The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => Discussion => Topic started by: Cmdr_King on March 24, 2015, 01:01:16 AM
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So lately I've been investing far more into my other hobby than the vidya games, and thought that having a place to organize and preserve thoughts on what I've been watching would be nice. I'll give any entry (generally, each season of a given show) its own post to facilitate skimming past potential spoileriness, because entire posts in tiny text would sorta defeat the purpose of having a topic I can easily read and refer back to.
Archive of Available Works: http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193897#msg193897
Table of Contents Holy Crap This Kept Going
Page 1
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173001#msg173001)
Batman: The Animated Series (Vol. 3/The Adventures of Batman and Robin) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173062#msg173062)
Justice League (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173092.html#msg173092)
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173132#msg173132)
The Legend of Korra (Book Four: Balance) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173249#msg173249)
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 3) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173252#msg173252)
Justice League (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173291.html#msg173291)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg173298#msg173298)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173573.html#msg173573)
Justice League Unlimited (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173578.html#msg173578)
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 4) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173582.html#msg173582)
Justice League Unlimited (Season 2-partial) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173642.html#msg173642)
Page 2
Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173706.html#msg173706)
Adventure Time (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg173886.html#msg173886)
Daria (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174077.html#msg174077)
Daria (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174180.html#msg174180)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 1: Water) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174300.html#msg174300)
Page 3
Daria (Season 3) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174357.html#msg174357)
Daria (Season 4) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174405.html#msg174405)
Daria: Is it Fall Yet? (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174409.html#msg174409)
Daria (Season 5) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174463.html#msg174463)
Daria: Is it College Yet? (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174464.html#msg174464)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 2: Earth) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174551.html#msg174551)
Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead (Vol. 4/Season 8) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174679.html#msg174679)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 3: Fire) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg174896.html#msg174896)
Inside Out (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175378.html#msg175378)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2012] (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175379.html#msg175379)
Tiny Toon Adventures (Season 1, Vol. 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175518.html#msg175518)
Teen Titans (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175657.html#msg175657)
Page 4
Brave (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175660.html#msg175660)
Young Justice (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg175957.html#msg175957)
Superman: The Animated Series (Vol. 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg176162.html#msg176162)
Planet Hulk (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg176476.html#msg176476)
Frozen (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg176779.html#msg176779)
Page 5
Adventure Time (Season 5) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg176904.html#msg176904)
Batman: The Animated Series (Vol. 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177057.html#msg177057)
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177269.html#msg177269)
Big Hero 6 (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177279.html#msg177279)
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177283.html#msg177283)
The Princess and the Frog (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177285.html#msg177285)
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177406.html#msg177406)
Dungeons & Dragons (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177732.html#msg177732)
Aria: The Animation (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177848.html#msg177848)
Redline (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg177944.html#msg177944)
Page 6
Beauty and the Beast (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178125.html#msg178125)
Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178386.html#msg178386)
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178503.html#msg178503)
Wonder Woman (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178504.html#msg178504)
Superman: Doomsday (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178522.html#msg178522)
Over the Garden Wall (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178547.html#msg178547)
Star Wars Rebels (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178677.html#msg178677)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg178731.html#msg178731)
Mulan (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg179067.html#msg179067)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Friendship Games (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg179421.html#msg179421)
Aladdin (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg179429.html#msg179429)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg179989.html#msg179989)
Page 7
The Little Mermaid (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg179993.html#msg179993)
Spectacular Spider-Man (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180259.html#msg180259)
The Incredibles (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180473.html#msg180473)
Wreck-It Ralph (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180560.html#msg180560)
The Slayers (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180884.html#msg180884)
Lilo & Stitch (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180900.html#msg180900)
Hercules (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg180975.html#msg180975)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181064.html#msg181064)
Slayers Special (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181096.html#msg181096)
Slayers Excellent (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181120.html#msg181120)
Star Wars: Ewoks (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181222.html#msg181222)
The Good Dinosaur (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181224.html#msg181224)
Page 8
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181396.html#msg181396)
Star Trek: The Animated Series (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181476.html#msg181476)
The Iron Giant (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181477.html#msg181477)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181618.html#msg181618)
Tangled (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg181639.html#msg181639)
Wall-E (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182058.html#msg182058)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182261.html#msg182261)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182277.html#msg182277)
Batman and Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182278.html#msg182278)
Kung-Fu Panda (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182308.html#msg182308)
Ratatouille (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182827.html#msg182827)
Page 9
Summer Wars (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg182911.html#msg182911)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg183393.html#msg183393)
The Slayers Next (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg183564.html#msg183564)
Thor: Tales of Asgard (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg183889.html#msg183889)
Zootopia (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg183928.html#msg183928)
Teen Titans (Season 2) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6666.msg184377.html#msg184377)
The Prince of Egypt (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg184568#msg184568)
An American Tail (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg184707#msg184707)
Tokyo Godfathers (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg185532#msg185532)
Fantasia (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg185579#msg185579)
Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg185739#msg185739)
Millennium Actress (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg186132#msg186132)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg186194#msg186194)
Page 10
Finding Dory (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg187636#msg187636)
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 5) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg187906#msg187906)
The Pirates of Dark Water (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188297#msg188297)
Hotel Transylvania (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188303#msg188303)
Bob's Burgers (Season 1) (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188360#msg188360)
Batman: The Killing Joke (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188479#msg188479)
Sausage Party (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188490#msg188490)
Kubo and the Two Strings (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg188524#msg188524)
My Little Pony Equestria Girls: The Legend of Everfree (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg190405#msg190405)
The Lego Batman Movie (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192123#msg192123)
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192500#msg192500)
Despicable Me (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192554#msg192554)
Moana (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192722#msg192722)
The Great Mouse Detective (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192772#msg192772)
Page 11
Despicable Me 2 (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg192870#msg192870)
Star Driver (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193335#msg193335)
The Sword in the Stone (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193649#msg193649)
Chicken Run (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193712#msg193712)
Robin Hood (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193906#msg193906)
Futurama: Bender's Big Score (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg193908#msg193908)
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194289#msg194289)
Bolt (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194472#msg194472)
Despicable Me (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194496#msg194496)
Alice in Wonderland (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194570#msg194570)
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194893#msg194893)
My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Magical Movie Night (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg194928#msg194928)
Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg195077#msg195077)
Page 12
The Little Prince (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6666.msg195334#msg195334)
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Avengers: Earth's Mightest Heroes (Season 1
Probably the biggest takeaway from EMH is that it's uneven as fuck. There is quite a lot of good stuff going on in this show, with a rock solid cast dynamic and in particular an especially nice take on the Hulk, as well as being the only adaptation I'm aware of that features Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne so prominently. At the same time there's a lot of relative duds in the episode lineup too. The five introductory episodes are... just not terribly interesting, much focused on name-dropping elements for future use without being terribly interesting in how they do it. The Cap episode, having an actual plot rather than being all "Named villain! Important quest object! SHIELD!", is alright but nothing too great. After that point they kinda alternate between small arcs for a major villain to fight, and single episodes that are adding up to the season ending conflict. Those are fairly split on quality; Kang and Ultron are pretty good episodes, while the Leader's Gamma World bits can go jump in a hole. The Masters of Evil episodes range from 'please don't tell me we are playing this storyline so straight' (Everything's Wonderful) to 'weeeeee' (Masters of Evil), although the final payoff is about right.
It's odd in general. Ultron and Loki are the only real A-List Marvel villains on the show (no Doc Doom, no Thanos, no Galactus, no Magneto (although that at least makes sense), no eastern european track suit guys, Red Skull is basically a cameo), and unlike the natural comparison point for this show not a lot of effort is spent making the lesser known villains stand out in any particular way. Like, I happened to watch Hulk vs Thor right after finishing the series, and learned about as much about Enchantress' abilities, motivations, and personality from that 45 minute movie she was a secondary character in than this show where she's the most visible villain for most of the show! Christ, at least have her yell "About your performance... IT IS MAGNIFICENT" or something.
Also, and I almost forgot about this, fuck Maria Hill in this continuity. You do not get to be THAT lawful stupid in the middle of a gang war between HYDRA and AIM. Shoot the Avengers in the back later, stop the goddamned supervillains now, thanks.
Still, the team is handled well. To my knowledge this is the only adaptation of a marvel work where Black Panther is a major character, and I do find myself wanting to read some of his older stories and seeing how they measure up. They do a great job getting across not just how broken Hank is, but showing the cognitive dissonance that leads him to be such a human wreck. Add in the aforementioned 'cool take on the Hulk' and most of the cast is not just interesting, but someone we don't usually get in these shows.
Best Episode: I'm torn between A Day Unlike Any Other, just for the great imagery of the Avengers flying to Asgardia upon winged steeds with the Valkyries, and Breakout pt. 2 for being a great fight that really sold how these people might work together. Bonus points for Graviton being pretty fun to watch despite being someone I seriously never knew existed.
Weakest Episode: Gamma World pt. 2 Oh good the heroes mutated so not only do we have a bunch of wanna-be hulks but we don't want to HURT them. Christ. Normally in a mind control story you at least have decent fights because you see how people who normally work together can be used against each other.
Grade: 6/10 I think. I did order season 2, so depending how the breadcrumbs here go and how the existing villains are handled I might raise my opinion on the series as a whole.
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Batman: The Animated Series (Season 3/The Adventures of Batman and Robin)
So everyone knows Batman:TAS. Season 3 is a bit tame overall, although in part I think it's because the later DCAU got considerably more sophisticated than Batman really had a chance to. That said at least in this season you can really see why they decided to go with the revised animation style in later shows and the last season of this one. There's a lot of off model moments, especially with more kinetic characters, that don't happen much in later stuff like Batman Beyond.
Anyway, some surprises this season were mostly induced by researching things after the fact. Like, it turns out every appearance from Ra's al Ghul in this series is actually in this season, which is strange to me because I remember him as the number two overall villain behind the Joker. Though actually on the whole the Joker doesn't get much action in this season either, so I guess that might be where the impression came from.
This is also the point they seemed to realize that they could do some serious continuity in the series. They were about 60 episodes in going into this season, so they had enough material to actually do a lot of continuations of previous stories or bringing back previous characters as experts for the duo to consult. Basically I feel like this is sort of the foundation for what the DCAU eventually became, but a lot of the individual pieces definitely show their age.
Best Episode: There's a few good but not outstanding episodes to pick from. I'm going to single out House and Garden though. I dunno, Poison Ivy is so often the most sadistic villain on the show, so her more vulnerable side being on display here is pretty nice to see.
Weakest Episode: Harley's Holiday. Those comments about being off model above are to a large extend inspired most by this episode. As well, a lot of Harley's dialog and peppiness are honestly a bit grating in this one, which was pretty damned disappointing.
Grade: 6/10. No episodes stood out as much as, oh, Heart of Ice and while it's cool to watch the show transform into the DCAU more or less it's still a bit just okay unto itself.
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Justice League (Season 1)
Hello again DCAU. So Justice League plays differently from any other DCAU entry, due to all episodes (well, except the Christmas one, but that's next season) being a multi-parter. Kinda a feel of always trying to be epic. But then, with the premise of the show, a certain amount of that is needed. Logically speaking, every enemy has to be so threatening that Superman cannot beat them alone, which automatically sets the bar high. By and large they get that part right even if other stuff sometimes goes wrong.
Season 1 improves almost linearly, sometimes for production reasons and sometimes for storytelling ones. Production is simple, new episode format, increased need for VA cast, few other things, they took a while to work out the kinks. The storytelling ones are a bit self-inflicted. Despite being the fourth series in the DCAU, with the previous 3 completing their runs, 4/7 of their primary cast were actually new characters, and one of the remaining three was actually a one shot cameo who I don't know was confirmed as actually the same Flash (although I believe that Flash was indeed Wally West. THEN AGAIN. Season 1 of JL does not actually address Flash as Wally West at any point so.) So a big chunk of the first half or so of the season is highlight episodes for GL, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter. Flash and Hawkgirl are sorta skipped over but the latter is probablly intentional (and it works since her presented personality is pretty straightforward and fun anyway). Season 1 Flash is kiiiinda a dipshit though. They figure him out later but yeah, pretty weird going back to this season and seeing him.
The pick of first episode villain is weird. Is this a straight callback to the original JLA #1 or something? I've never seen reference to it before. The next couple are more kinda exploring the scope of the show and testing waters as it were, so all told we get to about episode 8 before a particular good storyline shows up. Unsurprising of course: continuity is the DCAU's friend and it having so much to draw on is why it ultimately became the standard for animation, at least for me. Once we get past that first quarter of the season or so the show largely maintains a pretty reasonable standard of quality, roughly equal to the TASes overall. That later seasons of the show are, at least to my memory, a step up from this... well refer back to previous statement I suppose.
Best Episode: The Savage Time. I'm not sure single episodes of the JL multi-parters stand out like they did in other series, so I'll just nod the full serial here. Anyway, great concept, lots of good moments, both on epicness and poignancy, and seeing Bruce Timm geek out about comic history is always a treat (relatedly I thought about giving Legends the nod but not featuring the full cast is a small hit there).
Weakest Episode: Secret Origins. The introductions of the heroes feel very forced and don't really establish their characters in an interesting way. They also burn too much time setting up the premise and only having Supes and Bats which would make sense if this was made as I pilot and the rest of the series commissioned later, but from the dates and comments I don't think that's true.
Grade: 7/10. Thought about going up to an 8 since it ends pretty strong but it feels a bit too uneven for that.
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*waits patiently for Justice League Season 2 review*
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I'm not actually going in any particular order, just doing stuff as I watch (or rewatch) it. I actually don't have JL season 2, but it'd been about 10 years since I've seen it so I picked season 1 up last week and actually just ordered season 2.
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Season 2)
The season has a major downside which I want to address first. While the really overt "oh this team member is off in another country today" nods in season 1 were kinda distracting, they also tended to be, y'know, just for a couple episodes. Season 2 has, variously, Cap, Hank Pym, Thor, and Hulk disappear for 10-13 episode stretches. ie half the damn season. Now while they do provide story justifications for all these, in a show whose primary appeal was team dynamic spending essentially the entire season with the team missing at least one major member is pretty lousy. Cap being gone by itself is fine, it's setting up a long-term plot they pull a lot of drama from, and watching Skrull!Cap's attempts to emulate the original kept the overall team dynamic from breaking down too much. The others are less workable. I know Hank's thing is being an empty husk of a human being but you could have... y'know, not put that in this continuity. Something more productive than "spend 20 consecutive episodes sulking" over the whole Ultron thing could have been thought of. Thor and EMH Hulk are my favorite characters in the lineup so just having less of them in general is sad times.
Otherwise this is the superior season overall. While Secret Invasion is a pretty good episode, there unfortunately was a price to be paid in dreary WHO CAN YOU TRUUUUSTTTT episodes leading up to it. And there is a stark (pun intended) difference in the focus between seasons; Season 1 was Iron Man, Season 2 is Cap. So having a fake in the first half blunts the whole point of the thing. Once he's back the whole "Humans are Special" counterpoint to the daily alien invasions can actually be made properly and the season functions as intended more or less. Given the major baddies of the season are alien invaders who Cap FUCK YEAHs in the face and the Red Skull just seals the point. It's Captain America time baby.
I had this thought in the first season, but the second season here really cemented it, and ties in nicely to having watched Batman:TAS S3 in the interim; I think Marvel when they were working on this wanted to do a Marvel Animated Universe, with this, Wolverine and the X-Men, and Spectacular Spider-Man forming a loose continuity, although since both those shows ended less-than-ideally right before this one started means it didn't quiiiite line up. And then Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble started and derailed the whole thing. I gather those two shows ARE in continuity with each other, except nobody really cares because Ultimate Spider-Man is just okay and Avengers Assemble is... less than okay.
Anyway, so one of the things that works is they have enough continuity now to make stories about Enemy Mine situations and stuff actually work, which felt forced in the first season and had a lot of <Iron Man> "Oh sure I know about [thing that hasn't actually been on the show before], I had to deal with that in [fight that apparently happened off screen, possibly between episodes]." Now when they call back they have something to call back TO. Although sadly this meant the felt the need to pull "Previously On X-Men Avengers". Like in the first episode I was okay with it, back from the season break and all, but every episode, even ones it didn't make a lick of sense in like the last one? C'mon guys.
Luke Cage and Iron Fist are great. Carol Danvers actually being a regular feature on the show was also welcome, because look having Jennifer Hale to punch evil in the face is an unequivocal Good Thing. Even if her seeming inability to recognize when she's being played and when she's not is a bit of a downer.
I miss the theme song.
Best Episode: Acts of Vengeance. It ties up a lot of the loose ends from season 1, let's each of the Masters of Evil show off in a way they never really did before, has probably the best use of the "Skrull!Cap is giving himself away but nobody's noticing" aspect for the first half of the season, and ends on a nice cliffhanger note even if they did not actually get around to Ragnarok.
Weakest Episode: Yellow Jacket. Hank is back! Wait no it's an empty husk of a man who's a jackass because reasons.
Grade: 7/10. The series never quite achieved a real "holy shit this is GREAT" moment but it was steadfastly entertaining throughout.
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The Legend of Korra (Book Four: Balance)
Best season of Korra.
Okay fine. It finally hit me what, through good times and bad, Korra had really been missing. That missing piece maaaaay have caused some tearbending. I mean, due to internets I didn't get to watch this until it hit blu-ray, long since knew the major spoilers, knew that it happened, but still got me.
What the series was missing was Toph. I mean, not specifically Toph necessarily (although again, tearbending), but rather that no character in the show fulfilled her place in the overall character dynamics. To be gruff, to say what needed said, to remind the rest of the cast when they were being dunderheads. We did have Varrick, and he fullfils some of those functions, but he's a very different character and more importantly an outsider to the group.
Moving on. Everyone was great this season. Well. Bolin and Tenzin's family fell out of focus after being the real stars of book three, but otherwise Korra, Asami and Mako have never been written better on the show, Varrick continues to be great, Zhu-Li out of nowhere to be a great and enjoyable character. I favor Zaheer as a character, but Kuvira is still a fine villain, and more importantly presents the threat the show as a whole needed despite being less of a direct threat to Korra than each of the previous villains. Amon's charisma, Vaatu's raw power, and Zaheer's cunning were dangerous and world-threatening... but that's the issue, they were all clearly terrible threats that had to be stopped. Everyone knew what needed to be done. With Kuvira there isn't so clear-cut an answer, and while she presents a substantial threat to the characters physically, she more importantly presents a moral threat to Korra. Would you not have taken similar actions? Can you devise a more effective solution for lasting peace in the Earth Kingdom? Vital questions that do a lot more to highlight the differences in the two shows than what came before. Aang always knew he was right and needed to find the strength to act on it and believe it was his duty to do it. Korra embraced being the avatar, but never understood what she was actually supposed to do.
It's sorta odd that there wasn't a major highlight of the different family clans after the climax, since family had been such a major theme of the series to this point. I suppose Remembrances touched on it, and the back half of The Last Stand did have a wedding (Do the Thing!), but still a bit weird. Maybe they weren't sure they could get all the actors back in the booth for a line and a half at the end because budget.
So... the thing. There's about six scenes throughout the season that really sell on it, although I'm sure it was a thing in Book Three and will have to watch for them on the rewatch. The only especially telling one was in Korra's letter... I believe she reads it in Korra Alone? Hope so. Anyway,... actually.
Best Episode: Korra Alone. I love The Calling, Remembrances, and Operation Beifong, but I have to nod Korra Alone for raw emotional punch. We see something in Korra we never, ever see before, emotional vulnerability. Her response to Asami is basically the first time we see her admit to feelings that aren't frustration to someone that's still alive, and as noted above "Nice to see you again, Twinkle Toes"? Tearbending.
Weakest Episode: And for the first time it's super obvious why I chose this phrasing. There are not bad episodes in Book Four. So the weakest episode is just the one that I wasn't in love with, which is After All These Years. A lot of it is exposition, and the serious emotional weight of it is thrust off to the next episode, ie the one I called the BEST episode of the season.
Grade: 9/10. Korra on the whole is not quite so good a show as Avatar. Without a rewatch, I'm probably going to hand out 7/7/8/9 on Korra, while Avatar would be closer to 8/9/9. But basically unlike any other tv producers I know of, the Avatar team know how to end a goddamned show. They GET that if you know in advance the show is ending, you set up your cards, save a little back to do it justice, and let those engines loose for the finish line. The fact that both shows had, after their first seasons, a firm idea of how much show they'd be able to do helps a lot I'm sure, but no, Korra just has an excellent finale even if I like an earlier episode more. Big scale, big confrontation, feels like a real conclusion to the major arcs, characters end in a better place than they started, there's a sense of both reflection and looking forward, and of course, you always have a nice emotional moment riiiiiight before you fade to 'The End'.
God damn. I might have to buy some Avatar comics. After all the rewatches for this topic I mean.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 3)
So short season is short. I get the sense in this one they were essentially trying to change the format of the show from one-shots that acknowledge continuity to ongoing continuity-driven storytelling, so the shortness of the season was them finding a balance they liked. Or they had to steal the budget of this season for the first Equestria Girls. One of the two.
So most of the season is spent following up logical extensions of stuff they'd had in previous episodes but never really followed up on. Luna's return as a Princess, Rainbow's aspiration to join the Wonderbolts, and of course the culmination of Twilight's studies. On the whole probably one of the stronger seasons, although there is a disproportionate amount of pouting which is a little off.
Best Episode: Well, I should probably cite Sleepless in Ponyville or Keep Calm and Flutter On, but nah. Magic Duel. Trixie is basically the best and her torments of various extras and the like were pretty entertaining. It's also one of the rarer cases where Twilight being clever seems like more than her just having an inexplicably encyclopedic knowledge of a library full of encyclopedias, but her actually thinking of what her opponent is doing and how to gt them to defeat themselves.
Also yes basically I watched Turnabout Storm and Trixie is one of my favorite MLP characters.
Weakest Episode: One Bad Apple. That this season also has Sleepless in Ponyville makes just how stock and crummy a CMC episode this is stand out. Also hurts that... well, most CMC episodes are extra special Aesop driven, and the one for this episode is nonsensical. Like, yesss, sure, they made Babs feel put out because of their over the topness, but setting up Babs to embarass herself is not some outrageous disproportionate act of evil on their part.
It also highlights the recurring weakness of most CMC episodes, how the BLUE FUCK are Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon able to get away with a fraction of the shit they do? Unlike a modern setting, there is actual,l active adult supervision of children in Equestria, seeing them able to so overtly and terribly savage other kids with seeming impunity is distractingly unlikely.
Grade: 7/10. On the one hand there's quite a few good episodes, but on the other I find the season sorta hard to remember a lot of specifics from without a wiki assist. I think mostly the big episode for the season is just kinda okay so while it has strong slice of life bits it lacks big epic "hells yeaaaaaaahhh" moments.
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Justice League (Season 2)
Helloooooooo DCAU. The true question here for me is, is this peak DCAU, or will it instead go to JLU Season 1, because it's a nuanced and difficult question. One I'll probably have to come back to after a healthy rewatch of JLU 1, despite having seen that a lot more times than the Justice League seasons. Anywho, episodes in this season, excepting one set, fall into two basic catagories: great and SUPER great. As always in DCAU works, we come back to continuity. We start off resolving lingering plot threads from Superman TAS, draw heavily from extant continuity from the last season of this show, feature the last appearance (in production order) of The Joker, and retroactively have the two parter that sets the foundation for ALL of JLU but we'll get to that in due time.
They also managed a much better character balance this time around (where Season 1 was basically GL's show sometimes costarring J'onn J'onz), and thanks to knowing in much more detail how Starcrossed was going to shake down from the outset actually made a season-long arc out of Hawkgirl's background. There was a minor undercurrent of just how fragile the League was to go along with it, making it feel much less serial in general which, well, refer back to DCAU Point 1.
They also snuck in a straight up goddamned Christmas Special, which I think is the first since like Batman TAS Season 1 which at THIS point is 12 years prior for them. And it was weirdly good.
More than anything else every episode felt like it served a purpose and told a story that was enriched by the story's surrounding it. There's not too much else to say.
Best Episode: Hereafter. It's not even a contest which is not a statement to make lightly in this season, but yeah. Starcrossed is bigger, Wild Card is perhaps the perfect Joker episode, A Better World is the episode the franchise had to have to go forward, The Terror Beyond is a hella fun ride, Secret Society is the first time the series made proper use of having so many villains and making them effective together. And it doesn't matter because in Hereafter they killed Superman, built in a reasonable explanation for why he wasn't actually dead, made him have to earn his way back to the realm of the living, had a great use of a villain type I've always been a sucker for, told a reasonably effective post-apocalypse tale. In 45 minutes they hit every emotional beat they were ABLE to hit and it works every. Single. Time. And I mean, Lobo was there too. C'mon now.
Weakest Episode: Eclipsed. Also no contest, because it's the only episode that isn't great. So everyone is possessed instantly by the magic diamond and come the fuck on. No internal struggle, no sleight of hand, just rarr ancient lizard race kill puny humans jesus fuck. The only remotely redeeming aspect is it degenerates into Flash vs Everyone Else and is the first serious demonstration that yeah, Flash is actually the strongest Leaguer and is too cripplingly terrified of his own abilities to realize it most of the time.
Grade: 9/10? Yeah, I think so.
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JL Season 2 is really really good. I still find myself watching some of the clips from time to time despite it being about 10 years old now. Batman vs Batman in A Better World I think has my favourite Batman speech (the one in the Justice League movie is a close second) and second on pretty much all the episodes were strong. Good choice on Hereafter as well as the best episode of the season. I think my personal favourite is For the Man who has Everything, but they are all excellent.
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For the Man Who Has Everything is actually from JLU Season 1, so technically wasn't eligible for that post. That said I've long since already had JLU1 so I can rewatch and write up that with relative ease. But actually in general the New Stuff category has dried up for now so while some idle rewatches to keep active are going to happen, if people have stuff they'd rather have covered sooner than later (on the off chance people, like, read these) then suggestions are welcome.
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks
Hello my little barbie. But we'll save that rant for the original EQ. Anyway, welcome again to Canterlot High, Equestria's dumping ground for dangerous magical beings who we're totally pretty sure will lose their magic in human land. But hey, if we had a magic mirror to another realm we'd probably dump nuclear waste into it, so "mostly non magical land that will depower our magical foes" is relatively responsible.
Back off topic. The movie spends an unfortunate amount of time on the inter-group tensions, which makes me think that they'll be using EQ, among other things, as a dumping ground for friendship lessons that don't really make sense five seasons into the character development on the main show. However, the villains directly encouraging this to feed on it is at least SOME attempt to make it palatable, and the villains are pretty effective in general, so we'll let that slide a bit.
What the show lacks in engaging character bits it does make up in two main areas. Sunset Shimmer becomes reasonably likable here, so that's good. But more directly they put some real effort into some of these songs. The main villain song, Battle, is pretty fun in a sort of Backstreet Boys meets Spice Girls way. Actually, in general they clearly put a lot of thought into giving everyone a distinct and recognizable musical style, and that endlessly catchy callback with just a hint of sex appeal and darkness is so perfect for these villains, it seriously pulls the movie together.
Otherwise, as noted while the early going with sorta pat and strained character interaction was a bit of a miss. But they certainly knew how to END the movie, so 'sall good.
Grade: 7/10. Pretty typical of MLP stuff... exceppppttt
Prequel Shorts
Yessssss. These are uniformly great and remind me a lot of Tiny Toons, except with much better established and more consistent characters. Makes me wonder if having more episodes of the show which do shorts in this way, perhaps with some of the lesser cast members, wouldn't be a great idea because doing quick joke sequences is something they clearly know how to pull off. Although I've read they more or less ARE doing this for one of the upcoming Season 5 episodes.
Grade: 8/10. Yeah, the shorts definitely pull the movie up a point.
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Where is Brave and the Bold?
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While JL season 1 is certainly watchable, it's also a little dull. The pacing is on the slow side, and quite a few of those hour long episodes could have been handled in 30 minutes.
JL season 2 is, to me, the peak of the DCAU. The pacing is stepped up greatly, the villains are much more of a threat, the whole thing is just seat-of-your-pants fun.
You covered why most of the episodes are good, but I want to mention a couple you left out.
Tabula Rasa: This is the first time we see the JL get straight up jobbed. They don't win, they can't win. The villain just leaves because they're just not worth his time anymore. The action is great in this episode. The android makes far better use of the mace than Hawkgirl ever does.
Only a Dream: Noteworthy for the villain's wife actually dying, a taboo that you just don't do on tv cartoons. The individual vignettes with the superheroes in dreamland were great (how scary is Superman without control of his powers?), and Batman winning in the end the way only Batman can.
Twilight: Superman villains working together = twice the oh shit value as usual. And you see Superman really bust loose. Burning a hole in Darkseid's feet makes me giggle.
I actually really love Eclipsed. The mind control being spread so easily and casually is what makes it work as a Flash showcase.
Favorite episode for me is Wild Card. Least favorite is Maid of Honor - it's a season 1 episode in season 2 (slow pacing and non-threatening villain).
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My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
And so we come to My Little Barbie.
So… when you go back to the resurgence of American animation in the 80s, basically what you find is that the Regan administration happened to loosen up a lot of the laws on programming aimed at children, meaning it was actually possible to make 22 minute toy commercials where it hadn’t been for something like 20 years (I’ve never formally looked up the laws involved, so don’t quote me on that, but I have seen just enough pre-60’s cartoons to know they had the same marketing bent as the Hasbro lines in the 80s). What happened through the 90s, and we can almost directly attribute this to Batman TAS (although Warner Animation in general was responsible since other contributing factors were Tiny Toons/Animaniacs) is that cartoonists decided to make stuff they could be proud of and enjoy. The relationship shifted from the toy line telling them what needed to be in the show and the writers going “uh sure we can work that in” to picking and choosing what elements they could expand on and make good while taking elements that weren’t fully workable and finding ways to marginalize them.
Equestria Girls has two major problems, and the foremost goes back to that concept. Hasbro said to themselves “hey, other companies are actually finding a market niche for knockoff Barbies, we can finally get in on that action.” Then some marketing team went over their properties and said “Yup, Friendship in Magic is by FAR the one that’ll draw the most money”, at which point they went to the writers who went “uh sure we can work that in”. The whole thing is very jackhammered into the setting and comes off as very artificial because of it. The idea seems to have been to try and wink at the audience enough to get them to brush it off, hence spending most of the movie on weird “yeaaah Twilight totally think she’s still a pony, hands are hard guys” humor. And even then you had them clearly struggling with things like how to work 7 distinct outfits for each primary character into the movie with highlight scenes for each as dictated by marketing.
Descending from that to create the second problem though, the rest of the cast is the same as the pony cast… pre character development. The human cast has issues that would have been strained and backslidy even in season 1, which logically follows because late-teenaged ponies are clearly full-fledged members of society in Equestria while in human land they’re, y’know, teenagers. But being logically viable doesn’t make it any more fun to watch. And sure, this is partly a personal thing; more developed characters can be placed in more sophisticated stories, I’m a sucker for ongoing continuity in my children’s cartoons, I dunno what to say there.
That’s not to say it’s all bad. They made good use of the movie to address a small but important bit of Twilight’s season 4 arc and kick off her development ‘off-screen’ as it were. It’s a doubt that has no real basis in reality, but that logically someone in her situation would have, and wouldn’t really be able to seek advice from her friends or mentor because it was so internal. Thrust into a new situation as she was gave her an opportunity to learn the lesson on her own. More important of course was Sunset Shimmer, who actually has a different dynamic for a character on the show and ties bits of the movie together that otherwise would just flounder. I’m mostly glad I saw both existing movies before writing this up, because knowing that the next focuses more on her, and realistically what’s probably going to happen is she becomes the ‘main’ character of the human world stories going forward means they stand a good chance of being distinct but still quality.
Grade: 5/10. While the seeds for a decent story are here, and they’re used better in the next movie, this one is overall somewhat tedious and never really comes together.
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Justice League Unlimited (Season 1)
I basically go by sets for these breakdowns, so JLU Season 1 encompasses what the internet tells me is actually two seasons, which DOES fit with how the season shakes down. I gave definite consideration to following that just to give myself a second best episode vote, buuut I guess I should just follow the pattern I have.
So as previously discussed, Justice League had a goddamned amazing run of television between Twilight in JL Season 2 and Epilogue at the end of this season. The most negative I have to say about it is individual bad episodes, and there ain't many of those. JLU season 1 sees the fullest use of continuity in the DCAU, and it's glorious. Everyone remembers the Cadmus arc of course, but it goes well beyond that. Followups to Justice League episodes (Cadmus itself is one to For a Better World of course, but there's also ones for Starcrossed, Terror Beyond, Paradise Lost, Tabula Rasa, Twilight...), Batman Beyond writ large, the outright fucking continuity porn that is Epilogue itself... this season is a reward for the faithful, and yea it was good.
So CK Loves Continuity aside, what's going right here? There's broadly two sorts of episodes going on. Ones to highlight characters in the expanded roster and how the sheer might of the league is affecting the balance of the world, and ones showing the League as a whole struggling with the world's new perception of them. So we got two things that lead to good stories: showing how new characters interact with established ones, and showing characters struggle with their own morality against the reality of their world. Overall the first half has more of the first and is a bit weaker, but still has some amazing emotional moments. And For the Man Who Has Everything, which is one of the best remembered episodes in the series and the only Alan Moore adaptation he's actually reputed to enjoy. High praise indeed.
But naturally the major highlight of the season is Cadmus. One of the things that always stood out to me about it is the entire arc feels out of place in a DC universe. Like, guys, Superman is going to say fuck it and take over the world? But they do put a lot of work into earning that fear (Continuity strikes again!) so it works for purposes of the story. And watching Justice League from start to finish again does mitigate some of the "really Supes? Overreact much?" aspects because you can actually see the entire story starting to weigh him down gradually. Batman's interaction with Amanda Waller remains a highlight as well, although his calling the League out for... banishing Doomsday to the Phantom Zone of all damn things is still odd. They do an excellent job ramping up as well. Clash is great as the sort of breaking point, where everyone involved is Over This Shit and this happen. Question Authority, Flashpoint, Panic in the Sky, and Divided We Fall are functionally a four part episode with steadily escalating action, great moments for every character involved, the amazing culmination of Flash's series-long character development, and surprisingly enough only the second time in the whole DCAU we see a villain die for keeps. (sure, they MIGHT have brought Brainiac in a sufficiently long-running version of the show, but realistically it would be YEARS before they'd be willing to undo something as awesome as Flash destroyed Brainiac molecule by molecule after delivering multiple punches power by circumnavigating the globe. You don't bring someone back from he dead casually after that.) But...
Best Episode: The main contest here is between two unlikely candidates for me, Ultimatum and Epilogue. Ultimatum is a combination of "Bruce Timm is a complete comic book history geek yo" and condensed tragedy, which is an excellent cross section of things. But I gotta give it to Epilogue. I know some folks don't care for making explicit what they feel worked better as unstated or symbolic, but I'm willing to allow it for the story moments it provided. The teenaged Terry is likable and all that, but what they give us here is a chance to see a Terry that's spent half his life fighting the neverending battle, and struggling with just what he gave up to do that. He's not burning for revenge or fighting to please people now, but the grinding realization that he doesn't have to actually die to give up his life to the cause and the turmoil he's trying to work through because of that is presented incredibly well here. As well, the vignette with Ace is just great, a perfect summary of who Batman should be.
Weakest Episode: Initiation. Just sorta tedious, in particular the needless character friction for Supergirl, Captain Atom, and Green Arrow, although it does the narrative job of introducing the expanded league that it needs to.
Grade: 9/10. Yeah, I think I do like this more than Justice League Season 2.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 4)
Ah ah ah ah
Season 4, ie the one that pissed off the fanboys with Princesses. But fuck those guys. So instead, Season 4! ie the one where the show fully shifts into predominantly continuity based storytelling with occasional slice of life rather than the other way around. While for this show it was either that or start focussing way more on non-main characters at this stage in the game, it is nice to see such transitions. The other major distinguishing mark of this season is that when it decided to go shonen, it went full on Dragon Ball Z which is honestly pretty amazing, but that's just me.
Anyway so I do want to note that the whole box thing is kinda... dumb. As in specifically what is in the box is really dumb. Why is there a castle and superpowers in a box. Hopefully Season 5 does a bit better in justifying the whole thing than Twilight's Kingdom itself did. However, Princess Twilight Sparkle and the five Key episodes are a reasonable backbone for the season as a whole, so in that respect the box is fine for tying the season together in this strange continuity-laden world. Of course, there's not only another plot thread through various episodes, but it ties into an episode... IN THE PREVIOUS SEASON! GASP. The Equestria Games thread is kinda weird, especially since most of the season was actually done in 2013, while Equestria Games itself would have been summer 2014, meaning at no point did the buildup actually coincide with an actual Olympic Games. Weird. But it's a cute idea, and most of the tie-in episodes were decent.
The remaining episodes were uneven on the whole. It includes some good ones like Filli Vanilli, or at least I really enjoy that one, but also two rather tedious CMC episodes and my least favorite episode of the season. Season also has some just.. strange episodes. What even with Bats! ? I'm not sure what the inspiration was there. Then again that immediately followed Power Ponies. Between that and the superpower forms from the box... Did... Hasbro like dump some of the paint your own pony designs on the writers and say "These gotta be in the episode"? If so then I guess props for working them in as palatable a way as you could.
Best Episode: Oddly... I gotta give the nod to Testing Testing 1, 2, 3. It's rare for aesop episodes to get my attention but... holy fuck that is a message that I am very, very happy to see. The season has a lot of episodes that are solid to good, and among those being pretty decent while also being an immensely rare and also VITAL message like that is just enough to stand out a bit.
Weakest Episode: Simple Ways. So anyone watching the show enough will probably tell you that the weakest combination of three characters is the CMC. 'cause y'know. But for my money the weakest combination of two characters is Applejack and Rarity, because the writers seem incapable of giving them a dynamic beyond Country Gal/Prissy Pants culture clash that every combo episode between them since season 1 has featured with the same tedious bullshit each time. Just, dammit, no. Stop that. Either don't make them feature together by themselves in episodes or give them an updated character dynamic that fits their more developed characters. It doesn't have to be THAT different even. Like, Castle Mane-ia, in part, had an Applejack/Rainbow Dash dynamic that was pretty similar to their season 1 episodes. Except the conflict in those episodes was that they were taking it very personally, which isn't true in the Season 4 episode. Just... yeah. We're five seasons in, don't recycle old Season 1 scripts, you're not going to pull it off now.
Grade: 7/10. Overall good, a small handful of weak episodes and no true standouts. Probably slightly worse than season 3 overall, but not meaningfully so.
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JLU is worse than Season 2 to me, although it certainly has some great moments. I think there's a couple of problems:
1) The shift to 30 minute episodes. This wouldn't have been so bad if they were using the existing cast, but to try to introduce a new hero *and* wrap up a villainous plot is too much to cram into 30 minutes.
2) The existing JL are more interesting than the new second-stringers. This results in the episodes with the old JL far outshining the new JL.
Best episode is the one where they are changed into babies. Because it is totally babies. Worst is the one with Hawk and Dove, because they are possibly the most boring superheroes ever made.
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The opening episodes of JLU season 1 were pretty weak overall. A couple of second stringers they do focus on though did grow on me (Green Arrow and Question in particular are <3). It got gradually better once they reached the one with the Ultramen and you got to see more of Cadmus. Batman's bits with Waller were the highlight for me overall across the season. Like you get the feeling they want the same thing but they are clearly not seeing eye to eye on the issues, which is great. The speech she tells him when he interrupts her shower is particularly great IMO.
Agreed on Epilogue, which is IMO, the best episode of the whole season. Even though the action was relatively limited. Just a very poignant way of ending Batman Beyond as well as what Batman's reason for fighting is really about.
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My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Sounds about right. I think I'm overall a bit softer on it than you (I like the dumb horse humor, what can I say?) Not much to say here otherwise though. The movie was a functional vehicle for what Hasbro wanted and the writers at least produced something vaguely entertaining. Plus, Shimmer is legit fun.
Though man, does her existence ever fuck with continuity. When was she Celestia's student? When was she kicked out? When did she use the mirror? How long has she been in the human world? How long has she been at that high school? >:|
My Little Pony: Rainbow Dash is Kind of an Asshole - Eh... I think the intergroup tensions are perfectly functional here, particularly given the villain plan. Definitely agreed that Shimmer was a high point and I'm kinda sad they didn't do a little more with her. Those "No offense"s she had to dish out needed a bigger pay-off. Songs were definitely better (all the Sirens' songs are fantastic and Let's Have a Battle (of the Bands) is beyond fantastic). The fanservice stuff was excellent.
I am a little surprised you liked the shorts so much, though. Didn't find them too particularly outstanding outside of Music to My Ears (which is great!).
My Little Pony S3 - No love for Magical Mystery Cure? I found that episode to be a pretty clean winner for "best episode of the season" for a number of reasons (nice, tight story concept, solid payoff, great use of the musical structure, great music in general). Magic Duel is a pretty excellent choice, though. Gets some more fun screentime for Zecora and Trixie coming back is nice. May she make a reappearance in S5.
Kinda disagree with your thoughts re: One Bad Apple. The point of these sorts of morals is to promote understanding as opposed to lashing out at people who are (or you feel are) wronging you. Of course, this gets into the territory that bully morals are always kinda hard, because the situations are so variable and any one answer is going to be ineffective.
Also, outside of S4, I have no idea where you get the impression children in Ponyville are that closely supervised. <_< CMC are out doing their own shit independently all the time.
My Little Pony S4 - This is a weird one. I agree with all your broad points, and utterly disagree with your episode choices. >_>
Definitely agreed that the random swap to full Shonen for one episode was fun. Everyone loves laser death battles, boys and girls, young and old alike. Though the Rainbow Power designs are awful and hope they never recur again. Ever. Please.
As far as episodes go, yeah. This season felt like it was more erratic. I'm actually pretty lukewarm on the season for most of the first quarter of the season, then things suddenly get quite good.
I think I like the CMC a lot better than you. I actually enjoyed most of their episodes this season and find their past episodes generally passable at worst. Flight to the Finish and For Whom the Sweetie Belle toils are nearer the top of my list for this season, and I unashamedly love Twilight Time for no good reason whatsoever. I can sorta understand disliking them (they do aim towards the kids thing pretty heavily in their episdes), but, on the whole, they've never really bugged me. Which two episodes did you find tedious, out of curiosity?
Kinda surprised to see Simple Ways hit the bottom for you (it is actually nearer the top for me). While it is, ostensibly, another exploration of the same dynamic they've been using with them, I think the fact that it focuses more on Rarity (and Trenderhoof's) complete inability to understand Applejack's lifestyle more than any direct conflict is interesting and covers a lot of fun concepts.
Also, this season had It Ain't Easy Being Breezy. Which is my choice for show worst episode by a mile. Fantastic moral, absolutely obnoxious and irritating episode.
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Captain K- I think the only episodes I find dull for that reason are Initiation (which had other problems) and Hawk and Dove (which I can SOMEWHAT forgive because I am always a sucker for classical/norse mythology in my super hero stories.) The others that focus a lot on introducing new characters are Fearful Symmetry, which has a lot else going on and further it's the Question who is great in JLU, and the Cat and the Canary, which I can see disliking but I got no problem with it. Mmm. I guess you could say Double Date fits that format too, and it ranges from cute to insufferable at various points so I guess I'm okay with it but maybe others can't stand it.
Andrew- I like Flight to the Finish actually, and Twilight Time is alright (stock message, but I can forgive the girls getting swept up that way and they do try to put a stop to things when they notice it going too far to their credit). For Whom the Sweetie Bell Tolls and Somepony to Watch Over Me are the ones I find irritating, for opposite reasons. Sweetie Bell is so vindictive in this episode it feels out of character and force for the sole purpose of the message. Apple Bloom is actually good in her episode, but the stuff they have Applejack do for comedy is just a chore to sit through.
It Ain't Easy Being Breezy is miles better than Feeling Pinkie Keen. I'm okay with it as an episode on its own merits, mostly owing to showing the struggle Fluttershy is having over the whole thing very well. But in a Series Worst contest you'd have to do quite a lot to outsuck Feeling Pinkie Keen for me.
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Applejack out of character was extremely jarring. Of all the ponies, she has the sturdiest sense of self and rightness. Her devotion to family is definitely one of these things, but absolutely nothing leading up to that episode suggests she goes crazy as hats over protecting her sister. There is some precedent for going overboard for her family in general -- Apple Family Reunion -- but the face-sucking clinginess and eschewing work to pursue it made no sense.
It Ain't Easy Being Breezie: No, screw this episode. I can't forgive the squeaky high faux Irish accent. Why? Why would they do that? What POSSIBLE reason justifies speech like nails on a chalkboard? Sell toys all you want, Hasbro, but try to make me want to buy them. Unless their plan was to make me buy them solely so I can destroy them.
For Whom the Sweetie Bell Toils: I like Sweetie Belle more and more as the show goes on, and Luna has always been best princess, so this episode gets my thumbs up on the cast alone. I don't find it out of character for her to get so brutal; in fact, it's one of the first times I can recall (outside of Diamond Tiara) kids acting like kids, i.e., sociopaths. Sweetie Belle has had a complicated relationship with her sister the whole time, most notably in Sisterhooves Social. It makes perfect sense for her to lash out at her sister for stealing the spotlight (which would be an act of self-centeredness that is definitely in line with what SB hates about Rarity). She learns the appropriate lesson in the end.
Feeling Pinkie Keen: Not sure what it is you hate so much about this episode. I won't defend it heartily because it's not one of my favorites, but ... worse than Breezies?!
(Do you hate Pinkie Pie? Or really love her? Because either of those might explain it.)
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Feeling Pinkie Keen is mostly a shakey concept married to abysmal execution. Pinkie's oddities driving Twilight nuts and causing her to investigate sorta makes sense, but immediately suffers from making Twi seem rather judgmental so it'd take excellent execution to avoid falling into that trap. Instead the show immediately descends into the worst, most transparent fake psuedo-scientific gibberish, not even bothering to try and make Twilight's comments reflect actual methodical inquiry. Twilight spends the entire episode sounding like an idiot, coming across as an asshole, while the show is trying to pretend she's a smart and rational person and that's why she's doing this. Even allowing that she's supposed to look silly, the whole thing is a giant smack in the face for the audience's intelligence.
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Are you covering shows like Adventure Time and things like it? I'm a bit behind on that kind of stuff so I'd like to see opinions on it since no one I've talked to can really describe why they like it well.
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I follow Adventure Time myself so yeah, I can definitely cover it. For the most part pretty much anything goes if I can reasonably get access to it and it falls under the heading 'cartoon'.
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Justice League Unlimited (Season 2)
Owing to some sort of printing error, I don't actually have the entirety of season 2. So instead of offering up a season summary or grade, some thoughts on the individual episodes.
The Great Brain Robbery- A great deal of fun. Because Luthor is evil, y'see. Yes. Luthor is pleased. Mostly though this episode is the main setup for the series finale, and while it does highlight a bizarre issue the DCAU as a whole has, their seeming inability to effectively feature Green Lantern villains is pretty minor in the final analysis.
Grudge Match- What's fun about this one is that moment of dawning horror when Black Canary, Huntress, Vixen, and Shayera realize oh god we have to fight Wonder Woman now. And Diana basically mops the floor with the lot of them. Otherwise an unbashed sequel to Double Date, but stronger than that episode by a good margin.
Far From Home- There's not really a lot to this episode except some odd questions I spent most of it mulling. I suppose that at this stage they knew they weren't getting another season, hence writing Kara out of the show. Because if not why exactly do you write out one of the very few characters carried over from previous series that you actually have permission to use? Seems out of character for the show. Also, exactly how much weaker is Kara supposed to be than Superman? Like, John is explicitly called stronger than Supergirl, and while sure she's not as strong as Superman he's consistently been an order of magnitude stronger than anyone else on the show, even in the early going. Why would she be that much weaker exactly? I guess it could just be that the show does a poor job showing Green Lanterns as exceptionally strong in general (in general GL mythos seems to be a weak point of the DCAU writers, as noted earlier with Sinestro and Star Sapphire being b-plot characters even at their most prominent)? Just weird. And you think about that sort of stuff because the plot itself is pretty thin and Supergirl gets a way better showing back in Panic in the Sky. Or Fearful Symmetry for that matter.
Ancient History- Cute callbacks guys. Good ending overall; Hawkman realizing how stalkery and weird he's been and bowing out, John being straight about his feelings, and most especially "Tell me about my son". Otherwise pretty danged forgettable.
Alive!- Best episode of the set. JLU Season 2 is very much the villain season to start with, and at this stage they've used enough of them that they can carry an episode pretty handily. All fightan no waitan. Then at the end Darkseid's return to Apokolips is downright chilling. We are SCREWED I tell you S.C.R.E.W.E.D.
Destroyer- This is basically what Final Crisis was like except with Mind-Slaves right? Which is funny because I'm pretty sure Final Crisis didn't actually come out until a year or so after this aired. But yeah, here's some perspective for this episode. One of the features on the dvd is... playing this episode with only the music tracks. Hell of a way to close out the series, with the last standing major villains taking each other out, and the Adventure Continues.
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Ooh, these are fun reads, and I wanna chime in that it'd be cool to see some thoughts on Adventure Time, as well as the other 'big' cartoons at the moment, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe. The currently-airing Marvel cartoons are also a favorite of mine. They've come a long way since the hanna barbera days.
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I've heard mostly negative about Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble myself. Gravity Falls I'll probably be looking into, caught a few episodes the otehr day and it was definitely promising, although I'm not sure there's a full season of the show to look at yet? I'll have to research there.
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2 full seasons, but the first season has not been completely released on DVD from what I can gather.
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Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Season 1)
So the show has been billed as basically the Silver Age with modern VA work. Far as I know they more or less deliver on that.
There are moments of just plain joyousness in this series. They do a good job of establishing them early and frequently. I mean in episode 1, in the teaser, literally the first thing of the show you can see, by the two or so minute mark Bats had more or less turned his utility belt into a lightsaber. That's fantastic.
The trouble I have is that the series suffers from occasionally trying to be a little too deadpan, such that is starts to be outright serious. And while you do need a certain level of seriousness for the other stuff to contrast with, it tends to feel stilted or forced most of the time. Not always. Two moments stand out; that little moment riiiiight before it clicks who the Red Hood is in Deep Cover for Batman!, and the tail end of Hail the Tornado Tyrant!. Or maybe I'm a sucker for those sorts of stories in the latter case. I remember kinda wishing the episode cut off at the second commercial break, but the actual ending was good too so hey what do I know I guess.
Anyway, the "just a liiiittle too serious" problem is moreso in the first half of the season, but even later I will say that in most episodes, though certainly not all, the teaser is actually better than the main episode. On the flip side! This means otherwise lame episodes have a good part at least.
More or less by nature of the show, the season on the whole doesn't leave a strong impression, but little moments or gags from individual episodes do. Paul Dini is the sort of bastard I can accept. Come back when you know your goddamned history whippersnappers! Paul Dini for President.
I'm not sure if i want to invest in the rest of the series or not. It's good, but mostly doesn't have huge staying power for me. Although I've read they have an adaptation of Emperor Joker and I really wanna see that.
Best Episode- Well, I'm of two minds here. I didn't mention above because it made more sense to talk about here, but another small issue with the series is that Batman himself is the straight man, with a very subtle and deeply sarcastic sense of humor. But a lot of times, there's not a foil for him in that regard. And "The World at Large" doesn't fit that bill. Probably one reason people really like Aquaman in this series (beyond, of course, John DiMaggio); his bombast gives Bats someone to straightman against. But my first major contender for best episode is The Color of Revenge!, and the main reason for that is because the correct foil for Batman is Robin. This must be the Dick Grayson people actually like, because even in his teenage weenie years where he talks like he's straight out of the Adam West show he's great. Batman is good at being sarcastic at villains, but Dick is outright mocking them and it works. This Batman makes sense when Robin is in the room. Buuuuuuuut... it doesn't really matter. We are all just slaves to this hypnotic patter. We have no choice except to
DO HIS EVIL BIDDING WHEN WE HEAR HIS BOOMING VOICE
HE'S THE MUSIC MEISTER
AND WE ARE ALL HIS PAWNS
He's the Music Meister and WE MUST BEWARE HIS WRATH
Weakest Episode- Mystery in Space! I find myself tempted to nod The Eyes of Despero! because I find Despero and his whole gimmick lame and then randomly having a thirty second Sinestro/Guy Gardener sideshow was really dumb. But oh my god Mystery in Space! is tedious. I don't care about this dude, or his planet, or the chucklefucks he is fighting, and to underscore all of that Aquaman is here specifically to BE really lame for contrast to himself and blah blah blah next episode please.
Grade- 7/10. Even the weakest episodes have something going for them, but aside from the two standouts there's not quite enough to hang your hat on so to speak and the ratio of eh to good is pretty shaky in the first half.
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Whenever I hear about this show, I just laser-focus in on this one scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAFP0IoMfsA
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Adventure Time (Season 1)
So Season 1 doesn't really have much rhyme or reason to the way it's arranged (it's there, but ignorable, I should say), and is focused on basically establishing the identities of the main cast. So instead we're going to talk about the question presented: why do people like this show.
I mean, there's an easy, easy answer to that, but it hasn't happened yet.
So here's the impressions season 1 will send you away with, in roughly descending order of how present they are in the show and thus how likely they are to keep someone watching.
The animation is amazingly kinetic. There is ALWAYS a lot of motion going on at any given time, and the show's ability to project energy and draw the eye to something important going on is nearly unparalleled. There's relatedly also a lot of emotion from any character in a given scene, and a high willingness to bend or alter the characters and their models if that's what's needed in a given scene.
The show is constantly putting more into the show. More characters, new places, new genres, new things that don't quite make sense. But more importantly those things are very distinct, with a lot of personality. By way of comparison, let's take Tree Trunks and Spitfire, from FiM. I could actually tell you as much about Tree Trunks after her one feature episode as I could after, if memory serves, three from Spitfire. Which isn't a dig at the latter, she's a reasonably nuanced character given her actual story roles and probably has plenty of fans. Meanwhile I've definitely met some Adventure Time fans who really, really don't like Tree Trunks. But it's a difference in style, because the point of her episode is a character with all these foibles and quirks and how she impacts the heroes in about three different contexts within her one episode. The oddity with the show is that it has so many characters like this that over time the "main cast" ends up expanding from four (Finn, Jake, Bubblegum, Ice King) to what TV Tropes has listed as ten, of which I'd only quibble on one entry.
The show is unrepentantly geeky of course (most cartoons are if you scratch the surface, it's almost as though animators and artists are a core geekdom constituency) , but it's very specifically all about Dungeons and Dragons. Even setting aside the dungeon crawl episodes, there's a very d20 vibe about how our heroes operate. I'm not going to dwell on this, being only peripherally aware of the subject matter, but it's really noticeable.
Something is off about the world of Ooo. It's openly post-apocalyptic while also having a neo-medieval vibe, but that's obvious from the opening credits. Even without that, the surface normality of Finn and how it contrasts not just with the existence but with the sheer VARIETY of perils and mutants and monsters in the world suggest something very wrong has happened, but it's so normalized for the characters you can only see it along the edges.
Other thoughts... I remember the first time I watched this season thinking that it was some sort of sociological experiment. It's structurally laid out like a kid's show (11 minute format aside), and has applicable life lessons as often as not, but the path from A to B is so bizarre that it's like they're trying to stealth teach the aesops. This aspect is still there, but with the benefit of watching later I'm starting to think the series bible had to include elements of season 4, but their ability to reuse earlier elements means that it's easy to mix up with stuff they just watched the fans and brought back later because they were liked.
Best Episode: Henchman. The last five episodes of the season are all worthy in their own way, so I'm just tiebreaking for the one with Marceline. I know, boring, sorry.
Weakest Episode: Prisoners of Love. This episode is trying to just be this generalized introduction for the Ice King, but it also means most of the episode is just princesses whining at Finn. About as dry and long as an 11 minute cartoon can be I think.
Rating: 6/10. I don't really get into the season flow much in this writeup, but most of the first half of the season is pretty eh. Probably the show's biggest strength is showing established elements in new contexts and well, there wasn't anything established for most of this season.
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Have you seen Bravest Warriors, CK?
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Since I've pretty much only watched season 1 of Adventure Time, and I enjoyed it, I should be pretty well equipped to answer this question. It is a toughie. I think...Adventure Time is the first post-sarcasm cartoon I've seen. Its directness is really refreshing, actually. Unlike practically everything that came before it, it doesn't seem to owe much of anything to The Simpsons. To the extent it owes anything to earlier Adult Swim shows, it owes an absurdist sensibility but not much else. So that's what it's not. Now what is it, for me to like it so much? Well, it's direct, but not simple. It feels like an emotionally honest appeal that what is valuable in life is human decency, understanding differences, and having good fun. Also the color scheme and animation are aces.
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Have you seen Bravest Warriors, CK?
Never heard-a it!
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ctrl-F Daria
0 results.
Least CK thread ever.
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ctrl-F Daria
0 results.
Least CK thread ever.
Welllll...
I do have Daria.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHO_DhLeQr8
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Daria (Season 1)
Hurray for clear season markers on the full series set of like 60 episodes.
The first thing I find myself thinking about season 1 on the whole (aside from "wow Brittany sounds weird without her full squeak in the first episode or three") is just how much the seeds for everyone's final character development are present from the very beginning. But let's not dwell on that too much, seeing as these aren't strictly retrospectives.
One thing that actually stands out in these early episodes though is just how much focus Quinn actually has. And the Morgandorfers in general, but especially Quinn. The show gives off the impression of "Daria and Jane basically greek comment/snark and the absurdity of life through small town misadventures" but actually watching the show, at least in this season, how Daria relates to her family and the compare/contrast with Quinn in particular are far and away the most dominant aspect of the show. One of the things that stood out, and part of why I wonder just how much of the characters were planned from the outset, is that even in the first episode you can see that Quinn is amazingly savvy, and is actually putting conscious effort into being perceived as airheaded to be liked/nonthreatening/to manipulate. Her skill at getting people to do what she wants isn't just impressive, you can actually see the effort she's putting into it.
Daria similarly is doing the same thing, except instead of trying to get people to act a particular way, she's putting a lot of thought into controlling people's perception of her. And while obviously the show spells this out by the end, it's really noticeable from the start. More interesting in this season though is how we can actually see the cracks in Daria's shell of indifference already. She very noticeably doesn't react to everyone the same way despite her first and usually only response to anything being snark; with classmates there's a certain resignation to the stupidity of it all. But with adults? It's more of a seething anger. These people are letting all the injustice and stupidity run rampant even though they, unlike Daria, can supposedly do something about it. It's sorta surprising going back to the series, but it's pretty consistent.
I love watching Helen and Daria spar. Realest relationship in a pretty danged grounded show.
Best Episode: Pinch Sitter. Sort of a microcosm of everything listed above, with the added bonus of a fairly upbeat ending: Daria actually gets to make a difference!
Weakest Episode: The Lab Brat. One of Daria's strengths as a show, or at least in Season 1, is how grounded it is; sure, one high school student probably wouldn't have all these plots in one semester, but as someone that was indeed in high school for most of the years between 1997 and 2002, yeah, those are all definitely things that could happen in a high school of the time. So while this episode has some decent humor, the absolutely cartoonish level of misandry Barch has here kinda takes me out of the show. You could dial it down a notch without blunting the intent of the character. As well, Quinn being so effortlessly stymied by Kevin without retaliating at all feels off.
Rating: 7/10. Lowish end of 7, but feels too strong (and too consistent) for a 6.
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Bravest Warriors is basically Adventure Time in the future. It seems like just random humor at first, but as the seasons go on you realize that there's an overarching story going on and that *everything* is connected. One of those things you have to watch more than once to catch the massive amount of foreshadowing.
Also it has Catbug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv99gj1xxWw
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Thank you for that Youtube link, that was the best hour of my life in a long time.
Fuckin' Catbug man.
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Daria (Season 2)
Mmm. So the thrust of season 2 is setting the stage for the deconstruction of Daria's worldview. The previous set was largely establishing who she and her family were, while her we're slowly fleshing out the closest supporting cast members (Brittany, Kevin, Jodie, the Fashion Club, the teachers). Which in turn slowly puts to lie the cynicism that makes up Daria's headspace, because these disparate people are on the whole decent folk who consider he a friend, despite Daria's unwillingness to give them any credit. Most of the focus episodes for her crush on Trent are in this season as well, showing the first major chink in her armor (along with The New Kid, which is basically that whole subplot condensed into an episode). Add to that Gifted, where Daria sees the far extreme of herself and how it's no better than anything else, and a shocking number of pieces are in play for big shifts in the show.
I had an oddly hard time picking the highlight episodes this time around because honestly each episode in season 2 is good about bringing something new to the table. Well, that and watching lots of Daria in a row has an odd way of bleeding together, where you remember the significant bits but I need an episode guide to properly sort out which ones happened in what episode. Nothing else I've done so far has really had that effect, but hopefully it's just a product of Daria's quirks as a show. I'd hate to think I'm getting worse at this as I go.
Best Episode: Ill. Honestly mostly because Brittany cracked me up in this one. It's functional as the peak of the Trent subplot, and as noted it's the moment you realize that yeah, Daria really isn't giving her classmates enough credit. But mostly it's the episode that got some actual laughs out of me which stands out among the other "have a significant moment or two but nothing super huge" episodes in this season.
Weakest Episode: That was Then, This is Dumb. It's meant to be a spotlight for Helen and Jake, but I don't think it quite hits the mark. Not a bad episode, just the one that brings the least to the table.
Rating: 7/10. Bit better than Season 1, but not a full point difference better.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 1: Water)
Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked...
It's been rather a long time since I revisted Season 1, so a good portion of the season was being a bit surprised at some things that changed as the show progressed. Some standouts.
- Boy in the Iceberg/The Avatar Returns look... off. I think it's the coloring, it feels washed out compared to the later parts of the show.
- Katara is... kiiinda lame for most of the season. A lot of her focus episodes boil down to her feeling inadequate or becoming jealous, and I was very happy in the finale when she replaced those with being really badass instead. Sokka is also weaker in the first half or so of this season, being the designated "Is Wrong" guy, but I remembered that being the case and his moments of eating crow definitely decrease in frequency as he matures and he starts getting moments.
- But more generally I think of Avatar as an ensemble show but season 1 is considerably more about Aang himself than I remembered. Which is fine, we'll get to it in more detail later, and later seasons continue to pay off storylines he has here in fact. Just a little surprising.
In general season 1 has some weaker episodes scattered in, though notably I remembered liking at least two that I ended up thinking kinda sucked upon rewatch (Warriors of Kyoshi and Imprisoned). Actually, let's mix things up a bit because it'll lead more naturally to the conclusion.
Weakest Episode: "It's the Great Divide, the largest canyon in the Earth Kingdom!"
"Ehhhh, let's keep flying."
Anyway a lot of season 1 was devoted to showing off the size and variety of the world, and the depths of the bending and what it could do. It's almost as though Avatar was a show with tons of research and cultural allusions going on behind the scenes and they wanted to show off all their work. Fancy that. The Great Divide is the worst of the episodes devoted to this, but is typical of the problem most of them had; they didn't have anything for Our Heroes to DO in their backstory showcase so there's a lot of visible strain to have something, well, HAPPEN. And by and large none of it comes to anything. Great Divide stands out from its peers mostly for the sheer irritation of its core plot. It's nice that you want to show Aang doing some mediation or whatever, but jesus fuck don't make the different sides both completely loathsome doing it. Especially since, and the episode is dull so you have time to think about these things... even by the most generous interpretation short of "one side is straight making shit up" the Zhangs are pretty much inescapably in the right. If their guy did straight up steal the Sacred Thing... he then proceeded to run in the one direction he could actually be caught, upon which he was imprisoned and his entire tribe declared enemies of the state for the actions of one dude. Sorry dudes I think y'all just elitist fucks, get bent.
Anyway the real trouble with these episodes is, because they were strained to figure out how the heroes fit in, they were detracting from the core strength of the show.
Best Episode: "I always thought... Prince Zuko was in a training accident."
"It was no accident."
So yeah, obvious pick, The Storm. I can't help but think of this as the moment where Avatar goes from a good show to a show that was seriously vying for best show ever. They have the actual balls to say "We can have an episode that's all character and backstory", but more than that it's a split episode between the main character... and the main villain. And basically you're hit with the realization that they're very similar people with similar problems, just raised in very different cultures which mean Aang's coping mechanisms were largely constructive while Zuko came inches from getting himself thrown overboard most days. It's no coincidence I'm sure that the immediate next episode is The Blue Spirit, in which Aang himself comes to basically the same conclusion. It's also the first moment in the show where the actors really got to show off; Zuko pleading with his father is heartbreaking, and the emotional rollercoaster Aang is on reliving those memories is palpable in his speech.
Rating: 8/10. There's some unevenness, both in the season as a whole and in most of the better episodes, The Storm aside, which keeps it from being really top tier, but still some excellent stuff even in season 1.
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I think my favorite of the eight episodes I watched was the pilot, which is pretty weird and a little alarming. King of Omashu was the first episode I was really not a fan of, with its bizarre shoving my favorite characters off to the side so the Main Character could be totally cool!!! Imprisoned has George Takei but is otherwise a bit of a dud, and the Winter Solstice episodes are just awful (the treatment of Sokka is utterly appalling, and it definitely suffers from trying too hard to make the main character be totally awesome. Again.). I wanted to like the show but I just couldn't make myself watch it again after that.
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Well, the show does tend to cycle through the main characters for making episodes about them. King of Omashu is Aang's turn around, which is fine, but they do so at the expense of Katara and Sokka which wasn't really necessary, no.
I think the idea of The Spirit World/Avatar Roku is... well okay the actual point is "We DO have a main plot here, there's an endgame in motion". Beyond that the idea is less for Aang to show off and more to establish what his duties were and how badly out of his depth he was in fulfilling them. Just this also means that there's two Aang-focus episodes in a row where they again forget to let the rest of the cast contribute.
More broadly, as noted in the write-up,l Katara gets worse before she gets better on that front, which was surprising. Sokka meanwhile gets better all the time, but his arc for most of season one is a long uphill battle to earn the actual respect of his companions.
The other main problem in the first half of the season is that Zuko is pretty much used as a straight villain, which he's really bad at. Which is the point, but... annyyway.
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I'm okay with the point of those two episodes in a vacuum, but the multiple times of Sokka doing something cool to basically be met with "oh ha ha you aren't the badass protagonist, why did you expect to be anything besides a waste of space" was a bit excessive. Sokka was essentially made into a damsel in distress three times in four episodes. WTF. Meanwhile, Aang comes up with a totally idiotic plan to bum rush the Fire Nation armies? Oh, it works fine because of his cool voodoo powers. I don't really feel like the episode did that great of a job of showing that he was out of his depth; he can consistently just do things to bail them out of whatever bad situation they get into.
Katara is boring and borderline useless (it feels like the show sometimes forgot that Kitara could Waterbend at all), but at least written with the awareness that having the female protagonist be a damsel all the time would be a bit much. Sokka instead got put into that most amazing role.
Zuko/Iroh stuff seemed to have potential that largely wasn't realized yet. There was some funny stuff with Iroh but overall I don't think it was clear to me the relevence of most of those scenes.
I've heard that the rest of the series is better than the first half of season 1 but I feel a bit apprehensive to continue because of those last two episodes. I think Aang is the problematic character of the story and he would need to get a lot better for me to really enjoy it. The show is humorous enough but not so humorous that I would actually watch it for that.
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I was sorta guessing my way through which character would be your favorite, yeah. Anyway, the next episode (The Waterbending Scroll) will address some of those issues, and the one after that most of the rest. Aang doesn't really start his character arc until The Storm, which is four episodes down the line, and the larger issue of "exactly how often can bullshit Avatar powers Deus ex Machina the gang through danger?" has an approximate answer of "honestly until mid season 2". So if that's the biggest issue then yeah, it takes a long time before it starts being addressed so you may not want to continue the show anyway.
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Re CK: I dunno, I never thought "The Kyoshi Warriors" was all that great my first time! They do some cool stuff with them in Season 2, but their open is pretty lame, mostly just a chance to show off that the Water Tribe is kinda patriarchal but Sokka's a good sort after all and can learn. Eh.
Re Ciato: Among adult fans of the show, Aang is rarely the favorite of the cast. He's by far the most kid-power-fantasy of the characters and probably more aimed at 10-13 year old viewers. He gets to goof off and be comic relief, he gets to win by virtue of being the Avatar sometimes, etc.
That said, to be clear I *like* Aang and think he's plenty interesting, and does fine work for the group's chemistry, so outright disliking him is definitely a warning sign. (Sokka is in fact the best, of course, but ATLB characters are very good at having real development arcs such that they aren't the same character by the end of the journey. He needs some initial foibles to work past, same as Katara.)
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Re CK: I dunno, I never thought "The Kyoshi Warriors" was all that great my first time! They do some cool stuff with them in Season 2, but their open is pretty lame, mostly just a chance to show off that the Water Tribe is kinda patriarchal but Sokka's a good sort after all and can learn. Eh.
Aye. I just remembered liking it and am not entirely sure why now. I think it's a combination of the opening act not being as funny/interesting on rewatch and thinking the warriors themselves got to do more in this episode than they ACTUALLY did.
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To this day I still haven't watched Season 1 of Avatar the Last Airbender. It remains the best cartoon I have ever watched. Seriously, I just came upon a group of friends watching it one day and they were about a quarter through Season 2. I started watching and then just never stopped.
My point is that you don't need to watch the first season to get to the good stuff. In fact, you might want to avoid it so at least you can see why people actually like it, even if it ends up not being to your taste.
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Re CK: I dunno, I never thought "The Kyoshi Warriors" was all that great my first time! They do some cool stuff with them in Season 2, but their open is pretty lame, mostly just a chance to show off that the Water Tribe is kinda patriarchal but Sokka's a good sort after all and can learn. Eh.
Mmm. The episode is okay but it definitely beats you over the head with its message. "Hello, you are watching a kid's show!" I don't feel like Sokka seems to be all that patriarchal in any other episode so it just feels odd.
Re Ciato: Among adult fans of the show, Aang is rarely the favorite of the cast. He's by far the most kid-power-fantasy of the characters and probably more aimed at 10-13 year old viewers. He gets to goof off and be comic relief, he gets to win by virtue of being the Avatar sometimes, etc.
That said, to be clear I *like* Aang and think he's plenty interesting, and does fine work for the group's chemistry, so outright disliking him is definitely a warning sign. (Sokka is in fact the best, of course, but ATLB characters are very good at having real development arcs such that they aren't the same character by the end of the journey. He needs some initial foibles to work past, same as Katara.)
Male power fantasy characters are always have always been a personal hangup for me because they are so everpresent in media. Anyway, I compare the crew to, say, Harry, Hermoine, and Ron,(we'll say from Book 1) and the power dynamics between those characters is so much more explored and less "badass protagonist pretty much obsoletes all his friends". Ron, despite being kind of an idiot and not very special at anything, seems to contribute more than Sokka. Sokka in theory should have some advantages (is older, is more physically capable) but they never seem to manifest into anything.
(As for the Aang stuff, I have watched the first eight episodes, so obviously impressions are just from those.)
To this day I still haven't watched Season 1 of Avatar the Last Airbender. It remains the best cartoon I have ever watched. Seriously, I just came upon a group of friends watching it one day and they were about a quarter through Season 2. I started watching and then just never stopped.
My point is that you don't need to watch the first season to get to the good stuff. In fact, you might want to avoid it so at least you can see why people actually like it, even if it ends up not being to your taste.
That seems very possibly like a decent idea.
I was sorta guessing my way through which character would be your favorite, yeah. Anyway, the next episode (The Waterbending Scroll) will address some of those issues, and the one after that most of the rest. Aang doesn't really start his character arc until The Storm, which is four episodes down the line, and the larger issue of "exactly how often can bullshit Avatar powers Deus ex Machina the gang through danger?" has an approximate answer of "honestly until mid season 2". So if that's the biggest issue then yeah, it takes a long time before it starts being addressed so you may not want to continue the show anyway.
My biggest problem with the show thus far is the utter obsolescence of the siblings really. <_< Aside from that, it is more than Aang in theory has these problems but they rarely seem to yield in meaningful challenges for the character. He in theory has character conflict but it hasn't really done anything in the plot at all. I appreciate the honesty beyond fanboyism, CK. :)
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Re Daria:
Quinn's growth through the series is fantastic. It helps that she's up against the series's only true villain (Sandi) and starts getting the best of her later on.
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Untrue! The real villain of Daria is and always will be Ms. Li. Not that you're wrong about Quinn and how she interacts with Sandi.
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Sandi and Quinn interaction is probably the best part of the show, aside from how much Daria reminds me of my best friend in high school.
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Oh hey Daria.
The way the show flows and blurs together (especially on binge watches) isn't just you. That is going to happen when you don't really have a status quo that resets each week. Daria uses the monotony of sitcom structure the same way a school year feels. There is consistency and beats to it, but because the narrative just flows through the whole season it gets hard to remember exact sequences of events.
When I have a chance I will look up peak story beats that still tear out my heart even 15 years after being the target audience. I think it is more season 3 stuff that is the peak for the drama. Aaaaaand just realizing that thinking abou Daria and listening to the Cure in public is a bad idea.
Edit - case in point. Looked up the episode that destroys me that I thought was season 3. Final episode of season 5. Literally the last TV episode of the show.
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Daria (Season 3)
I have to be direct.
Season 3, aka "I guess I am just human or whatever".
Well, some disclaimer is needed. There's several episodes this season that are strongly detatched from anything resembling reality, which while good for humor completely clashes with the show at large (Depth Takes a Holiday, Daria!, and The Lawndale File.) The overall tone of the episodes leads me to think these are direct and very barbed piss takes at MTV execs. "Oh, so we need a Holiday episode? Oh, we'll do your Holiday episode." For the record, Jake gets all the actual good songs.
Lane Miserables is also at odds with the rest of the season, but not the show as a whole. So I'm not really considering it as part of the rest of the writeup, anyways.
The remaining 9 episodes go back to my first statement though. While season 1 plots were largely about establishing the Morgandorfer household, and season 2 focused on Daria's relationship with the world and especially her classmates, season 3 is about putting Daria in regular teenager situations and letting her Daria-ness simply write the episode from there. It's less focused on character development than either previous season, instead seeming content to take the characters in their mid-development state and have them experience normal life situations for a change. Basically everyone's at a sort of equilibrium, forced to acknowledge their shortcomings but not yet forced to overcome them.
Best Episode: Daria Dance Party. In a season largely defined by relative normalcy, I find myself drawn to the episode that's basically "normal but with personality along the edges".
Weakest Episode: The Lawndale File. When you subtract the semi-topical in 1999 (2000?) cultural references it's just a bland episode with no narrative drive beyond outrageously trumped up paranoia.
Rating: 7/10. The stasis most of the cast is in is a bit disappointing, but the funny steps up the game a bit to make up the gap.
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Huh and yeah reviewing, I was totally off on Season 3. It is so shaped in my memory by the first and last episodes. "Through a Lens Darkly" is definitely the first real peek into Daria's introspection and coming to terms with just how much of a facade she puts up and what that is. Very teenager moment in your development as a person (and something that we all need to be reminded of constantly?). The audience meeting her auntie is kind of a big deal I think as well since it establishes a mentor/adult that Daria actually engages with as a peer.
The final episode is obviously some of the most important character points in the series...
Also want to go back to an episode in season 2, Arts'N' Crass. I could have sworn that was a later series than that... but it establishes some serious character for Helen that can seem lacking at first. Regardless of how difficult she can find Daria to be and how distant she can seem at times, she will 100% side with her when she knows she is in the right and is there for her daughters. It is an amazingly genuine sequence at the end of the episode and one that (as sooooo many things in Daria) I project a bit too much on. I wasn't a difficult kid, but I was a strange one sometimes and I know there was times my parents stepped up to bat for me in spite of knowing exactly how I am.
Edit - oh and yes God God Dammit is the best and greatest musical tune ever penned.
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Daria (Season 4)
If I'm wrong please correct.
Also the theme of this season.
The show to this point was largely cases where Daria was ultimately in the right, and the conflict was over her being needlessly harsh in her delivery. Here the focus character of a given episode will pretty consistently be in the wrong. Jane is really bad at relationships and relationship/friend balance. Daria legitimately pisses off Jodie with her self-righteousness. Psycho Therapy very nearly sends Helen to tears. Dye! Dye! My Darling is an exercise in managing to make every single character do something very wrong and being angry at themselves over it later. Fortunately for the show (seeing as basically everything in the movies and season 5 is based on this episode) this flow logically from the season.
Between that and the highlight reel aspects of I Loathe a Parade, I'm wondering if they'd known at the start of this season approximately how much show they'd have left. World views have been rent asunder, and leaving Season 5 to rebuild our self-images using pieces old and new before making the true leap at the end of the show, leaving this life behind forever. If that makes any sense.
Best Episode: I Loathe a Parade. I gotta admit, I'm a sucker for all the callbacks.
Weakest Episode: Groped by an Angel. Of the many things Daria as a show has proved itself highly qualified to discuss, it turns out atheism is one it has to fall back on trite and predictable responses for. Oh well.
Rating- 8/10. Ramping up, calling out, kickin' ass. Pumped man.
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Daria: Is it Fall Yet?
Alternately titled "8 or whatever short tales about Lawndale". Because there isn't really a plot here, but a series of character vignettes.
I am willing to assume this is on purpose, and the point is to show how badly the cast fares when everyone mutually cuts themselves off from their support networks. You could also call it "Self-induced crippling social isolation: The Movie". The argument could also be made (actually the argument IS made, by Tom, in this movie) that this is an apt title for the show, but unlike the normal of the show here everyone has done it, not just Daria.
The net result is closer to season 3 than season 4. There's less status quo, but the general idea of everyone being stuck with their own thoughts but not really being able to do much about them is there. While I could recite everyone's general subplots, on the whole I don't find them terribly interesting in isolation. As so often comes up in these reviews (I guess that's the word for them?), some events are logically required to further the story but are really dumb and annoying to sit through. In this case, all items related to Daria's issues with Tom. Yes, you can't go from "Self-induced Crippling Social Isolation: The Real-Time Event" to "functioning relationship" over the course of a month, and yes I know you can't just have that shit happen off screen. But you do need to give me some other material in between lest I get twitchy.
I should probably be offended by Jane's subplot. I can't find it in me to be so. I think I'm too surprised Jane didn't pick up she was being hit on. Really goddamned blatantly. It's strange to me that Jane, raised in Casa Lane, would have such a strong assumption of hetero-normativity.
Dumb summer jobs are dumb summer jobs.
So bassssically Quinn and DiMartino have to carry the movie. They succeed! DiMartino getting, well, ANYTHING is kinda nice because the dude is only second to Stacy in being unfairly shit on by life. But Quinn of course comes surging back from a season or two of relative irrelevance to reclaiming her status as The Other Main Character here. It makes sense though; for most of seasons 2, 3, and 4, Quinn was defined by the Fashion Club, and their group subplots. It's nicely mirrored in her actual plot here; she'd been acting below her own intelligence to avoid being outcast. This was always her MO, from episode 1, but the stability of the Fashion Club meant she was able to go on auto pilot about it; she wasn't putting thought into how to be accepted, just time and energy which isn't the same as what she was doing in Season 1. So after what is at least 1, and more likely 2, years in-universe of slacking off she's presented an actual challenge that she chooses to meet.
Rating- 7/10. Absolute initial response was somewhat higher, but actually writing everything out yeah, it's not quite 8 material.
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Daria (Season 5)
Haters gone hate hate hate hate.
Yeah this is my favorite season. The hatemail from Daria fandom will be arriving any day I'm sure.
So each season sectioned off a particular part of Daria's own character arc. 1 establishes her clash against societal expectation, 2 expands her exposure to the world at large, 3 has her doubting her own motives and hypocrisy, and 4 the world and her closest friends actually challenging her on above. So after shuffling through an angst period in the first movie, season 5 is largely about Daria just... giving life a fair shake. Being Daria she will pace back and forth on the "Do Something" precipice, and really this is Tom's function in the show (aside from being a gender flipped satellite love interest, which is cute and I do appreciate it). Since he's an outsider to the cast, while still being largely trusted by Daria, he can be the voice that says "no, seriously, give it a shot, the worst that happens is you're sorta embarrassed." And then she gets really mad at him for a while then admits she was being a doofus and life goes on. A similar running theme exists for most of the cast; it's okay to give a damn and try.
This of course means that Helen was right all along, because apparently she's got the superpower of actually holding two full on conversations at the same time.
It doesn't get the best episode nod, but this write-up does have to make specific mention of Boxing Daria. Fittingly it's only the very last episode that reveals Daria's Secret Origins, because it is only at this moment, after the entire series of her character arc, that we can actually appreciate it properly. And more importantly, that Daria herself can; she was wrong about everything. That life was worth giving as many tries as it took because eventually something would take and living without those things was hardly living at all.
This is how we know it's fictional.
I kid.
Best Episode: Lucky Strike. This one has the major resolution of Quinn's story arc, so that's huge points there. A lot of my favorite gags for the series are in this particular episode as well (like every word from Li and DeMartino's mouths for starters). More than that though, much like Pinch Sitter way back in Season 1, this episode is one of those unqualified wins for Daria. I mean, Jeffy (I think) managed an original though. That's a hell of an accomplishment.
Weakest Episode: Sappy Anniversary. A lot of my comments on Is It Fall Yet? apply here. I get the concept, it advances the story arc, but god it can be tedious to sit through 20 minutes that SHOULD have been resolved with the exchange "I feel like you take me for granted" "Howso?" "Well we never really do anything special or celebrate anything" "I guess that's fair. What should we do then?" Of course I'm sure I've met grown ass men and women who couldn't have that conversation, but sometimes verisimilitude is a bitch y'know?
Rating: 8/10. Smooth all the way down. Ayup.
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Daria: Is It College Yet?
You're standing on my neck.*
Like the last movie, this one features a lot of vignettes of the non-core cast. Unlike the last movie, these ones actually all tie back to the main plot in a meaningful way. Not necessarily advancing it, but at least working off the main concept.
It's Graduation Season! Hurray!
It's College Application Season! Booo!
Honestly I'm not sure what to say about the main plot thread. Daria's college application process doesn't really speak to anything I've evver had to do, I guess. The resolution of her and Tom's relationship, well... is fitting and makes perfect sense but doesn't inspire terribly interesting commentary. Tom was something Daria needed in her life but their actual relationship wasn't one meant to last.
Howeeeever.
Here's what's interesting. Tom's main function in the show is, as noted above, to be the voice that says "Go ahead, give it a try". So Jane's arc in the movie? Daria has to be the voice that says "go ahead, give it a try" for her. Much as the last episode of the series shows Daria's arc come full circle, here most of her and Jane's friendship comes full circle.
And they claim they wrote this show as they went.
Rating: 7/10. Good ending for things, but lacks major hits on the feels-o-meter.
*Hey, just because it's not in the movie doesn't mean the last Daria write-up SHOULDN'T end on la-la la la la.
la-la la la la
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This entire set of writeups actually makes me want to give Daria a try. It never got any airtime over Brazilianistan and it sounds very well constructed.
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Caria is legit one of the best made young adult pieces of television ever made.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 2: Earth)
"It's time to ask yourself the big questions. Who are you, and what do you want!"
Though less obvious in season 1, like most modern american fiction Avatar draws a great deal from Star Wars. So unsurprisingly season 2 is really more about the villains than the heroes. Season 1 had a hero-driven goal and the villain had to react to them. Here, the actions of the villains change the landscape and our heroes are constantly amending their plans to work around them.
Also of course the heroes fundamentally lose. Pretty badly.
Season 2 is notably more consistent than the other two in general. Both season 1 and season 3 start off with a string of episodes that largely meander. while some casual misadventures are to be had here (Avatar Day and The Cave of Two Lovers mostly), I find myself appreciating the random lore elements of those episodes a lot more than equivalent episodes in season 1. In part, Aang/Katara/Sokka have a much better group dynamic at this point, meaning that they react more enjoyably to outsiders and their concerns. But also I think the writers just have a better sense of what sorts of stories are actually interesting to the audience compared to which ones are interesting to the writers. Backstory on a previous Avatar is much more engaging than backstory on a one-off village.
But of course the bigger factor here is that we've got two more major characters in the cast. Four if you want to think of Ty Lee and Mai as major. At this point in the show, it's clear that Zuko is as much the main character as Aang a lot of the time, and so Azula fulfills the role of being an antagonist to both of them, generally pretty successfully. "Pretty and poetic, but also scary in a good way", y'know. Toph meanwhile is basically the best. She brings something the group just hasn't had: a) actual confidence and b) blunt honesty. We don't have to pussyfoot around anymore, Toph's got this one.
Best Episode:
"Leaves on the vine falling so slow
Like fragile tiny shells drifting in the foam
Little soldier boy come marching home
Brave soldier boy comes marching home."
Weakest Episode: "You're in Ba Sing Se now. Everyone is safe here."
Now, City of Walls and Secrets is supposed to be seriously frustrating. But even without that element, there's a serious flaw in this episode: Long Feng is just not a credible villain. To an extent this is also intentional, he's supposed to be a petty tyrant who's out of his depth against the real villains. The trouble I have is how BADLY he handles the gang. They come into the city to talk to the King about the war that Long Feng knows damn well the Earth Kingdom is losing. He's self-absorbed, not delusional. And instead of shuffling the Avatar and his very capable escort out of the city to talk to, y'know, fucking Generals or something, he essentially holds him hostage in the heart of the city. The thing of it all is that all they had to do was give Long Feng a reason to want the war not to end. He could frankly have been a conspirator with some Fire Nation interest without altering the actual plot, but it doesn't even need to be that. We see later that the heads of the Earth Kingdom military are personally loyal to the king. So the war keeps them scattered lest they defy him and the Dai Li. Shit, this plausibly IS the reason he needs to keep the Avatar silent on his own terms, in Ba Sing Se where he can watch him. But you have to SHOW ME that. Or at least give a clear implication of it, not just leave me hanging four episodes to speculate while I sit there thinking "You know that Aang could, AT ANY TIME, fight his way past all your Dai Li and force the truth to light. Y'know, that thing that actually happens in three episodes?"
Rating: 9/10. Beyond all that though, there's just a lot more episodes that are willing to play with the audience's feelings rather than just being straight action-comedy. Zuko Alone, Bitter Work, Lake Laogai (see quote at start of post, this almost got the best episode nod almost entirely for it), The Guru, and of course Crossroads of Destiny all have moments suitable for tearbending. And as you may have noticed, CK rating scale is [/i]actually[/i] based almost wholly on feels.
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While the second half of Season 3 is quite strong, I have to agree, Season 2 is where Avatar is strongest. Bitter Work is easily my favourite episode, though Lake Laogai and Zuko Alone are excellent competition. As is Appa's Lost Days, honestly. That said, while I find Tales of Ba Sing Se to be hit or miss, I can't fault you for picking it for best episode. Iroh's Tale is excellently done.
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. Appa's Lost Days was on the short list of "episodes I expect to get the Best Episode nod", I remembered it really hitting me last time I went through season 2. On this rewatch it wasn't quite as impactful for whatever reason. Still meant to put it on that list in the last paragraph though.
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This entire set of writeups actually makes me want to give Daria a try. It never got any airtime over Brazilianistan and it sounds very well constructed.
I'm shocked that you haven't seen this yet. It's definitely something I think would massively appeal to you. Would definitely recommend it.
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Avatar season 2 is pretty much 100% The Empire Strikes Back. I have no real problem with this because The Empire Strikes Back. I'm not sure if I like Tales of Ba Sing Se so much because Iroh is my favorite character or whether Iroh became my favorite character because I like Tales of Ba Sing Se so much.
While I normally shudder at the thought of not watching things in order, I suppose I'd have to second the notion that Ciatos skip ahead to seasons 2&3 if 1 isn't cutting it because wow there's some good stuff in those latter seasons. At least stick through enough of season 2 for Toph to show up, because Toph is amazing. I could rattle off a list of my favorite three characters and it wouldn't include any of the core trio of protagonists. (It's Iroh > Toph > Zuko, for reference.) That said, I think by the end Aang well transcends the initial kid power fantasy issues Ciato cited. Mostly because: even when everyone in the world is telling him that he can only win by killing someone, including past incarnations of himself, he refuses to do so on moral grounds, which really did feel like a satisfying culmination of a lot of little character beats they hit throughout the series.
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Mike Judge's Beavis and Butthead (Volume 4/Season 8)
hehheh hehheh
So, extended joke about all the really dumb shit Beavis and Butthead have done over the years aside, this is our first entry where continuity is optional. And consequently the hardest one to say anything substantive about.
So this is the entirety of the 2011 revival. I also considered calling this entry 'Beavis and Butthead Open Bracket 2011 Close Bracket', but that'd be a reference I'm not entirely sure anyone present would get.
My main memories of the braindead duo are of the movie, and setting that aside what I remember of the show's original run finding individual episodes funny but being annoyed at the music video segments breaking up the flow. The biggest change to the show for the revival was having most of the intermissions be for MTV's reality programs of the day (Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, etc), which is probably the most effective part of this season on the whole. While the dorks gain about 30 IQ points for these parts which is weird, it's otherwise fairly consistent about having a good zinger or two. Could just be I don't remember enough about the music of their original run to appreciate the bits back then.
The trouble the show has though is that while the intermissions are generally good, they still play holy havoc with the episodes. A lot of times there's not even enough episode remaining to actually properly set up a punchline because you have to spend the whole run-time just showing stuff happening to get to the end at all. So in the end most of the good stuff is actually visual gags, which there's plenty of opportunity for at least.
I'd prefer to rate the episodes as what constituted a broadcast episode (so episodes that are two 10 minute shorts would go together), since some other shows with splits like that will be easier to handle that way, but well... without interval parts connecting them or the like I"m having trouble actually remembering both halves of the episodes that stood out to me, so I'm going to break them up. It's simpler.
Best Episode- The Rat. The entire middle segment of the Rat where they fail to set a rat trap is great. But I actually really love the rat puppy-dogging after them afterward. Something about the genuine affection they show for the thing really works for me, even though the ultimate punchline is just kinda there.
Weakest Episode- Bathroom Break. Hits too close to home.
Rating- 5/10. It's popcorn. I mean, aside from The Rat and the two extended episodes, I'm having trouble what the actual gags were in any of the episodes, and I watch most of them yesterday. I also distinctly remember declaring a lot of them kinda eh, even though I'm not sure which ones were and which ones had some good jokes I don't remember. If I were cruising the channels looking for something to fill a dull half hour I'd certainly watch it ahead of a lot of other things, but the way I watch shows, binge watching video releases? Yeah, doesn't hold up too great.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 3: Fire)
So last time we noted that Book 2 was probably the most consistent part of Avatar. This phrasing was always meant to preface that I was going to call Book 3 the best season. I have since decided I may have been in error; while Book 2 undeniably is better at having a consistent narrative running through the entire season, the weaker episodes of Book 3 are considerably less weak upon reviewing than my memory credited them. And as such the season as a whole is quite incredible because you have a pretty good beginning followed by, starting a Day of Black Sun, basically the most amazing run of television we've yet covered.
I get why I thought this way though. The last episode of the previous season ended with Aang straight up DYING and having to be revived with a one-of-a-kind resource, an action which also effectively ended the Hundred Year War in the Fire Nation's favor. We establish in the first episode this season the resources Team Good Guys still have and their proverbial last stand is scheduled in advance. So any time spent between that episode and the invasion on Day of Black Sun will come across to the viewer as dithering, a sense which is amplified by Aang's belief he's utterly failed the world and has to redeem himself and the resulting frustration. For an extra layer, while Zuko's lack of turn in Crossroads of Destiny was a believable bit of his character, the early going of this season quickly establishes that he's also mired in self-loathing that we as viewers know is going to end with him fighting for Team Good Guys in the end, so again the buildup feels needless in a meta-narrative sense. So on paper every episode between Awakening and The Invasion except maybe The Avatar and the Firelord are filler... but in practice, isolated from being impatient on a first viewing, most of those intervening episodes are actually quite enjoyable. Actually, let's detour quickly to get this bit out of the way.
Weakest Episode: The Runaway. This is basically the only Toph focus episode the whole season (since she doesn't get a life-changing fieldtrip with Zuko) and it's just not really a good fit for her. The friction with Katara feels forced (primarily because Katara come across as uncharacteristically holier-than-thou rather than being more upfront with her concerns), the breakdown of her issues is too on the nose to feel natural, and despite the overall premise it's just not fun in the way Toph should be.
Meanwhilst I found myself liking The Headband and The Painted Lady a lot more on this runthrough than previously in particular. Nightmares and Daydreams was actually utterly hilarious, and the Beach of course is, well, another villain episode in a series known for its villains. So while a bit heavy on exposition and maybe a touch slow the first half of the season is actually good.
The entire rest of the series starting with Day of Black Sun is an unstoppable train of emotion. The series actually has the heroes straight up lose their desperate invasion gambit (because not only were they utterly defeated in Crossroads of Destiny, but the villains casually learned about the eclipse before they even made their move). But the series begins wrapping up, which means everyone finishing their character arcs. And then we have...
Best Episode: "I'm so full of hope that it's making me tearbend. *cries*"
"My stomach is so hungry that it's making me tearbend *sob* I need meat!"
Such a brilliant take on the series recap.
Of course that's a lie.
Best Episode: "My mother lied to you. She was protecting the last waterbender."
"What? Who?!"
"ME!!!"
It's amazing just how closely Katara comes to going over the edge here. In fact, had Yohn Ra not been retired, she would have. Back in The Puppetmaster, she breaks down crying over having to use bloodbending to save her family's lives. Her she uses it as her first line of attack against a dude that she's assumed is the man who killed her mother. She literally forces the dude to his knees before even looking to see if its the right guy. In that moment, without the extra time spent flying back to the Fire Nation, she would have killed him. But I really like the resolution of the episode; she's not sure even in the end if it was right to spare this man, yet she's still a stronger, healthier woman for having faced him.
But actually... that's not my real pick either.
"Your uncle's gotten to you, hasn't he."
"Yes, he has."
See, way back in 2008, the first time I actually watched Avatar was on the day Sozin's Comet came out. They were marathoning it as a movie, I was kinda bored, thought I recognized the title as something I'd heard good things about.
"Destiny is a funny thing, Prince Zuko"
So I just pop it on and it happens to be on a particular scene.
"Yeah yeah, I know you're good now"
"I was talking about my uncle"
After that I pretty much had to watch the whole thing from start to finish.
"I hate you uncle! You smell, and I hate you for all time!!"
"You didn't... really say that, did you?"
"I might as well have."
Then a couple days later I snagged season 1. But in the end, on a fresh watch from start to end, and despite excepting to nod The Southern Raiders for this position, I came back to that scene again.
"Uncle. I know you must have mixed feelings about seeing me. But I want you to know... I am so, so sorry uncle. I am so sorry, and ashamed of what I did! I don't know how I can ever make it up to you, but I-"*is pulled into a fierce hug* "How can you forgive me so easily! I thought you'd be furious with me!!"
"I was never angry with you. I was sad, because I thought you had lost your way."
"I did lose my way."
"But you found it again."
Best Episode: The Old Masters
Not bad for an angry jerk and a creepy old grandpa.
Rating-
Well.
See. Rewatching the whole series? Actually managed to raise my opinion of season 3.
So there's pretty much only one way this ends, isn't there?
10/10
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With you being wrong and not noting that The Blind Bandit is literally the only episode of the whole show anyone needs to see?
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That was last season! And honestly on rewatch while the Earth Rumble VI segment is legit (absolutely recommended for anyone with a passing knowledge of 80s Wrestling) the rest of the episode is only so-so.
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Inside Out
*squeeee* omygodohmygod PIXAR IS DOING SOMETHING THAT FEELS LIKE PIXAR AND NOT LOW RENT DISNEY
So let's itemize the obvious strong points of the film based on this then talk about specific victories and flaws.
- Fucking gorgeous. Not just well animated, but the designs on the characters and small details therein are great stuff. Joy is literally glowing!
- Excellent marriage of fantastic concepts with grounded, personal storytelling
- Excellent use of celebrity voices. Lewis Black as Anger man.
- Uplifting humanist messaging without talking down to the audience.
There's one really glaring flaw that puts a huge dent in the movie for me. In simplest terms, Sadness is just... despicable in the first half of the movie. They use protagonist-centered morality too heavily, more than even works for the character involved frankly. Joy narrates that she doesn't see why Sadness is there... and we as the audience ALSO don't see a reason for Sadness to exist for over half the movie. If anything, the rest of the emotions are under-reacting to her, because she's generally presented as an unstoppable engine of sheer destruction, dedicated solely to destroying all Riley holds dear and reveling in the sheer carnage in its wake. The best thing we can say of her in the early portions is that she seems to not particularly want to do any damage, and that it's simply in her nature to do so and she will invariably act in accordance with that nature unless forcibly held in check. She doesn't want to be a monster, but is.
Intellectually we know this is untrue. And having read ahead, I knew going in the actual function of Sadness in the movie's theory of emotion. But her presentation is less that of a healthy functioning bit of humanity and more the personification of Depression, a hostile sickness who wants nothing more than to hold fiercely to the saddest of times and dwell on them to the exclusion of all else, until all they can actually do is lie motionless, crippled, forever. And again, this doesn't seem to be the intent. But at no point prior to being allowed control does Sadness actually express meaningful concern for Riley's well being. Some offhand remarks about not derailing the system, but that feels more like her trying desperately to hold into a win and justifying it as being dangerous to do else.
And again, intellectually this is justifiable in story. Of course Sadness doesn't know much of anything, Joy's been controlling her forever, and once she does have some control she does function as an aspect of the whole rather than an outside, destructive force. But as the audience, this jars a bit with the first half of the movie. We spent a lot of time considering her as a hostile force, without any clear signs this was untrue. You can't define the view of the movie so heavily by the protagonist that we're blindsided by the actual development of the plot, at least not in this sort of story.
Everything else is great!
The interactions of characters in human space are jealousy-inducing. The interactions of the emotions are generally pretty funny. The journey through the mental space is a neat interpretation of psychology and neurology. Every gag where we jump into a non-Riley person's head is great, both as movie storytelling and just for being funny. Lots of little details to obsess over.
Take her to the moon.
The issue I took is really distracting after the fact, but in the moment when you get to the endgame you're willing to forgive it all. Although yes I was bothered in the first half by "god I really dislike Sadness and want her to fail. That's... not good." But hey. As long as the emotions line up when they need to, y'know?
Rating- 8/10.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2012] (Season 1)
Strange show. There's a reasonable amount of competent writing, reasonable level of continuity, and it's pretty clear watching the show that... whoever is doing most of this are big fans of the original cartoon who are determined to bring as much of its characters, concepts, etc as possible without sacrificing credibility to this show. But... for most of the season's run there's just no emotional resonance to it whatsoever for me. I watched like 19 episodes in and had any meaningful response (that is, something besides "eh", "'salright", or "that wasn't very good") to ONE episodes in that time (The Gauntlet, ie "the turtles fail their objective and then Shredder stomps the lot of them out of nowhere").
The stuff after that point is considerably better. Focus shifts back from "turtles face new enemy (that they probably created)!" to "turtles have to use their talents to survive and keep each other safe", not coincidentally also being the episodes with the largest focus on April and Karai, who are... basically the best characters in this show. Or at least this season. Hell, this was a major contributor to the lack of caring for most of the season, April would go long stretches without even appearing, any time she WAS relevant was purely to Donnie's little-bit-creeper crush (although I will say, this is more about his personality lending itself to obsessive behavior than him being a budding date rapist at least). Once that stopped the show had a much stronger emotional core because, for both logical in-universe reasons and reasonable storytelling reasons, the turtles themselves are not the best adjusted and she brings a balancing personality to the dynamic that Splinter doesn't always (he's got the kung fu dad "I'm strict and a little distant but if you harm my sons YOU WILL FUCKING DIE" thing going).
On the whole it's mostly intellectually interesting to me as someone who did grow up with the '87 cartoon, but it does get pretty decent at the end.
Weakest Episode- Probably Turtle Temper. It's meant to showcase that these Turtles have the emotional maturity of teenagers rather than just... being called teenagers. Which is succeeds at, but in a "these guys suck at being heroes still, sorry folks" way. It's probably the most irritating of a story line the first half of the series repeats with variations about 7 times, mostly. But more than that it feels like the most dissonant between "how badly the turtles fucked this up" (they got a bystander dragged into their fight and mutated) and "how much in the way of consequences or guilt they suffer" ie none. As noted, I struggled to care too much about the first 3/4ths of the series so I may be forgetting one I liked less.
Best Episode- Enemy of My Enemy. Gets consequences and dilemmas very right. Everyone's emotions here feel very natural, and as well everyone feels like they get a legit chance to weigh in and develop because of it. Leo goes against his instincts because it's a strategically sound decision and, due to his relative inexperience, he often errs in favor of them over trusting himself. Just well presented and a major catalyst in the plot to boot.
Rating-
Wait, one last thing.
Space Heroes is fucking great and I should totally pick up Stat Trek: TAS shouldn't I.
Okay.
Rating- 5/10. The strong finish feels like too small a portion of the season to go higher than this.
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Tiny Toon Adventures (Season 1 Volume 1)
I have seen the face of God, and yea it was good.
(http://statici.behindthevoiceactors.com/behindthevoiceactors/_img/actors/actor_13.jpg)
Pictured: God
Back to that in a second.
Fittingly this show is among the bedrock of modern animation, seeing as it was unto itself a deliberate and methodical effort to reconstruct icons of the golden age of animation into the then-current day. So of course a lot of times it can come across as being clever without really being funny. But hey, these things happen.
Since there's not a huge amount of continuity or overriding themes, unsurprisingly. So the most interesting aspects are how each character is used and who is most effective. Or something like that.
Buster- He's... a lot better as a host than as a star. Which is weird. Despite the easy label of Hamton as the straight man of the show, Buster much more often fulfills this role narratively; he's grounded and provides a rational response to most of the goings on. The main trait he shares with Bugs Bunny, primarily retaliating only when sufficiently provoked, plays into this well; he can employ cartoon logic but it's a conscious decision to do so.
Babs- Babs should by all rights be supremely annoying. She's always on and can't hold a train of thought. But because Tress MacNeille is God, she's instead the best character.
Plucky- He gets probably the second most focus episodes this season, understandably so because he's the most interesting lead. Not necessarily does this lead to the funniest material, but it's generally the most consistent.
Hamton- It's weird how many episodes in you get before he's even relevant. Once he is he's generally pretty good y'know.
Furball- Gets probably the most focus of this season which is fascinating. What I like about Furball is that despite having vicious cat behaviors he's otherwise immensely more sympathetic than this character is anywhere else. You almost want him to succeed in eating other characters because god, he deserves a win y'know?
Montana Max- Lots of fun. Creepily prescient too. I guess this mostly means that 80s style corporate raiders not only survived to the modern day but have if anything gotten so naked about their motives they resemble a goddamned cartoon character based on them. But no, the writers are great about giving him interesting and creative levels of cruelty to inflict on everyone else so you don't really get bored of his abject sociopathy.
Elmyra- The entire writing staff had animal-'loving' toddlers at this time. I'm convinced of this. Elmyra has just a couple of focus episodes but she is in EVERY other episode. She's... let's call it incredibly uneven. It depends entirely on how she's being used in an episode. She'll sometimes be treated as a sort of force of nature, who can be anticipated and enemies maneuvered into heading straight into her. She's quite good in this role. As a lead she'll usually be an oblivious bringer of doom, which is hard to sit through most of the time. And sometimes she'll be... treated realistically, a child-person with real feelings but an incomplete understanding of what she does and the writers try to make it sympathetic and it's... okay but clashes so bad with the other Elmyras. Blah.
Of course some of this is because the show has different... reality levels for lack of better way to put it. Sometimes bits are clearly actors performing, others dip in and out, others are clearly happening to the actors in their 'real' lives, but the show doesn't differentiate between them in a visible way most of the time. I assume it's a "we can do whatever's funniest" thing, but a lot of times it detracts from the humor for me because it's just a little dissonant. Or I'm watching too many things and confusing myself.
Best Episode- The Acme Acres Zone. Definitely the funniest episode overall. The first short is pretty average but everything about the Hamton one was good and I like the layers of humor in Babs' sketch.
Weakest Episode- Buster Bunny Time. The last sketch is great but the first is kinda insufferable. No. Bad Elmyra.
Rating- 6/10. Never really boring, and some scattered moments of good laughs, but not particularly standout.
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Teen Titans (Season 1)
Hello again D- ah, wait, sorry. For some reason this series gives Bruce Timm a producer credit but does not, in fact, adopt the DCAU canon. Weird.
Okay so this series is definitely a slow starter. I commented around episode 4 or so to the effect of "Oh Hynden Walch, you're the only good thing so far". The team wants to have a very en media res going on which... if I'd been watching this in first run television I'd have dropped the show by episode 2 frankly. Like dude. You can't start the show by having two main characters have a huge falling out when we haven't even been introduced to the characters! Actually hold up.
Weakest Episode- Divide and Conquer. I don't even remember who the villain is in this game and it so doesn't matter because Cyborg getting into a pissy fit with Robin and leaving the team in Episode Fucking 1 is amazingly stupid. Like, THAT'S the first impression you want me to take from this show? The cast is a bunch of self important cry babies who fight among themselves constantly? In a super hero team show? The fuck.
Sisters being basically about one member feeling neglected and jealous only reinforces that trend. ANd think, that's about Starfire, so they're dinging teh best part of the show in the process!
Okay you can argue that Slade is better, let's not slight Ron Perlman, but still.
Now once we get past those episodes (I'm in awe of the incompetence of the first four episodes as a creative decision, seriously how are you trying to sell the show at this point that you end up with these four episodes?), we get the first set of character focus episodes. Those are all pretty good. Cyborg's is a bit rote, but hey, neat B plot. Nevermore is the first real suggestion that this show has some wit and talent going on behind the scenes. Actually...
Best Episode- Nevermore. Of course CK likes the mindscape episode. Don't be silly. More than that it's one of those episodes a budding series should always have, where it lays seeds for plotlines they don't have plans for... yet. Especially in a superhero story, you need to make your world seem bigger than it is. And y'know, beyond that it's just fun to see the rainbow Ravens and how the rest of the team actually does, in fact, give a fuck.
Switched and Masks are also good times. Deep Six is a bit weaker but still enjoyable.
90% of the time the show gives me the distinct impression that they're blowing the entire budget on character animation and have one dude do all the backgrounds in MS Paint. The other 10% is Detention, a 22 minute tribute to Yellow Submarine. I approve.
But yeah, it's a strange show. Rarely have I covered something where I actively thought multiple episodes were actually bad, so this is a first. Once it gets going and focuses on the characters as people rather than its weird, misguided attempt to, uh, put the Teen into the Teen Titans I suppose you could say, it's pretty good. Not super awesome, but good.
Rating- 6/10.
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Brave
...
So this rewatch, unlike most which are just me going "I totally want to jabber about this thing", was inspired by conversation. I found I was having an uncommonly low opinion of the movie.
...
This rewatch has only lowered my opinion.
So when you're basing your movie on a relationship, that is, of two distinct characters resolving differences and coming to a new understanding and sense of togetherness and stuff, as an audience I need to feel that both characters have a valid viewpoint. Otherwise, when they compromise and come to a middle ground in the end, it doesn't ring true. This is basically what I was talking about in Inside Out; the movie centered too much on the protagonist such that her foil wasn't presented as sympathetically as she needed to be.
So for this rewatch I figured something like this is why I remembered not really clicking with Merida and Elinor's relationship (in a movie where the Mother/Daughter dynamic is kinda the point). And it was.
But what I didn't tune into the first time around is the degree this happens. Elinor isn't just presented too much from Merida's viewpoint, she's... outright abusive. Like, not just tyrannical. A lot of their interaction int eh early going is Elinor as a tutor, which is fine. But a princess must be perfect? A princess must wear an outfit she demonstrably cannot move or breathe in? ANd everything else that says basically "a princess must be insufferably feminine and without a will of her own"? Yeah. Abuse. I can only read it that way. Sorry.
and where the last Pixar movie was pretty good about having moments where our maligned non-focus main character got to show some positive traits and win the focus character over, in this one we're... apparently supposed to conclude that Merida was being selfish and was the one mostly in the wrong? No. Sorry.
So yeah the core dynamic of the movie is just a complete no sell for me. We can intellectualize this as Elinor trying to teach power through femininity as it were, but that's not how it's presented. She kinda sorta models it, but there's two main flaws here. a) she never makes any visible attempt in the movie to reason with Merida over it, to explain why she should know these things. They're just a pile of duties and if any of them are done even the slightest bit wrong Merida will have caused the downfall of her entire civilization. b) Merida is generally presented with a very modern sensibility, and since the movie is heavily framed from her point of view the (highly anachronistic) medieval setting and the realities thereof are things that only exist in the abstract. They don't make sense in this movie despite nominally taking place during them (probably). So yeah. A desperate act stemming from a lifetime of abuse isn't the crime the movie frames it as I don't think.
When we take all that away there's... not really a lot of movie left. Some Scottish Hijnks. THey're.. there. And the triplets. Scottish Huey, Dewy, and Louis! They can stay. I do like how the mystical elements are omnipresent but have a very light touch.
Rating- 4/10. Yeah I dunno. Um... I can't say it's hard to watch really. Moves at a fine pace. But yeah the beginning stuff is very distracting now.
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Apropos of nothing, I remember being in a Borders ages ago (back when such entities still roamed the Earth) and seeing some collection of Teen Titans, the comic book (specifically older Teen Titans stuff, not newer stuff... this was in 2006, and I think the comics were from the 70s or early 80s?). I recalled liking the few episodes of TT the Cartoon Network show I randomly watched, so why not give it a look? It even came with a forward explaining a bit of the history and just how awesome this one old plotline they were collecting was, and how they'd built toward it and re-introduced old characters and this is gonna be awesome blah blah blah. I think the plotline was something along the lines of Raven's dad invades New York City or something and Raven must decide her TRUE LOYALTIES blah blah blah?!
It was awful. Okay I didn't read all of it but the writing sucked and I'm not sure what drugs they were on that caused them to think in the forward that their "connections" to other comics was in any way good or made sense. Like, they literally have this other character who'd apparently been written out or removed from the cast earlier walk up to their door and say "Hi I'm back, I think you're going to need me!" as their big reunion thing. All the elegance of "hey our friend who left the D&D group is visiting this week, let's put their character back in." Anyway, yeah, writing was bad, plot appeared to proceed in the most hackneyed way possible, art was awful, etc.
It left me quite impressed at the writers of Teen Titans the TV series, to have made something pretty cool from such dreck to be based off of!
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The "classic" Teen Titans stuff is really the 80s stuff. Most thing I am aware of it is that with a bit of distance, it is a run that has a few okay bits but is mostly just a "Me To!" of X-Men without the build up and earning of it or singular vision that the Claremont nearly solo era or even after stuff got broken up and shared with Nocenti and the like.
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Not liking the Elinor/Merida relationship is really weird but yeah I wouldn't like the movie either if I agreed! You're wrong about a bunch of things, though.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that Merida was framed as mostly in the wrong. Recall that (a) she totally gets her way about marrying against her will, which was the single biggest wedge issue between them, and (b) the last scene in the movie is Elinor and Merida riding horses together which shows that on some level Merida has won her mother over to her way of thinking on other things, too. Not to mention how much fun they have catching fish together and other "unladylike" activities. The only way that Merida is framed as "more wrong" than her mother is uh the part where she causes her mother to be cursed which well duh, otherwise the audience is very much supposed to sympathise with Merida more. Your argument would make sense if Merida ended up bending to her mother's will on all things at the end of the movie. If this was some weird sexist morality story about how Merida was wrong and needed to learn to be more ladylike/submissive/lack free will then it would not have these scenes, nor the ending it did.
You can call the Elinor/Merida relationship "abusive" all you want but you're living some pie-in-the-sky fantasy land if you don't realise that there are plenty parent/child relationships which fall awfully close to this one. Do I think Elinor is partially in the wrong because she treats Merida like a child and doesn't properly impress on her with words and logic the reasons why she should be better-behaved? Absolutely, but that's the point. You remember that scene where Elinor practices talking to Merida (and vice versa) in a reasoned way? The point being she never actually talks to Merida this way? The movie certainly wasn't unaware of the problems with Elinor and Merida had in communicating and relating to each other. Most of the things Elinor asks Merida to do are very reasonable in-setting even if Merida (and a 21st century audience) objects to them, i.e. the "perfect" behaviour and wearing the objectifying and highly uncomfortable courtship clothes.
Also, side-note, having watched both movies pretty recently, maaan Elinor has nothing on Triton as far as being an abusive parent in Disney/Pixar movies goes.
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I somehow missed CK's post on Brave (didn't click next page), but hey Elf answered that one anyway. Suffice to say that Elinor is an extremely understanding mother by contemporary standards and positively middle of the road by modern ones, so I'm not seeing it as abusive here either. I mostly wanted to get mad at Merida in that movie, which I imagine was the intended result for the adults watching, just as getting mad at the parent is the intended result for kids, and then the result is everybody hugs at the end and yay.
I'm not a super-huge fan because I think the intended age group is ultimately still the 6-12 crowd that just happens to be pretty watchable as an adult. So I like it as a children's movie but wouldn't exactly seek it out for obvious reasons unless I was looking for something to watch with kids. (I wouldn't complain if Pixar did Scotland: The PBS unhappy srs bizness relationship drama some day, though. I did watch some of "Outlander" which is closer to what I was looking for, albeit with more mommy porn! Ah well, can't win 'em all.)
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Obviously all, or at least the vast majority, of those things are true. It just doesn't matter. Comes down to what I'm actually assessing these things on. At the most basic, I'm taking my knowledge and instinct for how the story expects me to react and comparing it to what I actually feel watching it. I don't usually abstract things out to that level (it's more just sorta writing down whatever actual thoughts I remember having as I watched, preferably about a day after the fact so I can properly sort which ones were lasting impressions and which were my mind wandering), but I typically don't have to think about it, it's just how I end up writing.
But it's the only way I can really explain my issue with Brave on this rewatch. Because of the sort of story Brave is, regardless of the details the story will end with a reconciliation between Merida and Elinor. And at the story level, this means for me to be invested in that story I need to want them to reconcile. But I don't. A lot of this comes down to framing; we're looking at events through Merida's perspective, and she only sees the worst of her mother in the first half of the film. Even though we have scenes Merida isn't in, all we really get from them is "Elinor feels kinda/really bad about the terrible thing she just did" which... uh, let's say is not helping. We spend a lot of the movie with a Worst Parts version of parenting, and then later in the movie we just have them... get along because... reasons. Because everyone feels really guilty so they have to get along to feel less guilty. We get exactly one scene of good parenting to try and win us over beyond this but I'm not willing to grant them that at an emotional level. Intellectually, yes, of COURSE Merida is really biased and emphasizing the negative, she's like 16, but we don't get to see the other side in a way that makes me sympathetic to her. And without that sympathy for both sides in the relationship I'm not really invested in that entire part of the movie.
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Re: Inside Out
I disagree with your interpretation on Sadness. I don't think she was despicable, more bumbling and annoying and definitely never malicious. I think she's more misunderstood and no one knows what her role is. That's the whole point. That may be due to a protagonist centered morality, but that's a really weird criticism to levy at a movie about a character's internal emotional state, especially since she's a kid. When you're young, sadness is a negative thing that happens when you're upset and it is worsened by the fact that it's embarrassing to show outward signs of sadness (like crying in school).
There's a remarkable moment when Riley's mom says "throughout the move, you've stayed our happy girl... if we could keep smiling, it'll be a big help." This is a well meaning sentiment but it has unintended consequences. It puts pressure on Riley to remain positive and happy and implicitly sends a message that being sad is a bad thing. It is any wonder that a protagonist centered morality puts these valuations on Joy and Sadness when her own parents frame it this way?
A similar sentiment is in Moaning Lisa in the Simpsons. Lisa is sad for the entire episode and Marge tells her to smile. Both Inside Out and that episode come to the same conclusion that it is okay to be sad and that parents will support you ("Lisa, I apologize to you, I was wrong, I take it all back. Always be yourself. If you want to be sad, honey, be sad. We’ll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we’ll still be there"). We are told by our parents to "be positive" and "smile." This is a message echoed by broader society, especially in the west, where the idealized affective state is one of joy/happiness. On the other hand, sadness is stigmatized. One of the main points was finding out the utility of Sadness, both internally and externally.
I also don't think Sadness as Depression makes much sense. Depression isn't necessarily extreme sadness (although it can be). When Riley is depressed, she derives no pleasure or happiness from things she once loved, like her friends, being a goofball, or hockey. If anything, depression in this case is best represented by a lack of affect at all, positive or negative, and that dovetails well with the fact that Joy and Sadness go missing from the control center. That's when Riley is the least reactive and just lies in bed. I actually think the movie does quite well here in depicting depression.
I can kind of see where you're coming from but I didn't see any of what you've said as a problem and I didn't think the movie demonized Sadness as much as you thought. Beyond learning about the utility of sadness and how growing up involves integrating a blend of complex emotions, my reading of the film was a lot about the importance of openness of communication and learning to understand oneself, so I didn't see an adversarial bent here.
I also agree with NEB on Brave.
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I also don't think Sadness as Depression makes much sense. Depression isn't necessarily extreme sadness (although it can be). When Riley is depressed, she derives no pleasure or happiness from things she once loved, like her friends, being a goofball, or hockey. If anything, depression in this case is best represented by a lack of affect at all, positive or negative, and that dovetails well with the fact that Joy and Sadness go missing from the control center. That's when Riley is the least reactive and just lies in bed. I actually think the movie does quite well here in depicting depression.
I can kind of see where you're coming from but I didn't see any of what you've said as a problem and I didn't think the movie demonized Sadness as much as you thought. Beyond learning about the utility of sadness and how growing up involves integrating a blend of complex emotions, my reading of the film was a lot about the importance of openness of communication and learning to understand oneself, so I didn't see an adversarial bent here.
I had the same thought, but I think it's poor wording on my part. It's closer to... Sadness as portrayed in the first half of the movie was severely dysfunctional, and was inevitably going to lead to depression regardless of how the other emotions reacted to her. An anchor that made her swirled around and around until Riley shut down as she ultimately does in the film. And, y'know, of course Sadness was dysfunctional, considering how everyone reacted to her, but it came across as a self-reinforcing thing rather than something stemming from a mistake by the rest of the emotions.
Though really in Inside Out's cases it's more that when a film has such a huge gap between expected response ('poor Sadness she just wants to help and be acknowledged!') and actual response ('Good lord Joy is right Sadness, you go stand in that corner before you break everything!') I put more thinking than the film can actually stand up to into analyzing why that is.
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Young Justice
Usually these sorts of shows are either a) awesome or b) uneven. Young Justice presents us a new overall quality to assign our superhero action shows, muddled. From start to finish, this season has a very consistent feel of trying to do things that play against its strengths and weaken what the show could have been.
Unlike a lot of things I cover, Young Justice actually has a very strong start; the first four or so episodes, where we're establishing the team, introducing the core party members, and sowing the seeds for long term storylines are actually very good. Superboy's background, the forces behind his creators (Cadmus), watching our heroes learn about one another and gel as a team, these things are established early as places the show intends to explore and does an excellent job of getting you pumped up for what's coming.
At which point the show... just keeps adding more. More storylines, bigger and bigger coalitions of villains behind them, ever more interaction with greater numbers of Justice League members and adding (or teasing) new teen heroes to the team. I get the impression the second season only doubles down on this trait to boot. And I'm kinda still sorting out where the show got the idea that it should be the grand DC Universe tour. The best work on the show was always the character focus episodes, so I'm confused that the creators seemed to miss this. The sheer volume of villains, which includes something approximating every single villain in the DCU working for the seven members of the Supervillain Illuminati really detracts from the whole thing as well, because the Light as a group very rarely act in concert, but no one member of the Light steps up to have the presence of a Main Villain, end result being the Vandal Savage has to exposition his villainous villainous plan in the last episode.
Basically the show seems to have known it was a cross section of the DCAU Justice League and Teen Titans, and so decided to somehow take aspects of both shows into itself. But inexplicably picked all the ones that didn't make sense for a new show in its own continuity.
When the show does buckle down and put its focus where it should, it remains very good. Our five main characters (Artemis is presented as a main character but... honestly she's not, she just doesn't get to hold down an episode and is always second fiddle to either Robin or Cheshire, one of the villains!) have a reasonable group dynamic and their trials and flaws are presented well. It's all the other crap that stops episodes from being about them that holds it back. Actually let's wrap up.
Weakest Episode- Failsafe. I get the intent. It's a clever episode idea. But they manage to hit the exact... what's the opposite of a sweet spot? Episode manages to shoot straight between the gap of coming off as incredibly fake (sorry, no force IN THE DCU can disintegrate Superman in a single shot) but never getting the audience invested in the real danger to the team. Even knowing the twist going in it comes across as flimsy and lacks dramatic weight where it should be.. pretty disturbing.
Hooooweeeverrrrrr.
Best Episode- Disordered. Seeing the team struggle through the aftermath of that is handled very well. Superboy and his one-shot adventure with the Forever Planeteers SEEMS like it should add on to the pile of "yet another irrelevant cameo" but it actually works as intended for once; they give one of our established characters an in to fight a new set of villains and he gets a chance to save the day because they don't know how to handle him. And of course the rest of the team actually having counselling sessions is kinda cool.
I will say though that they managed to make one character I'd never heard of, Klarion, pretty fun. I keep thinking he's voiced by Vic Mignonga though, which apparently isn't true. Weird.
Grade- 6/10. Waffled between this and a 7, but having more time to sit on it has made the weaknesses stand out more than the strengths, so there it is.
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Superman: The Animated Series (Volume 1)
Hello again D.. wait.
oh? Good, good.
Hello again DCAU! Previously, we saw the far end of the continuity. Today we have the formative element of that continuity, the earliest bits of Superman. The differences in approach between this and Batman are obvious from the outset, and takes a lot of clear lessons from the third season of that show (or were they concurrent? Eh, either way). Superman actually starts with the origin story, something that is revealed quite a ways into the first season of Batman. Hell, the only thing that makes it obvious the first episode of Batman is the first episode is the "I am the Night!" speech. Episode one of Superman meanwhile has toddler Kal-El.
Wait, let's move on.
But honestly my first inclination is just to talk about the historical relevance of the show because it just feels sorta dated mostly. In much the same way the Last Son of Krypton three-parter lays most of the seeds for basically the whole show (Supes' relationships with Brainiac, Luthor, and if I'm not mistaken the first hints of Apokoliptian influence on earth are all established out of the gate), so this show contains most of the most important threads that were ultimately weaved into Justice League. Batman might be the cover boy, but it's Superman who's at the heart of DC, and his rogues and plots are the ones that can carry a full Justice League.
Just as a show unto itself it's... quite watchable, but only occasionally brilliant. And really.
Best Episode- The Main Man (Part One). I remember watching the show in first run (which would be about 13 year old CK) and thinking it was kinda funny. As an adult with many dozens if not hundreds of hours of super hero action to compare it to, the sheer outlandishness of Lobo stands out so much more. And it's amazing. The fact they were able to render something so accurate to the comics Lobo in a kids show is noteworthy as well; you can feel Brad Garret timing the REAL profanity so it was juuuusssttt off-screen.
But while the show does get a smidge better as it goes ('Volume 1' contains what the wikis tell me is actually all of Season 1 plus five episodes from season 2, and four of the five season 2 episodes are just palpably better than most of season 1), on the whole most of it fails to rise above kinda entertaining. Granted on the other hand I'm having trouble singling out a weakest episode.
Weakest Episode- Probably the Promethean. While timing hurt here, I actually fell asleep the first time through and had to watch it again. And almost fell asleep that time. It's not THAT bad but it's just not a terribly exciting concept. Random alien thingie lands on earth, tries to eat heat. We freeze it. The end.
But that would rate, like, a 4 if I were doing individual ratings for episode by my usual scale. Nothing really bad crops up, and very few episodes don't offer at least something. Show just kinda feels aged.
Grade- 6/10.
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Weakest Episode- Divide and Conquer. I don't even remember who the villain is in this game and it so doesn't matter because Cyborg getting into a pissy fit with Robin and leaving the team in Episode Fucking 1 is amazingly stupid. Like, THAT'S the first impression you want me to take from this show? The cast is a bunch of self important cry babies who fight among themselves constantly? In a super hero team show? The fuck.
i swear, this is the most baffling first episode in anything ever. Took me forever to figure out that it was actually, indeed, the first episode.
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I legit checked the episode list insert and online to be sure it wasn't some sort of printing error in the discs.
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If I recall correctly the first episode isn't actually the first broadcast episode. Some execs had intended what is now the third episode to be the first but it was deemed "not a good intro" and so they aired these out of order. I'm not sure which is the actual first episode anymore but apparently someone up top shares your sentiment that the first episodes do a poor job of being first episodes.
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Final Exam, the first appearance of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo. While better than Divide and Conquer to be sure, it shares some of the same problems and focuses too much on "our heroes don't really get along". I get they wanted to have the team not start off perfectly in sync of course, but it's multiple episodes in before we even get a sense of why these five even ARE a team.
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I am shocked to hear about DC releasing a Justice League product to a new audience that focusses excessively on internal team conflict without spending any time actually building up any team dynamics.
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Remember though, Teen Titans was concurrent with DCAU Justice League. There is a point of comparison for expecting better.
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Still a better start than Clerks: The Animated Series got.
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Final Exam, the first appearance of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo. While better than Divide and Conquer to be sure, it shares some of the same problems and focuses too much on "our heroes don't really get along". I get they wanted to have the team not start off perfectly in sync of course, but it's multiple episodes in before we even get a sense of why these five even ARE a team.
I always kind of took that to be the point. The literal last episode of the show is their origin story. That's the big surprise ending is how they ended up together.
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I think the argument is less that you need to give the origins in the first episode. I mean, Batman doesn't bother to start with an origins episode. It's more that the early episodes make it feel like these are not folks who should be working together. That having them split up and work solo or work with other people would be preferable and more enjoyable for the characters than being in the Teen Titans.
Now, this isn't to say that you can't have teams that clearly do not work well together. I mean, Suicide Squad is a great take on that concept. But in that case, you need to explain early on why they're working together in spite of that being a bad idea.
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That.
Additionally, in those first few episodes I feel like the team would even be more successful as solo acts at that point. Like, they spend so much time not getting along that if they just ran in, did their thing, then went their separate ways it'd get more done. This again changes as the team comes together during their focus episodes, but it's a bad, bad start. THAT SAID I definitely liked the season after that point and do plan on covering more as I have opportunity to pick more seasons up.
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Planet Hulk
This feels like the equivalent of All-Star Superman. At least for the Savage Hulk (HULK SMASH, rather than the myriad different personalities that define the comics runs), this feels like the truest and most distilled story you could tell about that character. Interestingly, it's only by creating a new setting for the character and actually REMOVING one of the core elements of the books (that he's always being hunted down) that you can tell that story. Bruce Banner is defined by his baggage. But the Savage Hulk, who is generally considered as an inner child, needs a clean slate to truly shine. His defining attribute has always been the conflict between two very basic desires; to be left alone, and to have friends, so he needs a setting where he's the only aspect of the character known to the setting to really show that off.
It's just a very well put together movie. There's never a sense that bits of the story are missing or unexplained, it's very good at efficient character development, and plot developments are generally well seeded without being overbearing. Additionally as an adaptation thing, I looked up some of the details of the original comic and I think every change is for the better. A betrayal among the warbound would feel intrusive in this story I think. The rock dude whose name I legitimately forget having ties to the first Thor story was always there, but using that opening to put Beta Ray Bill in place of Silver Surfer is a good move. I'm more willing to buy his being weakened in the same way Hulk is much more easily than the POWER COSMIC doing so, for starters. Also y'know, any excuse to use Beta Ray Bill.
It's a simple story well told, and I'm having trouble thinking of anything to say about it that's not basically summarizing y'know?
Grade- 8/10
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Flash destroyed Brainiac molecule by molecule after delivering multiple punches power by circumnavigating the globe.
So didn't know where to put this, but just nerding out the magnitude of Flash's punches on Brainiac Luthor. The Earth's circumference is 40,008 km. Wally West is stated to be 86 kg. If you use the animation as the timing for when Flash completes each of his laps around the earth, you get the following:
Lap 1: 9.48 seconds
Lap 2: 9.71 seconds
Lap 3: 11.16 seconds
Lap 4: 5.09 seconds
Lap 5: 2.02 seconds
Lap 6: 0.58 seconds
Lap 7 onwards: 0.5 seconds
With all the variables and the formula for calculating the energy, here's the magnitude of what each punch is the equivalent of:
Lap 1: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 2: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 3: Energy released by a hurricane in 1 second
Lap 4: Equivalent to the explosion 1 Megaton of TNT
Lap 5: Yearly consumption of electricity in Mongolia
Lap 6: About the yield of the Tsar bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested
Lap 7 onwards: Higher than the yield of the Tsar bomb
Supposedly, this isn't even close to how fast Flash can run since 40,000 km/s is nowhere close to the speed of light. Granted, hitting Brainiac Luther with about 6 atom bombs is pretty notable.
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Frozen
Well let's start with the obvious.
Grade: 9/10.
I mean, I don't really need to TELL you Frozen is amazing. It's self-evidently awesome. So instead we're going to focus on the biggest strength of the film, the use of songs.
By which I mean a song-by-song breakdown. Because ~
Frozen Heart- Basically expositing the main plot. It's a bit akin to having the greek chorus talk about the dangers of hubris at the start of a play. Basically the least relevant song in the movie but eh, I can see why its there.
Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?- Montage! This song I think is the crux of the film emotionally, in that the rest of the film only makes sense because of the emotions of this song. Anna has gone mostly nuts from isolation, while ... well, we'll come back to Elsa actually. What's neat here with her is the visual progression of her ice powers. First she walls off the world outside the window, then learns she has to cover up her powers, then with every time skip she ices up more and more of the door to her room- the one Anna is always just outside. Not subtle, but pretty cool.
For the First Time in Forever- My favorite song as a song. The bit where Anna goes to the picture gallery is just delightfully animated and the whole sequence in general is filled to the gills with amazing attention to tiny, largely irrelevant visual details that I adore. It's really sort of a sequel song to the previous one, which fits considering approximately thirty seconds pass between them.
Love is an Open Door- It's great how much this actually sets up Hans as the ultimate villain of the piece. Like you're sitting there going "this song is weirdly dissonant and the singers are only in harmony half the time" and OF COURSE IT IS. Hans is at first taking a few seconds to sync up to what Anna is doing to sell the act, then later intentionally baiting her into following up his lines. The visuals are a bit tamer this time but using the song structure to set up the plot is just a lot of fun to see.
This is a good time to talk about my biggests issue with the film (it is appropriately quite minor); Hans' reveal as douchelord the ambitious was kinda overblown. It's not that his borderline sociopathic nature is too much, it's that the timing of the reveal seems needlessly risky for him. Like... yeah, maybe, MAYBE the chancellors and other officials of Arendelle will buy your story, but not even pretending to go along with Anna and ditching her at that stage seems needlessly likely to backfire for someone who'd be so careful to that point. Still, it doesn't change the plot much even if you tweak it to be more in line with the overall character so like I said, it's minor.
Let It Go- So let's talk about Elsa. People like to take this song as a bit of a gay anthem, which out of context on the radio, yeah, totally. Within the movie that doesn't make much sense, because it's not about Elsa embracing herself and being honest with the world, it's about Elsa giving up on the rest of the human race and embracing a life of solitude. A lot of the subtext for the movie presents Elsa's powers as being a sort of gifted mental illness. The tortured artist thing, where it's the depression that gives you the mental flexibility/different view of the world to be creative, y'know? So Let It Go is just a deeply ironic song about her triumphant decision... to embrace the madness and just fester in her own juices forever. Of course, it's not just irony... there is definitely a sort of liberating feeling in just giving up on trying to function. But it's a delusion, everything is not awesome, and the rest of the movie bears that out.
In Summer- As a song this has a bit of "we needed to mark 'Sidekicks have reality-ignoring comedy song' off the List of Disney Musical Cliches" to it. Buuuuuuutt... well, Olaf himself is quite likable as those go so it's not too intrusive. More than that this marks roughly the halfway point of the film, and the second half of Frozen is kinda all drama all the time. Having a moment of pure levity is a logical move here.
For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)- ;_;
Fixer Upper- More expositional songing. Both for the red herring solution to the issue and to the real one. Not a whole lot else I can think of to say for it.
Fun experiment this.
Er I mean. So yeah Frozen is awesome and y'all already saw it of course. But there's only so many ways to say "oh god the level of detail in this movie is amazing" so here we are.
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I rather unambiguously consider Frozen to be the best animated and/or children's anything I have seen since entering my 20's. That movie is so damn complete. I haven't even given much thought to the use of songs in the film before but yeah it is unsurprisingly very good.
Love is an Open Door takes on such a delightfully sinister feel once you know the whole plot.
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Frozen's terribly abrupt ending is the only thing that hurts it, but it's a pretty big deduction. Elsa is all rawr I'm a monster... oh yeah, love! There are so many ways they could have done that better.
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Adventure Time (Season 5)
So I meant to sit down and watch the intervening seasons again before this one came out; I knew I was going to watch it right away since due to my lackluster internets I can only be as up to date on the show as the DVD releases. Oops. This also means though that I'm going to be talking about this season as though all those other ones are something you're familiar with. But more than that, a lot of my thoughts on the season have little to do with the highlight episodes and a lot to do with the progression of the show to this point, so I'm going to knock those out first before moving on.
Weakest Episode: Shh! It's a clever episode idea, really, and has that nod to the golden age of animation (I get a strong Tom and Jerry vibe off it in particular), but a lot of it comes down to being unintentionally (but extremely avoidably) cruel to B-MO rather than Finn and Jake wrecking each other over their bet, which just doesn't sit right with me.
Best Episode: All the Little People. I'm having trouble articulating what's so special about this episode. It's... layered. It mirrors a) Finn's development as a character in his emotional arc in this episode, b) Finn's character flaws and how he's going to seriously dent his heroism for the remainder of the season, c) the show's development, d) the fandom's development, and even e) the writer's relationship to all of the above. It's an incredibly dense 11 minutes, and that's with noticeable chunks of it being basically "Finn stares at a wall in a state of emotional shutdown, seeing the full carnage his hubris has wrought".
So excepting season 1 (which is more a series of stories more related by their tone than by continuity), I feel like each season of the show is sorta about a particular aspect of the show, generally a character (season 2 is more fleshing out Ooo as a cohesive setting, in as much as it even is one). And season five is basically all about Bubblegum. To this point we're already seen that she was definitely more harsh than was strictly necessary in defending her kingdom. Goliad for an easy example. But in season 5 we get something approximating her full backstory; candy-blobs were the only non-malevolent mutants in the aftermath of the Mushroom War, and Bubblegum arose from them some 850 years ago. She essentially by herself forged the Candy Kingdom, building first robotic guardians and then inventing Candy Life, from which all citizens of the modern kingdom descend. She's almost solely responsible for technological discovery/reclaimation in Ooo to this day, and it's no exaggeration to say that the Candy Kingdom is basically the source of civilization in Ooo, and in turn Princess Bubblegum is the Candy Kingdom in any governmental or military respect. Her only true peer is her sometime lover, who took such a different view of nigh-immortality and the responsibilities thereof that they've never been able to reconcile in untold time sense their original parting.
And unfortunately for her the rest of Ooo civilization has advanced far enough to start seriously resenting her meddling. A brief perusal of the episode list suggests that Season 6 is in large part about this coming to a head. I look forward to it.
The scattered Bubblegum moments are definitely the highlights for most of the season, but it's also worth noting that the first nine or so episodes, which actually don't touch on this, are probably the strongest string of episodes in the series (that I've seen). After that there's a more normal number of average and good episodes, but those first several are a lot of very good episodes in a row, which is great. Actually, come to think of it they do tie back into Bubblegum though; they're largely about struggling with responsibility. Bubblegum as a character is essentially about assuming ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY. For everything and everyone. Forever. Somewhat literally. Heh, always nice to make connections while actually writing the review/write-up/what DO I call these anyways.
Grade- 8/10. The good episodes are spectacularly good and the weak episodes are still pretty okay. I keep thinking I should go up to 9/10 but the sheer size of the season (Season 5 is two seasons of episodes. But it's all one season for some reason. But they gel as a single season so I decided against dividing it up) means that proportionally there's still more just okay episodes than awesome ones.
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http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Complete-Willie-Aames/dp/B002DH20Q0/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1439565203&sr=1-1&keywords=dungeons+and+dragons
$7.50 at the moment.
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I was able to procure a copy actually. It's in the queue. Actually I think it's next up, although I'm behind a writeup (as in I finished a show but haven't written it up yet) so it won't be the actual next post.
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(http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmabamR58R1qkq2eto1_500.png)
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Batman the Animated Series (Volume 2)
The main standout feature of this set is it actually has Robin in a majority of episodes. We'll come back to that.
The main thing that grabbed my attention relative to other bits of the series is how different Batman himself would seem from week to week. I'm getting the impression that they're taking the characterization of Batman from whatever era of the comics the story that day is most similar to, so he'll go from stoic to barely functioning to master of obscure rhymes and phrases to finger wags at villains like they're children from episode to episode. It's not really something I remember seeing in the first or third volumes (the forth, which is after the network change and revamping of the show to match the New Timm style, I'm actually not all that familiar with), although if that's because I wasn't paying enough attention or because they legitimately wrote him somewhat differently I dunno.
In part though it's probably because this season has the most appearances from The Riddler, and simply put the Riddler is the silliest Batman villain and requires Batman to be silly sometimes. And Robin to be dense. I guess I'm saying the Riddler episodes have cool moments but they definitely lame up our heroes.
It is interesting to note that Poison Ivy feels like an entirely different character in Harley and Ivy than in any of her other appearances. I don't think this is necessarily bad writing either. It feels more like not having to perform for/seduce men is extremely liberating for her, so with Harley she actually gets to show off and enjoy her human side (as opposed to the supervillain eco terrorist side).
Back to Robin.
Best Episode- Robin's Reckoning (Part I). The handling of Robin in the show in general is actually cool. He EXISTS in the first part, but it's established that he's sort of on sabbatical; he's focusing on College, but it's implied that he and Batman have been active for a while because he legitimate did hero as Robin in his early teens. So he's in one or two episodes. Putting his Origin Story up front early into the season (or dividing up the sets such that the start of the Robin-Centric set has his origin, I'm not feeling like looking up which it actually is) is just a good move in general. In general though it's a very simple but powerful episode. The dude who killed the Greysons is back in town, Bats tries to keep Robin off the scent, flashbacks. I really like that the flashbacks have very direct elements of Batman: Year One in there; the character designs are lifted almost note for note, it's a nice touch. Doubles as both a reference AND makes the flashback immediately visually distinct.
Weakest Episode: Tyger Tyger. I... just never understood what they were doing with the characterization in this episode. Well, for Batman it's obvious, but everyone else? Ehhhhh. I also feel like this basic plot was done a couple other times in the series, both before and after this episode, and done better, but I actually can't think of any episodes in particular so maybe not.
Grade- 7/10. My memory is that volume 1 has some of the absolute grand slam best episodes of the series, but that this set might be a bit more consistent overall? I should probably hold off on that conclusion until I get that rewatch in.
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Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
There are two very distinct parts to this film. We'll be talking about them separately.
The first half of the movie is pretty typical of Batman Beyond stuff. Terry gets the job done, if with somewhat more collateral damage than he'd like, but something is off. The subplot about Bruce Wayne returning to control of Wayne Enterprises serves two purposes (gives a date to the film: between seasons 1 and 2, and as an obvious but plausible red herring for later) but largely fluffs things out. But hey, gotta have something for Bruce and Terry to be doing while the villains are getting the plan together.
I should note that the Jokerz gang in the film is fun to watch, not just because it's a neat set of designs but because they're very distinct from the ones in the show proper in a critical way: They actually resemble the average Joker gang from TAS. Ghoul's tech savvy is a fine stand-in for the Joker's chemical wizardry, Dee-Dee is obvious, Bonk shares a lot of character design with Joker Goons, Wolf of course is half hyena. I guess that makes Chucko Captain Clown. Heehee.
The second half has a sense of drama between Terry and the old guard that so rarely got a chance to crop up in the series, but makes a lot of sense. Bruce mentoring a teen through super-heroing is nothing new, but with Robins he was on the scene, able to deflect the worst of it to himself. Terry might have a guiding voice in his ear, but he's out there on his own. Bruce getting such a cruel reminder of how that can end and more seriously questioning the morality of this is good to see addressed. It's also a nice chance to do a "Terry's identity is discovered" story without having it TOO seriously impact the continuity. They also continue the trend of giving Jason Todd's backstory to other characters because they can more or less, which works out nicely here because it goes in an opposite direction; Terry often comes across as a bit Spidey-ish anyway, so that element of never getting to reconcile with his father over his own stupid mistakes makes perfect sense. In a lot of ways this isn't Terry's story, but he still gets good moments in it and it's pretty enjoyable as such.
But much like Epilogue, a Justice League story that's actually the capstone Batman Beyond story, Return of the Joker is a Batman Beyond story that's actually the Grand Finale for Batman: TAS. And, y'know, damn. I feel like this is a sort of stand-in for The Killing Joke, not just in terms of scope and some visual elements, but in basic outline. Which funnily means that the difference between them is Harley having an odd mediating effect on the Joker... that actually makes him do WORSE THINGS. Kudos guys. But yeah I think this bit is actually animated differently, and the whole thing is gorgeous and creepy and mmmm.
Grade- 8/10. Probably my favorite bit of Batman Beyond, to the surprise of nobody because to my knowledge that's basically true of everyone.
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Big Hero 6
So apparently the internet has decided there's this huge rivalry between this movie and Frozen. Which uh sure you do that dudes.
I can kinda see it in a way though, mostly in that this film is, by Disney standards, very much the B movie by comparison. Less push, less hype, less followup, and I strongly suspect less budget. But being fucking Disney this is all relative and its still a huge movie obviously. But it manifests in small ways actually watching the film. That attention to detail and small plot points being layered into the film throughout isn't as strong, and consequently the movie itself just isn't quite as strong/compelling as Frozen.
So back to gushing about how awesome Disney's current run is.
Baymax is the sort of character we all wish we'd come up with first. Front and center in the marketing, the movie, the soul of the story, and of COURSE he is c'mon now. The little bit of synch up between the sort of character he is and the sorts of jokes he's in is a nice touch ('I am not fast.')
Hiro is handled well enough, if a bit standard. But the real standout moments of the movie are actually him and Tadashi interacting. Or in the case of the climax, him reacting TO Tadashi. Unless the emotional climax was "I am detecting life signs." I'm not entirely sure.
It hits the super hero movie notes well enough, with just enough action to space out the emotional bombs properly. The application of SCIENCE was actually pretty nice for once. Each character has an actual speciality, bound together by Hiro's ability to enhance existing specs into something practical (making his field moreso mechanical engineering than anything else, with some sides in programming).
The only real fault I'd hold against the movie in itself is a shockingly poor use of that supporting cast. You've called your movie Big Hero 6, but um... aside from bodies and being a collective gaggle of 'friends', what do Honey Lemon, Wasabi, Fred, and GoGo atually accomplish in the movie? Getting themselves in and then out of danger mostly? It's not a deal breaker by ANY stretch but it's a definite disappointment.
It does however have the Best Stan Lee Cameo.
Grade- 8/10.
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Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Well, first things. http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6338.msg177280.html#msg177280
So this is nominally an adaptation of this comic. But not really. It definitely has the Crime Syndicate and borrows heavily from the first few pages of that book re: Lex Luthor of the alternate earth, but otherwise it goes in a very different direction. Production history plays some role: this is actually a mashup of JLA Earth 2 and a planned (but scrapped) inter-season film for the DCAU Justice League. I bears more earmarks of that original concept than JLA Earth 2, and aside from a sorta superfluous subplot with J'onn it's probably better that way. Morrison was writing a lead-in for other people to use the Multiverse, this is a movie trying to tell a complete story.
Anyway so it's pretty good. A lot of credit to the voice crew in particular (James Woods playing everything so deadpan is especially amazing after being used to him from Hades or Family Guy appearances) for really giving the Crime Syndicate nuance with not a lot of lines. Opening scene is also fantastic for setting the tone and letting you know right away what we're in for. Being less of an anti-morality and more a world where the greatest of heroes and villains traded roles, but the everyday person just wants to live in peace like anywhere else, is a much better fit for a short story (Morrison's comic is arguably better as a comic setting, but for a one shot story it's wonky and a strange decision). It was also a great showcase for Flash to steal the show, which of course makes perfect sense when you remember this is basically DCAU Wally West, not Barry Allen, although more just in terms of lines than showing off moments. Wonder Woman probably fared the best there. ... okay the Jester showed off the best but that's the awesome opening talking again.
I think I'm going to keep going in circles on this one. It's good, though doesn't have huge amounts of substance so only so good.
Grade- 7/10.
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(http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmc6puqVmm1qkq2eto1_500.png)
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The Princess and the Frog
Here we are, the launch of the current era of Disney. Because the last time around was a lot of fun for me, we're going to make this a regular element of Disney Musicals (well and if anything else is a proper musical they'll get that treatment too but if they exist I don't know them)
Down in New Orleans- Well not really a musical number but hey, as a pure mood setter it's pretty good, historical setting and all.
Almost There- Adore the art shift. Bit dry musically though, and as a song it just emphasizes one emotion without really advancing the story or detailing the characters much more.
Friends on the Other Side- The whole song's kinda done almost recitative, which works well enough considering the purpose of the song. God damn Keith David sells the hell outta this. But duh, it's Keith David. In general though Dr. Facilier is one of Disney's better villains, and a lot of it is what you see in this song. Showy, manipulative, but under all that you can see the anger and frustration that lead him to be the villain. Working out of a run down alley, dismissed out of hand by some stuffy ass servant, seeing people raised above him by circumstances of birth. It's right there.
When We're Human- "We Haven't Learned Anything Yet!" the song. Really fun song though.
Gonna Take You There- Mmm. Not really a hugely impactful song. Catchy but short and just kinda "hey we need to introduce each character in song."
Ma Belle Evangeline- ;_;
Dig a Little Deeper- "... well one of us learned something." Actually though this brings up an interesting thought for me; EVERY song in this movie involves either a full art shift or a complete lapse into Disney Song Acid Sequence territory. Correction, every song but Ma Belle Evangeline. Interesting really, each song is really more about quirky side characters than the main cast doing something. Odd.
Down in New Orleans (Reprise)- Perfect little outro song.
Other thoughts. I'm surprised that Charlotte doesn't have a song, because she's already the biggest cartoon character in the film and her every moment on screen is pure joy. Actually she's basically Pinkie Pie.
A lot of Disney movies are at their strongest in the first half, setting up, establishing the characters, front-loading all the best music. The Princess and the Frog instead has its absolute best scene, Tiana's last temptation, at the climax. Actually in general the musical aspects are a bit weaker than the renaissance films it's reviving, but the film has plenty of flavor and casting and characterization the equal of any of them so it's certainly worthy of its position as the lead in for what... okay if this isn't called the Disney Revival or something pithy like that it NEEDS to be.
Grade- 8/10
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 1)
I used to wonder what friendship could be.
The first few episodes are pretty rough. While Pinkie and Rarity seem to have sprung forth fully formed from the brow of ZeusFaust, going back to season 1 Rainbow and Twilight is weird, and Fluttershy and Applejack are kinda painful in the first couple episodes because they clearly don't know what actually to DO with them yet. All the cast do develop through the seasons of course, but the latter two don't even have a basic foundation for about five episodes before the actresses find their footing and get the personalities down.
The rest of the season is pretty good. It's proportionally the most slice of life oriented (as I remembered it), but that works since the writers had lots of play just introducing the core cast at this point and still had their A material to draw from. There's a lot of conscious use of Looney Tunes gags throughout the season which I didn't really remember, but it feels out of place in most episodes since they're so character driven. It does give off the impression the show is channeling Tiny Toons at times, which makes bunches of sense. Also probably the animators saying "look at what we can do in Flash now!"
The show has no relationship whatsoever with chronology at this time. The writers probably kick themselves for it now. Also makes me wonder if they only expected to get that first season, which would be weird because it's not like Hasbro is going to NOT make more toys...
... hah, just noticed something.
Weakest Episode: Feeling Pinkie Keen. I talked about this waaaaay earlier in the topic. This rewatch has not revised my opinion much. There is less faux-science gibberish than I remembered at least, so instead of sounding like an asshole AND an idiot Twi just sounds like an asshole with a side of mocking her subject. Basically any episode that pushes the character outside their usual personality for sake of the message is going to rub the wrong way, and this episode additionally stands out because of the whole "Twi is kinda an asshole" thing. It's really the fact that they had her be so BOTHERED by it. You could have had a similar episode that wasn't a chore just by having the approach be "Pinkie does have a lot of abilities that don't follow the rules of magic. Alright, I'm going to figure out how she does it!" Twi can still eat cartoon gags, episode can still end with "I guess some things just can't be explained", but nobody's an asshole.
Which immediately preceeds
Best Episode: Stare Master. I am of course a sucker for Fluttershy Badassery, and few things are as conceptually as awesome as "Stared down a Cockatrice. And won." But the episode is just a lot of fun in general. It's a great showing for the CMC in particular, because they just get to be kids for a while and do kid things and be adorable and loud and have a pretty danged good musical number. They often lose this aspect when they have to carry an episode (or at least it's splitting time with them being lectured at or going DRAMAAAAAAAAAAA), but here it's part of Fluttershy's development for the episode which works wonderfully.
Grade- 7/10. Better at the end than the start, basically a pretty normal first season for a show that had multiple more after that.
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Element of Honesty.
Just drop from this cliff. You'll be fine. Seriously. Trust me. It's way too much effort to tell you the pegasi will catch you.
>:|
That may actually literally be my least favorite moment in the entire series.
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Weakest Episode: Feeling Pinkie Keen
For some reason the people trying to get me to watch this show selected this as one of the episodes to preview. This was a poor decision. (I liked the other episodes I saw pretty well, but not enough to watch a whole TV series, getting me to do that is a herculean task.)
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I was also shown one episode of MLP to get me to like it, and it sucked. Did not watch more.
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Dungeons & Dragons
Welcome to the Time Warp.
So this isn't the greatest show, but it's really very watchable. There's a clear sense that the writers were trying to write something better than a saturday morning kid's show, and really wanted to have a story here. Despite being almost entirely episodic for the entire series, there's a clear sense throughout that the kids are in fact getting better and making small, gradual differences in the Realm. They don't seem to notice, but taking down dungeons and releasing old heroes definitely creates a less bleak setting as time goes on.
Probably the biggest factor in the show working is how well the main villain is handled. They set up even in the intro sequence, and back up in every episode he plays more than a perfunctory part in, that he's more powerful than the kids put together, and has strangled the Realm into obedience, but is not all powerful and has a clear reason to go after the kids even before they start making an actual dent against his tyranny. He's a villain that is 100% willing to say "Mmm, this could be a threat to me. I should probably take care of it." or "this artifact could give me the advantage I need to finally destroy the last pockets of resistance and ensure my reign is eternal" and take care of the matter with all available resources, including going himself if things aren't going well. Aside from being a bit prone to monologueing his weaknesses, he does an admirable job of being credible and competent throughout.
Which does lend to the idea that the unproduced finale was pretty much something they did from the start and just kept it under their hats a liiiiitttleee too long.
Best Episode- The Dragon's Graveyard. Going along with both the above, we have a latter episode where the heroes realize that they can accomplish their goal a dozen times over but it'll never mean anything because Venger is too savvy for them to get away when they do. So they decide to take care of him... over much objection from Dungeon Master (this is the most direct nod to the plot of the unproduced finale: Venger is his son, who sealed away his goodness for power. Two or three previous episodes also allude to a strong connection between them, but that's one of the appeals of the series: they clearly had a pretty detailed series bible the whole time, in particular the rough shape of the finale) and involving an especially daring and risky plan that quite likely might have gotten them killed if they had succeeded. It's got a distinct sense of "holy shit they got this to air?"
Weakest Episode- Beauty and the Bogbeast. In which one hero does something patently stupid and we all suffer for it. The whole thing feels very forced, in the Editorial Mandate sense.
The show also features Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, which leads into a larger point. This show was released in 1983, making it basically contemporary with The Transformers. Apart from sharing some headline actors, both shows also took creative direction from Marvel and was mostly animated by Toei.
Except Dungeons & Dragons just blows the other, better remembered show out of the water in terms of animation and VA quality. In the sense that it very clearly used a lot more in between frames, paid more attention to visual continuity and characters being off-model, and did no small amount of ADR and cleaned up voice quality quite a bit. Which of course is just animation speak for "this show had a WAY bigger budget". and that's the thing. Transformers exists because Hasbro had already made GI Joe and knew how to make this shit work. They had a clear expectation of how much money they could put into this and still make money. And no mistake, D&D was at this time a known thing, and there were definitely tie-ins in the actual game plus toys and shit. But the level of branding doesn't seem to have been there. There's no way it was making the sort of money Transformers was, but they were SPENDING a lot more of it.
In short, this show shouldn't exist. It's an anachronism, closer to the post-Batman era of the early 90s than when it was actually made. How they hell did they actually get the money for this thing?
And I think it's basically the first real example of American Anime (making it doubly anachronistic!). The show bears much more in common with stuff like Robotech (read: Super Dimension Fortress Macross) and Mobile Suit Gundam than what existed in american animation at the time, or for a few years immediately following. TRS and whoever else pitched this (probably to CBS from a brief glance at its broadcast history) were gambling that they could tap into the emerging anime market, and the crossover between that, the coming Fantasy boom of the 80s (for all the money THAT didn't make), and Dungeons & Dragons and its related markets. Basically the first show by nerds, for nerds.
Which kinda makes the year of broadcast fitting. I was born in 1983~
Rating: 6/10. But no mistake, this show is just endlessly fascinating in a weird way.
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I think what really makes the show work is Eric. He makes the setting seem so much more realistic with his constant complaining. Going on quests isn't all fun and excitement; it's a lot of trudging through swamps with mud in your boots. And even though he's a total heel, those moments when he does save the party are that more compelling because of it.
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He's also the only one of the kids that noticeably improves beyond martial skill throughout. That's one of the flaws with the show really, it tends to kinda forget some of the kids are there a lot of the time such that you could have cut it down to just Eric, Bobby, and Hank without much change. Diana in particular gets to do almost nothing the vast majority of the time, which is just a waste.
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Everything I wanted minus a bit about the ending that never happened. I would like your read on it and an elaboration for the uninitiated?
I also appreciate the attempts at a female cast in 1983, though you are right, it could have worked as a sausage fest because it was still 1983.
Now all you have to do is review the opening theme song to Conan the Adventurer and we are good.
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Actually yeah, I meant to comment on that in the Dragon's Graveyard section; dude all but says "please don't do this you don't know the whole story". Edited.
And yeah, the girls is a shame but not unexpected. Sheila's on the other end, she gets attention but it's mostly girly stuff; she's defined by her relationships with Hank and Bobby and being team mom. They do take some steps to at least justify this, Bobby is much younger, and her character role is Thief so direct action just isn't going to be her bag. It just also means she very rarely directs the plots of episodes so you could probably omit her despite her getting a decent amount of screen time and character moments. Presto's in sorta the same boat, he's generic nerd person, although they do that kinda buddy cop thing with him and Eric that kinda works once in a while. As noted Diana just never gets to shine and exists because "we need not-white/male people!"
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Diana was black and a woman, it was 1983. Not that that's an excuse, but it is what it is. In this case it's not a matter of forced diversity, rather the show was pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. Just not pushing *too* hard so that there would be backlash. Remember this was before even The Cosby Show - if blacks were in a tv show it was in the Blaxploitation manner of the 70s. D&D was quietly showing America's youth that you could hang out with black people without them being BLACK.
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One of the quaint charms of the 80s is how everything - everything - followed the "1 of each" model for racial diversity, alongside a lot of products that emphasized superficial cultural differences (Street Fighter, ABBA) in ways that would be embarrassing in 2015.
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Well of course! Things are more collectible that way!
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Really not sure going the direction of collecting minorities is the right choice for this conversation. It rarely ends well.
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Aria: The Animation
ara ara~
Okay so I know that slice of life is a thing in anime, and said genre was probably at its height in 2005. Even so this manages to be a continuation of the last entry in a way; holy hell how did they get this made! I've seen movies that were less detailed, clean, and fluid in their animation. The little tricks of animation to save budget ARE there, but... daaaaamn this show is pretty. Unlike the last show, I'm willing to guess here that it's the simplest case; the production house fell in love with the manga and its aesthetic and said fuck it, we're doing it and god I hope we don't go broke doing it. Seeing as they went on to produce three times as many episodes after this I assume it must have worked out somehow.
Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure what else to say about this one. Other shows with high slice-of-life content I've covered had been more forthcoming with things like tentpole episodes, while somewhat hilariously considering its me the continuity of Aria actually makes it harder to cover there; it doesn't have big set piece episodes and branch out, each episode adds a teensy bit of new character and development and world detail and you don't quite see it until the end. And indeed since this season is less "ending" and more "suitable pausing point" there's not a lot to go on. The whole show of course is saturated in moe anyway, but that goes along well with the general thrust because it's overtly themed around finding the beauty in the everyday and taking the time to appreciate it.
Although...
Weakest Episode: That Which You Want to Protect. So aside from being an introduction to Athena (despite Athena only REALLY appearing in two episodes, and the other episode being a way better display of her powerhouse singing anyway) this is really supposed to be this development episode for Alice. But in the end the whole thing just feels kinda mean. The show itself is making fun of Athena so that Alice's complaints seem plausible and Alice herself is being a dick the whole time. Which is sorta in character but doesn't work for me this time. Could just be they were being too "see see see Alice you have to see all the good things too SEE SEE SEE" and it rubs me the wrong way? I dunno.
I'll admit, I also don't get much humor out of Maa which hurts as well. Stop biting the pervy space cat in the dick dammit.
Best Episode- That Soft Wish. Probably the best aspect of Aria is the setting, and consequently the more mystical episodes which are basically a chance to give new facets to the setting stand out. Of the two, this one is better. Akari and not-Akari whose name escapes me doing their mirror thing is adorable, and they sell the sense of creeping wonder really well.
Rating: 6/10. It's pleasant enough but doesn't really do too much for me I'm afraid.
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Redline
So I actually made a short comment (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,328.msg156944.html#msg156944) about this the first time I saw it. And the core observation there remains true: Madhouse let a first-time director make his dream project, and everyone on board was so in love with it all they just did not give a fuck if they actually made money doing it.
So has the other thing changed? Well... not exactly. The direct animation influences on this movie clearly EXIST, but I'm not familiar enough with the ones they're calling to to actually spot it all. However, we are a little bit better at this now.
Okay, so one of the things this movie is famous for is being fully hand animated. Let's pause a minute on that. The movie is 102 minutes, about 5-10 minutes longer than your feature length animated feature (ie Disney). Okay so.
NOBODY DOES THAT.
Most people don't hand-animated 10 minute shorts, not in 2011 when this came out, not in 2005 when they started principle animation, not in the fucking Disney Renaissance. The Little Mermaid did not hand animate every single frame. You have to go back to like Sleeping Beauty, which not coincidentally also took forever to make (something like 8 years) and lost money, and that despite actually being a rousing success in the theaters (#2 for domestic gross in 1959). But these loons did it.
And it's not just that they hand animated this shit, this movie is ALIVE. Most shots of the film are crammed full of non-background elements that are moving, vivid actors on the stage. Like we need pictures here.
This is Princess and the Frog, full budget Disney Film from 2009.
(http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/01/Tianas-Mom-from-The-Princess-and-the-Frog-An-Appreciation-Post-4.png)
And you'll note that the character and the items IN the barrel are distinctly more colorful than the rest of the shot. Those elements are in motion on the foreground, while the rest is background elements.
Redline usually looks like this:
(http://bluraymedia.ign.com/bluray/image/article/121/1216246/RedlineBDIGN-2_1326237202.jpg)
That's insane. Nobody does that. These dudes said nope, the whole movie has to look like a cohesive artistic vision, DRAW THE LITTLE GLOWY LIGHT BOXES BY FUCKING HAND.
Unsurprisingly the rest of the movie is given a healthy coat of insanity over everything. The basic plot seems to actually be "barely-legal street racing with a World Cup-level following in the far future is utilized by the Planet of Royal Magical Girls to expose the secrets and decimate the military might of oppressive cyborg planet." Each racer besides the hero and the love interest are on screen about 5 minutes combined at best but are provided full bios during the movie because goddammit we wrote those bios and WE WANT THEM TO BE KNOWN. It does have the cool effect of making the whole thing seem more like real life sports coverage, the media spinning stories for each competitor to drive up viewers and gather followings for each.
I'm a little torn though.
Rating: 7/10. Like, this feels SO LOW for a movie with such overwhelming artistic quality, but I rate by general emotional response and well this is very definitely a fun as hell movie but doesn't have any deeper impact for me y'know? I may have shamed myself here.
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Beauty and the Beast
It's that time again.
LET'S SING!!
Belle- God, this is one of the most singable songs ever. AND IT'S NOT THE MOST SINGABLE IN THIS MOVIE. Okay maybe that's nostalgia, but I'm doubtful. It has a very common folk vibe (duh, it's the villagers), and there's a lot of subjects in there since they're basically establishing the entire premise in these, what, five minutes? Something like. But of the Renaissance films, this one is probably the most overtly Broadway and I think that's another big part of it. Clearly I need to study musical structure.
Belle (Reprise)- Man I remember this being so much longer. Also so very close to being literally the I Want song (in that I had to go look up the proper title of it and almost right I Want as the title of this segment). Is what it is, moving on.
Gaston- NO OOOOOOONNNEEE inspires like Gaston, gets the audience to sing along like Gaston. So technically the bits before and after Maurice comes into the bar are marked as two songs, but yeah, we'll talk both here. Anyway, Gaston's one of the funnest Disney villains and that's almost entirely this song and how efficient it is. We know exactly the sort of scum he is and why he's that way.
Be Our Guest- Y'know, this is the most famous song from the film (for example, on this bluray it's the song that's used on the menu), but in a lot of ways it's probably the least relevant. The plot just sorta stops to have some fun. Which isn't a bad thing, but by comparison it's sorta odd. It's mostly down to having such a cool visual style (come to think of it, Little Mermaid lacked any of the acid trip visuals so sheer novelty is probably a factor here) and being the only time Lumiere gets a chance to show off, which considering half the cast is basically Broadway Powerhouses, of course you let Orbach show off the pipes.
Something There- So I remember thinking, as a kid, that this montage took place over, like, a couple months. Y'know, most of the winter. But no! This is obviously about THREE DAYS. So close to not having obvious love at first sight romance Disney. So close. Anyway as with most of the songs major plot advances are told in song (because this is probably the most musical Disney Musical) so I dunno, just don't get super huge vibes off a lot of them for whatever reason.
Beauty and the Beast- This is such a strange movie. It doesn't usually do spectacle. It's shooting for being simultaneously intimate (as fits a story that's romance at the core) and... grand. Large spaces with lots of detail. We're the only people in the whole world, and the world bends to keep it true.
Come to think of it I don't think any other Disney film does that. Wonder if that's why it remains, in terms of decorative hardware, the most accomplished Disney film. (Yes, I'd put a Best Film nomination over a Best Animated win.)
Mob Song- Y'know, I should go and rewatch the Sleepy Hollow half of its movie. It just occurred to me that there seems to be huge amounts of visual reference between it and the mob here. Hell, Gaston definitely looks more than a little bit like Brom Bones, so further similarities shouldn't be surprising at all. Anyway this song plays a lot differently from most of them. Most of them are expository, while this is very definitely narrative. Really effective too, I keep saying "This is the catchiest song!" forgetting the next song will be even catchier! KILL THE BEAST. KILL THE BEAST. Y'know.
I dunno what it is, but the color pallet of this movie seems amazingly vivid. I dunno if it's because the backgrounds are more muted (and for a lot of the movie take place at night or are basically gothic architecture) of if Disney muted their pallet as time went on or what. I should probably watch forward and see if there's a noticeable shift but I only have about half those movies.
What really works about the movie is its sheer simplicity. Not too much really happens, and they put real effort into getting you up to speed quickly and just letting you drink in the visuals and music. I suppose a Tale as Old as Time probably should be that way.
Rating- 8/10.
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As a specimen yes I'm intiiiiiimidating
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I once dated a guy who played Gaston in the stage version of Beauty and the Beast. It was surreal. We were out one time, drinking with some friends and he managed to work in the punchline "I'm especially good at ex-PECTorating~!" So now Grefter/Zenny/whoever doesn't need to make that joke.
Gaston is basically the best. Movie should get a 10/10 just for best villain.
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This prompted me to listen to Gaston last night now all day i've been singing
No one fucks like your mom
No one sucks like your mom,
No one shits day old cum like your mom.
Etc etc etc.
I'm surprised thats not already a parody.
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That last one doesn't fit the rhythm of the song at all. :(
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Who can keep iambic pentameter while they orgasm? (Urmom)
Edit - also implying I can quote/reference Disney stuff. Who do you think I am.
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Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion
Y'know the pilot movie thinger.
So it is easy to forget that I know like all of the things about Star Wars. Okay not so much now because I haven't been keeping up with the new wave of novels but anyway I go into this knowing nothing about Clone Wars (which Rebels is fundamentally a sequel/successor series to). Except nothing from Clone Wars is really necessary for me because like hell I don't recognize a Jedi Holocron or obvious Force-sensitive luck when I see it. And there's certainly a large amount of pandering for the sort of audience that would actually get stuff like that, and a lot of the set pieces are very note for note with previous Star Wars media.
Also it carries on the proud tradition of Star Wars dialog being soooo bad. Like not the story, the spoken words, they are not quite working. While the VA crew for this has a lot of veterans, they just aren't familiar enough with the characters (shocking, the cast doesn't have a feel for the characters in the pilot) to make those lines work even a little bit.
Everything else is pretty good though. (except the slingshot seriously guys slingshot?). The characters could easily have gone, they have that feel of "we've assembled a Team of Experts in Their Fields" like a heist movie based on the designs, bad but largely I do find myself interested in seeing more of them. Ezra has some potential and I'll admit "Aladdin but in Star Wars" is something I'd give at least an episode or two just to see if how that worked out. The rest of the team have a good humor about them and you get to see just enough even in this pilot to suspect they some backstory we an delve into later. Just on the whole everything a pilot like this needs to accomplish, despite some hiccups.
Rating- 7/10.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 2)
So this might be my favorite season? Would not have called that. Main contributing factors:
- The endcap episodes are probably the best ones, so there's the strongest tie between the good episodes and the relevant ones.
- A lot of the aesops trend towards "you can mean well and still fuck it up", which I can dig and works really well with the show.
- There's a bunch of random episodes about Equestia history which I am just a sucker for, sorry.
- All the CMC episodes are actually, uh, good.
And honestly... I guess I don't have much to say about the season as a whole. It's very much a continuation of season 1 in terms of overall style and tone, except they've got everything working properly so there's no issue with half the season feeling incomplete or rough draft-y.
Weakest Episode- I actually discussed this one a bit while watching (I'm a bit behind on writeups actually >.>) and immediately was pointed towards two other contenders, both the Spike episodes. And yeah I'd definitely call those the bottom three, but... both those episodes have moments I enjoy a lot even if a lot of stupid stuff gets in the way of it. The Mysterious Mare Do Well is... more even than both of those, but on the whole everyone's just kinda an asshole in it. Actually, come to think of it Ponyville has this total Marvel Universe vibe at points where the citizens only remember the absolute last thing a hero did and turn on them for no real reason because what've you done for me lately and shit. But more than that the way the reveal is handled sits poorly with me; Yes, Rainbow needed to be knocked down a peg to focus on what's important, but frankly it comes across as "you all just wanted to rub her face in doing better than her" which... is out of character for everyone 'cept Applejack. And even then Applejack has to be pretty into a competition to reach the point of jackassery, but it's there and I'm okay with her being a bit smug sometimes. Rest of y'all know better.
Best Episode: A scene from the writers room for MLP:FiM Season 2
<MALarson> So y'know Star Trek: The Next Generation?
<McCarthy> Off course.
<MALarson> So I kinda wanted to do an episode where Q was the villain.
<McCarthy> Brilliant! Quick, someone find a John de Lancie sound-alike!
<Secretary> Actually ma'am we have John de Lancie on the line...
<Faust> MWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA
I lean towards the second episode as better, the Discordified Ponyville is pretty danged great and there's plenty of good lines (Rarity in particular stands out), although part 1 does have Discord splitting the fellowship. Eh, either way.
Rating- Mmmm. 8/10? Yeah probably.
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Wonder Woman
Strange movie. It doesn't hew all that closely to her post-Crisis debut, but I don't know enough of her history to know if they were mix and matching versions of her backstory or just making things up with appropriate Greek Myth material. In the end though this feels more like a comedy than anything else, which stands out from the other DC direct to videos I've seen. That or casting Nathan Fillion in a leading role just inevitably causes that. I'd believe either.
It does kinda work because the main thrust ends up being that everyone is manipulating everyone, except thanks to Diana's main power she can cut through it and even the playing field. THe movie ends up with a flow of... snark, snark, joke, decapitation. And somehow it never really kicks you out of the story with it.
On the whole I think a more direct adaptation of her post-crisis origin would've made a stronger movie, but what's there is entertaining enough.
Rating- 6/10
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Superman: Doomsday
Probably the last one of these for a while (mostly since there's only one more in the set of "DC Animated films packed in with appropriate comic" and Justice League WAR doesn't look that good, and I really think covering All-Star Superman would be hella redundant). Which is good because god I feel like there's hardly ever anything to say with them.
Although it does make for fast and easy content to keep the thread moving...
Anyways! So this movie covers the full Death and Return of Superman arc, and the first half is a very good adaptation thereof. There's some key changes, but the battle between Supes and Doomsday hits a lot of the notes of the original and the changes are either necessary (trimming out the JLI and condensing the supermans down to one clone) or to the good (Lex Luthor inadvertently releasing Doomsday and being behind the aforementioned clone).
The middle parts are actually shockingly good though. There's this scene where Lois just kinda shows up in Smallville and just starts babbling to Martha Kent because she's the only other person on earth who's grieving the way she is, because nobody else loved Superman as a man and not just as Superman and it's pretty great.
Also this scene where Adam Baldwin has you damn near convinced he's going to kill an old lady with her cat but actually just pets the cat for 2 minutes.
On the whole it feels very... efficient, which in a way is too bad because I feel like a lot of the movie never gets a chance to settle before something else happens. Probably inevitable when adapting a... god, 12 comic arc? 15? Something like. Still, everything actually here is good.
Rating- 7/10
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Over the Garden Wall
So it's not often you see cartoons that feel designed to win awards, but I think this one is. Turns out I'm pretty okay with that.
So this is an art project stuffed with high end voice talent that was completed before it started airing, because it's actually 10 shorts originally aired as a miniseries. Meaning it just oozes style, has a very unique and consistent tone, almost all its choices are extremely deliberate, so on. It surprisingly doesn't go too heavy on continuity, most of the series being a basically individual stories that paint an emotional, rather than chronological, progression, though about once an episode something permanent happens before moving on.
The main take though is how charming most of the cast is. Wirt and Beatrice are obviously flawed people but the story sets them up nicely so you want them to overcome. Gregory could be irritating as hell in that way small children are, but his obviously good heart always comes through strongest before you can hold his more immature actions against him. The way the Beast subplot is resolved is pretty brilliant, both in story and allegorically (though just how that plays out depends on what exactly you want to attribute to the Beast and the nature of the setting which... eh, I'd rather let people watch and make their own conclusions there.)
Just... yeah. The show is smart, emotionally resonant, and very sincere. It's great to see things like it crop up.
Weakest Episode: Schooltown Follies. Mostly just the most fillery of the episodes. The core plot, while certainly adorable, just wasn't terribly interesting for me, and the story arc aspects are somewhat limited to light tension between Wirt and Beatrice that would... make a lot more sense if they were supposed to be an item which isn't really true. Not not a lot of substance to it.
Best Episode: Not callling it The Unknown feels a bit dishonest, but I gotta admit I'm liking Babes in the Woods more. The animation really lets it all hang out here, and Gregory is of course at his best here. It also speaks more to the central truth of the show than the finale. They aren't trapped by the world, or the people here that seem to want to harm them, they're fighting with themselves and their own weaknesses. It gels so well with the sort of story this really is, even though you wouldn't think of it before this point.
Rating- 9/10
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Star Wars: Rebels (Season 1)
As hoped, the season proper shored up the biggest weakness of the pilot, although unexpectedly this happened from both ends. The more awkward dialog became considerably less common, and the cast definitely found their footing. And it of course continues to be super duper Star Wars, so basically all the awesome on that front.
The surprising this is how well it's done making me care about the cast and drawn me into this new corner of the Galaxy. Like a couple episodes in they work in that one of the major villains (it slipped past me on a watch, but reading up on the show later it turns out he's with the Imperial Security Bureau, meaning a) he's basically an SS thug and b) holy crap they brought Isard's dad back into canon, meaning COMPNOR beats out things like Thrawn. Huh.) personally ordered the slaughter of Zeb's people, which dovetails a bunch of things quite nicely. They actually pretty subtly build up why this nothing world on the Rim is important, and why enough crap happens there to entertain a ship full of very skilled rebels.
The show's overall tendency is to introduce new characters as fairly one dimensional then adding layers as they progress which is not usually how you do nuanced characters, but works really well in context of Star Wars (for more or less the same reason Bioware's thug/saint morality system actually kinda works in KotOR). The exception there is the Inquisitor, but he's basically equivalent to Darth Maul (or at least, Darth Maul in Phantom Menace), there to present a physical threat to our heroes. And he works well enough in that roll, enough at least that when Ezra does a Dark Side Cave Vision Quest and the Inquisitor keeps popping up and killing everyone I believe he's legitimately that scared of the man. Something about the inter-character dynamic absolutely screams of Greg Weissman to me as well (he is indeed a credited creator/writer here of course) but I can't put my finger on what it is exactly. Something about the way the crew has tiny feedback loops of building trust.
Sabine is great.
The season actually does include Spark of Rebellion as episodes 1 and 2 (darn, coulda saved $10) buuuuut fortunately they aren't either of the focus episodes anyway so that works out.
Weakest Episode- Fighter Flight. It's a fun enough concept but the immaturity of everyone involved is a bit much at times.
Best Episode- Rebel Resolve. While the following episode is of course more climatic, it's also mostly action scenes. This one is where we get that sense of "and everyone really is a team now and they are not going to leave one of their own to rot" etc etc. Cliche enough, but I'm down.
Rating- 8/10.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas
What's this?
This is Halloween- In my memory this song is a lot more forceful than it actually is. They're kinda going for a low crawling creepiness I think, but the tune's too upbeat to quite match the lyrics. Of course I think the point of the sequence is actually to show off all the models and sets they made in the stop motion, on which count holy crap this works. Creepy, sexy, heartrending.
Jack's Lament- It's easy to forget this song is the core of the whole movie. Like, all the most iconic imagery of Nightmare Before Christmas is Jack on the swirly hill, the moon huge upon him. Unlike the last this one is a very complete package, but so understated I honestly forgot it was a full song and not a line or two of sung dialog. It does highlight how strange a concept Nightmare Before Christmas really is though; the core emotion here is the feeling that something something comes so easily to you that you lose all sense of achievement from it. I mean they do play it more as "appreciate what you've got!" in the end which is bigger on the wide appeal scale but... that's not where they start and I'm surprised to see such a... mature emotion at the center of a movie.
What's This- !!!!!!!!! the song. Realistically an answer to the last song, or rather it's presented as one while actually setting up for reprises later on, but anyways. Works quite well for its context, not super memorable beyond the final line I feel though.
Town Meeting Song- Exposition! Not much to say, it's a very function-driven song.
Jack's Obsession- I got nothing here either. See above!
Kidnap the Sandy Claws- I love how sadistic this song is. After a lot of very Hamlet-esque navel gazing, something to sorta jolt the audience with the reminder that not every gruesome thing about Halloween is a mask over a smile, but ancient evils and vice buried deep.
Making Christmas- Great visuals again. Nobody really gets to show off musically though sooooo not too much to say.
Oogie Boogie's Song- HOLY CRAP A SINGER BESIDES DANNY ELFMAN. Man, this reminds me bunches of Friends on the Other Side, both in the style of singing (though of course Keith David is infinite sexy where Ken Page is infinite smug) and the visuals. It's just FUN, though, which is a good breather for the film. 'specially since...
Sally's Song- "Hello Viewer. In case you forgot, we are currently entering the Tragedy portion of our horror-comedy-tragedy. Thank you for your consideration."
Poor Jack- Y'know, this song is awesome in its prescience. You can't tell me that "Well what the heck I went and did my best![...] and at least I left some stories they can tell, I did!" isn't basically Tim Burton's career, ~1999-Present.
Anyway the latter part is my favorite bit of Danny Elfman singing in the whole movie, probably the bit I actually remember best. 'cept maybe Kidnap the Sandy Claws.
Finale- <3! <3 every one!
IN some ways this movie is less than the sum of its parts; the environments are creative, the plot unusual and generally conveyed well, the characters simple but understandable, music memorable and very tailored to the movie, but a lot of times it all just passes by before you can fully drink it in, and the different phases of the movie don't always mesh. It's got a bit of the Bizarro problem, where the anti-logic can get the audience overthinking things in ways the movie doesn't quite hold up to.
But y'know, all that stuff is REALLY good. Being a bit prone to the ol' fridge logic doesn't dock it that much.
Rating- 7/10.
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One of the things I always picked up from Jack's songs was the idea that his entire existence is founded on being a creator, but the only thing he's capable of creating is horrifying. Sometimes that's how I feel when I try to draw and the only thing that comes out is anime moe blobs. Truly horrifying.
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Mulan
Pre-viewing looking up of titles suggests there's fewer songs in this than average for Disney of the era, so we may have to intersperse singing with other analysis. Let's find out!
Honor to Us All- Feels hardcore stereotypical. That said ignoring the cultural notes I'm not wholly qualified to evaluate, to a large extent that's the intent anyway; the song gives you a good sense of how rigid and backwards her family's/society's expectations feel to Mulan. Musically it doesn't really grab me, but as with the stereotypical nature of it that could be part of the intent.
Reflection- I'm a sucker for power vocals like this. Otherwise fairly standard I Want song. Much shorter in the movie than in my memory though! Actually though in keeping with the lower song count, Mulan highly front-loads most of the content that's not War Stuff (although! Songs concentrating sooner in the movie is common for Disney) so it's probably just mentally expanding the front to even things out. Or mixing it up for the Pop Ballad Version. That's always possible.
Unlike every other Disney-affiliated music covered so far, Mulan actually puts its most significant scene AFTER a song, not during one. That being Mulan's decision to leave. This hits just... every style note for how momentous, dangerous, and desperate the whole endeavor is, and also manages to give you the sense that in spite of it all, Mulan's actually.... what's the right word. Comfortable? No. Confident. This IS the right thing to do, and this IS who she is. Everything's hidden in drapes, a storm builds, everything must be accomplished quickly and decisively, full of sudden sharp movements. So perfect.
Okay, back to the movie.
I'll Make a Man Out of You- Montage! The best word in storytelling!! Okay this one is just kinda fun. Not really super deep but it's here to advance the story and does that well. And with weirdly large amounts of Donny Osmond.
So Hercules, Hunchback, and Mulan all have a very similar structure in terms of cast and plot progression. Or maybe the similar horse designs is making me read too much into it. Anyways the sidekicks are all built along the lines of Genie from Aladdin, but it doesn't... work as well. That said, Mushu at least makes sense in the plot and there's a good reason for him to be here. But without that sorta Merlin-esque "I exist outside time and can make pop references from THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, what of it" it's still kinda distracting to see Mushu outright pull out a toothbrush. Nothing major but distracting.
A Girl Worth Fighting For- I guess there's three main intents here. a) demonstrate that Mulan isn't really that much more at home with men than treated as a woman (which was already accomplished in the previous bathing scene), b) because we need another song and hey, this makes sense as a marching song (uh... sure I guess?) c) we are t minus length of song from the heavy bits of the story, better do something light and fluffy. Because "I ain't biting no more butts" wasn't light and fluffy enough? Yeah, this is pointless. Or at least needed to be replaced by a BETTER marching song. I may be biased because the male cast aren't any good at singing though.
Broadly though I think Mulan excels in the critical moments, but it's the in-between where you can see Disney had gotten comfortable and formulaic. The elements of Aladdin that worked because Robin Williams, or of Lion King that worked because a segment of the movie stars children, are carried over here with an incomplete understanding of why they were working. Eddie Murphy is fucking hilarious, but not because he's a living cartoon character who's unnaturally talented at impressions. One plays off animators better than the other. I do kinda wish I'd covered Hunchback before Mulan, because a lot of the strengths and weaknesses are the same, but extremely exaggerated. Mushu is distracting but doesn't quite kick you out of the movie entirely.
Rating- 7/10. But really that's the summary in general. Mulan is a brilliant movie that has a lot of mediocre content in the center. This feels right as the final score as a result.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas
You nonetheless give this a much higher rating than I would. Tim Burton is a director that I almost want to like, and sometimes I think that's just because lots of people I kind of like do.
Case in point, I will say that a song you skipped over also has the BEST COVER VERSION of a Disney song.
BEHOLD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXtSFKTvbHU)
At any rate, Nightmare is just another one of those movies that doesn't GRAB me, and almost no Burton film has. If you held a gun to my head, I'd say the best one is... Beetlejuice, maybe? It's tough, man. It's tough. I know there's one I tend to forget and a lot that are well-liked cult films that I just can't get into.
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My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Friendship Games
What's this... oh yeah.
MUSICAL OF NON-DISNEY ORIGINS.
(No I don't plan to go back and cover the other MLP films in this format.)
Friendship Games- Sorta feels like it was intended for later in the movie, maybe a sort of duelling song with both teams having to travel to a neutral location (unlike the games being set at CHS as actually happens). The credits themselves try to build up each main character having a rival from the Shadowbolts but that doesn't really ever plan out. They just don't get enough focus time to make being the negative aspect of each Element really relevant (brutal honest, mocking laughter, so on) and only noticeable if you go in primed looking for it. So I guess it kinda serves that purpose? Eh.
CHS Rally Song- Honestly a pretty weak song. I really like the idea of it really; hey, guys, think about it, we're AWESOME. We fought literal monsters! The fuck can a bunch of high school kids do to us! But it's just kinda generic as an actual song.
What More Is Out There- Actually, wait.
What More Is Out There (Deleted Duet Version)- This is a WAY better version, in basically every sense. See, they extended the Twilight lines to keep it a full song about just her, and it comes across as... whiny and short sighted. Which kinda works for human Twilight but isn't what the scene calls for. The staging is supposed to be more "this is what any normal person would want, why isn't it enough for me." Sunset's lines much more ably capture this sentiment, reinforced by her being a much more rounded and worldly character to start with.
Also most of Twilight's new lines sound incredibly lame and having a second singer to contrast Twilight's singer is a big boon to the entire song.
ACADECA- Reasonably fun montage song. Granted this ends up meaning that 90% of the titular games takes place in just under 3 minutes of film time but eh, happens. Not much else to say about it.
Unleash the Magic- Probably the best song actually, setting aside the one that's not in the film. They do a great job selling the temptation here, love it. Especially because Twi herself doesn't even sing until the ending line, it's all just watching her expression shift from abject terror to grim determination.
Right There In Front of Me- Mmm. Actually scratch that, it's not really part of the movie, credits song and all.
I dunno, not a huge amount to say honestly? I think everything relevant I covered in the deleted song, they don't quite hit the mark they were probably going for on this one because they tweaked the plot a bit.
Not making a separate category for the shots this time. There's one I really enjoyed (All's Fair in Love and Friendship Games) but they're more separate from this one than Rainbow Rocks' were. Aside from Science of Magic, anyway, but anyways.
Rating- 7/10.
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At some point, I feel they are going to need to stop cutting Sunset Shimmer's content out of EQG stuff.
Seriously, both this and Rainbow Rocks would've been a lot better with more Shimmer focus.
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r u a drug dealer
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Oh. Also. Principal Sombra was a missed opportunity.
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Oddly the show seems generally reluctant to bring back villains (indeed, the opener and closer of Season 5 sharing a villain is pretty surprising thinking on it). Hell, Princess Luna wasn't actually a villain after the second episode but we didn't see her again until season 2. 'sides, Sombra was basically characterized as hitlersatan so making him work in the EG setting might have caused problems? Seems like it'd be tricky anyway.
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Aladdin
Oh I come from a... hold up.
Arabian Nights- Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place~
So a casual look at the production of the movie tells you this is a bit of a holdover from an earlier version of the script in which the Peddler is in fact Genie. This doesn't fully jive with the finish product, although you could make the argument of course. So in the final film this is mostly an extension of the framing device, which never fully closes at the end. It feels a bit out of place as a result, but y'know... damn I love Robin Williams (fake edit: apparently they got a sound alike, but ANYWAY) on this song. And while it doesn't quite fit narratively due to orphaning the framing device, it's a nice little microcosm of the film in general so hey, works.
One Jump Ahead- So the opening of Aladdin's story is really pretty heavy if you present it naturally. Kid has to steal to eat, is surrounded by people even worse off who lack the talent and physical health to do even that, and you can tell in the scenes right after this he actually has some pretty deep self-loathing problems; a puffed up princeling fires off a pretty cheap insult, and it SERIOUSLY gets to him. But by presenting this as comedy then sorta lifting the curtain on the tragedy, we keep the tone from becoming completely depressing. Also just a great chance to see Al in action, both physically and mentally, which is pretty important to the film as a whole of course.
On Jump Ahead (Reprise)- more just a sung line. See above.
Actually quite a long song drought here. Okay so the scene where Jasmine and Aladdin meet is great. You can see why these kids would be so smitten with each other right off, and I love how the crowd at the end of the scene is just in awe at the con they and Abu pull off. Everyone looks VERY entertained by the spectacle of it when Abu gives away the game at the end. Granted, Aladdin's presumably been living like this for years so if people didn't like him for SOME reason he'd probably have been given up by now.
Frank Welker remains god tier. We all knew that but he gets to really show off in this one.
Friend Like Me- "Guys we got ROBIN WILLIAMS, let him rock it out man." Honestly I... don't wanna talk too much about this one just because...
Hold that thought. God the physical acting in this one is great. Like, Abu's just gone through a full cycle of rapidfire transformations, then gets a brief reprieve while Genie conjures up the Elephant form, and the way he retreats is so great. Okay back to the songs.
Prince Ali- Okay, the sheer size and bombast of this song is amazing. It's really nothing more than an extended boast, but it's a great fit for this part of the movie and the imagination of Ali's feats and possessions really sells the thing. And for the most part Friend Like Me is basically the same song, except without those amazing little details. The visuals in Friend Like Me are, well, WACKIER but honestly this one is a lot more impressive overall. It's so busy and the rapidfire cycling of all Ali's stuff always makes me smile. Especially that little bit at the end where Jaffar is literally shoving the entire retinue out the door. Details man.
A Whole New World- Hello award bait song. Unsurprisingly I actually like the earlier scene for setting up the romance, but there's certainly good plot stuff in this one. As a song it's memorable but not something I'm in love with.
Prince Ali (Reprise)- So now let's talk about Jaffar. The sheer joy he takes in his evil is definitely a big part of the movie, especially since most of the plot is actually driven by his machinations. Hell, he basically makes a point of humiliating the Sultan and Aladdin for... fairly minor slights on the whole, because why not. The song captures the whole of the character pretty well. Just a lot of fun.
So before this new blu-ray release, I hadn't seen Aladdin in like 10 years, and I'd kinda thought that I was probably overestimating it in memory because it had the better follow up series and sequel movies. And... actually no, there's tons going on in this movie that's easy to forget over time. I was a little reluctant to talk it up against Mulan in particular, but rewatching it... nah, there's definitely a reason that Aladdin's basic structure is the one the latter Renaissance films copied. Genie works so damn well, because Robin Williams can dial from comedy to heartwarming on a dime because he could do that, not because it was necessarily a good film-making formula.
Rating- 9/10. ;_;
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Where are you finding cut/unedited versions of pony movies that you can even make the comparison? Didn't it -just- come out?
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It's about three weeks removed from a direct-to-video production, video came out last week, special feature is the song I commented on (plus the animated shorts, although those are also on youtube)
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How to Train Your Dragon 2
God, is this really our first Dreamworks film? [note to self: you need to shuffle those posts to do the table of contents you doofus]
So I know there's a bit of a thing in the fandom here of this film versus the first, and let's get out of the way that I don't think this film does as much for me as the first. I think the spectacle bits of the first were more memorable, and more substantially the long stretches of naturalist stuff in the first was very cool, and on the whole this movie is trying to substitute that with the mom plotline and I actually don't get quite as much out of that. I think after a whole film about building trust a film about loyalty is a bit redundant I guess, so the plot doesn't have the same oomph.
Not to say this movie is bad or it is bad at what it is doing. Most of Stoic's stuff is great and shores up what could so easily have been retreads. Actually that's probably the best way I can put it, in a lot of ways this is more his movie than Hiccup's. There's a lot of other stuff going on in this film which is probably an equal partner in it feeling weaker overall; Hiccup's story is more compelling, and Stoic's story has to share what seems like more time with comic sidekick subplots. Still, it's more that I wish he'd been given more chances for scenes like him seeing Valka for the first time and less moments of whatsherface pining over that loser dude.
As I understand it, How to Train Your Dragon was a book, and actually this movie is covering the second half of said book. I'm more or less writing off the overarching plot about the dragon alphas or whatever as "things that made more sense in the book", especially given the whole naturalist bent in the first film. I'm entirely willing to believe that a lot more about dragon behavior and socialization was there and just couldn't find a home in the film in between everything else. I hope so because otherwise the whole Toothless plot is REALLY silly come the end. I mean it's sweet and all but yeah.
Just not a film that left a huge impression. It's good.
Rating- 6/10.
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The Little Mermaid
Oh this movie. Let's just get to the songs first.
Fathoms Below- Man I forgot this even existed. Ah, that's why. It's a chantey that's talked over by Eric and his butler dude. Let's move on.
Daughter's of Triton- A deliberately aborted song. It's a little too chirpy, but really we can pretend that's why Ariel didn't want to show up.
Part of Your World- The primordial I Want song. I dunno. I really don't get much of anything out of it. It actually feels much more expositional than anything else? I dunno, I guess it just doesn't add anything that a still shot of the grotto wouldn't.
Part of Your World (Reprise)- Ah, there we are. This is really Ariel sorta coming around to understanding her first crush, and that comes through so well here, where the previous version of it was more frustrated daydreaming which... just isn't a terribly strong emotion. But this works.
Under the Sea- Man this movie loves to end songs on nobody listening. Self-deprecation perhaps? Heh. It's fun, not a lot more though.
Poor Unfortunate Souls- Hellooooooo animation budget. God damn. Everything about Ursula and how she moves and is design is GREAT. More Ursula please movie.
Oh yeah the song is also amazing. The spectacle of it all is more fun than about anything. "Oh I just want to help those poor miserable people who just need a little magic to be happy! This is the face of a woman you can trust~" Playing with the girl's hopes and dreams like that is also pretty fun to see in action. It's great.
Les Poissons- Go home Odo you're drunk.
Okay this is an oddly placed song. It's obviously meant for comedy but we'd already had some thanks to the payoff of Scuttle's blathering. And really the movie is actually quite a ways away from getting dark so a mood lightener is a bit out of place. My best guess is they just wanted a song playing off Triton's fears about humans and couldn't figure out another place for it.
Kiss the Girl- *shrug* Our last song here and I really got nothin'. It works narratively but I don't really have any stronger feelings towards it.
Sooo yeah you'll be unsurprised to know that I do not actually have any special affection for The Little Mermaid. And... yeah, it never clicks. There's some real flashes of brilliance but they're a small bit of the overall film. Mostly, when the characters have a chance to just exist and show their personality, that's always great. Ariel is a character that would really be a lot more fun in another story. I already said the bit on Ursula. The side characters never really get a chance to shine (aside from Sebastian, and that's just musically) but I feel like it's there.
Still, it's less there's something wrong with it as it never quite comes together. But there's still some fun parts.
Rating- 6/10
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Spectacular Spectacular Spider-Man (Season 1)
In some ways I feel like Spectacular Spectacular Spider-Man was the start of this. That is, the habit of going out and seeking out season sets of stuff I've never seen just to see what's up. And it's definitely a good show. But I'm having trouble really pointing to any one thing and saying "Yup, THAT'S why this show is fucking awesome". I mean... the cast is adorable, it's excellently paced, they do a great job of seeding larger plot developments throughout every episode rather than having filler followed by massive swerves. It's an excellent adaptation, beyond excellent really. Josh Keaton is the official Spider-Man in my head. As ever, Greg Weissman writes damn good villains. Also damn good dialog.
But I'm not sure what specifically the show is good with. It's more that it's just... well rounded, with few weaknesses. It's Spider-Man at his best. There's a lot of characters and the villain focus shifts a lot, which might be some of it; no one relationship or plot arc can tower over the others because they're given pretty equal billing and time. But if you want Spider-Man, I think this is the best version you can find. There's something to be said for that.
Weakest Episode- Interactions. Electro is way more interesting in the Sinister Six when he's kinda feeling the whole villain thing than in this episode, and there's not a lot in the way of interesting B plots to bolster it.
Best Episode- Persona. Black Cat's first episode, also if I remember my season 2 probably her best. This Peter Parker gets amazingly flustered by her flirtations and it's awesome. Also the little background events with the symbiote (obviously they haven't identified it as that yet but c'mon) whispering in Pete's ear are just the right touch at this stage.
Rating- 7/10. Without being able to cite any specific strengths I feel like I can't rate it higher than "solidly entertaining" despite feeling like it could be higher. Maybe I'm mixing up it and season 2.
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The Incredibles
Or the Fantastic Four and Watchmen had a baby.
Okay so I'm not entirely sure how to tackle this one. Aside from going down the list of all the stuff Brad Bird tucked into it, which is long because he's one of those geek hero types that wears his influences on his sleeves and wants you to know all the cool shit he's blending into his smoothie, it's fundamentally just a very smart take on all the classic deconstructionist hero stories. It's worth pointing out that the film does a lot more use of footage and recordings than you normally see in animation. That is, there's parts of the movie that are aged up recordings of the heroes, or scenes of characters watching monitors or iPad messages, and I feel like they actually do have a slightly different look than the actual action, like it's... flatter.
And obviously they basically made Brody a supervillain, so that's there.
I found myself thinking a lot more about the messaging watching it for the writeup. I haven't actually watched the movie in quite a few years, and in that time you do see the occasional listical or other internet rambling that more or less calls the whole contrast between the Supers and everyone else kinda Randian. And if you want to squint at them right all super hero fiction has that sort of slant to it, the inherent assumption of the genre is you have a bunch of exceptional people working outside the law because the law has failed. Not the appeal I've ever found in them, but some writers absolutely take the idea and run with it, and it's sort of the gremlin inherent in the philosophy.
Incredibles doesn't actually use that angle at all though, because the setting somewhat unusually has all super heroes (or all the ones we see) registered as officers of some governmental body to start with, and then they're all decommissioned due to the prologue. The whole thing becomes more analogous to the creative process, where if you have some idea or talent you're just not going to be a well adjusted person unless you embrace it. You can't 'be normal', let the freak flag fly, y'know.
Although you'll see in the same breath people complaining about the demonization of the insurance dude, all "He's right you have to think of teh poor stockholders!". Completely ignoring that the things he actually berates Bob over amount to "HOW DARE YOU MAKE SURE WE HONOR OUR CUSTOMER'S POLICIES" and is probably downright illegal. But who will think of the poor, poor stockholders.
But yeah this is firmly within my wheelhouse obviously, but I can't quite muster up unending adoration for it even though I feel like I had it at one time. Still very good in all respects though.
Rating- 8/10
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Wreck-It Ralph
*squeeee* omygodohmygod PIXAR IS DOING SOMETHING THAT FEELS LIKE PIXAR AND NOT LOW RENT DISNEY
So let's itemize the obvious strong points of the film based on this then talk about specific victories and flaws.
- Fucking gorgeous. Not just well animated, but the designs on the characters and small details therein are great stuff. The Nicelanders are animated in 8-bit!
- Excellent marriage of fantastic concepts with grounded, personal storytelling
- Excellent use of celebrity voices. Sarah Silverman as the ultimate brat man.
- Uplifting humanist messaging without talking down to the audience.
*wawawa* Huh? This isn't Pixar? Are you sure? It was out around the same time as that Princess movie from Disney. *wawa* Brave was Pixar? Really? Man, 2012 was a fucked up year.
Okay, so non-musical Disney! And jokes aside, while certain elements are closer to the Disney side, the single best part of this movie is really just how... real the game worlds are, and taking new sorts of settings and making them alive is just sort of the Pixar bread and butter. And I'm not gonna lie, when I wrote that I was planning to reuse it for Wreck-It Ralph the whole time. Can't let a set-up like that go to waste.
Anyway, so I'm torn between just goddamned gushing about the three component games and doing a "of course it's awesome let's move on". It's a brilliant setup even setting aside their visual design, they feel like real games that would have existed in their respective eras, and is a great mix of genres, styles, and so forth. The arcade conceit is sometimes a smidge distracting because quite a lot of the references and so forth are decidedly non-arcade games but eh, minor. Then again at the visual level a lot of the point of the movie is as a celebration of the history and breadth of game design, so not including them would be far more distracting.
Actually though on this viewing I found myself really noticing the designs of the characters a bit more. They are equally amazing. Calhoun in particular is just kinda amazing. But that makes sense since in large part this is just these doofuses trying to make their way through a situation none of them were programmed to handle.
Tangent: "She was programmed with the most tragic backstory ever" is among the best bits of dialog ever spoken and I won't hear otherwise. That they even PAY IT OFF later with the laser sight gag in the ending is double bonus of course. Actually, most of what Calhoun does is pretty funny, which is kinda great; the tragic character from the terrifying hellscape lightgun game is the comic relief.
Anyways the movie ends up playing with a contrast between who the characters are as programs and who they are as people, which is interesting because unlike, say, Tiny Toons, you get the sense that it's less that they're actors playing a role in the game so much as they somehow sorta take the character they were programmed as and become more people as their lives go on. I almost want to go back through it looking for those bits to see if I find more, but nah, this is about the third time I've tried to watch this for write-up so let's get stuff done.
The hardcore emotional notes are just... daaaaammn, y'know? I mean as much of a betrayal as it is for Ralph to wreck the kart, you can see it, in that moment. We just had to watch Vanellope die! Really nastily, begging for help and everything. And really the rest of the movie would have to fuck up pretty bad everywhere else to drag that sort of thing down.
Instead it has a rather well handled twist with the villain. So yeah, y'all know what I'm going to say here.
Rating- 9/10
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It feel like it's happened quite a few times in my life that I watched a movie related to video games, enjoyed it at the time, but then looked back on it weeks/months later and realise that no, it's not really all that great.
Wreck-It-Ralph doesn't suffer from this. It's legitimately an excellent movie, I think, ranking just behind Frozen on the list of kid's movies I've watched as an adult (since such things are naturally easier to compare with each other than with different sorts of cinema). I agree with the final paragraph's comments in particular.
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Alan Tudyk steals the show as King Candy. Anyone who disagrees will be taken off to the fungeon.
You know, it's his fun dungeon.
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Wreck It Ralph's only problem is that the arc where he tries to get the Hero medal is kind of dull. Rest of the movie is excellent. And they know how to actually end a movie, unlike Frozen (zing!).
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The Slayers
Actually, before anything else, we gotta do this. It's Slayers man.
OP1 (Get Along)- Pretty basic, though fittingly it's really sorta Lina introducing herself, literally so in the spoken word part of course. But really that's sorta the appeal in general, Lina Inverse isn't a very standard character and for all people tend to cite one of the supporting cast as their favorites, she's the reason the show works and what gives it appeal.
ED1 (Kujikenaikara)- Probably my favorite of the series' EDs. It doesn't have any special connection to the show really, but it's such a good general ending theme I think. NEVER GIVE UP. WE'LL BE BACK. Etc.
So the first half or so of season 1 here is strange. I'm assuming there was a mid-season break in there. But the tone of the show shifted pretty noticeably (the fourth wall breaking drastically reduced in particular), and the cheapness of the animation became waaaaaay less blatant. Actually, that's worth a note, I don't think any show I've done yet uses as many animation saving tricks, or does so as blatantly, as Slayers. Pan over one image to create the illusion of movement! That dude is huge and a Dark Lord, you can just have him talk over a still, that's kosher! For god's sake you gotta put your hands in front of your mouth to talk! EXPOSITION BREAAAAAAAAAAAAK.
And... I don't actually care! Some of this is just blatantly showing its roots as an adaptation, so long breaks for stuff like that makes it more... book-y. And the lore in Slayers, being sort of like alternate universe D&D where Gary Gygax was japanese or something, is something I don't mind exposition breaks for. When the show DOES use animation budget, it does so intelligently. But mostly the voice cast is amazing, and the characters in turn are amazing, so I don't really care WHAT Lina Inverse is doing really, I want to know about it!
That said.
Weakest Episode- Escape! Noonsa, the Flaming Fish Man! So an episode where mostly the ineffectual loser villains mock and torment Lina, with spurts of Zelgadis backstory and him showing off. I mean, it's tolerable, but just kinda boring.
The second half gets very gut-punchy. Setting that aside though, it does some stuff a lot of other anime forgets to I feel like. The last episode in particular really sells that hey, just because Lina is the hero here doesn't mean she doesn't need her companions! They don't shuffle off to fight their loser personal rivals, everyone has to play their part in the big showdown in order to take Copy Rezo down, even if sure Lina gets the final blow. Actually I guess Sylphiel does but it's not like Rezo was going anywhere at the time. Mind...
Best Episode- Yes! A Final Hope: The Blessed Blade! I debated the previous episode because... y'know, but this episode replays bits of that moment, and I think Sylphiel's desperation to save Lina comes through more strongly than the actual mortal wounding itself did. Though really picking one strongest was tricky because the last three episodes are really a set, even moreso than a fairly continuous story like Slayers was to start with.
Also I've always loved the little spell education segment. I kinda wish it showed up more.
So... I remember considering this my favorite season, but a lot of the flaws seem more pronounced on this rewatch. The pacing especially is pretty bad, and despite being probably the most important event thoughout the series, the animation issues do put a big damper on episode 10. We'll have to see how Next holds up.
Rating- 7/10
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I've never seen original Slayers, and really should. That said, I am looking forward to the review of Next. It's one of the anime I saw around when I saw Evangelion and Gundam for the first time, so it's kinda stuck with me. And while Evangelion has that really catchy OP, it never really caught me the way the kinda bad translation of Give a Reason did.
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Original Slayers run is pretty legit for what it is. You should indeed hit it up Excal.
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Honestly, for all that the more modern Slayers Revolution seasons aren't as good, I still quite enjoy them.
Also, this phrase here: And the lore in Slayers, being sort of like alternate universe D&D where Gary Gygax was japanese or something, is something I don't mind exposition breaks for.
This is the best description of the non-humorous quality of Slayers I've ever heard.
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Lilo & Stitch
Lilo & Stitch falls in a strange era of Disney, where the Renaissance was clearly over but they had no idea what to actually do yet. So we got several fairly offbeat films. They all are pretty different in tone and, what stood out on this watch-through, art styles. In this case, everything feels very... round. I think to some extent this might be a stylistic choice rather than a change in art style, because it means that Stitch looks extremely distinct from every other alien; he's pointy and dangerous, they're soft from years of bureaucracy. Still, even the humans move in a very circular way, and of course the character designs themselves are a bit different from the norm since it's not a pack of white people.
Stitch of course is an adorable son of a bitch.
Okay so most of y'all know I have a nephew, who's in roughly the same age group as Lilo. And daaaaaaaaaaamn. Yeah that is pretty much exactly what kids that age are like, at least the ones that don't have friends. Extreme dedication to their internal world and fierce need to fuck with their parents for the sake of it. Lilo's particular hobbies are bit weird still, but she's also surrounded by tourists and uh... y'know (http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/s_PArents_Are_Dead.jpg) so her morbidness makes some sense.
I wish I knew more about Hawaiian culture because I can't tell if they're pandering or not. I suppose it's not a huge deal but they clearly put a lot of thought into the authenticity of the location (because it's Disney, putting stupid amounts of effort into things 99% of the audience doesn't know nearly enough to notice is their gig) so it's something you wonder.
Honestly in some ways the movie is so different in most areas that the one it's very stock and standard in, the basic themes and moral tropes, stick out like a sore thumb. Lush, vibrant, hawaiian, they let one of their quirkier animators take the lead of character design, aliens! Telling an extremely basic Disney story in a very predictable way. The characters are likable and believable so it's no problem to make it through the movie, but I feel like it changed the window dressing without really putting a new stamp on the core story. It's definitely distracting in the last third or so of the movie. Or I'm old and cynical, one of those.
Rating- 7/10.
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I think it's on the DVD commentary, the roundness on everything is intentional.
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I actually was watching that after doing the write-up, apparently it's a quirk of the dude who directed it. I'm sticking to my "Stitch Pointy, Everyone Else Round" theory though.
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Hercules
I've always had some love for this one, and I don't know why. Let's see if we can figure it out by the time we're back from the songs!
The Gospel Truth (I, II, III)- We'll just talk about this like it's a continuous song. Which really means the whole movie has a hella-long intro. And in some ways the next two songs are kinda introductory as well, but at that point it's just "oh hey Act I is longer than you remember it is". SO back to the song. Gospel Truth works wonderfully for the ancient backstory part, it's quite fitting and suits the arthwork presentation thing very well. That they keep using it contributes a lot to the sense that the movie takes forever to start though. I mean, I like the singers, but... might've been better to cut the continuations, or maybe even move them to some other part of the movie to keep the motif? Mmm.
Go the Distance- Y'know, I could swear there was more to this song than using the same basic short version and chorus three times in gradually more upbeat keys. Okay the third iteration (which is marked as "Reprised" on the track listings even) is different but... yeah. The movie is kinda shooting itself in teh foot breaking up the songs like it does, because they keeping coming across as "well we need to sing because otherwise we'd just be doing dialog and nobody would know it was a Disney movie then!"
One Last Hope- Hercules is a lot higher on the cartoon factor than most of its contemporaries, like... just in how its animated and presented. Closer to Looney Tunes than Disney, y'know? And I think letting Danny DeVito sing fits right along with that.
Alternate Comment: Go home Danny you're drunk.
Zero to Hero- Who put the glad in gladiator~
Okay so before this is the major set piece of the film. The animators went full tilt on the hydra fight, which... I mean, it's pretty obvious even without like every interview in existence from the movie's promotion mentioning it. But I think this is really what sells the conceit of the film, the modernity of the ancient setting. Herc isn't just a slayer of monsters, he's a damn superhero, with all the fame and recognition that such a thing would get. The different Labors being referenced of course doubles down on the whole thing, and sorta ties back into why they told the story this way; Herakles WAS basically a mythological rock star. He did what he damn well pleased, everyone knew who he was, every story tried to cram him into it every way they could. He invented the fangirl!*
*Okay probably not but hey.
So this is roughly the point Hades really kicks it up to full throttle in terms of sheer ham. Because we want the entire film to shift from "wow there is so much going wrong here" to "yesssssss" on every front at once.
I Won't Say (I'm in Love)- Damn Meg is fun. Her sheer cynicism works really well with the whole modern ancient thing in the movie, and she's about the only one here really getting good lines and delivery on average. Also apparently the best singer in the cast! Probably not hard I know. So yeah, great, would recommend.
As so often happens, the musical pauses here for plot and stuff.
Predictable as the whole "true hero" thing is, I gotta admit I love the staging of the scene, with the Fates and all.
... yeah that's about all I want to highlight from this bit.
A Star is Born- Man, I wish more of the Disney canon had outros like this. Strongly ties to the introductory song, but is very much "WASN'T THAT AWESOME". I'm always down for saying things I watched were awesome!
But yeah, I think the concept here is quite solid but... there's a pretty huge portion of the movie where it doesn't really UTILIZE it. And I don't think there's... a huge amount to say otherwise.
Rating- 6/10.
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Hercules is a brilliant film that has no chance of aging well. Like I'm sure in 20 years someone watching for the first time will say "I don't get it."
Its premise revolves around two things that became prevalent in the 1980s. Hercules is the sports figure that becomes super famous/merchandiseable (Michael Jordan). And Hades is the corporate raider, attempting to make a hostile takeover of Olympus.
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Which is already kind of aged to make into a movie in 1997.
You could try watching Hercules Returns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Returns) and seeing if it is better than the Disney one.
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letting Danny DeVito sing
...
Damn Meg is ... Also apparently the best singer in the cast!
You're wrong, you're fucking wrong, and you're lying. STOP TELLING LIES.
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letting Danny DeVito sing
...
Damn Meg is ... Also apparently the best singer in the cast!
You're wrong, you're fucking wrong, and you're lying. STOP TELLING LIES.
I especially liked when Phyllicus was singing to Hercules that he had to pay the Troll Toll.
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 1)
Let's knock this one out right away.
Weakest Episode- Bombad Jedi. Look at that title again, I don't have to say much more.
Thing is, it's not something I had in mind from watching the season. There were a few earlier episodes that I was trying to pick between, but ultimately decided that those episodes suffered from the same basic problem but had other good moments to counterbalance them. But it's a recurring issue for a lot of the season. Clone Wars is a war series. It doesn't go in for gore or the like, but it also doesn't back down from what it is. It introduces characters just to kill them. It shows refugees and displaced civilians selling out our heroes for supplies. And truthfully, Jar-Jar, while really bad in this episode, isn't nearly the worst thing in the show for horrible tonal contrast to all that. The standard battle droids are. But the first few episodes where that REALLY stood out were otherwise good while this one is... eh. There are much better Padmé episodes.
Ahsoka suffers similarly, but for here there's at least something to look forward to. And hey, she's like 13. And they even early on make it clear there's some arc planning here. But yeah any episode... well except the one where "oh god all my men are deaaaaddddd :(" featuring her is not one of the better ones.
Honestly though the main appeal of the show though is that it does a better job with PT-era characters and sequences than the films. Like...
Best Episode- Mystery of a Thousand Moons. In particular I find myself actually rooting for Padmé/Anakin to work. There's a video I watched comparing Empire and Attack of the Clones about body language and desire ( This one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=344&v=R1nkVqNAlLs&ab_channel=JillBearup) ) And that's what's working here, these are kids that are married and don't get to see each other and have to be cautious about letting anyone really see them together. I almost nodded another episode just for that stuff, but this one has so much else going on that yeah, it's worth noting. Everyone's got plague! Race against time! We might be dying but we still got shit to do! Nice stuff.
And... actually so far I think that covers it. The new characters introduced are largely kinda interesting but don't have a lot of screen time because about half the season is chasing Grievous and he's... just this droid-man y'know? I kinda bought the whole series at once though so hey, we got lots of time to get better.
Rating- 6/10.
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Slayers Special
Box calls this Slayers: The Book of Spells, but it's labelled as Special in the actual OVA. 'sides, any Slayers fan material I run across always, always uses the Japanese terms so.
ED-S (In My Unlimited Desires)- The I Want song! Being Slayers, it's a sultry rock ballad about how Lina literally wants everything, because there's always another desire after you think you're happy. So you have to keep the journey going, forever. Honestly, among the Slayers songs I'm familiar with, this is actually my favorite, based purely on the sound. The content is pretty perfect for this set too, which is definitely bonus.
So the OVA here is basically three episode-sized short stories in one package with little except maybe chronology tying them together. One of the things I've been chewing on for the topic is how to tackle things like shorts, and I think an anthology like this is a good intermediary. So we'll look at each part first before the overall analysis.
The Scary Chimera Plan- The only Dragon Slave between the two OVAs! And actually it's an imagine spot. But in general this is the 'humorous' (being Slayers they all have some humor, but Scary Chimera Plan is nonsensical except as humor) one of the set, but it's very... off-beat. A lot of it is depending on the viewer to kinda mind-break along with Lina at Naga (or Diol's) anti-logic.
Of course it has Naga turned up to 11 so there's that.
Actually though despite some repeated visuals all over in that sequence there's something very charming about watching the Nagas swarm and destroy the castle.
Jeffrey's Knighthood- The entire short rides on how well you buy into Josephine's antics (Jeffrey's legit annoying as hell, and part of the conceit is that Naga and Lina don't get to do much.) It's an interesting thing because it starts kinda funny, then gets tiresome, then suddenly they play is seriously in three different contexts and it actually gets much funnier. Well played.
Mirror, Mirror- So this one is like 50% music video. Two songs in fact! Run All the Way is honestly pretty magnificent. Or maybe I just like Lina singing about her position as a living avatar of selfishness. Or at least presenting herself as one. Touch Yourself (really? That's what it's called?) isn't quite as good, buuuut it does play over a montage of setting werewolves on fire rather than, uh, Lina and Naga running so there's that. Anyway the central gag to this one is Mirror Lina, and honestly the longer it goes on the more Lina's reaction of abject horror actually starts to rub off on the audience, which is kinda cool. The sheer wrongness of it really builds up well, like angles without angles and colors that are not colors.
A lot of this depends on you already understanding, or picking up quickly, who Naga is as a character and how she relates to Lina. Sadly for us, these come after the first Slayers movie and I, uh, don't have any of those and couldn't tell you for sure if I've seen them or not. But Naga's pretty straightforward at least. Still, Lina seems downright cruel here in a way she never comes across in the series, but I suppose she is a touch younger which may play a part. I do wish the set had a clearer overall focus, like some sort of sense of why they're even bothering talking to the crazy people they are, because in the end it gives off this sense that the first two shorts are really just filler with no particular ties to reality, with Mirror, Mirror being an actual story about Lina and Naga's wandering. I mean I guess I shouldn't worry that much about Slayers canon but evaluating this as a whole rather than three completely disconnected things does sorta diminish the value of the first two shorts.
A lot of how Slayers is usually remembered is reflected much more strongly in the OVA here than in the seasons. It's off-beat, character focuses, with lots of the characters being OP as fuck. The seasons themselves have more layering and character moments, and are almost certainly better shonen (even if some of them fall into the traps of the genre more than I like), but watching this would definitely get you up to speed a lot faster.
Ratings- 6/10, 5/10, and 8/10, for Scary Chimera Plan, Jeffrey's Knighthood, and Mirror, Mirror respectively. As a collection, 7/10.
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( This one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=344&v=R1nkVqNAlLs&ab_channel=JillBearup) )
"Bla bla bla bla bla"
"Dammit Threepio!"
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Slayers Excellent
ED-E (Never Die)- Such a low key song. It's bloody weird, because I strongly associate Slayers vocals with bombast as suited to Megami singing more or less in-character as Lina. within that it's pretty enjoyable, but doesn't stand out at all. Probably the weakest vocal so far.
Labyrinth- Our 'serious' offering for the set. One of the many bits of Slayers that you forget you love until it comes back around is Lina's ability to completely take apart the evil plots of villains and make fun of how predictable and stupid they are. It struck me watching this particular instance that of course the series itself escalates so damn quickly to Always Chaotic Evil Devils bent on nothing less than the utter obliteration of the cosmos; nothing else would dare mess with Lina Inverse. She doesn't just kill lesser evils, she utterly humiliates them. I admit I was sorta disappointed they didn't go full epic but eh, despite the obviously increased animation budgets I get the sense that the OVAs specifically wanted to avoid too much epic.
Sub-rating- 7/10.
A Frightening Future- In the grim darkness of the future there is only boingaboinga.
See, Scary.
An odd one in general. It fits the general shape of Slayers filler, but the way it derails is distinctly in character for Naga stories. I'm not sure how better to explain it.
Sub-rating- 5/10
Lina-chan's Lovely Makeover Operation- And then Lina was a kogal.
Not really. Just everyone else.
So this one is in full on parody mode, which I actually don't think happens elsewhere in Slayers that I'm familiar with. It's a nice one-off kinda thing. The odd part being that it actually directly references the previous piece despite both of them being otherwise completely detached from the usual reality of the show (or seemingly being so.)
Sub-rating- 6/10
So Excellent makes sense as a set in a way Special didn't. Sure, it tangents off into nonsense, but each story is distinctly about Naga, rather than Naga just being a character who happens to be around. It ultimately gives the impression that the two OVAs should have been the other way around, and perhaps the material they were adapted from was, but I kinda doubt it. I don't think any one episode in this set is super strong, but I do have to give it a nudge for feeling like a coherent though I think.
Group Rating- 6/10.
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Star Wars: Ewoks
With my last breath, I blame Grefter.
Okay so it's not actually that bad, but it's not good. I'm working from an incomplete set, which sorta cobbles 8 season 1 episodes (of 13 as I understand it) into two movie-like things, and although the stops for each episode are visible I'm going to forego evaluating them individually.
In part this is because I don't think I could actually pick a weakest episode. The trouble is that the weak parts of the show are the exact same issues over and over. I can't remember if I've ever talked about this issue? Eh, oh no maybe I repeat myself. So a lot of people insist on avoiding the word "cartoon" in all its forms, because the term reinforces the whole notion that animation is for children (or so they think). Because there was a time between roughly the mid-50s and the mid-80s where animation went through some dark, dark times. The House of Mouse was barely holding it together, Warner Bros. had actually closed shop for several years in there, and the face of animation was folks like Filmation and Hana-Barbara. And adults with their self-respect rightly turned up nose at 90% of their output. It's part of a whole package; kids are dumb and will watch anything, these are just vehicles to keep them occupied and sell them crap so we want to spend as little money as possible.
Nowadays you don't suffer that, at least not in the mainstream. Those shows do exist, but are largely relegated to direct-to-dvd mockbusters or toddler-tier programming. But the stigma is there. And with that comes the whole thing about moral guardians and blah blah won't somebody think of the children. This too has dimmed over time, but it left a mark. Between it and the previous, there's an idea that if you're designing a show for the youngest audiences, you have to talk down to them. You have to keep conflicts simple, use certain stock hardships and interpersonal conflicts, and so on.
I generally sum up all of this mess as "being limited by the audience"; the show is for five year olds, and in talking down to the five year olds you make the material somewhat insulting to a more sophisticated audience. While you can't necessarily call it bad, it is dumb and not enjoyable. And that's what Ewoks is suffering from, in every episode available. It's limited by the audience and spends inordinate time teaching small kids the same lessons about being nice and owning up to your mistakes that every cartoon ever has to cover. The recurring bad guy faction, the Duloks, are also about as insufferable an 80s Cartoon Villain Group as I'm been exposed to, which is not to be taken lightly. Bleh.
When the show isn't doing all that nonsense, it's got some decent things going on. like, compare to something actually in its weight class (I dunno, the Smurfs, say) and it stands out well! The internal mythology makes a modicum of sense and their interactions with the many other sapient races on Endor are kinda neat. The animation itself isn't total balls, certainly above average for 1986 anyway. But it's a long walk in the desert for those tiny oasis.
Rating- 4/10
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The Good Dinosaur
Hey so this movie is not one where you just kinda know everything about it going in. At least I didn't. I knew something something there's dinosaurs and a little toddler thing and yeah that's what we got.
It's basically a western with a bunch of boy and his dog. Except the dinosaurs are the people and the dog is a four year old.
That's just so odd I dunno if they were shooting for that or... if they like had to swoop in and rescue a movie with four or five distinct 'parts' and that's how they made it all fit. I have to say though, it's very different so hey, props there.
And they do a pretty good job of playing against your expectations for "dinosaur movie" and incorporating elements of the whole western motif. The core plot is "main character gets swept downriver while trying to work out some trauma via revenge and adventures home", and unsurprisingly at one point becomes hopelessly lost. So trying to run away from some flying asshats, he tries to call out for help to another sauropod... which turns out to be a pair of T-Rexes! Who turn out to be entirely well-meaning and helpful! And are ranchers. And they run like they're riding a horse, like go look up that footage if you don't want to watch the rest of the movie, I love how well they capture the gait of that despite it being them running.
They also have approximately three really good scenes of the Pixar style. If a character is drawing a circle, you are permitted and indeed encouraged to respond with tearbending.
In spite of all that you can really see the seems in the movie, and it's sorta distracting. Aside from the main character himself, who is a nobbly-kneed little goober and I kinda love it, I'm not really feeling a lot of the designs despite a lot of technical achievement (they shot shit like bruises and scraps extremely convincingly). The whole OH GOD A FLOOD KILLED MY PA thing is almost depressing in its obviousness, although they have a lot of shared visual cues with the Lion King so at least they're aware of how cliche and obvious they made it. The way they portray the main character's traumas are a bit overwrought for me as well, but I can let that slide because I think he's supposed to be basically 12 (although the way the movie frames it the dinosaurs are like born in the spring and halfway grown come winter).
Rating- 7/10. Not the best Pixar movie, but solidly worth watching.
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Ooh, what a useful review! I'd been pondering seeing it, but all the review snippets were sounding extremely negative. Glad to see it's just 'bad for Pixar' not actually 'bad' (like Cars).
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Did somebody just badmouth the animated, motorized, Doc Hollywood? That description alone provides the entertainment value of glorious cheese!
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Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods
So the release of The Force Awakens has of course generated a lot of talk about Star Wars, and on comment I've run into, phrased differently in various places, is the prequels being basically the unchained id of George Lucas. One dude made every creative decision and had full rights to do whatever the fuck he wanted, and it's fascinating to pick apart even the very very flawed products of that effort and see how he ticks.
I feel like Battle of Gods is basically the unchained id of Akira Toriyama. The end result: weird, puts jokes and off-tempo heartwarming in completely inappropriate spots and makes it work, flashy, generally makes you question how these people function, and just generally utterly joyous about everything it does.
It's pretty great, is what I'm saying here.
Honestly I wish there was just a whole movie of Beerus and Whis lounging around their timeroom or something. They could order take-out sushi. It'd be awesome. But hey, then after a brief interlude of Establishing the Threat, we then proceed to spend most of the movie actually just kinda fucking around at Bulma's birthday party which involves Vegeta singing to distract Beerus. And fights about pudding. With special appearance by THE GREAT SAIYAMAN. Yeah this movie is really funny and likeable and it's almost a shame when the fighting starts because while the fighting is done well it means we don't get amazing Pilaf shenanigans.
Really I said it best in chat. This was like watching Dragon Ball Z Abridged at times. It's nuts. although funny enough, I think I like the DBZA crew better overall as a voice cast. Goku and Piccolo are basically the same, but everyone else is actually better in DBZA for my money. Well, of the established cast. Beerus and Whis are awesome in this dub.
Rating- 8/10. Not a lasting, life-altering favorite by any stretch, but damn entertaining on every level.
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What makes Battle of Gods work unlike the Star Wars prequels is that Toriyama has actual experience at doing this stuff in the past and making it work; Battle of Gods was him going back to the series original routes...as in, Dragon Ball, where it was primarily very silly until a fight scene started and that would range between either 'pretty cool' or 'gimmicky and silly.' Raditz's appearance is when the franchise took a huge shift into being far more action oriented which is why it became DBZ there.
In fact, it's not just in the tone and the focus from quirky silliness to bad-ass action (the latter you could see slowly evolving over the course of the series. The Piccolo Saga feels very Proto-DBZ in many ways, honestly; the one thing reminding you it's Dragon Ball is Goku is still a kid), but also Dragon Ball had a far more fantasy, mystical feel to everything. Goku was a monkey boy who transforms at the moon because...he's a magical kid. Oolong is a pig who can transform because screw you, he went to school to learn how! Piccolo is an ancient evil green demon because he's suppose to be the devil, and Kami by extension is suppose to be God (hence his name!)
Then Raditz shows up, and suddenly we have Aliens, Androids and you get the idea. Buu felt like an attempt to shift things back into the fanciful silliness, unfortunately it tried too hard to balance Dragon Ball's quirkiness with DBZ's high-octane action and kind of fell flat on it's face.
Battle of Gods felt like the Buu Saga done right. Won't go into details, but I think it's safe to say what makes the movie work above all else is Beerus just being a fantastic villain to compliment the tone the movie wanted, and Whis being a great side-kick to bounce off him.
Battle of Gods definitely felt like it was also trying to sort of mix the sci-fi and fantasy sides of DBZ. It still had the mythos and universal lore involved but also by calling them "Gods" and working around legends again, it harkens back to the more fantasy roots.
Basically, what I'm saying is Battle of Gods is a movie that embraced not only Dragon Ball Z at it's finest, but also Dragon Ball. It was a huge nod to the entire series, and not just "Raditz through Buu" like most things do. Having Pilaf in the movie felt like Toriyama's way of saying "yeah, we remembered those days too, don't worry!"
But yeah, it's a pretty fantastic movie and as I said, it worked contrast to the Star Wars prequels because it's less Toriyama being unrestrained for the first time and more just him going back to his roots and having fun again. And frankly, Beerus and Whis are basically the best thing to happen to the DBZ universe like...ever. Resurrection F even solidifies this further as while the movie is fun enough, those two basically just make every scene they're in so much better. Further proof those two are awesome?
Brad Jones, the cinema snob, actually saw Resurrection F not knowing anything about DBZ whatsoever and actually highlighted those two as standing out and being fun characters, who he wanted to see more of (he also said the movie was surprisingly fine for something he knew absolutely nothing about as he was entertained even if he was confused and the completely wrong demographic so kudos?)
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And now, to boldly go where this topic has not gone before: to a time before 1983.
Star Trek: The Animated Series
If I were being lazy I could probably just post this:
(http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/wp-content/uploads/Spock-1.jpg)
I mean, that sums it up pretty damn well. Good, bad, or other, it's always fascinating. Because they didn't try to make a Star Trek-themed kids show. They made more episodes of Star Trek. Except:
- Half as long
- Only 8 cast members
- No extras
- Guest stars happened like once ever (wisely, it was Mark Leonard as Sarek)
- 70s era animation. You may not have watched as much early-day Cartoon Network as I, but 70s cartoons looked like hot garbage. And those were Hanna Barbara. Filmation was largely worse.
And the compromises they make to get the episodes to fit all those limits are often times not nearly as painful as you'd expect. There's one or two duds in the series, but on the whole they are very solidly Star Trek and while it doesn't have a lot of oomph, it presents interesting sci-fi plots in an engaging way.
The flip side of this though is the bit about guest stars, because... okay, the main strength of original flavor Star Trek is the main trio, yeah? Kirk, Spock, and McCoy form a particular dynamic that covers a full range of emotion, temperament, etc etc. It's the foundation of every episode. The trouble is, this means that in order for an episode to especially stand out, you have to introduce something new for them to react to. And while disrupting some portion of the trinity in a substantial way can work, the Original Series covered a lot of that ground and the Animated Series seems loath to retread it too much. The other way is to throw a new character at them and use that sort of complete humanity dynamic to thoroughly examine this new character and the situations they create. And while they can make up new characters, because of the limited cast and lack of cash to pay guest stars it pretty well has to be James Doohan or Marjel Barret doing a weird cartoon voice, which kinda undercuts the concept a bit.
But this isn't to say the show is bland. It just sorta maintains a steady 6 range in 90% of episodes. There's about three episodes meaningfully below par, and two of them are just the animation failing to back up the story. It looks goofy and jerks you out of the moment.
Weakest Episode- Bem. The planet-side stuff and Bem himself are two completely disparate ideas that shouldn't have gone together. Maybe if Bem was secretly a part of the lady-God on the planet, it miiiiiight have been okay, or at least okay in theory, but as presented just... it's annoying and has no reason to be there.
And there's similarly three stand-out episodes. Tribbles are gonna tribble so I don't have to explain further. As noted earlier they actually sprung for Mark Leonard in one episode, and it's good. But... surprisingly...
Best Episode- The Time Trap. Y'know what? I'm just kinda a sucker for this particular Trek plot. But I feel like this is the best example of it because the Space Wedgie they're stuck in isn't really that bad. No roaming bands of raiders, no meaningful supply shortages, and you're borderline immortal. And the ruling council just acknowledging that hey, people still miss home and have to at least try to get out is honestly very nice. So the drama actually stays on "Okay, we can't trust a Klingon. But can we trust them just far enough to make this work?" which is just kinda refreshing because that's all the drama we actually need. These guys are established enemies with both mutual respect and mutual animosity. They know the greatest harm they can do their enemies is to kill their opposite number, but they can't, and in their own way would miss them if they did. I think the simplification of the plot to fit in the runtime is helping out a lot here.
Rating- 6/10. It's not really spectacular, but it's still a pretty damn interesting watch and I feel like I'd recommend it a lot more than the rating suggests.
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The Iron Giant
I feel like there's two movies here. The core narrative of Hogarth and how he sparks the Giant's growth, and the story told by context (which is also the story of about 15 minutes of runtime riiight before the climax but anyways). There's a lot of density here for this sort of film, but I'd probably blame that on Brad Bird. But actually I feel like I missed huge chunks of the film the last time I went through it because there's a couple bits I don't actually remember. Hogarth's rundown to Dean of his life in particular. Sorta like "oh, they DO explain why the kid is so offbeat and likes hanging out with a beatnik, okay".
Okay, back to the two movie thing. The trouble there is that the contextual movie is a lot more interesting than the narrative one, because the film practically stops dead a lot of times just to have kid and his robot shenanigans. Not that they're bad shenanigans but earlier bits of the movie put cues to keep you in the context plot while the middle parts are just shenanigans for their own sake. A lot of them don't really contribute a lot to... well, Superman either, so it's just kinda... a thing that happens.
So context. Okay, probably not the best word for it, although I'm not sure how else to describe it. There's a very tangible sense through the whole movie that the adults are living their own 1950s lives and it's only sporadically intersecting with Hogarth's best buddy robot movie. But the cues about Sputnik, the duck and cover video, the emphasis on the witnesses being working folk, on and on lets you as a viewer know what aspects of the half-scene adult life movie are influenced by the current events of the time period. And from there you can fill in the parts you don't see from basic knowledge of history; what they worry about, what things are actually like, the gap between the two, the cultural undercurrents and early rumblings of later counter-culture shifts. A whole other movie that's partly displayed in the movie, but can be completed easily but adding outside knowledge of the cultural context it's set in.
When you have both the movies side by side, I can kinda see why they wanted the shenanigans stuff, to try and emphasize that off-beat or not, Hogarth is a kid and has the naivete of one, and using that to set up why he's better equipped to figure out how the Giant works. But even knowing why it's there, I don't think it quite works. You get the same emotional/thematic beats from the meatier scenes like the train crash, or the deer. Dragging out the walking hand bit or the trip to the lake... not so much.
I don't think there's anything so clever to say about the last bit of the movie. The conflict with the army briefly shoves the second movie to the forefront. Superman is Superman. The sole advantage of being a WB Animation movie of the time period, they can bloody well call Superman Superman. You are better than you think you are. Er, who you choose to be.
Rating- 8/10.
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Write-up of Disney's 34th Animated Feature.
The Bells of Notre Dame- The rhythm of the song is kinda wonky in places (a lot of Clopin's lines are pretty awkward mostly), which does sorta remind you of how overwrought the whole situation is. But damn, David Odgen Stiers is on point here and sells the whole thing well. And it sticks the landing in fine form but that's true of most of the songs. Otherwise you see one of the better uses of the sharp contrasts in lighting the movie adores, it's a bit reminiscent of the nightmare chase in Snow White come to think of it.
Out There- This one's in two parts, one from Frollo and the other from Quasi. Quasi's bit is pretty average for an 'I Want', but damn does it feel a lot more earned contrasted against Frollo's manipulation. Or I just love me some Tony Jay in this movie.
Topsy Turvy- Certainly plenty of fun. Although the best bit is "Look at that disgusting display!" "Yes Sir!" Although watching again for the first time in a while, I'm noticing that damn does Esmeralda look like she's from another movie. Beyond being about the only character drawn as attractive, she has a lot more detail (both in her face and in this outfit here) than everyone else, even other main characters. Although it should be said that kinda works in its way, I think having a sort of otherworldliness to her is appropriate. Sensual but alien, out of place, y'know? Heck...
God Help the Outcast- One line from this has ALWAYS stuck out to me. "I ask for nothing, I can get by. But I know so many less lucky than I." Downright bloody saintly here. So... To the people of Paris Esmeralda is exotic, an other to be leered at but never accepted. To Quasimodo, she's an angel from heaven sent to deliver him his loneliness.
Heaven's Light- This shares a slot with the next song on the soundtrack but... yeah that gets its own thing for obvious reasons. Anyway, damn man, I forgot he literally calls her an angel here. Silly of me really. Uh otherwise it's a very short song without much impact, more of a montage to move into the next scene.
Hellfire- Ooooooooooh. Okay. Okay. So let's set aside the obvious appeal here. We just had a villain song about how he wants to rape and murder the heroine, in some order he has no idea about. DARKNESSSSSSS. Okay. Also yet more excellent use of lighting and overall heaven/hell imagery. We also have him basically calling Esmeralda a demon sent from Hell to tempt him. And... this all works because, unlike a lot of other scenes, we really feel Frollo's sincerity here. He really is as pious as he presents himself. He really thinks the Roma are devils sent to tempt righteous men from God. He really has no idea how to deal with deep seated lust, because he's never felt it before. It's what makes him both interesting and, well, dangerous.
A Guy Like You- Dammit movie.
Dammit.
Ugh. Okay. Jason Alexander can sing at least. But no. No movie. It is ENTIRELY too late for a mood lightener. Move this song up where Heaven's Light is and we can work with it, for all the gargoyles are still almost a pure negative to the movie. But here? After we've seen a dude get shot, most of the city harassed and large portions set on fire? No. We can't be pausing for comic relief right now. And really not for the rest of the movie. The late Renaissance films all suffer somewhat from using Aladdin as a template and not quite doing it right. But where Mulan, Hercules, Pocahontas and Tarzan just don't quite integrate their comedy, drama, and heartwarming in a seamless way, here... here it's... just derailing the entire movie. Like we have a dramatic confrontation with Frollo and a conflict of loyalty for Quasi due to his mistrust of Phoebus and y'know what, I'm still sitting here babbling about how stupid the damn gargoyle song is! And this would happen if I wasn't typing while watching (look, I can't remember one song in enough detail to write about it if I don't do it right away, it has to compete with other Disney songs!). The fucking fuck. And they come back in the climax and it's just as dumb there.
The Court of Miracles- Y'know what, this is a bit light for this point in the story, and it's Clopin going to hang the damn heroes! This is what I'm talking about here. This song? It's okay, it's a good way to ease us through the necessary scenes of "Why the fuck should we trust these assholes" in a speedy way. It's really not bad at all. And if we hadn't had that distracting stupid other comedy song we could appreciate it a lot more.
So some parts of the movie like to imply that the gargoyles are just Quasimodo's imaginary friends, while the ending has them interacting with the soldier's assaulting the cathedral, and it's yet more jarring stupid for a movie where jarring stupid is about the only thing WRONG with it. and y'know. The actual ending and a few other scenes imply basically that Notre Dame itself is alive and aiding the heroes. So why not play that up a little more? It would really solve the problem handily.
The other bit of the ending of course is hooking up Esmeralda and Phoebus. And at first this feels like "oh hey we're being EDGEY and not letting the main character get the girl!" But it's... a lot more than that. Like, I was just kinda thinking about it on this watch-through. Townsfolk exoticize Esmeralda. Quasimodo deifies her. Frollo treats her as an object of temptation and lust, a demon he must conquer. What's Phoebus' main interaction with her? Engaging with her as an equal and mostly just wanting to know her name. He's the only character in the whole story who treats her like a human being! Huh. Practically ahead of its time it is.
Rating- 7/10. But yeah. This... this should have been the best movie. It really should. But they didn't have the balls to let it stand on its own. What a pity.
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I took the ending as "Quasi learns that pretty people should be together and ugly people don't get no pussy."
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It is okay if you are ugly and alone forever, you are a beautiful awesome person that everyone likes but no one loves.
Yayyyyyyyy!
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It is okay if you are ugly and alone forever, you are a beautiful awesome person that everyone likes but no one loves.
Yayyyyyyyy!
I thought I told you to stop following me around and commenting on my life.
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Tangled
Something about the opening needs comment but I can't figure out what I want to say. Having Flynn narrate it doesn't quite work for me, I think because they go in a slightly different direction with him in the movie itself where the melodrama feels a bit off I think. Still, making the sun a prominent motif throughout the movie was a good move and helps keep things fairly cohesive in its way.
When Will My Life Begin- Mm. It's competent. Optimistic and upbeat but utterly consumed with mundanity, gives us a pretty good first view of Rapunzel. It's kinda hard to get excited about it mind, but hey, there's nothing wrong with it.
Mother Knows Best- I was trying to form thoughts but then the bit where Rapunzel is hiding in her hair all curled up like it's a mole hole popped up and distracted all of them. Such a lovely little image. um. I dunno. It has a feel more like... like a Hammerstein musical, y'know? Which isn't too far removed from some of the work of the Sherman brothers which is very very Disney so it works for a milestone work like this actually, but I don't think any of the ones I've covered had a song in this style to it.
When Will My Life Begin (Reprise)- Oh Rapunzel you're such a dork~
I've Got a Dream- Mmm. Y'know, cute of them to have the obligatory reality bending song actually matter to the plot. "Oh hey Flynn's a scheming dickhead but it's gotten him in over his head! However will we get out?! Let's use the power of trust to sway the crowd into a dance number! And then they just let us go." Very nice. It's a somewhat stock idea for a fairytale story nowadays but the execution, especially compared against Disney itself, is pretty alright.
Mother Knows Best (Reprise)- Damn. This is some wicked witch shit and it's amazing. I think I have underestimated Gothel as a villain. She's pretty meh for most of the movie but she sells the hell outta this song and it's too perfect.
Mmm. So this exchange happens before the last song.
"What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?"
"It will be."
"and... what if it is?"
"That's the best part. You get to go find a new dream"
I think we should just kinda file this away as Disney.txt.
I See the Light- Man, forgot this was a song over rather than singing in characters. Of course it's from the voices of the leads so same difference mostly. And really I could have been hitting harder on how many Renaissance notes this hits, since this one is probably the most direct transfer of that formula, but really I don't think I'd be considering it in that light except I'm doing these writeups, so I hate to bring it up too much. Otherwise, it's effect at what it needs to be. But like a few other song it doesn't wow me either.
Rating- 7/10. There's not quite so many highs in this movie as its contemporaries, but it's extremely even and complete as a film, which I think is why it succeeded where Princess and the Frog in particular did not. It's not a huge favorite even then, but there's certainly a lot to be said for that.
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Mother Gothel is the most disappointing part of that movie. There was sooooo much potential for Disney to make her a genuinely nuanced villain but they just went the overly safe direction of straight up evil. She literally lived with and raised Rapunzel, posed as her mother, seemed genuinely interested in Rapunzel's happiness and wellbeing, but with the fatal flaw of being dangerously overprotective. A parental trait that's incredibly relatable and yet scary in extremes. It seemed like such a perfect fit for the kind of drama and tension the movie needed. Even her song is literally setting her up as "overprotective mother going too far" and they built in a reason for her to be that way due to literally needing Rapunzel to stay alive.
And there was a genuine chance for them to show Gothel as concerned about Rapunzel as a person. Gothel may have stolen Rapunzel out of necessity but she easily could have enjoyed the familial bond that she formed with her. And then been genuinely concerned about Rapunzel's reaction to finding out she's not her mother not just because it means it ruins that familial bond but because Gothel's life is on the line and THAT is what puts them in conflict as antagonist and protagonist. It's melodramatic but at least it has substance which is more than just "stock evil witch" villain that we got.
Perhaps I'm explaining it poorly, but I was so excited about the possible ramifications of Gothel's song but the movie was just a total letdown after seeing that potential.
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Oh no, absolutely. I basically remembered her as a complete non-entity, but the song there is... the character she could have been, yeah? I forgot she even had such a thing in the movie. So more props than I had previously given were in order, even if she still suffers from not living up to that potential.
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Eh, I disagree. I always got the impression that Gothel didn't want a familial connection to Rapunzel beyond what was necessary. Rapunzel, after all, was not a person, she was just her flower of eternal life having annoyingly gained sentience and become much harder to retain ownership of, since it foolishly thought it belonged to itself. And so we get the psychological mind games and the various strings to keep Rapunzel under control so that the flower will always be there for Gothel.
Seeing that dynamic, Rapunzel trying to grow while Gothel wants to diminish and control her, limit her to simply being a tool, is the heart of the movie. And to try and sell "Oh noes, she may find out I'm not her real mother" as something Gothel would care about when her primary concern is depersoning Rapunzel, they just don't feel like two concerns likely to go together.
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Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. Instead of being nuanced, she was just evil, what with the whole depersoning thing.
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Wall-E
The Best Pixar Movie.
Okay so, way back in Inside Out, I noted that "feels like Pixar" included '- Uplifting humanist messaging without talking down to the audience.' That was always meant first and foremost in reference to Wall-E. In particular, the scene where Wall-E meets Mary. She's babbling away over her headset to some unidentified person about bad dates, and desperate to get past her, Wall-E turns her chair off when she fails to respond to anything else. Her first reaction is... utter awe and really seeing the Axiom and the world around her, quite possibly for the first time in her life. If you want a visualization of Pixar and what they believe in, those three or four seconds are hard to beat.
So the visual brilliance of the movie is pretty obvious. They spent a lot of time creating what I'm pretty sure are the ruins of New York, complete with a completely drained harbor, and the design of the Axiom tech, and the detailing of Wall-E's bunker and giant stacks of trash and etc. 'Define Dancing' is one of the more iconic moments of the entire 2000s. It's interesting to me that they went out on a limb like this, considering their previous work was very talky and focused on character building through direct dialog. But hey, they pulled it off.
The really fantastic part though is we have a movie that is so blunt about its themes people actually started finding extra ones because they had to use other overt themes to get across their original overt themes, I never felt like they were sacrificing the integrity of the movie to do it. Knocking people out of their complacency feels natural to Wall-E as a character. The relationship between EVE and Wall-E makes sense. The Captain's lethargy in the beginning sells me on his declaration of "I don't want to survive, I want to LIVE".
And hey. Basically the entire main cast are a pack of dorks. Wall-E is a collector, EVE is a wanna be action heroine, the Captain does an on-screen wiki-walk. So I think they may have had a damn good idea of their target audience, y'know.
Rating- 9/10
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My problem with Wall-E is that it is really fucking depressing. Not really enjoyable to watch because the future it paints is so bleak.
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 2)
A lot of this season feels like background noise to me. There's a seeming reluctance to put the main characters in the same place too much, so they're having to juggle a lot of plotlines all at once to keep everyone in the loop as it were, and I think the show overall suffers for it.
It also has a lot of stuff that feels like it was there for homage or fanservice that I don't think will go much of anywhere. Boba Fett, the Zillo Beast, so on.
Although at least one of the straight homage episodes was cute. Seven Samurai in Star Wars? The devil you say.
Weakest Episode- Weapon's Factory. Ah good, teenage girls bickering.
Best Episode- The Mandalorian episodes are strong in general, and of them Voyage of Temptation stands out a bit for having a few moments that scratch fanboy itches. "You won't shoot me Duchess, you can't give up your precious pacifism! And you Jedi, you are weak before your love!! AAHHH AHAHAHAHA*grk*" *IMPERIAL MARCH* "What? He was going to blow up the ship."
But no, I think they just go a great job of implying just enough of a connection between Obi-Wan and Satine that we believe they might have become star crossed lovers, but instead chose the path of duty. And that this decision does hurt them. It's especially the sort of thing you can imagine of the younger Obi-Wan, and why I actually think of Ewan McGregor as definitive in the role rather than Alec Guiness.
Yeah. I honestly at one point watching this season put in a disc and got through half an episode before realizing crap, I'd watched this one and forgotten it. I dunno what it is, since there's certainly a good episode or three here but... I dunno.
Rating- 6/10.
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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
In some ways this is a bundle of ideas that doesn't quite tie itself together. Bruce's former lover loses her family and goes down the dark path he himself oh so narrowly avoids. A new Batman-like villain squares off between Bats and the Joker in a tragic three way. Bruce's crusade to protect the knight almost ended before it truly began.
But to large extent I find myself wondering... what's so special about her? It's not that Andrea lacks personality really, but I guess they just failed to capture any real spark between her and Bruce, and without that to push past the sheer coincidences demanded of the story it just doesn't flow as a single coherent plot.
But god damn does the movie sparkle when you take any individual scene or transition and look at it in isolation. The placement of the flashbacks is led into quite nicely, the framing of the major dramatic moments is amazing (in particular: Bruce at the Wayne's tombstone, begging their permission to be happy, storm raging all around). The movie drifted a little more PG-13 than the show could, to generally solid effect. It certainly enhanced the dark mirror aspect of the Phantasm anyway. The bit where the Joker toys with the old gangster is probably on my list of definitive Joker moments now. Alfred has a particular line that's reused in this fan-made Batman vs Superman trialer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk9dXG4fMw8&ab_channel=JTSEntertainment) that seems... just perfect for Batman, and I didn't realize it was actually from this movie.
I overall like the idea of this movie a lot more than the movie as it exist I think. What's there is fine, but this is something that could with just the right chemistry have been the pinnacle of the DCAU. Still, as a collection of moments, it's still reasonably impressive.
Rating- 8/10. Waffling a little but I'll err high today.
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Batman and Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero
Basically a two-parter padded out to the length of a three-parter.
Well that was easy.
That really does sum it up, but obviously we should break down what I really mean by that.
So Mr. Freeze kidnapping one of the gang like this is obviously a bit higher in stakes than usual, and there is a sense of closing off his overall story arc, which is nice. But where the previous movie felt like it was trying to go a new place with the characters and be an event (I don't think it quite succeeded, but that was the intent), this is more just putting a nice bow on one of the show's story arcs.
The larger problem is the sense of padding. The climax mostly falters here; yes, I get it, the thing is exploding. Exploding it more does not really make it be any more on fire or deadly than it was. We have to save the invalids and run away, that's great, please focus and stop showing me yet more explosions. The repeated escape attempts by Barbara also drag on, but at least that does serve some purpose (hey guys, you fucked up and picked the superheroine to kidnap! She's not gonna let you steal her organs uncontested!) They probably could have gotten away with shortening the initial escape a little bit, especially considering it just leads up to "oh fuck we're on an ocean" and maybe just left some of the shooting gallery portion to our imaginations or something.
Actually I think some of the point of all this was as a Batgirl showcase, and while that's not remotely what they promised with the, y'know, title and packaging, if you knew that and signed on for it, hey, you're gonna get a good show. There's also a pretty decent chase sequence between Mr. Freeze and Robin! Not very much Batman though. This is another reason it feels a bit more like an episode, because if I'm remembering it's placement in the release order, it came out while the show was on hiatus before returning as the New Batman Adventures or whatever, and the episodes of the series right before that did focus a lot more on Batgirl and Robin than Batman himself as a rule.
Rating- 6/10. Enjoyable enough, but not a lot of meat to it.
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Kung-Fu Panda
My biggest thought here is the movie wants to sound way more profound than it can actually back up. I suppose that might just be a consequence of being a the sort of kung-fu movie that it is, but yeah. It wants to be philosophical and inspiring and generally rings hollow. There's a few things going wrong here I think.
- There's too much cast and not enough bonding between them to sell me on the "be yourself!" theme. There's like a scene and a half showing the furious five warming up to Po before devolving to a pack of extras. All the interaction between him and Shifu that's not Shifu fucking with him is in one montage. The scene with Oogway works... because the character tropes Oogway falls under means that one scene between him and the hero is what the audience should expect. They wanted to have their star-studded cast but also keep the movie kiddy cartoon paced and something had to give.
- Po's got obvious self-loathing problems and the other characters picking at them is uncomfortable. I mean, these dudes are already local heroes, defenders of the peace and all that. Picking on the fat kid is a bit beneath you isn't it?
- They go back and forth a lot on what the heck Destiny is supposed to be, and wrapping it in pithy sayings just makes it sound like you're trying to pull a fast one on me.
- Similarly, why DOES Po stay? He gives several different answers and none of them feel true.
But y'know? That sounds more damning than it is. The movie puts on airs of being mystical and kung-fuey, when at heart it's another light-hearted but very faithful take on a genre as Dreamworks is wont to do. And when it's just doing that, being a comedy kung-fu flick staring Jack Black as a panda, it's fine. Some of the humor at Po's expense does have a bit of punching down to it, but for the most part a lot of it is him being infectiously excited about everything and it's pretty fun to watch. I adore the opening sequence in particular. It has juuuuuust enough of a "Fanboy's First Bad Fanfic" styling to get the idea across without being annoying about it, and the art style lacks that same-y feel a lot of Dreamworks of that era had (and indeed like the actual movie has).
I really don't have that much to say about the plot. The movie puts a lot of comedy in between the scenes of course, but it takes elements from across all sorts of kung-fu movies and plays them pretty straight. The sincerity of Po makes it work better than it could, but it's still very predictable and stock in a lot of places.
The fight on the bridge is pretty cool though.
Rating- 6/10. Fluffy popcorn fun. Just don't let it try to pretend it isn't that.
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I've always thought Kung Fu Panda spoofed profoundness, and when serious, leveled at the same maturity of other animation films.
Man.
I'll still see the newest one!
Edit* BECAUSE PANDAS ARE SO CUTE
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I did not like that movie much.
It's probably best to sum up why with the sequence in which Po is able to become a great kung fu master, not through hard work but through... some hand-wavy nonsense about a love of food. And just to prove it's no accident he then goes and solos the final boss who just beat up all of his friends who have been training at this stuff for years. (Incidentally I had zero problem with them initially resenting him, although yeah they could have been less mean-spirited about it.)
It's well-animated and entertaining enough, so it's quite functional if all you're looking for is to have a good time with Jack Black voicing an adorably animated panda and doing cheesy kung fu stuff, but I feel like it sends all the wrong messages, and that's pretty unforgivable to me given its target audience.
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Ratatouille
Y'know how when you know a lot about a subject stories about it usually become hard to watch because it turns out writers don't usually know shit about shit and get everything wrong?
Yeah Ratatouille isn't that movie. That is actually pretty close to a what a brigade kitchen looks like and that is actually a lot of the little tips you're supposed to learn and cooks actually are, in fact, all insane.
It's the little timers going off in your head all the time.
It's actually a strange sort of family movie though, because if we're being blunt most of the movie is every character using the other characters. I meant yeah nobody goes out of their way to be an asshole but it's not something you see a lot: there's a lot of acknowledgement of everyone's own personal hangups and selfishness. Some of it is probably just the really out of whack power dynamics between any two main characters, where the lead is a literal rodent and each subsequent character is the direct subordinate of the next most prominent character.
Honestly though while I do like Remy as a character I don't feel like his stuff with his family later in the movie really adds anything. I guess you need a sort of breaking point so that both he and Linguini have wronged the other? But I guess that I felt like his arc reached a reasonable enough conclusion in the pretty early going and you really didn't need more than maybe one scene later on for him to kinda go "no, I was right, and I can't let rejection keep me down". It could also be just that I care more about the human cast.
In general though Ratatouille is known to have had some production issues, along the lines of "we had to replace the director and Brad Bird had to redo chunks of script when he jumped into the project", and you can see some of those seams. Linguini's and Remy's stories don't always feel like they go in the same movie, even though the two of them do make sense as a unit. It's not wholly jarring because they do try to make the culture clash part of the story, but you can still tell.
Still, it's cute, and actually more or less knows it's stuff which is nice.
Rating- 7/10
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I dunno, I consider Ratatouille a 9/10 and up there with WALL-E in the Pixar pantheon, and I don't know or care much about food. Can't really defend that or anything, it's just a movie that does nothing wrong and tons of stuff right and had me smiling the whole time. Felt like an unusually cheerful Roald Dahl work.
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Didn't care for Ratatouille at all.
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Summer Wars
At heart, Summer Wars is a very simple movie. In the sense that it tends to be straightforward or obvious, and telegraphs heavily.
Which is good. It's good to remember that simple things can be amazing. That straightforward or obvious isn't the same thing as stupid. That making something easy to follow and accessible doesn't make it somehow less.
Before delving into all that, it's worth noting the visual spectacle of the movie. I mean, the Oz sequences ARE pretty cool. Granted they're extremely similar to the director's first major work, to a degree I gather borders on shot-for-shot remake at times. Which in a way is one of the weaker parts of the movie because the way the 'fights' in Oz play out don't always quite make sense with the narrative here where I'm sure they were just fine in a Digimon movie. Like... what does flooding Love Machine do exactly? Like the first part I can kinda translate into some logic, tricking the core of the AI into a private server and cutting it off from the rest of Oz where it couldn't do any more damage, but what exactly does damaging it in Oz's battle mechanics... eh, let's not dwell. It's silly and doesn't make sense sometimes and is there to look cool and give urgency to the family drama.
The rest of the movie looks slightly washed out sometimes, but that might be deliberate thing to contrast better with Oz. That said... I once saw a thing on one of the director's other movies, where he talked about how he liked to have characters cry. And was one of the few animators where crying characters don't look adorable and noble when they cry, actually conveying 'inelegant blubbering'. Which yeah, being primed to look for it, it's definitely a standout thing. Also a big emotional moment in the movie anyways of course.
So Summer Wars is obviously about family, communication, and togetherness, and what's interesting is mostly how each level of the story reinforces it. A lot of the characters are motivated by trying to serve the needs of the family, which is fine. Except it's not. Blood being thicker than water and watching out for your own is natural to people, but it's not enough, which is really repeated point of the film. Kenji's own small family is fractured, but while this means he takes a certain joy in the liveliness of the Jinnouichis it also gives him a sense of perspective their large, close-knit clan almost missed. We live in a world where all of humanity is one community, made literal with Oz in this world (if you're actually unfamiliar with the film, imagine if Facebook and Google joined forces and world governments and major corporations all decided to run their private security directly through them. The whole internet as a single system.) Even in times of trouble, turning your gaze wholly inward and ignoring the human community is wrong, even if nobody would fault you for it. Granny calls it what it is, an attack by an enemy. Here it's a single AI, but it's basic behavior is that of an internet troll; Humanity's enemy is spite, maliciousness, capricious destruction for the sake of it. Ignoring it to focus on your own grief and lives is natural, but you have to fight against that instinct or it'll run wild until people really get hurt.
... okay wow that was not where I expected that paragraph to go. Let's refocus.
Regardless of how it happens, people have to be connected and reach out to each other to make the world work. Being isolated leads you to mistakes because you lose all sense of how your actions might affect others, while rallying around each other and making sure everyone knows what's happening and that they CAN help and CAN do more than they think is the most important thing. There's little cycles of this through the whole movie; Natsuki gets Kenji in way over his head in the beginning, but Granny accepts his presence and tries to nudge him into believing in himself. Wabisuke makes a troll AI to recoup the family fortune, Sakae rallies the country to work around the damage. The family turns inward to prepare Granny's funeral, Kenji pushes them to realize that a lot more people could suffer the same. The world basically gives up on salvaging Oz from Love Machine, Natsuki's card game inspires everyone to fight back on their own.
They really, really wanted to make sure you picked up on this.
Granted I can only assume Summer Wars is a bit more All Ages kinda audience, or is intended as such, so they're very careful to lay out all the later plot points so you know it'll be important later. Still, as much as the hammer the point, it works because the whole cast always comes off as very genuine. Yeah, I've met some of these people, these guys all make sense, y'know?
Much as the movie's disjointed sometimes, the parts all succeed really well at what they do and the recurring theme being very similar in each keeps it feeling like one overall story even though it could easily have not.
Rating- 8/10
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Puella Magi Madoka Magica
So this finally happened.
I think the series has a strange interest in convincing you Madoka is the least interesting member of the cast. The other four girls each get to set the tone for part of the series, while Madoka is generally cast as a bystander. Which is true, but...
Actually, going through the cast down the line seems like the best approach.
Mami's episodes are almost entirely about deceiving the viewer. Can't be an effective deconstructionist work if everyone knows you're playing it crooked from the first minute. Mami herself feels more like a device than a character... mostly. Really there's only two moments in the series that her facade of "Cool, Collected Sempai!!" cracks, and neither of them is when she loses her head even! That one's more of a "Oh. Huh." on her part. But no. One is way down the line in Homura's extended flashback, where she lives t o see the proof that yes, you too can become an evil witch! Which works there because when that happens in the current timeline, nobody's really alive to react to it once it's all over. It's good to have a proper emotional breakdown over that one. But important to the show overall, the other one is just Madoka babbling, talking about what she really wants is to help people... and she lets it drop. This isn't glamorous. It's lonely, and dangerous, and thankless, and you just watch people die and hope maybe you can save some of them and one day, you'll finally lose. Really that's when you know (assuming you didn't anyways) yeah, she's dying in about 5 minutes isn't she. Still, There's something I really like about that, they don't go "lol nope ded she was full of it", the let her say it herself, in response not to distress, but to renewed faith: Madoka was someone she could genuinely believe just wanted to help people, the first such person she'd probably ever met.
Sayaka really gets the bulk of the episodes to herself, but purposes of discussion we're calling 4-6 Sayaka focused while 7-9 are about her breakdown and how this compare/contrasts with Kyoko. So first...
Weakest Episode- Miracles and Magic Are Real. Madoka is one of those nice series where there aren't bad episodes, and every episode is important, but this one has the least forward motion and least in the way of character moments. Basically the only important things are...
<Madoka> *wordless scream of existential terror*
<Sayaka> Yeaaaah that's totally fair. But I'mma go be a superhero now!
And then a bunch of stuff that... just kinda happens.
And really that's the meat of this part, Sayaka wants to be a superhero and wavers on whether she can manage and bristles at the other characters for not being superhero enough to match her despite being way stronger as magical girls. We can basically call this the "we have to give you a small window of hope that maaaaybe there could be a happy ending! Otherwise the pain from the last knife twist will linger and numb you to this one." portion of the show.
Kyoko's fun. As raging assholes go. But that's more or less the point, she has to be endlessly cynical but without despair, to contrast Sayaka's downward spiral. Her backstory is strange though, because basically she's someone who had her entire family die as a delayed consequence of her actions... and she has to go "Well... I'm... actually still better off. Man that's messed up. Oh well, hedonism is go!" Strange concept.
But back to Sayaka's downward spiral.
Best Episode- I was stupid... so stupid. The slow motion swan dive into utter despair works so well. I think it's the back and forth of it. Feel utterly isolated, tell off your best friend. Hate yourself for telling off best friend. Try to be happy for other friend starting new relationship, want other friend to die in a fire for stealing away dude you've been trying to support for years. Remind yourself you have to help as many people as possible because it's the only thing you have, be reminded that nobody deserves to be saved. That last part is worth highlighting for being some of the nastiest things I've ever heard in a non-exploitative work, but in a good way. And seems especially appropriate for this show because y'know, I've seen some other anime made in the past 10 years, and more importantly I've seen the fans of those anime. They need some dick punchin'.
Homura of course is where they tried to put all the twisty plot stuff. And in general she's the character with the most overt attention paid to her development, and presumably intended as the fan favorite. And hey, she's cool. Although sometimes they oversell it, the lingering shots on her doing her best impossibly cool hair flip get a bit gratuitous.
It's strange. Like, conceptually Homura is basically awesome but in practice she's very pandering is the best way I can put it. Cool beauty! But secretly she was a nerd the whole time! Awesome at everything... because she tried over and over and cheated the system, like a video game! She can do everything by herself because she has hax! But it's all to save the fair maiden, like a badass knight! YEAH!! And it's unfair, because in reality the obsessive nature she develops and determination to cut out everyone except the center of her universe are pretty clearly shown to make things progressively worse, if not for the ending. The multiple levels of making her the avatar of the fanbase is another bit of misdirection. But they spend an awful lot of time on it and it's a bit offputting sometimes.
Of course realistically a lot of that stuff exists to set up Rebellion.
Madoka... well now. I almost immediately thought of this exchange when pondering how to approach the show.
They're doomed.
Yes. But a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It's a privilege to be among them.
You're unbearably naive.
Well... I was born yesterday.
Substitute 'born' with 'became god', it's really very close to the overall sentiment of the ending. But it's important to remember that this is a compromise; she can't just make the world better. But she can take on the burden of everyone who fell to despair trying. The phrasing Mami has for how Madoka's universe works is very specific, she takes the magical girls when their curses almost equal the good they did. Karma is rebalanced to very, very slightly add up to good.
But the show is very coy about it all. Madoka is of course overtly messianic, but for most of the show she's really a game piece, moved around by the other girls. And they want to play this off as her just being hopeful and naive and wanting to believe the best of people when it doesn't make sense. Which isn't untrue, but it's again misleading. Madoka doesn't so much believe that everyone should be nice and kind and being nice means doing everything for other people as... she's someone who's genuinely upset that the world is unfair. Not that it's unfair to her, that her life is miserable and it's terrible that she's no good at anything and she has a boring family and all he friends love her mom except her mom's a raging alcoholic and they silently keep her barely functioning every day. That doesn't even register for her, I don't think. It's the fact that there IS inequity. That something innocent can die pointlessly (One of the surest signs of The Kinda Show This Is: the original wish that lead Madoka to being a magical girl in most of the timelines is revealed... in the opening credits, without any actual explanation or indication of its significance. Yeaaah), that the people trying to protect the world from witches are forced to fight one another to survive, that every wish you can make ends in utter despair. And she spends the whole series chewing on it, everyone around her oblivious to the problem: this isn't right, the world is wrong, there has to be some way to fix it.
She couldn't make the world right. But she could give everyone an honest chance at making it better.
And then when her back was turned a voice said "Get in the sack!"
I'll have to watch Rebellion. But I'm expecting an EoE scenario.
Rating- 9/10. Sorta on the lowish end of the rating but I have to err high when I spent the whole write-up talking about the cast and not even mentioning the character designs, art shifts, use of lighting, or music.
Oh yes, one more character isn't there.
Bunnycat- A dick.
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The Slayers Next
OP2 (Give a Reason)- The single best remembered song in Slayers, and with good reason. The intensity of it builds in a way that gets you to follow one rhythm just before it ramps again, and it's almost impossible not to move along with it. There's also this very real sense of incredibly sincere emotion to it that I just don't.... quite know how to explain. We're moving to Megumi's rhythm, but she's really baring her soul here, y'know?
ED2 (Jama wa sasenai)- Not an exceptional song, but a solid one. The chorus stays with you well and the buildup is decent. Not a lot of meat to it but a certain amount of that is normal in EDs.
Mmm.
Next upon rewatch is certainly better than The Slayers.
The trouble is that's true more because of production values and the show finding a more consistent comedic voice, so a huge chunk of it just kinda flows right over you. This improves in the second half of the season... well, let's break.
Weakest Episode- The Unexpected End? The Shocking Truth! Kanzel and Mazenda just aren't terribly interesting and the threat level attached to them is tedious. Combined with being the end of Alfred's thing and the engineered succession conflict in Seyruun the whole episode is basically saddled with trying up a lot of crummy storyline. The animation for the city outskirts being levitated is pretty bad too just for flavor.
Mostly because we stopped dithering and finally found a primary villain rather than just one-note minions. So we have actual goals and a mounting sense of dread. And in those conditions they start getting real character moments again (for people who aren't Martina, Martina is the most consistently good part of the season), and let's be real, we're all here for Lina, Gourry, Amelia, and Zelgadis. In particular, there's something about Lina just immediately taking to Auntie Aqua that I really love; oh, Lina hates people when she can't take advantage of them, but older lady who gently ribs her excesses? Loves her. The battle with Gaav is also pretty nice, because they do a good job of establishing that oh okay actually we can throw our biggest guns at this and plan all day and it's just not going to work.
Actually, let's sidebar. Part of the issue in the first half of this season is what I usually think of as the Shonen Problem; we have our big superhero actiony shows. We want the main character to be the special snowflake with extra powers. And the villains have to be able to fight those powers, so... only the main character can fight the villains. And this doesn't have to be true, but it's a trap that the writers have to actively work against.
And one of the key reasons I remember the first season as better than it really is (other being the note about humor above) goes back to that. They did so, so good at making sure the whole team was integrated into the fights, and Kanzel and Madenza threw all that out. Nope, everyone else flails, only Lina's AWESOME NEW SPELL can do anything functional.
The fight with Gaav avoids this by just making it such that actually even lina can't get this shit done! and then...
Best Episode- The Souls of the Dead! Lina's Final Decision! I doubt anyone's terribly surprised. Everyone dies horribly with great suffering! Go To Next! I also considered of course but sharing the major speech with the Lord of Nightmares means we can judge based on the emotional bits, and I think Lina's struggling in the face of everyone dying horribly is a bit more affecting than Gourry's mad dash to pull Lina back from the kiosk.
Yeah I dunno if there's anything deeper to say really. Slayers likes to repeatedly gutpunch the audience sometimes. It keeps working.
Rating- 8/10. I'm really underselling the stronger points of the series because humor just tends to be very hard to hold on to, at least for specific examples or analyzing why something is funny or how funny it is. The overall strength of the cast and the clockwork running of their timing is very strong throughout and that makes the season.
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Best Episode- The Souls of the Dead! Lina's Final Decision! I doubt anyone's terribly surprised. Everyone dies horribly with great suffering!
Count me as surprised? I mean, Slayers is great, but big demon lord final showdown stuff is almost never the reason to watch the show. It's *needed*, yes, there has to be some overarching defeat-a-great-threat framing story or else our "heroes" would look more like crazed magical bandits than RPG heroes, but the best episodes are usually the rando "the team is travelling and runs into a weird situation, Lina inappropriately responds with violence" ones. Srs bizness Slayers episodes are basically the weakest ones, with the possible exception of maybe the first half of Season 1 with Zelgadis & Rezo as villains.
Also I think that everybody agrees Slayers is perhaps a little too liberal with handing out invincibility to its enemy cast it wants an excuse to persist from episode to episode. I recall Slayers Try being the biggest offender here but you're reminding me that Next did it too.
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I'm gonna side with CK here.
End of NEXT just hits that perfect melodramatic pitch, in large part because it massively ups the stakes and Phibby is just a delightfully monstrous asshole. Plus, Lina's decision is so wonderfully in keeping with the series while still being... sympathetic, I suppose?
This isn't to say that -most- of Slayers' big emotional showdowns work. It is mostly that Copy Rezo and Phibby are great, everything else sucks.
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The "I don't think you'll be surprised" part is referring to the fact that I rather consistently give the most nods to episodes heavy on the high emotional stakes and melodrama. I'm a bit predictable.
But yeah. Back during the first season, I figured it'd be a tossup between the episode I did nod and the showdown with Shabranigdu-Rezo. The latter didn't hold up, the former did. The trouble I have is that comedy, or at least Slayers' brand of it, isn't something I find super memorable, and quite often the stuff I laugh at the most in the moment isn't the stuff I remember down the line. So... it's the big high stakes climaxes that have the biggest reaction because humor tends to be transitory, at least for me.
Also one of the weaknesses of Try. It's still Slayers comedy, but it's got nothing else (unless I forgot something, we'll see! Eventually!), and even in that department it's notably weaker than Next since... no Martina.
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Thor: Tales of Asgard
Hmm, so this is only our second of these? Well then.
So the whole Lions Gate Marvel thing is basically their answer to the DC Animated features, and the idea seems to be that since this is direct-to-video animation they can ramp up the blood and violence a bit and it'll be fine and give them a hook.
That's... a great theory? And Planet Hulk is legit good. This one is... not terribly good.
There's just a long list of issues, some fundamental, some nitpicky, some minor but really glaring. I'll try to just take a couple from each set to save needless ragging on the film since it's not THAT bad.
- The animation is janky. Lot's of very sudden movements, no real fluidity. Normally this sort of thing would trim itself down if they were having budget problems but here we are.
- The violence level does not really help this particular story at all. This is probably the biggest overall issue, the story itself sets off as an innocent youthful adventure that ends up being a lesson for Thor about the responsibilities of being a leader, which is a fine enough premise but I don't think showing the Sword of Surter (really? you can't call it Twilight? Because that's what that's called in marvel) burning the flesh from ice giant bones before showing the bones disintegrating is really advancing that story much.
- I gotta say, Thor finishing off the final battle by taking up Gungnir is a huge letdown. C'moooon, you had Mjolnir in the vault! Stop teasing me.
- In general the relative ages of everyone and characterization feels slightly off. Thor and Loki I'm okay with since the main thrust is being the event that sets them on their paths into adulthood, but it's like they had a really specific story idea and jammed the other characters into it with passing reference to their usual personas.
- The Valkyries. God everything about them is hard to sit through.
As noted, I do like the core idea, and Thor and Loki more or less work. But everything else around them just feels off and there's a few parts that aren't fun at all to watch.
Rating- 4/10
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Zootopia
God, how is there anything BUT Zootopia porn left on the internet. This is the second furriest thing I've ever seen.
Okay, so there's a big gap there because I am CONVINCED the other thing is like... actually intended as pornographic sometimes, this just has some weirdly male-gaze-y stuff on Ms. Hopps at times.
Otherwise, this is a Disney film and possesses all the many hallmarks of that legacy. Details poured into aspects of production no regular viewer will ever notice, cohesive world design etc etc.
I mean, it's good. So, so much better than that trailer because honestly I had decided to avoid it based on that thing, fortunately while that scene is in the movie, it's cut down a bit. And they actually pay it off somewhat later.
The main thing about the film though is that is has... seemingly by accident, though perhaps they decided on the broad themes in response to events from a year or two ago and it's just gotten EVEN MORE relevant in the past few months, become extremely timely. The main thrust here, if you're not familiar with any of the advertising or world setup, is basically "animals evolved into cartoon furries, but remain somewhat divided by traditional classifications of predator and prey". There's a lot of mistrust there, and broad stereotypes about each group, as well as specific ones to particular species (rabbits are cute (don't call her that, it's okay between rabbits but not so much when other mammals say it...), foxes are sly bullies, weasels are shifty criminals, etc).
It does mostly work, and the way it informs the backstories and ongoing plot for the two main characters is great (hell, the rapport between the two of them is the best part of the film), but it can be reaaaaaallllyyyy on the nose at times, in a way that's distracting. There's a bit of a mystery plot going on here, which sadly is pretty predictable about five minutes after they tip their hand on one even being there, but I guess that's probably just going to happen sometimes in your family films.
In a lot of ways I suspect this one will feel sorta dated in a few years, despite "racism is bad and hard to counter!" being a pretty eternal message, because the specifics of it just feels very rooted in the 2010s specifically, along with having technology directly mirroring modern featured pretty prominently. They also have some direct shoutouts to the current Disney run at a few points that will have the same effect overall. Still, it's certainly enjoyable enough and, as noted, it's nice to have something that will be getting a lot of eyeballs dropping the racism hammer right now. But it's just not an all-time classic in the making.
Rating- 7/10
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Zootopia
God, how is there anything BUT Zootopia porn left on the internet.
… yeah that's getting immortalized as a signature when I get home.
This is the second furriest thing I've ever seen.
Okay, so there's a big gap there because I am CONVINCED the other thing is like... actually intended as pornographic sometimes,
Sonic the Hedgehog? Disney's Robin Hood?
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Animalympics.
(http://www.rubberslug.com/user/06a746f86645439ab36a1447bb4c32bf/474931-8335953-rene-kit-5m-8+9-c9.jpg)
Imagine this for about a full minute of screen time.
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k
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Teen Titans (Season 2)
Let's go ahead and knock this one out.
Weakest Episode- Every dog has his day. Neat enough idea, but the off beat humor didn't quite hit the right wave length with me. It indulges a bit in the "art shift to something creepily, grossly detailed to jolt audience" style (think Ren and Stimpy or Spongebob) and that's never been a real winner for me. The role reversal at the end is cute at least.
Okay. So while watching the first half of the two parter I was considering talking up the show's strengths for filler; like, the earlier Terra-centric episodes were... fine, and Terra is an interesting enough character, but I feel like the arc needed one more episode in there. Preferably in the start of the season, like split her first episode over two parts with more camaraderie and maybe a tussle with Dr. Light or something in there. This sort of storyline needs a certain baseline of normal, and they never quite get there for me. Meanwhile, the filler episodes like Fractured or Winner Take All were just good superhero shenanigans. Heck, I want to single out Winner Take All for actually taking the base premise of Robin and Cyborg being hypercompetitive jocks and butting heads over it and make it actually interesting. It stands out compared to the first episode back in season 1.
buuuuuuuttttttttt
Best Episode- Aftershock (Part II). Oh holy crap where was this show hiding. The opening scene with Terra is a big reason I wish there was another episode for her, because I think her visions lose a little bit by not actually being shots from earlier episodes. Or if they were I totally forgot and uh oops. But everything else? Man, the first action sequence is like something out of Batman, except with full super powers. It's this amazing contrast to the normal state of the show. No bright colors, no jokes, no anime, these people are walking demigods, they have no weakness, they know your every move, you will never see them coming, and you have burned your the last shred of mercy from their souls. You're right there with Terra when she flees in abject terror of the Titans.
And it just gets worse for her! I think they walked an absolutely perfect line for Terra's scenes with Slade. It's clear that this is a violation, that Slade manipulated her into giving up agency, into saying yes when she didn't mean it, when she even thought she did. But they never sexualize it or smother it with the usual giant flashing "THIS IS A RAPE METAPHOR" signs. It is what it is, and they trust you're smart enough to recognize it.
The fight between Beast Boy and Terra is just amazing. They put so much thought into how these two very different sets of powers interact and how they can counter each other. It's just a joy to watch.
The ending does feel a little contrived, but I'm willing to put it down to them being to quick in the last scene; her last attack against Slade didn't LOOK so strong that it'd go full supervolcano, but it is in line with the overall emotions of the fight so hey, minor animation let down.
I'm a little torn here at the end. I'm finding i like the last episode even more as I'm writing about it, and the overall episode quality is definitely higher all around from the previous season. But I'm not sure if I weight the end enough to put it the next grade above that or not. Mmmm. I dunno, I do feel like they got lucky and generate more emotion and payoff than they strictly earned. We'll shoot a bit low on this one.
Rating- 7/10
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The Prince of Egypt
Deliver Us- Nice contrast between suffering on a grand scale and sacrifice on a personal scale. The little sequence of all the terrible perils Moses' basket faced is kinda interesting, nicely sets up the idea of his being chosen and protected by God from the outset. Nothing amazing overall but it lets you know all the important context for the movie pretty efficiently.
I definitely find myself feeling like the sibling bond between Moses and Rameses is sold well. The idea that Moses is somewhat uncomfortable with the excesses of the court is a smidge overplayed perhaps, but otherwise his being the irresponsible younger brother works pretty well.
All I Ever Wanted/(Reprise)- The song has nothing on the dream sequence. I've got a serious soft spot for art shifts as you may have noticed, and this one is pretty fun. But actually the bit with Pharaoh is the best. Patrick Stewart plays it just right; yeah, he's not THRILLED with baby murder, but slaves aren't something you should lose sleep over years after the fact. It is just the burden of duty, and not the heaviest of his burdens.
Through Heaven's Eyes- Montage! Pretty effective one too. The singer has a nice rich voice, letting Moses' goofballness show through to see why he'd be endearing to these folks and their pick of little moments to show between him and Tzipporah are pretty danged effective.
God's voice has never felt quite right to me. I think it's Val Kilmer with another layer over it and to make that slightly less obvious they have him use this really weird cadence to all the lines. The burning effect is pretty cool though.
Playing with the Big Boys- *yawn*
Something is way, way off with Miriam's voice and I don't know what it is. She's... flat? I dunno. It's a big weakness in a lot of places because she tends to be the one to spur Moses to action a lot of times.
I gotta give a lot of credit to the animators for the work on Rameses' son. They give him a lot of personality for a character I don't think actually gets a speaking line. He's... a kid, y'know? It adds a lot to how utterly crushed Rameses is later.
The Plagues- I've always loved this one. The chorus is great, it is great. The visuals on the plagues are suitably horrifying to boot.
When You Believe- Super sappy. I thought The Plagues had won the Academy Award, but turns out it was this one? Weird. I guess maybe the harmony parts appeal to those sorts of folks.
... helloooooooo animation budget! The pillar of fire feels ALIVE, and the scope they manage to give the parting of the Red Sea is pretty amazing. Yes children of Israel, you are right to stare in awe of this spectacle.
Unsurprisingly they prettttty much stop the movie here with only the barest acknowledgement of the 10 Commandments. Considering how heavy they'd been on the plight of the people and putting the emotional conflict in the sibling bond rather than the messiness of reality, the golden calf and other such events would really spoil the mood y'know. But yeah, movie holds up about like I remember it, and... probably my favorite of Dreamworks' films that I'm aware of.
Rating- 8/10? I might be shooting a little bit high there. But sure, let's roll with that.
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Zootopia
Okay, so there's a big gap there because I am CONVINCED the other thing is like... actually intended as pornographic sometimes, this just has some weirdly male-gaze-y stuff on Ms. Hopps at times.
Rating- 7/10
They didn't pick a rabbit, timely for the 21st century, not to emphasize her round bottom and spunk. But, I think about how most female cartoons move or look, Nahla and her round bottom sitting, Gloria the hippo and her fat ass….
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An American Tail
... oh yeah, this is more or less a musical.
There Are No Cats in America- Y'know, intuitively I feel like the breaks into cartoony visual shifts are a bit odd for Bluth. Even though that's probably not actually true... just compared to Bluth's other early works. I suppose it's a portent of later bits of his career really. Anyway, as a crowd song with some intentionally rough singers, I don't have too much to say about it musically, but it has this interesting bit of misery olympics, which is strangely perfect for this. "Y'all remember we're deperate refugees fleeing on the slim hope that AMERICA fuck yeah! is all we dream it to be right?" "That ain't no reason to be down! When I was little cats used to kill us and dance about on our graves!"
Never Say Never- I kinda feel bad for whatever poor kid is doing Fieval. It's really obvious they have a legit kid doing the voice, and he sooooo hasn't had any true singing training, so they have to have him kinda whine through this song and let the dude doing the french accent try and cover for him once he actually joins in. I don't think it quite pulls off what it needs to narratively though; like... he has to shift from hopeless to determined and I don't really see that moment in there where he's convinced about it. He just sorta flips a switch.
I'm kinda digging the way they actually have Fieval work in this. The way his naivete is just inherent to the character, and it can both get him into trouble and endear people to him. The fact they pay off his love of the mouse-Rapunzel story to escape the sweatshop is cute and sells the character well.
Somewhere Out There- The placement of this is strange to me, mostly because it's not the first scene where Fieval and the Mousekewitzes miss each other. I've been told that this scene is the one people remember from the film which is weird in an absolute sense since it's a very short song and the visuals aren't all that different from the movie as a whole. But... An American Tail isn't huge on specific imagery or long spectacular scenes. It's a small details kinda movie, and this song does probably the most to capture the overall emotion of the film.
A Duo- I love the way Bluth uses color shifting. The manipulation of size works pretty well too and plays nicely with the idea of the song. Not that it's a great song, for all Dom DeLuise is pretty fun.
WEWEASE... THE SECWET WEAPON!!
I have to say though, while I haven't hyped any of the songs (since they're trying to be in-character with them so these are rustic folks with untrained voices, y'know?) the rest of the music is quite excellent. Sappy to be sure, but shit, we're trying to be a family movie about the totality of the immigrant experience, sappy is kinda the point.
Hence the glorious slow motion camera rotation against the fresh, coppery splendor of Lady Liberty and all that.
This movie runs counter to a lot of my own biases though. It's much focused on introducing new characters and moving briskly from scene to scene, without much pause for character depth or emphasis of emotional moments. There's one bit where the Mousekewitzes are finally clued in that Fieval was actually still out there, but the rest is very transitory in terms of plot or emotional beats. It makes sense with the overall idea of the movie, but I apparently don't have a special emotional attachment to that particular american experience.
Bridget makes me smile though.
Rating- 6/10
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They didn't pick a rabbit, timely for the 21st century, not to emphasize her round bottom and spunk. But, I think about how most female cartoons move or look, Nahla and her round bottom sitting, Gloria the hippo and her fat ass….
Oh, the design is awesome. I just found the camera gaze a bit weird because it's so overt.
That said I uh... actually have a half-finished Fantasia write-up (I started it then realized I couldn't do some of the segments properly without doing them immediately after watching, mid-movie) so I'll have to see how they frame that. Could be it's there too and I just missed it because Dance of the Hours is so damned strange to start with.
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Tokyo Godfathers
To this day this movie amuses me on a conceptual level. Probably the greatest Christmas Miracle movie ever made comes from a Japanese man who, so far as I can tell, was not among the ~2% or so of Japanese folks who adhere to any variation of that faith. Satoshi Kon's fingerprints are all over the movie in terms of visual design and story focus, but the actual story told here stands out a lot from the rest of his work and the degree it resembles western works (apparently it borders on adaptation of a John Wayne western, although I'm not familiar with that film) and the less-than-ubiquitous-in-Japan Christian faith is a bit uncanny.
Actually, I want to focus a bit on that. The film in question is 3 Godfathers, and purportedly draws some inspiration from the tale of the three magi and their journey to (or flight from, a lot of magi stuff is in Orthodoxy which I'm substantially less familiar with) Judea. But the sense that the film is drawing from some older story, and has a more mythological/folkloric arc definitely jumped out at me. Like, the cycles each character goes through, how they get drawn into new trials by the whims of fate, the lessons they all receive while separated, just create an undeniable sense that this is not a modern story told in a modern format, despite the contemporary setting. I can't be any more specific than that because I'm just not learned in those older storytelling forms, and maybe I'm completely fucking wrong here? But it's definitely something I kept thinking of.
The Christmas Miracle aspects, and the movie's understanding of Christian values, are a bit more straightforward. The first time I watched it I wasn't paying that much attention, but the characters remark a lot throughout about just how unlikely some events of the film are. But it's delightfully low key until the very end. It's pretty danged unlikely they'd happen along a yakuza boss trapped under his own car, or that Gin would run into a dying bum who just wanted to share a last bottle of saki with a kindred spirit before he passed, but hey, it'd been a weird ass day and stuff happens. But it makes the end where a divine wind sweeps in to let Hana and Kiyoko float down to saftey really satisfying in its way; yeah, misfits you may be, but you did good. Let all ye assembled know this woman and this child are blessed.
One of the things Kon was renowned for is the diversity in character models. This stands out even more as time goes on and anime descends further down the rabbit hole of moe and creepy otaku milking, but many anime have two main faces, cute and ugly. Kon's characters are to a much greater extent real people, instantly distinguishable however you dress them or change up their hair or what have you. And while that ties into the philosophies behind all his work as I understand it, it seems especially prominent in Tokyo Godfathers because for all that every character in the film has a lot of complexity, the greater focus of the movie is really on... exposing the aspects of life and society a lot of Japan likes to pretend isn't there. Apparently the scene where Gin is beaten up by a gang of college kids was a well-known news story at the time, and that's completely unsurprising just watching the thing. "Oh, we're just cleaning up the park". Miyuki had such a distant/strict relationship with her father she cracked and stabbed the man. Hana...
...okay actually Hana's story is a common one throughout most of the world. So we should all be pretty ashamed we ignore it. It's telling she unwaveringly and to her detriment is the most moral character in the entire movie.
I don't think Satoshi Kon was super subtle guys.
But that's sorta the point. You can't cope with the world and help the people in it without acknowledging the ugliness within it.
Rating- 8/10
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Fantasia
Oh god what have I done.
Naaaah this should be okay. I mean talking about one of the most influential movies ever made can't be that hard.
The thing about Fantasia is that it damn near ruined Disney. They went all in here, and it shows. The core concept is something that's been done later, and was parodied by Warner Bros. in their heyday, but even then Fantasia has a... seriousness isn't quite the right word. Solemnity. It's not just a strange concept, it's a silly one, and they even play with that in some of the introduction segments... but it never carries through. We're doing something groundbreaking, serious, elevating our artform to a level nobody could possibly have believed. And nobody DID in 1940, but here we are.
Actually let's get on to the individual shorts.
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor- “Well, we want the audience to know what they’re in for. We better start with MAXIMUM DRUGS.” Well, not actually, they actually linger on the orchestra’s shadows for quite a lot longer than you’d think, but the main bit is MAXIMUM DRUGS. Although at one point early on once it switches to animation they have basically flying bridges. Cute.
Actually though, the introduction to the piece notes that it’s “music for its own sake”, and in that context it’s pretty successful overall. The flying shapes are a bit off, but after a few minutes it settles into a sort of motion theme that’s actually really cool. You kinda meander in time to the music, then suddenly start falling. Then it moves into impressionistic styles that then suddenly punctuate with harsh colors and lights that make sense: you’re also getting jarred by sudden deep notes in the music. It feels more like a proof of concept than anything else, but within that it’s quite effective.
The Nutcracker Suite- I get the impression a lot of the movement here is taken fairly straight from the ballet, so a lot of it is kinda dull comparatively? Doesn’t help that the musically slow bits accompany the cast segments with the least personality (the dew fairies and angel fish).
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice- Y’know, Yen Sid seems to have a less defined model than Mickey. Feels a bit amorphous. Although that kinda makes sense, I think they’d previously been rotoscoping (or some similar technique) human figures for these things and probably figured what Yen Sid was doing was a bit complex for that considering it’s a ~10 minute short.
Of course this is a light piece to lead in to the one where everything dies, and Mickey’s suffering is in fact pretty funny. I’m not entirely sure how you’re supposed to get that particular story out of the music as written, but I don’t think it works at all without Mickey’s desperation to punctuate the march of the brooms.
The Rite of Spring- This was also originally composed for a ballet apparently, but unlike Nutcracker suite this just makes sense as what Disney made it, a dramatic retelling of ancient Earth. The whole first movement is downright violent, but with a lot of gravitas, it just makes sense as the background for lava flows and the formation of landmasses. Once dinosaurs show up, there’s a definite sense of just letting the creatures operate in their habitat and the music waiting for them to act rather than some larger story trying to force its way in.
That Disney would go on to produce large numbers of actual nature documentaries is utterly unsurprising. Huge amounts of attention are given to how the dinosaurs move, particularly mouth movements as they eat.
In general though this short has the most technical skill on display. They blend a lot of layers of cells here to get some of these effects, and while a couple of the seams are really obvious for the most part it’s a gorgeous (if often bleak) piece.
The Pastoral Symphony- Hello drugs.
This feels the most Disney-esque of the shorts in Fantasia. To an extent it’s just because it’s a very colorful and the characters are fairly consistently done in a very Disney style. And each movement of the music has its own shorter story in it, which all match well to a certain sort of classic Disney short where it’s about… how to put it. Daily struggles with just a little cartoon edge to them I guess. The youngest Pegasus can’t quite work out how to fly and has to haul his ass up by his own tail to get it done? Something about that is quintessentially Disney to me. Drawing on the Greek pantheon is also in character for them at this time
But in some ways that makes it stand out. It’s this sustained marathon of a short, where the others in Fantasia have long stretches where there’s no characters on screen, so they animators could just have stuff happen in time to the music rather than having to write stories for each bit of the song.
Dance of the Hours- So Nutcracker Suite I’m not terribly fond of since it feels like they just arbitrarily had a bunch of plants do the original ballet. Dance of the Hours is overtly drawing from the ballet (they’re in fucking tutus here) but… they’ve added an entirely different character and plot atop of it. Or Dance of the Hours is awesomely fucked up. But even if it is, it still doesn’t have dancing hippos.
Since I said I’d be on the lookout- they definitely emphasize the fatness of them hippo asses sometimes, but this short never uses cinematic camera angles as we understand them… although at the time this was released, I’m not sure cinema used cinematic camera angles as we understand them, at least not in as ubiquitously (Although APPARENTLY Gloria was the hippo from Madagascar. This hippo is apparently Hyacinth.) Of course Dance of the Hours doesn’t particularly anthropomorphize the cast. They just walk on two legs with no other particular anatomical changes. Strange shit.
(Obviously DRUGS is a major theme of this short as well. I mean you can find them in all the shorts, everything moves rhythmically all the time, but.
Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria- Holy shit did they actually draw those skeletons in chalk? That grainy translucence is fuckin’ weird man. The pettiness of Chernabog in tormenting his servants is kinda neat actually, emphasizes that this is really just a celebration of his own evil for him.
Probably the most interesting thing here is actually the transition between the two songs, where they use a lot of lighting and color changes on a bunch of different characters which you just don’t see too much of at this time. In fact I’m not sure it’s a thing normally.
Then again Ave Maria is pretty worthless soooo I dunno.
Even though I pick on Nutcracker Suite, it has to be emphasized that every bit of Fantasia is ambitious as all get out and brings in something new and revolutionary. Even for all the DRUGS bits, you can feel how badly Disney were trying to push themselves and make this entire crazy operation work. And even where I can’t trace any of the precise lineages, I do feel like animation would have taken years to make the strides it did in the late 40s and 50s without Fantasia and the techniques and sheer ambition it took to create it.
From deep within his icy bunker beneath Cinderella’s Castle, old Uncle Walt smiles at the legacy this film carved through the medium. And for all there’s not always characters or plot in any traditional sense, it’s hard not to get swept up in that at times.
Rating- 8/10
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Nice. I need to watch that again, I was a big fan as a kid and I probably haven't watched it in around half my lifetime now.
I didn't like Bach much when I first saw the film as a child but it really grew on me the older I got until the point where I would generally call it my favourite; it's an awesome piece of music and I love the way the movie just seems to use it to bring images to life. Beyond that... I mostly second many of your thoughts from what I remember. The movie is an amazing concept in general and pulled off very well on the whole IMO, though there are definitely some weak patches (and it is a shame the film ends on one).
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Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation
I knew I'd seen this at the point after they cut it up for syndication, but only really remembered one of the plot threads. This was only partially true: a couple of the smaller stories I remembered just fine, but thought they were independent episodes.
For example, this is where we get the marvelous THUD audio test.
The Audience is Now Deaf.
There's also an above average Elmyra sketch (for whatever that's worth to you) and one of the rare Fifi-centric parts of the series, which is a damn shame really because spending the whole movie building up to her apocalyptic telling off is great.
The Buster and Babs end I... legitimately did not remember like any of. I couldn't tell you why! It's... okay. The initial gag to kick off the soaking contest is actually quite good, but the escalation is just kinda there and the downriver trip... there's a few episodes along those lines and it's pretty average among them? There's just a sort of disconnect for some of it. Are possums particularly carnivorous? Why do the bellegators have to marry Buster to devour him? They go on some long walks to set up Babs' gags and it doesn't quite work.
I do wish I had a little counter that could tick at the corner of the screen for "Better Superman than DCEU Superman" though.
So naturally the highlight of the whole feature is Plucky's trip to HAPPY WORLD LAND (Happy World Land!). Hamton is unusually low-key in this one, but I don't think the show did better sight gags than in this plotline. Like... okay, we just have to quote the movie here.
"Could crank up the AC?"
"Can't do that, burns gas. I'll just crack the window"
"Don't you dare! People will think we can't afford air conditioning"
Plucky stares deliriously out the window. We zoom out or the car to see the road is between volcanoes and lava flows. As they drive out of view, a new crater opens up in the middle of the road. Another car drives up and tries to stop, fails, flips over, and lands in the open lava pool therein.
I don't think I've cracked up for purposes of these reviews like that in months.
Plucky suffers so beautifully.
Rating- 7/10. Still, while the trip to Happy World Land is absolutely a cut above, a lot of the rest is pretty average as Tiny Toons go so I don't want to go too much higher than the norm.
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Millennium Actress
Y'know, I feel like Kon is just showing off in this one in a way the other movies of his I've seen don't. There's a very cinematic quality to the way a lot of the framing and editing are done, especially the transitions between different settings. It's appropriate to the movie of course, but I feel like the things he's doing with costume changes, setting swaps, and rapid shifts between them at certain points and the sense of shift in time and between reality and fantasy it creates have a small barb to them.
It kinda says "hey, other anime directors! Do you even realize how hard this would be on film and how easy it is for us to do it? Why aren't we trying harder to use the advantages of our medium here? Step it up!"
Or maybe that's just me.
To an extent, Millennium Actress relies on the audience to add complexity to it, which is interesting. Like... we get to see exactly once what this looks like from the outside, an old lady and a middle aged dude pantomiming their way through old movies and getting way to into it. And that's the natural interpretation of it, so the movie makes a point to say "yeah, there's nothing unusual going on here", but it just invites you to make more of things than is there. So you see each transition from era to era and the temptation to read entirely too much into everything just keeps gnawing at you. Did Chiyoko actually bump into the Man with the Key when filming the samurai movie? Is she losing her grip and remembering events from her movies as parallel to things that actually happened to her? Is her memory and performance so captivating even the camera gets confused?
Well no, we just said those didn't happen. Don't be silly~
But really the only word for it all is charming. These are kind, interesting people. They lead fascinating lives. As the audience we just hope that maybe everyone can have a happy ending. Isn't it a movie?
Not as such, no.
The run to Hokkaido is one of those perfect little film moments, where a single sequence captures the entire spirit of the film. Granted it's like 7 minutes long in an 85 minute film but hey. Hope turns to longing, longing turns to frustration, frustration turns to desperation, desperation turns to determination. Determination turns to hope.
Chase after it. A love you can never forget.
Rating- 8/10. Satoshi Kon can pretty much sucker punch you in the feels whenever he damn well feels like, but he's so good about making sure he's earned it anyway, because he respects the artform and the audience.
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Ahh man. This movie. Let's talk the technical bits first. There are very few movies animated with the level of detail the toons in Roger Rabbit are. A recurring fact I bring up when we revisit Disney is their tendency to sink ridiculous time and effort into things the average viewer won't notice.
The film industry refers to this as the Roger Rabbit Effect, because they bloody well should name it after this movie.
What's easy to forget is that there's this much thought and detail into the entire movie, not just the animation.
I mean, the movie's entire first act is just one day. Eddie drinks in every single scene in it. They only draw attention to it in some of them. This dude does not give a fuck, he's entirely too drunk to have any fucks left to give. And you don't get to forget that.
That sort of conspicuous detail is all over. The arrangement of the glory days photos and newspapers is carefully arranged to reference later scenes. The layers of dust on Teddie's desk are correctly manipulated when Roger interacts with them. Christopher Lloyd does not blink and only moves at sharp angles.
This is one of the secrets really. It is a work of love. How does the audience respond except with love?
The rest of course is that all that detail works with the sort of story it is. It's a noir-ish mystery punctuated by hi-jinks and with a distinct undercurrent of war-era race relations. It's an epic bow to all the great characters and animators of the golden age of cartoons. The meticulous detail and overt fanboyistic background events are all there to service the story and lead the audience through all the twists. Of course Doom is the villain, nobody's surprised about that. But then it turns out he's not even human and oh god that explains everything doesn't it? Of course Eddie's a detective for toons, he's a retired police officer who was raised in the circus.
And of course, I don't want to diminish the more blatant crowd pleasers. The piano duel between Daffy and Donald is magnificent. Saying to hell with it, we'll guarantee Mickey and Bugs get equal screentime by always having them on screen together makes Bugs' gags work; Mickey setting him up for punchlines is a stroke of brilliance.
One of the features on the bluray is that entire sequence side by side with Bob Hoskins on the blue screen. I really recommend it, because it drives home how amazing he really was in this. He has to go through a series of wire falls, tumbles, and all this, have dialogue with four different characters, interact with rooms... 100% of which are animated and only one of which (the flagpoll he grabs) has a prop to work with. It's him wandering around a mostly empty set and having one sided conversations with voices that were dubbed in later. It's tremendous.
It feels a little incomplete to cover Roger Rabbit and not talk about Jessica but... I dunno. The movie's really very upfront with who she is as a character, while being just ambiguous enough that the audience has that hint of doubt. But I guess owning herself like that is rare enough that it's enough, maybe.
Rating- 9/10. Maybe a teensy bit high, but yeah, few films nostalgia bomb me quite as hard as this one.
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Teensy bit low more like.
Also good take on Millenium Actress. For me at the end of the day it wasn't important what was real and what was a movie. The real story is that even if this is just things in the movies it is still an amazing story of the person that made those movies. The blurring of the line between amazing unbelievable things from movies and amazing unbelievable things people did from that era of cinema is very much part true to life. Film making back then was a very adventurous strange beast (in no way impugning modern film either).
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How is the viewing experience different between VHS WFRR and Bluray WFRR? I didn't know they re-released it, so after a quick google, apparently the bluray removes some elements that may be nostalgic to the medium: scratches, etc. Since you reviewed this, I nom Howard the Duck for a review sometime this year.
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Finding Dory
Just keep swimming
Finding Nemo isn't a movie I ever quite clicked with. Like basically every Pixar movie prior to Incredibles it was somewhat obviously a kid-oriented movie, I saw it as an adult (hell, for context, I didn't watch Finding Nemo until the blu-ray release), and just generally it was a solid movie without being spectacular about anything. Or I remember it that way, and I neglected to make time to watch it before theater time because CK is a lazy fuck if y'all haven't noticed.
And that ended up not being the case for Finding Dory. And I think to delve into how that works I have to do things a bit different than usual and get sorta personal.
So, my sister has moderate-to-severe autism. I don’t really know the precise sort she has, because she was diagnosed at age three nearly 30 years ago. One did not really diagnose less severe autism-spectrum disorders in the late 80s (sidebar: this is why the rate of autism rises through the years. It’s not becoming more common by any evidence we can find, we’re just actually diagnosing the cases that were always there more often). I’ve met autistics who are more severe, but it’s still an immediately apparent developmental disorder which, in all likelihood, will prevent her from living or working unsupervised her entire life.
Now, this is hardly a 1:1 analogue of course. Dory has a lot more means to develop coping mechanisms because society (even fictional talking fish society) simply deals better with extroversion than introversion. But watching the inescapable knowledge that your child will probably never be able to take care of themselves gnaw at the back of someone’s brain? Yeah that’s most of my family for most of my life. Not necessarily tears in the night I guess, that’s very movie-y, but hushed conversations, trying any fool idea that passes that could help, the need to create some fragile veil of normalcy at any turn? Very well acquainted.
There’s an inversion of these moments as well, where Dory is crushed under a sense of guilt for causing her parents heartache. And as the oldest child of parents in a particularly contentious marriage until they finally split some 16 years later, that’s certainly something I felt no few number of times as a kid.
So somehow a movie that came out when I was 20 that I didn’t watch until I was nearly 30… spoke very directly to my childhood and I spent several long segments of it tearing up and it was fuckin’ weird.
The odd thing is the rest of the movie shows some of the detrimental effects of being a sequel. Some references there for their own sake, the other two main characters have to be there but their subplot isn’t anything to write home about (although! They do introduce the phrase “what would Dory do” and that’s amazing), and I don’t know that the new supporting cast did too much for me? But the big moments were enormous even if the small moments weren’t always up to the task of holding them up fully.
Rating- 9/10. Dory herself is an utter joy (another great thing, watching her logic her way to concluding things she can’t remember) and it’d be dishonest of me to rate the movie much lower after talking about spending chunks of it teary eyed, even if my gut reaction is more of an 8 on the overall strength of the film.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 5)
Last season unexpectedly went full DBZ. This season instead has cultists and full throttle time travel fuckery. Handled well though; the emphasis is on how terrible of an idea it is. Similarly while it's noteworthy for being unusual in the context of the show, it's not really a standout episode in other respects.
So that bit covers one recurring subplot this season, and... I can see where Starlight would work up the fandom some? Although the season opener got some baffling hate which I just don't get, even if I can see not liking Starlight herself. Her main four episodes don't quite gel for me I think, but eh, I'm not gonna be too harsh on the show for trying new stuff and not quite getting it down.
The other two plot threads feel like kinda an excuse for Continuity (TM), although I will admit outside that aspect the Map episodes are pretty standard. Like, sure, Coco Pommel is the dorkiest of dorks and it's cute, but aside from it being kinda cool to see her again her episode is pretty standard. Same with most Mane Six episodes this season actually, Map stuff or no.
So... yeah.
Best Episode- Crusaders of the Lost Mark. Yeah, the CMC got their shit together in terms of focus episodes this season. Considering both that even the non-CMC episodes paid no small attention to cutie marks and this episode being structurally identical to Magical Mystery Cure, it's surprising as hell this wasn't the actual season finale. Also had way more music than the actual season finale, which is a bit odd. Or I'm misremembering, that's also possible. I think the main thing this episode has going over CMC episodes in previous seasons though? It calls Diamond Tiara out on her bullshit! And tries to do something about it! Stock old school bully characters annoy me, but fixing them is always fun. I'm weird.
That leaves about two episodes unaccounted for. And I kinda hate to hate on them all things considered but... yeah.
Weakest Episode- Make New Friends But Keep Discord. Discord was rather mean-spirited in both his focus episodes this season but... the other one has some better visual gags. And Tree Hugger just doesn't tickle me. More than that I'm kinda okay with Discord being a bit of an ass if he also has a point/can BS his way into pretending he does, and in that respect What About Discord resembles Three's A Crowd more than it does this one. This one mostly has Discord pouting.
Although. Mail pony floating helplessly in the void is kinda cute.
Well okay there is ONE episode left after all those ones but... I'm not entirely sure what to say about Fanservice-thon 2015. It exists? It's entertaining enough? Making Derpy a main focus character is weird and I'm not sure what to make of her voice? Oh! Wait, there's two important points.
1. Needs more David Tenant.
2. Lyra's tearful questions about sitting on park benches is the greatest thing. Except the next episode where she and Sweetie Drops get Catdog'd and have ecstatic hugs over it.
Rating- 7/10. Pleasant, a one or two standouts, but lots of just okay as well. But a bit more memorable than some of the other seasons in the middle.
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I enjoyed that Finding Nemo and Finding Dory had characters with "handicaps." Some of those emotional moments in Finding Dory hit, some of them I felt were a bit overwhelming because Degeneres's voice did not modulate and she sounded a bit too childish (until I realized that Dory was 3 years old... right? Became lost for 2 years afterward?)
I'd like to see you do something on Transylvania. Thoroughly enjoyed each -- some problems with one of the main characters but that's for a later discussion.
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The Pirates of Dark Water
You can definitely tell this is a Hanna-Barbara production. The use of color, their signature animation saving techniques, and the basic construction of the main party fit their particular quirks. But there's two major things that stand out about the show:
1. It's very conscious that it's starting as a cross section of stock early 70s sci-fantasy tropes and Hanna-Barbara character tropes, and makes a very conscious effort to add nuance into those tropes. Ren is your stock kindly, noble, somewhat naive prince, but they make of point of showing that this can both help and hinder him. Tula is The Chick, but she always hold her own when push comes to shove. Niddler is a coward and glutton, but he makes sure to be useful on the edge of the action and it makes sense since he's much more support than fighter anyway. That sort of thing.
More broadly-
2. This feels like a hail mary "this'll either spark a new golden age or bankrupt the studio" play. Yeah, there's a lot of amorphous animation with plenty of errors here and there, but there's also clearly a lot of effort into putting a lot of effort into the scenes that most demand it, and the core designs are all amazingly evocative. The voice cast is largely seasoned actors even in 1991 (Tim Curry? Hector Elizondo? Frank Welker? These dudes had extensive credits by then. The least experienced one there was Jodi Benson, and she was just off the smash hit movie of 1989). They establish a damn ambitious plot on the outset. They're about 10 years ahead of the curve in terms of continuity. Someone at Hanna-Barbara seems to have decided they needed to let their most creative people cut loose if they were going to last. I feel bad for not watching the show more when it came out (I was 7 or 8, I definitely remember this show's original run getting airtime) because the fact it didn't finish is sad.
Hell, they tried every avenue to get this thing out there. 5 episode pilot on a major network establishing it's Saturday morning chops. Another 6-7 episodes to make a full season on another major network when Fox didn't pick them up. A second season in syndication with other Hanna-Barbara fare to because they knew it was the best anchor they had for their other output. They were already owned by Turner at this time, but I feel like this failing played a part in their talent and IP being splintered off into the Cartoon Network brand and other loss of autonomy. Still, there's something to be said for failing for the right reasons.
Best Episode- Mmm. This is one of those shows with a fairly steady quality level that spreads out its key moments a bit, but I'm honestly partial to Andorus. Tula being an Ecomancer was never quite played up like it could have been, but it's introduction here and her struggling with the responsibilities of it come across really well. It's honestly the only episode that felt like the evolution of a character than than a lesson for a character, if that makes sense. And I'll admit, plot points about reclaiming a lost land from the darkness give me a tickle, and I like this one just a teensy more than Dark Disciples.
Weakest Episode- The Beast and the Bell. People being dumb and failing to communicate get city destroyed. Yawn.
One thing I will say is that sometimes they played a little too safe. They worked hard to try and keep Bloth in every episode, presumably because he's mentioned in the opening ramble and they didn't want to change that, but truth is it'd have probably worked better to hold him back once in a while to stem the tide of repeats on "Ren gets captured, has to escape the Maelstrom. Again." plots. It also made his part in the plot feel a lot more impotent after Dark Dweller since there's clearly another big bad out there but he still tries to shoehorn himself in. Probably the biggest misstep in the series, although I feel like the second-to-last episode was an admission of this and, had they gotten a third season, they'd probably have tweaked his role in the show a bit to reflect that. They were that kinda show.
Rating- 7/10. For all it's definitely ahead of its time, the episode-to-episode sameness at times holds it back as well.
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Hotel Transylvania
I should probably start with the negative here. Y'know all those old, tired nagging wife tropes where dudes hang out and bitch about how tired they are and how weird having kids is and just seem completely beaten down by not being able to hang out and do irresponsible bachelor stuff forever? Yeah there's a lot of that here and it's annoying and distracting.
The basic story conflict is pretty hacky too, although that bothers me less. It's easy to read it as intentionally over the top because it fits with classic Vampire behavior to be obsessive and controlling, which balances out them just kinda letting Drac stretch all the vampire rules to their breaking point otherwise (like flying in direct sunlight for like 10 minutes of screen time.) His flaws are quirks and his emotional baggage and it works. Also helps sell us on him being sufficiently emotionally devastated by his wife's death to go into overdrive like that.
The core humor of the movie trends towards crazy immature and slapstick and hooonestly I kinda love it. I can't even remember most of them, it's just quick little split second sight gags or comments that immediately got a chuckle. Although there is one with a bit more setup.
<Frank> That man is Dracula!
<Bystander> Prove it!
<Drac> *uses the mind control eyes, gets him to break his coffee mug over his head*
<Bystander> Proceed.
But mostly they go more for the adorable here. Everything about Mavis? Cute as hell. The little werewolf girl? Cute as hell. The 118th birthday book? Cute as hell. Jonathan? Dorky as shit. In a cute as hell way.
Mmm. yeah I'm not sure what else to say. This movie could pretty easily have gone horribly wrong, but they really did good on playing down the Adam Sandler-y elements and really playing with the animation aspects. Re-reading on the movie reminded me that Genndy Tartakovsky pulled the movie out of the fire and cobbled it into something workable, and yeah that seems obvious in retrospect.
Oh shoot, I love the vampire transformation effects too. That feels important to mention for its own sake.
Rating- 7/10. A bit disposable, but pretty funny in the moment.
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Poor Pirates of Dark Water... the serial format just didn't fit on cartoon channels of the time. Heck, Nickelodeon hadn't even figured out how to support a show like that when AVATAR was running. It was a pretty great start to the story, and could have gotten a lot better had it continued.
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Bob's Burgers
So I'm used to H. Jon Benjamin as Archer. It's pretty amazing how he can use almost the same voice yet be so distinctly two characters. And that's almost all down to how sharp this show is. They don't really do anything in terms of visual gags or the like (anuses notwithstanding) but they still managed to just crack me up a few times each episode. It's kinda stands out to me actually, they make this work entirely on the strength of the scripts and the actors. I'm not sure anything else I've been doing lately has the confidence to do that.
Admittedly I don't normally do straight comedy, but even the handful of shows here that do lean that way have been high on sight gags or comic violence.
But yeah, back to the cast. H. Jon Benjamin as a straight man except when he's not works well. He's got that sorta trailed off mumble that really sells it. Kristen Schaal is someone I don't think I could dislike in something, and as usual she's all in as Louise here. I think it helps that she's the youngest sibling but is still the flamboyant one, heightens the contrast between her and Tina.
Tina... well, Tina. Having never watched the show before it popped up on the shelves I still had seen Tina hype about the internet. Playing the horny older sister deadpan-melodramatic means you can almost have her say any damn thing and get it to be funny. Everyone else feels like they're just there to set up the episodes really, but that's okay. Not everyone has to be amazing.
Best Episode- Art Crawl. The kid sub-plot is just amazing. Bob's pettiness kinda works in this one for me too and I'm not sure why. Maybe just because pissing off petty tyrants amuses me at some deep philosophical level.
Weakest Episode- Sexy Dance Fighting. Mostly this one feels like a plot that almost any generic family sitcom might have done. It has it's moments (I mean, it's a Tina-centric episode) but the main bits of Bob feuding with the Capoeira instructor are just bland.
Rating- 8/10. This one feels shorter than I like but... yeah, it's just a rock solid comedy. I'm not sure what else to say about it.
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Batman: The Killing Joke
I put this one off for a bit. Because... well, we live in an age you can get several hundred internet reviews of a new comic book-adjacent item within two hours of the thing going public, and honestly they all said very similar things and... yeah, they were pretty much right. They add a half hour or so of prequel about Batgirl's last case. It's a reasonable idea that quickly goes off the rails stupid. Just about everything goes wrong here aside from the raw action bits. These are some pretty cool fight scenes that highlight nicely how Barbara's fighting style contrasts with Bats'. But the new villain being a sexist creep doesn't play right all with Batman being a condescending shit and Barbara almost... seeming like she's kinda into it? And the batsex. Which again, I get in the abstract (It's just kinda Bruce Timm's ship and hey, I thought it was neat enough the first time he did it) but doesn't work at all with the story they do here.
And the rest of it's a pretty faithful adaptation of a comic that's widely held as the definitive story about the Joker. So what's even to add?
I will say that in some ways the translation to motion actually hurt the comic a bit. I didn't actually read Killing Joke until last year, and I distinctly remember getting to the bit where Barbara gets shot and having to just stop at every one of the Joker's lines. They're sufficiently horrible that you almost laugh, then go to the next one which is even worse and just have to stop for a "and it goes on like this" moment. Something about the lines being spoken aloud lost the visceral feel of that sequence.
Which isn't a knock on the VA. I mean, it's fucking Mark Hamill and ah... you can tell he's been wanting to do this for years. He probably tried out for the Joker with this comic book in his hand. If you told me he used lines from Killing Joke to practice in the booth before every recording session I'd believe you. Actually if you told me that's not what he did I'd call you a liar. The point at which he breaks into song was inspired but hey, they had to do something right.
I dunno. I think the original story benefited a lot from its brevity and focus, and the expansion and necessary fill-in material lose something to it. There's something to enjoy here, but definitely some slog too.
Rating- 5/10.
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I think you should watch Kubo and the Two Strings in 3D.
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3D glasses usually give me a headache, but I'm definitely considering catching Kubo this weekend in not-3D.
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Either way, I think it's really good and that's after a run where I felt that Laika was on the cusp of doing something special but not quite getting there.
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Sausage Party
In which Alan Menkin did the opening song number.
So I don't feel like this ever got truly laugh out loud funny, which is a shame. So despite not quite landing for me I do like this in the abstract. It's essentially billed as a classical parody of Pixar, as told in the comedic voice of Seth Rogen. Which are both good ideas: a proper all-in parody of Pixar is something that should have happened years ago (but couldn't because essentially the entire genre just kinda... died after Mel Brooks stopped making movies), and Seth's style often goes into human cartoon territory anyways, so just actually animating him is a great idea.
And it's not that the movie is unfunny, it just never quite makes that jump from "This is amusing" to "and I just cracked up in the theater". I think in some ways it might be a victim of its own success as a parody. Basic knowledge of Pixar plot structure and Seth Rogen's brand of comedy lets you guess too many of the gags in advance. And in comedy it's hard to tell the same joke twice, and that still applies to some extent when you can successfully guess the punchline to a joke even before the setup is finished. And in that sense I don't want to go into too much detail on the moments that worked?
But I'll say that actually the best bits for me were all Selma Hayek. Nailed it!
And that opening song. If you don't plan to watch the movie, still maybe look up that bit sometime. It's delightfully surreal.
Rating- 6/10
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Kubo and the Two Strings
Everything about this has such personality. The puppets, the characters, the cast, the nature of the tale and the form gods and magic take. It has this distinct feel of authenticity, in a way I don't think I've gotten out of many stories over the years, while still being unmistakably itself.
Kubo achieves that sweet spot: it is unmistakably in the form of a classical myth yet still feels like a human, lived-in story in the moment.
Really that's the essentials. This is in that rare class that, at least in a just universe, will come to redefine how people think about its subject matter. Please see. Let's give Laika a genuine hit.
Here's the post script for after everyone's completed their homework:
I could just gush about that first storyteller sequence. Paper Hanzo gets across so much personality, and the way the paper moves to both create the monsters he fights and how it disassembles as he dispatches them is great. And of course the old lady was right. Bring on the fire-breathing chicken.
The great thing with Paper Hanzo is he's pretty distinct from Beetle, but at the same time I'm kinda kicking myself for being blindsided by that reveal. Paper Hanzo is totally trying to get him to put two and two together and I never picked up on it until after the fact.
(Unlike Monkey where sometime right after the mosquito incident I went "wait a tick")
They also have a hook that might as well have been written for me. There's an unstated conceit that magic and the gods function on narrative. Playing a song calms the tides, animates paper, let's a woman return to some semblance of life despite crippling brain damage. And what is a story without an audience? Don't look away for even a second, or our hero will surely perish.
And what wins the day? Kubo changes the story. His grandfather stole his eye... and now, he uses that eye to see the world he was blinded to. He joins humanity and sees it through the same eyes as his oh-so human grandson. Literal because, y'know, of course it is.
Rating- 9/10. Y'know, my feeling coming out of the theater was more of an 8/10, but writing this out my estimation has gone up.
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thought this was a really cool inside look at the studio.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/18/12500814/laika-studios-behind-the-scenes-kubo-and-the-two-strings-video
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Please see. Let's give Laika a genuine hit.
Unfortunately, it's not doing well. It opened worse than their previous films. I blame the marketing. The tv spots airing for it give you almost no idea of what the film is about. Plus Kubo and the Two Strings is a horrible title.
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Yeah, I caught it as a Sunday matinee, and there were... four other people in the theater. There were more folks seeing Suicide Squad last week on like a Wednesday evening. I mean I suppose the theater I usually use isn't the most representative in the world but... yikes.
All the more reason to encourage as many people as I can to see it though.
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Star Wars Rebels (Season 2)
Well that escalated.
I have to give special mention to the special guest star this season. They got James Earl Jones to do a little teaser in the first episode, then got him for several episodes this season. But the stand out bit is how sparing and deliberate they are with their use of Darth Vader. Shows up in the premier to remind you he is Darth Vader and doesn't need his star destroyers or the weight of the Empire behind him to destroy you. He is the reinforcements. A brief appearance mid-season to remind you that he terrifies these Inquisitors the heroes are struggling with. And of course the finale.
Best Episode: Twilight of the Apprentice part 2. So Rebels is currently recording their fourth season and doesn't have a clear endpoint. It's not technically a trilogy. But damned if season 2 doesn't follow as the Empire in a pre-designed trilogy structure. Main character has now brushed so close to the Dark Side a Sith holocron responds to him. Other main character ate a lightsaber to the face and is blind. The heroes' strongest ally missing, presumed dead, and could barely put up a fight against Vader (who at this point has a personal interest in the heroes).
And of course that layered voicing effect is probably worth the nod alone.
And it's not like that came out of nowhere. The whole season was essentially about how badly the early Rebellion was doing. "Victories" basically amounted to "we got enough fuel to keep the fleet moving another week and only lost 3 A-Wings this time!" Well okay there was that time they visited the french twi'leks and stole a fighter carrier. That was definitely an actual win. But aside from blowing up a cruiser or two that was about it for them. Hell a significant number of episodes were devoted to trying to find a base, and settling on the one with blaster-proof spider nests.
Weakest Episode: The Honorable Ones. Just a cross section of a few weak elements. Zeb is generally the weakest member of the cast, especially for holding down an episode. Kallus' honor streak doesn't quite jive with his earlier portrayal in the series and makes the overall episode's impact feel hollow. They do what they can with it but on the whole I think his earliest episodes were just too over the top to get me on board, at least right away. And the basic premise of the episode means that it has to be carried by the two enemies and it just isn't. Zeb had a much better episode earlier with Legends of the Lesat and this one doesn't add much to his character, so without earlier groundwork to better establish this 'honorable' side of Kallus it just doesn't click.
But yeah despite some episodes that were essentially character-based filler, they always had enough of a connection to the wider arc to feel like they belonged there. Or at least didn't break the tension.
Rating- 8/10. That said I don't think they quite hit enough high notes to nudge it over into 9 territory. Damn close though.
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My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Legend of Everfree
I feel utterly out of practice on this. But hey. Fuck it. Music time!
The Legend of Everfree- I get what they're going for here, trying to have like a class sing-along feel but with production values. But something about it doesn't have the right energy. I think the singing style has a low-pitched feel to it, like it's very restrained. I'm not sure what should have been different here but yeah. Not quite right.
Flash is the least smooth "clearly supposed to be the cool kid on campus" kid I've ever seen.
The whole romance angle between Twilight and Timber is kinda weird to me. Like, do 16 year olds own and run the camp or is he about 5 years older than her? That feels really weird with the relative ages involved.
The Midnight in Me- Oh no I am the demons :(
I dunno, I'm sure they wanted to do another Twilight song because Twilight and all but... the random angsty song at this place in the movie feels off. The surrounding material is mostly shenanigans, y'know? The song itself being nothing special doesn't help.
Embrace the Magic- Hurray! Sunset is taking charge. Pretty average song all told but feels natural, and more Sunset has always been to the good in these movies.
Making Filthy Rich so overtly sinister is weird. His counterpart is a pretty reasonable pony! I mean, the plot works just fine if you play him off as more cool and distant rather than actively rooting for Gloriosa to fail.
We Will Stand for Everfree- The rhythm of the song reminds me of Poor Unfortunate Soul from The Little Mermaid. Which isn't a bad thing to remind me of in your villain song to be sure sure. Honestly this and Sunset's song are the only ones I find decent? They aren't great, nothing on the big climax songs from movies 2 and 3, but the work and mostly justify their existence.
The Legend You Were Meant to Be- Totally a transplanted credits song. That said it's pleasant enough, but being so arbitrary robs it of any weight.
So I'm not sure how to feel about this one. A lot of it is fluff compared to Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, in that it doesn't seem to really be building to anything, except then at the end it was totally building to stuff you guys. Ending on a clear "The End... or is it?" is kinda weird considering it's at least a year to the next one (... assuming). Well unless they plan to tie more closely with the main series I guess. That'd be weird. But I mean even the series doesn't end on cliffhangers, they usually cap with a clear big bad threat, then go "hey cool thing happened and the characters have all matured!" or whathaveyou.
The fact the put some actual time into romantic inclinations in the movie is interesting to me in the context of the franchise too. Having Flash step back and go "wait, right, the one I like is probably not going to come here to hang out regularly" and move on feels like just trying to clean up a dangling thread which is proper. But despite the kinda weirdness of Twilight's interaction with Timber, it's not something we've seen before. The only other couples in the series are presented fully formed, and never with the main characters. And while it's disappointing in some ways since the show not really doing much of that made it distinct, the fact they have this movie be 90% shenanigans then 10% clearly differentiating itself from the series is why I'm a bit torn about everything. It's a risk, and an unexpected one, but not necessarily a bad one. I really don't know.
Well I mean I have a grade here, but it's a very gutcheck loose affair.
Rating- 6/10
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The Lego Batman Movie
The movie Joel Schumacher was trying the make but lacked the talent to pull off.
Before we go further, I should probably emphasize a few things since this is both the first new post I’ve done in months and also the first time I’ve covered anything new since expanding to the blogspace. These are largely written on the assumption you’re familiar with the work in question. Less review and more editorial or retrospective.
Which is to say: be warned that I do tend to talk about specific scenes or plot resolutions if they help me explain a particular observation or emphasize the theme or atmosphere of the thing. If you’re here for the thumbs up/down, it’s good, go watch.
So back to Mr. Schumacher. It’s sometimes said that Batman Forever/Batman and Robin were trying to be campy silver age Batman. But I’m not sure that’s entirely right- they still used a lot of the designs of the Burton movies, and you don’t go for pure camp but include the modern characterization for Mr. Freeze. So instead I think the intent was to capture the full breadth of Batman. It’s a worthy goal, and while Schumacher is basically a talentless hack, the Lego Movie folk are equal to the task. And while some of it is purely for humor, especially the multi-layered fourth wall awareness and occasional add in of live-action film footage, they definitely had things to say about the State of the Bat.
I mean, the Joker goes on a whole rampage on what amounts to a jilted lover plot. But this is set up by him insisting that he’s Batman’s arch nemesis, the one that pushes him to excel, while Batman… claims his arch enemy is Superman. Which makes sense for the superbly self-important Lego Batman, while also being an easy jab at BvS while also being a much slyer hint at what the movie was building to.
(Sidebar: Props to the trailer team on this one. They actually managed to show this, sorta the pivotal point the movie turns on, but recontexualized it into a joke rather than suggesting in any way this was the point at which the plot is set in motion.)
But being a kid’s movie Batman is what really works here, because it prompted them to do something nobody else has ever really done that I’m aware of in adaptations of Batman; focused on the importance of the Bat-Family and how they fit into the greater story of Batman and his rogues. And unto itself I like that for the novelty, and I think something I’ve always kinda wanted to see done justice. But this gives them a bit of that sly commentary again: Batman by himself isn’t much. He’s motivated by his past, sure, but the toys and money and trauma aren’t really very interesting past a big shiny opening number. Batman lives and dies by his supporting cast and his rogues. You can only tell so many Batman stories without them, yet every time they go back to the well, that’s where they start. And since they acknowledge all those phases of his life, you know exactly what they mean.
Although no mistake, the movie is funny and clever without all that. Batman talking Robin through the deadly Kryptonian defenses or standing back to back in order to hit enemies “so hard words describing the sound pop up”? Those are the times you’re reminded this is also a sorta sequel. Well, that and the opening scene where they really put that love and care into the faux stop motion animation. That’s also cool.
It’s kinda weird to who they consider the super bad guys. Until I remembered oh yeah, it’s Warner Bros, they have super duper rights to some of those. Definitely gave it that crossover vibe the Lego Movie had too.
Rating- 8/10. It has a much stronger start than finish, but yeah, all sorts of good going on here.
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The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
This is composed of three shorts made over the course of several years, which is easy to tell if you’re on the lookout for it (the animation quality and character models visibly change between the segments), but I think the in-between material adds a lot to the experience, so we’ll cover this as one movie.
Oddly though the animation style is what sticks out to me. You can see a lot of the scratch lines and other penciling artifacts, which to some degree gives you a date for the thing, the mid-60s after the switch to Xerox for 101 Dalmatians. But even then there’s something fuzzy and artificial about it in Pooh… which makes perfect sense. These are stuffed animals being animated, with imperfections and seams coming apart. Whether it was a cost-saving measure or not, the slightly washed out and rough look of the animation here actually goes nicely with the conceit that it’s the pages of a storybook coming to life. Hell, the narration and use of actual book pages along with that is why this works as a movie rather than having artificial stitched-together-shorts vibes, the characters are living a story alongside us, the viewer.
I guess that means in a way Winnie the Pooh was Toy Story before Toy Story.
Maybe that’s why I’m otherwise kinda lukewarm on it.
No mistake, this is a cute movie with its own charm, but I dunno, there’s just not much emotional weight here. The comedy relies a lot on the simple-mindedness of the characters which would work better if that wasn’t the case for almost all of them. And since it’s mostly harmless misadventures, comedy is definitely at the forefront of what’s going on here.
The characters do take on a life of their own out in the broader culture for a reason though. Their childish thinking is a bit samey for comedy, but beyond that their individual quirks do leave an impact, it just doesn’t really show in a narrative flow sense.
Honestly though the best part of the film (aside from the animation stuff, which I could probably go on about some of the visual gags here, like the bees or the bit where the book gets rained out) is probably the ending bit, where Pooh tries to get the Narrator to tell it again. Like I said, the conceit of being a story the audience is participating in with the characters really elevates the whole thing.
Rating- 5/10. Yeah, I think this is more interesting as an academic or historical study than as a film. Good for your really young kids but only a few highlights for the grownups.
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Despicable Me
Consciously or unconsciously, Illumination drew a lot of inspiration from Shrek here. Take an obvious villain, put a known comedian behind them, make the whole thing a surface-level subversion of the expectations for children’s movies while deep down reaffirming most of the same basic tropes. They both even end on essentially a fourth wall shattering cast-wide dance party. While Shrek is a different animal at heart (for starters it’s a full on parody), those similarities definitely color how I’m looking at the movie as a whole.
One of the defining features of Shrek to me is that the side cast always got a lot more attention than Shrek and Fiona, and without having seen those films in many years… well yeah. Shrek and Fiona aren’t really interesting. Despicable Me similarly puts a disproportionate focus on characters who aren’t Gru and the Girls.
Unlike Shrek this weakens the movie to me. I mean, the Minions are kinda adorably stupid, and in 2010 before they went through a complete arc of overexposure they were probably hilarious because they still whisper just a little to my inner 12 year old now, despite being thoroughly familiar with their antics. But I gotta say, Steve Carell nails the careful balance he has to for this. His sarcasm is impossibly dry, and his ability to deadpan basically anything unless he’s specifically putting on a show is on full display here. And because of that, when we slowly see him smiling in spite of himself, or the very last thread of his patience finally snapping before he vaporizes the carnival game for cheating, it still feels fully part of the character. They do a credible-enough job with the girls too, they feel pretty distinct despite not having too many lines.
There’s all sorts of subtext (also text) about the relationships between parents and children going on here, but for whatever reason a lot of that never speaks to me. Vector’s position in the plot in particular is more interesting for the obvious nepotism than for the dripping disappointment the banker has in him. Although honestly I’m not entirely sure what they’re going for there, the main nods to have to pop cultural references are with the bank and it just seems fairly empty, in the “it’s funny because I know that name” sense. On the other hand this is where they put in the scenes of baby Gru wanting to go to the moon, and that’s awesome.
The way they do teeth is weird. The other physical comedy bits are pretty good, them using a shrink ray as the main plot device opens up for that. Nothing especially jumped at me animation wise, but it’s… y’know, fine.
Rating- 6/10. Definitely could have been a better movie overall, but entertaining enough for what it was.
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First Despicable Me fell pretty flat for me, but the sequel is great.
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Moana
I realized once I was in the theater for Moana a flaw to the whole music format- I really need to write as I watch the movie to do this. Sooooo yeah, I’ve been waiting for the blu-ray to work on it. Hopefully I can remember my original impressions for various bits in addition to all the song material.
Where You Are- A bit generic, the crowd aspect can turn into a murmur really. Although come to think of it that works? The continual pace of everyday life easing away the dreams and desires of youth. The needs of the crowd keep you grounded, draw you back in, very nice parallel all around.
(Alternate joke: a responsibility montage is the fastest way to contrast Moana’s desires with her sense of duty)
How Far I'll Go- A bit weak for this particular song. Of course, that’s probably on purpose. To be continued~
We Know the Way- Yeah, this is the premise song. Clear drive, nice melody, just very enjoyable without being overbearing.
How Far I'll Go (Reprise)- First iteration, wavering voice and youthful indecision. Second iteration, I Want Song.
Hiiiiii Alan Tudyk.
You're Welcome- The Rock playing himself is a thing I have to love. He definitely isn’t at home with the whole song part, but otherwise a brag song is pretty perfect. Also a great way to incorporate the actual mythology they’re drawing from.
Ah, the coconut pirates. I think this is when I really started to love the movie. Adorable but also horrible, a mix that keeps coming up after this really.
I mean like the pee joke they throw in. Also y’know how the whole Heart thing turns out, but I think I’d be letting y’all down if I didn’t mention they have a perfectly timed pee joke.
Shiny- Yes Tomatoa. I liked the song.
Okay so I dunno that I have much to add to this? It’s pretty up front about being not!David Bowie. I like the sly reference to Maui’s backstory except they go into that in detail like five minutes later so it loses something to introduce it like this.
I Am Moana- I distinctly remember being in the theater and tearing up a little bit when the ancestors showed up. Something about the entire movie’s emphasis on the voyaging history of the Polynesian people really struck a chord with me. I dunno. I guess… people need a new frontier. Without new places to travel and lands to explore and fire the imagination, can we really stay human? Or do we become consumed by our fears and imagined unknowns?
What I’m saying is, get our asses to Mars.
Know Who You Are- Totally sappy, but hey, the instrumental payoff has some badass visuals to go with it. It works.
We Know the Way (Reprise)- Teensy little coda. Needs to be there for the mirror, but yeah, nothing special.
I remember liking this more than Zootopia, which I think I’ll stick to, but it’s not as stark a divide as I was thinking. It could just be that I’m such an easy grader in the theater, especially for this sort of movie that’s high on feels and skews a bit younger.
Rating- 8/10. Lowish end of the grade, but feels right.
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The only good song in Moana was You're Welcome. Oh yeah I went there.
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The Great Mouse Detective
This is a strange movie sometimes. Mostly one or two scenes feel like the rest of the movie had no idea they were there.
The opening scene tries to be strongly from Olivia’s point of view, so Fidget is super scary and everything is in shadow (although some of the coloring seems a bit off… but hey, the studio basically gave them a barebones budget because if this didn’t work they were shuttering the animation division) and so on, really intense and then a little girl calls out for her daddy.
Then the main theme music kicks in for the credits.
Which sounds like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28pTtCDkVk&ab_channel=ContentMatches
Little bit off right?
You similarly have the furry stripper dance.
I mean no mistake, the characters in this are often silly, and Ratigan’s theatricality and Basil’s showmanship are absolutely part of the characters, but even those clash pretty badly with “let’s punctuate the little girl’s trauma with upbeat adventure music” and “bar dancing for fun and profit”.
The main bits are pretty good though. Good voice work, characters come across well, they respect the viewer’s intelligence with the investigation and clues (although to an extent you can tell this was an adaptation because of that part). Ratigan in some ways is a model for the villains of the Renaissance (Ursula in particular, not coincidentally the next film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements), although thanks to the magic of Vincent Price there’s a good argument to be made he’s a lot more enjoyable than his descendants. Not sure I’m sold there, but it’s certainly something to mull over.
I think the biggest flaw is mostly that aside from Ratigan’s flamboyance and Basil’s excitability everything else is merely functional. Nothing wrong… well aside from the two above mentioned scenes, although in isolation those are fine they just aren’t worked in very well. But it banks really hard that you’ll be entertained enough by two characters to invest in everything else going on. Which sure, it works, but it also holds the movie back to be sure.
Rating- 7/10
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Despicable Me 2
Unlike a lot of sequels I can think of, this really feels like a sequel: it’s entirely about the fallout from events in the previous movie and how this impacts the lives of the characters.
Yeah sure there’s a new supervillain and complications from outside the original details of the world as presented but you could remove a lot of them from the movie without substantially hurting the final product. Well, maybe not remove, but certainly El Macho didn’t really need to have an evil plot going on. He could just have been a retired supervillain who reminisces about the old days and laments Gru giving up the life too (and also his son is playing with one of the girls’ hearts).
But mostly it’s about looking at the end of the first movie and saying “okay so he’s a father now, but what does that mean”. Gru seems to soldier on without much looking back, but hey he lived out his life dream already so moving on to a new phase of his life might just feel natural. But it also means his friends feel like he’s left them behind, and the neighbors he used to ignore have to be allowed in a little bit, and having to figure out how to support a family and so forth.
There’s definitely a streak of feeling outdated and the weight of age catching up with you. Come to think of it they definitely touched on it in the first movie, and actually I’m wondering if it’s going to crop up again in the upcoming third movie considering they went out of their way to fill the previews with the villain who’s whole gimmick is lame 80s throwbacks. Which is really the main function of El Macho in the plot; he went into the woodwork after his most iconic moment, but the family life leaves something missing so he tries to go back into full on villainy.
Otherwise all the best parts of the first movie are back for this one. Gru’s protectiveness walks the right line to stay funny, the Minions are used mostly-appropriately, there’s a sort of understated gag where the real jokes is how ineffectual everything is. Mostly they replaced what often felt like filler originally, the never-quite-lands attempts at being subversive, with more nuance and interesting stuff.
Rating- 7/10. Not amazingly better than the first, but I’d definitely put it higher.
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Nothing super productive to say, just glad this is back.
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Star Driver
So this show was pitched to me as basically fusing Utena with Gurren Lagann. Which is certainly true, it wears both of those influences on its sleeves. Of course, those are both all-time classics that redefined their genres and one of them is probably my favorite show full stop, so I mean… I don’t want to pretend Star Driver lives up to those.
Now they take inspiration from a lot more places, those are just the most obvious ones; Gurren Lagann for visual style, Utena for overall plot flow. And really it makes sense, magical girl and mecha anime actually work well as a fusion. They share a tendency to use ritual to excuse to recycle animation, and tend to use similar episode-to-episode construction (ie monster of the week), so the main differences are in background plot and presentation. So Star Driver says “Why not both?” Magical girl transformation sequences, mecha attack recycling. Hotblood, relationships.
They try their hand a bit at the Evangelion “do cool stuff with ancient mysteries using some obscure mythology” thing, but it doesn’t really matter too much one way or the other. Around the time not!Haruka and not!Michiru showed up reinforced something I sorta wondered early but almost forgot: a lot of the plotting with the Kiraboshi is actually filler, because Star Driver is a lot more concerned about properly pacing the high school drama. Which actually kinda works for me? But it’s a funny thing to notice. “Oh hey we really need some time to flesh out the secondary cast and make sure Wako’s dilemma doesn’t seem too sudden, let’s introduce some fresh antagonist to fill out four or five episodes”.
Weakest Episode- Adult Bank. The character drama is the main draw, so this being our main introduction the Bank cast is a big letdown in hindsight. Like on the whole they’re probably actually the most interesting faction, but in this one they seem so shallow and petty and don’t really have any hints of the aspects that make them work as the show goes on. Or at least that’s how it feels just skimming some episode summaries to do the writeup.
Although really when I say the high school drama works, I should really be saying that they succeed in getting me to care about Wako, and so the goings on of her friends are interesting because she is interested in them. And really there’s not a major trick here, Wako manages to walk a fine line in a way that just worked for me. She’s extremely quirky, but without any one quirk being overwhelming- somehow to me it balances out to someone who just seems… human. To paraphrase, she’s often a cowardly, selfish crybaby who wants to live more honestly with herself.
Best Episode- The Trio’s Sunday. Following from that, here’s Wako just getting to run the show more or less. The magical supervillain shenanigans exist only to let Wako threaten them, several scenes are designed as a string of heart melting lines, and on the whole it’s the calm before the series enters into finale buildup mode.
One thing some folks that had seen the show mentioned when I was starting is that while it stayed pretty decent, it never really improved much from where it started, which… yeah. Some of it is what I was talking about before with the overarching plot being there to pace the character drama, some of it is the finale proper being kinda weak, using predictable parts less than optimally. I could really have used just one more scene after where they stop as well. Like… ending on Takuto and Sugata just saying “hey being alive is fun” is nice and all, but lacks any sense of catharsis. It didn’t have to be anything spectacular even. Like just end on them and Wako in a hug even? Something else.
I’d be negligent if I didn’t close out talking about music though. By about episode 3 I’d added Monochrome to my daily listening, and all four shrine maiden pieces are quite strong. Indeed, this goes back to the weakness of the finale, they bring back Monochrome but don’t really time it very well to the action. Ditto Komorebi no Contact. It’s great to bring those songs in, but never really to the same effectiveness as Monochrome was in the first few episodes.
Granted I’m spoiled by the comparison to Gurren Lagann there. That show’s finale clearly animated two scenes to some key music, then redid those scenes for the movie when they used different music for them.
Rating- 7/10. So very close to the 8, but just never delivers enough of an emotional climax to cinch it.
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The Sword in the Stone
Let’s talk about Winnie the Pooh.
Now, the first short that was eventually compiled into The Many Adventures actually postdates this one by a couple years, but on the whole the overall mastery of the new Xerox-based animation was pretty similar. Which makes sense, but… remember how I compared Pooh to Toy Story, in particular how making the story about toys in both used the limitations of the technology to their advantage? Yeah, not being able to do that is definitely a point of distraction in this movie. The way hair moves in particular, where chunks stay perfectly still while other bits flail wildly, kinda get the eyes to send the “whoa what’s up with this” signal for me.
Now, Sword in the Stone tries to get around this by not having too much in the way of regular people on screen (its predecessor, 101 Dalmatians, did the same, although I haven’t seen that in years to directly compare), and it mostly works. It also highlights the similarity with Pooh though, because despite by all indications being produced as a single film it certainly has the same story flow as shorts that were post-hoc stitched into a movie narrative. I gather this is somewhat an artifact of The Once and Future King, which it’s directly adapted from, but not entirely. There’s no real progression to the lessons Merlin is teaching Wart, just three repetitions of a basic theme of using brains over brawn. I guess you could sorta justify it as Merlin still trying to sell Wart on the entire idea of education by showing the value of thinking, but it’s still not really narratively satisfying.
And really that’s a good summary in general. If you break the film into roughly five different shorts (meeting Merlin in the woods, the fish short, the squirrel short, the wizard duel, and pulling the sword), they have their various strengths and are on the whole entertaining in one way or another. But unlike Pooh, the connective tissue or progression between them don’t really add anything to the final package. They also don’t hurt it mind, except in the very minor way of adding to the vague sense that the movie’s meandering along without a real point.
Basically it has the narrative of an Atelier game. Which I realize many of you have no idea what that means, but it’s so apt I feel obligated to make the comparison just so I don’t forget it later.
But let’s talk about the good stuff before we wrap up.
I think the squirrel segment is pretty great. The little animation touches of playing with the tails are nice, it’s just the right level of silly with the chasing, the peril feels a little less weird than having a five foot pike in a castle mote, you could probably write a thesis on how they managed to code the girl squirrel as attractive (and I’m sitting here a little annoyed I don’t know enough art to even scratch that topic honestly), and while fanfic as we understand it won’t exist for another 5 years or so after this came out, DAMN is the ending fanfic fuel.
I’m kinda surprised Madam Mim doesn’t have more of a following. Actually I’ve read that she’s huge in the Italian and Dutch Disney comics, which is completely unsurprising. Reading up on the movie for trivia and the like suggested people were really impressed with the designs in the wizard duel in general, and yeah even without the color coding it was always very obvious who each animal was. This is true of Wart as well, all of his transformations have his bedhead and scrawniness, but he has three set transformations, not half a dozen in a single sequence.
Rating- 6/10. Yeah I think that’s mostly it. I do really like a few things about it, it was a big favorite of mine growing up and I certainly was thinking of going to 7 after doing the plusses here, but yeah I don’t think that’s quite right either.
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Chicken Run
I’m having trouble finding a reaction to this one.
On the whole I find myself remembering the first few Dreamworks films more than they probably deserve, through a combination of having an affection for classical animation over computer and finding that the Shrek-model films were so formulaic that the more experimental and serious earlier films stick out in mind more. And Prince of Egypt was certainly something that was gripping and lived up to my memories.
Chicken Run… I dunno. Aside from a one liner I remembered vividly from the very first watch (“The chickens are revolting!” “Finally something we agree on.”), the only bit that jumped out at me here was Rocky’s introduction. The utterly hungry looks they manage to get out of those chickens and Rocky’s clear delight at the situation is simultaneously funny as hell and kinda amazing because damn, I can’t imagine kids really twigging to it.
And really that’s the main take here, it’s really a movie that’s more for the adults in the audience, relying a lot on calling back to its inspiration and unspoken puns or aspects of the particular slice of Britain its set in. If you’re familiar with mid-60s film and other WWII fiction there’s probably a lot there… and I say probably because in the main I’m not. ‘fraid most of the war fiction I know is MASH in terms of attempting even the remotest sense of realism. So… yeah, I’m either not quite old enough for quite enough of a history/film buff to really know a lot of the references, and without that it’s a clever movie without being a lot more than that.
Otherwise I should give a nod to some of the character beats. While it’s not really a character film overall, I do want to say that Ginger is a pretty good lead and they do a good job of always getting you to root for her even though she’s a bit of a stick in the mud. I also like that there’s not a huge confrontation with Rocky over the flying rooster bit; they’ve all put so much faith in him he can’t bring himself to admit the truth, but rather than some over dramatic reveal, he leaves with the evidence to let everyone piece it together themselves. It’s not a noble thing to do or anything like that, but it feels a bit more natural to me than engineering some major reveal for a big public shaming, y’know?
Or maybe I’m just a weird asocial person. That could be too.
Rating- 5/10
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So I frequently end up just kinda picking something from the list and doing it on days off, so figured rather than spamming up chat with random half-disguised options every so often, may as well have a list of what I have laying about that’s not covered.
Stuff I've actually never sat down and watched marked with *
Films
All Dogs go to Heaven
Anastasia
Animaniacs: Wakko’s Wish
Batman: Gotham Knight
Batman: Year One
The Boxtrolls*
Castle in the Sky
Corpse Bride*
Coraline
Doctor Strange*
Dragonball Z: Resurrection F
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Finding Nemo
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
Futurama: Bender’s Game
Futurama: Beyond the Wild Green Yonder
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Hulk vs
The Invincible Iron Man*
Kung Fu Panda 2
The Land Before Time
The Lego Movie
Long Way North*
Megamind
Minions*
Monsters vs Aliens
Monsters, Inc.
My Neighbor Totoro
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow*
Paprika
Paranorman*
Princess Mononoke
RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio
The Road to El Dorado
Spirited Away
Team America: World Police
Titan AE
Toy Story 2
Ultimate Avengers*
Ultimate Avengers 2*
Disney
Dumbo
The Rescuers
The Rescuers Down Under
The Lion King
Pocahontas
Pocahontas II*
Mulan II*
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Series
Adventure Time Season 6
Animaniacs Vol. 1
Batman the Animated Series Vol. 1
Batman Beyond Season 1
Batman Beyond Season 2
Batman Beyond Season 3
Cowboy Bebop
Ducktales Vol . 1
Darkwing Duck Vol. 1
Darkwing Duck Vol. 2
Gargoyles Season 1
Gargoyles Season 2, Vol. 1
Gargoyles Season 2, Vol. 2
Gurren Lagann
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu
Fullmetal Alchemist Season 1
Futurama Season 3
Futurama Season 4
The Legend of Korra Book 1: Air
The Legend of Korra Book 2: Spirits
The Legend of Korra Book 3: Change
The Legend of Zelda*
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Mobile Fighter G Gundam Season 2 (…ish)
Ranma ½ Season 1 *
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Rick and Morty Season 1
Rick and Morty Season 2*
The Simpsons (Seasons… 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9 looks like? Eh, not sure I want to cover them at this time.)
Spectacular Spider-Man Season 2
The Slayers Try
The Slayers Revolution
The Slayers Evolution-R
South Park Season 14
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 3*
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 4*
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 5*
Transformers Beast Wars Season 1
Transformers Beast Wars Season 2
Transformers Beast Wars Season 3
The Venture Bros. Season 1
The Venture Bros. Season 2
The Venture Bros. Season 3
Wolverine and the X-Men
Young Justice: Invasion
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Robin Hood
This seems to be considered one of the weaker films by Disney itself, based on how it’s generally marketed, released, and priced. I can kinda see it.
There’s a contemporary feel to it that I imagine rubs critics and Disney staff the wrong way. In the first scene when Robin poses as a fortune teller, part of the pitch includes the line “get the scope with your horoscope”. There’s a scene of football-style tackling, complete with college fight song. I’d say the Sheriff was literally Rosco P Coltrane, except Dukes of Hazard didn’t start airing until 6 or so years later.
It’s all pretty similar to a classic Goofy short. Which seems entirely out of place in a film really, especially one not set in modern times.
There’s also some obvious animation issues, although I can’t rule out some of those being an artifact of video conversion. Still, there’s definitely points where details and colors go wonky, in addition to the obvious reuse of some character models from other movies.
Basically I can see where Disney might feel like they just made a cheap, pandering cash-in here. Modern enough to get dated fast, made on the tiniest of budgets, etc etc.
Which doesn’t really fit with its modern reputation does it? People like Robin Hood just fine! Because while Disney might be right about their work here, y’know what? We’re pretty far removed from those contemporary influences, so new generations can discover it and just enjoy the execution within that that cash-in goal. And on that front it’s just fine. The villain’s foppishness is pretty entertaining, Robin is a likeable and low-key kinda hero, Baloo Little John is a hoot, they even do pretty good with the Obvious Kid Appeal characters, since they also give us a vehicle to really introduce Marian and all that.
It’s a perfectly decent movie, it’s just not very Disney-like, so Disney doesn’t really associate with it as much as some of the real classics.
Rating- 6/10. I dunno why I find it more interesting to pick apart average-to-above movies than talk up their good parts, but I keep coming back to it don’t I? Eh, so goes.
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I vote for Anastasia, South Park movie, and Paranorman.
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I've been meaning to get to Anastasia for a while, and finally nabbed a copy of South Park's movie after wanting one since more or less the time I started this topic, so those'll probably get cycled through pretty quickly. ParaNorman I've... never actually seen and should get to but that's true of a depressing number of things on those lists.
That said I was already watching Robin Hood and this when I was putting the list together so this is nothing you just asked for!
Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
In a way, sometimes I wish Futurama hadn’t gotten that Comedy Central revival.
Because this? This is the finale. I mean, it’s not really considered one of the finales written for the show, by the time it was made they already had the other three films at bare minimum. But it’s the ending that makes sense. They use everything, reference everything (Nibblonians, Santa’s Neptune workshop, the satellite that collided with God, almost every character of real relevance except I guess the Robot Devil…), it’s structured like a grand finale in terms of scope. And it’s the only resolution to Fry and Leela’s romantic arc I’d place above The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings.
That’s the big one really. Futurama is a show that would often blindside you with its’ ability to gutshot you in the feels, but the flashbacks to Lars are the stuff where you know it’s coming and it still gets you. I can think of about one other instance of that in all the shows we’ve covered here (about 110 at time of writing… good lord), which was a scene I quoted verbatim back in the Avatar Book 3 writeup immediately before giving it a 10/10.
Now, on the whole this isn’t quite that good. Rewatching it for the writeup for the first time in… god, 5 years? More? I was largely struck by being utterly impatient through the first half of the movie. The setup for the scammer aliens and the discovery of the Time Code takes ages, and the only real good bits before then are all the piss-taking of Fox for cancelling the show originally. And those might not actually have been funny, just cathartic enough to fake it.
It feels weird to not talk about Bender in a movie named after him but… it’s not really his movie? The third one is to much larger extent. We’ll get there. Y’know, someday. Probably.
I’m not entirely sure why they elected to have some musical numbers. I guess to some extent maybe they felt it was tradition for that to happen in the movie versions of TV comedies? But certainly they don’t really land as particularly funny. Fortunately enough happens around them I don’t care.
Rating- 8/10. In syndication this turns into I believe four episodes. And if we think of the movie in those terms, the first two kinda outright suck while the third is good buildup and the fourth is high in the running for flat-out best episode in the series. So this roughly balances all that out I guess.
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South Park movie, Rick and Morty, Alice in Wonderland.
Don't watch the RahXephon movie. It's just another series compilation movie.
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Cowboy Bebop with music reviews as you go TIA.
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South Park movie, Rick and Morty, Alice in Wonderland.
Don't watch the RahXephon movie. It's just another series compilation movie.
With an even less comprehensible ending, from my recollection.
Cid votes Spirited Away, Coraline, Utena, if that's a thing that we're all doing here.
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Well since it's so controversial, I vote *for* the RahXephon movie. I seem to recall liking it but thinking it would be completely unhelpful if you hadn't seen the series already, and that it answered one minor unanswered question from the series, but not another. Damned if I can recall the details or what those questions were though so I'll take a refresher!
Also, finish off Slayers and do Slayers Try, since you already did original & Next.
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Went through and alphabetized, added, and subtracted a few things. Also, since there was some confusion, added some asterisks next to stuff I've never watched.
The thing with RahXephon is that it's really all about playing with the idea of the quantum God- a being existing outside time who, in selectively observing the plurality of the cosmos, decides what events are true. So the conceit in the movie is that it's a slightly different universe than the one in the show, whose events Ayato also becomes aware of when he tunes the world, meaning he (and of course the viewer) thus get different info than the first time around. Which is cute and all, but also means that there's nothing meaningful to discuss about it without also talking in depth about the changes and the series as a whole... which I haven't seen since 2006 and don't have on hand to watch again.
(If it sounds like I remember it well, that's because I read an LP of SRW MX recently. I don't remember SHIT about the show unto itself except... uh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHRDJY4NGc0&ab_channel=Brunom1 )
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Yeah, that moment is fantastic. One of the few moments where RahXephon beats out the similar scene in Eva.
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South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Mountain Town- It's been six weeks since Saddam Hussein was killed by a pack of wild boars and the world is still glad to be rid of him.
Y'know, in theory this is as much a parody of Renaissance era Disney as anything, and really the sell it much harder than Disney did at the time here. This one in particular draws a lot from Belle in Beauty and the Beast, but they're actually a lot more blatant than it was; I mean there's a huge minor key shift when Sheila's verse kicks in. Of course, being crude and obvious is sorta the point isn't it?
Uncle Fucka- As seen here.
Wendy's Song- Actually let's save this one.
It's Easy, MMmkay- we shouldn't say fuck no we shouldn't say fuck FUCK NO~
Y'know, the lyrics to this might be the most competent Mr. Mackey has ever been in-universe, at least up to that point in the series. It's actually weirdly catchy, moreso than about anything else songwise in the movie I think. Which really adds a lot of flow to the thing: oh sure, let's fake it, we still get to swear AND it's fun!
Hell Isn't Good- there's probably a joke here about Metallica being the soundtrack to hell, but I don't think I have the heart for it. Although this highlights some issue trying to do the movie this way, a lot of the songs are just too short to really get a hold of. Same deal with the Wendy song. It's just a couple lines, and doesn't really go with any other songs to create a larger motif in the movie. It exists because well, can't go that long without a song now can we.
Blame Canada- Oscar Nominated Original Song Blame Canada.
Honestly, I think this song may have left a bigger impact on the series than even it's aware of. It could be the perpetual soundtrack for the adults of South Park for the entire series after this point. You can really feel the crystallization of Matt and Trey's particular cynicism; the only real question is who do we blame.
Kyle's Mom's a Bitch- The most appropriate "ah fuck" in the movie. Otherwise, well, this is kinda the moment they allowed themselves for pure fanservice, which makes sense considering I kinda got the impression hey didn't expect the show to keep going after the movie... so may as well reprise the one thing from the show they thought held up. Which... haven't seen Season 1+2 in a while but I suspect that's totally true.
What Would Brian Boitano Do- I've always felt like there was something specific to Brian Boitano's heyday that made him the one they use here, but fuck if I know what it was. Oh well. Point is, defeat the evil robot king in the year 3010.
Up There- Weirdly late in the film for an I Want song eh. Then again I suppose you couldn't really have Satan singing any earlier. Probably the most gratuitous Disney jab, with the most obvious parallels between it and its inspiration. Although come to think of it I think this song has the most effort into its animation sequence too, so in a way that kinda works.
La Resistance- Derp, that's what Gregory is, he's Le Mis! Which explains why the whole thing turns into a competing medley with each character doing their signature songs. Pity really, I kinda like the one they start with... although I guess that makes sense. More broadly, more than the earlier stuff which is easily mistaken for just an animated show full of satire taking the piss of the biggest animated films of the day for their own film, this really hints at the later transition they take towards doing actual Broadway stuff.
I Can Change- ... I don't think have anything here.
"God? He is the biggest bitch of them all". This line has forever stayed in my brain. I often have to resist quoting it in open company.
I'm Super- Sure am. I wish I could remember if this is something from the show as well, but.... oops. That said, pretty alright, and... sure, filler, but again that's exactly the point.
The Mole's Reprise- Alas, the best character... has died.
There's probably something to be said about Sheila staring unflinchingly at the carnage she's wrought. I suppose it might just be setting up for Kyle's Moral Delivery (see also comments about Blame Canada and the crystallization of Trey and Matt's cynicism)? Actually, those two things should be separated.
This is probably the most sincere moral South Park ever delivered. No "Y'know, I learned something today", no happy medium finding, no pat ending after, just 'going out and fighting everyone isn't taking care of the children, taking care of your children is taking care of the children.'
but I think this touches on a deeper vein. The main villain here is Sheila, and it's telling that probably the evilest moment in the movie really belongs to her; she watches the war happen around her and immediately says "This is what we wanted!" I mean, much as Saddam is probably a more evil person, he's also a buffoon easily thwarted, while everything actually bad in the film is because Sheila accepts no responsibility whatsoever for anything she does. Even when the other moms call her out. Essentially, the source of all the worlds problems are... people trying to stifle free speech. It's kinda weird really, a world where any regular evil is just people being dumb, and overall evil people are just kinda dumb. So malevolent INTENT comes from anything against freedom, while the actual evil is harmless.
Libertarians get weird when they get going is what I'm getting at.
Cartman's superpowers, the most anime thing. Odd thing, I remember the part where they obviously riff on Return of the Jedi (hard to miss), but the way Cartman powers up, and the way snow flies up when Saddam hits the ground? So anime, I think specifically 80's style seinen, but could be off there.
Mountain Town (Reprise)- ... wait, is the the only time in the whole film Chef is on a song? That is amazing restraint on their part.
This one feels a lot more like a straight retrospective than what I usually do, which... well, it's a comedy which often has trouble aging, so assessing it more in terms of how it affected the evolution of the show just felt more natural. Or I'm in a weird political mood so the politics of it jumped out at me. Both those seem likely. Lacking in substance as some of the songs are though, I actually liked them quite a lot, and there's plenty of stuff that does hold up humor wise. But some of the stuff that's bothered me about later seasons definitely seems to have roots here.
Rating- 7/10
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Bolt
So this is a new one for us, a Disney film from the dark times, before Princess and the Frog.
‘course, that’s misleading, because really this is the first film that lead them out of the wilderness- the first after John Lasseter took the helm at Disney Animation Studios. And some of that influence can be felt just in the premise, because there’s something quintessentially Pixar about an animal movie built around the lead thinking he’s a super hero because he’s on TV. It just feels like how they’d put the twist in the “pet walks through hell to get home after being carted across the country” story.
I think of films like that, where you have one big gimmick to polish a classic story, as having two dimensions you can grade it on: does the gimmick change the story in such a way as to make it seem completely unlike the classic story, or is the execution of the story fundamentals good enough to let it stand up on its own regardless of the gimmick.
So the gimmick is certainly very present, but not really in a transformative way. They try to use it to add extra punch to the reunion by giving us a fakeout of Bolt being replaced, and it’s the main source of humor in most of the flick. But they almost seem to want to get those funny bits out of the way so they can instead step away from the gimmick and instead mix the classic form of the story with a roadtrip.
We’ll come back to the ending though.
Fundamentals… well, I had a phrase get stuck in my head, and despite not being very good y’all are stuck with it now too: Median non Descript. I know, it’s terrible, but y’know what, the McAveragesons have gotten enough attention. But there’s just something entirely middle of the road about it. You can immediately peg the age of the movie from the animation quality, but they do an adequate job of giving personality to the animal characters so it doesn’t stand out too badly. There’s a fair amount of non-acting going on here, but for Travolta at least that kinda works because not-quite-monotone fits Bolt as a character. And no one else really has enough going on for it to impact much. The cute dog scenes are sufficiently cute, the reveals of deep personal trauma are predictable but placed well, the dumb sidekick is just barely effective enough to not get too annoying. Etcetera.
Rather torn on the ending though. Well, let’s step back. The entire sequence from the big heartbreak fakeout to the credits is a bizarre mix. The actual fakeout is just one of those giant predictable things that are utterly annoying because watching characters get twisted up over obvious misunderstandings that’d be resolved by talking for 30 seconds is just not fun to me. But then it sets up the rescue sequence, which pays off the opening (which honestly the opening bit of going through an episode of Bolt is the best part of the whole movie) and has fairly good emotional beats. Then the ending is just… the tritest thing, I mean of course that’s how the movie ends right? So I suppose it ends on the same basic note it kept hitting through the majority of the film doesn’t it.
Although actually I guess even the fire escape sequence touches on just a weird thing in the movie. Like, they set up the whole “Bolt thinks it’s real” thing in a weird Truman Show fashion, which is fine, except they linger just long enough on how goddamned traumatized the poor dog is, then immediately play it off as just “oh he just needs the Regular Life, it’ll be fine”. Seriously, that first scene in Bolt’s trailer where he sits there staring at the door in an unbreakable state of hyper-vigilance? I’m pretty sure that’s the clearest sign of PTSD. But obviously a week in the heartland will clear the right up. It’s almost too bad because there’s plenty of other scenes that suggest Bolt is just kinda wired weird and is kinda fearless by nature, it’s sorta the point of the very first scene- Bolt isn’t quite like these other puppies, he stays focused on what interests him. But that specific scene… yikes.
I don’t really think that hits me too hard on the final gutcheck entertainment rating, but… yikes.
Rating- 6/10
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Despicable Me 3
Yes yes, I know, I’ll go back and cover Minions eventually.
In a way I think I like this one the most so far. Which doesn’t make much sense, and I can only assume it has to do with either seeing it in the theater or some particular aspect landing more definitively for me. I think in part the movie finds a better balance for the ensemble, and having the characters off doing other stuff makes some sense given how much it loves the side characters to start with. For the most part they manage to juggle that very well too, especially using the Minions subplot to imply time passage in the main plotline with Gru. It’s not perfect, the Sing sequence is a smidge too long and the bit with them in the balloon is a bit intrusive, but mostly it actually helped give things natural breathing spots which can be a hard thing, especially in kids movies.
Bratt’s material is amazingly in tune with his actor. Like, did Trey Parker have a hand in his own lines? Is one of the writers an ex-pat from South Park? Or are they just uncanny imitators? I dunno, but it’s weird. Honestly though, despite the first trailer showing the entire first scene of the movie more or less (come ON trailer people, do better) Bratt’s material was good. While conceptually El Macho is just amazing I feel like Bratt’s the first villain in these films to really pop for me? There’s always a certain patheticness to the Despicable Me universe (it’s a bit reminiscent of Venture Bros. come to think of it) and Bratt manages to own that while having it actually make him more threatening.
They revisit a lot of common themes with aging and Gru’s sense of inadequacy, which honestly they don’t do a huge amount with but the window dressing around it is pretty good at keeping you from being overwhelmed by any nagging sense of retread. The biggest payoff though?
There’s something completely perfect about the ending of this, in the sense that I can think of no more fitting ending for the series than Gru and his twin locked in a series of good natured Super Spy vs Super Villain battles for years to come.
It’s really kinda a pity there’s no way in hell the series actually ends at 3.
I love everything to do with the unicorn subplot. I’ll leave that one there.
Rating- 7/10. Despicable Me has never really gotten amazing, but there’s definitely a comfortable level of amusement to be found pretty consistently. Which I sometimes suspect is the difference between a franchise and a series.
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"God? He is the biggest bitch of them all".
Such a good line. That French kid is a dick.
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Alice in Wonderland
We live in a world Alice created. The Internet is the entire world, right?
While you can see, very nearly fully formed, the primordial Internet Troll in the Cheshire Cat, it goes a bit deeper than that. It’s not terribly controversial to say that there are certain bedrocks for human interaction in the age of the internet. The shared cultural touchstone is Monty Python; people who’ve never seen Monty Python can quote large segments of it. The shared logic of the internet is that of Douglas Adams; people who’ve never read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can still form thoughts in the same basic structure as Infinite Improbability. And in that same vein, pretty much anyone uses rhetoric strongly reminiscent of Alice.
I suppose that just means that the internet mostly speaks in rhyming nonsense logic, where nitpicks are meant to convey interest and encouragement and quoting nonsense rules then managing to simultaneously follow and subvert them is everyday behavior, but it’s more the fact everyone accepts this and can easily parse meaning from it that’s interesting.
Of course, I’ve actually read Alice in Wonderland (though not Through the Looking Glass) and… I dunno, I actually don’t remember a lot of it? There’s something about the book that slid right through my brain. But I remember thinking that the Disney version was quite true to it with the major exception of Alice’s song of self-loathing. So it might be overstating things to credit Disney too much here… but I don’t think so actually. In large part Alice in Wonderland is an animation showcase, and I think those visual cues actually help the voice of the writing come through more strongly. Or I’ve seen this movie once every few years since I was a child and can fill in large parts of both from memory so I see more stuff for an exercise like this. One of those.
Otherwise, despite being very visually driven and having a lot of colorful characters (who I get the impression were kinda name actors in their day, although thanks to Disney gravity I’m sure about half of them are best known for their Disney stuff nowadays), Alice appropriately lives or dies on Kathryn Beaumont’s performance, and I can think of few actors her age (~12 when she’d have been in the booth) I’ve seen comparable performances out of. She spends a lot of time outright talking to herself and manages a lot of nuance and personality.
It’s kinda weird Disney only cast her in one other thing, is what I’m saying. More than that though, despite being easily chopped up into smaller segments for mass consumption (I vividly remember having free Disney Channel previews and getting bits and pieces of Alice in between shows, back when it was a premium station without commercials), it has a clear emotional throughline and story progress, and almost all of that is down to Beaumont being able to inject a steady emotional drain through each segment.
I’m having trouble putting a bow on this one, in a way that’s kinda weird. A lot of my appreciation for it is purely intellectual (it’s well animated, it reflects strongly in modern culture, they got a really nuanced performance out of a very young actress) and I can’t really say I had any emotional response to it at all. So I suppose…
Rating: 7/10. I dunno, this simultaneously seems low but also I don’t feel like I can justify higher. It’s foundational and interesting but it just doesn’t stick to me in the way I usually expect these things to.
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Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders
I have to admit upfront that I just did not have any strong reaction to this one. So retroactively I guess I’m glad I didn’t try to do it immediately after Adam West passed. Be sorta a crummy thing to do wouldn’t it?
Mind you Adam West was absolutely excellent in this, as were Burt Ward and Julie Newmar. Indeed, the ease with which they slip into those old roles and bounce off each other justify the entire film easily. The trouble I’m having is that it’s absolutely designed to be a self-aware love-fest for the ’66 show. I’m passingly familiar with it, it was still in reruns when I was a kid and restricted to whatever came in on the antenna, but I couldn’t tell you the contents of any episode. It just means I have some audio/visual reference to back up general pop cultural osmosis knowledge. But it’s not something that nostalgia bombs me all that hard. It’s cute and you can tell they worked really hard to slip some of those references in those places, but… it’s there, being cute. And I really feel about the same way about the barbs at the darker and grimmer Batmen of modern times; like, that’s kinda the point of the plot and… it’s cute, I see what they’re doing, it’s sorta funny for Adam West to say those things? But it just doesn’t really carry the piece by itself.
I feel like I’d probably have a better appreciation for this if I’d watched it when it came out… because that was last fall, before a certain other Batman animated feature made a lot of those same points much better. That’s probably the best I can peg my non-response to the film: if you don’t have a full nostalgic response to Batman ’66, what’s left is a weaker version of Lego Batman.
I’m being more negative than the film really deserves though, so… I’m going to break a bit of a personal taboo and give props to two specific jokes. Batman gets gas to the face, and starts seeing triple… of Catwoman. Of course they make the right joke. During the second fight against Joker, Penguin, and Riddler, the impact sounds suddenly get dark. And I think that did a lot more to float the story than almost anything else, because those balloon words got pretty out there. A gag only this film could have made, and it really works.
Rating: 6/10. It’s got a standout moment or two, and doesn’t have any huge flaws, but largely just doesn’t click for me.
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Batman '66 is the show where the Joker invented a time-stop device and used it for petty crime.
I think that's the most apt description I could ever give.
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My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Magical Movie Night
Hasbro had a wonderful problem this year: they have an actual Friendship is Magic movie coming out this fall, which will probably make all the money (mostly because I can’t imagine it really cost much to make), but they already only do stuff for the alternate continuity once a year, so gotta do something for that to keep the doll line robust. Thus we have Magical Movie Night, billed as a collection of short day-to-day adventures for our two legged friends.
Yeah that’s not quite what they did.
No, this harkens back to the Disney Sequels, specifically the ones that were TV pilots cobbled together into short films. Now, to their credit, they aren’t representing this as a single story (although disclaimer, we’ll come back to this). But it’s very specifically structured as TV episodes, each short is 22 minutes long, each one has two transitions that are in fact commercial act breaks, they have cold opens, there’s an intro that is almost identical to anime-style commercial bumpers.
It’s distracting, is what I’m getting at.
Since there’s only three of them, we’ll just give each episode its own little blub.
Dance Magic
Honestly I think I like this one the most? It’s super slice of life-y, and feels like they had an idea for a ~5 minute short (probably to attach to Legend of Everfree) that got too big and turned into a proper episode. It’s a Rarity piece, which I’m usually lukewarm on, and trying to focus Crystal Prep characters doesn’t really work for me, but on the other hand?
https://twitter.com/CmdrKing/status/895043080000335872 (https://twitter.com/CmdrKing/status/895043080000335872)
Pinkie Pie: Still the best.
Movie Magic
All the issues with the “TV pilot condensed into movie form” crop up in this one. There’s a straight exposition dump about the geodes from the last movie, because using those powers is going to be a recurring gimmick in the series! And we need to have a recurring misguided friend to teach lessons to, so bring on the jilted fangirl! But we also need to make this kinda look like a movie for some of the marketing materials, so let’s make “movies!” a gimmick and have the cast visit sets of MLP-verse films! Please ignore that only Daring Do and the Power Ponies make obvious “would be films in modern times” cases, we can wing this.
Honestly though it all frays at the seams. Juniper’s motivation is just beyond stupid and kicked me right out of the short. Dashie’s fangirlism wobbles precariously between funny and annoying. And they give this huge detective rant to Twilight despite this not really being her episode? Just not good decision making here.
And of course there’s an exceedingly clumsy transition into the next short because oops we actually did want to pretend this was a movie.
Mirror Magic
I should disclaimer here that I’m behind on the regular show: haven’t seen Season 6 yet. So I don’t have a great handle on the post-evil Starlight Glimmer. Still, the first part of the short works well, despite having a sense of being obligatory. “Okay we’ve gotta do SOMETHING with Twilight having two students but only acknowledging one most of the time, so… cameo? Yeah cameo.” Honestly I could really go for the reverse more than anything, but I legitimately don’t think that’ll ever happen. Still, Starlight’s endearing enough in the role, partly because they have no qualms making her look dorky as fuck.
This is all a bit undercut by the whole magic part, mostly because we don’t have any meaningful sense of why or how. Like, okay, magic is crossing over and spontaneously generating, that’s fair. But this feels really specific except there’s no explanation? Oh wait, yes there is: it’s the pilot, it’s a hook!
The whole distraction thing keeps coming up.
Anyway, having most of the cast sidelined in the mirror dimension is kinda lame, and the sudden rush at the end of “okay everyone admit to past dealings as a supervillain” is… I dunno what to make of it. Did they cancel the EQ show and had to wrap up material they already had? Was this short the original pitch for a full scale fifth EQ movie that they pared back because FiM is getting that slot? It’s weird.
Really that’s the final take, as much as I have fun guessing at the production process of the show despite never doing silly things like research, I’m really a bit lost at this one. What’s here is largely fine, with a few good moments, but there’s also a lot of material that could have stood on its own if it were given a chance and I’m kinda sad we’ll probably never revisit most of those concepts. So just kinda decent on the whole.
Rating- 6/10
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Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme
After a long absence, let’s pull another Lionsgate Marvel flick out of the case.
Much like the last one I don’t have a whole lot nice to say.
So we’ll get the good parts out first. The movie plays out as an origin story, and they try to link in Strange’s backstory, the events of his accident, and his becoming the Sorcerer Supreme together, which works quite a bit better than I’d have thought. Pinning his bitter misanthropy on a dead little sister is a little much, but tying that into why he’s put off by the coma kids, and hallucinations of the same being what distracted him enough for the accident actually dovetails well. The whole “Dormammu uses kid’s dreams to weaken the barriers between dimensions” actually is a pretty good idea for the way they present magic; functions of willpower and spiritual enlightenment and suchnot.
Annnnd the rest.
Most basic of basic problems here: this is just cheaply animated. The flaps are terrible, the shading is beyond terrible, moving vehicles use a cel effect over top of obvious blocky CG artifacts and frankly look less polished than multiple 2003 video games I can think of. Within the same frame they’ll have multiple levels of detailing on faces and the like, giving the impression that some of the lesser characters have a blur effect or something going on. Sometimes I wonder if they were going for a no-outline animation style, which has been done to amazing effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_Jack), but no I think they just tried to save budget because the backgrounds are awful and they use this terrible slow-mo effect in some of the fights because, oops, we needed to stretch the scene?
Like Thor, the ultraviolence doesn’t really work here. They use the hell out of the same “skeleton crumbling to dust” effect as that, so I guess they were proud of it. Not that it’s bad on its own, but they get so much use out of it by inventing a bunch of lesser apprentices for the Ancient One so they had people to kill off, then in the finale by having several dozen civilians get consumed by a swarm of hellbeasts. Because that’s what’ll draw me into this super hero movie.
They don’t even get the Dr. Strange basics right. I know to some degree this is suffering because I have the MCU movie to compare it to, but Mordo’s betrayal makes negative amounts of sense and the presentation of magic itself is just boring. Even if battles had been well animated it wouldn’t have produced very good fight scenes because the scenes themselves just didn’t have much going on. I guess Wong’s sand effects were decent? Yeah, I’m stretching here.
There are absolutely times the good ideas here try to come out. The way they present Strange’s path to understanding and the nudges you see Wong and the Ancient One making to get him there really do come together well. But even those bits will get horribly interrupted by the crummy fight scenes, completely derailing any sense of momentum. Any time I tried to like the movie it would seem to notice and go back to its worst qualities to prevent that right quick.
So yeah I think I talked myself into giving this the lowest score I’ve used so far.
Rating- 3/10
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will you ever seek out the little prince?
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that's a 2015 cartoon, featuring James Franco? Hope so, just ordered it off amazon~
e: I know we talked about it before in fact, I just don't remember the conversation well, just that I saw ads at one point then never knew what happened with the movie itself.
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Sailor Moon.
TIA.
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Do Haruhi. I feel that show is in such a weird position as basically the first show that started the whole 'Moe boom' that turned anime into a mistake. But there's like... actually some cool stuff worth talking about here, especially about the nature of escapism, and how it's both uplifting and can potentially destroy your whole world.
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The Little Prince
I usually take more to the ends of films than the beginning. So it's taking a bit to process how to talk about this one: an utterly striking start that really carries through the rest of the piece.
The opening scene for the school interview isn't too intense, certainly I’ve seen some fairly stark interview waiting scenes before. But then we move to the swankiest part of town, wherein all the houses are stacked rectangles. And then the mom has planned out the little girl's entire life until she's out of college down to the hour. Including all her birthday presents. Like the one for her 9th birthday in two seeks.
The Little Girl is 8 years old and they're telling her to decide her entire life path. Jesus fuck, no wonder she needs a damn fantasy adventure!
From what I know of course this entire plot is not taken from the story it's adapted from. Instead, it's a framing device around the story of the actual Little Prince, which is actually pretty well handled. The mix of CG and what seems to be stop motion (and a really good approximation if not) sets everything off nicely, positing the Narrator as the Aviator is pretty nice. They really did quite a great job of paralleling the new material to the original, and I think grounding this part of the movie in mundane things really sells the core emotional hook of two very lonely people finding one another.
Now, once the Little Prince finishes, the movie has another act to go through, and it loses a lot. Switching back to the main art style entirely is definitely a bit off as a decision. A lot of the main animation can be a bit empty, too clean, and that works wonderfully during while it’s alternating with Little Prince’s story because it highlights how sterile and lacking in humanity the Little Girl’s world is. Without that contrast though it just starts to feel like a budget limitation. And it probably was! This is a French production, they don’t have the talent pool and money big American houses do, so I don’t doubt they struggled to keep the main animation budget under control, and the Little Prince animation was undoubtedly a lot more costly and had to be utilized as sparingly as possible to get the movie out the door. But when you’ve done so wonderfully for 2/3rds of your running time hiding all those facts with good creative decisions and using those limitations to create narrative resonance, suddenly losing it can be quite distracting.
But y’know what? There’s something about the compare/contrast between the original material and the book and the time periods they were made in that kinda works. The original was written during World War II, and very much has the feel of a fairy tale for the industrial, scientific world. It’s morally forthright and ends at a place meant to allow parents to explain to their children about death and the afterlife and so forth. It’s written in the perspective of an adult, so they can teach their children. The new material is from the perspective of the Little Girl, in our time. Like most children now, she’s been orphaned by modern life: one parent gone, the other overworked and absent to make up the gap. Her life is far lonelier than the lives of a mid-20th century children. Until the start of the movie, she really had only herself to understand the world through, and so when confronted with the reality of mortality? The only one that could help her cope with it was herself. Through the lens of the story, she imagined a new ending, one she could digest, because it added the context the original story could assume a parent would. And in that light, the Little Prince returning home and finding his loved one died, rather than simply leaving the earth through death himself, is much more suitable. It doesn’t assume you have some independent understanding of Heaven, and instead creates a literal image of loved ones lighting the way for you after they’re gone.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, the bits with Mr. Prince are still goofy as hell, but as a vessel to get to that ending to the journey… I’ll live.
There’s one earlier scene I do want to mention apart from all that though, because it mislead me a bit about the overall moral here. Like obviously a play on mortality and the journey to adulthood are what The Little Prince is about (unless it’s… waaaay different in its totality than what’s in this film). But the start of the book content, with the Narrator’s story about his failures to draw and then his drawing of a box being just what the Little Prince needed? That’s an interesting facet of that that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. The Narrator had a fierce desire to express himself through art, but didn’t have much talent for it. So when he draws something he can handle, then explains that what was needed was hidden inside it? I kinda figured it’d be a lesson along the lines of “find a way to make what you can do fit in with what you love to do”. But then, I suppose that is the sort of lesson a modern person would want to take from a work, isn’t it?
Rating: 8/10. Never quite got the emotional punch to rate higher, but there’s a lot here that’s working and I think everyone should give it a shot.
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Yeah, to me the opening was more than an introduction of a strong motif or comedic relief, really. There's something about her relationship to her mother and the system in which she's overworked as a single parent that's lost in your review. Give or take, I understood the intense micromanaging her life as a clearly false overcompensation for the lack of a two-parent household. In the case of this story, it's a heterosexual household. Her mother overworked herself in a way that is both psychically draining but also necessary in her eyes for producing the resources she believed necessary so that her daughter would never become herself. It's more than tragic, as it is both representing how capitalism strains familial relationships but also the outcomes of females across generations that see new wealth. It's not just the old man and the girl that are lonely. I can see how she's orphaned in a poetic way, but I also see that her mother was unwilling to slow her own work schedule for far more than her daughter's future success. I would have never described moments of the Prince as goofy. I recall every scene as outright depressing or sad, dealing a little less directly with mortality and moreso with trust and the tricky threshold between ignorance and innocence. I wonder why that is that I felt this way. Hm. Maybe because I saw the incorporation of his story as envisioning more frameworks for existence without a particular logic other than emotion? Anyway, glad you watched it! It's beautiful to me.
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Yeah, the movie is fairly up front about the Mother's motivations. Which come to think of it makes her a strange break from the adults in the Little Prince's journey; they capture the sense of confusion a kid might have about how adults behave, but on the whole they're strange people doing silly things without much internal motivation. They do what they do because that's who they are. The Mother does what she does because she doesn't see any way to help her own terrible life except to make sure her daughter can avoid it.
That is, the other adults, seemingly, are just bad people. The Mother's not a bad person, just stuck in a bad world.
By goofy I was more thinking that it tends to have humor that broke the tension for me. Mr. Prince himself most especially- the bumbling in his introduction sequence was just odd as a choice, and made it hard to take his grappling with the situation as seriously as it needed to be to fully work.
That said, like the Mother's motivation/arc, it's all secondary to the Little Girl; film's focus is firmly on her, and you have to take everyone else from the margins.
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The moral compass off good and evil is stressed less in the girl's story than the Prince's. I mean, for the girl's story what is evil are systematic processes like gentrification or repetitive work and rewards. It's so interesting to me that the cliffhanger of the elderly man and his home were pretty much sidelined so that he could literally conduit the girl into a parallel universe of gluttony!
Ah, see, yeah. I was far more forgiving for the humor since I expected it in so-called animation films for children, and also because until the Prince had other humans to modify his emotional conversations, he existed without human recalibration.
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Hellsing
A bit of production history for this one. Hellsing is adapted from a manga of the same name… but specifically the first two volumes (with a smattering of material and notes from later I suspect). Said manga ended up being 10 volumes. So essentially in 2001 they produced about 6 episodes based on the existing material followed by an addition 7 including whatever nuggets Hirano deigned to give them with a more or less original story.
As such, not only does the story go off on a hell of a tangent and ignore some pretty clear “this will be important later” markers, the property it was adapted from was still quite early into its run for several episodes, and some bits that are tonally at odds even within the manga to that point ended up being adapted pretty faithfully because… well, that’s what they had to work with.
On which note, let’s start here.
Weakest Episode- Order 02: Club M. The series starts off with a monster of the week vibe, which this one exemplifies with the young couple. Monster of the week comes off as real weak when the monsters aren’t serving some larger villain openly, which they haven’t at this point, especially when said monsters are in fact the kind that theoretically have motivations. Why did they become vampires, is there some meaning behind their killings for them, are we supposed to feel bad when they die because hey they were young and in love? I dunno, apparently it wasn’t important, but a lot of attention was drawn to it so dismissing all that to focus on the main characters is weird. Especially since part of the thrust was that Seras was clearly struggling with killing them! So she was probably asking those same questions.
Now the remaining episodes of adapted material I actually like a fair bit, but what’s more interesting is how they decided to flesh out the rest of the run. Since it would be a bit out of character for anyone in the cast to have a fight last more than two episodes, and making an original villain too important might make adapting later material (which I think they clearly expected they’d end up doing until literally the last minute, more on that later) awkward, so they instead took some heartfelt stabs at guessing the backstories of the characters from available information and fleshing those out with some more psychological episodes. And I’m always a sucker for that.
Best Episode- Order 10: Master of Monster. This one snuck up on me, because at the very start it seemed kinda cheap. Oh, Integra’s in an “I lost all of the blood and need surgery” coma, let’s have tragic backstory. But honestly… to this point in the series I didn’t care all that much about her. She’s just kinda generic grumpy commissioner, except a lady, which is fine but she doesn’t really interact all that much with our POV character Seras so it lacks impact. But baby Integra is adorable, and they manage in the one episode to lay out very quickly and effectively her path from precocious tween prodigy to hardass knight commanding the deadliest fighter on the planet over the course of about a day. Her utter goddamned refusal to accept her uncle’s usurpation, or take the slightest bit of Alucard’s shit, is actually amazing when you give it context and put her in personal danger.
So while they tried to keep it a light touch, as noted they did add an original villain for the last few episodes. He kinda works, albeit he’s not especially interesting or well developed. But the last episode spends most of its running time with an epic battle between him and Alucard, and then literally splashes some title cards wrapping up the plotline (oh he was hired by a traitor from the Round Table, they were quietly executed, but oops also Integra was still arrested) then a ten second epilogue for an ambiguous ending. And I have to think that, up until they had partially animated this episode, they thought they’d take a year or so, let Hirano get ahead, and then adapt more of the manga for a season two. Then suddenly realized that was going to take several years for that to meaningfully happen, and instead gave up and wrapped up their original plotline and the series with it. Instead, hey revisited it several years later once the full manga was finished with a fully faithful and cleaned up edition. An Ultimate edition if you will.
Support the official release.
Rating- 7/10. In the end there’s not a lot of real hook here for me I find. It was riding a pretty steady 6 until episode 10 in fact, but a few upticks are really all I need to go from “well it’s decent” to “yeah that was good”.
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My Little Pony: The Movie
For this one, I feel the need to issue a reminder: these are not really reviews and are much more interested in discussing why a work is the way it is (and, on occasion, delving into picking out themes and very very rarely what is probably actual critical analysis, although that’s rare and amateur at best), both in terms of analyzing emotional response and in looking for evidence of production history within the work because we are in fact nerds here and trivia is fun.
See, I don’t know how to feel about this one, and I’m gonna have to discuss in detail a critical plot point of the movie to figure it out. Sorry folks, I don’t have an easy up/down is this worth watching note this time.
Hasbro has gone back to deep wells for this one. The core plot is essentially “special movie big bad shows up, heroes have to travel to distant lands to meet new allies to combat it”, which is basically how every movie of kids TV show has gone since such things existed. Which Hasbro was deeply involved in in the 80s, so yeah, back to the well.
Now, within that framework, the movie’s… average? It’s not terribly subtle about the toyetic nature of these things. And I have to admit that some of the designs on the new characters (pretty much all of them except Tempest Shadow and the Storm King I’d say) do clash with the established material for me. Mostly the color pallet and gait of everyone feels off. But the characters themselves are fine. I mean, they got Zoe Saldana to voice a character, and decided fuck it, she’s a pirate bird captain. Because I’m pretty sure if you put a microphone in Zoe Saldana’s room as she slept her nighttime mutterings would be usable material for that character.
And of course we’re a good 7 seasons into the show now so they’re real good at the main cast now. Pinkie is mugging the HELL outta that camera, Apple Jack’s snarks are perfectly placed, I think the song they give Rainbow is probably the best Dashie song I’ve seen in the series. They seem to have made a conscious effort for the incidental cast not to interact with the plot too much, for all they were most generous with visual cameos. And Derpy shenanigans. Can’t forget those.
And now that we’ve nibbled up to it, let’s dig into the issue. The main goal of the quest is to get the help of the Hippogriffs. Once everyone gets there, they discover they hold a magical artifact that let them shapeshift and escape the Storm King, and are understandably not keen on going back to openly fight him. And so, noticing how cripplingly lonely the princess is, Twi sends everyone else to win her over while she… steals the goddamned artifact?
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WRITERS.
TWILIGHT SPARKLE IS NOT THAT FUCKING STUPID.
I mean, like. I actually went home from the theater and had to look up if this was supposed to be somewhere earlier in continuity. Like I mean maybe… I can see Twi being that panicked and dumb right after becoming a Princess? Bit of a stretch, but I can kinda buy it. But you’re telling me that Twilight used befriending someone as a feint at this point in the show’s continuity? I just don’t fucking buy it. You already have to buy a lot of nonsense up to this point in the film, because frankly I just don’t see how the Storm King is somehow a larger threat than some previous villains, but hey, I guess they got a good sneak attack in. That can matter a lot. And let’s be real, a certain amount of contrivance just to get the plot started, and to justify some new toys characters and locations is just part and parcel of a marketing-driven series, and you do accept a bit of that if you stick with the series.
But that sort of break in characterization really kicks you out of the movie. They follow that up with a big blow up between her and Pinkie, and honestly that’s why it’s there. They needed Twi to be isolated so she could be captured and set up the endgame. But no, you done fucked up whoever wrote that, and I’m really not sure if all the other stuff I liked before and after makes up for it.
In light of which, let’s rewind.
LET’S SING!
We Got This Together- Does every big episode in the series start with one of these? The town song as they prepare for a big day? If not all of them, at least most of them I reckon. This one is a bit longer and more involved than average, which makes sense all things considered? I feel like some of the intent behind the film here was to draw in lapsed fans, so reintroducing the main cast to get everyone on the right page is a good move. It also reinforces for that audience that we’re focusing on them, not the expanded cast like Starlight or Sunset or any of a number of characters.
Totally snuck in a Discord cameo there. Granted I had a short conversation with a random stranger in the theater, since we both happened to be checking to see if there was a stinger (there’s not for the record). We even designed it: totally should have had Discord pop back up and be mad he missed all the fun.
I’m the Friend You Need- Y’know, I kinda like Capper actually but… the naiveté on display here… I’m gonna need an assist.
(https://img1.etsystatic.com/058/1/6782226/il_570xN.701495995_em32.jpg)
Thank you Sir Patrick. Not much to say about the song, since it’s more for the montage than a show stopper if that makes any sense? But yeah, lives or dies on how much you want to like Capper.
Time to Be Awesome- I gotta admit, there’s a big disconnect here. I mean, didn’t they stop piracy because they were afraid of the Storm King? I don’t know how “be awesome!” got them past that hump. Maybe focus more on how they could totally defeat him as long as they got to the Hippogriffs? But y’know what, I don’t care that much because fuck it, it’s time to be awesome! Very nicely captures a soaring spirit feel.
One Small Thing- I swear this is Pinkie’s theme song with lyrics. Actually, I think Time to Be Awesome was also Dashie’s theme with lyrics. So anyways, most of the music in the movie’s been pretty good, this one’s no exception, but it’s not really standout one way or the other.
Open Up Your Eyes- So there’s… about three songs through the series I’ve kinda fallen for: True True Friend from Magical Mystery Cure, Welcome to the Show from Rainbow Rocks, and Light of Your Cutie Mark from Crusaders of the Lost Mark. I’m not sure if this surpasses any of those for me, but it’s definitely among them.
I do think they oversell the tragedy for Tempest Shadow a bit, since when they dramatize her backstory here it really feels way more like she just kinda gave up rather than cracking under the trauma she went through. But it does set up nicely why she’d both be so driven to be strong (to show them, SHOW THEM ALL) but also have a giant gaping blind spot towards someone who valued her abilities.
Rainbow- Holy shit Sia really is an aussie. The way singing erases accents in English is sometimes amazing to me.
Oh right, song. It’s a nice ending concert thing? Certainly not Sia’s best song, but I do have to say… there’s a gravitas to it? It’s both melancholy and determined, and I feel like that’d be a great fit for the overall plot…
… y’know, if they hadn’t completely fucked that up? I really can’t tell if they wrote parts of this four years ago and just touched it up for the “now” point it occupies in continuity without actually changing the parts that matter, or didn’t bother paying any attention to the basic Hasbro Movie Formula script aside from character-specific gags, or if they just are kinda at the limits and don’t know how to write the more mature characters they have now and keep falling back on the basics from earlier in the series to inform character flaws.
But for all that, the fluff is really quite great; what I’m having to chew on is, which do I weight more for this series? Do I toss the complaints with the plot since it’s there to string together characters moments and gags I’m enjoying, or is the plot issue so badly out of character it’s poisoning the whole movie?
Rating- 6/10. You’ll be unsurprised to learn I instead toss it the “it’s… okay, with a few standout moments” score. I mean, I did the whole song bit because I picked all the songs up off iTunes, it’s doing quite a bit right, but damn man. Damn.
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Anastasia
Let’s return to Don Bluth, in this, his final surrender.
I’m not entirely sure that’s even unfair really. I’ve never went and dug through interviews, especially more recent ones, but the degree to which this is shamelessly a Disney Princess movie is astonishing. It’s unmistakably Bluth’s art influence and has some of his particular flourishes, especially in the dark moments, but no mistake, he’s making someone else’s movie here.
And of course, being a Disney Princess affair means… let the anvils ring!
A Rumor in St. Petersburg- There’s such an air of artificiality to this. I don’t know why, but something about the backgrounds and setting that make all the choreographed dancing stick out in the worst way. Could be the mood whiplash too. But I think it’s something about the setting, like the street there flags as “now” and a real place, so the fake behavior stands out. Could also just be since I’m using kinda a cheapo copy so the actual video quality isn’t meshing right, but I think it’s just the presentation falling apart.
Journey to the Past- The exposition right before this is also pretty dire. I’m suddenly thinking Bluth was taking the piss with this whole operation. Like god damn, this is practically this (http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/disney__s_anne_frank_by_andrewdickman-d4mk4q0_6183.jpg) except Anastasia is actually a movie that exists, and it has about the same sense of really TRYING to miss the point this hard thanks to following the formula. I mean it doesn’t help that the song is weak as hell too, but yeah, I’m already kinda in the wrong mindset for song by the time it starts.
Once Upon a December- Gosh I remember liking this one quite a bit. It’s pretty good, although I had utterly forgotten why. It’s haunting really. There’s an echo on everything that gives it a sort of horror movie vibe, it’s unreal and something disastrous is coming. Like this sells the base concept of the backstory in a way showing the events didn’t.
In the Dark of the Night- Why is there a bug civilization in evil wizard limbo? In fact the whole part where the bugs are a chorus is distracting. You have like the green glowy goblin dudes, you couldn’t anthropomorphize them? Or have Bartok do accompaniment?
Sidebar; oh man Bartok is like Hunchback Gargoyles tier. Which is sad because hey, a character for Rasputin to talk against and question his plans is fine, but he’s always on and it just comes back to being artificial.
Learn to Do It (/Reprise)- Montage! We’re friends, we’re all friends here, thank you. Actually aside from the reprise, I’m not sure what this is doing here. Sure, sure, set up princess training and how easily Anya takes to it. But… why ride bikes? Horseback? The only one that actually does make sense is the reprise part really. Although Dimitri does fall flat on his face, maybe that’s the important part.
Paris Hold the Key- Okay, Paris being a perpetual ongoing street circus makes waaaay more sense than St. Petersburg doing it. … holy shit they’re in a Monet. Daaaamn. Okay like… nooone of the rest of the movie does this. There’s a bit of a disconnect between backgrounds, characters, and inanimate objects, but a lot of that is CG blending and the movie being from 1997 and, as I recall, Fox Animation only having like three films total and Fox being notorious cheapskates. Or maybe some of the other songs use famous artists as backgrounds but I’m too uncultured to catch anyone but Monet. I dunno.
Y’know, they really got into making new outfits for Anya. Makes sense since they’re doing Disney Princess, but actually they have some really tasteful designs here, it’s great.
The ending meanwhile sure is a thing that happens. Especially the part where the animal sidekick does the real hard work of setting it up while the final win is a layup, just stepping on something that’s already literally underfoot.
I dunno. As fakey as it can be, as often as that kicked me right out of things, and much as they sanitize the historical background so much I remain convinced the understatements are master theses on the art of sarcasm (embers of unhappiness, really? Really?) There’s a certain charm to this. I like Bluth’s human designs, you can see a lot of effort into some interesting bits of the film, the main emotional climaxes moooore or less work. You do, in the end, want these people to be okay and find some measure of peace.
Rating- 5/10. Split the difference? Sure, split the difference.
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Sidebar; oh man Bartok is like Hunchback Gargoyles tier. Which is sad because hey, a character for Rasputin to talk against and question his plans is fine, but he’s always on and it just comes back to being artificial.
(https://media.tenor.com/images/1d783b85a90937329b8b837d47e42cfd/tenor.gif)
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Hellsing Ultimate
Hellsing Ultimate, despite being adapted by the same people from the same material, is a lot of things that the earlier Hellsing really wasn’t.
It’s horror porn, gore porn, gun porn, and occasionally just porn. It’s an indulgent, fantastical mess, that always demands your attention except when it’s clearly just playing with itself. You do have to give it a minute once in a while.
So I’m going to bypass some of the usual staples for talking about a series here. Hellsing Ultimate is 10 OVAs released over a period of 6 years. The animation quality is generally movie-tier. The narrative flow is kinda gibberish: I considered reviewing each set of the blu-ray release as its own thing, because while there’s still a really crummy cliffhanger between VIII and IX, that’s still as close as it has to cohesive structure. Four installments detailing Millennium’s coming out of the shadows, four more detailing the Battle of London in earnest, and the final two resolving all the conflicts between the main cast and wrapping up the plot. But within those arcs, the start and stop points don’t make much sense. Like the best part of the series is probably the final battle between Alucard and Anderson, which is split between VIII and IX, while the lowest point is probably Millennium’s initial assault on London, which is mostly V but with some bits of IV and VI.
So yeah, that’s about as coherent as the technical talk is gonna be.
The word for all this is gonzo really, in both common uses of the term. Visceral, emotional, personal, with no sense of objective outside reality, and also using the barest of establishing shots before getting straight to the show. It’s not strictly accurate in the second sense, since there are certainly plenty of times it does slow down and brood for a bit before going back to the action, but those moments get shorter and less frequent as it goes, and after a certain point the talky bits are just as spectacle driven as the blood or the action. I mean, you aren’t going to convince me that Alucard reverting to his WWII appearance and ranting about what a failure Walter is for damn near 10 minutes isn’t meant to be a sort of carnage.
I have to say I’m totally in love with the credits sequences in Ultimate. They almost always present a bit of a tonal contrast with the episode their paired with, while also expanding on background elements in a clear but unobtrusive way. That the music is always quite good helps a lot of course. It makes an odd contrast because, given the nature of the series, there’s times where some sequences you can kinda just check out a minute since it’ll be over the top, long, but not really be anything but gory spectacle, while the credits always pulled me forward in my seat a bit so I could catch the details behind the credits themselves.
Really that sort of thing is all over the place in Ultimate, it does a lot of clever things and can go long stretches with just perfect pacing and flourish, but occasionally it gets completely indulgent and if you’re not into the specific thing of that scene (especially a lot of the gun/military porn) and it’s kinda easy to check out. Of course, that’s sorta the point isn’t it? Horror comedy from a guy who got his start in illustrated porn indulging his personal sense of style, of course it’s gonna be gonzo and over the top.
Which actually provides a nice bridge into the subtextual meat of the show. There’s a line used very late in the series that boils down the main conflict between Alucard and Anderson, which is very expressly echoed by the Nazi villains as well: that deep down immortal monsters are whimpering children looking to die. But this doesn’t really hold true, because the dividing line isn’t between monsters and men. Seras is defined by indomitable drive to stay alive. Walter and Anderson go out of their way to BECOME monsters because they… basically wanted to die on their own terms having one final battle. Sir Penwood, generally portrayed as a coward, ultimately decides to go out triggering a bomb to take as many Nazis with him as he can, even when he reasonably could have escaped. And as might be expected, Integra’s life has been defined by spitting in the face of insurmountable odds and refusing to bow to those who would threaten her, always defeating deadly threats with extreme prejudice.
This undercurrent is really consistent. Men fight until they find a worthy opponent to die to, while women fight to live. And it’s strange because I’m really not sure where they’re going with it. Especially when it comes to the main cast, because for Alucard and Seras it also definitely ties into the vampiric bloodlust, rape vs consent thing they have going on. It’s almost like… there’s this belief that men, by nature, steal and take what they will, but because of this are damned and worthy only in death. Women, meanwhile, use what is offered, but no more, and have earned life. Although this might be tied into the minor preoccupation with purity that’s there as well; Seras can only become a vampire because she’s a virgin, and several mentions are made of Integra’s “maiden virtue”. We don’t really know what’s up with any of the vampires of Millennium, but they certainly go out of their way to sexualize Rip van Winkle’s death. I dunno. It’s messy and has some clear parallels to Japanese gender roles overall, except with a distinctly negative spin; men will dominate by nature, but they are little more than dogs because of it, animals waiting to die. So seemingly the idea is that, if a woman can preserve herself against such assaults, she becomes a proper liege, who will strive towards the greatest good and never taking more than what is offered.
It’s strange trying to decipher the messaging of something that’s simultaneously overtly skeevy but also has a clear respect for its own characters. Of course wild oscillation between effective material and being distractingly over the top is the Hellsing experience isn’t it.
It’s gorgeous, it’s gripping, and it’s certainly trying to say… something. Honestly the real weakness here is I don’t know that it speaks to me, specifically? Well, it’s not, and I know it’s not because I think it’s only actually interested in speaking to one person, Kouta Hirano. But then again…
Rating- 8/10. To borrow a completely unrelated quote? Stay a while, and listen.
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Woo, 3 hours under my wire.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 6)
I don’t have much to say on the lowpoints this season, so lets knock this one out right away and move on to what’s working.
Weakest Episode: Newbie Dash. Y’know, I like Dashie, she’s often my favorite of the six, but damn if he pouty episodes aren’t tiresome. How many times has your overcompensation gotten you owned Dashie? Right, all of them. Why you gotta do a thing. Admittedly the Wonderbolts running on friendly assholism is kinda bleh to me to start with, even if it does make sense for the sort of people they are.
I’ll admit I needed to skim episode titles to single that one out, but there’s a couple episodes like that (Flutter Brutter’s another one) where, yeah it’s new stuff I guess? But it’s really just a new coat of point on a typical (x)-episode plot and it’s season 6 guys, you did this one and it wasn’t good the last time.
But really the bulk here are just… fine. As slice of life content goes, season 6 holds the batting average. There’s some fun concepts in there, and I dunno if they got all the milage they could have outta, oh, “Dischord vs DnD” it still exists and that’s peachy.
Our continuity this season though with in Starlight episodes, which actually did something they show had been aching for: showing just how hard it is for a villain to earn redemption in their own eyes. Well, okay, Equestria Girls had been doing something with that with Sunset, yeah, but y’know what? Her problem was her confidence was shot after her inner darkness manifesting as a literal demon. Starlight’s deal is her coming to grips with just how bad she was in the first place.
I mean some folk, not without reason, were kinda pissed that Starlight seemed so easily forgiven after her “I almost destroyed time!” escapades. Y’know who else thought that? Is crushed daily by just how dysfunctional her understanding of basic life is? Spends noticeable amount of time in each appearance paranoid about the possibility of relapse? Was so overwhelmed at the ease with which the people of her village forgave her she had a panic attack?
Yeah. Even if everyone else either accepts that she wants to change and wants to make that easier for her, or doesn’t really know what she did and thinks of her as just Twilight’s weird friend? Starlight Glimmer hasn’t forgiven Starlight Glimmer, and time will tell if she ever can.
Honestly the more they show Starlight the more I am so, so tempted to delve into thinkpiece “diagnose the MLP characters!” stuff and that’s totally not something I should be doing. But I’m sure that piece exists and damn if I don’t feel like Starlight, specifically, hits you in the face with it harder than everyone except Twilight.
ER, anyways, so the Starlight arc through the season has a secret weapon in its quest to make me like the episodes and root for her.
That’s right, they brought back my irrational favorite pony, the Pathetic and Friendless Trixie!
Best Episode: To Where and Back Again part 2. This is probably my single favorite episode in ages, and it mostly just cheats to get there then lets everything unfold naturally. Shove Discord and Trixie into the party together, biggest braggarts of the show? Yeah, nah, that’s ending gloriously. For good measure they bring back the biggest hanging villain on the show, because of course they do, they know continuity is my catnip. Thorax is a bit nothing as a character which isn’t ideal, but I have to admit, I do like that the episode that introduced him didn’t really have much Starlight in it, cool way to downplay that the changelings were going to be a thing in the finale.
On the whole there’s some signs of fatigue in the basic structure of the show here. Having Starlight to be the lead on some episodes, and the format tweak for CMC episodes, help quite a bit, but I think the writers for the non-anchor episodes are starting to strain under continuity rather than using it. Which sorta makes it surprising that the show has an eighth season lined up in some ways, but we don’t know much about that yet and it’s entirely possible it’ll start winding down at that point.
I mean, I saw they launched a proper Equestria Girls webseries sometime this year, the exact thing I mentioned that the last EQ movie was setting up for. Seems like a thing that could happen.
Rating- 7/10. The good episodes were an improvement from the last couple seasons, but the middle episodes were a bit weaker, so around the same feel overall I think.
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One Punch Man (Season 1)
One Punch Man is a strange show; not quite parody, not quite a regular comedy, definitely not straight shonen. And as usually happens in those cases, I’ll be forming thoughts on this one in the writing, because organization is for chumps.
In that light, let’s knock out the formality early.
Weakest Episode- The Modern Ninja. I actually kinda like Speed-of-Sound Sonic, but there’s really nothing else much going on in this one. The power suit thing feels like a step down from the last couple episodes, even allowing that this is setting up for arcs that haven’t happened in the anime yet, and while Sonic is kinda fun it’s not a terribly interesting fight which is a bit of a buzzkill in a filler episode.
Rating- 8/10. It’s often uneven and there’re some quibbles to be had with stuff like the casual attitude towards collateral damage, but it’s absolutely worth recommending and watching.
Let’s get started then.
Best Episode- Unyielding Justice. The show’s thesis statement is absolutely in this episode. I’m just not entirely sure how to take it.
The speech from Mumen Rider would be amazingly sincere and heartfelt in a serious super hero show, so in this show which is about 30% parody? Spending the entire episode to this point playing it so straight and topping it off with this makes it stand out all the more. Even when you know it’s going to be followed seconds later by a crushing curbstomp.
Except that’s then immediately followed by Saitama saving him and congratulating him on a job well done. And when some asshole in the crowd (seriously, what the fuck is wrong with those fans! Er that guy! YOU WERE IN THE BUILDING AND SAW HIM TEAR A HOLE IN THE DISASTER SHELTER AND MELT A FUCKING CYBORG DOWN TO HIS FUCKING HEAD IT WAS CLEARLY FUCKING REAL) tries to disparage the other heroes and ends up getting the whole crowd behind him because of Saitama’s bad reputation, he instead leans into that reputation to deflect credit back onto them.
At one level this is another layer added to Saitama. Sure, it’d be nice to be appreciated and rewarded for his hero work, but really… he’ll deal. It’s fine. He gets funded by the Hero Association now, so all the material concerns are put to rest and he can just keep on keeping on, so does it really matter that much if he gets the respect other heroes do? Nah, more important to do the job and keep people safe.
Honestly I have to think, between this attitude, how he came by his powers, and the baldness that Saitama is meant to be a Zen figure in the most literal sense, a teacher by example for the ways of the Buddha. Unfortunately I don’t know my Buddhism nearly well enough to really follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion, but it just makes too much sense.
It’s important to remember though that Saitama doesn’t really change much from the start of the show, at least not in this season. Sure, he gets fired up once in a while, his circumstances change, but he’s more or less the same guy. We just get to learn more about him as we see him in those new circumstances. So how it affects him isn’t really as important as how he tries to influence others, since they’re the ones that react to the fact of his existence.
And really that’s the best way I can approach it from the other side. The world doesn’t know how to react to Saitama. Being part satire while also being a shonen, the universe is fundamentally cynical. The effective heroes are assholes and the heroic ones are ineffectual. Swathes of cities are so regularly attacked by monsters people just gave up living there. And of course, like our world, society is petty and cruel- a world where evil tends to triumph, and is getting more powerful all the time.
And then here comes Saitama. Sure, comedy might demand he sometimes take out buildings, but funny how few casualties there are when the giant naked Attack on Titan reference falls on a city eh? The king of the sea is beyond human science, he could easily conquer the surface world… except the heroes buy enough time for Saitama to show up and do his thing. A wild DBZ knockoff appeared! Saitama used “Actually Trying”. It’s super-effective!
Saitama existing means a world where Good will always triumph over Evil.
And the world can’t process that. How can that exist? There must be a trick. It’s a scam. He’s a nobody leeching off the real heroes who had to die trying or saved everyone for their own ends. Any possible explanation except that he’s the real deal and if they follow his example, the world will be a better place.
… dammit, I just got to the same conclusion again. Zen, man. Zen.
Closing ramble… I made a point of name-checking a few shows, and honestly I’m pretty sure everything in this show is a direct shoutout if you’re more knowledgeable about shonen than I. Those were just the ones I knew without looking. That said once we get to the end of the season with the S-Rank Heroes the whole thing feels more American comics than shonen. Very Justice League and all. The short episode and a half arcs are pretty fun and help draw more attention to the overall flow of the tone and narrative.
I kinda ignored Saitama’s ennui, but despite being where they pull the whole tag line (“Can a hero be too strong?”) initially, it feels incidental at this point. It could eventually turn into something that challenges Saitama’s understanding of himself and corrupts things, but in Season 1… yeah, it’s window dressing. Worth noting for the future, but right now not really relevant.
There’s not officially a season 2 at time of writing (although it’s coming). I eagerly anticipate it.
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I liked the first couple of episodes of One Punch Man quite a lot. Found it to be utterly hilarious. And the over-the-top parody just -worked-, especially having watched it immediately after being exposed to its contemporary Japanese Superhero show, My Hero Academia.
And then... I just got really bored with it, really fast. I don't think its message is strong enough to carry the episodes in any sort of serious way. If it's not being comedy, it just feels like a hollow shell of a show to me. When it went all-in on being the Justice League in the last two episodes, I literally fell asleep to some of the most visceral animation in modern anime. That should not happen. It was the middle of the day, I wasn't even sleepy.
I'm not quite sure when OPM went wrong, but it just flatlined for me somewhere midway through. Maybe its message just doesn't resonate with me? I think I'm the only person who doesn't love this show, and I can't figure out -why-.
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Nah, i’ve Seen some folks that don’t care for it. More thoughts when i’m Not on phone, but I had a somewhat opposite arc where I was lukewarm at first but really dug the parody once it tipped there was more going on.
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I found the manga (the cleaned up one, not the source manga) much easier to follow and more entertaining. Though I did go and watch the relevant fight scenes. I tend to nope out of manga adaptations pretty quickly these days for some reason. The transition tends to show.
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The manga is not that great early on either. I initially disliked it and became a fan as it went on. The really good stuff is past this "season".
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Batman Beyond (Season 1)
Okay, so… what if Spider-Man… but BATMAN?
The anecdotes from Timm and Dini amount to them being asked to make Batman in high school, but no mistake, the concept is much closer to “what if Spidey but Bats”. Being the key creators of one of the most influential cartoons of all time and going on to make one of the only good shows of the early 00s (Batman: TAS and Justice League, ‘natch) you expect quality in the end of course, but I’m surprised at how thoroughly they embraced the idea.
There’s a push and pull the show has for me; it can pull off transcendental brilliance moments away from struggling through an obvious writer’s problem. While it’s strongest in the opening episode (because they had nooooooooo idea how to write Bruce genuinely bonding with Terry starting out) it’s certainly something I remember cropping up here and there throughout the entire show, not just the first season. I think it comes down to just how amazing the show is at creating its aesthetic even out of the gate. Screens everywhere, clothes that make a point of accenting, rather than blending, the functional parts, doing away with photorealism on TV in favor of shadow play news, background music that moves fluidly between piano strings and guitar riffs… those things can at any moment suddenly jive and immediately suck you in, but that means the natural pains of making a new show with largely original characters and trying to find their voices stand out all the more.
Simultaneously it has to be said that there’s a real reverence for what feels like old-school comic writing. One thing folks often lament about modern books is how thoroughly the decompressed style took over; that is, every story is a 5-6 issue thing written with the trade in mind, with no real natural jumping-on point books that tell one story well while giving the reader incentive to seek out other books. And that’s where this first season sticks out. Blight is the main villain throughout, but most episodes don’t feature him in a prominent role- just Rebirth, Meltdown, and Ascension. But he appears in a majority of the others, setting up other villains and reminding us that he’s a personal nemesis to both Terry and Bruce. We learn first thing that Barbara Gordon is the new commissioner, but y’know how long we go until she has the full picture? 10 episodes in, and then it’s a couple more before she gets a spotlight episode and we get her side of the intervening ~50 years.
It’s a neat transitional period for the DCAU as a whole, and in its own way I can see liking its style more than the rest. It’s definitely the most distinct show in the canon… well, unless Static Shock is really out there, I guess I’ve never seen that.
Unusually I kept thinking of oddball episode-specific comments as I went through, so we’ll start with the weakest, then end on the best before we wrap up.
Weakest Episode- The Winning Edge. Someone just told them to do a drug episode. Steroids powered by Bane-juice makes sense for the setting and all, but it doesn’t really add anything either and… well, it’s a stock episode concept to start with, y’know? It’s okay and all, but never really elevates itself either.
Golem should be required viewing in schools. 22 minutes for a concise, thorough exploration of what toxic masculinity is, how it perpetuates, and how just being bullied doesn’t suddenly mean you’re magically the one in the right at all times.
Shriek… fuckin’ showoffs. I think that’s the entire reason Shriek exists, the sound guys had an idea and wanted to show off. That said there’s some meat to this episode I wanted to highlight even though it’s middle of the road for the season. I mean the whole conceit of how much people underestimate sound and hearing is a fun concept to start with, and there’s the undercurrent of what people do in the quiet moments revealing who they are I’m digging.
And I mean… I can’t NOT take a second to highlight the final exchange.
“The voice kept calling me Bruce. In my mind, that’s not what I call myself”
“What do you call yourself?”
*glare*
“Oh, yeah, I suppose you would. But that’s my name now.”
Best Episode- Meltdown. Of course it’s the Mr. Freeze episode. But I mean, only one episode hit me in the feels. And I think I really only need one line:
“Believe me, you’re the only one that cares.”
Rating- 7/10. I gotta admit, the high points are real good, and the low points aren’t terribly low, but aside from Meltdown it never quite popped for me and I can’t quite say why. Buuuuut y’know me, I’m gonna go with that gut reaction.
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Castle in the Sky
My first temptation is to just pick out all the Miyazaki-isms and talk about how this fits in the Ghibli canon. Except this is the first time I’ve covered one, and also I found something more specific to talk about with it anyways.
I mean, seeing as I haven’t covered one of these, let’s hit the basics. Castle in the Sky is technically the first Ghibli film… in that the main production crew of Nausicaa founded Ghibli almost immediately after its release, so while technically nothing before then is Ghibli it’s more accurate to think of this as the second after Nausicaa. And even at this point a lot of the studio’s more enduring tropes were already present:
- Unabashed feminism in the form of young leading women unafraid to take charge or fight for themselves in the face of adversity.
- Astounding sequences of flight and an unmistakable admiration for flying vehicles.
- Gorgeous backgrounds, in particular pastoral landscapes notable for their vivid colors.
- Those same backgrounds carrying a sad undertone, celebrating the resilience of nature yet taking some pains to show the deeper scars of the story at hand underneath.
- A devotion to contrasting the humanity of monsters with the monstrousness of humanity.
And there’s plenty to like about just the overall pace, the mix of comedy and seriousness, how elegantly they weave action and quiet scenes, all sorts of stuff like that.
But what that jumped out at me was the main villain. It’s easy for me of late to see fascism everywhere for ~Mysterious Reasons~, and especially the toxic masculinity that underwrites it. But there’s enough specific imagery and lines that I’m comfortable saying this is intentional. He’s driven by entitlement: he’s a Prince of Laputa! He should rule this world! How dare these vines defile the holy temples! And the way he goes about everything is very specifically hypermasculine. He uses the military, since of course violence is power, but he also holds them in clear disdain. They are beneath him, for he is heir to the power of the ancients! The technologies and weapons that are his birthright put their paltry power to shame!
I also ran across people reading some of his comments to Sheeta about resurrecting Laputa as his intention to use her to repopulate. Which… certainly fits everything else about him…
But all this makes a lot of sense. Like a lot of Miyazaki’s work Castle in the Sky works in a lot of environmental themes, most clearly when Sheeta speculates that the people of Laputa didn’t die out or anything, they simply realized they’d cut themselves off from nature and returned to a better life on the surface. So making your villain a personification of male entitlement, complete with fetishization of technology and power over nature, is a natural contrast. Of course, it also means that the main villain is a straightforwardly evil nazi-type, which is quite the contrast from most Ghibli works. Granted, recent events have taught us that the ability to easily recognize and identify such ilk is highly relevant, and muddying those particular waters wouldn’t really be very responsible.
But there is some complexity elsewhere to make up for it.
The robots are terrifying things. The first one we see melts its way through a stone castle and all the soldiers within it. It’s a product of technology in a setting that ultimately concludes on the sanctity of the natural world. But it also only does exactly what it’s told to do. It destroys the building where Sheeta is held captive because her instruction was too simple: help me. We later see dozens of them that are inert, because with no one to utilize them the technology merely returns to nature just as nature reclaims the land devastated in the past. Until seized by Muska in the finale, most of the robots merely sat, unused, a threat to no one. The one active one we see has merely maintained the garden and brought flowers to the dead. We could probably surmise it was given a more complex instruction: tend the garden, and preserve all the lives within it. And so it does, for untold centuries, perfectly benign.
Technology is only in opposition to life and the natural world when those who covet it, rather than understanding it, use it for evil ends.
Despite individual moments of beauty I dunno that I ever fully clicked with Castle in the Sky. While the story does need characters like them I don’t really have much to say about the Dola gang, and the scenes with them serve the emotional need of “we need a quiet period between the rescue and the finale”, but aside from the flexing scene (which is indeed glorious) they’re just kinda there I felt like. Admittedly the whole scene of them ‘helping’ in the kitchen just dragged for me which plays a big part. I also never really felt much of anything for the male lead? I dunno, I feel like finding those threads made me sound a little too positive since really it’s a film I like well enough but didn’t get much emotional impact from. But here we are.
Rating- 7/10.
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DuckTales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
So when I sat down to watch this, it’d been many a year since I’d actually seen the film. I was immediately struck by the fact that the villain was unmistakably Christopher Lloyd, and I somehow didn’t know this fact. Clearly my memory and insights will be impeccable for this outing.
Indeed, on that note… a lot of this is building on a series of tweets I did a couple weeks ago. All told there’s not a lot here that I found, but I also hate to let the blog go more than a month without some sort of content, so best follow through and assemble all that into something resembling thoughts.
Okay so most of the first half of the movie is a solid archeology run, followed by… some of the 90sest content I can think of. The Genie is trying his damnedest to talk like the cool kids and make him some catch phrases to land. Actually maybe that’s more 80s cartoon sensibilities. Anyways, the issue is that nothing about it is really attention grabbing, save some neat creature designs and one or two animation errors (we’ll come back to some of that stuff). They want to establish that Scrooge feels he earned the treasure, that Genie is a deeply unhappy person (and also, well, a person), and that the kids are quickly invested in his well-being, and just kinda put it out there.
Actually, the other thing of substance is that the wishes that go on are almost always twisted, despite Genie seemingly being benevolent and obedient to a fault. Webby’s wishes for a pet and living toys are so destructive they have to be unwished, and a simple wish for ice cream still ends in Dewey having some land on his head.
Second part is mostly entertaining for the creature designs, or more specifically Merlock’s animal forms. Beetle aside they’ve got a good mix of clearly being Merlock while also clearly being the animal they are, and the carry over of color and hair elements really sells the thing. He also gets beaten up pretty thoroughly, which is nice since his demise isn’t especially potent. The finale is mostly cool for the transformation of the money bin into Merlock’s castle, which is a fairly obvious “hellooooooo animation budget” moment.
But… yeah, not a lot to it. In fact, only two real takes here.
The wishes all coming out a bit corrupted for the most part is strange given Genie’s character, but make perfect sense for DuckTales. As much as Genie doesn’t really land as a character, so him getting to escape the genie life in the end doesn’t have much emotional weight for me, that Scrooge does it is interesting. Boiled down to his core, Scrooge is an idealized personification of capitalism, right there in his motto: he made it by being tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties, and he made it square. His wealth has value because it reflects his own hard work, and if he had done so by taking short cuts or swindling others it would diminish it regardless of the numbers. Literally no rich person in history can claim this, but in DuckTales capitalism works! Which also means that wish-granting in a literal sense like the Genie’s is antithetical to the setting. Sure, you’ll get it, but it’s not going to come cleanly because you didn’t earn it. And similarly, Scrooge makes two wishes that amount to “return what is rightfully mine”, then uses the last to end the cycle by freeing the Genie. Because in DuckTales, doing anything else would just be against everything Scrooge stands for.
(We’ll set aside whether a foreign adventurer can ‘rightfully’ claim the treasures of folkloric figures. DuckTales has far more questionable examples than the treasure hoard of a legendary thief and I’m probably not qualified to dig into that topic anyway. And I mean, it’s a 1990 adaptation of a comic series from the ‘50s aimed at children, that sort of examination is way outside the scope here.)
The studio here is fascinating though. Far as I can tell, this is the first published work from Walt Disney Animation France, which is what it says: an animation studio under the Disney umbrella in France. And you can tell they’re new, they have a few animation errors here and there, the backgrounds don’t quite mesh with the character models (all the ducks have a sorta gloss to them that stands out), little things. But they also put in some quality work here in terms of designs and concepts where they had the space, so Disney basically kept them on the roster helping with the TV work, then tapped them to do the Goofy Movie. And then suddenly after that… they’re listed as working on every Disney film between Hunchback and Brother Bear basically. So I dunno what the whole story here is, the studio was ultimately absorbed into the broader company then dissolved when Disney exited traditional animation after 2005… but I wanna know more.
Rating- 5/10. But no real deep insight here. It’s… fine. I appreciate bits and pieces on an intellectual level, but no real deeper emotional resonance. Just kinda basic, averagish stuff.
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“The voice kept calling me Bruce. In my mind, that’s not what I call myself”
“What do you call yourself?”
*glare*
“Oh, yeah, I suppose you would. But that’s my name now.”
This is the only thing that stuck with me from Batman Beyond. I believe you forgot Bruce pointing to his head and saying, "Tell that to him." Such a good ending for an episode I remember nothing else about.
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I believe that’s right.
It’s a pretty good summary of the show really, especially at that point.
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Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F
I think I’m kinda bored.
Which is unfair. Everything about getting to the showdown between Freeza and Goku is actually quite good. Bringing back Pilaf and the gang is a bit gratuitous I suppose, but considering how dour the film as a whole is I won’t begrudge them having a second comedy element besides Whis. Using F during Freeza’s resurrection? *chef kiss* (and let’s be real, I guarantee you that when they had the “holy shit Battle of Gods made all the money, how do we follow that up” meeting, someone just said Maximum the Hormone and the entire movie wrote itself afterward.) The fight with the Freeza Force is a bit long, but also does a great job of giving each fighter a moment and making their fighting styles visually distinct and instantly recognizable.
The opening has to get its own section of course. So Freeza has to be just history’s greatest monster right? His personal Hell is huge, and dozens of angels and other spirits are dedicated to eternally serenade him. He hangs from the great tree, encased in his pupa, there to await forever more until he can truly transform for the better. And this is all beautiful and poetic, but it really stands out because generally speaking Dragon Ball Hell has always been fairly bureaucratic; King Yemma sits at a great desk, in full business attire, rubber stamping the fates of souls. Wait in lines, work menial jobs for all eternity. But Freeza? Oh no, he gets the special hell, the ironic kind.
But about half the movie is the big fight, right? And it’s… a perfectly solid DBZ style brawl. Freeza not picking up right away that Vegeta was just waiting for a chance to kill him was weird, but it also set up the only real twist in the proceedings so that’s an alright trade-off. New forms are always fun I suppose, and both of them feel appropriately powerful in a way that DBZ could be hit or miss at. Basically though it’s sorta hard to care? I think there’re two main contributing factors.
1) The entire foundation of this fight is on shaky ground. Conceptually, by making the thing a big title fight for all the marbles between Goku and Freeza… you’re trying to be better than the original end of the Namek saga. And you can’t. Moving it to Earth so the stakes are technically higher, giving them new forms, making the occasional nod to Freeza learning from the previous bout, that’s all great and adds a little to the fight as spectacle. But you can’t replicate the original transformation to Super Saiyan, or the real meaning of that original victory: Goku is officially the strongest man in the universe. You can still present him new challenges, smarter and stronger foes, shonen power creep, and it’s fun and exciting and all that, but the cultural impact will always be less, and making that comparison so directly weakens this story by default.
(Suddenly I can’t help but wonder if this implies Vegeta’s entire character arc, his quixotic quest to recapture and overcome the original battle between him and Goku, is a metaphor for the show itself. Eh, beyond the scope of a Resurrection F post.)
2) Between the first time I watched this, near release, and now, all of Dragon Ball Super has come out. While I skipped all the episodes directly adapting this movie (I am assured this is the right decision), Freeza’s comeback in the Universe Survival arc exists now. And for all its problems, Freeza was consistently the best part of it. His transformation to Golden form there was given far more weight and spectacle than in this film, his cruelty was more terrifying, his humor more clear and funny, his power far more overwhelming until the very end. So now that I have so much more Freeza to compare him to, the little nuggets we get in Resurrection F feel so much less satisfying.
In the end Resurrection F is spectacle over substance, but nothing here is better than what’s been done either before or since in the series. That’s a bit unfair to the film in its original context of course, and what’s here is… fine, but it doesn’t stand out or hold up, at least not the way Battle of Gods does.
Rating- 6/10
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Incredibles 2
So, after chewing on this a few hours this morning, I started coming up with crazy theories. Buuuut it’s also out in theaters now, so let’s talk some basics first before we get down to that.
I’ll say out the gate I definitely like the first one more, but they are different movies and have different strengths. Nothing in this one really gets the same emotional weight as Bob’s two big emotional scenes in the first, I think most of the slower paced hero sequences worked better in the first, and it all wraps up much more concretely and satisfyingly. 2 has more flaws, mostly in that the way they weave Helen’s A plot and Bob’s B plot together doesn’t quite mesh, or at least seems like a few scenes were in a strange place? I’m having trouble pinning down exactly what the issue is.
However 2 is a lot better at big bombastic action scenes (in part just because of the advances made in 14 years of digital animation of course), and more importantly it’s the funnier movie. It leans on slapstick more directly, but y’know what, don’t underestimate good slapstick. There’s also a subtler sense of banter between the family, in that “not really angry but kinda mad” way, that never really cropped up in the original which makes sense since this one is more forward-looking and less strained for everyone.
There seems to have been a very conscious decision to highlight the ladies in this one, because Helen manages to kick even more ass than in the original (impossible as that may seem), Evelyn oozes style in a way that I have to love for a Q-type character, and Voyd is adorable and I’ll not hear otherwise.
Really this is sorta a long-form “if you want more Incredibles, this is a slightly different take on that, but definitely fills that box”. Lacks a certain something, but as theater picks go you can do far worse.
Rating- 6/10
Okay! Soooooo.
The big hot take in the era of internet hot takes has long since been that The Incredibles was basically a batch of Objectivism wrapped up in friendly kid-digestible form. I certainly touched on that when I talked about it, mostly from the perspective of “well I mean, it’s worth looking at”. And I think I got it right: a certain amount of that is inevitable, because of the nature of super heroes, but the fine details of the story all work pretty hard to fight against this: the horrifically pro-corporate Insuricare boss is portrayed even less sympathetically than Syndrome, the heroes are all under the (wholly willing!) supervision of the government, and Dash and Syndrome both using the “when everyone’s super no one is” sentiment seems like a deliberate setup to debunk it, an immature child at the start of his journey.
But if you’re so determined, you can build that argument. And I think overall Incredibles 2 thus set out to be more explicitly against such things. Bob’s obsessive need to help people was cheekily cited as one of his weaknesses in bonus materials in the original, and while he absolutely goes above and beyond in that department comparatively, 2 introduces a ton of new supers and they uniformly display that same drive to altruism. The desire to use their powers publically because it’s part of their identity fits the usual outsider mentality you see in superhero fiction, but the specific bent towards using it for good being universal even outside Helen and Bob’s personal circle is telling.
The more conclusive bit is how the villain uses the “superheroes are inherently kinda Randian” argument as the foundation of her entire plot. She weaponizes it against them, while cultivating the Objectivist Ubermench image for herself in the process.
- Makes multiple references to the fact that she personally designed and built all the tech that sustains the family business.
- Considers working in “sales” or otherwise engaging with people who are not at her level as beneath her, peasant work to foist upon her less capable brother.
- Specifically mentions her father depending on others, rather than the safe room he built, as the reason he died.
- Builds the entire character of the Screenslaver around rants of personal responsibility, decrying people for relying on heroes, or the government, or anyone but themselves to solve their problems while they leech off society.
- Specifically invokes the idea of supers seizing power for themselves when feeding them lines while mind controlled to panic the public.
That is just a laundry list of ticked boxes there, more even than Syndrome, and it feels like more of a stretch to say that isn’t the point.
Also the part where she spends the whole movie telling Helen how much alike they are and how they should be great friends, all to build up to a wholesale rejection of every one of her arguments. (…. granted that could also just be that Evelyn is into her, but I mean I’m pretty sure that “sexually attracted to Elasticgirl” is synonymous with “has a pulse” in the Incredibles universe.) But really it’s just a clearer, more direction version of the same general thrust the original had. The Incredibles concludes that being ‘special’ only matters if you’re true to yourself and those around you, and Incredibles 2 returns to one of the oldest of all heroic mantras: with great power, there must also come great responsibility.
And while there’s a lot of differences in execution, these thematic similarities are a big part of why 2 hasn’t left as much of an impression on me. Yeah, it’s doing a clearer, louder version of that one theme, but it lacks the texture of the original. Like, I don’t think there’s another good thematic reading of it. Meanwhile, you could absolutely read The Incredibles as… oh, I dunno, a veteran narrative. Or a statement on toxic fandom, or on masculinity, or about the lasting damage cold war paranoia had on that generation. Not all of them WELL, but it’s there, and when it comes to lasting the test of time, that sorta thing matters a lot. And maybe my opinion of 2 will rise over time (certainly I think my opinion of The Incredibles dipped a little over time, perhaps one day they’ll meet in the middle), but unless I missed something… it’s just kinda good, solid theater fun.
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Steven Universe (Season 1)
Steven Universe is the show humanity needed, and I hope it wasn’t too late.
Okay, wait. Basics. Steven Universe pops at a basic entertainment level. The character designs are distinct and immediately eye-catching, episodes never go too far in one emotional direction or another multiple in a row, their use of foreshadowing and planting plot devices in advance in a low-key but still memorable way is among the best I’ve seen for a kid-focused show. Especially considering that they’re clearly aiming to be showable in nearly any order while still actually having a clear and strict timeline from episode to episode if you’re binging it. They don’t always do the best job hiding their animation limits, sometimes their use of expression can drift into too formulaic, but how anyone can think this looks interchangeable with half a dozen other shows I’ll never understand.
Also there are so many homages to other shows. Also video games, somewhat unexpectedly. They borrow the robot master select screen from Mega Man 3 at one point. Pearl is a walking reference to Revolutionary Girl Utena. Garnet’s Universe is a series of Dragonball references, but then the final attack is almost certainly a Giga Drill Break. It’s worth noting they only rarely actually change the animation style, but the way they adapt elements of these shows into their own style has its own charm.
Also holy shit I am CONVINCED that the big battle in Ocean Gem was using a background track ripped from an unmade Kingdom Hearts game. They summoned the very soul of Yoko Shimomura, and I love them forever.
The show’s focus is on characters and relationships, so obviously the characters are pretty good. It’s worth noting mostly how each new cast addition manages to bring a new balance and set of traits to the overall pie, and that’s starting with 5 primary characters. Each new one keeps managing to be a new favorite, only for one of the Gems to do something great and new, but then the new characters add another layer and aaaaaaaaaa. It’s great. I mean, there are exceptions, but…
Weakest Episode- Keep Beach City Weird. I don’t have much interesting to say about this one. Actually I considered not even bothering because no episodes really stood out as tedious or offensive or anything. But I remembered some internet lists calling this one the worst and… yeah probably. Ronaldo isn’t great at the best of time, and he’s just the worst sort of asshole here, and then they give up and feed him fresh delusions in the end. I mean I… geeeet it I guess but bleh.
But mostly Steven Universe is a show about the strength of compassion. Steven doesn’t just have near-global empathy, and it’s not just a source of strength. Like, sure, the show totally pulls moments of “I FIGHT FOR MY FRIENDS” heroic resolve, but only one or two belong to Steven. And they’re more about keeping him moving than striking down his foes.
Steven Universe doesn’t just feel for everyone, and see the pain behind fear and hatred. He has the strength to understand, at some impossible intuitive level, that everything they inflict on him is just a fraction of the hurt that brought them where they are. He will heal, he can shield himself, and he can take it, because not doing so instead means he has to suffer seeing another living thing, hurt and scared and almost always alone, die.
All the best episodes of Steven Universe come back to this theme, in one way or another. So Many Birthdays really shows off how Steven thinks of the Gems and how badly he needs them both to love him and each other. Monster Buddies uh… is kinda the episode I was describing with the “hurt and scared and alone” thing. An Indirect Kiss delves into Steven himself a bit more, showing where the edges of the hole never knowing his mother lie.
I’d be remiss not to mention Alone Together, but I’ll admit I didn’t get a lot out of it personally. Like the way it can reflect the experience of the world suddenly noticing you growing up is absolutely a thing that’s pretty obvious, it’s not something I ever really experience? I mean when people randomly hit on me as a young teen I knew they were making fun of me and instead developed a healthy complex about that instead! Totally different.
Buuuuuuuuuuut….
Best Episode- Oh my god Mirror Gem. This is such an encapsulation of the entire show. Steven gets one idea in his head, it leads him to some Gem tech, he does kid stuff with it… but it turns out the key is his boundless empathy, and trying to help something that seems dangerous. But it goes off script at this point because for the first (although probably not the last) time in the show there’s not a clear resolution: Lapis says her clearly heartbroken goodbye and runs of. And sure the very next episode has the Gems confronting her, but it too has no clear-cut “just do what we’ve been doing” resolution. More than that the way they loop the voice clips to characterize Lapis while she’s still in the mirror is inspired, and her reactions afterwards keep adding little layers. Season 1 (which seems to really be two seasons but the show retroactively put them together for some internal reason) shows Lapis in exactly five episodes but that adds up to so much personality my jealousy is unbound.
I also feel sorta glad I don’t really date after watching stuff like this. I feel like I’d have long since run head firsts to fix a problem person and dashed myself on the rocks way before figuring out how to remotely help.
Something about this show inspires oversharing. Must be the empathy high.
All that said I do have a bit of a cap on how much I can hype this season? The ratio of episodes that absolutely popped to the good filler is a bit too lopsided for my tastes, and while the underlying message of the show is something that speaks to me so, so much it also can sometimes lose the thread when it needs to keep Steven… well, his age. Whatever it is. So I might undershoot the score a bit here, but it feels right in the moment.
Oh. Yes.
Whoever said “CK is Pearl” is right to a degree I think Rebecca Sugar might be inside my head and it’s weird. Stop being so right you right person.
Rating- 8/10
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Incredibles 2
and Voyd is adorable and I’ll not hear otherwise.
Got to disagree there, all the new super heroes were terribly designed and not interesting at all. I think that's one of the biggest problems with the movie: too much screentime for the boring new heroes and not enough Incredible family.
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Yay! You watched Steven Universe! And you have basically the exact reaction I was expecting and hoping for! I hope it brings you more joy as you start getting into the real meat of the series from here.
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Gravity Falls (Season 1)
The thing about perpetually coming late to the party, especially for a completed series like Gravity Falls, is you tend to get people’s impressions based on how things end, not how they’re received as they air. So in that respect the oddest thing about Season 1 is how much of a slow burn it is. ‘course, considering it spent a year and a half airing 20 episodes, and included a lot of overt elements to intrigue fans between episodes, it’s a fair argument to say that watching all of them over the span of a few days isn’t the intended means.
I don’t really plan to dig into that side of the show, although if I want to keep going with it after season 2 that’s not a bad idea. But having not been there I dunno if that outsider perspective is useful. And of course, being a slow burn is hardly a bad thing, just a surprising thing.
Fundamentally the first season is actually a very typical show for the demographic. Sitcom-ish setup mostly based in exploring childhood, coming of age, the first clashes between budding adults and their caretakers, that sorta thing. And considering the love for the cast, that’s actually to be expected. But the supernatural elements, the mystery so boldly jammed straight into the center of that opening? Gravity Falls plays very coy with it all. Oh sure, there’s usually a touchstone moment (typically a single line of dialog) of Dipper remarking on the weirdness of the town, and usually there’s some abnormal element attached to the week’s lesson/problem, but until Gideon Rises really only the first episode goes all in on weirdness.
Now having a general idea of the ending I know that slow burn goes very fast very quickly once it starts picking up, but here we’re really focused on making sure we understand who the cast are and how they function as a unit.
To that end I’m a bit mixed: I know he’s not, but I have trouble thinking of Dipper as not being the “boring main character” type. No mistake, he has traits, the way the show sets him up to start taking on the pretenses demanded of masculinity only for the episode’s lesson to kick it right back to pieces is very much appreciated, but… I dunno? It’s hard to get a sense for him because he’s starting this journey not as a boy but as unshaped clay. We don’t know who he is because he doesn’t seem to have really defined himself at all. Dipper will depend entirely on where he ends this journey and… well, this is the middle.
Mabel… oh Mabel. Why aren’t there more real Mabels? Okay that’s unfair, we can’t actually have that many before we reach complete global saturation, but I think everyone needs a Mabel in their lives. Not so much a shoulder devil as a shoulder sister, who reminds you to keep your head in the clouds and find joy in other people sometimes. And yet that’s not to say she doesn’t have worries, or depth. But there’s a deep sense of who she wants to be at the core of Mabel’s being, and her conflicts are when she starts to doubt if she can be that person, or if that person can find a place among others. The contrast between that and Dipper’s quest to find that for himself forms the core of the series really, and even here you can see that they both know this and fear what it may bring. Or rather, fear that it might mean they might become people who don’t love each other anymore. But I think going into that should probably wait until the series is done.
The rest of the Mystery Shack crew are a bit one note, with asterisks all over the place. Grunkle Stan sits upon a throne of lies made from a house of cards, and more than anything else the season finale wants you to know that throne is going to start crumbling down very, very soon. Soos… his moments are great but his baseline sometimes gets a bit creepy I’m afraid. Wendy is who the plot needs her to be at this point, but they leave themselves plenty of room to go places with her. It’s a strange way to handle the supporting cast really, because while they slot easily into a lot of different stories there’s plenty here for people to glom into if that’s the character for them? I’m not sure how to describe the vibe they give off exactly, almost like a +1 Archetype if you will.
I’m going to skip the episode honors this time around, but I do want to single out one for further discussion.
Too Real- The Hand That Rocks the Mabel. Okay, so a lot Dipper’s quest for identity is him trying on and quickly rejecting a lot of aspects of… let’s call it traditional masculinity. He wants to be masculine, indeed he seems in quite a hurry to be a man, but at every turn he keeps finding out that all the usual ways manhood is defined involves hurting others. It’s common enough that I’m comfortable saying a big part of Gravity Falls as a show is exploring masculinity and trying to find a form of it that works today. And in that light this episode, Gideon’s debut, is something that had to be here. The degree to which Gideon cultivates the mask of the classic Nice Guy is almost unnerving. It’s all an act, not just in the way any “Nice Guy” is ultimately not sincere but in a “he’s a swindler intentionally creating a persona of being a Nice Guy” sense. He’s so villainous he doesn’t even realize the act he’s putting on is a red flag to someone who’s appropriately cynical even when pulled off flawlessly.
And gotta say, it’s a hell of a thing to watch the episode lay this all out? The manipulations Gideon pulls out to keep getting those reluctant “yes” agreements from Mabel is so textbook it’s eerie. He breaks down in the way of all abusers, something that seems especially potent on the day this is being posted. But they never go full throttle with it, which I appreciate. It makes it a lot easier to send younger audiences away with the core lesson: if you say no, and they keep asking, leave. Run away. If they won’t take no the first time they won’t take no ever, and teaching people that red flag is something I’m glad to see.
Mmm. Writing this out I’m definitely finding some angles to really get a better bead on the first half of the show, but I gotta admit, my actual experience with the show wasn’t amazing by any stretch. It’s good! And the seeds for sheer awesome are absolutely there. But just as 20 episodes of television…
Rating- 7/10
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Oh boy get ready for Season 2.
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Gravity Falls (Season 2)
Dipper Pines and the Quest for Manliness (Part 2).
Season 2 does try to keep a lid on the secrets it unveiled at the end of the last season, but that’s used deliberately to build tension, it gives things a much more concrete feel of building pressure than season 1’s slow burn. And mostly they use this time to start giving more dimensions to Soos and Wendy.
Wendy turns pure Action Girl, on the premise of “how else does the lone girl in a family of lumberjacks function”. It works, but also since it means she gets to see Dipper be something other than “awkward dork with an obvious crush on her”, they get to form more of a… I don’t wanna say partnership, but a camaraderie. While Dipper visibly has a small hope in the back of his mind that maybe, y’know, someday when the gap in their ages isn’t so relatively large things could go back in a romantic direction, he’s also managed to internalize the idea that they spend time together without that being the focal point. But more than that, since she gets to do things besides be disaffected at everything, it’s a lot easier to appreciate her dry snark. It’s certainly a great primer for the finale’s buildup at any rate.
Soos… the two big Soos-focused episodes this season are commonly cited as people’s favorite episodes, and they’re certainly not wrong. For our purposes they also tie nicely into the overarching themes of masculinity. Soos and the Real Girl shows a thorough knowledge of some dark, dark corners of the internet, and does a good job of showing both the temptation of those sorts of behaviors and why a good person would never fully fall into it. If anything the trouble Soos has is that he cares too much about the game, making him easy to manipulate for GIFfany. Blendin’s Game now, that’s magical. As a contained story it might be the best one in the series? But despite Soos feeling a bit disconnected from the rest of the cast earlier in the show, mostly since his attachment to Stan is played as pathetic, this one episode moves him fully and naturally into the family. It also brings some subtle cues for how the show views masculinity; Soos is mostly harmless before, but here we see just how deep the goodness at his core goes, and that’s almost entirely him just learning his own form of manhood. Stan certainly had affection for him at some level, but he just wasn’t emotionally mature enough to fill that Dad-shaped void in Soos’ life. They made it work, but Soos still had to be his own guide. And ultimately this is the lesson Dipper has to pick up in the end, and fitting all that road mapping into this one episode is great.
Not What He Seems is the fulcrum point of the series. Everything before is designed to bring us to the moment Mable has to choose whether or not to hit a button and close the portal Stan’s spent most of his life trying to open. Dipper, who’s spent all summer becoming ever more disillusioned with everyone in his life, the repeated failed models for adulthood, and Stan most of all. Or the consummate con man, completely sincere and desperate for perhaps the first time in his entire life.
A man like Stan can’t change overnight of course. He almost immediately reverts to type once this moment is past, but the foundation has been at last shaken. I guess in theory you could say just having the kids around, reminding him of better days, before the only true bond he formed in his life was broken, started that process, but that moment of trust is the beginning of the end. He can’t forgive Ford yet, but the 30 years of stasis running the Mystery Shack and searching for his brother is over, and he noticeably becomes a more complete person in each episode. Still a trouble maker and a scammer, but with a more adventurous spirit, with clearer moral boundaries, and with less and less spite.
Put another way, the Stan Pines in the first episode wouldn’t have even stayed in town once Weirdmageddon began. The Stan Pines in Not What He Seems would never have invited Bill into his mind to be erased. It’s a long road, but he finds something worth caring about again, and even grows enough to try again with Ford.
Since Dipper is, in the end, the focus of the show’s core arc, we’ll talk about Mabel first. Like I said for season 1, Mabel is a character who knows who she wants to be, and instead struggles with whether the world will let her be herself. The idea that people are supposed to change as they grow up, and seeing the ways the world gets worse and worse as you approach adulthood terrifies her, because she can’t see a way of being a good person there. Her sense of right and wrong tells her everything she sees about high school is wrong, and the idea of living that every day is… a lot.
More than that Mabel is basically Kamina. Don’t worry if you don’t know that name, because the relevant comparison is conveniently boiled down to a single quote.
“I was at the end of my rope. But Simon kept on digging away. His drilling let me put on a brave face… whenever I feel timid and weak, whenever I feel like I’m losing confidence, I think back to the sight of his back all hunched over, digging away. I think to myself ‘I won’t be laughed at by that back’”.
So too with Mabel and Dipper. His stodgy persistence is the mechanism by which Mabel’s sense of justice steers itself. Without him, she can keep going out of sheer momentum, but eventually she’ll dash upon the rocks. But his mere presence let’s her be Mabel, one who won’t let down that nerd.
Ford is very much set up as the role model Dipper has been looking for. A man with the same dedication to truth and knowledge as Dipper, who can actually teach him how to turn that part of himself into a life. It’s very likely the first time in his entire life Dipper sees a way to become his own person, someone he would even want to be. And that sort of thing can really blind you to the growing they still have to do.
Ford is exactly as self-centered as his brother, it just manifests in a completely different way. He loves the idea of solving the world’s big mysteries, of changing the world and human understanding of it, which can be noble. But mostly it just means that he did it, he fulfilled his destiny, the destiny of all smarty pantses; he did a great thing, and everyone will know he did it. Now, Ford is still more emotionally mature than Stan. It might be a bit abstract for him, but he knows that it’s important to make sure people like and respect you overall, life’s easier that way. And certainly if there’s a risk of ending the world you won’t really accomplish much by letting that go down. But like his brother he only truly connects with other people again once he meets Dipper and Mabel. An emotionally aware person wouldn’t go 20 plus years without realizing his brother was devastated and made a rash decision in weakness before making contact again, y’see.
So Stan and Ford’s arcs don’t conclude until well into Weirdmageddon, because how else could things go. But more generally because it was important for the ritual to fail, because showing the depths malformed masculinity go is key to putting a proper bow on the show’s broader themes. There’s a nice layer of having the first bond formed between members of the circle be the last to heal, of showing just how profound the break between the brothers was, but under that is where the show comes together. Stan and Ford are old men, who became men in very lonely, misinformed ways. For men like them, problems aren’t prevented by communicating dangers between people. And they aren’t solved once problems rear their heads but before they become catastrophes through the cooperation and affection between different peoples. They’re solved at the last moment before the end, through the sacrifice of ‘disposable’ men.
How much of world history has gone that way? Most? All? I feel like we’re living through several of those scenarios right now, except the sacrifices are 20% of the world’s population living in coastal regions. But depressing comments on the nature of humanity aside, it also sheds some light on reversing Stan’s sacrifice in the end. Stan’s stubborn masculinity doesn’t have to be the way. We don’t have to accept that such sacrifices are necessary, because we’ve learned better ways. And dipping back into the show’s weirdness? If Ford learns those lessons, well, of course Stan learns them by proxy, no? I mean, what human ‘magic’ goes further back than twins?
So what sort of man is Dipper Pines? Well, he’s not one, because he doesn’t have to be just yet. I think he learned, more scientifically of course, the lesson Soos accidented his way into: don’t be any one man. Look at the examples of others, see the pieces that feel right for you, and weave them into your life. And really the twin magic strikes again, but fittingly as inverses for fraternal twins. Mabel has a sense of right and wrong, but not always the courage to trust it. Dipper always trusts his instincts, but doesn’t always have his right/wrong compass calibrated. The bond between them not only makes them better, but each of them can’t steer a proper course without the other.
So let’s touch on the everything else before wrapping up. Because the internet has a lot, and I mean so much, of content touching on the quality of the show’s animation and homages or the way it weaves mysteries into the show. And that stuff’s great, but I haven’t invested the time or energy to really catalogue it better than others.
The way those things interact with the extended cast is worth noting though. I usually walk into a series knowing the broad strokes of its story, but even with that there’s a lot of satisfaction to stuff like McGucket finding his identity, and seeing all the pieces falling into place as the story goes. The show admitting outright that Blubs and Durland were lovers in the end is nice and feels like rewarding the viewer for paying attention the same way the mystery clues did. There’s a few others I’ve forgotten between watching and writing, but the show taking the cast just as seriously as the mystery gives the show a much stronger feel than a lot of this type.
Rating- 9/10. In the end I do feel kinda disconnected from the show, and never quite got the huge feels from it, but damn if rating it any lower doesn’t feel like an immense disservice.
PS: Oh my god the Mabel shorts are SO GOOD. Just so good you guys.
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Chicken Little
So I watched this a couple days ago and mostly forgot it. Rather than do the simple thing of watching it again, I think writing things out to remember them will more accurately capture what this movie is about. Chicken Little is in the running for worst film of the Disney Animation Studios canon, and while the other two most-cited contenders aren’t movies I’ve seen, that’s definitely a fair statement. And the reasons why it fails are best illustrated by this lack of memorability.
The problems start immediately, with the movie rapidly flipping through several Disney fairy tale opening options, calling each cliché. Aside from being a cliché itself even in 2005 thanks to Dreamworks, you’re priming your audience to require subversion; reminding people there’s nothing new under the sun means you need to surprise them much more than something that makes no such pretense. The truly damning thing is this isn’t the tone of the movie at all. It’s a little weird, and the contemporary setting is even now rare for Disney films, but fundamentally it isn’t trying to subvert children’s fables, it’s stretching desperately to make one fill 90 minutes (and coming up short even then).
From there the opening act sets up the apparent core conflict, with Chicken Little’s panicked declaration that the sky is falling falling on deaf ears, including those of his father, whose only goal in life is seemingly to pass through it entirely unnoticed. A better movie might have turned this into a scathing critique of political and moral apathy, but instead it later chooses to be a Disney movie about family reconciliation. Like… Dad whose name I won’t dignify by looking up, the problem wasn’t that you have no faith in your son, it’s that you have no faith in anything! Rather than pay the slightest attention to what’s going on in your world, you heard someone speaking out of turn and scolded them to calm down, because anything that draws attention to yourself is automatically bad. That’s a much deeper problem that having a heart-to-heart 10 minutes before credits roll doesn’t fix.
But even knowing it doesn’t go anywhere, and setting aside that the storybook opening has already ruined the movie’s tone, this could still have worked. But then the movie tortures logic for a while. Chicken Little is scared to confront his dad (sure), so he figures the better solution is to win the town’s trust (…okay). And the best path to do that is to become a town hero (losing the plot here), so he’ll become the start player of the local baseball team. At this point I’m pretty sure the actual problem of the movie is they wanted desperately to satirize American culture but weren’t good enough writers to actually SAY anything. The reasoning in the movie seems to be “people will listen to anything a celebrity says, therefore all I have to do is become the best baseball player in town and I win!” And if it was something Chicken Little wanted to do for other reasons, or had the slightest previous skill in, or wasn’t specifically designed so it would take a miracle for this plan to work, or even if the plan completely failed and he had to come up with something that he was legitimately good at instead, all of those are better story ideas that could give it thematic heft. Instead it’s basically a way to revert the movie world to the status quo it had before the opening scene, except it wastes 20 minutes of screen time and steals the spotlight from a young tomboy. That part comes back.
So. We’re back to square one, and so Chicken Little manages to stumble upon the original cause of the invisible thing that hit his head. Drumroll please!
(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5893faa1ebbd1a8f680352a1/t/5b468335aa4a99d99e8845c5/1531349134876/THECONFESSIONALS7.jpg)
Yup. There was an invisible spaceship, they left behind their kid, and now they think he’s been kidnapped and they’ll wipe the town off the map looking for him. It’s all a big misunderstanding and all Chicken Little has to do to save the day is be honest and get people to believe him!
Okay, so I guess it’s slightly unfair to say there’s no subversion here. The entire thing does turn the moral of the original fairy tale on its head. But that’s not the same thing as Shrek-style subversion, and it doesn’t really work even in the context of the story, because it’s not a gradual learning curve, he just tries the same thing repeatedly until accidental evidence is finally dumped on his lap in such quantities people finally listen. And the whole thing is so padded and diluted that even that tiny thread of thematic thrust doesn’t really do anything.
And that’s the thing. Nothing in this movie has any emotional weight. The character models are notably ugly, which doesn’t help with garnering accidental empathy, but that’s the problem. Any caring for the story or characters here would have to be carried by the physical acting because nothing in the story gives it space or detail to generate that response. The cast is a bunch of comedy sidekicks not provided any good jokes, no one’s given the dramatic pathos to be effective, there’s no clear reasoning for the town’s hostility to Chicken Little in the first place even, which mostly matters because it seems pretty clear he was already a bit of an outcast before the opening scene but we never get to see it in action. The only character I actually felt bad for was Foxy Loxy, because being brainwashed into a girly girl sits just that badly with me on principle. Apparently there’s a scene I didn’t even notice where she actually bullies the main character, but considering the entire movie is bullying him for the crime of existing I probably wouldn’t have noticed even if I hadn’t completely checked out of caring by then.
Rating- 4/10. As much as I’m ragging on it, the thing is it doesn’t manage to be actively offensive. It’s just… nothing. A flailing thing that leaves no impact at all.
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There was also Home on the Range, which I remember nothing about except that Roseanne Barr was a cow.
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Yeah, Home on the Range and Black Couldron are the other two I hear as “worst”, but i’ve Seen neither.
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Black Cauldron is fine, just too dark for a Disney movie.
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Yeah, I got the impression that it's... mediocre basically? Like not really a good adaptation, not as good a "dark" movie as contemporary Bluth films, and not Disney enough to be on-brand, but perfectly watchable and mostly inoffensive.
Home of the Range sounds like a real contest for being super bad, but I missed a chance to snag a copy ~4 years ago and don't feel like going out of my way to track it down now. If I find something I'll pick it up but *shrug*
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Coraline
The first time I watched Coraline, I hadn’t really read any Neil Gaiman. And while I still haven’t read Coraline, I’ve read some of his other work, I’ve seen some of his work on Doctor Who, I have a pretty solid grasp of Neil Gaiman’s quirks and the stamps he puts on his work.
I feel like I should have been able to tell Coraline was one of his without having been exposed to him yet. Few things are more distilled essesnce of Gaiman than a story of a child learning the rules of ancient magical beings and engaging in battles of wits, aided by ordinary things infused with their folkloric properties and just a touch of modernity being foreign to magical monsters.
But let’s back up a bit.
I’d forgotten how much of a slow burn this was? The events in the world behind the door escalate in their wish-fulfillment very slowly, and the back and forth between it and the real world lasts the bulk of the run time, in multiple verses. And really the story wouldn’t work without it, being able to see Coraline’s frustration with reality build more and more, when she has ever better experiences with Other Mother to contrast it with? It puts that little bit of a veil over the obvious evil behind a perfect world where everyone has buttons for eyes, and lets the viewer have that little bit of doubt that maybe they should want Coraline to stay too. It also gives the sudden shift once Other Mother offers to let her stay in exchange for her eyes retain a horror vibe despite everything being so clearly too good to be real.
And what’s great is you need all those misdirects because Coraline herself is so smart. Her natural impulse is to question everything around her: why is this like this, what’s over the hill, why can’t things be better. The thing that makes her tempting to Other Mother, the desire to imagine something better, also makes her dangerous. And presented with a hint, or a new fact, she’ll incorporate and utilize it very quickly. It’s just kinda a joy to watch her be so vibrantly young and eager honestly.
Really it’s just a perfect primer for Neil Gaiman’s work, and that’s intensely valuable. Horror without terror, skepticism without nihilism, honoring superstition and folklore without bowing to it, there’s a lot Gaiman does that few others have done, and the more people that explore those aspects of humanity the better.
So hey, let’s sing the praises of Laika. This is their first work, and while you can certainly tell they were figuring out the limits of what they could and couldn’t do, there’s some pretty amazing stuff here. What impresses me most is the tinier effects really. They don’t do much of it for obvious reasons, but they do dabble in dust and electric effects, and knowing how stop-motion works it’s an amazing thing to even attempt, let alone pull off pretty well. More than that the designs here are just wonderful, it’s all very stylized and distinct but never so much that the subtle off-ness of the other world immediately pops. The fact that it’s wrong is still immediately obvious, but the delights therein are also just real enough to want to overlook it.
Much as I can wax on about Gaiman, Coraline does feel a bit insubstantial overall. I can’t really quantify it exactly, but I guess the fact that it lacks any meatier happening than a single wicked witch means it never leaves the impression Gaiman’s weighter novels or Laika’s later work Kubo did. Still impressive and well worth watching, but lacks the personal investment those gave me.
Rating- 7/10
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Coraline before Coco?! #%$@!
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Coco is so good! I've watched it about three times to do it here and can't figure out how to approach it!
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Ralph Breaks the Internet
This sequel feels more like a Disney movie than the original. The Pixar-ian emphasis on creating the world of the original forms the backbone of that story, and having that in place is the only reason this film can have an entirely new setting but have the conflict it does.
Although I guess in a way the saturation of reference humor maybe makes this the Dreamworksiest of Disney films.
Since the Internet as a setting is way more about just the sheer scope and cute references, the main thrust here is the continuing relationship between Vanellope and Ralph. And I want to lead off with that because in the end I think this is a slightly weaker movie because while they give a lot more screen time and care to that character dynamic it never quite has the same heart as the original. No one moment has the sheer emotional punch of Ralph smashing the kart in the original. I mean I can get myself to tear up just remembering that sitting here, there is no shame in not living up to that moment, but it’s just kinda the simplest way to summarize how I feel about the film overall. So yeah: there’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s just not quite as special as the original in either emotional punch or creating an amazing world. So let’s get to what’s working.
I do enjoy the main conceit at play here. Sure, you and I could never make thousands of dollars on internet videos overnight, but we’re not living 80s video game villains who can create videos purely in time required to shoot. And while it’s a bit of a sketch show at points because of it, mostly they’re kinda clever in their very precise mix of lameness and endearing qualities. And just as a means to give Vanellope and Ralph things to share reactions to, it’s great. You can really feel the six years of friendship they’ve built up, as a contrast to the growing rift between Ralph’s comfort with himself and Vanellope’s need to do something more with herself.
I think the degree to which they made Shank the coolest person in existence walked the line perfectly. Being Gal Gadot helped immensely there, her particular accent makes her sound authentically badass no matter how she says it or what she’s saying, so she can be incredibly casual and use the game’s lingo but you never doubt for a second that she’s a stone cold killer under the right circumstances.
And let’s be real, that chase sequence in the middle of the Disney movie was one hell of an action beat and not remotely what anyone would expect. Well, okay, they probably did once the full Fast and Furious vibe of that game was in the trailers but that’s not how Disney normally does action dangit.
I cannot understate how much Calhoun killed it every second she was on screen.
Rating- 7/10. Be sure to stick around after the credits.
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There was a scene in the trailer that wasn't in the movie and that makes me sad.
Yeah, didn't like it nearly as much as the first one. I found it too hard to believe Vanellope would abandon her friends that readily. And didn't the first film establish that going turbo was inherently bad?
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse
So why haven’t y’all watched this yet?
There’s some visual elements in the film I don’t want to give away to an unawares audience, but almost all my impressions of it are really based on them, so between that and the movie being out a mere weekend as I’m putting this up… yeah. Go catch it on the big screen now, then come back to me. It’s good, 8/10 stuff, but with plenty of bonuses. Go!
Honestly the movie is self-evidently good to the point I want to start out with my most negative reaction: at a surface level this being so obviously A Spider-Man Movie that I wonder if it’s just a bit too generic. The tale of Miles Morales hits the beats of the Spider-journey so thoroughly it’s very obvious.
And the movie makes that part of the narrative, turning what could have been an unfortunate implication, that the black latino Spider-Man has to be carried by all the others for his first movie, into a strength; anyone can be Spider-man if they try, and more importantly you could be Spider-Man.
I’ve rarely been in a theater and had an entire audience crack up as often as they did at Spider-verse. A lot of the humor didn’t quite click for me, in part because I think some of the slapstick segments go on long enough to be uncomfortable? Old Peter being passed out and pulled across Brooklyn with Miles along for the ride is funny for 30 seconds, can hold a good rhythm for a couple minutes, but the length it goes on in the movie starts to feel like they just wanted to make the poor guy suffer.
Alright! Time to gush.
It’s not only a gorgeous movie, with an immediately recognizable New York with vibrant detail, but the crossover elements manifesting in the animation style both artistically and in motion sells effortlessly that these are people from incredibly different places. Realizing Peter Porker so brilliantly in a cg animated film is something I’m not sure I can point to a better example of, Peni isn’t just out of an anime, she’s sporting that very slightly western style you’d see more in shows like Avatar than most anime out of Japan. The way Miles’ street art is brought to life does an amazing job of not just being impressive, but selling the way this is a manifestation of his self and spirit into physical form.
The little touches in the story and using the Spiders are nice. I certainly plan to get this on video just so I can try and dissect some of the big scenes for added easter eggs. The gags subtler gags worked in around the wackier characters hit home nicely: Spider-Noir vs Rubik’s Cube is something everyone should experience. Spider-verse has my second favorite post-credits of the year (nothing’s going to top Ralph), definitely stick around for that. And the movie being so willing to mix comedy and drama is always welcome; I’m never going to complain about a little girl mourning her robot companion while a talking pig offers her a shoulder.
In spite of all this madness the core of the story is always Miles’ Spider-Man origin, and that the madness around it only serves to support, emphasize, and contrast his twists on that origin. Prowler’s design and unique lighting makes him absolutely pop against the other characters, lending him the most menace of any enemy in the film, which naturally lends that much more power to his refusal to hurt Miles in the end. The shirt clutching speech, and its reversed reprise, is a perfect sort of grapple where you both feel how sudden and paralyzing it can be but also just as quickly remember it wouldn’t truly be hard to break out of for Spider-Man. As noted several paragraphs ago, the similarity of Miles’ story to the others is a point of bonding; we’re the ones who’ve walked this road, and we know you too can come out the other side of it a hero.
It’s mostly visual, but I wanted to single out the final battle. Because despite being probably the only big-name Marvel hero that he had no personal involvement in, I have to think that far more than Stan Lee or Steve Ditko, it’s Jack Kirby that gave this one a standing ovation from the beyond. The way the super collider’s interdimensional portal manifest is possibly the first time I have ever seen Kirby’s art style so vividly, eye-poppingly rendered in motion. Subatomic space in Ant Man and the magical realms of Dr. Strange have nothing on those perfect inky-black Kirby Dots from the beam between worlds. The dimensional web we get glimpses of when someone’s passing through the door is so perfectly a recreation of expertly used negative space on a comic panel you can’t look away. The way the rest of the room gets swallowed up by the energies and other dimensions spilling out of the portal, but you can see hints of the original room peaking behind them… ahh!! So good!
There’s definitely some tendencies in the way the movie is written and presented that betray it’s younger target audience than most modern super hero fare, and the big emotional moments only rarely land with the same emotional punch as most of Pixar or Disney’s output, but the unique visual flair and openly inspirational messaging definitely elevate it into their company. Not always for everyone, but something everyone needs a little more of in their life.
Rating- 8/10
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Zombieland Saga (Season 1?)
This show went and did a thing, and it works hard to undue some of my goodwill toward it.
Don’t set up a redemption arc for your abusive asshole character unless you’re willing to really put in the work folks.
Zombieland Saga is a show that probably does require a bit of introduction, so let’s start with what it is. There’s a subgenre of anime know as Idol Shows, that exist as a sort of cross-promotional effort to advertise and build up the backstory/mythos for an actual singing group. Building into the real-life decline of the Idol business in Japan, or at least it’s diffusion and mutation into new forms, Zombieland Saga’s Franchouchou uses an extreme gimmick: each of the 6 performers in the group are dead, zombies raised by their manager to become the saviors of the Saga Prefecture, plagued by an aging populous and declining tourism. And so each of them are legends within their field; the founder of a biker gang, a courtesan from the Meiji era, a Showa era singer, the leader of a turn of the millennium Idol group who was struck by lightning and died mid-concert.
And then there’s our lead character Sakura. The show opens with her taking an acceptance letter for tryouts for an Idol group, practically leaping out her front door, declaring good morning to the world… and is promptly hit by a truck and killed. Sakura is a well realized character who I like a lot but also the focal point for everything that keeps me from really embracing Zombieland Saga. The intro here covers a lot of it: the show is completely unafraid to embrace the undead nature of its cast for extreme physical comedy and I can’t think of a single instance it worked for me. And more importantly a lot of instances where the violence was just uncomfortable. I dunno that I have anything eloquent to say here: I don’t like seeing girls decapitated for comedy. Sorry.
More than that is Sakura’s role as the focal point of manager Kotaro’s behavior. This guy is a fucking asshole, openly abusive of his charges, and Sakura is always front and center in most of his scenes. His catchphrase may as well be “DUMBASS ZOMBIES”. And here’s the thing. Both overtly and covertly, Zombieland Saga faces the sheer grind and unseemly facts of the Idol life. There’s an argument to be made the comedy is more meant to derive from the sort of “if you didn’t laugh you’d have to cry” nature of a lot of it, and creating a cast of heroines that can withstand it and rise above, turning the tragedies of their deaths into a source of strength as zombies, is sorta the point. But you lose that thread pretty badly at a certain point.
Weakest Episode- It’s Zombiemental Saga. This forms a bit of a two-parter with episode 6, and honestly it’s just kinda a dull episode unto itself. But it’s the first signs of the “oh but actually the complete asshole really cared all along and just wanted to motivate you!!” aspect to Kotaro’s character, and ergggghhhhhhh.
No mistake, the final reveal is worse, but… when they hint that his motivation is directly tied to Sakura in episode 11 it’s also in context of Sakura finally pushing back against his abuse, deflecting some of the implications a bit, and in the (season?) finale when he turns out to have been a classmate of hers who hid his identity with a fake name after resurrecting her, it’s a two second flashback that’s not commented on and the rest of the episode is reasonably strong. I guess the actual reveals of his background don’t really matter at this point, but the overall softening of his character without typically adjusting his behavior or showing a meaningful backlash, pushback, or comeuppance over it… it really kills the vibe on a show that mostly coasts on character beats and generating cast empathy.
Bad as all that is, it didn’t manage to completely kill my enthusiasm for the show, and what works her works too well.
Best Episode- Though My Life May Have Ended Once By Some Twist of Fate I have Risen, and If Song and Dance Are to Be My Fate, Then Carrying the Memories of My Comrades in My Heart As I Sally Forth Shall Be My Saga.
What the hell’s normal supposed to be?
There’s a subtlety to this one I dig a lot, and why I want to start talking about the good parts here. Saki’s solution to the mess she finds her old life in is fascinating, because it amounts to recreating the circumstances of her death and that seems to have been the plan. Her reaction to Reiko clocking her square in the jaw is to smile and tell young Maria ‘looks like your mom is plenty tough, maybe just prove to her you can keep up’. While keeping her old gang alive was appealing, her main goal was always to make sure her best friend could keep that normal life she’d wanted, despite still not seeing the appeal. And honestly I get the sense that, in part, she felt Reiko *deserved* to clock her one. For dying in the first place, I imagine.
It’s also one of the funniest episodes for my money. Girls armed with chainsaws step up to Saki for interfering. Saki does a barest glance in their direction, the screen freezing into sketch art for an instant, and immediately they back down, knowing she’s far out of their league. And if I have anything to say about it the Dorami Gang’s awkward stalk shall live forever.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mUDsw0Z6H0c/maxresdefault.jpg)
There’s plenty of small moments between the cast of course. Many belong to Saki (“Who cares what kinda junk she’s got!” indeed), but part of the main thrust of the season is the growing sense of camaraderie within Franchouchou and as such our lead character Sakura is often at the forefront. Indeed, until earning Saki’s respect via rap battle in the second episode, Saki was pretty much content to just be a shiftless rebel in her undead life. And to some extent a show that’s just small moments and girl bonding time is something I really appreciate right now, if I’m honest.
Rating- 6/10. I watched this in shifts, and if I’d gone all the way up to Episode 12 without knowing the final reveal on Kotaro I’d probably have rated this a bit higher: being cued in that it was coming got me to notice the gradual shift towards more sympathetic characterization for him a lot more. But yeah, that really sours what until then was more of an 8. Blargh.
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CK, have you seen the Dragon Prince on Netflix? It is super great.
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Steven Universe (Season 2)
I think whoever did the episode selection is on the drugs, so this will be a bit looser than I usually do. What they call season 2 here starts with "Say Uncle" and ends with "The Answer", and while the Season 1 set did rather obviously not stop at the actual end of the season so that's just a natural consequence, it is utterly baffling that they cut 4 episodes short of what most outlets call the end of Season 2 since uh... there's clearly an ongoing arc for Peridot they just... stop in the middle of. It's really obvious that narratively "Message Received" is the actual end of the season from the barest glance at the summary! Bah.
I mean if not for that aspect, sure, The Answer is a perfectly valid closure point to end a season on, but... they'd clearly gotten halfway through a distinct arc here, not just slow season-long buildup.
Now THAT said
Best Episode- Sworn to the Sword. Goddammit Steven Universe you can stop making me characters already! I'm already Pearl, you didn't have to make an entire episode about how Pearl feels she's less of a person and not worthwhile without serving another and teaching that behavior to the overly-smart and precocious budding sword girl!
All that said the season arc, despite the conclusion being chopped in half, is interesting because it feels a lot more like the show consciously trimmed down on the... filler for lack of better word to keep having more stuff with Peridot. Granted the fact that Peridot is very... very blatantly a catgirl on the spectrum and they just take their sweet time shifting from "wait a minute" to "okay this is a little TOO obvious guys" makes it all kinda weird because she's honestly hilarious but I'm not sure how much I should actually laugh at it since some of it is clearly her having an extended breakdown, not just being quirky and high strung.
Honestly the biggest problem I have here actually is the episode collection because they stopped in a bad place so not having access to more of the show RIGHT NOW is a lot more annoying than it was with the Season 1 set. Although the more compact season did give it more of a overall unified vibe which is cool.
Dunno about a rating honestly.
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Seasons are an affectation for Steve Universe. (https://turtlebyte.github.io/stevenhiatus/) Someone needed to market it for things.
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You're not wrong (indeed I'm perfectly happy to be going to the series a few years later to avoid that hot mess), it's just weird that the writing has clear finales and stopping points but not only does the production not notice, but they didn't bother to correct it for the releases 5 years and a hundred plus episodes later.