Cartoons

Would you believe I've been getting up the last several Saturday mornings to catch cartoons? Ah, just like old times. Well, not quite so early.

Green Lantern: The Animated Series hit the middle of its first season by closing its main story arc. It looks like the second half is another arc to itself, but there aren't many threads left unresolved.

Thundercats (the new series) has had some ups and downs in my opinion, going from some cutesy stories to some fairly interesting more adult ones. Though there's no word about continuation (not cancelled, but on hiatus), the fight against Mumm-Ra is definitely not over. The season ended with a battle that showed unity of the "good guys," but was a net loss overall, and the story took a turn I wasn't expecting by showing Pumyra loyal to Mumm-Ra. Yeah, they got me with that one.

The Legend of Korra had a reasonably solid first season, but felt a bit rushed to me. The inter-character romances build up and play out a bit too quickly as I see it, and the season ending wrapped up pretty much every thread there was. Tarlock and Amon beaten and presumed dead while the other Equalist leaders were captured or beaten after Amon was outed as a bender himself - a huge blow to the cause. There's probably still a little Equalist tech and technique (chi blocking) out there, but the organization is pretty broken and there aren't any other villains except maybe the underworld bosses in Republic city. The romance being brought around full circle in a sense feels immature, but I guess the characters are fairly young and allowed to fumble through it. What's a little disappointed was to see Korra lose access to her bending (saw that coming), gain her air bending (okay, neat), then get back everything she lost by Avatar vision in the last five minutes of the episode and learn how to "cure" others (uhh... cheap, sorry). I think it would have been better to see her struggle a bit as just an air bender trying to regain her other abilities while questioning if she's still the Avatar. Now, I guess the next book will have to take a completely new direction somewhere.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in Rokugan (ongoing)

 So, yeah, I'm terrible at keeping up with between-session conversations and all the piles of possible channels/servers in Discord - especially when work gives me some time to think, but not Discord access. I believe a question was posed about thoughts on the state and future of the Adventures in Rokugan game, though, so here goes... In general, I'm enjoying the time and look forward to it more than feel burdened by it. The start time is a little earlier than ideal, but I don't mind making it work on Saturdays. So, net positive overall. I'm a touch "meh" on the mechanics of AiR. I like the familiarity of D&D, but the Rokugan-specific stuff doesn't feel very rewarding. Granted, this may just be my pick of a shadow acolyte, but I feel like I'm getting more functional mileage out of the sharpshooter feat than all of the special class abilities and level-ups haven't been particularly exciting. I've been tempted to multi-class into something els
Read more

Harbinger of Chaos (Godbound)

 Last night seemed to be the climactic finale of the ongoing Godbound game. I have some thoughts. The previous session ended with a couple PCs and a shadowy person in the special chamber with access to divine realms and their vacated thrones (in the campaign, the gods were sorta kicked out of their positions, making things up for grabs). Once PC had already claimed a throne. All the others were waiting outside. At the moment the session ended, no one seemed aware that the shadowy figure was Beryn, big-bad threat of the campaign. This is where I feel weird about things, because that little detail came up OOC and it changed everything. If the PCs had been aware at the time, they probably would have started a fight outside the chamber when they saw him. That didn't happen. But suddenly because the players were aware, they wanted to be able to plan before the conflict (with downtime glossed over previous) so they could go into the next session guns-blazing and as prepared as possible.
Read more

RPG Desires?

 So I was asked last night what I actually want in an RPG game/campaign. I came up with a few points, but that's a question I find hard to answer on the spot. It's easy to point at things in an ongoing game that I don't like, and a little harder to point at things I do (darn negative-focused psychology), but making generalizations is more difficult still. It does, however, give me something to focus a little on and ramble about for a time... Story I like a narrative through line - not usually to the point of "railroading," but I want more connective tissue than just returning to a job board after each mission. Sometimes that develops as things go, with character goals shaping things. Setting an end goal at the outset ("defeat the demon lord!") can have ups and downs. However it comes about, I really like to feel there is some forward momentum toward something, though. Consistency This one gets sub-points!  As far as setting, I sort of stopped using the t
Read more