The Review Show

Episode 114. This week we read the first four volumes of Hiro Mashima's shonen manga Fairy Tail. Lucy is a young woman with a talent for working with spirits contained in magical artifacts, and she wants to join one of the hottest wizarding guilds, Fairy Tail. She takes up with another fledgling guild member, the fire-breathing Natsu, and the two form a team to take on whatever odd jobs come their...

Episode 113. This week we watched season one of the supernatural crime procedural Lucifer, based on a character from the Sandman comics. You know the devil, right? This is him. He got bored of ruling hell and left to run a nightclub in Los Angeles, where he loudly tells everyone that he is the devil. When there's a murder outside his club, Lucifer gets wrapped up in the investigation, and particul...

Episode 112. Friend of the show Jacq joins us for a discussion on Mr. Robot, season three! Elliot has realized that deleting all of E-Corp’s financial records has worse consequences than he intended, and now he’s working at the company trying to restore that data. He’s lost connection with Mr. Robot, blacking out entirely when his other persona takes control and struggling to puzzle together what...

Episode 111. This week we listened to the Marvels audio drama, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross. The story features some favorite Marvel characters and is produced by audio drama all-stars like Paul Bae, Lauren Shippen, and Misha Stanton! It's 1967 and New York City is already dealing with protests about the war, civil rights, and the rising presence of muta...

Episode 110. We went back to the origin story of the Marvel comics universe and read The Fantastic Four: Masterworks Volume 1, a collection of the first ten issues from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1961. When scientist Reed Richards, pilot Ben Grimm, Reed's girlfriend Sue Storm and her brother Johnny take an experimental flight to space, they return changed. They're developed superpowers! Some...

Episode 109. We're continuing our monthly series on Mr. Robot and talking about season two! Since their hack to delete E-Corp's financial records, Elliot has decided to lay low and get his head on straight, still trying to find out what happened to Tyrell. Darlene is struggling to lead F Society to further action while avoiding the attention of the FBI. Angela is attempting to play the big busines...

Episode 108. We watched the 2008 film Speed Racer, the Wachowskis' visually dazzling adaptation of the classic anime. Speed comes from a family of mechanics and wants nothing more than to be a racecar driver, even though a dangerous race killed his older brother when he was a kid. He's rising up the ranks of the sport and attracting big corporate sponsors, but the tempting deals are ruined when he...

Episode 107. We watched Satoshi Kon's 2006 mindbending anime film Paprika. A group of scientists have invented a device that allows them to travel inside of dreams and affect how they play out. They intend to use this for therapy but a former colleague is using the device as a weapon, bombarding people with intense fantastical imagery that overloads the dreamer and drives them out of their mind. D...

Episode 106. We read the first two volumes of Black Hammer, a comic by writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dean Ormston. Ten years ago, Spiral City's greatest superheroes faced off against the Anti-God in a battle to save the world, but they paid a terrible and mysterious cost to defeat their enemy. The heroes were somehow cast away to a farm in a small rural town, trapped by an energy field running alo...

Episode 105. This week we watched the whimsical family adventures Paddington and Paddington 2 from director Paul King, to learn for ourselves why they're some of the most critically acclaimed films of the 2010s. Paddington is an innocent talking bear who travels from his sheltered jungle home to London, a city he only knows through idealized family stories. The city isn't as immediately welcoming...

Episode 104. We're discussing season one of the USA drama Mr. Robot, and join us for another episode next month as we keep watching the show through to its conclusion! Elliot works for a cybersecurity company and deals with his social anxiety by hacking into the private lives of the people around him to get to know their true selves. He earns the attention of a mysterious anarchist called Mr. Robo...

Episode 103. This week we read the first three volumes of the manga The Heroic Legend of Arslan, from the creator of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa. Arslan is the young prince of a country at war, trying to learn battle tactics and how to impress his aloof parents while he's beginning to question his country's harsh practices. When he's separated from the rest of the army during a devastating...

Episode 102. This week Melissa's friend Jacq serves as co-captain for a discussion on Parasite, a thriller from South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho that swept the Oscars this year. The Kim family is struggling to find steady work when the opportunity arises for their son to tutor the daughter of the rich Park family. The rest of the Kims lie their way into positions in the household staff, fabricat...

Episode 101. We conclude our monthly series on The Venture Bros by discussing seasons 5, 6, and 7, which catches us up with the show! Both generations of the Ventures are dealing with the secrets of their fathers as the family lineage becomes more complicated. The Monarchs and Henchman 21 explore paths outside of their typical villainous roles. Billy and White experience firsthand what it's like t...

It's episode 100! We tried a new and special format for this episode. We challenged ourselves to a debate about one of our favorite story genres and asked, what is the best superhero movie? Kyle's champion: The Russo Brothers' Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Melissa's champion: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. Two humble New York boys face off! We discuss the strengths and flaws of both movies, how...

Episode 99. This week we watched the true sports story Remember the Titans. Melissa had never seen it before, and Kyle had seen it dozens of times, since he's from the location of this story and it mentions his own high school! The year is 1970 and two segregated schools are integrating and forming a new football team. The coach is determined to make this the best season possible, no matter how to...

Episode 98. We're taking our first good look at X-Men this week and reading the 2012 graphic novel X-Men: Season One, from writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Jamie McKelvie. In this contemporary re-telling of the original comics, teenage telekinetic Jean Gray is upset about leaving her normal home and school behind to live at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She doesn't want to be tra...

Episode 97. We both watched season one of the Amazon Prime comic book comedy The Tick, and Kyle got confused and also watched season two! As a kid, Arthur witnessed a terrible superhero fight that not only claimed the lives of the heroes and villain involved, but also killed his innocent bystander father. As an adult, he's haunted by that trauma and convinced that villain The Terror faked his deat...

Episode 96. We're back with another episode of our ongoing monthly series covering The Venture Bros, now discussing seasons 3 and 4. Newlyweds The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch are learning to be a successful criminal couple as she encourages him to pick a different arch nemesis. The Venture family find themselves under attack from new villains rising to fill the gap The Monarch has left in the...

Episode 95. This week, Ignacio from Crossplay joins Kyle and Melissa to discuss the 2016 anime film Your Name. Taki and Mitsuha are a teenage boy and girl leading different lives in different parts of Japan, with no idea that the other person exists. They find themselves experiencing vivid dreams of living another life and discover that these dreams are real -- they've been switching bodies at ran...

Episode 94. This week we watched Wes Anderson's 2012 feature Moonrise Kingdom. It's 1965 in a small island town off the eastern US coast. Sam and Suzy are two troubled youths who fall in love through pen pal letters and decide to run away together, prepared with little more than Sam's scouting knowledge of the island. But they're being pursued by every adult they know, plus Sam's entire scout troo...

Episode 93. This week we read the first two volumes of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez's comic Locke & Key, soon to be a Netflix series! After their father is brutally murdered in a home invasion, the Locke kids move across the country back to his childhood home, a sprawling New England mansion known as Keyhouse. They're dealing with loss, fear, reinventing themselves for a new life, and now, m...

Episode 92. We're starting something new on The Review Show! We're going to watch a longer series through to completion, covering part of it one episode a month. This month, it's seasons one and two of the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros. Dr. Rusty Venture, former boy adventurer, hasn't grown up into the same dazzling super-scientist that his father was. Struggling with upholding the legacy, h...

Episode 91. This week we watched the 2019 horror-comedy Ready or Not. Grace is marrying into a board game dynasty, and her new in-laws have a tradition when someone joins the family: on the wedding night, the whole family gathers at the mansion to play a game together. Grace picks the wrong game. She's going to hide, they're going to seek, but she discovers that they plan to kill her once they fin...

Episode 90. We read the first two volumes of The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage from Valiant Comics. Shan Fong-Mirage can speak to the dead, but she can't speak to her late husband Hwen. She's desolate and going through the motions of her life as a paranormal investigator, taking whatever jobs will give her the money to keep her and Hwen's home just as it was when he was alive. Her latest gig seems s...