"So when Sonnie steps into the pit, she's not fighting for pride or status and certainly not for your fucking money. She's carving up the men who did this to her."
In a world of underground cage fights featuring monsters, a traumatized young woman named Sonnie has a unique advantage.
Helen Sadler voices Sonnie. Based on the short story of the same name by Peter F. Hamilton.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Backstory Change: Sonnie's Rape as Backstory was a lie to Dicko in the original short story, where it was originally a car accident.
- Alien Blood: Both monsters are shown bleeding orange blood.
- All There in the Script: Jennifer (Dicko's girl) and Simon (Turboraptor's operator) are never named in the dialogue, their names only appearing in the final credits.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Turboraptor has a blade made of bone concealed inside its arm just in case it's ripped off. Sonnie's team concedes it's technically legal, as it is part of the beast, though they're amazed that Simon engineered it.
- Beastly Blood Sports: Focuses on fights to the death between bioengineered beasts controlled remotely by human pilots. For Sonnie though, it's more of a conventional Blood Sport.
- Butch Lesbian: Sonnie's human body doesn't present a feminine appearance and she is seduced by Jennifer.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: In the original story, it's revealed that Khanivore doesn't have any organs to speak of — they make for easy targets and don't really serve a purpose for something that spends most of its time in stasis. Instead, she's 100% pure muscle and gets loaded up with preoxygenated blood before each fight.
- Central Theme: Hidden depths, and things being more complicated than they appear.
- Classy Cane: Dicko carries one.
- Composite Character: Jacob and Karran, the creators of Khanivore in Peter F. Hamilton's story, are Adapted Out and their roles merged with Wes and Ivrina, who in the story have ancillary technical jobs in Sonnie's team.
- Confusion Fu: How Khanivore tends to fight, somersaulting around the arena, avoiding hits and wearing down the opponents with long-distance strikes using its spiked tails.
- The Constant: The fight takes place in a vandalised St Paul's Cathedral in the midst of a cyberpunk Neon City.
- Combat Tentacles: Khanivore's tail splits into four long tentacles with spiked ends.
- Cyberpunk: The setting is a bleak future Britain where biological engineering has advanced to such a degree that gladiatorial combat between genetically-engineered Kaiju is evening entertainment, but crime, poverty and corruption are apparently still rife.
- Death by Adaptation: Dicko wasn't killed by Sonnie, as he just sent his assassin and never showed up to gloat.
- Decapitation Presentation: After defeating the Turboraptor, the Khanivore rips off its head and holds it up.
- Defiant to the End: Sonnie continually taunts Dicko as Jennifer kills her, which is then subverted when it's revealed they're stomping on an empty shell that she's been remotely piloting.
- Dissonant Serenity: Subverted; on first viewing, Sonnie doesn't blink when Turborapter has her on the ropes, maintaining her focus and Lotus Position. On rewatch however, Sonnie-Khanivore's distress is obvious because she's in danger of dying.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The scene where Turboraptor momentarily turns the tables on Khanivore is very uncomfortably framed to echo Sonnie's Rape as Backstory, from the way Khanivore attempts to escape by crawling away, to how Turboraptor pins Khanivore against the wall, not to mention the shot of Turboraptor slowly thrusting its armblade into Khanivore's abdomen.
- Emergency Transformation: Sonnie was so badly wounded by her rapists that her friends had to put her brain into her beast to save her.
- Every Man Has His Price: Dicko offers a half-million bribe to throw the match, and does not take it well when Sonnie refuses and then goes on to win.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Though in the original short story, it's not the story that Sonnie tells Dicko.
- Exact Words: Jennifer tells Sonnie that she stays with Dicko for "security". What she doesn't say is whose security.
- Feel No Pain: Sonnie walks barefoot across broken glass without noticing, foreshadowing for the reveal that her body is artificial.
- Feminist Fantasy: A scarred, tough-as-nails rape survivor carves up toxic, powerful men and brings them down a peg, both inside and outside the arena.
- Femme Fatalons: Jennifer has foot-long bone spurs hidden in her fingers. In the short story, they're magnetically-fired titanium spikes.
- Flipping the Bird: Dicko asks them one last time to reconsider his offer as they step into the lift, and gets a bird as the doors close.
- Foreshadowing:
- If you pay attention, you'll notice that Wes isn't activating Sonnie's affinity link as the bout starts — he's killing it. At all other times, the light on Sonnie's head is green, meaning that the link is active. Turboraptor's pilot is also yelling and moving around during the fight, while Sonnie's human body sits perfectly still with her eyes closed—because she's not hooked in any more.
- When it seems like Khanivore is losing the fight, Ivrina and Wes seem more afraid than irritated that Sonnie is getting beat. Because that's actually Sonnie who's getting hurt in the arena; if Khanivore dies, Sonnie's dead for real.
- When Sonnie meets Jennifer in the lab, she takes the time to close a pod which is clearly designed with human proportions in mind. An odd thing to keep in a lab for a monster, but quite sensible if they also have to maintain a human shell.
- Since absolutely nobody could survive what Jennifer does to Sonnie and she not only still lives, but taunts her back, it becomes crystal clear she isn't inside that body even before she states so herself.
- Fragile Speedster: Khanivore can't hit nearly as hard as Turboraptor, but she's much more agile, using her tails to inflict lots of small injuries while keeping her distance.
- Freudian Excuse: What makes Sonnie so fierce and headstrong is her anger after being gang-raped. Or that's what everybody thinks. Sonnie scoffs at the fact that everyone assumes that about her, and we ultimately learn that the real reason why she never gives up is that, unlike other combatants, she's fighting for her life every time.
- Gender-Blender Name: Sonnie is a girl. And Khanivore is a girl as well, as Sonnie points out when Dicko assumes otherwise (though why you'd bother giving a bioengineered fighting machine genitalia of either sex is a mystery).
- Gorn: Don't go in expecting Gory Discretion Shots - you get to see arms getting ripped apart, bloody stabbings, heads getting splattered onto floors and faces erupting into the camera from a hit in the back. The ring announcer even makes a point of telling the audience there's going to be plenty of gore.
- Go Seduce My Archnemesis: Dicko gets Jennifer to attempt this. Would have succeeded, too, if not for The Reveal.
- Had to Be Sharp: Why is Sonnie undefeated at the monster fights? She is the monster, so if she loses, she dies.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: The ring announcer doesn't appear afraid to be between two huge monsters who are about to attack each other. We find out why when he flickers and disappears, and the Hover Bot projecting the hologram quickly ascends out of the way.
- Horn Attack: Khanivore has a huge spike on its head which she uses to stab Turboraptor's chest when he has her pinned to a wall.
- In the Hood: Sonnie wears a hoodie to hide her scars.
- Ironic Echo: "Are you scared now?" Asked by Dicko when he thinks Sonnie is at his mercy. Sonnie says it back to him after the tables are turned.
- Jump Scare: When the spikes hit Sonnie's face.
- Lecherous Licking: Jennifer mockingly licks the blood on Sonnie's face after impaling her.
- Lotus Position: Sonnie's position during the fight. Subverted in that it's not so she can focus on the combat, but because her remote human body is switched off and sitting in that position disguises the fact.
- Made of Iron: Both beasts inflict serious bodily harm onto each other, including deep cuts, stabs and amputations, somehow managing to not only stay alive but keep fighting. It takes Khanivore chewing a huge piece out of Turboraptor's neck to finally put it down for good.
- Mighty Glacier: Turboraptor's fighting style. It's big, it's strong, and though another beast might be able to jump around most of its attacks it's going to hit at some point, and then it's going to hurt.
- Mon Mode: At the end of the short, it's revealed that Sonnie's mind was transferred to Khanivore after her body suffered critical injuries. The human body is being piloted by Sonnie, the monster, to give the illusion of her controlling the beast instead of vice versa.
- Multiarmed Multitasking: Downplayed in the original story, as Sonnie can only focus on using two tentacles at a time, giving the others a simple task and relying on her processors to carry it out.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: In addition to being a pun on "carnivore", Khanivore means "king eater".
- Non-Indicative Name: Turboraptor's name makes you think about a fast predator, but it's actually a Mighty Glacier.
- Poking Dead Things with a Stick: Dicko pokes Sonnie with his Classy Cane at the end when she is lying on the ground dying.
- Precision F-Strike: Sonnie's female companion when denying Dicko's offer in the beginning:"So when Sonnie steps into the pit, she's not fighting for pride or status, and certainly not for your fucking money."
- Rape as Backstory: Sonnie's friends explain to Dicko that she was raped, beaten, and cut up by an "estate gang" and she fights as proxy revenge on the ones who hurt her, which is why no bribe is enough to convince her to throw the fight. Though, as Jennifer is seducing her, Sonnie confesses that it's not all there is to her, people just don't look past the convenient story. In fact, she was beaten up so badly her friends had to transplant her brain into her beast; she's fighting for her life every time.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Sonnie had blue tattoos, while Simon has red tattoos on his body. She stays calm and meditates the entire fight, while Simon shouts, swears and angrily gesticulates the entire fight.
- Remote Body: Combatants use devices attached to their heads to remotely control bioengineered monsters in combat. In Sonnie's case, her human body is the "remote" one.
- The Reveal: Sonnie is not a woman who occasionally pilots a monster, Sonnie is a monster who occasionally pilots a woman.
- Rewatch Bonus: When Dicko suggests Sonnie throw the fight, her beast hits the glass of her tank. Once you know the ending, you realize that was actually Sonnie reacting, so she tells him to fuck off twice.
- Shell-Shock Silence: A non-explosive variant when the fight starts turning against Khanivore, as the sound of the cheering crowd cuts out and is replaced with a pulsating thrum of music.
- Sore Loser: When Sonnie's opponent loses at the arena, he gets angry and blames his defeat on his helpers. Dicko sends an assassin to kill Sonnie after losing a good deal of money when she refuses to throw the match.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Everyone assumes Sonnie is just taking revenge for her rape and lashes out on the arena. She doesn't deny it, but in private is shown to be openly dismissive to the story surrounding herself.
- Team Power Walk: Sonnie and her partners walk up to the arena in slow motion.
- Throwing the Fight: Sonnie refuses when this is offered. Understandably so, as it would kill her.
- Tomato Surprise: Sonnie isn't a human whose brain links to a fighting monster — her brain is in the monster and she pilots her human body when not fighting.
- Up Close with the Monster: The episode ends with Dicko face-to-face with Sonnie as Khanivore.
- Vapor Wear: Ivrina walks around in an open jacket with only body paint underneath. Jennifer isn't wearing anything under her dress, either. It's also obvious Sonnie isn't wearing a bra beneath her shirt.
- Women Are Delicate: Twice subverted. Sonnie is not the Broken Bird she appears to be - she's not victorious for living through her revenge fantasies, but because she's in fear for her life. And Jennifer isn't the arm-candy Trophy Wife in a vastly imbalanced relationship she can't get out of, but a professional assassin.
- Your Head A-Splode: How Jennifer eventually meets her demise, courtesy of a giant spike going through it.
