KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
Okay so I have some extremely mixed feelings on the reveals of these latest Steven Universe episodes (season 5 has now managed to come out with 18 episodes in 11 months, because lol Cartoon Network). On the one hand I really wanted Rose to legitimately have shattered Pink Diamond for all the reasons given. For Pink to not be alive after all given what was said in The Trial and things not being as bad as they seemed, for Rose to actually be willing to go that far. On the other... this brings with it a lot of implications, especially about Rose. Interestingly enough, I find that it obviously redeems Pink Diamond quite a bit, which I don't know what to think about, but I also find that it simultaneously does the exact opposite for "Rose Quartz" - because this made someone who already had a bunch of secrets and stuff going on, hiding things even from her closest friends and confidantes, a lot less trustworthy. Every story about the rebellion and the aftermath where Rose was the primary source, and not told by another gem with firsthand experience, is now extremely dubious, especially highlighted by Garnet's "true story about Rose Quartz" from a couple of episodes back, which was obviously in a lot of ways a fabrication and how Rose chose to explain it to Garnet, withholding a wide variety of extremely pivotal details. In general it puts the entire rebellion into question since it was founded on somewhat false premises, and means that with the possible exception of Pearl and even then it's been shown that Rose hid things even from her, Rose has lied to literally everybody. So a villain got redeemed and a hero already hinted at having certain decidedly non-heroic traits got even more doubt cast on them - even though they're really the same character. I can almost dig it, a few things make more sense in retrospect now and there'll obviously be more explanations coming, though I still feel like there's a number of things that just don't make sense after this. Also I don't know what's happened with the images in the first post. They don't show up for me and I don't know why, anyone else having the problem? They're hosted on my own webspace and I know they're there, but in the topic I just get broken images... which seems to be the case for my avatar as well. Not positive this isn't just a problem on my end since I'm having some broken image issues elsewhere too and it might be my browser not liking me.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
So Adventure Time has finally concluded. After ten seasons and 283 episodes, the grand finale of the show - being as long as four regular episodes - aired this week. A lot of words and spoilers follow. Definitely don't at all read this if you haven't watched the finale and is in any way at all planning to ever do that. So, not everything gets neatly wrapped up. Some plot threads reach a conclusion, others are referenced, some aren't even touched upon, so there's some stuff left dangling even post-finale. Which is something that I do think plays into one of the themes of the show, a theme that absolutely has a place in the finale as well - things keep happening. Even when we don't see it, the adventures continue. There's been flashbacks and flash-forwards that show that certain things repeat. Most of the AT episodes are effectively standalone, what's been seen in the show are only a number of moments over the span of five years in the long history of Ooo - something that even has an in-universe version in the Grayble episodes. Those are effectively the in-show version of the show itself. Some characters have already been around for a thousand years or so, some are implied or confirmed to be around for another thousand. Reincarnations/versions of Finn and Jake will always be around. The show has gone to great lengths to confirm that - to paraphrase the song from the finale - things have happened, are currently happening, and will continue to happen. The status quo is definitely not maintained after the episode, but in certain ways, everything stays. So the war that the final season built up towards never actually happens. Disappointing? I don't think so. What happens instead also plays into the themes of the show, and is a major demonstration of the character development that's happened. Finn started out as your regular kid adventurer hero, beating up evil, using violence as his default option. There was even an antire episode about that in the first season. But in the final season, he was the one to attempt the diplomatic solutions, whereas Princess Bubblegum went from the cute, literally pink princess - even if she from the very start was shown to be extremely capable in her own right and easily the smartest character in the show - to a complex character that almost went down the villain route herself before settling on being fine with not having total control over everything but not shying away from going to war when it seems inevitable. The war gets replaced by the actual final threat of the show, one that overshadows every danger they've faced before, one that's continuously been hinted at really being the ultimate evil, even behing behind the Lich to some degree. Because some characters not involved with the war at all tried to fix something completely unrelated. I'm not sure exactly how intended it was wrt the actual finale, but it can play into another minor theme the show has had - while things happen to you, other things (that might affect you anyway) happen to other people. I even want to present the title of the show as an example of how this is a thing - the full title of the show is "Adventure Time with Finn and Jake", but there's a lot of episodes in which the two main characters don't appear at all, and it definitely developed to have more of an ensemble cast - PB, Marceline, BMO and Ice King, at least, definitely became main characters as well. It was clear that everything didn't revolve around the "hero" of the show. And the Ice King finally did get to become just Simon Petrikov again, but losing Betty forever - again - in the process. It was her choice, and it also stopped GOLB, so there's that - and it absolutely plays well into Betty's character arc, especially after she became the new Magic Man. It does have some unfortunate implications, given that Simon as the Ice King has some most likely very intentional similarities to someone suffering from Alzheimers/Dementia, and that's definitely not something that can just be cured like that. The ending montage shows that it's not necessarily a happy ending for him, as he does try to get her back somehow - he does get a new extended family in what's basically his adopted children Gunther and Marceline, and their respective partners, Turtle Princess and Princess Bubblegum, and it's a bit ambiguous if he moves on from trying to get Betty back or not. All in all, it's a very bittersweet conclusion for one of the more tragic characters in the show. I can definitely see how it's one of the more controversial choices on how to conclude things. So yeah I actually mentioned it above, but then there's the thing I'm probably the most happy about. I didn't think they'd do it but they did, the absolute madmen. Oh my Glob PBxMarcy is canon. After all those seasons of teasing and hints that all still contained some degree of ambiguousness to what the exact nature of their relationship was, and the only confirmation that they had been a thing in the past wasn't from the show itself, they have a full-on, on-screen, on-the-lips kiss lasting several seconds. It's also made heavily suggested that, at least for her part, even after whatever led to their prior breakup, Marceline was still in love with Bonnibel for all those years. And then in the ending montage they cuddle up together. They're extremely officially a couple after the finale. While Steven Universe did have them beat on the first same-sex kiss of the sort between main characters in a kid's show, that was between two characters that had been established to be in a relationship from the first season, whereas this one was explicitly a so-called Relationship Upgrade. Regardless of the fact that yes, they have been my AT OTP for a long time, it's proof that one step at a time, portraying LGBTQ themes and relationships even in children's shows in ways that don't treat them as a joke or a punchline (something even media not meant for kids still has some issues with), but with the same respect that hetero relationships get, becomes more and more acceptable. And that is incredibly awesome. Adjacent to that, something that to my surprise didn't get any form of closure or even mention was Finn's relationship status. Especially since Huntress Wizard was right there - they have shared at least two onscreen kisses and definitely have feelings for each other, but HW previously stated that they couldn't fall in love and worried it would make her soft, so their relationship seems to remain ambigiously in the PG-rated vesion of friends with benefits. But Finn is still only 17 years old at the end of the show. With Peebles and Marcy, they're both so old that there's no real point in counting anymore, have known each other for so long and been through so much together, and seen and tried so much so them getting together again really does seem like this time it's for as long as they're both still around. Finn's still a teenager who's only had one actual lasting relationship previously, and there's every chance that Huntress Wizard won't be his final romance. And Finn's age is a bit of the last theme of the show I feel like touching on - growing up. Finn was 12 at the beginning of the show, definitely still a kid, and that's what the target audience was. As the show progressed, it started involving more serious plots, heavier themes. Adventure Time was a show that really did grow up together with its audience that started watching early on, even if the target audience probably was considered to be the same from start to finish by the CN people. And it got all the better for it. Compare it to FiM - that's a show that's gotten incredibly stale for a variety of reasons, but that's nothing I'm going to go into here. But this isn't the end of Finn's adventures, not by a long shot. Now. The opportunity still exists for all of this to be picked up on, and it most likely will - Adventure Time will continue with a comic book series literally called Adventure Time Season 11, which will pick up after the final episode. Previous AT comics have been not exactly canon to the show for understandable reasons, as the comics would take the show up until the point the comic was made into account but the show didn't pay the comics any mind (but, I mean, since a multiverse was eventually confirmed in the show itself and at the very least a version of Finn was said to exist in all the alternate ones, the comics could easily just take place in a only slightly different alternate universe). Adam Muto also said that he thinks calling the new comic series "Season 11" is a bit of a stretch since none of the show staff are involved with it, but the way I see it, with the show finished, The S11 comic has all of that as its starting point and there won't be any further episodes to contradict what takes place in the new comics, so this time there's no reason it can't be canon. At least that's how I'm gonna treat it. Phew. That really was a lot of words, but I think Adventure Time deserves it (and wrting far too many words about things is something that is extremely me). From what I can tell, I started watching it in July of 2012, so it's been with me for a little over six years, and it's absolutely the best thing in its genre I've seen during that time. So obviously I'm going to get somewhat emotional when it actually ends. And when I get emotional about something, words happen. Obviously, I want more Adventure Time, especially after what actually happened in that final episode and ending montage. And, well, the comics will give me that. I'll hear the voices of the characters in my head when I read them. But I also think reaching endings is something very important, and I'm glad that the AT staff got to end it on their terms and not forced by higher-ups to keep it dragging on. Come along with me.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Skilled player (1648)
Joined: 7/1/2013
Posts: 433
Comedy Central has acquired the rights to BoJack Horseman, the first Netflix program to be acquired for broadcast television. Let's just hope the writing staff remains intact!
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
So it only took forever but season five of Steven Universe finally concluded this week, with the season finale having aired on Monday this week. The first episode of the season aired May 29th - in 2017. I watched the quadruple-length last episode of the season, Change Your Mind, today, and it certainly was an episode. I have some mixed feelings on it, which has become par for the course for Steven Universe. There was a lot of new stuff to take in, a lot of stuff seen for the first time, and such a major change to the status quo that I don't even know where the show is going to go from here - I seriously thought it was the series finale for a bit, but there's going to be at least one more season so there's still time to wrap up some of the still unresolved plot points even with the main conflict of the show now completely dealt with. Well, thinking about it, they could only heal all the gem monsters that had been captured and it's pretty certain there's still a bunch out there. There's one thing I really want to happen in the next season and I don't think it will but that's what I said about PB/Marcy becoming canon too and if there's any show that will do what I'm talking about, it's Steven Universe. In fact, let me stay on that whole train of thought for a bit, now that I've slept on it and realized why I had such mixed feelings about this episode. Let me preface this by saying that I do like the show, it's great what it's done for portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in children's media, and it does deal with some heavy themes in a good way. But there's one thing in particular that keeps coming up and it got especially gratitious in the season five finale. It's always Steven saving the day, and major villains getting redeemed by... just talking to them. Steven himself has become a boring, predictable paragon character. Everything works out in the end. So far the only real exceptions have been Jasper and Eyeball (arguably Aquamarine too, but...) - and given what happened in Change Your Mind, they're redeemed now too, but only because their superiors did. It was said that White Diamond would present the ultimate challenge to the "talk about it" theme of the show, but it just took 8 episodes - counting Change Your Mind as four - between her introduction and her redemption. If anything, Jasper was the ultimate challenge to that - even actively rejecting redemption and prefering to become corrupted with her principles intact, staying a legitimate threat from her introduction at the end of season one until her final defeat towards the end of season three, and she always had to be defeated in physical combat. White Diamond got closer to actually winning than Jasper ever did, but she folded so, so much easier too. Even Peridot took longer to come around than White Diamond did. And this is why Jasper to this point has easily been the best villain of Steven Universe and one of my three favourite characters alongside Lapis and Garnet. And yes, I want Lapis and Jasper to have a long, long talk about what they did to each other and establish a relationship on healthier terms. So anyway. There's been so much talk about shattering gems, but in the end, not a single named character on either side, none of the good guys and none of the bad guys, have had it happen to them. It just happened to completely unknown backstory people, and not even the biggest one of them all - the shattering of Pink Diamond - ended up having happened at all. Pink/Rose is gone forever and that has been a conflict-driving plot point even before the backstory got explained, re-explained, and re-re-explained, but given that she gave up her being to bear a child... it is the only example of a named character being killed off for real, but that happened long before the show even started. Even the remains of shattered gems have some kind of sentience left in them. But all in all, there's a distinct lack of serious lasting consequences for anything. The corrupted gems get healed, and while it's been officially stated that they can't get perfectly healed and the longer they were corrupted, the more remnants of it there'll be in their healed forms, it's still presented as an umabiguously good thing. It just feels somehwat unsatisfying to me, I guess. Everything gets fixed, Steven's always the saviour, always coming through with talking about it. Saving the Crystal Gems by fusing with just their gems allowing them to reform faster than should have been possible, something that hadn't even been hinted at being possible at all. To draw a comparison with Adventure Time, which I still absolutely consider the better show of the two, Finn had a lot more character development - not to say Steven hasn't had development, he absolutely has, but he's always remained this incorruptible voice of reason - and far from everything in Adventure Time revolved around Finn, but in SU, everything is always about Steven in the end (yes, his name is the name of the show, but Adventure Time has "with Finn & Jake" in the name too, so, y'know). That hasn't changed for five full seasons, so it's gotten somewhat predictable and old. There is no doubt in my mind that SU has a strong enough cast to carry episodes that doesn't involve Steven in any way at all. He's always been the catalyst for conflict resolution, except for in flashbacks, for obvious reasons. I keep wanting the show to subvert that. It never does. The closest it got was with Jasper and Eyeball, and none of them were Steven's fault, so to speak. Change Your Mind was just especially emblematic of all this, since it resolved the conflict the entire show is built on. Not keeping White as a legitimate threat for longer felt like a waste and it was the perfect setup for a Diamond civil war to head into the next season. But alas. Of course I'll still see this show through to the end, absolutely no question about it. I like it, I like a lot of the characters, I just like typing a whole lot of words about only a few issues I have.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
Star vs. ended today. The show was pretty entertaining to me. I'm sad that it's over now. I especially liked the character dialogues and interactions. Characters were just very interesting. Janna, Tom, Buff-Frog, Eclipsa, Glossaryck, these are all very memorable characters. I hope they might still continue it in some way or there will be some other news later on.
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
I need help to find out what episodes/cartoons I watched. These are scenes I remember: - Spiderman (?); There was some picnic scene, then some bad guy flew over and beam gunned everything and all the young people aged into old wrinkly people. - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; They are somehow traveling through space, or time? It was multiple episodes that were connected together. It's a challenge to figure out which particular installments of spiderman or TMNT these are. And what episode #. Thanks if you can help me.
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
Well, I've neglected the OP of this thread, and that's not something that's gonna change—I've done one last edit to it where I alphabetized everything listed there and removed the Status part, and I'm not gonna keep updating it anymore. So unless someone wants to take over and actually keep an active OP, no new shows will be added to it. Maybe it's time to just start going with new threads for new shows you want to talk about. Until then, I'll just keep posting here about new ones I watch. Like one I finished just two days ago, having started it back in October.
Starting in 2018 and concluding in 2020 with a total of 52 episodes across 5 seasons, it's a reboot of the old He-Man spinoff She-Ra: Princess of Power. This one's completely severed any connections storywise with He-Man, and is extremely unapologetically queer, in all the best ways. The representation is completely off the charts, without it feeling in any way forced, or like it's pandering. The vast majority of the principal cast are some shade of queer, and in the whole series, there's very, very few straight-coded characters. I just love that such a cartoon can be a thing these days. Man, that ending. Might be the best application of THE POWER OF LOVE saving the world I've ever seen, and it being between the love between the two main girls was perfect. Adora and Catra really had the vibe from the first episode and it was more a question of "when" than "if" they were going to get together, for a while I theorized that they were already a couple at the start of the show, and a lot of the series does read as a very nasty breakup between the two. While part of me had hoped for their mutual confession to happen earlier, so we could have gotten more episodes of them being adorable (pun intended) together, I can't say they didn't save it for a fantastic moment. Also, Entrapta best character. A very recommended watch.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Editor, Skilled player (1401)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2081
So recently I've caught up on or started watching a couple of different shows, including The Owl House, Amphibia, Over the Garden Wall and Hilda. There's not really too much I can say about each individual show, but I've really enjoyed my time with them overall. I can safely say that I haven't been this much into animation for a long time.
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
The Owl House is indeed great, and the second half of season 2 is gonna start airing March 19th. And then, sadly, season 3 will be the final season, and not even a full season but just three longer special episodes. I can only imagine that it's because it got too gay. Amphibia returns for the second part of season three on the same day. It's one I haven't watched yet, but is on my to watch list and planning to start once I'm done with season 2 of Yashahime. Since I last posted here I have also finished up Castlevania and DuckTales (very good), and both started and finished Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (not bad) and Gravity Falls (great). Both neo-DuckTales and The Owl House def has DNA from GF. ...and I've also watched all of Centaurworld, which is short (18 episodes across two seasons) but good and verrrry weird. Has some big Adventure Time DNA.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Editor, Skilled player (1401)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2081
KennyMan666 wrote:
And then, sadly, season 3 will be the final season, and not even a full season but just three longer special episodes. I can only imagine that it's because it got too gay.
Shame, but I'm hopeful they'll at least conclude the story in a satisfying way. I mean Gravity Falls was short too. I never actually got around to finishing Gravity Falls. I'll need to get back to that. The premise of Amphibia is very similar to Owl House, and there is a lot of overlap. This means Amphibia also inherits a lot from Gravity Falls as well. I'd say that around Season 2, the show develops enough of its own identity to make it stand apart. Like The Owl House, and to a degree Steven Universe before it, most of the first season is basically spent waiting for the plot to arrive before either show really gets going in my opinion. Castlevania is one of those shows that I've been perennially meaning to "get around to eventually". I'll try to make it this year.
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
Finished Amphibia yesterday. The beginning wasn't the strongest, but it had fully grown out of being "The Owl House at home" by the end of the first season. I do think it was hampered a bit by the format of two shorts per full episode, and it's no coincidence that all the episodes that became my favourite episodes were ones that instead were one full length episode. It definitely managed to stick the landing, having a satisfying, sensible, bittersweet and kinda poignant conclusion with no cop-outs. Okay, there's one thing that you might consider a cop-out, but it followed along a theme and was so well executed that it didn't even feel like one. A solid high B-tier cartoon, I'd say. Once it got going it was never really bad, though early season 3 had some pacing issues, and it never truly reached the heights of the cartoons I'd consider A-tier. Oh and also Marcy best character
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Editor, Skilled player (1401)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2081
KennyMan666 wrote:
Personally, I really loved Amphibia. It absolutely had problems to my mind, especially early on, but yeah, it really was very good and really made an impact in the places where it counts. I didn't mind the beginning of Season 3 as much because the earth setting was way too exciting for me. I'd say the second half of Season 3 was weaker, because many of the plots were just about recruiting whatever ally of the day and moving on. They seemed more focused on just moving the story along, and were in turn quite dry on humor. It also didn't really matter much for the finale in the end. Taken by itself, the finale more than made up for it, though. In other news:
scrimpeh wrote:
I never actually got around to finishing Gravity Falls. I'll need to get back to that.
So I finally did. Man, what an excellent show. It still holds up completely. Time for Steven Universe next. I also finally got around to watching the first two seasons of Castlevania. Honestly really an underwhelming show if you're a fan of the game, as I might happen to be. The majority of season 2 is spent on this completely pointless Game of Thrones-esque scheming in Dracula's court with characters that have nothing to do with Castlevania, while the main characters get sidelined. I just want to see the cool bits where Trevor is fighting the demons. Is that so hard? The demons were also kinda stock and lame. Where's all the cool wacky monsters that Castlevania is known for usually? Where's the Medusa heads and the Bone Dragons and the like? Also where's Grant? Between things, I also watched through the first three seasons of Gumball, which has been unexpectedly and completely brilliant. I forgot the last time a cartoon made me laugh as hard as some of the jokes in this show did.
KennyMan666
He/Him
Joined: 8/24/2005
Posts: 374
Location: Göteboj
Oh boy So you're about to head into a bit of a, uh, period of Castlevania. So you know how for seasons one and two, season one was pretty much all setup and all the payoffs were in season two? Seasons three and four follow that pattern too, but rather than four episodes setup + eight episodes payoff there's ten episodes setup and ten episodes payoff. S3 is... not a very well regarded season but it's probably better when you can watch S3 and S4 back to back rather than wait months to find out what the point of all that was. There are more of the iconic Castlevania monsters coming, but S3+S4 definitely does their own thing. S1+S2 was loosely adapting Dracula's Curse and Curse of Darkness, S3+S4 aren't based on anything. And Grant is straight up not in the show because one of the showrunners didn't like Grant. He gets some small nods (and some of them are kind of ambiguous if it's really a reference) but the cursed pirate himself doesn't show up.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption