Finally got to watch the pilot for the Knights of Guinevere, keeping in line with my personal curse of only finding out about these things in the least convenient possible circumstances (at sea, miles from cell service, had to make landfall and hike a mountain to get enough reception to watch it) but I made it and I have thoughts. And a long boat ride back to enumerate them.
Holy shit this is so good
Wow Disney is gonna be hiring like, actual assassins this time. They got money for ip lawyers and money for hitmen, somebody get Dana a flack jacket.
Holy shit this is so incredibly good. I was so excited by the trailer that I was almost expecting to be let down by the actual thing but damn.
We have established the theme of "nostalgia is a maladaptive coping strategy" early and will be curbstomping it in for full effect i see.
Literally every representation of a corporate capitalist in western media is a caricature of Walt Disney the actual human person. The sleek slicked back hair and the neat pencil mustache and the suit, that's the popular culture concept that crops up in comics movies TV animated and otherwise. This probably has some absolutely twisted downstream effects future historical analysis will cringe at.
Loving the shattered sheild and splintered sword imagery associated with the girls. The traits that would give them agency have been overtaxed to the point of burnout or completely atrophied all in the service of the system that keeps them down in the first place.
While i'm at it, i'm also loving the fact that in the era of unhinged corporate IP regimes, this story is just one more addition to the communal canon of Arthurainia.
It would probably be a good idea to look up the medieval christian saints, andrea and francesca. Probably olivia as well.
I personally loathe the cutesy woodland animal sidekick trope, (for lots and lots of reasons) and it is fun to see it subverted, but no one is ever going to take it as far as I want to, and i'm gonna have to do with my goddamn self one of these days.
That said I am kind of interested to see how the show deals with the complete absence of non human organic life. I saw a post that touched on it but every single thing is either a human or a robot. What do these people eat? How do they breathe? Has anyone ever seen a real penguin or tapir or cat? For that matter would anyone recognize a horse that wasn't a unicorn? After a lifetime of only ever seeing the sanitized Disney-fied version of cutesy animals would real life animal intelligence be so foreign as to be alien? DJZ I'm trusting you with alot here.
There's a quote about how Mount Fiji shows up in so much japanese art that when it's not there it's because there was the conscious choice to not include it or you are standing on top of it. I feel like Disney is currently occupying this space of Mount Fiji. Especially when the titular character has hair that isn't quite Mickey Mouse ears.
It's really interesting how almost everyone is explicitly motivated by money with the notable exception of olivia and her father. They are wealthy beyond belief and never need to think about the material reality of paying rent or a grocery bill. We are so used to the narrative of money, grubbing corporate shills, making everything worse for everyone for the sake of profit, and that's not wrong. But here the people who are ripping out the innards of something you love aren't actually motivated by money because they already have so much of it. In the same way that censorship is never about content, it's always about control, I'm inclined to believe there's going to be something worth saying about how corporate entities require everyone to play with their dolls the "correct" way.
I have more thoughts about that last one but i'm probably going to need to sit down and actually articulate them into an essay.
I'm so glad the animation has such a dynamic color range. I'm a dramatic bitch. I require drama. Lighting. Competent technical skill even. Yay for blue skin and orange light. Yay for harsh desaturation and evil red lights. Did you see how they indicated morning by a small strip of orange sunlight leaking rosy dawn into the scene? Did you see how everyone's skin tone varied dramatically through different environments and yet held relative to one another? Did you see?! Applause and adulation! I want to study your color keys
i get that pilots are intended to have a whole bunch of hooks for future plots but I feel that nobly hiding hopless infirmities is played out. Dull cliche. Andrea got blue lung at work and isn't getting workers comp.
In that same vein, hello, redeemable shithead dad figure. Wants to make honorary(?) daughter captain of her own ship and boost them both out of poverty. Would like her to stop biting him. Is on first name basis with her friends. Like. There have been worse dads. The discourse is gonna be insufferable.
Oh yeah and lest we forget. Indie animation company needs to pay its bills. So it can make the show about evil corporation that churns out plastic garbage of the character. So indie animation company needs to sell the plastic garbage of the character. Which is different.
