Epithet Erased S1E2: “Bear Trap”

This one picks up right where the last one left off. Molly is in the custody of the two corrupt employees, who are foolishly standing right next to her and not taking any countermeasures against being Dumbed. To be fair to the woman (I think her name was Mera?) though, Indus didn't ask Molly for any details on what she did to those two Bonsai Blasters, and probably would have forgotten to tell Vera about Molly's brainwashing touch attack even if she had told him. Anyway, Mera explains that the two of them just started their gigs at the museum very recently, with the intent of staying just long enough to get access to the Arson Amulet before disappearing with it. I guess it's just coincidence that they and Giovani picked the same night.

Molly comments that that explains why Mera is such a shitty guide. Indus takes the opportunity to agree and say that yeah, Mera could do a much better job at least affecting enthusiasm for scams like this one. He himself manages it, after all, and he even has Molly vouching for him on this. Mera just says to forget and and help her find the amulet already so they can use it to take Molly's epithet.

Um...why do they want to take Molly's epithet away? I don't know. Maybe she's just a convenient guinea pig.

Roll OP. Now that I can recognize more of the characters depicted in it, it looks like the plot is going to concern an ever-escalating number of criminal and criminal-adjacent parties scrabbling for the amulet, with Molly continually being stuck between. Title card, and on we go. I wonder if someone's epithet is going to be "bear." Or "trap" for that matter.

Giovani is crumpled on the floor by his underlings, who all seem to be unconscious. He bemoans their fate of being knocked out, and then, when Mera expresses surprise that he's still conscious, makes a long, drawn out, and unfunny attempt to convince her that he's a serious criminal, with her unfunnily poking holes in his obvious bluster. This goes on for a while. A long time. It is lengthy.

From how she's talking to him, I get the impression that Giovanni isn't any older than his sidekicks. So, the Bonzai Blasters are less of a criminal organization and more just a gang of juvenile delinquents. At least a couple of them are armed though, so there's that.

Eventually, she has Indus throw the Bonzais and Molly into the nearby dinosaur exhibit room and use his barrier to seal the only exit until the two of them can finish business. Indus is unfunnily enthusiastic about the dinosaur fossils while doing this.

You know, if they signed on as employees in order to steal that one specific artifact, and they don't know where it's being stored yet, why are they doing the heist tonight instead of waiting longer and learning more? Eh, maybe they knew someone was on to them or something and had to hurry up.

Also, this show is so stingy with sprites that for some reason Giovani is grabbing his toe and grimacing in pain just like he did after kicking the potted plant when Indus tosses him into the makeshift prison.

Giovani admonishes Indus for not taking better advantage of the environment and actually imprisoning them inside the dinosaur skeletons. Apparently, he specified in his will that he wants to be buried in dinosaur bones when he kicks it, and...well, I guess either he's expecting to die here, or he'd just obsessed with being covered in dinosaur bones regardless of context. YKINMK. He then brags to Molly that he's already written his will despite his young age because he lives a life of danger. Molly replies that she's done the same, because the world is cruel and arbitrarily and you can never know when death is coming for you or a loved one. Molly is awfully philosophical for a 12 year old. And paperwork-savvy, though that's likely because her dad has been forcing her to grow up fast.

Giovani asks her if anyone's ever told her what a buzzkill she is. She answers in the affirmative, and he immediately regrets his coldness in asking her that. Okay, that's a nice humanizing moment. He then tells Molly that they should see if they can figure out an escape method, but Molly claims not to care one way or the other. In her words, Mera seems to really be excited at the prospect of stealing her stand, whereas Molly doesn't really care about it, so she might as well let Mera just do it. Giovani is outraged that a person could place such little value on themselves. He can get not caring about other people, as long as they aren't people you know, but someone not caring about themselves strikes him as fundamentally wrong. The pep talk that ensues is easily the best written thing in the show thus far. Nothing especially innovative about it, most turns of phrase in it are ones I've seen in similar scenes from other things, but it's well put together, and Molly's reactions are fairly touching. There's still a million unfunny jokes throughout, but the stuff around them is decent.

He ends up recruiting her into his gang, and decides her actual name is lame enough that, unlike Ben the attempted kid-puncher, she needs a code name right off the bat.

Of all the damned things, his reaction to her name gets its own sprite, and it's...something.

Anyway, he notices her bear pajamas and asks about him. Apparently bears are the only things she actually likes rather than accepting the existence of with grim fatalism. So, he names her the episode's title.

More unfunny stuff happens between them, and then he gives her her first mission as a Bonzai Blaster; think of a way out. She has an idea, and calls their idiotic warden over. She asks Indus some questions about his and Mera's relationship. Apparently, she bested him in an honorable duel some years ago, and he's served her loyally ever since. Okay, fits with his character I guess. She's pretty much enslaved him.

Anyway, between Molly's information gathering and some improvised subterfuge from Giovani (which Molly helps with, after a bit of prompting. She feels bad about it afterward though), they manage to trick Indus into letting them out and running back to Mera to protect her from an imaginary threat. Indus' stupidity is supposed to be the big joke here, but none of the gags are clever or inventive enough twists on the "let's laugh at the dumb bad guy" formula to get a smile out of me. If you've seen more than 10-15 episodes of Loony Toons, then there's nothing here that you haven't seen done repeatedly and more cleverly.

After Indus leaves, Molly expresses guilt at having lied. Giovani says that she's a criminal now, so she shouldn't agonize over tricking people. She tries it out herself by tricking Giovani into giving her a phone and then trying to call the cops with it, and is discouraged from it by him telling her that she's now a criminal herself since she's "broken out of jail." Which crushes her. Okay, these two little back to back gags are the first time this show has actually gotten a giggle out of me. The two head off to "build a secret base" to plan their next attack from and try to steal the amulet themselves...because that's what Giovani wants now I guess.

Notably, Indus' barrier remains active long after he's left, and Giovani's thuglets are still unconscious behind it. Giovani wants to rescue them. Okay.

Indus reports back to Mera to protect her from the imaginary threat. She asks him wtf, he lets slip that he let Giovani and Molly slip, and she asks him if Molly used her stand on him to make him even stupider than usual or something.

Wait, so she WAS able to determine that Molly's stand can do that? Then...why the hell did she have him pick her up and...oh forget it, I don't care.

That other random kid who Molly bumped into back during the tour walks in on them then. He claims to be a scientist breaking into the museum at night to conduct completely legal and aboveboard research, and gets really mad when Mera points out that he's a kid. He also puts Indus to sleep instantly when he tries to grab him, so I'm guessing his power is to project the experience of watching Epithet Erased into other people's minds.

Kid introduces himself as "Doctor" Sylvester Ashling. Mera reigns in her irritation enough to humor him, pretending to buy his scientist act and telling him she'll let him "study" the amulet that he is likewise after if he takes care of the Bonzai Blasters and Molly while she finds it.

He agrees.

Cut to Giovani and Molly having made a secret clubhouse out of bear statues from one of the zoology exhibits.

It's hard for me to keep track of how seriously each character is taking the situation. Giovani seemed to be really worried about his unconscious underlings and want to rescue them, but now he's playing with stuffed bears with Molly.

During this sequence, it also comes to light what sort of "organization" the Bonzai Blasters are, and how he earned his promotion to local captain. Turns out that "Ponzi" was actually right.

His minions, of course, are all downline from him.​

Okay. That's the first REALLY funny thing in this show so far. I laughed, rather than just smiling or sort of chuckling a little, which is the (rare( best that it's managed so far.

Molly also shares some more information about her family. Her mother died some years ago, and her father and (hitherto unseen) sister have been in denial about it ever since. Apparently, her dad is sort of an idiot savant when it comes to toymaking; he makes the products, and her mother used to sell them, but lately it's all been on her to do that (well...during the "night shifts" at least. Maybe her sister or a hireling works days). That doesn't excuse the way we've seen her dad treat her, but it does explain some things. She and Giovani also bond over their mutual sewing hobby, which leads Molly to infer that Giovani is "secretly nice," which he fervently denies. This could actually be touching, in a surreal dream-logic way, if it weren't burdened with three times its own mass in unfunny and tone deaf gags.

Then, Sylvester attacks. His opening move is a rain of golden particles that starts putting them to sleep.

Apparently he's also covered in these particles himself even when not actively using his stand, as Molly realizes that she got tireder-than-usual right after bumping into him as she left the big stupid fight scene during the tour. Okay, that's a clever touch, nicely foreshadowed! Anyway, Giovani is the one with the countermeasure to this (I guess magic sleep particles can't be "dumbed down" the way that other things arbitrarily can be). He conjures some high temperature soup on the floor around them, the updraft from which is able to repel the rain of sleep-dust.

I guess Giovani could actually hurt people with his stand, if he can make soup that's that hot. He just chooses not to. Which I'd read as another sign of him being much more of a sweetheart than he wants anyone to know, except that we've also seen him attack someone with a baseball bat with blades attached to it simply for defending themselves from his gang, so IDK.

Sylvester, seeing that his usual offensive measure isn't working here tries another of his abilities, which he calls "counting sheep."

I'm starting to feel like epithets can do whatever you can whine and twist the DM's arm into letting you get away with. If "dumb" can negate incoming attacks, and "sleep" can let you summon an army of magical sheep, then...well, yeah.

There's a bait-and-switch gag with too many parts where Giovani and Molly are panicking over the advancing sheep at first, but then the herd reaches them and they start going gaga over how cute they are, but then the sheep start biting them and making -1 hp tickers appear over them which don't actually mean anything as far as I can tell. So, Molly uses her stand to make sheep dissappear one at a time (apparently she can "dumb" summoned creatures into nonexistence, but not golden sleep particles. IDK, whatever) and Giovani hits them with his spiked bat. Apparently Giovani can make a super attack every thirteen times he hits something with his bat. Uhuh. Whatever. One of the sheep retaliates by exploding into sleepdust in Molly's face, which...um...apparently all three of them have now been transported into Molly's dreams, where Sylvester can now use her pyrophobia to shoot fire at them.

"Drowsy" rather than "Sleep," I guess. Same difference.

They freak out and climb on a tall thing to get away from the climbing flames. Then, they decide to use their sewing hobby against Sylvester; Giovani hits Molly with a ball of yarn twelve times and then throws it at Sylvester for a supercharged thirteenth.

Giovani wanted to hit him in the eye with a knitting needle, but Molly refused to go along with that. Giovani reluctantly agreed when he noticed Sylvester was wearing glasses anyway. I really am not sure what to think of Giovani's willingness to injure or kill at this point, it seems to oscillate pretty rapidly.

Sylvester is hurt but not yet defeated by the yarn, and responds by using an ability called "dream big," which turns him into a minotaur.

End episode.


Humor is a subjective thing. It's possibly the most subjective thing in a work of entertainment media. And, this is - much more than anything else - a gag show. So, if you find the jokes funny, you'll enjoy Epithet Erased, and there's no arguing over whether or not you, personally, find it funny. It's not something that can really be dissected or debated.

But, I found nearly all of the jokes to be either so unoriginal and overused that I stopped laughing at them literally decades ago, or just totally lame and lacking in punch.

There's also the way that the show can't seem to decide what medium it's going for to the detriment of the visual storytelling, the pointless and intrusive self-narration thing, and the inherent cringe of forcing game mechanics into a story that really, really doesn't need them. But I could forgive all of those things if the jokes that made up the bulk of the show tickled my funnybone. Unfortunately, they don't.

I think this is the only show I've reviewed so far that I'd say is worse than RWBY pretty much across the board. But, given how much of this show is comedy, and how subjective comedy is, I'm not going to be all baffled and weirded out by lots of other people liking it.