4/29 c31 4decode9
Well there's the princess. So far she's interesting, but at least she isn't causing any trouble.

3/29 c30 4decode9
Okay. I love the focus on Tina and her supporting the group. She's someone they need and is a grounding force for the group that is very much needed.

3/29 c28 decode9
Okay. That was a cute chapter, and I liked the focus on learning on my girl and her past. Girl needs hugs and support badly.

3/29 c26 decode9
And there's a nicelittle closer to this all. And the full team finally meets at last.

3/29 c24 decode9
Well...batty is really that focused on Selena-Ja and Blair which is unsettling, and speaking of Selena-Ja she sure kicked some butt this chapter. Hmm...still with how Blair is makes me wonder why she accepted in the first place in this version.

2/28 c14 6Viewer27Man
Our heroes are given training discomfort weapons as they farm for exp. Later our lightning is curious about a locked door and our water heroine, and a bird dimensional alien say no. The bird alien provides an alternative activity for them to look up the others that they take her up on. Later our lightning hero's brother talks the sister into a LARP. Meanwhile our lightning hero introduces 3 of his friends to the guys of the team and discuss a cult, avoiding women, revenge, an emailed virus, a podcast about the supernatural, and a death melody. Meanwhile the girls of the team are chatting elsewhere with 2 of their friends and discuss how one is dating one of the lightning guy's friends, his alien theories, a death melody, getting positions filled for a band, and a friend who isn't there. Later our fire hero reports the death melody to the trainer alien, an advocate of education. They then discuss the idea of our heroes being friends because of the powers and dangers they faced and that they are friends regardless. The trainer alien reveals that his alien allies are friends and that he reads, surprising our fire hero. The trainer introduces the names of 3 other radiant people and then the two have a teacher-student bonding moment. Later the wind guy and ice girl get smoothies and refuse to leave on the mean girl's demand. Later our fire hero goes to a park with his family enjoying the time with his grandfather. As his sister goes to follow through on the LARP our fire hero listens to the podcast on the death melody on his phone. Then the jerk from chapter 1 comes over, less angry than usual, and shows a break up video between him and the light heroine. The jerk leaves and our fire hero meets our light heroine and after a bit of reassurance and banter they see fireworks. Almost a week later the trainer alien gets informed about a new mission that won't be short and involves someone that makes him angry who is responsible for breaking up his old band.

We get another relaxation chapter of mostly hanging out scenes. According to the first and last time stamps it seems to span about half a month.

The scenes seem scattered and unconnected to me for the most part. The repeated mentioning of the death melody is an exception and so is a lot of side-characters being less angry, obviously a result of defeating Mistress M.

I had trouble following most of the hanging out scenes. It feels like the characters are using a lot of their own in-jokes in their humor to me and respond quickly understanding the full context, and I lose track of who is saying what in spots. I don't think it helps my understanding when the hanging out scenes don't move the plot along as much as the less-frequent Hub briefing scenes. The lack of an action scene to be the main chapter focus I think makes this stand out more. While I don't get the specifics for the most part of the hanging out scenes, what I get out of these scenes are that they are scenes of being friends, a little drama, and standing up to bullies.

I didn't have trouble following Jake's encounter with Robert. I also could follow Jake's teacher-student moment with Pilot well. I thought these scenes were pretty clear.

I guess I found it a bit weird we only get a described break up video for Jake and Amy breaking up just to be young and have fun happened before I even knew they were declared to be dating, though they have been notably friendly towards each other. This is more consolidated, but I think the scene itself would've caught my attention more.

We also get more hints about the other elemental radiant of the other elements that have been listed. They'll obviously meet our current bunch, but only time will tell if they be more of their own independent team of allies or if they'll officially join the party and even be friends and all that.

Favorite Part: The foreshadowing ending scene with Pilot. I don't think I've read him this mad before. I also liked his teacher-student meeting with Jake. We get to build character for the OP trainer and a villain to be curious about.

12/27/2023 c12 Viewer27Man
Our heroes finally confront the mastermind lady arc boss. She consists of 3 phases and has a gauntlet that has emotion effects on our heroes. In the first phase our heroes try to talk before fully attacking while she demonstrates that red rage spheres are her main attack of choice. In the conversation she reveals she's angry because long ago she had to give a horse away and finding a mysterious stone. The mastermind lady taunts them like the fight too easy but our heroes smack her around in response and becomes much taller with gray skin signaling phase 2. In the second phase the mastermind lady ups the emotional effects and owns our heroes. After owning them she brings up people and things that make them personally mad, from being able to sense that, and offers to give them power to get revenge on these things her way, which also involves a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. They start to fall for it until the control room sister cheers them on. Then our heroes deny her which defeats phase 2. In phase 3 the mastermind lady takes on a demonic appearance (and even more so over time), and angrily spams somewhat troublesome energy ball attacks, but ultimately gets smacked around again by our heroes' super moves. They grab her gauntlet and by their powers combined they destroy it and defeat the boss. The boss threatens to self-destruct upon defeat, but with the dimensional alien reinforcements now able to show up because she's defeated they teleport the big aura she's got going and her exploding body into deep space. Our heroes cheer in victory before normal life goes on as usual with our hero's mom acknowledging a 'realistic' excuse for what happened during the memory lapse. Meanwhile there some dimensional aliens speculate on the statue that the mastermind lady found to foreshadow things to come.

Looks like arc 1 is complete. It's over the top and cheesy, as expected. We got most of the revelations that seem relevant to the plot in this chapter. The fact she went mad over a short story of losing a horse is anti-climactic, but finding the stone aspect that will be relevant later makes it work because the magic item obviously made the anger worse. I also don't remember anything about this gauntlet being so important before this chapter when destroying it defeats Mistress M.

Most of this chapter is the fight with Mistress M. She's different from the previous encounters because we've been building up to this confrontation. She gets mostly smacked around during the first and third phases with some fighting back, I think her counter-offense is more effective in the third than the first. The second phase seems to be the most difficult one as portrayed and the only one where she flat-out overpowers the heroes. Also, aside from rage as her thing, we don't see her using much of the abilities she was known for before the fight for this built-up villain (illusion projections, parasol stuff, or possessing an owl for some effect, or spawning rage monsters out of our heroes or anyone, or even overly evasive tactics to frustrate them). None of our heroes were left out of this fight and got to deal hits, each getting their turn, that felt big to the opponent, which has been consistent for the arc as a whole.

I question the effectiveness of the offerings she made to the heroes as described. Yes she accurately acknowledged things/people that made them mad, but our heroes really haven't wanted more power per say beyond the ability to fight monsters, which seems quite sufficient for them so far, and have zero interest in authority that she also offers. I guess I don't see how her offers would be particularly tempting to our heroes because I feel falling for these demands would be very out of character for them. I could see her compromising their personalities with her emotional effects she's shown to have first making her method effective, but she acknowledges she's trying to maintain their personalities later after the part that works until they get cheered on. She doesn't even try to convince them she's doing the right thing in a twisted way out of this, instead she doubles down on how overly aggressive her plans for her reign will be. Though, I can very much see Margaret trying these temptations the way she does because I doubt she understands people and rather forces out what she wants.

Side note: I finally realized why secret hero worlds in stories like this can't be suddenly revealed to the public from this chapter: it would be too much work to describe the impact that would have and also enables the secret world to have a reasonably huge edge over the normal one.

On the arc as a whole, the main point of this arc seems to be establishing our main characters and what we can expect them to do, starting out, in this story. They deal with a threat that looks like it will be isolated from the next threat, while also leading into likely a future threat.

Favorite Part: Using the elements (most notably the stone that Mistress M found) to foreshadow things to come.

11/22/2023 c10 Viewer27Man
Our heroes split up gang. One group visits a college under the questionable guise of history buffs to investigate an urn while the other group checks out an abandoned warehouse and some musician involved in some drama with the light girl before. The urn eventually leads them to investigate a cabin in the woods in relation to the mastermind lady. They find a decayed corpse and another taunting hologram of her and her name. Meanwhile the group investigating the band fights a monster by throwing a porta potty and a car at it. The whole team then joins them to trap the monster with goo for examination. Evil plans are afoot.

The slice of life bits I feel work particularly well in this chapter. Notably the brief skating rink feels like a normal place to discuss plans like this.

I will note that I am having trouble following Amy's subplot of past drama situations through the chapters, though I don't know how important that is right now. Without looking back I don't remember if the one here was hinted at or if this is a new one. The main thing I get is that Amy's had a lot of drama situations in her past that haven't gone well.

Favorite Part: Throwing the porta potty. It's not shy about being gross while not going overboard and the act is in-character with her earlier disgust.