Category Archives: TV Shows

Madoka: Tragically Magical Girls

Posted on by Henry

There’s so much that I want to tell you about this show, but telling you would be a disservice to you and to Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  This show deserves better than that; I might even go so far as to say that it deserves to be watched.  I’m not saying that it is the alpha and omega of anime (or even of magical girl anime), but it is exceptionally well made.  From the standpoint of appreciating artistic storytelling craft, this is a show that you will want to see.

The art itself is of variable quality.  Some episodes received more time and effort than others, in part because of the end of the show’s release schedule coinciding with the 2011 tsunami.  Background facial animation, for example, is minimal regardless of episode, while the last two episodes truly shine with the extra time that the studio took to release them after the tsunami.  But the anime’s visual design is just as fascinating and worth attention as the storyline itself.  The witches, foes of the show’s magical girls, are bizarre and appropriately unsettling, and each feature their own distinctive style of illustration.  More on that later.

However much I liked the studio’s fascinating art choices, my favorite part of Madoka still has to be the storyline.  I’ll try not to spoil you, so let me put it this way: if you want a happy show, you should pick something that doesn’t have schoolgirls struggling to shoulder the burden of protecting the world.  Sound interesting?

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Kill la Kill: Fashion, Fascism, and a Heroine’s Shonen

Posted on by Henry

Kill la Kill is a bizarre combination of disparate elements.  It follows the genre expectations of Shonen manga, with semi-constant fighting, growing friendships, and that strange running theme of turning one’s previously defeated foes into new allies, but it replaces the normally male leads with female ones and does the same for many of the villains as well.  Despite this refreshing gender-reversal, the show still drips with male gaze and fan service; there are a few moments where the show mentions how ridiculous this is (as the protagonist rages against the stupidity of her outfit), but Kill la Kill still falls into the same visual patterns and doesn’t really change that paradigm.

Kill la Kill (careful, spoilers) excels at the absurd, as one might expect from the same creative directors who brought us Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and offers a look at fascism and fashion.  Or maybe it’s fascism by means of fashion?  The story begins as one young woman’s quest to avenge her father’s murder, as she sets herself against the leader of Honnouji Academy, whom she suspects of having arranged his death.  This school is a fascist dictatorship in which power-augmenting school uniforms are used both as a reward and as a means of control.  Things only get weirder from there.  I think it’s quite enjoyable in the end, but you should probably read at least some of my mixed feelings below.

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Girls und Panzer will blow you away

Posted on by Henry

Girls-und-Panzer-06b-8

Surprised to find that I like the show?  So was I!

Girls und Panzer is an anime about girls in their early teens being (mostly) nice to each other.  It’s also about tanks, and about young girls shooting at other girls driving other tanks.  Don’t think too hard about it.  The show is actually fairly high quality; the tanks are lovingly rendered in well-done CG that meshes with the rest of the art, and the writing delivers pretty much everything you could want from an anime about young girls and their tanks.  Besides which, the premise is just too much fun: Girls und Panzer offers heavily armed and armored vehicles cavorting across the landscape as their adorable and irrepressibly friendly crews wrestle them into thrilling mock-combat.

If that doesn’t pique your interest, don’t bother.  If, on the other hand, you think it sounds interesting… read on!

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First Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD

Posted on by Henry

Agents of SHIELD doesn’t deliver the unexpected in the same way that previous Joss Whedon projects have.  The world in which it takes place is already fairly well defined, and so the sense of discovery and wonder that I had when I saw Firefly for the first time isn’t replicated here.  That said, Joss Whedon is good at what he does, and his skill at establishing an interesting and precarious status quo is clearly shown in this most recent project.

Agents of SHIELD doesn’t occupy that category of stellar TV shows which are unassailably good right off the bat, but it seems to me that the foundation is being laid for a much longer story which should gradually grow in complexity and appeal.  To be honest, I think I may prefer it this way, provided it pans out: a carefully designed and cultivated story that grows into an excellent favorite would be much better than something that starts off promising only to go sour.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I’m not yet rabidly enthusiastic about this show, I do think it holds promise.  I don’t constantly foam at the mouth in anticipation of the next episode, but I want to keep up with what happens next.  And I can see the potential for this show to be really great.

What’s good?  I like the characters, brief as our exposure to them has been, and I want to see them given more chance to grow into bigger, deeper people.  It seems like Joss Whedon is moving them in that direction, though we haven’t truly seen that yet.  The writing and wordplay is predictably enjoyable, with the fun and funny banter I’ve come to expect from something with Whedon’s name on it.  Perhaps most importantly, Joss Whedon’s previous successes give me hope that this will become a more powerful and gripping story.

But what about my concerns?  Well, it seems like the characters haven’t had the time to really show themselves as the more interesting people I suspect they are.  I don’t have much sense of the characters beyond the role that they play for the team, and I want that to change.  The problem is, I don’t know that the current constraints of the show will allow them to; “find problem, investigate, solve problem” doesn’t leave much room around the edges, especially if the “problem” is always some SHIELD-specific mission.

Similarly, I worry that Whedon is constrained by all the other Marvel stories that he has to juggle at the same time.  That constraint seems like a real risk for a show like this, since it automatically means that the scope of the show can’t grow to larger proportions.  Anything that the heroes (or villains) do above and beyond the farm-league level would have to be acknowledged as a development by the big-time superheroes, and it’s unlikely that the eponymous stars of the various Marvel franchises would show up in person (regardless of how much sense it might make for the story).  Then again, Nick Fury shows up… so perhaps I’ll be proven wrong.

Finally, I really want there to be a big bad that I can sink my proverbial teeth into.  Unfortunately, despite the most recent episode’s hints (1.05 Girl in the Flower Dress), I still feel like I’m chewing a dry bone in search of meat that isn’t there.  It’s a very unsatisfying experience.

But I still think that this show could be great.  In fact, I’m hopeful enough that I’ll probably keep watching even if I don’t feel that it’s changing in the ways that I want.  I’m a little sad that SHIELD can’t (and shouldn’t) be the next Firefly, but I believe that Joss Whedon can still deliver on the promise that I think is here.  I really hope that he and his team do just that, because that would be great.

Screenrant is unhappy with Agents of SHIELD as it currently stands, and you can read one of their articles here.

A Brief Digest

Posted on by Henry

Did you notice how I mentioned that I was reading Hide Me Among The Graves several weeks past, but haven’t yet posted any review of it?  Well, I can explain.  And I have a few other points of interest for you today, with tidbits on Agents of Shield and Dominions 3.

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Battlestar Galactica

Posted on by Mattias Lehman

When we talk about science-fiction, we hold two different ideas in our heads. First, we think of lasers and space ships and so on. As I discussed previously, I don’t particularly see this to be science-fiction, but rather the clothing that science-fiction wears. Science-fiction should be about how new technology shapes the way we have to live our lives, not just wearing a sciencey setting. Here’s a quick litmus test for that. If the science suddenly became real, would we make such a movie in that era? That is, cars must have been science-fiction at some point. But would 2 Fast 2 Furious ever have been a sci-fi movie? Probably not. What is the distinction? 2 Fast 2 Furious doesn’t think about how the existence of cars changes human nature and society, it simply tells a story that uses cars. You could imagine the same movie with space ships, or horses, or any other speedy mode of travel. On the other hand, Minority Report is clearly science-fiction, being about the way we would react to some technology. Would we accept it? Would we fear it? Would we fight against it?

Bearing this in mind, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best science-fiction TV shows I’ve ever seen. Warning: there will be minor spoilers after the jump.

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Take Five: Episodic vs Serial works

Posted on by Mattias Lehman

In modern continuous works (largely tv shows at this point in time, but also comic books and other media) there are few ‘one-shots’ anymore. Obviously, books are the largest exceptions, but even many movies nowadays feel like they’re all either remakes, reboots, prequels, or sequels. Everything is linked to something else because why spend all of the money to make one of something when (if people like it) they’ll pay to come see another with less advertisement? And I’m sure that’s how a lot of consumers have come to see it. But from the perspective of a writer, it’s fantastic. Why? Because serial works have something that episodic works tend not to have. What is the difference between the two? I’m going to use TV shows as my ‘medium’, but you can apply this to any form of media.

A serial work is one where each episode builds off of previous episodes, and sets up future episodes. Episodic works, on the other hand tend to just rehash the same setting, but with a new plot. Rather than try and strictly define a midpoint, I’ll just say that it’s a vague continuum; everything is a little bit episodic and a little bit serial, but some works are way more episodic (Whose Line is it Anyway?) and others are way more serial (Lost). If you tune into a random episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? odds are you’ll understand it just fine. You might miss a few of the jokes that are more recurring jokes, but they’ll probably still be funny. On the other hand, the first time I tuned into Lost, I was — pardon the pun — lost. They were on an island, and an unknown monster — I was hoping they’d crashed on a prehistoric island and it was a dinosaur –was attacking them, and I had no idea why they were hiding in trees from a boar, and why the boar couldn’t be seen and then the next episode I tuned into I think there was a ghost or something and they were living in a bunker and pressing this button and all I could think was WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MONSTER? WAS IT A DINOSAUR? IS THAT WHY THERE’S A BUNKER? AND WHY ARE THEY PUSHING THAT BUTTON?

So I understand why TV shows are at least somewhat episodic. Who has the same chunk of time open EVERY day? Who will NEVER miss an episode? What about that random guy who sits down and turns the show on, is he going to keep watching if he can’t figure it out? Books on the hand, are inherently serial. You don’t sit down, pick up a book, flip to a random page, and start reading. So if somebody criticized a book for not making sense when you started halfway through, we’d laugh at them. But we do sort of expect that to be possible with TV (less so in the age of TiVo, which I think explains the success of shows like Game of Thrones). And I think we understand that book series’ and comic book series’ are part of one ‘book’, so to speak. Nobody buys just book 2 of a series.

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