Review: MECH CADET YU #4

MECH CADET YU #4
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Takeshi Miyazawa, Triona Farrell, Simon Bowland
Published by BOOM! Studios
Release Date: November 15, 2017

***SPOILER ALERT***

Stanford and the gang are up against the real enemy, a sharg! However, as the danger increases on their impromptu battlefield, will the crew be able to save the day? Find out in this latest issue of Mech Cadet Yu!

One of my favorite things that Pak does with Stanford is that he’s not invaluable to the team due to his punching skills. It’s his mechanic skills and his attention to detail that makes him a great member. The quartet would not have been able to fight the shargs without Stanford performing a few in the field mechanical fixes and I find it refreshing that an ability that’s more akin to healing and nonaggression is what makes him stand out as a good teammate.

I do have to say the speech about “fixing” Park made me a little less into Stanford as a person because implying to someone that they’ll befriend someone through a basically “you’re broken and I’ll fix you” metaphor feels a bit weird and condescending, but hey, it’s kind of flipping the All the Girls Want Bad Boys trope or the Broody Boy, Gentle Girl trope or even the I Can Change My Beloved trope, so that’s sort of nice. If it does end up being a Love Redeems situation, I’d be so down for that since that’s my favorite trope, but I kind of wish it wasn’t so mansplainy.

The art, as usual, is beautiful. The splashes that Miyazawa and Farrell create are eye catching. While I do have a soft spot for the splashes in this series, I am simply captivated by certain scene towards the middle of the comic where Park’s mech is acting up.

Stanford, almost falls to his death, only to be pulled up by a surprising hand.

“What are you doing, you idiot?”

Park brings Stanford to the inside of her mech as he takes out a power tool.

“They broke your robo. They break everything.”

Stanford unscrews a panel as fast as he can, their robos still battling outside as Buddy tries to keep Hero Force still.

“But we don’t have to take it.”

Stanford pulls out an ominous red panel from within Hero Force’s guts, the redness of Hero Force’s eyes turning back to yellow. And for a moment, Hero Force and Buddy pause, gazing at each other.

“VEEE?”

“VREEEE…”

There’s something magnificent about the calmness between those two robots, the allusion to going against the grain of what is expected from them both in Stanford’s speech. I loved it.

Read Mech Cadet Yu. Read it! Yeah, Stanford’s a bit much in this issue at times, but overall, the comic is great and I can’t wait until the next issue comes out!

The Verdict: 9.0/10

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