Review: Avengers Assemble "All-Father's Day"

Before you ask, yes. I have been on a Final Fantasy kick lately. I've been slowly reworking my way through the series, starting with 7. I'm on 9. Then I'll do Tactics, then 10 and 10-2, then... oh, yeah. The episode.

Plot
This was Avengers Assemble's take on the whole "the other Gods don't understand why Thor loves Earth" deal. Now, "Planet Doom" already touched on this, but didn't give that part of the episode much in the way of resolution. One could almost call it foreshadowing... if foreshadowing didn't go against one of the basic tenants of the Marvel Animation Universe, which is to have as little in the way of ongoing stories as possible.

The argument basically boils down to whether or not Earth has mighty warriors. Which means that the episode is centered around fighting. See my spiel in the Recap for my thoughts on that.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting a little tired of Asgardians and their relics causing havoc in this show. "Serpent of Doom," "The Doomstroyer," "Planet Doom".... At least Doctor Doom wasn't here again.

Themes
Odin is an old man and a fool.

"Agreed."

He unintentionally created a monster through completely intentional genocide and he revealed his location to it while fighting his son's friends.

(Edit: In the absence of any contradictory evidence, I am assuming that Mangog's origin is the same as his comic counterpart. Even if Odin didn't kill a billion billion Vanir to create Mangog, he forcibly amalgamated them into one being and locked it away. It might not technically be "genocide," but it's as close as you can get without killing anyone.)

I don't know what the intended theme of the episode was. Probably hubris. But all I see are the mistakes of a genocidal tyrant who would rather claim innocent lives than see his son do his own thing.

Characters
Thor
Thor is Thor. He argues for something he knows is right, and what do you know, he wins the argument.

Mangog
A generic demon-of-the-week. And JB Blanc's voice is wasted through all the pitch-shifting it went through.

Odin
Again, old man. Fool.

Odin is a tyrant who escapes any and all karma. I mean, the man defeated a demon that only exists because he killed more people than Hitler and he gets rewarded with a trip to Coney Island.

That is, without exaggeration, literally what happens.

"It's the women and children who make the most enjoyable death rattles, you know."

I'm not too big on the voice acting, either.

And yes, I am aware I'm saying this about Frank "Fred Jones/Abu/Oswald the Lucky Rabbit/Everything Else" Welker. Mel Blanc may be the Man of 1000 Voices, but Frank Welker does the rest of them.

Hear me out.

Frank Welker is an icon of voice acting. He's amazingly talented and I will fight tooth and nail at anyone who says otherwise. Unfortunately, that means that when you hear one of his many voices, you might already associate it with another role.

Frank Welker's Odin voice isn't really one of his more unique voices, and when you couple that with all his talk about going to eat... well, all I hear is this.

"Let the Feast of a Thousand Hams begin!"

Like I said, the man's a living legend. But I think a less-distinctive voice would have improved things a bit.

Animation
Mangog's design is terrible. Just in general.

Let's face it, Jack Kirby drew tons of monsters that look like Mangog.

Derpy face, three fingers. Standard Jack Kirby monster design.

And this episode translated his look accurately, but didn't really try too hard to make him look visually interesting. He looks like a less-interesting version of Final Fantasy 7's Ifrit.

Seriously, guys. Step up your game.

And Odin's design was just lifted from the films. Like every design but Falcon's. Nothing new here.

Final Thoughts
When you take away Odin's war crimes, Odin's voice, and Mangog's design, this episode's average. And I mean that. Perfectly average. Minimal Black Widow, a plot involving Asgard, lots of fighting. This is what you get when you boil the episodes so far down into their essence.

Not great, not terrible. Just average.

Next time... well, there might not be a next time. I just criticized both Frank Welker and Jack Kirby in the same post. I'm pretty much a dead man.

But if there is a next time, I'll see you then.