Static Shock – 09winds

Richie’s resentment of Virgil’s blossoming friendship with Daisy, and Virgil’s annoyance at Richie’s over-management of Static’s activities, causes their friendship to strain. At the same time,
Static must contend with Slipstream, who controls winds. When
Slipstream gets the upper hand on Static, it’s Richie to the rescue.

Media by Bird Boy
Review by Matt Zimmer

Sketch: Richie

Voices:
Phil LaMarr as Virgil Hawkins/Static
Jason Marsden as Richie Foley
Bumper Robinson as Slipstream
Maria Canals as Shelly Sandoval
Michele Morgan as Sharon Hawkins
Crystal Scales as Daisy
Richard Tatum as Omar Harmozi
Keone Young as Mr. Lee
Rickey D’Shon Collins as Boy

Static and Richie have a falling out as Slipstream, a new Bang Baby terrorizes Dakota.

Richie is excited to show Static his latest invention Zap Caps but
Static's reaction is lukewarm. He's tired of Richie always bugging him about Static stuff and Richie for his part IS a little too enthusiastic.
When a Bang Baby with the power to control winds named Slipstream shows up, Richie accidentally gets in the way and Slipstream gets away.
Furious at his friend Static and Richie get into a fight and say they don't want to hang out anymore.

Virgil and Richie are not speaking to each other much to Daisy's chagrin and when Slipstream attacks again. Static tries going it alone. Richie for his part decides against his better judgment to help and is injured in the process. Static and he make up and Static uses the Zap Caps to bring Slipstream down. Richie and Static are friends again at the end of the episode.

First off, even though he IS kind of a stereotype I've always liked
Slipstream and thought he was a funny villain. It's too bad that outside of a cameo in Power Outage he never returned.

The episode is okay but honestly Virgil was kind of a jerk in it. Yes, I find Richie annoying too, but he was only trying to help and Static came off as unlikable in this episode. That said, a LOT of teenagers get into fights for stupid, petty reasons so although I didn't sympathies with
Virgil here, I recognize the need to do this story to just show that despite the super heroics Static and Richie are just regular kids.

The animation was pretty good this episode although the wind effects weren't THAT great. Still the rest of the animation was fluid and looked pretty cool. Other than the wind effects I had no complaints. While this type of story has been done a lot on other shows it worked pretty well here and I liked the episode.

Story: ***
Animation: ***1/2
Average: ***