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Scavengers Reign (episodes 1-9)
Nov. 6th, 2023 11:29 pmScavengers Reign is so many things I love. Genuinely adult animation, visually gorgeous, genuine SF (as opposed to space opera or space fantasy or space action-adventure, not that there's anything wrong with any of those, but this feels rarer). Weird, inventive alien biology and a story that keeps it simple and lets the character beats and landscape shine. There's an obvious Miyazaki influence (Nausicaa, most of all, although also certain aspects of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke) but also some print comics influence, I think? Like I'm having trouble putting my finger on who but sometimes there's a shot where I'm just like oh, this feels sort of familiar, whose art is that. It is definitely an adult show and is high on body horror, but is also quiet and hopeful and beautiful. I would not call it horror as a genre.
Sadly I am not going to get to see the last three episodes when they air this week - it's on Max, and our long-overdue cancellation of Max takes effect tomorrow - but probably I wouldn't have watched it at all if I hadn't had the excuse of needing to do so before losing the opportunity, so, hey, getting to see 9 episodes out of 12 is better than zero. I wasn't even really aware of it before we came across it while trying to find what we actually meant to watch. (This whole Max thing has been a farce, we kept it around for way, way too long intending to watch a couple of things, only to discover when we finally tried that neither was available any more, for who knows how long.) I will definitely nominate the series as a whole for Dramatic Long - they're 25 minute episodes, so even all 12 episodes will be a pretty reasonable quantity of runtime. God knows nine episodes felt shorter than that latest Avatar movie (although I didn't watch them in one sitting, I was breaking them up with chores and parenting and stuff. But I did watch them all today.) I'm hoping it becomes available for purchase somehow rather than subscription-only in time for more people to check it out before nominating season, although that doesn't seem to be how things work anymore, alas. (But if it did, I could finally see those last three episodes...)
Sadly I am not going to get to see the last three episodes when they air this week - it's on Max, and our long-overdue cancellation of Max takes effect tomorrow - but probably I wouldn't have watched it at all if I hadn't had the excuse of needing to do so before losing the opportunity, so, hey, getting to see 9 episodes out of 12 is better than zero. I wasn't even really aware of it before we came across it while trying to find what we actually meant to watch. (This whole Max thing has been a farce, we kept it around for way, way too long intending to watch a couple of things, only to discover when we finally tried that neither was available any more, for who knows how long.) I will definitely nominate the series as a whole for Dramatic Long - they're 25 minute episodes, so even all 12 episodes will be a pretty reasonable quantity of runtime. God knows nine episodes felt shorter than that latest Avatar movie (although I didn't watch them in one sitting, I was breaking them up with chores and parenting and stuff. But I did watch them all today.) I'm hoping it becomes available for purchase somehow rather than subscription-only in time for more people to check it out before nominating season, although that doesn't seem to be how things work anymore, alas. (But if it did, I could finally see those last three episodes...)
