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jazzfishRadford Sechrist et al, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (season 1)
Netflix. Ten episodes, 25 minutes each. Animated.
Twelve-year-old Kipo lives in a burrow (underground city) two hundred years after an unspecified calamity turned the animals on the surface into giant and/or extra-appendaged and/or sentient "mutes". When a mega-mute destroys her burrow, and she and some new-found surface friends set off in search of her people.
The thing about Kipo is ... I've been searching for an adjective for weeks and haven't really found one. Bright, is the best I can come up with. Cheerful, upbeat, but not excessively so: this is not Only Good Things Happen, though it is most certainly Everything Is Gonna Be Okay. Kind, maybe. Kipo's main toolset for dealing with the various antagonistic beings is to like them a lot, in contrast to Wolf's loner prickliness and Dave & Benson's "run and hide". And while Kipo's not always right (sometimes the wolves in glasses and turtlenecks really do want to eat you), her approach works remarkably often.
And the whole surface world just bursts with creativity and fun. Flannel-wearing timbercats. Ginormous eight-legged rabbits. A crazed mandrill who's bent on recreating the French aristocracy. It made me smile, even (especially?) when it was pushing a little too hard.
Really, this is a case of "come for the fitness-obsessed raccoons, stay for the interplay between the four mains." Wolf and Kipo balance each other well with their exemplifications of 'trust' vs 'safe,' which is always a relevant dichotomy; Benson makes a good but unexpected bridge between them; and Dave... okay, the accelerated-reincarnating-lifecycle talking bug is mostly comic relief. But only mostly.
Here, have another review that's a bit more coherent.
Jon Favreau et al, The Mandalorian (season 1)
Disney+. Eight episodes, 30-40 mins each. Star Wars.
After the fall of the Empire, a bounty hunter finds himself hunted when he absconds with the target of his latest mission: a child of the same species as Yoda.
This feels more like Star Wars to me than the new movies did, and I still wish I had the vocabulary to talk about that. It's something in the visual language, I think: sharper edges, cleaner lines, fewer quick cuts. I don't really know.
The titular character starts out as a bog-standard Man With No Name type... but he's surrounded by a truly fantastic supporting cast. The Mandalorian Armourer's utter calm and sensibility, mercenary Cara Dune's cheery physicality, Greef Karga's not-quite-slimy business-friendliness, the Ugnaught Kuill who helps the Mandalorian so all these bounty hunters will stop making a ruckus over his planet... so great. And even the Mandalorian develops some personality by the end of the series. I can't think of when I've enjoyed a shifting ensemble cast quite this much.
There's a sufficiency of enjoyable but not overly intrusive callbacks to the Lucas movies. Maybe to other Extended Universe stuff as well but I'm utterly unfamiliar with the EU. I rolled my eyes a bit at the obligatory Tattooine episode, but even that was handled well: no Hutts except by reference, and some humanization of the Tusken Raiders. It felt more like "here's a familiar part of this universe, that we're doing other stuff in" and less "hey, remember the original trilogy? wasn't that cool? huh? wasn't it?"
Some genuine tension; some genuine pathos. Episode 7, aka "getting the team together," may be my favourite: it's fun to watch a bunch of more-important minor characters interacting not just with the main but with each other. And contrary to what the internet might have you believe, this is not in fact The Baby Yoda Show: it's there, and central to the plot, but mostly not the focus of any given scenes.
Both recommended.
Netflix. Ten episodes, 25 minutes each. Animated.
Twelve-year-old Kipo lives in a burrow (underground city) two hundred years after an unspecified calamity turned the animals on the surface into giant and/or extra-appendaged and/or sentient "mutes". When a mega-mute destroys her burrow, and she and some new-found surface friends set off in search of her people.
The thing about Kipo is ... I've been searching for an adjective for weeks and haven't really found one. Bright, is the best I can come up with. Cheerful, upbeat, but not excessively so: this is not Only Good Things Happen, though it is most certainly Everything Is Gonna Be Okay. Kind, maybe. Kipo's main toolset for dealing with the various antagonistic beings is to like them a lot, in contrast to Wolf's loner prickliness and Dave & Benson's "run and hide". And while Kipo's not always right (sometimes the wolves in glasses and turtlenecks really do want to eat you), her approach works remarkably often.
And the whole surface world just bursts with creativity and fun. Flannel-wearing timbercats. Ginormous eight-legged rabbits. A crazed mandrill who's bent on recreating the French aristocracy. It made me smile, even (especially?) when it was pushing a little too hard.
Really, this is a case of "come for the fitness-obsessed raccoons, stay for the interplay between the four mains." Wolf and Kipo balance each other well with their exemplifications of 'trust' vs 'safe,' which is always a relevant dichotomy; Benson makes a good but unexpected bridge between them; and Dave... okay, the accelerated-reincarnating-lifecycle talking bug is mostly comic relief. But only mostly.
Here, have another review that's a bit more coherent.
Jon Favreau et al, The Mandalorian (season 1)
Disney+. Eight episodes, 30-40 mins each. Star Wars.
After the fall of the Empire, a bounty hunter finds himself hunted when he absconds with the target of his latest mission: a child of the same species as Yoda.
This feels more like Star Wars to me than the new movies did, and I still wish I had the vocabulary to talk about that. It's something in the visual language, I think: sharper edges, cleaner lines, fewer quick cuts. I don't really know.
The titular character starts out as a bog-standard Man With No Name type... but he's surrounded by a truly fantastic supporting cast. The Mandalorian Armourer's utter calm and sensibility, mercenary Cara Dune's cheery physicality, Greef Karga's not-quite-slimy business-friendliness, the Ugnaught Kuill who helps the Mandalorian so all these bounty hunters will stop making a ruckus over his planet... so great. And even the Mandalorian develops some personality by the end of the series. I can't think of when I've enjoyed a shifting ensemble cast quite this much.
There's a sufficiency of enjoyable but not overly intrusive callbacks to the Lucas movies. Maybe to other Extended Universe stuff as well but I'm utterly unfamiliar with the EU. I rolled my eyes a bit at the obligatory Tattooine episode, but even that was handled well: no Hutts except by reference, and some humanization of the Tusken Raiders. It felt more like "here's a familiar part of this universe, that we're doing other stuff in" and less "hey, remember the original trilogy? wasn't that cool? huh? wasn't it?"
Some genuine tension; some genuine pathos. Episode 7, aka "getting the team together," may be my favourite: it's fun to watch a bunch of more-important minor characters interacting not just with the main but with each other. And contrary to what the internet might have you believe, this is not in fact The Baby Yoda Show: it's there, and central to the plot, but mostly not the focus of any given scenes.
Both recommended.