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This is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an artist. I'm an analyzer.

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You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Red Panda Report 2, the special, the second special.

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Special number two, I guess is what I mean to say. In this episode of

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The Shadow that I'll be covering, which is Shadow episode 3, I believe, called the Temple Bells of

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Nibon, The Shadow

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battles a

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drug pushing, kidnapping,

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yeah,

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lady from India, the Indian subcontinent, I believe is the correct way to say it.

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It turns out that this young woman was

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a, the niece of a yogi who, I wonder if that means she was a slave.

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Well, anyway, she was the niece of a yogi who

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trained in part, or who was part of the training of Lamont Cranston, which led him to become the Shadow.

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So I'm gonna start off with something with things that were less than thrilling. I think the episode

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works, and the episode has a float to it, but somewhere in the middle

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I've listened to this two or three times recently, and somewhere in the middle

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it just kind of loses the plot for me, and I kind of slip for being able to concentrate on it.

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There's no immediate threat. I mean, the Shadow is in threat of

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being exposed, but

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it's very unclear and

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the stakes feel low, even though his life is in peril, perhaps because I know the Shadow's life is always in peril, and

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the way his life is in peril this time is that if he

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lets himself

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stay

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within a certain area at a certain time and place, or

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yeah, if he stays in a certain place for a certain amount of time,

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his ability to become the Shadow or to be invisible will be undone for a few

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moments or for some undetermined amount of time,

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during which he can be shot and killed.

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The Shadow could be shot and killed at any time within a certain room,

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or you know, at any time within a certain time or place. For example, if you had a circle of

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guys with machine guns,

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let's say eight of them, and four of them were aiming, two were aiming high, two were aiming low,

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two were aiming in the middle, and two were

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aiming up and down, let's say, and

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you knew the Shadow was going to be in that room with those eight guys,

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the Shadow on the radio drama, at least, would easily be killed, I think, by those guys all firing simultaneously and

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covering as much of the room as they could so that he

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would be stricken by bullets and

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die by bleeding to death.

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Now,

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that's a ridiculous scenario, but it would also be kind of exciting for the Shadow to go through that scenario and

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somehow escape from it. The drama of the tension in this one was a lady in a room with a snake and a guy with a gun

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on a boat, I guess, they're in a room on a boat,

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is

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going to undo his powers, and if the intention was for his powers to be undone forever,

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and for him to no longer to become, be able to become the Shadow becoming invisible,

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that would make sense, and if they had explained that to me, I would have

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appreciated the danger he was in more.

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However,

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the amount of

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pushback or defiance he gave to this plan

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was very little. He

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swapped out a snake in a basket and

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hoped, or guessed,

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that the lady would in time Sadi Beladur, Sadi Beladur,

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which I don't know if that's supposed to be like Bel-adur, like beautiful snake,

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and I don't know if that's supposed to be a real name, or if it's supposed to just be something exotic sounding, like maybe Sadi is an actual

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not Punjabi, like Hindu name, and

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the Bel-adur, or Belada, because that's what they say, Sadi Belada.

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Yeah, I can't quite tell if that's a stage name, or what that is, but anyway, it just,

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she doesn't seem like she's enough of a threat, and then the way that he handles her makes it feel,

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makes it seem like he doesn't feel she's much of a threat either, in which case, why am I, listening to this,

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why am I interested and excited? I don't know.

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The reason I selected this episode was because I thought it had an interesting premise, that there was somebody from the shadows past, from Lamont's past, who could

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undo his shadow ability, but upon further listening,

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it's not so great.

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Wow, so I mean, I'm even falling asleep talking about it. That's not good. So,

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I don't know, it's interesting, but I never said the shadow was perfect. I just said it was interesting and cool,

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so there has to be lows, and I think this is one of them.

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So,

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yeah, that's my main gripe with the episode.

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For some of the positive stuff,

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we get to see resourcefulness of Lamont Granson slash the shadow. He's going out with Margot Lane to some

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event, and she's gonna be, oh, he's taking her dancing, or,

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taking her to go see this Indian dancer, who he already believes is part of this

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drug

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crisis that is hitting New York, or the city, whatever, and

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Margot is involved with having that problem addressed, and she's part of some social

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actress club, or I don't know what they're doing, petitioning for laws, or something, anyway,

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but she's involved in the case, and his network and his information is so extensive and so

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robust that he already knows

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what she is working on.

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What she's concerned about. He's concerned about it, and he's already traced down the

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likely

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attack vector to handle this issue, which is

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going to Saudi Balladur because she's part of it, so

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that's interesting. I like that.

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Something in the lore to talk about is the fact that

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Lamont Granson, once again, tells Margot that the

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yogi's practice and ability that he learned from is a type of science, and that

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it isn't something wholly mystical, but then again, you know, or the temple bell is mystical as well.

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I'm not sure. I don't know if there's supposed to be some sort of

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scam or sham or fake, but he

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seemed to be afraid of them, and he seemed to treat them as a legitimate threat,

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but then again, he was able to reproduce them in his office with, or in his study or

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library with Margot, so I just don't understand

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what that was about, but I'm supposed to be just talking about the lore.

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Yeah, but the lore is a little vague and quite indetermined, which I believe allows for maximum flexibility

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as a creative, as a writer, so I appreciate why you'd want to do that, but

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it is a little strange that we didn't get much more.

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I guess a more concrete piece of lore would be that Lamont went around to different places showing his face and

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I suppose revealing his identity to people, and that means there's probably a dozen or

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or less people on earth who were involved with the lore, and

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a dozen or or less people on earth who were involved with Lamont in his training,

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who could pinpoint or who could put the finger on him for being the Shadow because they recognize that he

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uses some of their techniques or some of the things that they taught him.

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And I just, I do find that to be interesting.

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Just on a nerdy level, nothing really exciting about it

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unto itself, but

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it's just kind of a fun factoid, a fun, did you know kind of thing.

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So yeah, like I said, I didn't think this was the greatest episode.

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There were some interesting concepts in it, but overall some of it fell flat for me or just wasn't

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wasn't quite

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as exciting as it could have been, and I think that's too bad, but tune in for the next episode where I'll be talking about another episode

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of the Shadow on

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the third Red Panda Report special before we get into the Red Panda Adventures

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proper. So anyway, until next time folks,

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goodbye and good night.

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I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have.

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There you can find all of my analysis, art, and fiction.

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I cover books, tokusatsu, comic books, anime, and more.

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Look around, you're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well.

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This has been a Story Over Everything production.