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alias_sqbrLive Action TV:
Our Flag Means Death
Murderville
Inventing Anna
Western Animation:
Star Trek Prodigy
Turning Red
Encanto
Anime:
Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated Into a Total Fantasy Knockout
Taisho Otome Fairy Tale
Live Action TV:
Our Flag Means Death: The gay pirate romcom everyone's talking about! Loosely based on the real-life gentleman-turned-pirate Stede Bonnet, who was terrible at piracy but somehow ended up working with Blackbeard (played wonderfully by Taika Waititi). This is fantastic, funny and charming and surprisingly full of feels. The humour can be by turns quite silly and quite dark, it has a similar feel to What We Do In the Shadows, but is a little more focussed on characters and relationships versus jokes. Has a lot of queer and POC characters, including a non-binary character who is handled pretty well, and is pretty decent to its few female characters. Note: season 1 ends on sort of cliffhanger.
Murderville: A very silly murder mystery comedy where in each episode a new guest star has to improvise being a police detective solving a murder, with everyone but them having access to the script. Got a bit repetitive near the end but some of the episodes are very funny.
Inventing Anna: A fictionalised depiction of the con artist Anna Delvey and how she scammed so many rich people. I am not usually into this sort of thing and eventually went off it but the first few episodes were quite engrossing in a trashy sort of way.
Western Animation:
Star Trek Prodigy: An animated Star Trek kid's show about a bunch of young aliens who escape a prison mine with an abandoned Federation ship that turns out to have a hologram of Janeway on board. They have various adventures running away from the prison warden (who is the evil clone dad of one of them), exploring the galaxy, and learning how to work together as a crew and figure out who they are as people(*). This was pretty fun! The characters are varied and mostly pretty likeable, and the scifi and character-based plots simple but effective. I had feels! I liked the style of 3d animation, too, it's expressive and aesthetically pleasing and worked well in the Cool Scifi Moments.
(*)except hologram!Janeway, who already knows exactly who she is, but who she is is great so that's fine.
Turning Red: A Disney animated movie about a Chinese Canadian girl in the early 2000s who thinks she has her life all sorted out...until she suddenly turns into a giant red panda. An absolutely delightful coming of age story, about the ways growing through puberty can be both excruciating and transformative. Funny, heartwarming, and charming. It balances specific, grounded reality with over the top cartoonish metaphor in ways I really clicked with.
Encanto: A Disney animated movie about a Columbian teen girl who is the only one in her family with no magic powers. She pretends to herself she's fine with it but deep down feels like the one flawed member of an otherwise perfect family. But then it becomes clear that the family has major cracks, and everyone has to confront how they really feel and what they really need. It balances specific, grounded reality with over the top cartoonish metaphor in ways that absolutely did not work for me: most of the movie documents how toxic family dynamics have caused deep pain, and then at the end everyone just...hugs it out and everything is suddenly fine. But other people love it, so, YMMV.
Anime:
Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated Into a Total Fantasy Knockout, season 1: A rom-com anime about two male friends trying to pretend they don't have feelings for each other when they are transported to a fantasy world and one of them is turned into a magically sexy girl. The show is very clear on them having already been pretty shippy as dudes, and the guy who turns into a 'girl' enjoys being seen as hot and pretty while still very much identifying as a guy. It's also very funny and good natured, and more focussed on humour and relationships than wish fulfilment. It's definitely not intended as Queer Representation and is often heteronormative, but has m/f, m/m, and f/f fanservice without being too sleazy, eg while guys are magically compelled to hit on the "girl" it's in the form of marriage proposals not anything overtly sexual. The 32 year old 'girl' theoretically has a thing for teen girls, and while he shows no signs of wanting to actually pursue any in practice I did still find it a bit squicky. The couple is not together yet by the end of season 1 and I am very curious to see how it ends.
Taisho Otome Fairy Tale: A romance anime set in 1920s/Taisho ero Japan, about the discarded disabled son of a rich family and the arranged bride bought to look after him. She's optimistic and determined, he's prickly, depressed, and traumatised but decent at heart. They slowly connect, and help each other and various other characters work through their issues and find happiness. A very enjoyable example of this kind of story, with lots of sweet friendships and sibling relationships beyond the central romance. His paralysed hand is never healed and while it's all a bit "woobie disabled rich boy whose depression is cured by the determination of a sweet able-bodied girl" it's clear his primary problem is his loneliness and abusive father. They're very young at the start (she's 13 and I think he's 15) but just betrothed to be married, nothing sexual happens beyond some chaste kisses and an embarrassed awareness that they will have sex one day. There's a huge power gap but he tries to be decent about it and they're in love so it's fine ;P This is mostly a pretty light story, with happy endings for all the main characters, but does deal with some dark topics and made me cry. I can't articulate my mixed feelings on the treatment of gender/sex but I have some!
Our Flag Means Death
Murderville
Inventing Anna
Western Animation:
Star Trek Prodigy
Turning Red
Encanto
Anime:
Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated Into a Total Fantasy Knockout
Taisho Otome Fairy Tale
Live Action TV:
Our Flag Means Death: The gay pirate romcom everyone's talking about! Loosely based on the real-life gentleman-turned-pirate Stede Bonnet, who was terrible at piracy but somehow ended up working with Blackbeard (played wonderfully by Taika Waititi). This is fantastic, funny and charming and surprisingly full of feels. The humour can be by turns quite silly and quite dark, it has a similar feel to What We Do In the Shadows, but is a little more focussed on characters and relationships versus jokes. Has a lot of queer and POC characters, including a non-binary character who is handled pretty well, and is pretty decent to its few female characters. Note: season 1 ends on sort of cliffhanger.
Murderville: A very silly murder mystery comedy where in each episode a new guest star has to improvise being a police detective solving a murder, with everyone but them having access to the script. Got a bit repetitive near the end but some of the episodes are very funny.
Inventing Anna: A fictionalised depiction of the con artist Anna Delvey and how she scammed so many rich people. I am not usually into this sort of thing and eventually went off it but the first few episodes were quite engrossing in a trashy sort of way.
Western Animation:
Star Trek Prodigy: An animated Star Trek kid's show about a bunch of young aliens who escape a prison mine with an abandoned Federation ship that turns out to have a hologram of Janeway on board. They have various adventures running away from the prison warden (who is the evil clone dad of one of them), exploring the galaxy, and learning how to work together as a crew and figure out who they are as people(*). This was pretty fun! The characters are varied and mostly pretty likeable, and the scifi and character-based plots simple but effective. I had feels! I liked the style of 3d animation, too, it's expressive and aesthetically pleasing and worked well in the Cool Scifi Moments.
(*)except hologram!Janeway, who already knows exactly who she is, but who she is is great so that's fine.
Turning Red: A Disney animated movie about a Chinese Canadian girl in the early 2000s who thinks she has her life all sorted out...until she suddenly turns into a giant red panda. An absolutely delightful coming of age story, about the ways growing through puberty can be both excruciating and transformative. Funny, heartwarming, and charming. It balances specific, grounded reality with over the top cartoonish metaphor in ways I really clicked with.
Encanto: A Disney animated movie about a Columbian teen girl who is the only one in her family with no magic powers. She pretends to herself she's fine with it but deep down feels like the one flawed member of an otherwise perfect family. But then it becomes clear that the family has major cracks, and everyone has to confront how they really feel and what they really need. It balances specific, grounded reality with over the top cartoonish metaphor in ways that absolutely did not work for me: most of the movie documents how toxic family dynamics have caused deep pain, and then at the end everyone just...hugs it out and everything is suddenly fine. But other people love it, so, YMMV.
Anime:
Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated Into a Total Fantasy Knockout, season 1: A rom-com anime about two male friends trying to pretend they don't have feelings for each other when they are transported to a fantasy world and one of them is turned into a magically sexy girl. The show is very clear on them having already been pretty shippy as dudes, and the guy who turns into a 'girl' enjoys being seen as hot and pretty while still very much identifying as a guy. It's also very funny and good natured, and more focussed on humour and relationships than wish fulfilment. It's definitely not intended as Queer Representation and is often heteronormative, but has m/f, m/m, and f/f fanservice without being too sleazy, eg while guys are magically compelled to hit on the "girl" it's in the form of marriage proposals not anything overtly sexual. The 32 year old 'girl' theoretically has a thing for teen girls, and while he shows no signs of wanting to actually pursue any in practice I did still find it a bit squicky. The couple is not together yet by the end of season 1 and I am very curious to see how it ends.
Taisho Otome Fairy Tale: A romance anime set in 1920s/Taisho ero Japan, about the discarded disabled son of a rich family and the arranged bride bought to look after him. She's optimistic and determined, he's prickly, depressed, and traumatised but decent at heart. They slowly connect, and help each other and various other characters work through their issues and find happiness. A very enjoyable example of this kind of story, with lots of sweet friendships and sibling relationships beyond the central romance. His paralysed hand is never healed and while it's all a bit "woobie disabled rich boy whose depression is cured by the determination of a sweet able-bodied girl" it's clear his primary problem is his loneliness and abusive father. They're very young at the start (she's 13 and I think he's 15) but just betrothed to be married, nothing sexual happens beyond some chaste kisses and an embarrassed awareness that they will have sex one day. There's a huge power gap but he tries to be decent about it and they're in love so it's fine ;P This is mostly a pretty light story, with happy endings for all the main characters, but does deal with some dark topics and made me cry. I can't articulate my mixed feelings on the treatment of gender/sex but I have some!
no subject
Date: 2022-04-09 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-10 02:17 pm (UTC)I am pretty unqualified to say how accurate it is history-wise, but to me it felt like it was making some effort but still sacrificed accuracy for Tropes when it felt like it.