Good King Wenceslas Looked Out, But No Feast. What?

[rionaleonhart]

When I watch things with my housemates, I don't always write about it on here because, well, you can't really pause episodes to scribble down your thoughts while other people are watching them with you. I thought I'd try to pull together a few lines each about some of the things we've watched over the last couple of years, though. Here we go!


Gargoyles (1994): Rei remembered this cartoon fondly from their childhood, but I had never seen it before. It was an interesting watch! Darker and more complex than I tend to expect from nineties Western cartoons, and Elisa and Xanatos are great characters; I'd have loved to see the two of them interact more. I'm annoyed by the 'Macbeth was just misunderstood' plotline, though; don't take away everything that makes Macbeth interesting as a character!

Cowboy Bebop (1998): This was an interesting anime, very stylishly directed, but it felt a bit like two different shows clumsily jammed together. I think it could have benefitted from cutting most of the 'bounty hunting procedural' aspect and becoming a shorter, more focused series. Spike is a fascinating character who feels severely underused, which is perplexing, given that he's the protagonist.

Wynonna Earp (2016): This was fun! It felt a bit like a version of Supernatural from an alternate universe; if Supernatural had been created by women and had female lead actors, I suspect it might look a bit like Wynonna Earp. Wynonna, in particular, feels very like a female equivalent to Dean Winchester; she's a wisecracking disaster who's incapable of coping with anything healthily. She's great. I love her.

Milo Murphy's Law (2016): A cartoon by the creators of Phineas and Ferb, about a boy who's plagued by misfortune. I loved this! In particular, I find Milo himself very endearing; I like his resourceful nature and positive attitude in the face of the certainty that everything's going to go wrong around him. Also, lumberjack-themed boy band song 'Chop Away at My Heart' is a banger.

Trinkets (2019): I'm a little sad that, although the ending was beautiful and perfect, the rest of the show wasn't quite good enough for me to run around recommending it. It's about three girls who meet at a programme for recovering shoplifters. Their friendship is great and I had a lot of feelings about it, but the show as a whole is so Constant Teen Drama that it's slightly exhausting. The finale was wonderful! I cried! The show as a whole is okay.

Batwoman (2019): We only watched the first series of this (and, in fact, I can't remember whether we finished that series). I really enjoyed what a catastrophe Kate Kane was, and her love-hate relationship with Alice was delightfully intense and messy; I feel it's a sort of relationship you don't often get to see between female antagonists! The show felt relentlessly miserable in a way that wasn't that fun to watch, though. We didn't make an active decision to stop watching it, but we drifted away.

The Owl House (2020): I really enjoyed this! Very cute and fun; very Gravity Falls vibes, which makes sense, given that it was created by Alex Hirsch's partner. It does seem like a disproportionate number of the episodes focus on teaching Luz that she shouldn't lie to impress people, though; if your protagonist learns the same lesson in half the episodes of your cartoon, I think you have to accept that she's never going to internalise the lesson! King is very reminiscent of our cat Zuko, who is a beautiful, perfect boy with absolutely no brain.

We Are Lady Parts (2021): A sitcom about an all-girl Muslim punk band. I got much more emotionally invested than I was prepared for; I thought this was just going to be a silly comedy! But then I met angry, self-sabotaging disaster Saira, and obviously I was doomed to love her.

Arcane (2021): A fantasy series based on League of Legends, a game I know absolutely nothing about. This is the most engaging show I've watched in a very long time. It genuinely surprised me on multiple occasions; I quickly gave up trying to predict what would happen in it, because I clearly had no idea! Every character is a disaster and it's great. An excellent series if you enjoy characters screwing up and tearing themselves apart over it. Gorgeously animated, too.

Queer Eye Germany (2022): A heads-up for anyone who enjoys Queer Eye: the German version is just as delightful! Ayan, the interior design guy, is my favourite of the Fab Fünf; he's extremely earnest and sweet.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

I love Cowboy Bebop, and that's interesting you think it would have worked better as a shorter, more focused series. Spike is definitely interesting. I'm not sure if you've seen the movie they released post-seried (which was set during the series) or not.

Wynona Earp is one of those shows I've always been vaguely considering watching.

I have not heard good things about Batwoman.

[rionaleonhart]

I haven't seen the Cowboy Bebop film! Would you recommend it?

I definitely think it's worth at least giving Wynonna Earp a try; I can't guarantee it'd be up your street, but I think there's a solid chance it might be.

[wolfy_writing]

I liked it! It's a stand-alone story that's only thematically connected to Spike's main story, but it's good!

Yeah, it sounds probable. I'm just waiting for the right intersection of "time on my hands" and "can obtain it easily."

[necrophilia]

Gargoyles is such a treasured part of my childhood. The intricate storytelling and somewhat mature writing was like catnip to baby Jes.

I haven't seen anything else on this list.

[rionaleonhart]

I'd be interested to know how I'd have experienced Gargoyles if I'd watched it as a child! I can't decide whether I would have been fascinated or would have rejected it for not having enough Pokémon in it.

[apiphile]

God everyone I know who has watched We Are Lady Parts just fell so violently in love with Saira. DO YOU GUYS NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MAYBE.

[rionaleonhart]

WE'RE ALL COMPLETELY FINE, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS

[militarypenguin]

I need to finish Gargoyles one of these days (minus The Goliath Chronicles, which I hear is neither canon nor very good). I watched it a lot as a kid, but didn't get invested until I watched it as an adult in 2010. Elisa and Xanatos were my favorites; I remember I liked Macbeth and his backstory a lot, too, but I wonder if I'd feel differently if I watched it now.

Glad you watched Cowboy Bebop! I love it, both the episodic stories and the plot-focused ones (I especially love how the former inform and set up the themes of the latter), but I can see how the experience would have landed more effectively for you had it been trimmed down.

[rionaleonhart]

I'm sure Gargoyles Macbeth is fine if you don't have my weird history of emotional investment in Macbeth!

Glad you watched Cowboy Bebop!

I'm glad as well! It's a fascinating show, even if there are some changes I'd have made. It's rare that I'm so strongly struck by the direction in an animated series.

[owlmoose]

I loved Arcane much more than I expected to! Gorgeous art, brilliant storytelling, excellent acting. I hope the second season emerges soon.

[rionaleonhart]

It's so good! I went in knowing pretty much nothing about it, and I was taken aback by how high-quality it was. Looking forward to more!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm on the fence about watching Cowboy Bebop; it's very famous and frequently cited as a good anime to watch, but I just never felt particularly invested in hearing it's about bounty hunters. (Which is quite funny as I watched Trigun well over a decade a show, but that was never a show I'd have picked up myself either for similar reasons: I watched it with a friend, and we didn't finish it.)

I've been playing Chinatown Detective Agency which came out a few days ago and I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it! On the one hand, it has some interesting concepts and some really quite challenging puzzles which can be fun - almost escape room (VLRish) style puzzles, but minus the escape room aspect. On the other hand it has some odd design decisions, I feel it needed more playtesting as it's buggy in a multitude of areas (though none of them seem to be gamebreaking), and I'm not sure they've thought through the mechanic that encourages (and requires) you to do out of game research on the internet which is fine now, but in like a week or a month from now trying to research it will surely just end up finding a walkthrough for the game on Google.

-timydamonkey

[rionaleonhart]

Huh, yes, Chinatown Detective Agency sounds like an odd game! The 'do out-of-game research' concept is an interesting one; I can see that it might have been conceived as a way to make the player feel more absorbed in the world, but it seems just as likely to break immersion.