Elves and Beasts and Lightsabers

  I lately saw these two comedy anime, both based off of manga. I found them really funny. Both shows have similarities and are also reminiscent of the anime Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, a series I am a big fan of, despite its unfortunate problematic elements (neither Gabriel Dropout nor Dropkick on My Devil have those kinds of elements). Both series are about they are about angels and demons coming over to the human world, in the slice-of-life genre. Both shows deal with folklore and mythos, which is always welcome. Gabriel Dropout follows two high-achieving angels who are sent to Earth via their student exchange program. Upon arrival, the main character Gabriel, almost immediately becomes addicted to gaming, losing her angelic disposition in favour of a misanthropic, slovenly, and lazy demeanour. The other angel, Raphiel, becomes a sadist. Then they meet two demons, Vignette and Satania. Vignette is a polite and kind person, ironically being more like an angel in behaviour rathe...

Darth Plagueis was a mysterious dark lord of the Sith, known for being the master of the formidable Emperor Palpatine and for his ongoing quest to seek immortality. He sought to master nature and the force itself through scientific and political power. Palpatine, his ever power-hungry apprentice, killed him in his sleep. This book details the long history of both figures, being the only Star Wars media to talk about Darth Plagueis in depth. It spans decades, following Hego Damask, a wealthy banker and the alter ego of Darth Plagueis, carrying on the Sith legacy. He seduces a young Palpatine and they continue their mission of eventually implanting Sith rule. I love this book. It’s so good at world-building, at expanding established lore. It has escapism with science-fiction with political intrigue. I really felt like this was history, history of another universe. While not whitewashing that both Plagueis and Palpatine are monsters, the book gives a lot of depth to both Palpatine and Pla...

In my opinion, Infinity Train is one of the best cartoons of the modern age.   Infinity Train is the long-awaited 2019 Cartoon Network series. The series started in 2019 and has three seasons. It was originally a short, but it was popular enough to be greenlit and made into a miniseries. The first season of Infinity Train follows Tulip, a young aspiring game programmer, her mercurial robotic sidekick, 1-1, and a talking Corgi, as she tries to navigate through this seemingly infinite train, each carriage carrying a different world with a puzzle to solve, and to get back home. She must also find out why there is a mysterious glowing number on her hand. After the original short, the show gained a fandom. An audience was drawn to the character potential and creative settings that the premise allows. The premise allows for a lot of magical and creative worlds for Tulip and her friends to venture and explore. It’s rife with potential, especially in regards to the mystery aspect of why Tu...

  The Owl House is an exceptionally fun and enjoyable show on Disney. This show follows Luz, an energetic fan of fantasy and magic genres, who is transported to another world. She finds herself, in the Boiling Isles, a dream come true despite the Isles’s horrors. She befriends the rebellious Witch Eda and her demon roommate King, and begins being trained as a witch by Eda. She meets some more people and goes to a magical school to further her learning. Hijinks occur. The show was created by Dana Terrace. Alex Hirsch works on the show, creator of and voice-actor for the acclaimed Gravity Falls Disney cartoon. It has similarities to that show, included feeling designed a bit for an older audience. It’s fair to say that the Owl House is a spiritual successor to Gravity Falls: an offbeat environment, and wacky characters juxtaposed against occasionally h o r r i f y i n g material. If one can get past the scary imagery in Gravity Falls and now the Owl House, they will be rewarded with ...

God I love this movie. I was just rewatching the movie and a wave of nostalgia flooded back and I remembered just how great it was. Going with bullet-points, because the points are too different from each other; miscellaneous thoughts. So many awesome moments! So many charming moments! So many funny moments! As many people say, the film is masterful in establishing the character of the robots without much dialogue. There’s so emotion in their expressions and movements. But also, the captain provides a good human contrast to our robot protagonists.   The malfunctioning robots that WALL-E first saves, and then return in the climax, are really fun (I had toys of most of them too, so I have an additional connection). There’s the perfume droid, the out-of-control massage droid, the fatal defibrillator droid, etc. And MO is just completely hilarious, probably the funniest character in the whole movie. I just love that this droid is so completely dedicated that it foll...

H.G. Wells 1897 science-fiction classic War of the Worlds has been adapted countless times. Most notable are the 1953 film, Spielberg’s 2005 version, Orson Welles’s 1938 radio play, and the latest stellar BBC rendition. It's about humanity being attacked by aliens; the archetypal story of the alien invasion plot so present and popular in modern media and science-fiction. It’s the first of its kind. Interestingly, every adaptation follows a different cast of characters; only the alien invasion and parts of the plot stay relatively consistent. The setting also changes, typically to be more relevant to contemporary life. Instead of Victorian England, it’s 1953 California or Edwardian England, for example. This is an unusual way to handle adaptations.  The story concludes with a twist, this being that, for all of their might and technological superiority, they are defeated at the film's end by Earth bacteria. The book is said to be somewhat of an allegory, with the stories...

The 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars Cartoon Network is an animated chapter of the Star Wars saga that has acquired a dedicated fanbase, and for good reason. The show is made with passion, and many elements are better done in the series than in the prequel trilogy themselves. The animated series has six seasons, with a seventh coming soon. It takes place in-between episodes 2-3, set around the Clone Wars, a rarely-seen event of the series that nonetheless has a huge impact, in the context of the Star Wars universe itself. What happens in the Clone Wars defines the political lore of the series. One benefit of being a show versus a movie means that there is an ensemble cast rather than a couple fixed protagonists. Some episodes can focus on Anakin and Ahsoka, others on Obi-Wan, others on other Jedi, others on troops, and others on politics. Because of this shifting perspective, the show can feel like an anthology. This keeps the show fresh, and it's interesting to see the different...