I kid, mostly, because obviously Gams’s Dark Black Songstress routine is doing real harm. At least, I am to take it that purple waves of evil and deep lady voices do not a pure and true heroine make. Nash is the first of the boys to pass out from the Mary Suebonic Plague, surprising no one, and everyone is suffering quite a bit by the time Ghaleon is done monologuing like he always does, even alone in the bathroom, or at the McDonald’s drive-thru. Kyle helpfully suggests, “Try to close your ears…to…fight it…!” This must be what the Blue Dragon Earflap Hat was made for!
Whoa, stealth white supremacist alert.
Kyle’s genius idea doesn’t work–shocking, but true–and we transition to a boss battle with the Black Dragon, who in profile reminds me of a mop dog with horns. The boys are all paralyzed, illustrated by cartoony zigzag lines around their bodies, and soon they are shoved back against the edge of the screen by BD’s breath attack. Meanwhile, Squeak is hovering around, totally unaffected, doing nothing. Thanks, little dude! This fight is clearly not winnable, and automatically ends after a few turns. And yet, after prolonged exposure to both BD’s wrath and the Mary Suebonic Plague, nobody has died! I think we may be overblowing this a bit.
Regardless of the facts of the situation, Tempest and Kyle are still yelling at Alex to do the right thing and open Gams’s throat with extreme prejudice. I’m not arguing, necessarily. Squeak mopes that Gams just can’t be evil, no matter how Ghaleon has warped her fragile little mind, and Alex goes for his last ditch effort: playing his stupid ocarina. The sad part is, it takes, seriously, two notes for Gams to stop singing and snap the fuck out of it. Maybe you should have gone to the ocarina well sooner, buddy. Alex yells out her name again–even as the ocarina is still playing in the background, and a big ol’ whatever to that–and Gams spits out this fucking garbage: “… … … A……le……x……It’s you, Ale x…” Even Suikoden II would not do that to me. The random spaces! What the fuck is that! Gams is about to tell Alex something else, and starts walking toward him, but then Ghaleon is like, “Haha, NOPE” and drags her bodily backward, complaining about Alex undoing all his hard brainwashing work with a “pathetic little ditty.” The pathetic little ditty, I should note, is still fucking playing as Alex and Gams yell for each other some more, until Ghaleon tells Alex, “Events far beyond your understanding have been set into motion… And all the power of this world will soon be mine to control!” There is no way he doesn’t practice this stuff in front of a mirror.
Ghaleon orders the Black Dragon to kill the boys, which makes no sense because he only controlled the Black Dragon via Gams’s song, but maybe she’s been singing this whole time and we can’t hear it, like the opposite of how Alex only played his ocarina for five seconds but we kept hearing it. I don’t know anymore. Alex and Gams shout each other’s names again, for the love of God, and then Squeak observes, “The Black Dragon Armor…it’s glowing!” Ghaleon ignores this and zaps Gams with a bolt of bright purple wizard magic, but he can’t ignore Alex’s armor glowing so brightly that it whites out the entire screen, the purity of Alex’s HEART THAT BELIEVES sucking them all into an anime cutscene.
This really makes Alex look like he has a five-o’-clock shadow.
I first must point out that even though Alex has acquired all these pieces of the Dragonmaster ensemble, and I dutifully equipped them as he got them, up to this point he has still been wearing his normal clothing. But lo! Hot white light flares out from his chest–no, I’m not fucking with you, his pure heart is actually glowing–and he groans and thrashes as color-coded specters of the four dragons rip out of his body and zoom around the screen, decking him out one at a time in his “new” duds. Except for the poor echo of Quark, who didn’t give Alex any actual armor, so he is stuck just breathing white fire into the screen to announce Dragonmaster Alex’s entrance. Finally, in a manner that feels more practiced than anything Ghaleon has said or done thus far, Alex slowly opens his green eyes and slashes his sword twice. OMG! So dreamy! Look at that codpiece!
‘Sailor Jupiter!’ I shout at the screen, unable to control myself.
“Alex…look at you!” Squeak says, out of the cutscene, and I think we need to listen to the furball for a change. Because Dragonmaster Alex’s sprite now includes his gray armor, but no earflap hat (!!!) and a long red cape that he is certainly not wearing. What the fuck is with this? Are hats too hard for sprite designers to handle? And does his cloak have white fur trim? He looks like the Cowardly Lion.
Alex ignores my many sartorial questions and yells, “Get away from her, Ghaleon! Get away from her or DIE!!” He can shout even louder and more pointlessly as a Dragonmaster! Neat! Ghaleon, of course, does no such thing, and instead the boys are thrown into a second battle with the Black Dragon, who I guess is under the thrall of Ghaleon’s wizard powers. I give up. So here’s where I’m an idiot–the blast of Alex’s HEART THAT BELIEVES, or whatever the fuck, has healed the party to full. And since there was no danger of them dying in the first battle, before this miracle, I managed to waste a small fortune in star lights. Hooray! Also the battle is laughably easy because Alex is strong against BD’s breath attacks and BD is weak to his SWORD DANCE THAT BELIEVES. Soon enough, and without having to waste too many more star lights, the Black Dragon’s body is dead.
‘Coming up next, on the CW…’
Not that this is a great comfort to Alex, when BD’s death doesn’t even seem to faze Ghaleon, who continues to hold Gams’s unconscious body and monologue as if nothing has happened. Blah blah blah, there are plot points you haven’t figured out yet somehow, blah blah who-cares-if-you’re-the-Dragonmaster-cakes. Ghaleon finishes up and then snaps his fingers, bringing Gams to zombified attention. Worse, Ghaleon asks her, “The time has come for us to depart this little soiree. Be a dear and summon the coach.” I wonder how much more fun this game would be if you read all of Ghaleon’s lines while pretending he’s a little old lady. Be a dear? Is he going to offer Alex some ribbon candy? Anyway, Gams does as he asks, and it turns out their ride is the reanimated corpse of the poor Black Dragon, whom Ghaleon will yell at for driving too fast, like BD is Morgan Freeman. “Isn’t this amusing?” Ghaleon says. “You’re the Dragonmaster…and yet, I seem to control the dragons!” Yes, yes, it’s all a rich tapestry. Ghaleon and Gams climb aboard the dragon and take off, but Ghaleon shouts over his shoulder, “If you still want [Gams] back, dragonboy, I have arranged a meeting at the Grindery. I’m confident we can work out some kind of final…arrangement there.” The Grindery? THE GRINDERY. Leave it to Ghaleon to christen his Frontier fortress with the most stereotypical gay nightclub name ever.
Are those dragon skulls? Did the Black Dragon decorate with his grandparents?
So that was kind of a letdown. Alex becomes the Dragonmaster and then does fuck-all with what I assume are his new powers. Gams is neither saved nor dead. Squeak didn’t even make the fate of the Black Dragon all about himself! What a waste of time. The boys return to the village, where the absence of the Dark Black Songstress has left everyone feeling just fine, and Mia, Jessica, and Fresca are getting ready to go on a rescue mission when the boys walk into Tempest’s tent. Oh, so they get sapped of the ability to do anything but be damsels in distress, but now that it’s too late for them to do anything, we get to see them just about to be helpful? Way to have your cake and eat it too, writers!
The couples all reunite, leaving Dragonmaster Alex to jerk it alone in the corner. Fresca confirms that they were about to go to the Black Dragon Fortress because they were “so worried,” so their hypothetical girl power rescue mission has to be grounded in maternal instinct on top of everything else. Of course. The boys catch up the girls on the plot, and of course Jess and Mia are just aghast at the news about Gams being the Dark Black Songstress. “Yes…it was definitely [Gams],” Squeak says. “But not the [Gams] I know…” I dunno, she was singing and the constant center of attention, and that’s Gams all over. Nash adds, somehow managing to drop foreshadowing and be a Captain fucking Obvious, “Ghaleon is manipulating her. I’m sure of it, Mia.” Oh, Nash is sure! Well, now we know.
Once the gang has established their next destination, the Frontier and THE GRINDERY (just put that in neon lights in your mind), Laike shows up to lead them along the plot path while not really helping them at all. Naturally, Tempest also knows Laike, and announces in insulting expository manner that his “archery practice” is going well, because, “Thanks to your instruction, I’ve become the best in the prairie!” So now we know who the real Gary Stu around here is. But as for things that don’t make me roll my eyes until they fall out, Laike tells them the airship must be nearly ready, and to return to Fartnoise’s Tower and ask about it. Everyone is all excited about flying to the Frontier and saving Gams, except for Nash, who looks preoccupied and goes “… … …” like he’s been doing several times an hour for quite some time. But he’s fine! Totally fine!
My uterus just shot out my ass and ran away screaming.
Laike stays behind to hang out with Tempest and make Alex super jealous, so the kids say their goodbyes. Well, first Tempest gives Alex a new sword, the Master Sword, which you know I’m calling the Masturbator Sword even though he’ll barely have it long enough to rate a nickname. And Tempest won’t hear any bullshit about not accepting it, because Alex has insulted him enough already, and also Tempest is an archer and doesn’t want a fucking sword. Sadly he doesn’t make Alex swear to kill the Dark Black Songstress with this blade, because now he too is saying shit like, “Alex, you are a true warrior! You have the strength to be the greatest Dragonmaster of all…but not until you rescue the woman who holds your heart.” So Tempest is back to being 100 percent irredeemable. Good to know.
Alex is encouraged by the Prairieclones to visit the elder’s tent before he leaves, and there the gang discovers something of a surprise: for whatever reason, Ghaleon has decided to temper his dragon-murdering and Gams-napping with one, I guess, good act, and has returned all the village singers to their homes. Well, at least the girl taken from Pao has returned, but I’ll just jump ahead and spoil that all the others save Gams are also safe and sound. Pao’s singer, the granddaughter of the village elder who looks like a slightly altered version of Lily from Reza, tells them, among other things, “The only time I saw the Emperor smile is when he talked about how he would rule the world…oh, yes! And once when he was serenaded with an ABBA tune by the fairies in his garden…” I swear to God I didn’t make that up. I think even I have more subtlety than that at this point.
‘You’re the Dragonmaster! And I have my small business! Peas in a pod!’
Before visiting Fartnoise, the kids hop around the continent with the White Dragon Wings to check on the other singers, who all invariably tell Alex they met this amazing girl named Gams who kept them from being afraid with the power of her amazing singing voice and perky tits. Lily sounds downright infatuated, really. Like everyone is. The singer in Meribia–whose understudy is hilariously unhappy that she’s back–goes as far as to call Gams “a great woman” for filling them all with her radiant hope and love and loving hope. Barf times infinity. While he’s in Meribia, Alex visits Ram-It, who congratulates him on becoming a Dragonmaster and gives him the Rememberizer, a mirror that will allow Alex to view all his anime cutscene glory. Now he can admire the camera angles that made him look so rakishly handsome in his new hat! And watch Nash admiring his own naked body on a loop!
The last order of business, before the kids board their airship and sail smoothly as you please to the Frontier with no problems whatsoever, is a visit to the Forbidden Fucking Forest. Alex now has a spell called Black Dragon Grief, which sends all monsters on the field into a black hole where they are stuck watching Gams’s boat song in perpetuity and never getting to find out where her backup singers come from. Black Dragon Grief makes it trivial to travel through the forest and reach the place we’ve all been waiting for: the…ladies-only Althena’s Shrine? Of fucking course it is.