We’re taking another look at Pacific Rim: The Black
Up and Running
Taylor wakes up the next morning, feeling a bit worse for
wear after the whole drift interrogation of the previous episode. Mei gives him
some Kaiju jizz or something to help him get over it. Bogan is on the move,
with Hayley and Boy in the back of another truck. They find Atlas
Destroyer, much to Shane’s pleasure.
Taylor is saddened, believing their quest is over and
they’ve failed but Hayley is a little more optimistic. You need to be able to
drift the use the Jaeger and given the quality of help Shane has, they may very
well be needed to pilot, and once they have that advantage, the rest should
come easily. That’s a great plan, if you can count on Shane being a dumbass but
of course he isn’t.
Joel is the drift mechanic that Shane has chosen to try and
pilot the Jaeger, he got himself drunk, thinking himself irreplaceable, so he’s
slightly alarmed hearing about Taylor. Unfortunately, the one member of Shane’s
crew he’d trust to drift with, Mei, refuses point blank. Saying they both have
demons the other shouldn’t have to deal with.
He inserts one of the power cells they obtained last episode
in, activating the Atlas Destroys and Loa completely owns him with every
line, he’s never piloted a Jaeger before. He attempts a neural bridge with
several of Shane’s guys but none of them come out of it well. Hayley finds Boy,
who killed a snake. Yes, that’s a thing that happened, moving on. One of the
guys he tries to drift with has some kind of fit whilst doing the neural
handshake and it sets off a loud alarm, reaching so far out that Copperhead now
knows where the Atlas Destroyer is.
Joel’s showing the after-effects of a stroke, and the other
guy I’m pretty sure is dead so now they don’t have pilots at all. Shane comes
to Taylor and Hayley, wanting Hayley to pilot, but Mei only agrees to do it
with Taylor, as he’s the one that’s been trained. The rest of Bogan quickly
move out, with a rendezvous point set at the old coal mine.
Taylor and Mei are suited up and begin the drift, but Mei is
a naturally closed-off sort of person and openness and trust are kinda
essential to maintaining a link. Mei begins to see some of Taylor’s memories
and with Copperhead closing in, she is forced to open up, we see memories of
Shane took her in as a child and taught her to kill. With the bridge
established, they’re prepared to move but Taylor is struggling with all of
Mei’s bottled-up angst.
Taylor decides they need to stand up and fight, and they
last about 30 seconds before copperhead rips off its arm. They use the
distraction to run, but Copperhead is in hot pursuit. They’re running through a
mine-field and Mei has the mines detonated, the explosives knock Copperhead
out. Shane is not exactly happy, he’s lost half his arsenal of mines and the
arm from the Jaeger.
Taylor takes full responsibility for it, but that just gets
him and the others on the end of Shane’s gun. Mei eventually talks him into
letting them live, but they have to leave, now.
Our protagonists in this episode are just passengers, they
don’t do anything of substance, it’s the one weakness of a fairly compelling
narrative.
Rating 7/10
Escaping Bogan
The sun is beginning to rise and for some reason Taylor,
Hayley and Boy haven’t left yet. I would’ve just left after the events of the
previous episode but what do I know? Mei finally convinces them to leave, but
Shane gives Rickter orders to kill them. But it’s not looking good for Joel.
He’s able to speak through all of his mouth now but his hands are still shaking
like mad, and whole bits of his memory have been completely fried. He doesn’t
even know what some of the parts are, less still how to fix them. And Shane has
said that if he doesn’t get it fixed by end of day, he’s dead.
Hayley asks Taylor what his plan is… You don’t have any
resources other than each other and going back to recover the Jaeger is a
non-option, what do you expect him to say? Rickter confronts them, and shoot
Boy. Taylor and Hayley attempt to fight back but ultimately they’re at gunpoint
until Boy, apparently completely unharmed by the bullet knocks him out. Mei
arrives to stop Taylor from killing him, performing the deed herself.
Mei brings Taylor back to the Jaeger to help Joel fix it,
Mei’s plan is to get him off the hook for repairs, and from then on Taylor and
Hayley get the Jaeger back. But as the plan goes into motion, something else is
brought up. Mei believed Shane treated her like a daughter because of the loss
of his own, turns out that’s a lie, he never had a family.
And no, Mei didn’t lose her either, in fact, she was
abducted from her family by Shane and groomed into the role, some of the
memories from their drifts were from other people Shane drifted with, he keeps
around copies of those memories on flash drives or something, and she was
taught to bury those memories as part of her grooming.
Hayley and Boy are doing the dumbest thing possible and
hiding out a stone’s throw away from the body of Rickter. Incidentally, it bugs
me that even Boy’s shirt doesn’t have a bullet hole in it. So naturally, Shane
had sent some men out looking for Rickter and they find Hayley and Boy, with
Rickter’s body and assume the worst, they captured and taken back to camp.
This complicates things, Joel suggests that the only way to
save them is to solo drift. Ghost-pilot with the memory of another Jaeger
pilot. It’s not commonly done, and most who do it don’t end up doing well out
of it, but it is possible, and since the memories will be of much of
experienced cadets, he may even pick up some extra skills if it works.
So the people who’ve done it. Raleigh Becket, Stacker
Pentecost and Herc Hansen, all characters from the first movie. Herc Hansen and
we see when he actually did it, turns out it was him that initiated the
Australia blockout and he piloted his Jaeger alone to do so. It’s a heavy
strain but He is able to pilot, rescuing Hayley and Boy. Of course, Shane
quickly works out what’s done and knows that Mei was involved.
Hayley takes her place in the drift as Taylor is exhausted,
but refuses to leave without Mei. They pick her up, and she replaces Taylor in
the drift. They destroy all of Bogan’s vehicles and leave. The next morning,
Shane tries to contact Mei on the radio, Joel answers for her, but it turns out
the radios each come armed with an explosive device which detonates and kills
him. And just as he was learning to juggle too.
The story continues to be engrossing if not always
particularly fun.
Rating 7/10
Boneyard
We open with Mei burying Joel, leaving a bottle of his
favourite… bourbon? On top of the rocks. Mei is feeling more closed off than
ever and despite Hayley’s invite, elects to find herself on her own. Something
gets Boy’s attention, an active breach. Mei is missing and whilst they’re
talking about her, Boy runs straight towards the Breach, just another one opens
up right underneath Atlas Destroyer. They both jump into the breach and into
Atlas Destroyer, barely saving it from falling into the Kaiju dimension.
They see that Boy was heading south toward the other
breaches and head off in pursuit. The find the remains of a dead Kaiju, and
parts of destroyed Jaegers, among them November Ajax from Uprising, Taylor now
has some of Herc Hansen’s memories, feeling as though their his own, another
consequence of ghost-drifting.
They continue on but are halted slightly when Loa accesses
an archived file unintentionally. Loa reboots and says she’ll run a diagnostic
later but has managed to locate boy, standing just in front of an active
breach, as a Kaiju comes out of it. The Kaiju is a mk III, named Acidquill. They
prepare to fight but it’s an unarmed and one-armed Jaeger against that a Kaiju
that could put up a heck of a fight against a regular Jaeger.
They’re saved by the mech-kaiju, the one we last saw in the
fog in Meridian in episode 2. It approaches Boy. The Altas Destroyer tries to
fight but it was able to defeat a Kaiju that was already kicking their asses.
It prepares to land a killer blow but Boy is able to block the punch. The
Kaiju-mech brings Boy in close, then establishes a neural link including the mech
and all 3 of them.
So, the uprising war involved mechs being infected by Kaiju
braincells, basically it’s the fallout from Pacific Rim: Uprising. One of the
mechs survived and evolved into the Kaiju and Jaeger killer it is now. We see
the mech in Meridian after dealing with a Kaiju and several gunships that
clearly don’t have the firepower to take down a mech creates a neural bridge
with Boy. Then it sees in Boy’s memories how Hayley found him after the war. He
scans Hayley’s memories of Boy, then decides to leave, giving the Atlas
Destroyer a new arm, one that is ‘extremely durable.’ And finally provides them
with their first weapon, a sabre chain.
The mystery as to who boy is has largely been drip-fed, but
this gives us a greater insight into that.
Rating 8/10
Showdown
Taylor practices with his sabre chain for a bit, then asks
Loa what the heck went on in the last episode, clearly thinking there’s more
than just the accessing of an archived file. Boy draws himself the size of a
building in blatant foreshadowing.
They’ve received an unknown signal, which Loa eventually
discovers is a distress call from another Jaeger in a place called Clayton
City. They quickly arrive in Clayton city and run into May who shoots at them,
directing them at a message telling them to fuck off. They don’t, she tells
them if they want to search for the other Jaeger, they should do it on foot as
they might attract Kaiju attention, but before they go, she offers them hot
chocolate, the power in this area of the city is still active, somehow
As they drink, Mei flashes back to being with her parents in
a Chinese restaurant and Shane coming in, it’s interrupted as Boy has found a
music player. This leads to dancing and the animation is… it’s not great. The
only weird thing about it is how tonally out of place it feels with the rest of
the show. Looking in a mirror, she gets another flashback which rather puts her
out of her good mood.
They quickly find the Jaeger. The Hunter Vertigo, Ford and
Brina’s Jaeger, we get a flashback to earlier this season. You know, this is already the longest episode of the
show, you don’t have to pad it out if you don’t have the budget, and this show
is on Netflix and it clearly isn’t for young children, you don’t have to remind
us of events earlier in the season.
The hatch is open meaning they likely got out but is as far
as they got with a mech. Mei asks Loa if she can help with her memories but
though she sympathises, there’s nothing she can do. Taylor and Hayley enter the
Hunter Vertigo, finding messages left by their parents. The first is a message
to base command, telling them that the Kaiju are seemingly getting smarter, and
begging the commander to try and evacuate their children.
They’re about to leave but were crushed by debris. Unsure if
they survived but… probably didn’t for long without a Jaeger. Copperhead
returns and knocks down the Atlas Destroyer, Hayley is knocked out, meaning
it’s up to Mei to co-pilot the Atlas with Taylor, Boy is visibly upset and
stands his ground against Copperhead, creating a blue shield before becoming a
Kaiju himself. Still, even in his new form, Copperhead is a lot bigger and
traps Boy in some debris.
Hayley, showing no fear whatsoever manages to calm boy down.
Taylor uses his sabre chain to great effect but Copperhead is pretty durable,
able to stay standing despite its stomach being stabbed. Hayley makes her way
to the nuke in the Hunter Vertigo, it was jammed in the fight and unjams it.
The Atlas leads Copperhead into position for the fatal strike.
The revelation of Boy’s origins strikes 2 different
reactions from the crowd. The first from Callum, worried this means the
Precursors can now make Kaiju that look like humans. The second from up above
from a group of cloaked figures who believe him to be the Kaiju messiah.
OK, we’re at the end, but we need to talk about this show’s
tone. It’s incredibly bleak which from a narrative perspective comes with pros
and cons, there’s a real sense of danger to everything that’s going on, they’re
in a tiny Jaeger with barely up going up against some of the more powerful
Kaiju, it should feel like everything’s a threat.
Still, from an entertainment standpoint this show is not
always easy to watch, I’m glad its only 7 episodes, about the same length as a
movie because it’d be a lot to watch more than that at a time. The dance
sequence stands out all the more as it’s the only optimistic scene in basically
the entire series.
Still, Pacific Rim: The Black is a well-executed and
interesting idea. I’m curious as to where things go with season 2.
Rating 8/10
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