SF and Fantasy Series Reviews M - ZMacross Plus (1995 Japan) ** Genres: SF Ani Watched: the first 2 of 4 episodes Oh goody. Hyperactive fighting amongst people wearing giant flying robots. It's stupid. But my boyfriend says, "But I'm enjoying it! It goes zoom zoom bang bang!" and so I keep watching. Surprisingly it improves after the first 15 minutes. And it's pretty animation. It becomes a strangely non-annoying soap opera featuring giant flying robots. The Japanese love soap operas with giant robots. They are all melodramatic and loving of giant robots that way. (Test pilots are perfect for soap operas: they're glamorous, sexy, and nuts. But American soaps don't ever have test pilots because test pilots' interests are too juvenile for the average soaps fan. They need men who will create drama within the context of poshly decorated interiors, restaurants, resorts, and provocative office buildings. Situations calling for expensively dressed and groomed ladies to counterpart. Maybe some kind of limited outdoors activity for showcasing a rugged tanned type, like riding horses into the sunset, is acceptable now and then as an exotic romp.) These robots are very advanced. They can change from being planes into giant people and punch each other. So OK, it's still stupid. Mahoromatic (2001 Japan) * Genres: SF Com Ani Watched: first episode High-school boys' fantasy anime. High-school boys suck if they like this boring sappy nonsense. No wonder they need fantasy. Because real women want real men! Who watch real action! Oh, I don't know - Japanese girls like bishonen apparently so maybe watching boring sappy nonsense is the best training for Japanese boys to get girls. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996 Japan) * Genres: SF Ani Watched: the first 1 of 26 episodes The credits have ditsy girls whose mouths go "Aaa!," to distinguish them from the slightly less ditsy boys, and in the background older men in business suits, looking serious (the straight men, not so much to humor as to ditsiness). This is all way way way too ditsy. There is humor, but it's too ditsy too.
Red Dwarf (1988 UK) ***** Genres: SF Com Adv Millions of years in the future, in a region of space millions of light years from our own, an intelligent space ship . . . well, there is some question as to that . . . a quirky self-aware spaceship carries what may be the last remnants of humanity on a journey of . . . well, no one's sure, really. And boy are things not going so well. Really you'd have to be a clueless slob or already dead to not be depressed by it all. Yet the universe has connived to populate this, possibly last, bastion of humanity with just the sort of characters who seem to thrive on the situation. At least as much as they would be likely to thrive anywhere else. These may not be the folks you'd choose to have with you on a probably terminal journey of bumbling discovery of nifty alien stuff and surprising regions of the self, but you might want to think again. No bright-eyed and bushy-tailed cadet would be anywhere as fit a companion if your aim includes retaining your sanity because how would he retain his? South Park (1997) ***** Genres: F Com Ani Excellent. Varies, though. You know how America is very diverse and you can't tell what a person is like by indicators like that he dislikes to X or hasn't read Y or wears Z? Like you could, to some extent, back in Russia. That was convenient, but this is better, everything considered. Still, you can use a few things here too. Like if a person voted for Clinton, you'll have an easier time conning or sleeping with him. Or if he wears a business suit, he might be the sort who joined the Communist party back home. Or if he tried and doesn't like South Park, he has a severely crippled sense of humor. No, I don't mean that you should then hassle him a lot because he will squirm amusingly; the other Americans around will not appreciate it, strangely enough. They like to be polite and nonconfrontational, possibly harking back to the days when one lived with rough frontierspeople and a wrong word could get one shot. It may seem boring, but at least everybody has a lot of stuff. That could be it too - they're too stuffed full of goodies, foodwise and otherwise, and not feeling up for it. Anyway, just be careful when joking with Americans; they're not used to it, at least not what you mean by it. But the diversity and the wealth also means that you get shows like this along with the piles of inane crap for the people with crippled senses of humor or wishing to experience drama among suited-up people or liberal BS-y issues. Star Trek (1966) **** Genres: SF Nice. Goofy yeah but you have to get in their groove. The scriptwriters had some very immature ideas about aggression. I don't mean four-year-old immature but nineteen-and-in-college-and-hoping-to-score-with-hot-liberal-arts-chicks immature. But it's still pretty cute. And the uniforms are cute and they are cute in their cute uniforms. I give it four stars, for boldly opening new frontiers in its field, although I've seen too many of these and so have you. I'm not likely to derive four stars of enjoyment out of seeing any more of them.
Star Trek Next Generation (1987) NR Genres: SF Yuk! I hate these people and they should all fall into a black hole full of fire ants! Snooty stupid boring frozen-faced brats, the lot of them. Taken (2002) NR Genres: SF Watched: trailer What do you know, an SF series featuring alien abductions and wheat field disturbances. The two day-to-day alien issues of most concern to the average citizen. That's part of the genius of Spielberg - going for what most interests the public with unwavering focus. No doubt no major ramifications of abductions in the public mind are left unprobed, the masterful direction finding a way to present them in an intriguing yet tasteful manner. Sounds too tasteful for me; I think this project would have made more sense as a porno. But the way they did it maximizes profits. That's how you make the most money presenting that kind of risqué material - by presenting it as not porn but something that it's easy and non-embarrassing to get and officially OK to consume. Like those supermarket romance novels. Once when my friend was a kid he snuck a peek inside one of his mom's romance novels. The sheik who had kidnapped the lady into his harem was doing all kinds of things to the poor creature despite her protestations, and then, he probed her rear with a common rear-probing implement, and she passed out! This affected the kid strongly too - he stopped right there and left his mom's books alone after that. I can't promise how much rear-probing this series delivers but it must have a fair bit; Spielberg wouldn't disappoint the interested public. Wolf's Rain (2003 Japan) ** Genres: F Ani Watched: one episode The episode didn't have a discrete story; it was evidently part of a boring drawn-out soap opera. It appears to be about juvenile Russian werewolves with Japanese names. Or maybe they're all Japanese and they're using Cyrillic because they finally gave up on their ridiculous antediluvian pictographs. Xena (1995 New Zealand) *** Genres: F Varies. They apparently had a good musical episode, but I missed that. It contracted the same disease Hercules did, all the stupid social work and touchy-feely crap to the detriment of monster and other bad-guy ass-kicking. Although in the case of Xena much of the touchy-feely was confined to the Xena-Gabrielle relationship and many viewers didn't mind. The X-Files (1993) * Genres: SF Varies a lot. Most are stupid, boring, and annoying; a few are good. It has a lot to do with whether the show is about a monster or about the ongoing plot: the monster shows are sometimes good. But even when it's about a monster, the show would be a lot better without the bizarrely frozen-faced guy and his psychotic semi-frozen-faced doctor sidekick. They're supposed to be secret government investigators and while I realize from everything I've ever seen in movies and TV that these people are humorless and rigid, this doesn't begin to explain it. They really freak me out. What's with the immobile faces? What's with the doctor's repeated denial of the possibility of monsters after show after show full of monsters? It is beyond the pale of normal human experience and it's very creepy and I hate them and hence have seen only several shows so I guess I shouldn't write a long review about it. Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie. |
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