Boy, it sure feels great to see the biggest douchebag gets punched repeatedly to the face by his own dirty tricks. It also feels good when the femme fatale Seven Blashphemous Deaths Sword feels threatened towards Monk’s declaration of love. If there’s one thing that I still enjoy in Thunderbolt, it’s that the cast keeps redefining their roles. Who would’ve imagined that collected Monk can be this love obsessive and embrace the “Till death do us part” vow to heart? In term of general plot, I feel that this season is weaker than the first. While in the first season we have a band of misfits with a shared immediate goal, here we have many branches of characters who have different goals that don’t join together towards the climax. Dirty Cop basically just wants to screw around and gets his hands on more swords now. Our team wants to retrieve the Evil Swords, and the Fallen Monk just wants to dedicate his life to his wife Sword. The issue remains that the cast doesn’t really connect to each other in a big narrative sense. It’s until this late in the game that the Monk has some reason to fight against Shang Bu Huan, just because Femme Fatale Sword wants to buy some more time.
Moreover, while it’s still a joy to watch these larger than life characters behave on screen. This is the first time where I see the implausible characters behavior in Thunderbolt. So Dirty Cop fights our Ginger Singer and decides to turn the table by handing his evil sword to him, thus force him to take care of these manipulated soldiers. I could totally understand if Shang Bu Huan hesitates to harm these guys but with Lang Wu Yao? He’s the kind who will save his ass first rather than saving innocent people who get into his way. I still remember him warning Shang Bu Huan for not killing those puppets in early episodes so I just don’t get the change of heart here. Whichever the case, Shang Bu Huan appears right on time (almost too perfect timing if you ask me), and shoe Dirty Cop how he can handle orchestrating the whole puppet soldiers without any sweat. At the end, Enigmatic Gale Joins the gang on his own amusement. The back-and-forth bouncing off between him, our Hero, and the Singer is still campy and pretty hilarious.
On the other side of the battle, Fallen Monk and his wife find themselves in the Wasteland of Spirits. In another reversion of our expectation, it’s revealed that the Monk has never fallen for the magic charm of the Sword in the first place, but love it in his own will. It could’ve been greater if we witness the moment he met and acquired the Sword though. At the moment we just take it as what he told us. Then my MVP character appears, the indestructible dragon who raises up from the ground and gets killed by the Monk just as quick. Poor little dragon who always picks the wrong fight. Now, with the finale of the final showdown between our hero team and the Monk, with Dirty Cop will somehow chime in as well, I just hope for a bombastic and explosive climax.
I’d say it’s not out of character for Lang at all. He has always been a very righteous kind, which makes perfect sense why he is hanging out with Shang and even followed him across the Wasteland. He’s also very protective of Shang and went out of his way to handle things by himself. Generally he cares a lot for our protagonist, and even in the first encounter with Night of Mourning there wasn’t a need to communicate the understanding no civilian should be harmed.
Unlike Shang who is more lax about it, this guy has been a lot more open and strict with categorising what are righteous and what are evil. Since he appeared, there are multiple times where this guy, who barely speaks, calls out the other characters for being evil, including those that everyone involved are already aware of.
When he criticised Shang for being soft, it is about his attitude towards villains and has nothing to do with saving innocents. It’d be more out of character for him to let those mind controlled soldiers get harmed. Don’t forget that it’s his instrument who does most of the (trash) talking.
You convinced me, Niello, especially on how he criticizes Shang for being soft towards villians and ot about saving innocents. It makes much more sense when you put it that way