Category: TV

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Baymax Returns But He Has Lost Some Dimension

Big Hero 6: The Series had its big premier with the short film (AKA two part episode) Baymax Returns, and while it was entertaining and fun, it was missing some of what made the original movie so good.  Namely, emotional depth.  The feature film Big Hero 6 was all about family and the importance of properly dealing with loss.  Big Hero 6: The Series is apparently going to be an easy breezy kids show.

Baymax Returns is pretty much what happens in the credits of the Big Hero 6 movie.  Hiro finds Baymax’s chip and starts to recreate him.  Meanwhile Fred is trying to convince the team to continue to be superheroes.  They on the other hand feel that their job is done.  Of course this would be a crappy show if they were right, so they are forced to continue to protect San Fransokyo from new threats.  Also, it turns out that they really like being superheroes.

I had a good time watching this show, and if you are a kid in the eight to thirteen demo, you will probably love this show.  It is hilarious, and the animation is well done (at least so far).  Plus, it has a great cast of characters.  The series just doesn’t pack the emotional punch that original Big Hero 6 did, and honestly it makes sense that a weekly TV show wouldn’t.  Disney is trying to sell merch not make kids cry, but it just feels hollow in comparison.

I am not going to rag on Disney XD anymore for making a pretty good show.  It will no doubt be another hit to add to their already impressive staple.  I just hope that Big Hero 6: The Series is successful enough to warrant another film, so we can explore the emotional dimensions of these characters further.  Instead of just laughing at their silly jokes and gaping at the pretty, fast moving action.

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You Should Skip ‘See It/Skip It’!

Rotten Tomatoes forced me to watch their new show ‘See It/Skip it’ in order to get the Tomato Score for Justice League yesterday, and I won’t be doing it again.  Thanks to Metacritic I already knew what the score would probably be, but because Justice League is a major film, especially for a DC geek like me, I was super curious.  It was a mistake I will not be making twice.

Listen, even if they pull this, “We aren’t going to post the score until after the show airs for a few hours!”, nonsense again.  I will just be patient and wait for every other media outlet on the internet to tell me what it is because ‘See It/Skip It’ is almost unwatchable.  The hosts have no charisma, or any chemistry together, and it all comes off super scripted.  Plus, I am not sure why I am supposed to take their advice over the advice their website is already giving me.  For the record they both said ‘See It’ for Justice League that way you will know what everyone is taking about Monday, but that they didn’t think it was very good.  Which is kind of an odd stance to take.

Anyway, ‘See It/Skip it’ is a waste of everyone’s time.  There is so much other stuff to read and watch on the internet about movies, and I am sure just about all of it is better than ‘See It/Skip It’.  I am hoping Rotten Tomatoes will have a Tomato Score for its own show because it will not be good.

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Will Anime Strike Work For Amazon?

Netflix recently went on record saying they were going to be putting a lot of money towards licensing and creating anime.  They also followed that up by raising rates for all but their most basic service, so it seems that more content requires more money.  Amazon is also aware of this, but instead of raising rates for all customers, they charge you an extra $4.99 a month for their ‘channel’, Anime Strike.

While on the surface $4.99 doesn’t seem like a lot for a streaming service that supposedly has more than 1000 series on it service, but you can only get Anime Strike if you have a Prime account.  Which is $99 a year, so $8.25 a month, but that includes a lot more than just streaming TV.  Anyway, Anime Strike plus Prime works out to $13.24 a month plus tax.  Which makes it a pretty expensive compared to other services.  Though to be far, most people already have a Prime subscription, and unlike the base Prime membership you can add and drop Strike at will, so if there is a series you want to see that you can watch it in a month you can cancel Anime Strike after you are done.

While it makes sense on the surface to charge people who want to watch niche programing more than people who don’t, I am just not sure it will pay off.  With all the services people are having to pay for now, I just don’t see that many people excited to spend another $5 on top of something they are already paying for.  In the end it will come down to content.

Amazon got me to try Anime Strike with their free trial because they were the only place that had ‘Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side’, but they didn’t have enough to keep me past the seven day trail.  This will be a problem for Amazon.  If they can’t get people to pay for its anime channel, than they will not have enough money to get more anime to keep up with Netflix, Hulu and Crunchy Roll.

It is just interesting to see Amazon going about this differently than everyone else, and I am not sure it is the right path to take.  We will see, I may end up spending an extra $4.99 month if they end up with the only place to get the content I want, so far that is not the case.

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Voltron Season 4 (AKA 3.5) Is Much Better Than 3!

Splitting the latest Voltron season in to two parts didn’t do it any favors.  It killed the momentum of the first half, but thankfully what they are calling season four delivers on goods promised in season three.  It is action packed, full of drama, and it is nice to see team Voltron making some headway.  There are also quite a few twists in this half of the season, so I can’t wait to see how those play out in seasons five and six, provided they split the show yet again.

However, I am hoping that this show has an end point planned out for the near future.  While I love watching it, I would hate for it to get full of filler and randomness just to keep it going.  There is nothing worse than a show just making stuff up as it goes along just because they don’t want to cancel it.  I am looking at you Naruto!  BELIEVE IT!

So while season four of Voltron only clocks in with six twenty-two minute episodes, they are all quite good, and I am ready for six (or thirteen) more whenever they want to drop them.  Sooner or later I will not be able to justify the price of Netflix, but thanks to shows like Voltron, this is not that day.

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Return To Hawkins For Stranger Things 2!

After the insanely popular first season of Stranger Things, people were wondering how and if the Duffer Brothers would be able to live up to their audiences’ lofty expectations for season two.  It turns out that they followed the mold of Alien versus Aliens.  Go bigger and keep the gas peddle down.  It mostly works.  It slows down in the middle, but it recovers, and sews seeds for the future.

Stranger Things 2 (what they called their second season) also deals with how children and self medicating alcoholic sheriffs handle trauma.  The question kind of answers itself, but in general they don’t handle it well.  However, watching the cast deal with what happened last season and overcome it to deal with season two’s new threats is excellent.

Stranger things still has one of the best casts out there, and they added Sean Astin to it, so in other words it got even better.  Though not all the new additions are great.  Not to give anything away, but there are some punks you will meet halfway through the season that are little more than 80’s stereotypes.  Whether it was they way there were written or the acting, it is hard to say, but they don’t come off well.

Still one bad episode compared to eight goods ones is kind of being picky.  Most shows wish they had that kind of ratio.  The question now becomes where Stranger Things goes after season two.  Season one’s ending gave us several questions that needed to be answered.  Season two’s remaining threads aren’t near as interesting, so the Duffer Brothers will have their work cut out for them, but after two great seasons you know I will be back for season three, and based on what I am seeing on Facebook and Twitter so will you.  I can’t wait to get back to Hawkins Indiana to hang out with everyone’s favorite middle-schoolers!