Paragon Lost, Parte Uno

CHILDREN, PARAGON LOST.

Earlier this year, Bioware, sensing that its fanbase was comprised of tremendous nerds, decided to deliver a Mass Effect "anime". ... I kind of hate the word "anime", because really, it's a cartoon, but sure, anime. They actually farmed this out to a Japanese studio. As far as I can tell from spending three minutes on Wikipedia, Production I. G. is responsible for this hot mess. They've actually got a pretty impressive resume. I mean, I know very little about anime, but even I can recognize Ghost in the Shell and Evangelion. Of course, it might be more prudent to blame T. O Entertainment, who has produced exactly zero things that I've heard of. FUNimation had their mitts in this too, but I thought they only distributed anime? I don't know enough about what I'm talking about.

We all bitch about Paragon Lost, but you want to know a secret? I fucking love this movie. I love bad things.

Whoever made this realized that making an adventure starring Shepard wasn't going to work, since we can't even pin down Shepard's own gender. So! So we must then turn to a new protagonist. Meet James Saunders!

Actually, ahem, he only started as James Saunders. Bioware found out that Freddie Prinze Jr. was a HUGE Mass Effect nerd, called him up, and James Saunders became the tremendously ripped bemowhawked deuteragonist James Vega.

Before we continue, you must know: I absolutely cannot take James Vega for even ten seconds. He's my second least favorite character after Kaidan. We're going to have to wait a bit to find out why. Let's just meet the rest of Vega's buddies in what we're now calling Delta Squad.

This takes place during the two years that Shepard was dead and all of council space had "dismissed" the "reaper" claim.

... except Vega, who remains deeply in love with Le Shep.

The rest of Delta Squad has names, but trust me, you don't care about them. They exist to both ask Vega why he is not currently having sex, and die. Truly, they are the essence of Mass Effect.

So anyway, Delta Squad is going to a planet to fight some krogan.

Um. Well. Those are krogan now.

Look, I'm little miss bad art, I get it, but some of the shit in Paragon Lost? It's like Bioware described some of the art assets over the phone to someone in Japan who sort of spoke English, but couldn't really understand a Canadian accent, ey, and also the connection was really bad and one of the people on the call had crying twins in the background. So those pointy things are krogan, okay? That is a krogan.

They kill all the krogan except one named Brood who James spares. Two dudes who sort of look and sound like Hackett and Anderson give Delta Squad commendations and tell them that they're now stationed at the colony they defended, Fehl Prime.

Let us now move two years later. Shepard's currently just waking up on a Cerberus station, wondering what the hell is going on with that, but let's stay with Vega, who's been living in Fehl Prime with the colonists.

Meet April. There's exactly three children in the Mass Effect canon: Gillian Grayson, April, and a third that I'll keep under my hat for now. April lives in Fehl Prime and is best buddies with Vega.

Also among the colonists is Treeya, an asari doing research on, uh, something. She's --

... is April playing with Vega's mohawk?

HOLY SHIT. That is AMAZING.

Fuck Shepard. April's my new favorite. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT.

Yeah, so the rest of Delta Squad is still horny.

That's a real quote, by the way, about how everyone wants "the blue." Is that not amazing?

There's a construction crew at Fehl Prime (they're building a huge fuckoff canon to protect people against ... hmm, I wonder) that discovers some kind of artifact. Since it's jamming communications, Delta Squad is asked to go check it out. Treeya comes too just in case she knows what it is.

... hey, Treeya, don't put yourself out or anything.

Okay, so that happens. Treeya decides to have a fit of Useful and, since communications are back up anyway, goes to Skype with her old mentor to see if she's got any ideas.

Hell yes that's Liara. Wave hi! Remember this moment, too, it's going to create the first of like a hundred plot holes.

Treeya's all, "What the hell? Reapers are a myth, Shepard totes made that up, the artifact wasn't reapers," and Liara's all, "Hey, eat my ass, you called me."

... because ... because the artifact repaired itself? Maybe? I have no idea why the call dropped.

... hey, over there in the distance, is that ... ?

YOU GUYS THAT'S A TURD

WAIT WAIT IS THAT COLLECTORS

This was, if you'll recall, the entire plot of ME2.

Seeker swarms run rampant, grabbing whatever colonist they can, to include my new best friend April. The bastards!

Delta Squad remembers that the Alliance was building a huge fuckoff gun for moments like this, so they all run to the control panel and fire at the turd collector ship.

But that was about as effective as pissing on it.

Everyone who's still alive runs underground: Treeya, Delta Squad, and this one guy who looks exactly like Ash Ketchum. His name is Messner. He just hangs out, I guess.

One member of Delta Squad starts fishing through files while he's down there, just for shits. The results are surprising!

Messner works for Cerberus! Fuck!

Vega knocks him senseless, but Messner points out that they're all trapped in the bunker, so they're all on the same team and they may as well start sharing what they know. As a peace offering, Messner starts:

That is a real moment in the movie, and it is amazing. Husbando~ and I still, to this day, scream bullshit at each other when someone says something innocuous.

... this is taking so long that I'm going to cut here.

NEXT TIME: BULLSHIT