Year: 2011

The Game of Thrones is afoot

So it’s finally here, George R.R. Martin’s magnum opus on the tubes after lengthy gestation. Yes ladies and gentlemen, no more cliche Tolkienesque uppity elves and grumpy dwarves to make us roll our eyes. While not strictly a measure of quality, it helps, unless you’re a certain Sam Raimi adapting a certain fantasy series that should be best left nameless.

I don’t think any spoilers are neccessary for something that is best experienced with a clean slate of mind, assuming the watcher is unfamilar with the literary canon. Suffice it to say that the first episode seems to be as faithful as a television series can get with regard to its original material, and the only reason anyone who has read the books should stay away is to avoid fixing the actors’ images into the character slots whenever they read the books again. I don’t think it’s that big a concern, because most of the casting calls seems well done, even if they’ve understandable discrepancies in terms of appearances. The only role I think is unsuitable is Michelle Fairley as Catelyn. While I’m not too convinced about Kit Harington’s Owen Hargreaves impersonation as Snow, it’s a minor quibble compared to how nailed on others are (such as Daenerys and the Lannisters.) Sean Bean is the biggest name here, and he carries Eddard Stark with the kind of solid, pensive dignity that he projects so easily. Although there isn’t a huge degree of audience hand-holding, watchers should still be able to get the gist of the plot, with all four major houses (the Starks, Lannisters, Baratheons and Targaryens) making their appearances.

It’s hard to fault the technical aspects, since this is the most expensive single TV season for a series ever made. Following like for like in the first novel, the scene beyond the Wall is as good an opening for a “realistic” fantasy series as it gets, showing the “out of sight, out of mind” approach to the supernatural elements Martin uses for the books, with nothing allowed to overwhelm the “meat and potatoes” political struggles of Westeros. The bleak beauty of the North Irish countryside is used to great effect in the Winterfell shots, and the use of music is naunced and low-key. What’s most amusing are the visuals for the opening theme, which are artistically novel and smack of sheer nerd appeal to the fanbase. The episode also ends on the best possible cliffhanger, the first of many illustrations that the characters of this show are different from the usual high fantasy treatment, and plot shields are far and few in between. HBO has already renewed the series for a 2nd season, which will hopefully suggest confidence that what happened with Rome when the show was cut short and the plot had to be adjusted with difficulty won’t happen again here.

Sandcrawler in Singapore

 

Jawas & Droids Not Included

Woohoo!!!!!!! This is so cool !! Meet the new LucasArts Animation Office.

I’ve no frickin’ idea where it’s gonna be but I wanna go visit it already!

X-Men 03 – What happened to the wimmin?

BOOM“OBJECSHUN! UR HONUR, THE ONLY THING GOING BOOMZ IS MY CLIENT’S SNAZZY DRESS SENSE!”

“Ippo said he’ll treat me to ramen after I finish weight control”

FAITOOOOU...erm, I mean, EMMMMMMMAAAAOh Yukarin, why are you always so deredere for blondes

Simple guyz
Simple guyz

OK, so did the X-belles get replaced by pod persons? Because they are unrecognizable from their usual personas in the comics. I was wondering in what way the wheels will start to come off gently from this bandwagon, but I never thought it would be in this fashion. I take back what I said about Storm (not to say the depressing “delicate constitution” crap they thought up to make her depend on the big burly men is gone, it’s actually worse here), because Emma Frost<>Emma Frost. Not only has she taken up some sort of weird gentle sensei schtick that’s massively out of character, she has a bizzare shoujo-ai relationship with the nascent Armor, in which they’ve NEVER MET EXCEPT OVER THE VIDEOCONFERENCE.

It’s a pity that this issue is so prominent (no pun intended), because the rest of the episode continued in a positive direction. The animation and art is still consistently solid, Cyclops toned down his emo-ing and Wolverine behaved more like Wolverine. Although there was significant infodumping courtesy of Ms Frost in the 1st half, the main fight with the mad doktor was satisfactory, if not very well developed. From a certain perspective, it was meant to showcase Armor’s first major use of her powers, but I still felt we could have seen more of the sheer monstrosity of the character depicted rather than just the usual short muwahahaha-ing.

The Emma Frost issue just sticks out like a sore thumb though, because short of Cyclops everyone just swallows Frost’s actions hook line and sinker. Granted, only Cyclops saw her psychic projection when Grey died, so there’s Considerable Doubt(tm) there, but there’s just no excuse when it comes to Armor. The somewhat creepy dynamic between the adolescent Armor and Frost is hilariously interpreted by the rest of the gang as some sort of noble teacher/student relationship, when the audience probably suspects telepathic manipulation plain as day. To be fair, Cyclops is skeptical, but he’ll probably change his mind once he shacks up with Frost (HAH!), assuming the young Hisako doesn’t knife him in the back when that happens.

Next episode brings on Frost’s diamond form (no “your body is a million dollars, baby!” jokes plz). I hope none of the U-Men have hammers.

Deadman Wonderland – Shawshank Running Redemption Man?

What, no community service?“NUUUUuuuuuuu…….what happened to “if the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit“?!”

OK, I have to confess I started watching with almost zero preconception/foreknowledge, so I was reasonably surprised when the first 5 min started out with a school massacre, which went well with the songless credits lead-in. Our lead, Ganta, courtesy of an unusual encounter with the perpetuator, is wrongly arrested for the crime and framed in a near kangaroo court, with his defence attorney playing his part in a “not so good cop, bad cop” fixit routine. Ganta is subsequently sent to Deadman Wonderland, a dystopian gaol that uses prison inmates in gladiatorial games of the kind only the wacky Japanese can think up, where he is tagged with a Battle Royale-esque collar and must have “Candy”, the absence of which is essentially a death sentence adminstered via collar. He also means a strange savant girl that seems to know him, and resolves to find the “Red Man” to bring justice to his friends’ killer and prove his innocence.

OK, so that might be a bit of a mess, but seinen shows playing coy usually are, so I’ll give it some slack until a few episodes down the road. I’m pretty ambivalent about those early minutes though, because I’m uncertain if this was some attempt at mocking the real-life Japanese system for pinning societial ills on the young. In any case, the brisk pace of the plot meant the execution was rather clumsy for that bit, and in retrospect the classroom dialogue between his two friends and Ganta was just merely cheap pathos. Judging from the rest of the episode, the snake-like attorney with Gin-like speech patterns (has someone been reading Bleach?) seems to be the primary atagonist for Ganta. I’m not sure how seriously we’re supposed to take the Running Man gimmicks, because the amusement park sets and voluptuous warden isn’t really burnishing the “serious seinen” credentials. Hopefully, the atmosphere will tend towards the surreal more than towards the ridiculous, which given  the conspiracy-heavy talk and the past Akira-esque destruction of at least parts of Tokyo, seems to be the intention. Epsiode 2 will lead in with more of the cast, so we’ll have more information on the prison dynamic then.