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Show: Zatch Bell
Episode: 46
Year: 2006
Writer(s): N/A
I just wanna say for the record that Zatch Bell is an exceptionally good anime with a wonderful story and very fluid narrative. Some filler episodes nonwithstanding. This is one of those episodes. I don't really like the Yank the Dog's Chain trope. It's very rare that it is ever used well and it is just mean and manipulative in almost every usage, with Plankton's Regular and Nautical Novice being two of the worst offenders of this trope. But even anime have a bad tendency to use this like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and even Zatch Bell.
To any of us who've watched the anime or read the manga, Ponygon or Schneider, the adorable little horse Mamodo took a very long time to find the owner of his book. The little guy is only 4 years old, even younger than Kolulu, he went all the way from Japan to ENGLAND and back looking for his book owner before bunking with Kiyo and Zatch and he's all but lost hope here that he'll ever find his partner. Without a partner he's pretty much defenseless (unless he gets really pissed off) and he's at constant risk of losing his book or getting it destroyed and being knocked out of the Mamodo battle without even getting the chance to fight. IMO he's best pony ever, I thought this even before I became a Brony. And he's my favorite Mamodo out of all of them. So this episode in particular really pisses me off.
After Zatch and Kiyo lose a Mamodo battle and barely make it out alive, this shocks Ponygon really badly, and when he sees Zatch crying himself in a massive depression in his doghouse (yeah Kiyo built that for the little guy) Ponygon wants to better resolve himself after mostly being lazy and being reduced to a house pet, so he runs off and goes looking for his book owner by himself, and it's not long before Zatch follows in pursuit. After failure after failure, he comes across this horsefaced fucker. And Ponygon taking his mothers advice literally in that his owner will be like someone he knows (a horse Mamodo) he believes this guy is his owner and nice person, joyously tackling him in before we can find out if he can read Ponygon's spell book. Honestly before I figured out who Ponygon's real bookowner would be I was surprised to see this dude as well. Either way it's one of those contrived coincidences, it's pretty obvious that this guy isn't the bookowner, that would be too obvious.
This guy is Kotaro Doronma, and boy is he a manipulative asshole. Zatch finally locates Ponygon and is convinced by Doronma that he's a good guy. He takes these two kids back to his "mansion" which is really a dirty shitty shack filled with obviously stolen priceless artifacts. Yeah, it isn't hard to put two and two together to figure out this guy is a criminal, even before the reveal. He manipulates Zatch and Ponygon into helping him commit robberies for him by claiming he's a modern day Robin Hood and that he's going to give his "presents" to the poor. Zatch should be able to tell this guy's a criminal, he's been caught in a robbery before in "Danny Boy", then again how often do you see a guy with a horseface? Still there's no excuse for this.
Ponygon just keeps being used as the pullhorse for Kotaro's robberies, blind to the truth because he really believes this guy is his partner. And I can't believe they didn't even notice something suspicious when they're basically used to rob a MANSION! There's childish naïveté and being completely clueless. Albeit them messing up various steps in the robbery is pretty funny. Not to mention how Doronma ultimately gets captured is hillarious, so I can let some of the stupidity slide, although Zatch not realizing Doronma isn't a nice guy when he starts throttling Ponygon for screwing up should've tipped him off immediately. It's the ending however that really hurts the episode and really yanks poor Ponygon's chain.
The little horsey breaks down into tears when Doronma is being hauled off to jail and he doesn't know why. Doronma finally admits he really was a thief and that he actually felt bad about using the two. Now this wouldn't be so bad, if him revealing that he couldn't really read the book didn't happen the way it did. Rather than him admitting he thought that it was some foreign language and can't understand it, apologizing for any inconveniences, he revealed he found a FLY squished in the pages! What the fuck!? That's one of the stupidest endings I've ever seen. Ponygon is positively crushed, and they try to play the ending for laughs! That's not as bad as Nautical Novice or Plankton's Regular, but still that's extremely cruel. And no, it doesn't make Dronma save any face, he's still a piece of shit for using the two, though fortunately he never appears again after this. If only they could've gotten rid of Naomi, she's even uglier than this guy.
Cringe-Inducing Audio: 0
Cringe-Inducing Visuals: 2
Lackluster Writing: 4
Annoyance: 5
Disturbing Content: 3
Unnecessary Cruelty: 7
Rancid Morals: 0
Low Production Values: 0
Unfortunate Implications: 1
Character Derailment: 2
Final Score: 24/100
Zatch Bell is owned by ShoPro Entertainment and Toei Animation.
Animated Atrocities is from
Regulas314
Episode: 46
Year: 2006
Writer(s): N/A
I just wanna say for the record that Zatch Bell is an exceptionally good anime with a wonderful story and very fluid narrative. Some filler episodes nonwithstanding. This is one of those episodes. I don't really like the Yank the Dog's Chain trope. It's very rare that it is ever used well and it is just mean and manipulative in almost every usage, with Plankton's Regular and Nautical Novice being two of the worst offenders of this trope. But even anime have a bad tendency to use this like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and even Zatch Bell.
To any of us who've watched the anime or read the manga, Ponygon or Schneider, the adorable little horse Mamodo took a very long time to find the owner of his book. The little guy is only 4 years old, even younger than Kolulu, he went all the way from Japan to ENGLAND and back looking for his book owner before bunking with Kiyo and Zatch and he's all but lost hope here that he'll ever find his partner. Without a partner he's pretty much defenseless (unless he gets really pissed off) and he's at constant risk of losing his book or getting it destroyed and being knocked out of the Mamodo battle without even getting the chance to fight. IMO he's best pony ever, I thought this even before I became a Brony. And he's my favorite Mamodo out of all of them. So this episode in particular really pisses me off.
After Zatch and Kiyo lose a Mamodo battle and barely make it out alive, this shocks Ponygon really badly, and when he sees Zatch crying himself in a massive depression in his doghouse (yeah Kiyo built that for the little guy) Ponygon wants to better resolve himself after mostly being lazy and being reduced to a house pet, so he runs off and goes looking for his book owner by himself, and it's not long before Zatch follows in pursuit. After failure after failure, he comes across this horsefaced fucker. And Ponygon taking his mothers advice literally in that his owner will be like someone he knows (a horse Mamodo) he believes this guy is his owner and nice person, joyously tackling him in before we can find out if he can read Ponygon's spell book. Honestly before I figured out who Ponygon's real bookowner would be I was surprised to see this dude as well. Either way it's one of those contrived coincidences, it's pretty obvious that this guy isn't the bookowner, that would be too obvious.
This guy is Kotaro Doronma, and boy is he a manipulative asshole. Zatch finally locates Ponygon and is convinced by Doronma that he's a good guy. He takes these two kids back to his "mansion" which is really a dirty shitty shack filled with obviously stolen priceless artifacts. Yeah, it isn't hard to put two and two together to figure out this guy is a criminal, even before the reveal. He manipulates Zatch and Ponygon into helping him commit robberies for him by claiming he's a modern day Robin Hood and that he's going to give his "presents" to the poor. Zatch should be able to tell this guy's a criminal, he's been caught in a robbery before in "Danny Boy", then again how often do you see a guy with a horseface? Still there's no excuse for this.
Ponygon just keeps being used as the pullhorse for Kotaro's robberies, blind to the truth because he really believes this guy is his partner. And I can't believe they didn't even notice something suspicious when they're basically used to rob a MANSION! There's childish naïveté and being completely clueless. Albeit them messing up various steps in the robbery is pretty funny. Not to mention how Doronma ultimately gets captured is hillarious, so I can let some of the stupidity slide, although Zatch not realizing Doronma isn't a nice guy when he starts throttling Ponygon for screwing up should've tipped him off immediately. It's the ending however that really hurts the episode and really yanks poor Ponygon's chain.
The little horsey breaks down into tears when Doronma is being hauled off to jail and he doesn't know why. Doronma finally admits he really was a thief and that he actually felt bad about using the two. Now this wouldn't be so bad, if him revealing that he couldn't really read the book didn't happen the way it did. Rather than him admitting he thought that it was some foreign language and can't understand it, apologizing for any inconveniences, he revealed he found a FLY squished in the pages! What the fuck!? That's one of the stupidest endings I've ever seen. Ponygon is positively crushed, and they try to play the ending for laughs! That's not as bad as Nautical Novice or Plankton's Regular, but still that's extremely cruel. And no, it doesn't make Dronma save any face, he's still a piece of shit for using the two, though fortunately he never appears again after this. If only they could've gotten rid of Naomi, she's even uglier than this guy.
Cringe-Inducing Audio: 0
Cringe-Inducing Visuals: 2
Lackluster Writing: 4
Annoyance: 5
Disturbing Content: 3
Unnecessary Cruelty: 7
Rancid Morals: 0
Low Production Values: 0
Unfortunate Implications: 1
Character Derailment: 2
Final Score: 24/100
Zatch Bell is owned by ShoPro Entertainment and Toei Animation.
Animated Atrocities is from
Regulas314
Image size
2592x1936px 736.31 KB
© 2015 - 2024 Regulas314
Comments6
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I always found Ponygon so lackluster UNTIL he found Sunbeam!!! After that happened, he became a serious powerhouse with just only 3 spells!!!