A hawk circles the snowy summit looming overhead as Junior, Ping, and the Pips walk through a rocky canyon. This suggests their mission is immediately doomed, as that hawk is going to tattle to his daddy that they’re coming, but let’s watch these four flail in the attempt anyway, shall we? The Mouseketeers have to fight through waves of Heartless to reach the summit, and additionally break through several walls of boulders from rock slides that block the path. So, not only is this a critical mission that Shang entrusted explicitly to someone he does not trust, but this is a mission that would normally take the labor of dozens of people not in possession of a magic combo-spitting Keyblade Shang surely does not know exists. Is the constantly draining morale meter supposed to be so our heroes can keep their spirits up after being so obviously set up to fail? Or at least for the three of them who would notice that failure is even possible?

I didn’t know there were corsets with peekaboo ab windows.

The pass is, thus, not in any way clear for travelers, but it does have a number of treasure chests. I know you were all wondering!

Short Stack, Beanpole, and the Fridge follow in the wake of the scout team through the pass. “Hey, you ain’t half bad,” says Yao, né Short Stack, aka the guy whose has only seen combat in the chow line up to this point. Beanpole, named Ling, adds, “A man among men!” The game isn’t so much laying it on thick with lines like this as it is smothering us with them, like a cake drenched in mirror glaze in a viral video. Chien-Po, or Fridge, says nothing, but I’m sure he was thinking, “Wow, this Ping guy’s penis, which for a certainty exists, must be huge and impressive.” Sweet Ping thanks Ling for this, uh, “compliment,” but after the redshirts have wandered away, she looks downcast and mutters, “But the Captain…” I am trying to figure out the exact moment this became about impressing a bunch of dudes, hot or otherwise, and not about saving her father from a gruesome death on a muddy battlefield, and hell if I can pinpoint it, but it was definitely Mushu’s doing.

But speaking of the hot captain and his hot low opinion of Ping, here he comes. Goofy and @%$#!!! make sure to greet him with news of how great Ping did. I guess they don’t care about impressing Shang and, consequently, marrying him at the end of this. Where are their fucking priorities? I swear. Shang says, “Hmm… Fine. I’ll let you join my troops… But I’m still not convinced you have what it takes to be a worthy soldier.” All these guys he has apparently allowed to join the Big Military Dick Brigade have literally done nothing but wrestle for the honor of the omelet bar. This is negging bullshit and I’m glad I won’t be invited to their wedding because I’d get drunk and say some shit. Even fucking Junior is mad at this, but Ping insists it’s fine: “I’ll find a way to show him what I’m made of. Just give me a chance.” Shang actually fucking replies, “That’s the spirit, Ping,” and walks off. This guy! EVERYONE STOP MARRYING GUYS LIKE THIS!

After a brief scene I’m just gonna scoot on past in which Ling again congratulates Ping on having an incredible and large real penis, the camera pans up the looming mountain so I understand the metaphor, and the army finds itself in a small, snowy village. I wonder if the people living here are happy or sad about Junior clearing the path back down the mountain. Yeah, it’s their only road back to civilization, but now it’s filled with these assholes. Speaking of assholes, Mushu is in the middle of telling Mulan (while calling her “girl” in a voice that can probably be heard five provinces over) that she has another chance to prove herself, by going after a “shady guy” he is sure is Shan-Yu. I don’t know why he doesn’t expect a hall monitor like Junior to immediately go “We’ve got to tell the Captain!” and even better, “That’s the Hun leader!” Honestly impressed he paid enough attention to pull that detail. “Waaait wait–wait–wait WAIT! Everybody use their heads a sec,” Mushu says. Good fucking luck. Junior, @%$#!!!, and Goofy take a full beat after Mushu says this and then–only after they’ve processed the concept of thinking–cradle their chins in their hands and tap their feet contemplatively. Don’t worry, this is not about to lead to any of them having an independent thought. That would be character assassination. Instead, Mushu walks them through his intricate and nuanced thought process. Ready for this? Okay: Mulan wants to bring honor to her family. Shan-Yu is bad. Therefore, Mulan must capture Shan-Yu with no help. Other than the other four people here, helping her. This will make Shang take her seriously, just in time for the war to be over, with the enemy leader captured. A perfect plan! I don’t expect pushback from the Mouseketeers, because they’re terminally stupid and this is also exactly the sort of dumb, poisonously male idea Junior normally loves, but after a moment, Mulan steels herself and says, “Okay. Let’s go.” Okay, maybe she deserves a miserable marriage with Captain Tightass if she’s going to be like this.

Imagine writing this out and still thinking it makes sense!

Mushu says Shan-Yu is “in a cave outside the village.” Seems legit! What swaggering military leader wouldn’t want to hide in a ca–oof, gonna pull the ripcord on this sentence. The camera pans over to the cave Mushu is talking about, which is in eyeshot of Shang and his lieutenants. So this should be easy in addition to being smart and well thought out. Good to know!

As it happens, nobody bothers stopping the party as they head for the cave, probably because they’re all hoping Ping, and to a lesser extent @%$#!!!, will be eaten by a bear. Inside, in addition to the treasure chests that we all knew would be here, are the same cartfuls of rocks and fireworks that have been strewn about this entire planet. It seems I can use these to damage nearby enemies (of which there are currently, ominously, none), but I cannot picture Junior doing anything but blowing his own stupid face off in the attempt. This is a tempting reason to try, obviously. In the back of the cave, the gang looks around what appears to be a ancestral shrine for a grand total of two seconds before declaring it a dead end, @%$#!!! and Goofy heading out the way they came while Mushu sputters that they have to look harder. There’s not even any corners in here, dude. Junior yells at his friends to wait for him, but before he can lope after them, the cave rumbles and a magical forcefield cuts off @%$#!!! and Goofy from Junior and Mulan. Behind @%$#!!! and Goofy, near the cave entrance, Shan-Yu makes a face like he’s laughing, but in complete silence, then turns around and walks away, not even bothering to gut either of the fools he can reach with the kris in his hand. Given their track record, I’m amazed @%$#!!! and Goofy don’t just follow him out, as he is, by right of conquest, their new leader and best friend. Instead, they watch helplessly as Junior and Mulan (and Mushu! I guess!) are ambushed by some Heartless. Junior, admittedly, does about 90 percent of the work in getting them out of this jam, but it’s not like Ping stands in the corner and cries or anything. She even heals him when he won’t stop being a moron and running into the Heartless centaurs’ long hard spears! What do I even need @%$#!!! for? But in a frankly unprecedented gracious moment, Junior gives ol’ Ping all the credit for their triumph, calling her “amazing.” Mushu says they need to go to the captain right away, to which Mulan says, “But Shan-Yu wasn’t here.” True, says Mushu, while I tear at my hair and curse @%$#!!! and Goofy for not examining their fucking surroundings for even one second, but instead, “We’re gonna tell the Captain how thousands of Heartless stormed the cave, and Ping took out almost every one of ’em!” I’m sure an uncorroborated, fantastical story of heroism from her biased friends will surely get the captain to see Ping as a true warrior! They’d better be sure to include how all the Heartless burst into applause as Ping murdered them, and then the lead Heartless gave Ping a 1000 yuan note.

But whatever Mushu’s grand plans were for announcing that Ping is the greatest, just tremendous, and dealt with those Heartless very, very strongly, they’re moot the second the party exits the cave and finds the village torched. But who could have done this?! Was it one of the hundreds of thousands of Heartless Ping single-handedly slaughtered?

Junior looks real sad about this village, though I cannot imagine that sadness is forming any kind of “I could have prevented this if we weren’t fucking around in a cave” thoughts in his cavernous skull. Ping comes across Shang, who is clutching his bloodless stomach and struggling to his feet. “It’s just a scratch,” he insists to Junior regarding his invisible wound. Yeah, seems that way! Ping gets out of Shang that “the enemy” went toward the mountain’s summit, and vows that they will stop them. “It kinda is our fault,” Goofy says from the back, and all of them look very non-judgmentally at Mushu, who nonetheless hangs his head and says, “You mean MY fault.” Well, the rest of them went along with this foolishness, but: yes! Very much so! But of course, we just can’t have anybody regretting their choices for even one moment, because a heart simply cannot believe that way, so @%$#!!! and Junior shut this line of thinking down. “Shan-Yu and the Heartless did this, not us!” Junior says. Oh, how tired I am, friends. How very tired.

Junior assures the captain they will “handle this” if he takes care of the villagers, and it’s very cute that Junior assumes there are any villagers remaining, and cuter still that there probably are, because Disney only kills off main characters’ parents. The captain is focused enough on his injuries and the immediate tragedy that he doesn’t think to ask, “So where the fuck were you that you think this was your fault?” and without a word of protest from him, the foursome sets off for the summit, to presumably face Shan-Yu, an army of Huns, and a bunch of Heartless. “Be careful–they’re strong!” Shang says. Helpful to the end, this guy!

Hee hee hee

An entire screen of walking up a medium incline later, Junior and Pals stand on a snowy bank we’re choosing to call the summit. A hawk flies over their heads toward Shan-Yu, above them in the distance. Ranks of Heartless appear at his sides, and only then does Junior grunt in dismay, even though he actually put together on his own that Shan-Yu and the Heartless were working together. I just don’t know anymore. “Attack!” Shan-Yu yells half-assedly, pointing his sword, and the Rapid Thruster Heartless buzz down the hill, looking not threatening at all. Until!

Suddenly I’m in the party menu, where Junior is now alone and I am informed @%$#!!!, Goofy, and Ping have been sidelined. I guess because this is some silly minigame, in which Junior is given 60 seconds to defeat a big bumblebee swarm of Heartless, a task that shouldn’t trouble him at all, but one I still oppose on principle. The Rapid Thruster Bees are accompanied by big monolithic Heartless that I guess are supposed to represent their hives or Queen Thrusters or some shit, but as usual look like punishing-yet-cartoonish buttplugs. Look, the brand book on this series is insane, but it is consistent.

Junior manages to take out 37 Heartless in a minute, and I have no idea if that is good or not, and would rather not be informed either way, thanks. Back with his friends, who seem fine and perfectly capable of helping, they all watch as Shan-Yu sends another wave down the mountain. Suddenly, the Three Amigos show up, Yao declaring, “We’ll handle this!” Like they handled the village burning down? Just asking. He goes to point a bottle rocket, shaped like a dragon, straight at Shan-Yu, but Mulan has a better idea: she grabs it from him, points it toward the ice shelf above the swarm, and for some reason straps Mushu to the damn thing instead of just having him light it with his fire breath, safely, from here. Maybe I just don’t understand how dragons work. Mulan is triumphant at the resulting avalanche, but realizes when her fucking beloved Captain Shang is walking up to her that the avalanche is not going to stop at crushing the bad guys, and will actually continue indiscriminately downhill. I know! Physics is bullshit.

The scene is chaotic as snow engulfs basically everyone, from Shan-Yu to Junior to Mulan and Shang, when the former grabs the latter by the hand to get him out of harm’s way. In the movie, Mulan was on a horse for this, which was still insane but at least made sense because the horse stood taller than the snow. I don’t know what the fuck this is. But somehow, they are safe, and Shang declares he should never have doubted honorable warrior Ping. “From now on, you have my trust,” he says. Oh, now that she saved his fucking life. I mean, never mind that this is extremely sad foreshadowing–why did fucking Junior only have to complete one training exercise to win this cop over, but Ping had to drag his ass out of an avalanche that she caused?

At this point–beyond the absence of the horse–some editing needed doing from the theatrical version of the story: obviously in this kid’s game based on a kid’s movie, we can’t have some doctor discovering Mulan’s tits and giving the game away. What would the kids think that the kids didn’t think in 1998?! So instead, in some absolutely primo telling-not-showing, Mushu pulls his tiny self out of the snow and monologues, not noticing Shang at all: “First she uses me as a lighter, then she turns me into a cannon ball. The head ancestor’s gonna hear about this. You know, that’s it! I give up! I can’t take this no more. C’mon, Mulan. Let’s quit this charade and go home, girl.” No amount of shushing Mulan does is going to walk all that back, but I’m disappointed she doesn’t at least try, “He calls everybody girl, it’s gender-neutral.” Further, Shang takes in every syllable Mushu says, and at no point does his brain stall out on “Is that a dragon, and is it talking?” Nope, he fast-forwards straight to “Mulan? A woman? It can’t be!” I mean, at least he’s shocked, and not retconning Mulan sucking ass at all her assigned tasks as making sense because she was a woman the whole time. I’ll take what I can get from this.

When Junior, @%$#!!!, and Goofy roll up, perfectly intact after a fucking avalanche, Shang rounds on them, assuming they knew all along. Hold on, bucko, Junior and @%$#!!! definitely had to be told. They, like you, are stupid. And speaking of stupid, why do they even care if Shang is mad at them? The only thing they should care about is not blowing the prime directive here on the Land of Dragons, and obviously that’s a mission they failed before they began. Anyway, back to Shang yelling at Mulan like a prick: “I can’t believe you lied to me.” He stalks past her before declaring to the empty mountaintop, “The punishment for high treason and dishonoring the Army…is death.” But since he owes Mulan a life debt from five seconds ago, and I hate to repeat myself but DUE TO AN AVALANCHE SHE CAUSED, he instead dismisses the four of them and demands they scram, leading the now even sadder remains of his unit down the mountain to the Forbidden City. Mushu sighs to Mulan that he “blew it”–you know, the extremely unconvincing cover story that was his idea in the first fucking place–as the scene fades.