i cannot believe that i am only now learning about the dinosaur king drama
in case you’ve never heard of dinosaur king:
it’s a pretty mediocre anime from the early 90s, that was pretty much just made to market this dinosaur trading card game. the plot was extremely boring (until stuff suddenly started happening around episode 35), and for some reason they decided to have all the dinosaur fights with these incredibly stiff 3d models, which was.. a choice..
all together it was so bad that it’s good (but not particularly good), and kinda forgettable
and then they decided that it needed a remake. they were releasing some new toys, and a video game was being worked on, so in 1999 they released a fucking remake of that weird show
the writers and producers were these two austrian guys, suppenheimer and vemovich
the remake was planned to be two seasons
the original dinosaur king had two seasons as well, the first had 49 episodes, and the second had 30 episodes
the remake was 60 episodes total, and completely ignored season two of the original
suppenheimer and vemovich only retold season one, expanded it a bit, reshuffled some events (namely putting the twist from episode 35 way earlier), giving the characters actual motivations… they actually managed to make the show good
(they still kept in the weird 3d dinosaurs, and the card game tie-ins, because at the core the show was still about marketing the toys)
and then season two ended, neatly tying up the story, and it was genuinely good
and then the network renewed the show for a third season
suppenheimer was done with the show at that point. they only ever wanted to make two seasons, and they had told exactly the story that they wanted to tell, so they were out
but vemovich wasn’t done yet, so he stayed on and wrote season three.
and season four.
and…
the entire remake turned out to be twenty seasons long
and it got weird, lemme tell you
the very first thing vemovich introduced in season three of dinosaur king, the anime about dinosaurs and traveling to the ancient past, was alien space pirates
which i guess makes sense, because they can travel through time, so the future is technically also viable
and then season six was all about one of the main characters becoming a werewolf? which was never fixed, but they also just never mention it at any point after the season six finale
season eleven was all about the love story between one of the supporting cast and one of the antagonists (who had a redemption arc early in season two, but vemovich cast him as a villain again anyway starting in season four)
season sixteen only had one episode where any dinosaurs appeared?? in a show called dinosaur king? and i’m pretty sure they said the word “dinosaur” zero times in that entire season
it was weird, okay, the entire remake was weird after season two
meanwhile, on the forums (and later on twitter), suppenheimer has completely divorced themselves from the show’s production, but they are definitely still watching, and loudly complaining
suppenheimer and vemovich were actually said to be on pretty good terms during the production of the first two seasons, but after that suppenheimer got mean
[id: a tweet by @ cimminimmi from december 2016 that reads “what was the worst show you guys watched this year?”, with a reply from @ suppi_sr (suppenheimer’s twitter) that reads “dinosaur king. for the 5th year in a row.” end id.]
we never really heard anything from vemovich. he was never on any of the forums, and he had a rule of never publicly interacting with any hate whatsoever
so we had suppenheimer just tearing the show down at every point, calling for people to stop watching, and even making several petitions to have the show cancelled, none of which ever went anywhere of course
because we then got season seventeen, which introduces vemovich’s author insert. they are absolutely not subtle about it, the character pretty much goes “hey, my name is vemovich, i’m the guy who is writing this story”
and he just occasionally pops up during the next four seasons
and then season nineteen and twenty are building up to this great unseen danger that is threatening to wipe out the universe
and at the very goddamn end of season twenty, the finale of the entire show, the big threat is finally revealed
so, i’ve said that this entire thing is an anime with weird 3d dinosaurs inserted into it
the big bad, the last villain that was threatening to destroy the fabric of reality… was suppenheimer
a live action suppenheimer, who is greenscreened into the anime world
he is of course stopped by vemovich’s author insert, who up to that point had been 2d animated, but now he is also greenscreened into the show
so the goddamn epic finale of the show is a live action suppenheimer and vemovich fighting, using 3d animated dinosaurs, on this 2d animated battlefield
it looked bad
and then the show is over
but this story is still going
because suppenheimer has spent the last eighteen years tearing apart the show and tearing apart vemovich publicly at least once per week
and then, two years after the show is over
those bastards tweet out that they are married
[id: a twitter conversation between vemovich, suppenheimer, and twitter user abblycidre from october 2021. vemovich is replying “love you, babe” to suppenheimer. suppenheimer replies “love you too.” abblycidre replies “don’t you two have beef?” suppenheimer replies “we can have beef and be married at the same time. it’s fine.” abblycidre replies “married?!” in all caps. vemovich replies “last i checked we’ve been married for 13 years now, yeah”. end id.]
so i guess the tweet where suppenheimer threatened to divorce vemovich wasn’t a joke after all
[a tweet by suppenheimer from june 2012 that reads “@ vemovich. if you don’t stop ruining dinosaur king i will divorce you.” end id.]
suppenheimer and vemovich have been living together for the entire goddamn run of the dinosaur king remake, while suppenheimer was constantly starting shit about the show online
they’ve been dating since before the show even started, and they got married during season nine, and they’ve just been keeping up those personas for twenty fucking years
and i just kinda don’t know what to do with my life now that i know that
what the fuck did those guys’ home life look like?!
For everyone wondering if this is real or not:
Yep, it’s real all right. If you’re interested in learning more about the show itself, I recommend reading through these couple of articles on the series: https://www.fandom.com/articles/dinosaur-king-internal-controversy or, for a more in-depth analysis, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/dinosaur-king_(season_1).
You should give these sources a good read-through either way because in all honesty, OP missed out on some prime groundbreaking material. For example, the fact that this show’s depiction of an ankylosaurus is thought to be the most accurate depiction of ankylosaurs in the 20th Century. Or how those first 2 seasons somehow have the lowest overall score of the series on IMDB and other rating systems, despite the controversy of later seasons (which might not seem like much, but it at least explains why none of the aforementioned petitions had any effect).
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Like yes the marriage Twitter reveal was really something, but it should not overshadow these absolutely mind boggling stats that come from such a niche 90s anime.
thank you for this addition. you actually mentioned some stuff that i didn’t find during my research (i did not know about the ankylosaurus thing), so kudos for that
there are a few things in the wiki article that i wanted to include, i just couldn’t find a good place to mention them in a post that already got a bit longer than i meant for it to be 😅
you know what maybe i did miss tumblr a little bit
