Shark of Steel

by Ragey

As you're aware, Repteel had the snot beaten out of him in the last episode and was put in a high-maintenance cell that would totally keep him imprisoned no matter what. The evil eel demands his electricity-providing power pack back, but because he's not very good at his manipulative persuasive skills the guards just ignore him. The commissioner (who I mistakenly called the chief in the last episode) has good news! See, th--

...

This is one of those bad dreams where you go to work without your clothes, isn't it?

Okay, they have the decency to add a few lines in other scenes to actually make them look like pants. Plus I'm immature.

Anyway, Dr. Paradigm is going to be taking Repteel and the cage off their hands in the morning, and according to a news report the Street Sharks are watching, their foe will be genetically reprogrammed into something no more vicious than a bunny rabbit. Hooray for government-issued brainwashing! Still, the fact he'll be in Paradigm's hands boils Jab's blood, and he goes to his dumbbell to burn off some steam about the issue...
 

Which then results in a really, really awkward scene where apparently his 1000 ton weights (is there any other kind in cartoons? I mean, it doesn't say what it is, but when in doubt, think big) fall off and start breaking the floor and making the place rumble and he's pinned to the floor and they need the help of Ripster, Slammu and the goddamned Sharkcopter to get it off and back onto the pedestal, where it is now completely harmless and doesn't cause the place to rattle and shake. It's very badly animated and I think it's taken me twelve years to get just the basic drift. Then again, Street Sharks as a whole likes to complicate what should be very simple scripts with wonky animation.

After that very awkward advertisement of the totally bodacious Sharkcopter, Ripster states that he's doubtful the police will even get to hand Repteel over to Paradigm, assuming there's going to be a jailbreak tonight. And confirming that very thought, Paradigm tells his seaviates that if they did that then he'd have to go ahead with the bunny rabbit mentality thing, whereas by busting him out they can blame the Street Sharks and still keep Repteel as evil as he always was - and nobody can put the blame on him!
 

The seaviates aren't too keen on the idea of having to bust out Repteel themselves, but they dodge a bullet by the unveiling of Paradigm's latest and greatest creation yet (next to himself, of course): Sharkbot! Metal in place of bone, silicone chips where DNA would be used, and basically one mean munchin' machine - made by the "high-tech secret stuff" they stole in the last episode! And through more sloppy animation...

It can look ever so vaguely like a Street Shark! If you ignore the robot arms and the robot... scratch that, ignore everything. IT'S A SHARK WITH A BUZZ SAW AND MISSILES LOOK OUT

The real Street Sharks head out at night to see if they can foil this assumed evil scheme before it begins...

But the seaviates are out as well, aiming to stop them too! Jab and Streex aim to attack Slash and Killamari's helicopter, but before they do, Slash calls The Guy In The Sky, alerting him of a supposed Street Shark attack at the police station. Killamari drops a canister of smokescreen and their helicopter vamooses, which in the blurry surroundings looks a bit like a helicopter, prompting Streex and Jab to let loose with firepower...

Which, just as planned, looks like they're shooting very badly at the police station. Two unsuspecting officers call for immediate reinforcements, but after they make their call for help Sharkbot storms in, emits sleeping gas, and blows up the communications device with a missile with an obscenely tiny blast radius. Not without saying "jawsome" first, though!

He then proceeds to enter Repteel's chamber, retrieve his power pack and give him a tasty electricity lead to munch on, which sends the lights a-flicker, thus signalling Slobster for his part in the plan. Meanwhile, Jab finally realises they've just been shooting at a smokescreen, but before he can vent his shark rage a police helicopter orders him and Streex to land their vehicles and surrender.

Repteel and Sharkbot escape, but not without getting caught on camera - another element of this finely woven plan! Because half-spherical, clunky shark robots look exactly like comically buff people with shark heads. Ripster and Slammu happen to see this shark fin passing them by and promptly give chase, calling for Jab and Streex to do the same, with the police not even bothering to follow after.
 

Jab shark dives after Sharkbot, following him and Repteel into the abandoned subway, but some electric eels put Jab out of commission. The commissioner is interviewed on why the Street Sharks would imprison Repteel then bust him out of jail (with missiles, no less!), and he claims that he thought they were misunderstood citizens but now isn't too sure what to believe.

This, of course, is everything Dr. Paradigm could hope for! He's got Repteel back, the reputation of the Street Sharks is ruined, and even if they come back to defeat Sharkbot and reclaim their honour, there's no way they'll survive the mechanical menace's sheer power!

Meanwhile, the Sharkcopter is repaired after the weightlifting incident, and despite being called new and improved and earning a round of "jawsomes" in terms of how completely radical the thing is, it doesn't look different at all. Plus they already advertised it earlier in the show. Regardless, they head out onto the streets to hunt down Sharkbot and Repteel again.

Sharkbot is given a new objective: Find the Street Sharks, lure them into an ambush, and capture them. And with that, he and Repteel head out again with the seaviates doing the ambush part. In no time at all, the Street Sharks are on their trail and led into a junkyard, where clearly nothing good could possibly happen.

Slammu pounds Sharkbot and Repteel out of the ground, but this only prompts their robot foe to start missiling the whole place, and only after they nearly get their arses fried several times does Slammu do something vaguely smart. He rams the piled-up cars onto Sharkbot, burying him alive. Heck, Jab and Streex join in, more or less dumping the whole yard's selection of junked cars on top of their foe.

Of course, Sharkbot just shark dives out of the mess. Way to go, geniuses. Ripster follows it over to a secluded part of the junkyard, where Slash and Slobster are waiting above with a cage to drop on top of him! A cage that... magically gets a floor after it lands?

Seriously, look at that. That cage has no floor when it falls. Then it gets one when it lands. How would the plan work otherwise? If it had a floor when it fell then Ripster would just be squashed, whereas if it always hadn't one then he could just shark dive from underneath it. The only thing it does go out of its way to explain is that the bars are too tough to bite through.

Well, Douglas Booth was in charge of it, I guess. Damn you to one out of fifteen hells, Douglas!

I kid. Just ease up on nonsensicalities, Doug.

Killamari uses the helicopter to tow Ripster back to headquarters, but Sharkbot leaps up and chews his way into the cage, ready to destroy him, despite explicit instructions to capture the Street Sharks. DON'T MAKE ME THREATEN YOU AGAIN DOUG (though I can excuse it by how cartoon robots are rarely the most intelligent things in the world). Regardless, it doesn't do a good job of that either, merely using a buzz saw to lop the top of his skull off, and doing very badly at it.

His good buddies Jab and Streex save his hide by attacking the helicopter, severing the cage from it and somehow destroying the floor too, allowing Ripster to land safely on Streex's glider and for Sharkbot to crash into the ground. It's still active, however, but Ripster's got an idea after his near-death experience.

Make Slammu shoot Sharkbot in the face several times.

Okay, after at least twenty seconds of unnecessary missiles to the face, Ripster uses the sharkcopter to hook up Sharkbot and lift him into the air. Jab cuts a convenient electricity lead somewhere and jams it into Sharkbot's innards, followed up by Ripster programming some new commands: Return to Sharkbot headquarters and destroy.

The seaviates are not impressed.

Before they can stop their reprogrammed ally, Sharkbot does what he was told: He returns to Dr. Paradigm's lab and self-destructs. That's gotta hurt.

Watching the news report, the Street Sharks laugh at Paradigm having his place blown up, and the doctor himself isn't too chuffed, especially with the authorities being unsure of the cause while he quite understandably blames the Street Sharks for it. They may not have cleared their reputation, but they still showed him what's what and put some dents into Sharkbot, so all is well!

OH SHIT IT'S BEHIND YOU

"You... rang?"

And everyone celebrates by supposedly playing around with Bends, but he sure looks terrified.

While the art in this episode is merely mediocre, it gets comically bad towards the end of the junkyard fight.

Look at that. Look at that. That is meant to be Sharkbot and Streex's glider respectively, and they look like unpainted cereal gifts.

Slash has disturbingly toned buttocks for a freak.

Look at those hams, man.