The 2011 reboot of Thundercats is what I was watching along with Highschool of the Dead to balance out watching My Little Pony man-wise. It's definitely just as mature, if not more mature than HSOTD because there are virtually no panty shots, and the violence is less over the top. But then again, Thundercats is a western cartoon about anthropomorphs and HSOTD is an Anime about ordinary high school students whacking zombies, they definitely cannot be simply compared.
Thundercats 2011, is a reboot, much like My Little Pony, of an old saturday morning cartoon but with a modern twist on it. Though since I haven't seen the 1980's series I couldn't tell you what exactly these modern twists are, but it definitely feels more recent. The story so far is thus, Lion-O (I call him Lionel because that's how everybody seems to pronounce it.) is the prince of the Thundercats, the Thundercats being a sort of feline noble family, and he's out to avenge the death of his father Claudus who was killed by an ancient enemy of theirs called Mumm-Ra, a sort of bat/wizard/demon type creature, who leads the Lizards against the Cats and wipes out the kingdom of Thundera (Presumably the land the Thundercats rule.) using their superior technology to overcome the Thundercats magical powers. Though the plot has an overarching story of stopping a specific villain, the series is still laid out across a series of standalone stories which tie into the overall story.
My main problem with Thundercats is that most of the things I gave away up there happen withing literally the first two episodes, and the following six it seems like the story is half over. The story so far has been paced incredibly fast, so fast that I myself have had to rewatch them so I can remember who's who and what they're all currently doing, which is quite bad if I rewatch it out of confusion rather than intrigue. Lionel for example changes from being a wide-eyed idealist concerned with myths and being compassionate towards his natural enemies the lizards, to being a natural born leader and acting as if he always was in the first three episodes, I personally think that he should've transitioned over the course of the entire series rather than three episodes, because he doesn't seem like he has a lot of character growth left to go through, and the series has barely started yet.
Another problem the pacing brings is that the other 4-5 main characters (Tygra, Panthro, Cheetara, and the Thunderkittens.) barely have screen time to themselves, this gets to a ridiculous extreme in episode 8 when the other characters literally aren't even in that episode and they have roughly the same amount of lines as normal, it makes me different to care about anybody besides Lionel/O because they're all one dimensional. One excellent example of this is in episode three, after the introduction of the Thunderkittens, at the start of the episode, they ask to tag along with Lionel, Cheetara and Tygra (What with their home destroyed and their species endangered in the course of a day.) and Lionel tells them they can't join them since he believes they'll slow them down, then at the end of that episode, he says something to the effect of "We're not going to babysit them, so it's a good that we've learned they can take care of themselves.", even though their entire contribution to that episode was appearing, eating all the dinners and not getting killed by a Kraken type thingy. In the following episodes I'm certain they have more fingers and toes than lines of dialogue.
Not to say that the story isn't enjoyable though, the actual concepts behind the stories are interesting, the lessons they teach Lionel are relevant and, whilst very fast paced, are interesting and entertaining to watch if you're willing to pay attention to it.
Now onto the animation. One of the first things I said to myself when I observed the animation was "There must be a mistake, I accidentally watched an Anime instead of a western cartoon.", because the visual style and animation is very reminiscent of a modern anime, only the lack of Anime eyes let you know that this was a western production, except that's a lie because the studio in charge of the animation is in fact the Japanese company Studio 4°C, which would certainly explain a lot, me presuming the studio had creative input. This is definitely a good thing because the visual style of Eastern Animation with the more fluid characters of Western animation, and combined with excellent backdrops, makes it a treat to watch, just to see where the main characters will go next.
Since the animation is very good, I can't really speak about it for longer than a paragraph, so I'll just conclude by saying that I will personally continue watching Thundercats, because while I have many complaints about the way it's written, there's still a lot to like about it, most of all being just the premise of anthopomorphic cats fighting with swords to save their kingdom. If that doesn't do it for you, it's certainly very nice to look at, it has a kind of Avatar: The Last Airbender kind of look to it, and I've heard it's a similar type of adventure series by people who've watched that too.
What I'm saying is, if you like your adventure cartoons, and are willing to ignore the slightly clumsy pacing and characters, I recommend Thundercats, if you're an animation student like me, I also recommend Thundercats for the simple fact that not a lot of western animations nowadays look like this, but if you're indifferent toward cartoons, Thundercats will not change your mind.
Sunday 18 September 2011
Sunday 4 September 2011
Highschool of the Dead.
I began watching this originally as a counterpoint to becoming interested in My Little Pony, because where as that is a bright and colourful cartoon with a lighthearted tone and lots of humour, this is a dark and gritty cartoon with dark tones and good old fashioned Zombie bashing.
The basic premise is as follows, whilst at school dealing with the same problems any Japanese high schoolers have, e.g. girl troubles, school and girl troubles in school, a Zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out seemingly at the drop of a hat, forcing a group of friends (At least I think they were friends.) to band together to survive, led by Zombie-savvy Takashi (Or maybe that was his surname, I was watching the Japanese version with subtitles, it wasn't especially clear.), though the title is a misnomer as only the first few episodes actually take place inside their school, it goes to several places from there.
My initial problem with the series was that there were many random panty and boob shots, typical of an Anime for such a demographic, it's not especially amusing because it's happens during tense and serious scenes and is very inappropriate every time it does it, also the female characters all bounce like they have water balloons attached to their chests and will wiggle at the slightest movement. But this decreases in frequency as the series progresses, so it eventually is not too big an issue.
One of my favorite things about the animation is how satisfying the zombie bashing is, and this is definitely a cause of the animation because it certainly feels like the zombies are being bashed with great force, and it's not too much of a stretch to believe they were hit that hard, and thus has a great feel to it, unfortunately the characters gradually start using guns so this too lessens as the episodes go on sadly, the guns don't quite have the same impact, despite also feeling very real. I discovered that HSOTD was animated by Mad House, the same guys who did Death Note, which I'm also a big fan of, I always felt during Death Note that the skills of the animators were wasted on Death Note due to it being more about the characters and having few action sequences to make the most of. Though one thing that I wish they didn't bring from Death Note was the shaky cam animation which baffled me even then, because no matter how much they try to convince me I'm in the thick of the action, I still know it's a cartoon.
The characters aren't poorly written, and are at least distracting to watch during the breather scenes or episodes, and Takashi, the main bloke can even be thought provoking during scenes where he performs morally questionable acts to save himself from the Zombies. The others are kind of single trait characters, but as I said, can at least hold your attention.
Another problem is that so far, there are only 13 episodes, and there's not a lot of variation story-wise, I imagine this'll be fixed if there's ever a second season, if there isn't a second season, the ending will come as a disappointment because it doesn't quite have the same tone as the rest of the series and isn't the climactic, epic ending one would expect from an Anime about Zombies. Overall though, I would recommend this series if the panty-shots don't annoy you too much and you enjoy watching Zombies get bashed with sports equipment, Shaun of the Dead style. :D
The basic premise is as follows, whilst at school dealing with the same problems any Japanese high schoolers have, e.g. girl troubles, school and girl troubles in school, a Zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out seemingly at the drop of a hat, forcing a group of friends (At least I think they were friends.) to band together to survive, led by Zombie-savvy Takashi (Or maybe that was his surname, I was watching the Japanese version with subtitles, it wasn't especially clear.), though the title is a misnomer as only the first few episodes actually take place inside their school, it goes to several places from there.
My initial problem with the series was that there were many random panty and boob shots, typical of an Anime for such a demographic, it's not especially amusing because it's happens during tense and serious scenes and is very inappropriate every time it does it, also the female characters all bounce like they have water balloons attached to their chests and will wiggle at the slightest movement. But this decreases in frequency as the series progresses, so it eventually is not too big an issue.
One of my favorite things about the animation is how satisfying the zombie bashing is, and this is definitely a cause of the animation because it certainly feels like the zombies are being bashed with great force, and it's not too much of a stretch to believe they were hit that hard, and thus has a great feel to it, unfortunately the characters gradually start using guns so this too lessens as the episodes go on sadly, the guns don't quite have the same impact, despite also feeling very real. I discovered that HSOTD was animated by Mad House, the same guys who did Death Note, which I'm also a big fan of, I always felt during Death Note that the skills of the animators were wasted on Death Note due to it being more about the characters and having few action sequences to make the most of. Though one thing that I wish they didn't bring from Death Note was the shaky cam animation which baffled me even then, because no matter how much they try to convince me I'm in the thick of the action, I still know it's a cartoon.
The characters aren't poorly written, and are at least distracting to watch during the breather scenes or episodes, and Takashi, the main bloke can even be thought provoking during scenes where he performs morally questionable acts to save himself from the Zombies. The others are kind of single trait characters, but as I said, can at least hold your attention.
Another problem is that so far, there are only 13 episodes, and there's not a lot of variation story-wise, I imagine this'll be fixed if there's ever a second season, if there isn't a second season, the ending will come as a disappointment because it doesn't quite have the same tone as the rest of the series and isn't the climactic, epic ending one would expect from an Anime about Zombies. Overall though, I would recommend this series if the panty-shots don't annoy you too much and you enjoy watching Zombies get bashed with sports equipment, Shaun of the Dead style. :D
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Yep, I did in fact watch this series all the way through. Yes it is a cartoon about ponies made for little girls with bright colours. But you know what? I like it, so shuddup!
There are many a reason why I like My Little Pony, the first thing I noticed was, as a fan of Animation, the series itself was very pleasing to look at, there were a lot of bright colours to amuse me, the characters themselves have incredibly simple yet great designs, and the actual animation itself was very smooth and varied ,such as the Ponies quadrupedic movement being very believable while still allowing for the occaisional anthropomorphism like holding objects with their front hooves on occaision. Though I was initially bugged by the fact that it has the telltale sign of being animated in Adobe Flash and looks like a webseries rather than a full TV series with a team of animators, but it works with the series.
The second reason I like this cartoon is that the creator, Lauren Faust (Previously involved in Powerpuff Girls and other stuff.) was a fan of the original series, but still thought it had huge room for improvement, which are important things to think during a reboot, you have to respect the series for what it was but still update it to modern values. This is why, in my opinion, series 5-6 of the new Doctor Who is much better written, because the creator loves the series, but knows it isn't perfect. Lots of the humour appears very self-aware and reminded me of cartoons such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Freakazoid.
The humour itself, to say it's written to make the target demographic of young girls laugh, are actually very funny. My favorite joke in the entire series is in one episode, where a horse drawn carriage is being ridden by another horse, the pulling horse then remarks "It's your turn to pull now.", made me actually laugh out loud. There are also a lot of jokes that could not possibly have been written for the target audience, such as the fact that one of the main characters names was unmistakably a jab at the Twilight series, or one scene which is a reference to Benny Hill, which can't have been seen by its audience, or another scene that seems to reference '2001' of all films.
And last but not least, the series, despite the title, is not overly girly, or even remotely girly, there are many episodes where the main cast could be replaced by male characters and the plot wouldn't be affected. And in addition, it isn't overly kiddy either, for the reasons mentioned above, as well as the fact that the overall message of each episode doesn't generally talk down to kids and never seems shoehorned in.
Well, that's my opinion on that, ad like many other fans, I await with baited breath for Series 2 to come out.
There are many a reason why I like My Little Pony, the first thing I noticed was, as a fan of Animation, the series itself was very pleasing to look at, there were a lot of bright colours to amuse me, the characters themselves have incredibly simple yet great designs, and the actual animation itself was very smooth and varied ,such as the Ponies quadrupedic movement being very believable while still allowing for the occaisional anthropomorphism like holding objects with their front hooves on occaision. Though I was initially bugged by the fact that it has the telltale sign of being animated in Adobe Flash and looks like a webseries rather than a full TV series with a team of animators, but it works with the series.
The second reason I like this cartoon is that the creator, Lauren Faust (Previously involved in Powerpuff Girls and other stuff.) was a fan of the original series, but still thought it had huge room for improvement, which are important things to think during a reboot, you have to respect the series for what it was but still update it to modern values. This is why, in my opinion, series 5-6 of the new Doctor Who is much better written, because the creator loves the series, but knows it isn't perfect. Lots of the humour appears very self-aware and reminded me of cartoons such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Freakazoid.
The humour itself, to say it's written to make the target demographic of young girls laugh, are actually very funny. My favorite joke in the entire series is in one episode, where a horse drawn carriage is being ridden by another horse, the pulling horse then remarks "It's your turn to pull now.", made me actually laugh out loud. There are also a lot of jokes that could not possibly have been written for the target audience, such as the fact that one of the main characters names was unmistakably a jab at the Twilight series, or one scene which is a reference to Benny Hill, which can't have been seen by its audience, or another scene that seems to reference '2001' of all films.
And last but not least, the series, despite the title, is not overly girly, or even remotely girly, there are many episodes where the main cast could be replaced by male characters and the plot wouldn't be affected. And in addition, it isn't overly kiddy either, for the reasons mentioned above, as well as the fact that the overall message of each episode doesn't generally talk down to kids and never seems shoehorned in.
Well, that's my opinion on that, ad like many other fans, I await with baited breath for Series 2 to come out.
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