CK's Cartoon Corner

[Cmdr_King]

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

[Cmdr_King]

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.

[Cmdr_King]

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

[Cmdr_King]

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

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

[Hunter Sopko]

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.

[Captain K]

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!).

[Cmdr_King]

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

[Excal]

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.

[Grefter]

Original Slayers run is pretty legit for what it is.  You should indeed hit it up Excal.

[DjinnAndTonic]

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.

[Cmdr_King]

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 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.

[Captain K]

I think it's on the DVD commentary, the roundness on everything is intentional.

[Cmdr_King]

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.

[Cmdr_King]

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.

[Captain K]

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.

[Grefter]

Which is already kind of aged to make into a movie in 1997.

You could try watching Hercules Returns and seeing if it is better than the Disney one.

[Cotigo]

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.

[Hunter Sopko]

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.

[Cmdr_King]

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 )  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.

[Cmdr_King]

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.

[Captain K]

( This one )

"Bla bla bla bla bla"
"Dammit Threepio!"

[Cmdr_King]

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.

[Cmdr_King]

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

[Cmdr_King]

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.