The Sword of Shikata
First Aired: July 18th, 2003
Synopsis: Spider-Man stops some crimes and saves some people from accidents, all the while reported on by a two mysterious men and a woman in a bodysuit, wielding a sword. Later, Peter attends Mary Jane's audition for a film by director Richard Damian and she's told to come back the next day. Damian heads to his mansion, where the sword-wielding woman is waiting, as she's been hired to capture Spider-Man for Damian's animal collection. She proves herself by cutting bullets in midair with her sword. That night Spider-Man goes to stop a mugging but it turns out to be a trap by the woman, who fights him. The cops show up and her two assistants try to help her, referring to her as Shikata in the process. She cuts off the index finger of one of them, then escapes using a smoke bomb with the other one. When the cops take away the remaining assistant, Spider-Man grabs his phone which was dropped, and the next morning uses it to track down Shikata. She explains that she's not going to fight him now, but that she does want to fight to the death with him since she respects his skill. Elsewhere, Mary Jane meets with Harry and is annoyed because the movie script is terrible, so he makes a call for her to meet with Damian to discuss it.
Shikata meets with Richard Damian and explains that she'll kill Spider-Man because of honour and stuff, and is ending their contract. He sends people to kill her since she knows of his plans to capture Spider-Man, and while she's fighting them Spider-Man shows up and helps her. She thanks Spider-Man but says that she's still going to kill him. She then returns to Damian's and kills him and his bodyguards, right before Mary Jane shows up to discuss her script rewrite. She finds the body and sees an elderly Shikata performing a ritual which de-ages her, and quickly leaves. Shikata is soon on the streets of Manhattan, and Spider-Man shows up to fight her. The two fight once more, with Shikata still insisting on fighting to the death. Spider-Man disagrees but Mary Jane is found in the crowd by Shikata's remaining thug, who holds her hostage to force Spider-Man to fight harder. Mary Jane manages to break free and tells Spider-Man that Shikata's sword gives her power, which she deduced from the de-aging ritual. Spider-Man manages to snap the sword, which causes Shikata to age and fade in a burst of green light. Her remaining thug is captured by the police. Spider-Man and Mary Jane go down and alley and make out for a bit, then Spider-Man leaves since the cops are coming.
Review: I think that Shikata's probably easily the best original villain I've seen in a while, if not the best one I've seen yet. (Other good ones were, um, Mysterio's ex-girlfriend from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Carnage, and, um...does Spider-Man Unlimited's Electro count?) She raises a lot of questions that don't give answers but she manages to make it work. Do we need to know why she ages and how she de-ages? Do we need to know why she dies when the sword is broken, or how she got her abilities? Nah, she's pretty compelling even without them.
Aside from having a pretty cool and interesting antagonist, this episode manages to do another pretty good thing - namely, have some pretty good action sequences. The fights against Shikata have Spider-Man dodging and bouncing around a lot, and the scene in which she kills Ricard Damian took me by surprise in that she actually achieved her goal. Some other episodes of this show - heck, of more than a few Spider-Man shows - haven't been very dynamic in their action sequences (note how quickly I often gloss over how Spider-Man defeats someone in my synopses), so it's good that this episode shows that, yeah, it is actually possible to pull it off. The only problem is that now I'll be comparing everything to this, argh.
Overall, this is probably my favourite episode of the series so far. It's got a good story and antagonist, lots of good action, and didn't have me screwing up my eyes and going, "Wait a second, the more I think about this..." like the first three have. If I had to choose a flaw it's that the ending is perhaps a bit rushed, between Shikata just randomly strolling down the middle of the road, Mary Jane being in the crowd to be taken as a hostage, and her and Spider-Man going for secret alleyway makeouts, but you can't have it all.
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