After discovering that his orphanage was on the brink of closing due to financial stress, Finn, who was living freely on the streets, set out for a casino with the aim of making a fortune. However, nothing could have prepared Finn for the nightmare that was awaiting him. Once there, Finn encountered a car chase and bloody shootout caused by a man's “lucky” card.
Finn will eventually learn what the shootout was about. The world order can be controlled by a set of 52 X-Playing cards with the power to bestow different superhuman powers and abilities to the ones that possess them. With these cards, people can access the hidden power of the “buddy” that can be found within themselves.
There is a secret group of players called High Card, who have been directly ordered by the king of Fourland to collect the cards that have been scattered throughout the kingdom, while moonlighting as employees of the luxury car maker Pinochle. Scouted to become the group's fifth member, Finn soon joins the players on a dangerous mission to find these cards.
However, Who's Who, the rival car maker obsessed with defeating Pinochle, and the Klondikes, the infamous Mafia family, stand in the way of the gang.
A frenzied battle amongst these card obsessed players, fueled by justice, desire, and revenge, is about to begin!
Quite a different episode from the first one, but still an incredibly fun and interesting one. Quite a lot to take in though, so I'll think I'll start with close to home. It was really great getting to see Finn's adoptive father Lindsey again, and given his involvement I'm hoping to see him be a recurring character. Due to Finn's situation growing up I feel like it'll be really important to continue to establish his connections with the people above him, so Lindsey and Chris are really important characters in that regard. Also, with Bernard's comment about the Klondike Mafia, I feel like we're going to see some unfortunate events take place in the future with Lindsey. Regardless, it was really see how Finn views characters like Lindsey, and the importance they are able to impart Finn with. It's easy to write a lead character in a vacuum until they reach their station, but having even just a single character to ground them can really make a difference in motivation.
Next on my mind was the vibe. I really feel like this episode was *strongly* influenced/inspired by the Kingsman comics/movies. I mean, they having a fancy suits store called Wizardsman and they're effectively spies under royalty. Then there's the whole thing about getting into a fight at a bar/pub, and the list just sort of goes on and on. It's really cool to see media so distant from one another end up so connected, especially when one's not just a shallow copy of the other.
Though they might borrow a good bit of background from Kingsman, they do impart a lot of their own onto the episode still. They run quite wild with the whole association to Poker, right down to the lower cards being less "powerful", which I'll come back to. Anyways, the soundtrack constantly has a saxophone and jazz feel to it, and the really stark lighting and contrast alongside the often wide and low/high camera angles sells the grandeur of the actions of the characters. It exaggerates that suave nature that Chris (especially) carries in each scene, and they don't shy away from really digging into it, like when Finn finds one of the woman's earrings in Chris' car the day after.
Now, for the cards themselves. Chris talks to higher cards being *better*, but at the same time he also talks about using your head, while he has the 5 of hearts. It feels like a bit of a misdirection, and a sort of rule to be wary of higher cards. But the the thing that strikes me as the most interesting is that we've not seen anything above a 10. And even more interesting than that, the suits of the cards have *themes*. This gets confirmed thanks to the "bad guy" in this episode who uses the 3 of hearts, Rocking Rock. So with that, you can start to build an image of what these cards can do. Hearts are constitutional, or "enhancement", cards while Spades are weapon cards (which means, unless I already missed it, Wendy's card is a spade as well). We know what Bobby Ball's card is (and also Lucky Lunchman), theirs are diamonds, which exert the ability to affect reality (meaning the spontaneous combustion is a diamond player), and lastly is the club. We don't really know of many club players, other than presumably Vijay, so we can't say for sure what their nature is. It could literally *be* nature, though it could also be something else entirely, only time (and probably the next episode) really tell.
Overall, I think there's still a lot to be impressed with this episode even if it's not as flashy or extravagant when compared to the first. It's setting things up, establishing norms and understandings that can be used to extend the field of play and draw the viewer even closer in. It's giving motivation, it's throwing the characters a bone for selling themselves and giving viewers a reason to bet on them. And all the while it does that, it still gives us something fun and interesting to look at. With 52 possible cards out there, High Card has certainly got a lot of potential for what it wants to go and do, and considering we're only 2 episodes in, they've got a world of potential I'm really interested in.
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Level 1Next on my mind was the vibe. I really feel like this episode was *strongly* influenced/inspired by the Kingsman comics/movies. I mean, they having a fancy suits store called Wizardsman and they're effectively spies under royalty. Then there's the whole thing about getting into a fight at a bar/pub, and the list just sort of goes on and on. It's really cool to see media so distant from one another end up so connected, especially when one's not just a shallow copy of the other.
Though they might borrow a good bit of background from Kingsman, they do impart a lot of their own onto the episode still. They run quite wild with the whole association to Poker, right down to the lower cards being less "powerful", which I'll come back to. Anyways, the soundtrack constantly has a saxophone and jazz feel to it, and the really stark lighting and contrast alongside the often wide and low/high camera angles sells the grandeur of the actions of the characters. It exaggerates that suave nature that Chris (especially) carries in each scene, and they don't shy away from really digging into it, like when Finn finds one of the woman's earrings in Chris' car the day after.
Now, for the cards themselves. Chris talks to higher cards being *better*, but at the same time he also talks about using your head, while he has the 5 of hearts. It feels like a bit of a misdirection, and a sort of rule to be wary of higher cards. But the the thing that strikes me as the most interesting is that we've not seen anything above a 10. And even more interesting than that, the suits of the cards have *themes*. This gets confirmed thanks to the "bad guy" in this episode who uses the 3 of hearts, Rocking Rock. So with that, you can start to build an image of what these cards can do. Hearts are constitutional, or "enhancement", cards while Spades are weapon cards (which means, unless I already missed it, Wendy's card is a spade as well). We know what Bobby Ball's card is (and also Lucky Lunchman), theirs are diamonds, which exert the ability to affect reality (meaning the spontaneous combustion is a diamond player), and lastly is the club. We don't really know of many club players, other than presumably Vijay, so we can't say for sure what their nature is. It could literally *be* nature, though it could also be something else entirely, only time (and probably the next episode) really tell.
Overall, I think there's still a lot to be impressed with this episode even if it's not as flashy or extravagant when compared to the first. It's setting things up, establishing norms and understandings that can be used to extend the field of play and draw the viewer even closer in. It's giving motivation, it's throwing the characters a bone for selling themselves and giving viewers a reason to bet on them. And all the while it does that, it still gives us something fun and interesting to look at. With 52 possible cards out there, High Card has certainly got a lot of potential for what it wants to go and do, and considering we're only 2 episodes in, they've got a world of potential I'm really interested in.