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watch-dog-with-a-blog · 1 year

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ah sorry for neglecting the blog!!! the holidays kept me a lot busier than i thought they would. i’m back now though, and i’m three episodes behind in reviewing jupiter-men! so i’m going to put all of my thoughts on this one. think of it as a trilogy i guess? buckle up, because this will be a long one!

episode 24

so in this episode, we learn that “jessie” (who arrio referred to in a previous episode) is his little sister. and she’s adorable! arrio always felt like a “big brother” character to the twins so him having a little sibling of his own makes a lot of sense for him.

we also meet arrio’s dad who, in the middle of arrio’s “angsting,” gifts his son a journal from his mom as an early 16th birthday present. it seems like his mom left this for him before her death (or disappearance?), with the stipulation that he waits until 16 before receiving it. this is pretty common in the YA /coming-of-age genre, and it makes me wonder if there was more to arrio’s mom than meets the eye…

but we don’t get the answer to that yet, as arrio throws the gift under his bed before opening it.

arrio is understandably getting increasingly frustrated by the avalon twins flaking on him and not-so-subtly hiding something from him. of course we as an audience understand why jackie and quintin are doing so, but since arrio is in the dark, their sudden behavior changes are hurtful and worrying to him. arrio’s interaction with mr. khan (the school counselor) highlights his worry, as well as giving more insight into arrio’s past.

mr. khan is downright fearful of arrio, and there’s even mention of a past restraining order. it’s clear that arrio was (and i’m sure still is, in shades) a deeply troubled kid. seeing the reactions the adults at school have to him now, two years later, makes me wonder how supportive they were of him during the roughest part of his life. at least it seems like his dad had his back the whole time, though we still don’t have many concrete details of the things that happened back then.

checking on the twins, we see they are exhausted and their bodies are in pain after two weeks straight of training, without breaks. geez! these are two 14 year old kids. watch-dog’s training is intense.

nathan seems like a taskmaster when it comes to training the twins, and while i’m sure part of it is him wanting to rush the process to get his dad back, it also makes me wonder what kind of training jupiter-man may have put nathan through. is this kind of tireless training…NORMAL for nathan? is he putting them through grueling training because he’s single-minded in his goal and doesn’t care if it’s extremely difficult for them, or does he really not see anything wrong with pushing them so hard because he may have gone through the same? i wonder if when we eventually meet jupiter-man, the story will take a “never meet your heroes” direction and we learn he may have had some serious flaws behind the scenes.

it seems inevitable that the twins will experience serious burnout at some point. at the end of the day they are still kids, and they’re now neglecting their friends and family for their duty as superheroes. this is an enormous burden for them to carry, and i really hope they will be able to find a better balance and support than they have right now!

in the end, we see the mysterious glitches we saw in a previous episode expand into a portal, from which a mysterious new character emerges. they have fire powers and seem to be looking for something. this is so exciting! i’ve been looking forward to seeing beings from the other dimensions and getting more lore on these other worlds.

i really enjoy this kind of worldbuilding and crafting of different systems. i like that they never really feel repetitive as long as the author puts a distinct spin on them. for instance, in the separate webtoons “four leaf” and “lone,” witches play large roles. but their magic systems are totally different! the witches in four leaf gain magical strength based on the number of bells they collect with the type of abilities being determined by their exact number of bells, while the witches in lone use wands to channel different innate magics with specialties in different forms depending on the individual.

it’s that kind of variety i love about exploring different worlds and the people / creatures that inhabit them, which is why i can’t wait to see the various worlds and dimensions of jupiter-men!

episode 25

it’s arrio’s birthday! and he opens his mom’s gift!

it’s a blank journal with a mysterious cover. arrio reads the inscription, which refers to enchantment and speaking from your soul. this seems to clearly indicate that arrio’s mom was from another of these dimensions (of magic?! awesome), and probably the exact one that the mysterious character from the previous episode came from.

a ring falls out of the book, and when arrio puts it on (and subsequently can’t take it off), his eyes fill with fire for a moment. so arrio will gain access to powers at some point! i would love for him to join gusher, powerhouse, and watch-dog on their team, but i’m wondering if the mysterious person will manipulate arrio and turn him against the twins…i don’t want arrio to become a villain, but with all of this tension and misunderstandings, i think it’d be easy for him to become a pawn in a villain’s game.

(also, arrio’s snappy orange socks he always wears are presents he gets from his baby sister; such a cute detail!)

however, at school, arrio’s small friend group gives him a cupcake in celebration while the twins are nowhere to be seen. when they finally approach him late in the day, they blow off his request to hang out (again) and ask that he cover for them (so they can train without their mom asking questions). they completely forgot his birthday (they think it’s the next day because they’ve been so preoccupied with everything else).

arrio confronts them on their lies and demands to know what they’re busy with, as he’s afraid it could be a gang. things get heated between quin and arrio while jackie tries to mediate. arrio tells quin that he’s concerned because he’s like a brother to him, and quin snaps that they *aren’t*so he can stop worrying.

this was a really sad and well-written argument. arrio definitely has reasons to be upset and worried. quintin snapping was a bit shocking to see, because while he can be somewhat intense when expressing his emotions, we’ve never truly seen him this angry. and i think a lot of that is because of the stress of constantly training and lying. it’s taking a toll on him even if he doesn’t really want to admit it.

after the argument, watch-dog calls. jackie (rightfully) goes off on him, but he interrupts to say that this isn’t a drill, it’s a real attack.

i think this episode did a good job showing the conflict between the twins and arrio come to a head. they can’t just pretend everything is okay while leaving him in the dark, and i hope they’re all able to talk openly about what’s going on. before it may be too late…

episode 26

arrio is still hurt by quintin’s comment, then he’s confronted by rick chang (the bully we met wayyy back in eps. 1 and 2). rick is pushy with trying to get information to go after jackie while arrio asserts her autonomy (w friend arrio), so rick picks a fight, arrio fights back, bada-bing-bada-boom, arrio gets detention on his birthday. plus we get more clues to his backstory, like the fact that he was in a gang. now we know why he was so concerned about jackie and quintin getting pulled into a gang; he knows what it’s like and feared they’d go down the same path he did.

sidenote, we also learn that rick has some sway in the school due to who his mom is. the principal says that while isn’t innocent, he’ll “call it even” and let him go without punishment so long as he doesn’t get his mom involved. which, scummy as heck. maybe we will meet his mom someday and get some proper rick lore, but for now i’m perfectly content hating him haha.

the heroes meanwhile sense an anomaly, and it’s coming from…the school?!

the mysterious person enters the detention room arrio is in. while there, they mention that “the star guardian is losing his touch if we are both here,” which makes me wonder a bit about the purpose of the star guardian. this character doesn’t appear to be a starstruck monster, but a person from another dimension. are star guardians meant to keep ANY interdimensional beings from crossing over into other ones? even non-harmful ones? do they enforce this dimensional segregation at any costs?

because if that’s the case, that DOES NOT bode well for what could have happened to arrio’s mom. did she flee here from her dimension for some reason, and once she was discovered by the previous star guardian, jupiter-man, nathan’s dad, daejung mun, did he banish her back to her home dimension (or KILL her)? separating her from her HUSBAND AND CHILDREN? this is realllly making my theory of jupiter-man hiding some skeletons in his cape look a lot more likely if that’s the case!

the episode ends with the mysterious person chasing arrio down the halls in an attempt to get the spellbook. we know the heroes will show up to save him, but their appearances will be cloaked due to their costume technology. will the twins choose to share their identities and truth with arrio before their relationship spirals further out of control? i hope so.

these chapters were really enjoyable, and i liked learning more about arrio’s backstory. the clues of it were spread out and we still don’t have the full picture, which is more interesting that just info-dumping all of it at once. this way it’s like putting puzzle pieces together. though i have to admit that i missed jackie, quintin, and nathan these past few episodes, because even though arrio is great and i’ve been itching to know more about him, it left the rest of the cast out-of-focus and i just really missed seeing more of them. that’s not a criticism of the story, though, because i think it was a good choice so we’d feel what arrio was feeling, about them not being there for him and leaving him feeling isolated from them. so bravo, author!

i’ll be getting back in the swing of posting my reviews weekly, so i won’t have to deal with writing three at once again, lol.

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