79 replies to this topic

[Ironbite]

I'm slowly watching this and....Claudia scares me.

Ironbite-a lot

[PiratedTVPro]

The animation does a lot of nice things that no one would complain about them not doing.

 

Such as? Because I can't see it.

 

I tried to watch the first episode and the whole 8fps animation is ruining the entire experience for me. Especially where they pick and choose where to up the frame rate in action scenes. Makes it look like a low-cost web series. It just looks like they didn't want to pay for tween animations.

 

Also the two Game of Thrones references in the first 10 minutes made me roll my eyes. I really expected more from this creative team.

Edited by PiratedTVPro, 17 September 2018 - 09:04 AM.

[Dvandom]

I've only had time for the first episode so far, but it's a bit disappointingly paint-by-numbers YA fantasy.  Two early-teens characters on opposites sides, each is a misfit who has trouble living up to the legacy they're forced into, there's a cute younger sibling and a pet, an early crush who will probably end up as an enemy and an early enemy who will probably end up as a crush, slightly older kids trying too hard to Be Adults, etc.  Oh, and while "humans are evil practitioners of Dark Magic" is hammered home in the intro dump, it's clear that both teenaged protagonists will have "the adults are wrong and perpetuating evil on both sides" as something that brings them together.

 

Can it still be good?  Yeah.  But it's not an auspicious start, probably should have just called eps 1-2 a single first episode so that something could happen in "episode one" other than the march of the YA lit cilches.

 

---Dave

[PiratedTVPro]

Well, my son asked why we weren't watching it after school yesterday, so I watched a few more.

 

The animation, if anything, gets worse after the first two episodes, but it is kinda growing on me. The Aunt is the first character that I actually want to know more about, and I'm hoping that the world opens up more as they travel East. My son (5 years-old) likes it a lot, so we'll at least finish out the season.

[Sabrblade]

Just finished the 9 episodes. Like others have said, the frame rate was pretty bad in at least the first two episodes, but the story's so good that I just had to keep going.

 

Though, two other things bugged me a bit.

Spoiler

The humor is kind of lame, as all of it is the same kind of humor that was written for Sokka in ATLA, but here, it's applied to several characters and more often attributed not to the guy who shares Sokka's voice, Callum, but to the likes of Soren and Claudia, making them come off as seeming dumber than they seem to be in other cases.

 

The other thing is that I would have rather that they didn't make Viren devolve into a straight up villain, as he was much more interesting prior to his elfish transformation, back when he was a more conflicted and complex character. I'd have rather that they kept the main antagonist of this series not be a physical person but rather the conceptual ideas of prejudice, distrust, and bigotry that served to drive wedges between all of the warring factions and persons earlier in the episodes, with no one being truly evil but instead hating each other because they perceive the others as the evil ones. When King Harrow admitted to Callum that he had done terrible things in the past that at the time he felt had been in the right, having now come to feel the weight of his misdeeds, that was a powerful moment that showed that the hate that runs deep between the west and the east actually has some justification, illustrating how neither side is really in the right with both having been guilty of atrocities over the years of war, all because each felt they were fighting for a cause that was both just and necessary.

 

As such, making Lord Viren become someone willing to escalate the hatred for his own selfish reasons rather than someone who truly wishes to do right by his people but merely struggles and makes mistakes and bad decisions along the way, robbing himself of any chance at seeing the error of his ways later on, diminishes much of the intrigue that his lingering humanity gave him, and instead just renders him just another run-of-the-mill power-hungry despot full of surface-dwelling bravado and platitudes. The scene where he was offering the throne to Amaya and willing to support her as queen regent, and the scene where he pays his respects to the late Queen Sarai and tries to make amends with Amaya, gave me some hope for him to stay interesting and not descend into standard bad guy territory, but I knew it was all downhill for him as soon as he announced the change of plans to Commander Gren about his two children heading the search party for the princes instead of Gren himself. Alas.

[Noideaforaname]

Spoiler

The king totally switched bodies with his bird, didn't he?

[Glenn]

Spoiler

The king totally switched bodies with his bird, didn't he?

Spoiler

or become one of those coins

[Cybersnark]

Spoiler

Given that the bird was caged and not singing, and Harrow's earlier argument with Viren, I'm guessing that it wasn't so much "Harrow switched bodies" as it was "Viren made the choice for him."

And I'm torn on whether we'll see a heel-face turn from Claudia (and possibly Soren), or whether Viren will be taken off the board (possibly by that Elvish surge he was anticipating) while Claudia develops into a genocidal big bad.

And yeah, the frame-rate was terrible. What's the point of including sign-language when you can't actually animate the signing?

[Fero McPigletron]

I'm catching up and watched up to ep 4. (I should be watching She-Ra or Castlevania 2 actually)

Just hoping Claudia isn't really evil but she's pretty on the side of her dad. Hope her dad isn't all the way evil too but he should have smart enough not to say the princes are dead if he didn't know for sure.

Haven't read the stuff above because I might read something spoilery but is the lady actually doing proper sign language?

The trio of kids are just ok for me. Not super wow yet.

[Superomegaprime]

I resently watched this, its an ok show but I think season 2 will provide more story and depth to the established world

[Fero McPigletron]

Done with 5-7.

5 was filler, bleh. Sure, there was a fish monster but eh.

6 was great. I liked all the fuss with the ice and the weeeeeird Claudia and brother orders. Man, bad dad.

7 was good too. If sun blade guy didn't have a mustache, he would have joined their team. (Cuz mustache makes you deeeevious. Or cowardly.). Also had a cutest lame puppy ever.

Edit - done with everything.

7 was good with the slug thing but they were lucky it actually had eyes. If it didn't, the first attack wouldn't have worked. Also, the lightning should have been enough. The tiny slugs coming out was grooooooss though.

8 final episode. Lotsa stuff. Ezren talks to animals? This should have been a bigger deal. I was floored by the puppy reveal. I thought the lady switched puppies, just gave the girl a new puppy but she couldn't tell the difference. The real deal though, whoa, that's too much. Also, the spider was actually blowing air. It can make sounds too and sounds have force. So I'd say the spider was dangerous since it CAN move things. Still dangerous.

The hatching was obvious c'mon. But now Callum has no battery left. What now?

When Asmodeus whatever cuz the cord, did the other bindings break too?

Also Claudia farting turned me off on her. Geez, did they really have to do that? She was awesome and now, blurgh.

Hope wolf girl sticks around.

Edited by Fero McPigletron, 21 November 2018 - 07:47 AM.

[SHIELD Agent 47]

Season 2 is coming to Netflix Friday 15 February 2019.

 

 

https://twitter.com/...169197632970752

[Sabrblade]

Will there be more than a mere 7 episodes this time?

 

Much more, I mean.

 

Pretty please?

[Fero McPigletron]

How about this one? It's cel animation and also from folks who worked on Avatar and Korra. The action looks quite familiar.

[PiratedTVPro]

Will there be more than a mere 7 episodes this time?

 

Much more, I mean.

 

Pretty please?

 

Will there be more than a mere 7fps this time?

 

Much more, I mean.

 

Pretty please?

Edited by PiratedTVPro, 30 January 2019 - 10:31 AM.

[videomaster21XX]

Disappointingly, it doesn't look like they tried to make the animation smoother. I can deal with it, but I do wish they'd just spend more time and budget on getting that to a higher quality.

 

As it is I'm going to assume there are many who are skipping this show because of that issue. :/

[Superomegaprime]

I'll watch for the story, the first season was pretty good but I am guessing that season 2 was in the works along with season 1, they just spilt it up into 2 13 ep blocks thou the first couple of eps were turned into a mini movie.

[PiratedTVPro]

As it is I'm going to assume there are many who are skipping this show because of that issue. :/

 

I would be skipping if my son didn't love it as much as he does. The story is okay, but the animation could be a real strength of this show, and as such it's a detriment instead.

[Superomegaprime]

 

As it is I'm going to assume there are many who are skipping this show because of that issue. :/

 

I would be skipping if my son didn't love it as much as he does. The story is okay, but the animation could be a real strength of this show, and as such it's a detriment instead.

 

 

The animation is better than some other animation, example, Cyberverse, it feels cheep and lazy, more so than Machinmina's TF series

[Sabrblade]

Friendly reminder that the next batch of episodes comes Friday.