CaT Reviews: Sif 100: The Rebooted Series!

This is the third episode of CaT Reviews!, this time featuring Sif 100: The Rebooted Series, as requested by ZeVikingSif.

Story
As soon as the first episode begins, we actually meet the main villain of the series right off the bat: the YouTube copyright claims system.



See, this series uses the gimmick of having the reader listen to music tracks in the background to help establish atmosphere. Interesting idea in theory, but YouTube's tendency to slam the banhammer on any video at any given moment means that most of the links are currently broken.

Anyways, the story begins with Sif Hunderson, the main character of the series, and his sister, who will be mentioned occasionally but only ever shows up one more time in the entire series, with his father, who is in the process of breaking laboratory equipment. He then takes the kids home and ditches the house, never to be seen again.

Years later, Sif seems to be spending his days aceing school, getting bullied for no adequately explained reason, and hanging with his friends at a comic book store. The only ones that have much of an impact on the story are Bradly, his best friend, and Anna, who he loves. No, I'm not exaggerating, there are like four uses of the word 'love' crammed next to her name when she gets introduced. She doesn't know how he feels, though, so they're just friends.

Up on the moon, things are a bit less normal, as a weird meteor crashes on the moon while two astronauts are nearby. They go to check it out, and are promptly killed by a blue demon that steps out of the meteor and asks them if they know his dad before burning them alive.

On the moon.

The demon then proceeds to laugh maniacally.

On the moon.

For the record, you cannot do either of these things on the moon, due to the whole 'no air' thing.

I dunno, maybe it's magic. Moving on:

Sif goes home and finds his father's briefcase on the table for some reason. After rifling through it a bit, he decides to investigate Knighttech, the company his dad used to work for. Meanwhile, the demon thing is murdering people and chewing them out because they're afraid of him. I have to imagine the whole 'murder' thing wouldn't do much for you public image, but hey, who knows?

Anyways, Sif manages to get into the Knighttech building and talk to a scientist, who gives him a tour. The demon, meanwhile, is in a fair, and rips its pants to gain control. Don't ask me what that means, I'm just the middleman here. It says it's going to get revenge on its father, who is revealed via flashback to be Sif's dad, who injected some human with blue stuff, turning it into the demon, and then launched it into space because reasons.

The scientist guiding Sif, named Dr. Tron, gets called to a meeting and leaves Sif in the room with a valuable meteorite, telling him not to touch anything. Sif immediately touches the meteorite because reasons, causing it to break open and reveal a metal container, which is opened to reveal the Alphatrix. The Alphatrix jumps onto Sif, who freaks out and tries to get if off. In doing so, he turns into Diamondhead and crashes through the wall, causing a bit of public panic.

The demon thing begins tracking down the Hunderson family, while Sif tinkers with the Alphatrix and decides to become a superhero. After receiving completely necessary narration about the most important part of the story - Sif getting orange juice - the demon thing arrives outside Sif's house. He dubs the demon thing Nightcrawler and turns into Frankenstrike, rushing it down.

Since this episode is a two-parter, I'll just talk about the rest in this section. Sif beats Nightcrawler pretty handily, but isn't able to stop him from burning someone alive. Nightcrawler jumps off, promising to destroy him. We then cut to Sif after school, where he finds out from a police officer that there's a terrorist on top of the Knighttech building. He goes to check it out, and the terrorist is revealed to be Nightcrawler, who jumps down from the building and starts fighting.

This time, Sif gets beat up, and Nightcrawler goes back to the roof to finish his evil plan: using satellites to transform everyone on Earth into creatures like him with the power of...uh...a pole. Or something. Sif fights him and destroys the evil...pole, then knocks Nightcrawler off the tower, who turns to dust as soon as he hits the ground. Later, Sif narrates the end of the episode, saying that he goes by the superhero name of 'Alienated' and fights crime and stuff.

Up in space, we end on a cliffhanger with a 'Magnet Humanoid' learning about the Alphatrix and smiling ominously.

Episode 3 picks up three months later, with the 'Magnet Humanoid' being introduced as 'Lord Ziegel' and smiling ominously. Sif does some training and returns home, where he watches some news reporters on TV talking about him. Two news reporters seem to be in favor of 'Alienated', whereas one guy considers him a threat and a menace. This guy is our Will Harangue stand-in for the evening, and is named 'Joel'.



SixSix, SevenSeven, and EightEight suddenly come to Earth and start attacking people, Sif going to try and stop them. They seem to be robots in this universe, despite just being really ugly people in mechanical armor in canon. They fight Sif, revealing that they were there for the Alphatrix all along and demanding that he hand it over. Sif handily beats them with NRG, but is interrupted by the police, who arrive and start shooting at him, calling him an outlaw and a 'creep' because reasons.

Sif gets away, and after some stuff at school happens, revealing that Sif knows how to speak emoji (specifically O_O...), SixSix, SevenSeven, and EightEight attack a plane to get his attention. He saves everyone aboard with Heatblast, but ends up getting knocked out and captured. He wakes up aboard the mercenaries' ship, where he finds himself stuck in a force field. The mercenaries tell him to hand over the Alphatrix, but he says 'no' and turns into XLR8, which ends up being useless, and Blitzwolfer, who he's never used before.

The mercenaries are considerate enough to EXPLAIN HOW TO USE HIS POWERS, advice that he promptly uses to break the forcefield and start beating them up. Great strategy there, guys. The mercenaries then fuse into a single being called NineNine, and starts beating him up. Sif eventually turns into Upgrade and shuts them down, then lands the ship and goes home.

Episode 4 begins with Ziegel breaking some criminals out of prison in exchange for them capturing Sif. Sif investigates the prison break and beats up the criminals, though they do end up getting away and Sif's reputation gets another blow when he accidentally smacks an innocent bystander.

He starts angsting about having the Alphatrix, then goes berserk and attacks Dr. Tron, who calms him down and talks with him. The criminals regroup in an abandoned warehouse and receive some new equipment to replace the stuff Sif broke during their fight. Sif manages to track them down and starts getting his butt kicked, but is helped by the arrival of Dr. Tron wielding a gun and eventually some cops.

Sif starts fighting one-on-one with a criminal that has a mech suit, who knocks him into a hotel lobby. Sif detransforms and suggests they battle old-school, which the criminal agrees to, taking off the suit and beating the crap out of Sif with his bare hands. Truly, our hero is a tactical genius.

Dr. Tron and the cops finally beat the other criminals. The criminal Sif's fighting hurls him through a car window, then throws him back inside the hotel lobby, where a crowd of people wielding large amounts of garbage have apparently gathered. They start ganging up on the criminal, with one homeless guy yelling 'WE STAND UNITED!'

The crowd holds off the criminal long enough for the police to arrive and arrest him. The next week, Sif starts training with Dr. Tron, and Lord Ziegel is revealed to have brought one of the criminals on board his ship to work for him.

Episode 5 begins with Sif fighting some robbers. Later, the school bully is picking on him again, and he accidentally activates a function of the Alphatrix that lets him use powers without transforming, knocking the bully into a tree and breaking his back. Sif's mom gets mad that he fought back (apparently not so much about the whole 'breaking spines' thing, just that he fought back) and grounds him.

Meanwhile, a blue meteor crashes into a ship piloted by Robot Humans and hits one of the crew, turning them into a Nightcrawler-esque creature. Sif later sneaks out of the house and goes to ask Dr. Tron about the incident, who reveals that it's a separate mode of the Alphatrix, and that the Alphatrix was created by Sif's father. As Sif leaves, an explosion occurs nearby, prompting him to investigate.

He finds the mutated Robot Human, who goes by the name of Hatus, destroying things. She starts throwing him around, continuing to do so until he manages to toss her off a skyscraper. She disappears, and he gets harrassed by Joel, who has arrived on the scene to report. He considers stabbing Joel, raising some serious questions about his mental health in the process, but ultimately decides not to.

He goes home and sulks, but gets visited by Dr. Tron, who has a talk with him. At some point later, he gets on a bus headed to the comic store to hand with his friends, but is interrupted by the reappearance of Hatus. They fight, Sif getting the upper hand pretty quickly this time and sending her packing. He has another talk with Dr. Tron about this, then goes home, this time getting caught and grounded for even longer.

He has some nightmares that night about Hatus and Nightcrawler, but wakes up and finds out from the TV that Hatus is wreaking havoc, fighting the military, and heading for Knighttech. He goes to stop her, and they have a fight so intense that the wiki formatting has a seizure. He ends up beating her and sending her packing again, then has a talk with Bradly the next day about not showing up to the comic store. The episode ends with Hatus resurrecting Nightcrawler, who laughs maniacally.

Episode 6 begins with Nightcrawler taking over a gang. Later, Sif and Dr. Tron are seen investigating the same gang, and actually end up tracking down some members, but Sif gets interrupted by the police since he's technically more wanted than they are. He escapes, and goes to school like usual the next day, only to get interrupted by Dr. Tron, who's found another lead.

They start investigating the lead, but suddenly get interrupted by Hatus crashing through the wall and starting a fight.



Thus begins a fight scene that somehow ends up with Sif in the middle of a lava pit. Nightcrawler reveals himself, and they have a fight scene with some...questionable dialogue. (Sif shoots web all over Nightcrawlers face)

Nightcrawler: URGH.. Mmmmm... After a drawn-out battle, Nightcrawler and Hatus reveal that they had just been distracting him from a robbery their gang was committing in another area and flee the scene. Sif talks with Dr. Tron, who reveals that his bosses won't allow them to meet in the Knighttech building anymore. The episode ends with Sif saying he'll find a place and flying off as Jetray.

Episode 7 begins with Sif fighting some thugs and meeting Ester, who in this universe is just a mutant, not an alien. We then cut to space, where Lord Ziegel contacts Vilgax...and I'm going to be frank, this is honestly my favorite variation of Vilgax. He's so simultaneously fed up with everything and yet utterly over-the-top that every scene with him is an absolute joy. He's so flamboyant compared to most Vilgaxes that I had to Photoshop a pink feather boa onto him to properly convey the levels of flamboyancy on display here.



Anyways, Ziegel wants Vilgax to get the Alphatrix for him, but Vilgax predictably wants it for himself and heads out on his own. He finds Ester and forcefully tries to get information out of her. She explains that she doesn't really know anything beyond the wielder being a teenager and attending a school around the area, causing Vilgax to storm off.

Sif sees a report about the damage Vilgax did on TV, getting worried about Ester, and goes to investigate. Vilgax somehow finds the right highschool and interrogates the janitor, who gives him Sif's name. Vilgax then throws the janitor to the ground in a huff and leaves, which somehow caused him to 'bleed to death and die', reaching Superbody Prime levels of redundancy.





Now, you may be wondering why this move actually managed to kill the janitor, whereas if it had been done to a main character, they would've been perfectly fine. Well, I haven't really brought this up so far, but ZeVikingSif really seems to like killing janitors; seriously, pretty much every one that appears in this series dies!



Sif tracks down Ester and Vilgax tracks down Sif. Upon seeing Vilgax for the first time, Sif is taken aback at the sight of an octopus alien, outright stating that Vilgax 'didn't want to know what he was thinking', and confirming at least some part of his internet history. The two fight, Vilgax getting the upper hand, but Ester manages to grab Sif and escape, leaving Vilgax empty-handed.

Vilgax ends up pulling another Kool-Aid Man stunt on Sif's house, then grabs Sif's mom to use as bait and runs off. Sif is walking along the street with his friend Bradly, then catches sight of a news report that shows him what Vilgax has done and is met by Ester, who knocks out Bradly.

Vilgax, meanwhile, has just taken out a police helicopter by hurling a single brick, and is getting bored of waiting. Just as he's about to off Sif's mom for him not showing up, Sif appears as Astrodactyl and starts punching Vilgax, yelling at him to...uh...

Uh..... Sif (Astrodacty): GET YOUR LITTLE HANDS OUT OF MY MOM RIGHT NOW!



Just...

Why, Sif?

Why?

Moving on, the fight takes Sif and Vilgax to a military base, with Sif's mom still somehow unharmed. Ester arrives there too, and Vilgax retreats, saying that he still has hostages at the north pole. A soldier runs up to Sif and tells him to run, since the impact they caused at the base knocked someone into the nuke circuit, and a nuke will shortly be launched straight at them.

To make a long, confusing fight scene short, Sif manages to save the hostages and redirect the nuke at Vilgax, blowing him up. Sif and his mom go home, his mom not being any the wiser to his secret identity as Alienated, and the episode ends with Vilgax on his ship in a recovery tube, talking with Ziegel and leaving one last piece of glorious snark.

Episode 8 is pretty easy to sum up without going into too much detail. The government goes after Sif, Lord Ziegel sends his last bounty hunter after Sif, Sif straight-up tries to murder the bounty-hunter because he ruined his chances with a girl, and in the end, he ends up partnered with the government. Lord Ziegel calls in his final man, a wizard named Maler, and wants to meet with someone named Deristroll, setting up the next episode.

Episode 9 is a crossover with another series called The Legend of Mig, and starts out with Ziegel and Maler going through a portal opened by the latter. We then see a fight consisting exclusively of characters from The Legend of Mig. Since I have not read The Legend of Mig, I'll just stick to the important parts, specifically that we're introduced to one of the episode's goon squads.

Another thing of note is that Mig, the main character, rips the leg off one of the goons and gets chided by his partner for almost 'crossing the line', which he waves off as saying 'he does stuff like that all the time.' Okay, first off, what weird universe is this that snapping people's limbs off is considered  'not crossing the line?! '



I mean, other than that, the show looks pretty decent, and I might check it out by myself one of these days, but seriously, what the hell? Am I just missing something here? Anyways, Lord Ziegel arrives at Deristroll's place and it's revealed that he saved Deristroll from a predator at one point, and has come to reclaim the favor. He send Deristroll after Sif, who is currently having a talk with his friend Bradly at school. Meanwhile, Mig and his partner, who is named Clepron, decide to go after Sif as well, thinking that he's a villain. After Sif gets out of school, he gets called to Dr. Tron's mansion, but once he arrives, is attacked my Mig and Clepron. Mig clearly outclasses him in Omnitrix skill, and on top of that, the Alphatrix is going haywire.

Despite all that, he manages to hold his own until the fight is interrupted by Deristroll, who Sif and Mig team up to take down, assisted by the arrival of Mig's Uncle Dan. Deristroll leaves, realizing he can't take all of them at once, leaving Sif and Mig to talk instead of beat each other up. They decide to hang out, and Deristroll suits up for another attempt to kill them. After a bit, Deristroll tracks them down and fights them again, doing much better this time around, but still ending up defeated.

Deristroll heads back to Ziegel's castle and the two argue, eventually coming to an agreement after Ziegel threatens him with one of his predators. The two lead an army of Biosovortians to invade the Earth, and our two heroes must unite to defeat them. After a long, intense battle on both sides, Lord Ziegel is finally gunned down, Deristroll is paralyzed, and the Biosovortians evacuate Earth. Mig and crew go back to his town, and everything returns to normal, with the exception of a mysterious figure at the end of the episode rambling ominously about stuff that never gets resolved in this series.

Episode 10, the final episode, starts three months from when the last episode left off, with Sif suffering from trauma that makes it practically impossible to force himself to use the Alphatrix. Dr. Tron tries to give him advice, but it doesn't seem to help. This is happening at a really bad time, too, as Nightcrawler has been building a cybernetic suit to enhance his powers and kill Sif once and for all.

A good chunk of the episode from there focuses on Sif's day-to-day life and Nightcrawler being a massive whiner that likes to screw with Sif's head via nightmares and throw temper tantrums with deadly results, along with sending his minions to collect information on Sif's loved ones. Eventually, the suit is completed, and Nightcrawler goes to fight Sif, confident in his victory...however, as soon as he starts threatening Sif's family, Sif snaps and finally uses the Alphatrix again, beating the crap out of him.

Nightcrawler retreats and Sif talks some more with Dr. Tron, starting to train again. He decides to track down Nightcrawler, and after following a number of leads, finds his secret hideout and begins to trash the place and fight him. Nightcrawler reveals, however, that his minions are already moving out to kill pretty much anyone Sif has been seen so much as talking to, and thanks to an unfortunate Alphatrix timeout, starts getting the upper hand. Once the Alphatrix recharges, however, Sif manages to beat Nightcrawler, even through Nightcrawler monlouging about his backstory, and burn his base to ashes.

Sif rushes to his house, only to find Dr. Tron there and his family missing. After a brief talk, the two get into an argument, and Sif ends up leaving. He goes to get Agent Shen, his main contact with the government, to help him, and they, along with some agents, track down Nightcrawler's new location and begin a plan to free Sif's family.

It is at this point that the series cuts out, and we get some bullet points on how it would've ended:
 * Nightcrawler's goons would have killed most of the Codename: Grid agents. Shen would have stayed behnd.
 * Sif would have followed Hatus to the training area, as he finds Nightcrawler holding his mother and Anna hostage.
 * They would have found out his identity.
 * They would continue to fight.
 * Dr. Tron would have entered mid-fight, as he assisted freeing Sif's mother and Anna.
 * Nightcrawler would have grabbed Dr. Tron, as Sif transformed back.
 * Sif apologizes for everything he said to Dr. Tron, as Dr. Tron says that he considered Sif to be a son.
 * Nightcrawler kills Dr. Tron, as Sif transforms into Heatblast and beats down Nightcrawler to a bloody pulp. As he cries, he believes that he had killed Nightcrawler, as more agents come in.
 * It cuts to a few days later, as Sif visits Dr. Tron's grave.
 * It cuts to nighttime, as Bradly is seen at his front door. Shen later calls and informs him that Anna and his mother are at the hospital.
 * At the very end, Sif is witnessing the countdown to New Years on the TV. As this happens, the doorbell rings. Sif opens it, and finds Chelsea at the door, as she kisses him when the countdown stops.
 * At the very end, Hex is seen, and built up.
 * End.

Characters
Okay, I'm going to be honest here: Sif is freaking nuts.

No, I don't mean Sif the user, I mean Sif the character.

He spends an inordinate amount of time in the series acting irrationally and emotional, and while that's certainly understandable to a certain degree, being a colossal jerk to your friends 90% of the time is not okay. Wanting to stab someone with a giant crystal because they tick you off is not okay. Violently pummeling a guy to death for non-lethally shanking you and ruining your chances with a girl is not okay. I get that he's going through a lot of crap, but holy hell, get this kid a therapist!

Dr. Tron is okay, I guess. Nothing really stands out about him in either direction, though his consistent effort in guiding and comforting Sif is admirable.

The villains are pretty standard through most of the series. Lord Ziegel doesn't really do much himself, and Nightcrawler's whole deal is just kinda confusing. One thing I will give Nightcrawler, though, is that the final battle we get to actually see between him and Sif inside his base is pretty awesome, as you can really feel the violent fervor of both sides.

The minor characters are alright. They work fine for their role in the story, but don't stand out much beyond that.

The canon characters presented are also just okay. They're very different from their canon counterparts, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I'm not entirely convinced that the changes wer for the better.

Except for Vilgax, of course.

He was awesome.

Writing
Hoo boy, let's see how I can put this without being offensive. The writing is...look, I have to be straight here, the writing for this series is honestly absolutely terrible.

Misspelled words I can handle, incorrectly structured sentences I can deal with, but the writing here is so all-over-the-place that it derails the plot. You can hardly tell what's actually going on sometimes because the flow of events is translated so poorly. I probably got a few plot points wrong in my summary purely because of how badly structured it is.

Now, other than that, the grammar isn't too bad, but the bad parts certainly seem to strike in very unfortunate places. I pointed out two such instances in the summary, but I'll give one last example to finalize my point: A.I: ALERT! ALERT! ALL ENGINES DISABLED! ALL ENGINES DISABLED! PLEASE ABORT THE SHIP!

Conclusions
Sif 100: The Rebooted Series is very obviously from an inexperienced writer. I don't doubt that ZeVikingSif is a much better writer nowadays, but everyone starts out as a noob, and we must all come to terms with our noobness at one point or another. Well, either that, or try to cover it up by redoing the whole thing like I am, but that's besides the point.

With bad writing, only passable characters, and the occasional very questionable line of dialogue, this series gets my final rating of Early Installment Weirdness, 3.5/10.