天下制覇

Magic robots with no social grace at that.

Impressions:

Genndy Tartakovsky’s new mecha show began today, but I can’t really say that I’m terribly impressed. It certainly maintains a lot of the sheer visual style and animation quality that makes it a joy to watch, but everything else feels like it has been completely phoned in with absolutely none of the genre-savviness or wit of Samurai Jack. There’s Fashiony Alien, the girl that wants to fit in and always do the right thing, Angsty Alien with a dark past and likes to brood, and Robot, who is a robot. And through it all, there’s this awful Heart, Body, and Mind nonsense pulled right from the back of a Wheaties Box or Legend of Zelda manual that is thrown at the audience with all the delicacy and grace of an industrial grade sandblaster to the testicles. All we’re missing is Sporty Alien and Baby Alien and we can have a complete Spice Girls reunion.

My main issue is that I already feel nothing but apathy and disdain for almost all of the characters, and that certainly wasn’t helped by very poor delivery from the cast. These are good VAs, were they drunk or something? The humor was also very stale and nothing but recycled jokes from the big book of "alien lands on Earth" that were probably old by the time of Mork and Mindy, let alone many decades later. Octus having whatever magical powers they need it to on the spot is just tremendously lazy writing too. It’s the kind of thing to shuffle under the rug, not repeatedly call attention to. I was also a bit peeved that once the stupid giant robot finally formed, they spent more time pondering what happened and what it could do instead of actually doing anything.

So… meh from me. Visually impressive, but chained down by completely cookie-cutter cast and poor setting. I could see it developing in a more interesting direction, or developing in a far worse one. Since their ‘mission’ is to basically assimilate into a high school (god, why) and apparently driver’s ed is upcoming… I expect it to get far more painful. Maybe fans of giant robots shows and all the bad cliches that come with them will find a little more to enjoy and I’ll probably turn it on just because it’s matched up with GR, but… eh. GR succeeds at subverting cliches and creating a gritty, dark world despite its TEEN POWER! This just tosses them all up and lets them stink up the place.