the first season of birdgirl is interesting. like every episode has an high concept that is much funnier on paper than the actual execution of it. i have trouble determining what doesn’t work for me personally. like is it just 00s era humor that i’ve grown out of? is it the lack of hanna barbera characters? i feel like the cast are somehow both going too big and too subtle. feel like maybe i’m hanging on to it because it’s an adult comedy with a decent look and good animation and i just don’t click with it
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i am of course the most excited about the venture bros movie but honestly also kinda excited to see the follow up on metalocalypse
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You know how like, back in the 00s there were all those guys who had blogs who would insist that He-Man had the potential to be a deep, complex, adult story when it was literally made by a series of borderline grifters building the cheapest conceivable toy line and cartoon?
Well the guy with a blog this time is Kevin Smith, and Netflix is making his dream a reality.
This somehow sounds more potentially painful than what imagined Kevin smith doing a goofy intentionally comic He-Man cartoon would be.
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look as a tokusatsu fan
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Someone link that video again where they’re talking about making the fucking green tiger. Greatest film on the internet
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I mean, technically they would be blogging about the He-Man reboot which was doing slightly more mature storytelling in the service of selling cheaply made toys and
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The specific thing that sticks in my mind about that reboot was despite, more ‘serious’ writing Evil Lynn would say rhymes to cast spells something it seems like she should do in the original but very much does not.
Also her name was still Evil Lynn.
i thought her name was evelynn
also kevin smith sucks im still really mad about this, he man deserves better
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You have to understand
He-Man features the lowest possible effort world-building.
You’d think that but then you get that episode that reveals He-Man’s mother is actually a NASA pilot from our earth who fell through a black hole to Eternia or something. Also Skeletor is He-Man’s uncle but that one’s comics-only and only hinted at.
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Thing is the original series bible had a lot of stuff that basically got shelved. Including Evil-Lyn being originally named Evelyn because she was an astronaut on that same mission with He-Man’s mom but instead of getting dumped on Eternia she along with the dudes who would become Tri-Clops and Beastman got dumped of Infinita which was Eternia’s evil twin in opposite orbit of their sun that knew only evil and basically warped everybody there, along with just the fact that the environment was an irradiated hellhole because as a planet of nothing but evil assholes it was in a constant state of military buildup and near apocalyptic war, hence dudes wielding both laser pistols and axes and shit. And then two warlords basically tried to hit each other with their respective doomsday devices at the same time and ripped open a portal to Eternia. The early concept work strikes me as a lot of Conan+New Gods riffing going on.
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i watchwd castlevania season 4 and outside some just spectacular fights and animation i know the select vbutts will hate it
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not sure if these episodes were written by warren ellis in light of everything but it has the cardboard brain storytelling of someone who got paid to write superhero comics. a few episodes in the middle are A Character Learning / Being Presented A Lesson for 15 minutes and then A Character Tells You Exactly What They Learned for the other 15
I’m actually surprised to say season 4 is actually pretty good like for real watchable entertainment. More thoughts to come as I finish the last ep and sober up.
Ok, not sober yet but but I still think season 3 was atrocious but S4 was certainly worth the struggle. I don’t think it’s smart but it is certainly more comfortable with being a video game adaptation than it was before. Being the insufferable video game purist nerd there are some things where I’m like this is not accurate but manages to at least be an entertaining story and using what it’s built up to just go wild.
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i never finished season 3 and i guess i’m curious enough about 4 to maybe try to finish it buuuut
i feel like part of it has to do with the show essentially just being fan fiction now. like i’m not really interested in where the show is going, at this point. i get that it’s probably really tough or whatever to write a show about the other games because there aren’t enough support characters, but Dracula X/SotN seemed like a pretty-obvious pivot, to me.
I don’t think we’d get anything that wasn’t fanfiction considering how much konami would care about any thing with its own characters and any creatives that would aren’t around anymore. Word is that the early script made its way to IGA’s desk and was not a fan of it and this whole production probably happened because he wasn’t there any more.
Season 1 wasn’t super great but I found it passable at just being a way to start a video game story that would garner attention from non video game fans. Season 2 was mostly just more except for being to long and alot of the time eaten up by trying to have Vampire Game of Thrones politiking when only two of them had speaking roles and the rest were set dressing. Of three three-ish plot lines, most of them felt like you could fit their entirety to one or two eps each but was spread out over all 8 episodes feeling more like fluff. For being a story about CV3, you could’ve pulled alot more fun adventure scenarios instead of just going to a library. Season 3 felt like so many confused ideas and even worse pandering to edge held together by string.
Through out all of these the animation has felt super uneven. There are certainly individual parts worthy of praise. I don’t know how to technically describe it but there are a lot of points where it just feels like something is missing. There are many times they try to wow you with their frame budget but something in the direction, choreography, story boarding or whatever missed the mark. I think one factor is in trying to go for prestige tv animation going off model would be the gravest of sins so readability and clarity of actions be damned. I wouldn’t say they completely changed in Season 4 but it felt like they found the leak in their production pipe line and were able to patch up most of the missing parts. When the high quality animation is happening it is pretty darn great and feels much better integrated with everything else around it. Also helps that it feels they are drawing from other inspirations instead of just trying to ape Avatar’s kind of action. One segment just screams “This is what we want Berserk to be”.
The story is probably more disposable but at least feels like it has direction. Clearly states the problem in 1-2 eps and actually goes towards the solution with some developments and a pretty fun final twist. I think they also used more video game monsters this time too. Fleaman got to show up at least 2 times and the final stretch is mostly full of actual bosses from the game. I don’t know what happened for this to happen but I kinda hope getting me too’d made ellis have to back off of the project, despite his name still showing up on the title card. The season felt more interested in telling its story instead of pushing a secularist agenda. It’s at least just subtext now.
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the more episodes go along the more i think the closest comparison is jim jarmusch
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castlevania is not like, Good but it does deliver on the “extremely stupid+horny violent 90s OVA with a manga entertainment dub” vibe, except the script is actually just like that because warren ellis is a hack. season 4 in particular feels like the animators just flexing nonstop during any action sequence with the stiff animation of the earlier couple of seasons gone in favor of breaking into this really smeary/scratchy style when anything wild is going on
every action bit w/ alucard is an excuse to cram in as many SOTN references as they can manage, there’s a Hot Gender-Swapped Grant Danasty, and malcom mcdowell hamming it up in every scene he’s in. B+ trash action will probably watch again if i want to turn my brain off and hoot + holler at sypha doing mortal kombat fatalities to a bunch of fleamen
imo the pacing would really work better as two long seasons instead of 4 clipped ones. S1 + 3 are just setup for the nonstop absurd action sequences of 2 + 4, but netflix animated shows aren’t allowed to go longer than 8-10 episodes for some reason
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