What shall we talk about today reader? Let’s talk about some things that annoyed me.
The other night right I caught two episodes of the cartoon of the Legion of Superheroes, where basically Dc’s greatest heroes from the future gather to defeat evil. First of all I have never liked this idea, and I can’t really blame the cartoon alone... from what I understand it goes way back into the comics. I mean you have all these superheroes... But there sucking so much they actually have to go back in time to get superman to help them... It’s just...
That’s pathetic. Seriously. I know what the angle is, no one will like it unless you’ve got a familiar face to ease you in, but when your team sucks so much they have to endanger the entire timeline... why the hell should I care about them? Now the Legion of Superhero’s is basically a poor man’s Justice League, which was brilliantly written, and while they have the essence of the show... they tend to miss the point entirely.
The example I’ll give is the episode I watched. For those of you who don’t know in superman’s time there’s this robot called brainiac who basically wants to catalogue the entire universe... He does this by gathering all the data on a planet, then exploding it. Sounds cool right? Anyway in the future there’s a race of robots descended from him but they don’t go around blowing up peoples planets. One of their kind is actually part of the Legion of Superhero’s and in an ironic twist becomes friends with superman.
In the episodes I watched the bad guy basically sets off Brainiac’s 5 old programming to turn him into the original Brainiac. Get this right, as far as I could tell the bad guys plan was to... spread darkness, destroy everything... and basically made no logical sense... I was like, “God damn it, why is everyone trying to be Mumm-Ra? Stop it! You cant pull it off!” suffice it to say he thinks he’ll team up with Brainiac but is then surprised when instead he gets murdered.
Now this is when I notice some odd things. When Brainiac 5 is talking to superman about Brainiac taking him over superman is all like “You have to fight against the evil within you!” and basically throughout the thing their talking about fighting back the darkness and evil of Brainiac... Now... There’s something wrong with that statement... I want you to try and guess what it is... There’s a clue in my third paragraph...
Find it?
He’s a F***ing robot! He doesn’t know what evil is! He also doesn’t care! Thats the whole angle with Brainiac, he’s not intimidating cause he’s evil... He’s fricken terrifying cause he’s not! He just... *is*. A perfect example is when the now ‘evil’ Brainiac 5 goes to a planet, calls them and tells them he’s going to turn them into digital energy. Do you know what Brainiac would have actually done? Not called them at all! He would have just gone, bam, your space dust now. The reason Brainiac is such a good enemy is because he doesn’t work with you on a personal level like many other villains do, he just kills you and moves on in an a perfectly cold and logical manner.
The only reason he ever really talks is because your acting very illogically (I.e. trying to stop him) and needs some data to understand why you’re doing it.
But in this bloody thing even Brainiac says that Brainiac 5 was “Overwhelmed by the darkness”... ARHGG! They just missed the point entirely. The ending is also one of the most retarded things I’ve seen in awhile. First the good guys basically do a dragonball Z style fusion from out of where... and it’s like... what? I can forgive that cause superheroes are always doing stupid things that makes no sense...
But now I want you to take a good long look at these pictures:
The other night right I caught two episodes of the cartoon of the Legion of Superheroes, where basically Dc’s greatest heroes from the future gather to defeat evil. First of all I have never liked this idea, and I can’t really blame the cartoon alone... from what I understand it goes way back into the comics. I mean you have all these superheroes... But there sucking so much they actually have to go back in time to get superman to help them... It’s just...
That’s pathetic. Seriously. I know what the angle is, no one will like it unless you’ve got a familiar face to ease you in, but when your team sucks so much they have to endanger the entire timeline... why the hell should I care about them? Now the Legion of Superhero’s is basically a poor man’s Justice League, which was brilliantly written, and while they have the essence of the show... they tend to miss the point entirely.
The example I’ll give is the episode I watched. For those of you who don’t know in superman’s time there’s this robot called brainiac who basically wants to catalogue the entire universe... He does this by gathering all the data on a planet, then exploding it. Sounds cool right? Anyway in the future there’s a race of robots descended from him but they don’t go around blowing up peoples planets. One of their kind is actually part of the Legion of Superhero’s and in an ironic twist becomes friends with superman.
In the episodes I watched the bad guy basically sets off Brainiac’s 5 old programming to turn him into the original Brainiac. Get this right, as far as I could tell the bad guys plan was to... spread darkness, destroy everything... and basically made no logical sense... I was like, “God damn it, why is everyone trying to be Mumm-Ra? Stop it! You cant pull it off!” suffice it to say he thinks he’ll team up with Brainiac but is then surprised when instead he gets murdered.
Now this is when I notice some odd things. When Brainiac 5 is talking to superman about Brainiac taking him over superman is all like “You have to fight against the evil within you!” and basically throughout the thing their talking about fighting back the darkness and evil of Brainiac... Now... There’s something wrong with that statement... I want you to try and guess what it is... There’s a clue in my third paragraph...
Find it?
He’s a F***ing robot! He doesn’t know what evil is! He also doesn’t care! Thats the whole angle with Brainiac, he’s not intimidating cause he’s evil... He’s fricken terrifying cause he’s not! He just... *is*. A perfect example is when the now ‘evil’ Brainiac 5 goes to a planet, calls them and tells them he’s going to turn them into digital energy. Do you know what Brainiac would have actually done? Not called them at all! He would have just gone, bam, your space dust now. The reason Brainiac is such a good enemy is because he doesn’t work with you on a personal level like many other villains do, he just kills you and moves on in an a perfectly cold and logical manner.
The only reason he ever really talks is because your acting very illogically (I.e. trying to stop him) and needs some data to understand why you’re doing it.
But in this bloody thing even Brainiac says that Brainiac 5 was “Overwhelmed by the darkness”... ARHGG! They just missed the point entirely. The ending is also one of the most retarded things I’ve seen in awhile. First the good guys basically do a dragonball Z style fusion from out of where... and it’s like... what? I can forgive that cause superheroes are always doing stupid things that makes no sense...
But now I want you to take a good long look at these pictures:
Yes that’s it, drink them in. What do you see?
GAY. I’m sorry but that’s the gayest bromance I’ve seen in a long time.
And then the ending right, Brainiac 5 fights the ‘evil’ within him and wins... but then as his armour falls away and Gasp! He’s become a real human!.... I’m sorry it’s just I thought Disney bought marvel instead of DC? When did we start having crossovers with Pinocchio?
I think the thing I most annoyed about, is the fact that they basically had all the ingredients for a deep and entertaining story in front of them... but then were like “Ah, we can’t be bothered, just have them say their evil alot and send it out”. I mean, instead of a fight with his inner ‘evil’ it should have been a fight between his growing emotions between his cold calculating programming. In fact the reason he went bad should be because he killed the bad guy, simply because that was the most logical thing to do, and when the others are like you went overboard it all goes crazy from there.
Also they did have the original Brainiac voice, which is brilliant, but when ‘evil’ Brainiac 5 talked he sounded like he normally did... which was just... it wasn’t threatening at all and lacked that cold edge.
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Well since we talked about one comic book company let’s talk about the other, Now you’re probably thinking I’m going to rant over the ‘travesty’ that is Disney buying Marvel, but actually if anything... I think it’s a good thing... why?
The Wolverine and Iron Man Anime’s....
What’s this? But James? Don’t you like anime? If there good... Yes I do... I suppose I am a dedicated follower... It’s not that I’m afraid the Japanese wont ‘get’ these characters (Which you could say about their wolverine one), cause I mean these guys are rebooted again and again so I’ve stopped caring how their depicted anymore. No what I’m angry about is the fact that it’s gotten this far.
I’ve seen many people complain about this news, saying things like anime needs to stay the hell away from the things they like, but what other choice do they have? Whatever the hell happened to western animation styles? I’ll tell you what... They DIED!
Anime has killed them.
Don’t even try to dispute that fact, you take any modern piece of animation from the west that’s in the main stream and bam... Looks a bit like an anime doesn’t it? Go back years, and in some cases very far back, and you will find artistic masterpieces of western animation.
But they are like the dinosaurs now, remembered fondly... but gone all the same.
In the end I’d say this happened simply because... the west didn’t try hard enough. Back in the glory days of Disney animation they were unparalleled, but also set the ground work for their own doom. You see they were all family films, or just something for the kids. They could never be more than that in the public eye, and while you might try to tell me otherwise... Face it, for the vast majority these things were for kids. So whenever someone tried something new, in the end it would be for the kids too.
In Japan on the other hand anime began to expand and explore all sorts of different genres, and as they tried harder and harder to push their own boundaries they got better at it. In the west we barely gave animation a second thought so when anime suddenly steam rolled in, showing fantastic battles in space and far off lands, the kids were hooked. That’s the thing in the end, anime has made a far greater impression on our young, which is another reason why our animation has become more like anime.
I’d say another thing anime did was show big companies that animation could actually be cheap, efficient, but still look good. In the end it is just business and all the kids like anime right?
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