlights.  Also, he’s voiced by James Hong.

(I want to point out just how many hints the show dropped about him. Chiro joined the team after he found the Robot, right? So he had to notice that they were all color-coordinated. He couldn’t have missed the missing orange monkey. Also, the colored elevators in the Robot also had to be a tip off. Why have six elevators and only five monkeys?)

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

1. Now that Mandarin has joined up with the Skeleton king, what does this mean for the Monkey Team?
2. Who else from the Team’s past will come back to haunt them?
3. How did Mandarin lose his cybernetics?
4. Skeleton King said that Mandarin was ‘returning’. Does that mean the two worked together before?
5. Will we ever see the new team moves again?
6. Why doesn’t Antauri implant more info into Chiro’s head more often!?!

FINAL THOUGHTS

This episode was great, in my opinion. It holds up after time and is enjoyable to watch. The villain is good and it gives us some of the backstory of the team.

(Chiro is still being a cocky idiot, but I’m still holding out for him doing some serious growing up. I also noticed that Antauri was really starting to get some character development as well, when he began questioning Chiro and then admitting his doubts.)

I also like the new moves the team made up.

Otto: Vertical Razor Chariot- Otto uses his saws to turn himself into a monkey motorbike. It can be used for quick escapes and climbing walls.

Sparks: Gyro-Roll (Sounds tasty!)-A spinning move that blocks and deflects attacks. It can also filing attackers away.

Nova: Knuckle Duster- A sneak attack where she punches, halts the attack, then shoots her knuckles, surprising the enemy.

Gibson: Biostatic Energy Amplification Darts- Shifting the containers in his drills, he can fire various lasers.  Otto decided to name it “Spin Shocker”.

(I personally would have shortened it to BEAD.)

…Sounds like the next SPOON!  

(EXACTLY!)

Antauri: Mega Monkey Paw- A drill move where he dives down, spinning his way through the enemy.

Well, that’s all for this episode, folks! Let’s pray that the next one doesn’t take this long!

(In the meantime, we’re gonna finish that Pikmin walkthrough and then get right to work! What, we can’t just leave it unfinished! They left Louie back on the planet with the Pikmin!)