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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at mjmunoz.com.

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Welcome to Red Panda Report episode 22. I'm talking about Red Panda Adventures episode 22, The Black Hand.

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Here's the copy written by Greg Taylor.

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Dark forces are gathering. Powers that have long slept are stirring once more.

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A coming storm of otherworldly evil.

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So our heroes have been warned.

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But can any warning prepare the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel for the unknowable?

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Or will the terrific Toostum of Toronto fall before the Black Hand?

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I love this so much. Anyway, so this was written and directed by Greg Taylor, who also wrote the copy.

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And is the voice of the Red Panda, if you didn't know that already.

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And I just have a few notes here. First of all, just in general, this episode was really good. It was a lot of fun.

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It's somewhat expanding the canon. We kind of start off with a magical...

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The Sphinx. He was a magic user. And then we had a little bit more magic.

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Maybe, I don't know, mid-season one or maybe the third quarter of season one.

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We had something happen and there was definitely magic there.

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And we got introduced to the Stranger and he, you know, forks a kit and tells us...

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He'll fly her to Paris with him or to France, wherever he is.

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If the Red Panda hasn't picked up on the fact that she's interested in him.

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And anyway, it's really cool. It's a really surprising part of the show.

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I never expected when I started the show that, you know, just by the fact that the Red Panda has hypnotic powers.

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Which he says are mental powers and it's more science than magic.

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That we would be getting this full occult thing with, you know, a demon coming through from another world.

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And I really like it. It's a lot of fun. It's a great concept.

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Well, as it develops, as the show continues and the stories evolve.

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You could say it really develops into like a major plot point or a major aspect of it.

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That I think sets it apart from a lot of other superhero type stuff.

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If you wanted to draw a comparison, I haven't read enough or I haven't heard enough of the Shadow or read it.

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You know, any of the books I think to really say how much magic is in there.

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I listened to one audiobook, a version of one that a fan did.

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It's called Razorfist, who reminded me about how awesome Shadow is.

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And then I started doing this because Shadow is so based on Red Panda.

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Anyway, so there's a lot more occult in it than I thought there would be.

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But I really like what they do with it. It's a lot of fun.

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And they go in a lot of different areas that are really exciting.

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And definitely play on like super powers and comic book type concepts.

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But they're just done with magic as opposed to science or cosmic stuff.

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So cosmic forces, which I guess it's all the same, which I'll get into right now.

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First of all, we get lore about the stranger that he worked for this council of mages in his youth 30 years ago or whatever it was.

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And they were upset about him interfering with regular human activities, which he said, you know, I was fighting crime.

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I was doing good. And that's why I broke all your rules.

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Because apparently he broke every one of the rules about how people who have magic are supposed to operate, which is fun.

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So Maxwell Falcone is a bit of a rebel. So it's kind of no wonder.

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He's been in Red Panda to get along. And I bet he sees a lot of himself in Red Panda. Yeah, that's the right way to say it.

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And I don't know. He's a fun scamp.

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And that ingenious and that willingness to disappoint people, authority figures and such to be a little bit of a rebel is probably what made him such a great hero.

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And that's the kind of thing that makes Kit and Red Panda such great heroes as well.

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Yes, that's kind of all for the lore. But also he's been in some sort of trouble in, again, I think it's somewhere in France.

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And he was magically projecting himself to see them, which apparently is a power he has. So that's pretty cool.

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Dr. Chronopolis explains that the magicians might be basically the same thing.

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They're these universal forces and they are these communities of access, these universal forces, and they talk about magic happening through frequencies.

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And that's how the track is written for. That's how the clothes that they have, their costumes, if they have brand new costumes, they have the magic fibers in them, the magic jamming fibers in them.

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I don't know if that's the truth or if they just had magic jamming fibers woven into their clothes or what other costumes they used to take.

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But it's a fun thing, it's a fun idea. And that's the kind of thing they're talking about, that they're taking, you know,

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tears into the magic in the world as an unknowable science or unknown science.

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They really understood science from, you know, from the beginning of the little understood science.

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And he's pushing these characters into the direction of magic so that they can learn how to manipulate and use it in terms of the things that are happening.

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And he's making magic clothes so that they can see how it becomes a movie.

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And he's just trying to find the spell plumber radar, but it just sucks off and you can't stick it on the movie in the little shadow that they have,

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which is this place where we should be detecting things, but we're not because there's nothing else.

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So that isn't even something to look forward about.

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Which is in tune, they have a chronicle for me to practice with them and they're able to find out where this entity is, this other world that exists, and they're able to find it through this

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costume thing that was one thing that was seen by magic school.

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And another I didn't describe is a false signal, like a...they have it on planes. It's like anti-aircraft.

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It throws out a jet, will throw this thing off, chaff I think is what they call it, so that that signals the missiles or whatever to hit it instead of the actual plane.

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So it's kind of like anti-magic chaff, I guess you could say.

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It's probably the right term, again, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's right.

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And then the last thing we have is a shield, an anti-magic shield. I guess it blinds...is it blinding the magic? No, they're already blinding magic because they're close.

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I can't remember what the shield really does, but I guess it blocks magic somehow.

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And then using that, Kit's able to kick this entity that came through back into the hole that they opened up, the portal that Red Panda and the remaining guy from the Black Hand

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basically did to each other in using the spell to open the portal to send the guy back through, and Kit was the one who kicked him in, so that was cool.

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We have Parker's pedestrian banter. So Andy Parker has...he's soft on the flying squirrel, as Spiro would say.

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And he is telling her...he's like having a soft tender moment with her, he's telling her, like,

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I guess I can't tell you to be okay because you're never okay because you're an adventurous girl and blah blah blah.

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And she tells him as she's leaving, like, I'm invisible magic! And he asks, is that some sort of banter because of it is?

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And he just, like, collapses. He can't do it because she can't hear him anyway, but also he just doesn't know what to say.

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And, you know, he's also competing with Red Panda even though Red Panda doesn't know it at this point.

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But I think everybody else realizes that's probably the case, so that's fun.

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And it's cute because it, like, textures his character a little bit, and it, yeah, just textures his character a little bit,

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and then it kind of makes the listener think about Red Panda and Kit's relationship, which...

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There's a line about a big bad wolf, they call that the entity that, and Kit says something like,

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what if he decided to come huffing and puffing in here to blow our house down?

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And Red Panda says, well, well, then we'll have to do some huffing and puffing of our own.

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And he calls him out on that because that sounds a little interesting, and he tells her, you know, behave yourself.

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And it's interesting because that's skirting the line of family-familiness because it's slightly suggestive.

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But I'm really impressed by Taylor. I don't know why he kept this show relative to the screen,

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like, until there were people, like, there were actually, like, on-screen deaths that happened because they felt they had another choice.

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And, look, there's one other romance in particular, and it's being developed in a scene that's so awesome.

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It's so awesome. And I don't remember if time has passed, but there's a scene where Red Panda,

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for the next three years, is like, I'm just gonna... I don't know if you guys need to tap this.

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So they don't have to struggle with fighting, like, they physically couldn't be able to stand up,

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and he's like, yeah, we have knockout gas, Kit, let's just use that.

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She's like, oh, yeah, I guess that's a good point.

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Anyway, so, like, you know, the violence, you can argue with that, and I know European people say, you know,

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sex is better than violence, or sex and violence should be equally bad,

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and Americans are dumb for disliking sex but liking violence in their shows,

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and, sorry Europeans, you're wrong, they're totally different things, and in heroic media...

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I talked about this before once. I'll just talk about it briefly here, very briefly here.

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In heroic media, violence is the necessary evil, you could say, to achieve the goal of creating peace,

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and anybody can engage in the violence against any bad actor who's trying to inflict violence on other people,

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versus, in the sex situation, sex is a, should be a, you know, one-on-one thing done between consensual adults,

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and it should be done with both parties being willing and agreeing to do it,

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in order for it to be considered moral, and there are other things, but that's like the base level,

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and if one person is trying to enact sex upon another, that is seen as an act of violence,

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and that person, the victim or the pursuing actor upon is more than justified in acting with violence

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upon the person who is trying to enact the sex, so I think that in and of itself proves that they're totally different animals,

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and you can poke holes in that and say it's a logical argument, but I'm trying to be brief,

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I don't want to distract you from everything, but if we went back and forth on this,

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if we agreed to go back and forth on this argument, this line of reasoning that I just laid out,

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you would see that I'm right and you're wrong, if you disagree with me right now, but that's okay,

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we can, you know, that's what the comment section is for, try it, but anyway,

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like it's pretty close to being bad, but you know, a kid's, that's gonna fly over a kid's head,

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an adult is gonna laugh, I laughed, I thought it was funny, but like I really enjoy how he's finally needling that thread

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and making a suggestive joke in this situation, but also letting it be okay,

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and so I still think it's family friendly, kids are a little ultra violent sometimes, but other than that, it's okay,

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but yeah, that was it, maybe that's why I had some trouble with this episode, because there was that moment,

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and then also he attached the shield, the anti-magic shield kit to her utility belt,

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and he like went up to her and flipped it on her, and in order to do that, they had to touch,

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and it was just, it was too close, too close for him to love her, and yeah, it was interesting, interesting moment,

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and as the relationship, spoilers for Red Panda, like 10 year old thing, as the relationship develops,

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you get to understand and learn why he was so hesitant to engage with her at all, in any respect,

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other than friendly banter and training her and stuff to fight, and I think it's interesting and fun when that reveal happens,

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and we'll be able to talk less guardedly about a lot of things, when we get to that point in the show,

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which I think is like, under season 4, beginning of season 5, or something like that, so anyway,

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for now, that's all I have to say, I really enjoyed this great episode, I think, and Red Panda's like, 90% of it is like, really good,

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or I'd say 80% of it's excellent, 90, the other 10 more percent is really good, and then there's another 5% that's okay,

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and maybe 5% that's just like, you know, nothing I like that much, but this is a really good episode, so,

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anyway, introduced with a lot of stuff that's going to be a lot of fun for us to have in the future, with these two heroes,

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so, until next time, take care, be well, and hold high the lamp of justice.