Tad, the Lost Explorer a temple to mediocrity

Movie: Tad, the Lost Explorer
Director: Enrique Gato
Starring: Kerry Shale, Ariel Winter, Cheech Marin

Verdict:
Tad, the Lost Explorer is a little known 3d nugget lobbed all the way from the Iberian Peninsula, and though the main lead brims with a certain charm and the action can genuinely thrill at some points, the predictable plot, choppy choreography, and less than stellar animation leaves this animated flick stuck digging fruitlessly for a gem to raise it above a callow mediocrity.

In depth:
We here in the States often forget that a wide open film world exists beyond our borders, one full of both quality live-action flicks and enough 3d morsels to satisfy beyond the usual Disney/Pixar and DreamWorks banquets. Among these (though not, admittedly, holding a particularly celebrated position) is the character of Tadeo Jones, a hapless bricklayer and Indian Jones parody created by Spanish director and animator Enrique Gato way back in 2004. After starring in a number of animated shorts and comics, Tadeo gets his feature film debut in Las Aventuras de Tadeo Jones, staring our daydreaming construction worker as he gets swept up in the adventure he has always longed for, trekking through Inca ruins and doing battle with pirates for a coveted lost treasure. The film got overdubbed in English as Tad, the Lost Explorer, and it eventually caught my eye; the world of overseas animation overflows with works of rich creative energy just waiting to be explored. But alas, like a cursed mummy’s tomb, Tad is a “treasure” better left unearthed, for though not without its charms, it fails to fulfill even the moderate aspirations of a bog-standard adventure flick, to say nothing of reaching anywhere close to the footrest of the Disney-Pixar juggernaut.

Voiced by Kerry Shale, Tadeo Jones (now Tad Stones for likely copyright reasons) is a humble young construction worker in Chicago with big dreams of becoming a world famous archeologist. But years spent sifting through work sites for treasure have only turned up beer bottle knock-offs, tourist junk, and a series of pink slips from exasperated employers. His only encouragement through all this comes from his archeologist friend Dr. Humbert (voiced by Mac McDonald). One day, Dr. Humbert receives a mysterious package from a colleague in South America containing a very special artifact: half of the key to an Inca lost city harboring a mystical treasure. Unfortunately, Tad’s shenanigans while escorting the good professor to the airport ends with the unfortunate scholar undergoing a stomach pump in the hospital, leaving Tad with responsibility over the priceless item. Now in Peru, Tad dons the identity of “Dr. Tad Stones,” adventurer archaeologist, and together with Sara Lavrof -  the daughter of Humbert’s fellow bone-digger played by the lovely Ariel Winter - and his pet dog Jeff, he seeks out the fabled ruins, all while dodging the attention of Odysseus, a group of treasure pirates hoping to beat them to the punch.

Tad attempts to blend comedy, heart, and a serious go at action, but ends up with a cocktail too flat to satisfy and too uneven to roll into a smooth, narrative elixir. Though I believe a film should aspire to a diversity of heights if capable, these lofty goals prove difficult when locked into narrow groves of select, plot-driven genres - and fall out of reach completely should the minds behind the movie show themselves incapable of pulling the trick off. About the one thing the creators did well consistently concerns our titular boy: Tad is, thankfully, a friendly and very likeable sort, with a good mix of flaws and balancing strong points. I’ve suffered through far too many films, animated or not, that reduce the wide-eyed dreamer to a partially brain-dead lug with no redeeming attributes. Tad, though dense and more than a little reliant on luck, comes off as rather friendly and pleasant right from the start, and the movie’s course reveals a depth of resourcefulness that largely makes up for his minor bumbling.

Such pleasantries, unfortunately, stick out in a film that damns itself by the faintest of praise. Tad’s costars don’t cut it either individually or as a unit; it’s hard to pay any attention to Sarah’s on screen role with the “Designated Love Interest” messages stamped broadly across her forehead, and Tad’s dog Jeff offers little but an excuse to keep the idiot plot moving. The worst of them has to be Freddy, Sarah and Dr. Lavrof’s shifty, constantly hustling Peruvian assistant who wastes Cheech Marin's vocal talents and embodies every obnoxious Latin American stereotype you can imagine.  Now, far be it from me to distort views of a film through a PC tint; any American condemnation of its supposedly “unenlightened” narrative can and should be tossed to the birds. But Freddy’s utter worthlessness draws not from any offensive stereotyping, but from the fact that he gives little to the story save terrible snake oil salesman jokes which tend to disrupt scenes in the worst ways. He’s a load in every sense of the word, and his intrusive, unfunny, and unnecessary presence is an edifice to what happens when a film shoots for “funny sidekick” and misses the mark by a light-year.
   
But this lines right up with Tad's central weakness: it aims high, but falls short of the mark in every meaningful category. Though well-paced and amusing in many places, the flick as a whole is a temple to mediocrity. The animation feels stiff for a big screen production, passable but clunky, like it had been pushed out of someone’s old Blender files with little or no embellishment. Narratively, it relies too much on unlikely coincidence and plotholes to get our heroes out of a pinch. The most ludicrous example for me rests with a “daring” temple escape which only worked because the plot forgot about the Odysseus pirates who were supposed to be guarding our leads to prevent said escape in the first place. This is tragically par for the film's course; Tad borrows extensively from other movies, but cuts corners on implementing the kernels that made those great films, well, great.

In fact, even the few areas of praise it earns come swaddled in a thick layer of directional ambivalence. As mentioned, Tad seems confused over what kind of movie it wants to be, aspiring to knee-slapping laughs and tense action with equal gusto, but lacking both the talent to pursue both directions adequately, and the focus to just pick one path and commit to it. This pops up largely in the overuse of the slow-motion action trope, which when combined with poor timing and the slightly awkward animation looks more amusing than suspenseful; and with the presence of Belzoni, Sarah’s mute, card-shark, sign-flashing pet parrot. I’ll admit, Belzoni often roused a chuckle out of me, his antics resembling something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, but considering Jeff and every other animal (mostly) follows the normal rules of critter behavior, his strange departure raises a legitimate “why?” aimed squarely at the creators. Even allowing Belzoni on account of Rule of Funny, the other plot particles coalesce into one big “meh” for the most part. The obligatory “plot-starting lie” Tad tells Sarah - the one of him being an ace archeologist, as opposed to a lowly mason - has been done to death so much its modern appearances are practically parody, and yet Tad plays it painfully straight, if somewhat lazily. Even the big bad “reveal” could have been seen by Stevie Wonder from two miles away on an overcast day. Tad plays all the cards in the deck, but possesses almost no skill in effectively utilizing them.

I don’t want to down on the film too much, since it does have its moments, and very little is actually painful, minus Freddy superfluous presence.  But Tad as a movie accomplishes little, inspires less, and leaves the viewer with a sense of time passed, but nothing more. The scales could have tipped the other way had Gato and company bothered to enhance the story elements they borrowed so liberally, and settle on a direction to pursue with dedicated focus. As stands, though, the sort of insipid, universal mediocrity it embodies falls shot of what its heroic lead likely deserves or desires.

Grade: D+

July Releases

July Releases

Summer's hitting full swing, and the box office is heating up in response.  Or, you know, moving past lukewarm , at least.  The two biggest spotlight belong unquestionably to Spider-Man: Far From Home, a reunion with everyone's favorite web-head as he navigates a post-Endgame world; and Disney's 3d remake of The Lion King, one of the most famous and beloved animated films of all time that basically introduced the premise of Hamlet to a wider audience.

Besides these two heavy hitters, July hosts a surprising diversity of indies, documentary films, and (gasp!) original films that aren't remakes/sequels/adaptations.  So this month might be a good time to stretch those horizons a bit.  

In video game land, Final Fantasy XIV Online releases Shadowbringers, its latest DLC, while the third season of hit Netflix series Stranger Things gets a game makeover.  Speaking of Stranger Things, Season 3's soundtrack is out as of the start of this month, while Fever Dream, the third album in Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men's apparently 4-year cycle of releases,  debuts later in July.

As always, check the links below to get the latest skinny on entertainment premieres this month:

Movies

https://www.movieinsider.com/movies/july/2019 

Games

http://www.ign.com/games/upcoming?time=1m 

Books 
http://www.bookreporter.com/coming-soon 

Music 
https://uproxx.com/music/new-albums-coming-out-this-month-july-2019/

Television
https://www.tvguide.com/coming-soon/

See you at the movies! 

Criticism Concepts 3: Screenplays and the bones of a story

Film and television provide unique vehicles for creative expression. Unlike the singular vision of a novelist, concerned with forging an individual connection with a particular readership, screened media represents a massive collaborative effort unlike any other form of entertainment. Even theater relies heavily on the chops of its playwrights, with actors playing close to character as crafted on the page. Though stories created for the screen start with the written word, they quickly float into a wider creative world to which directors, actors, cinematographers, and others all stake a claim.

This creates a special challenge for the critic.  Giving a fair assessment of a movie or television program—pointing out what works and how to make it better, as opposed to merely picking at its rotten bones like a vulture—requires a recognition of the many voices bubbling underneath.  The predefined grooves of genre and demographic help guide our expectations, but standing out from the herd demands bringing together these different visions into a cohesive whole, and the strength of the final product rests in how well the creators accomplish this.  A decent movie can get away with a deficiency in any one area with a strong showing in another; a great movie brings out the best of every element, achieving a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.

So with that in mind, we'll begin a short series here on how to walk through and critically examine a film not as a whole, but though each creative collaborator. I don’t intend to provide an exhaustive list of a movie or television series’ who’s-who, nor do I think such an atomized analysis of a holistic medium to be the “proper” method of critique. But acknowledging the many talents who coalesce to make a movie or show work may deepen an appreciation of what each of them individually contributes.  

So without further ado, let’s start with arguably the heart of the matter: the screenplay.

Contributor 1: The Screenwriter

 Writers are the most important people in Hollywood. And we must never let them know it.” - Irving Thalberg  

The quote above hints at a basic though often unacknowledged truth in Hollywood. Even if an idea originates elsewhere, the script and storyboard provide the scaffolding upon which the narrative of a film is built.  A building is only as strong as its foundation, and the foundation begins with a cornerstone; a solid screenplay forms that first slab of bedrock, igniting the interests of a production team who then scramble to complete the grand design. When evaluating the merits of a screened entity from the standpoint of its writing, the would-be critic's principle concern is its structure.  A screenplay should include the divisions of the story—the beginning, middle, and ending of classical storytelling—and provide answers to the Five Ws at the core of any plot: Who is it about, What are they doing, Where and When are they doing it, and Why any of it matters to anyone, in or out of the story.  And of course, a good screenplay should at least hint at the essential ingredient of any good narrative: conflict.  The story's conflict must be clear and compelling, and must resonate with both the production staff, and the screenwriter's target audience.

Besides the narrative structure, the screenplay also determines at least the initial form of the narrative’s characters. Characters sit at the center of most stories, yet no other element relies so much on the creative input of other participants.  Although I argue that effective onscreen characterization owes more to the talents the medium's actors or even director, the screenwriter initiates the creation of well-rounded, credible humans via a character profile.  Though many writers turn their noses up at character profiling under the belief that it stifles creativity or limits the imagination, a detailed yet flexible profile fleshes out characters while keeping them grounded in some semblance of reality. A good profile will cover basic personality construction and a survey of motivations, as well as permit consistency and complexity to continue within the writer’s direction.  This proves critical when creating plot-driven works, where characters serve as much to facilitate the setting as to be dynamic entities in their own rights. As many of today’s most popular genres fall under that broad tent, character profiles land a heightened importance within the screenwriter's creative toolkit.  

Screenplays: The Good and The Bad Screenplay writing is an art with many faucets, but the above should be a good place to dive into critical analysis.  So how do we cut the blockbuster wheat from the B-studio chafe?

A good screenplay covers all of the bases above, besides crafting its subject with enough flare to rouse interest even in the first few pages of reading.  A good screenwriter knows he or she writes for a visual medium, and when setting the pace of their narratives, must frame them in a way that draws the attention of both their imagined audience, and the producers who wield the power of life or death for their nascent story.  Connected to that, good screenwriters recognize that they’re not novelists— they’re writing for the collective effort, not the one-on-one interaction between reader and author. Therefore the screenplay should be detailed enough to give the studio collaborators something to work with, but not so much as to demand extensive pruning. 

A bad screenplay muddles its storytelling, either forgetting the aforementioned core elements, or smashing them in with such incompetence as to turn away prospective viewers.  Note that a bad screenplay is not, necessarily, a bad idea, or even a bad story; the distance between inspiration and execution depends on the writer’s media awareness as much as skill.  I imagine but a fraction of the world’s best novels would turn a producer’s head if they landed in his or her lap.  Though grabbing the reader’s interest as soon as possible can spell life or death for a story in any format, novels have more time to develop and expand over numerous facets and subplots.  Neither producers nor moviegoers are that forgiving. A screenplay demands a more direct and linear narrative style, one which gets at the heart of the drama, clearly states the conflict, and incorporates the narrative elements mentioned above within a concise, reasonable time frame.  All writers worthy of the name understand that they are writing for others and not just themselves; screenwriters should be doubly aware of this, and neglect it at their peril. 

Analytical Outline 

Being the cornerstone of a movie or television series means having a heap of other structures built on top of you, obscuring your essential role. But keeping the above in mind, we can pierce through the mortar to hash out an outline of this essential keystone's direct contribution:

1. The Structure: Remember: a screenplay’s fundamental contribution to a movie is its general structure.  Does the structure make sense?
1. The Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Does a movie/show fail to adequately introduce its main characters or explain their motives and/or purpose for being there?  If so, that reveals a fundamental flaw in the shaping narrative.
2. Conflict: Meaningful conflict rests at the heart of any good story; even solid comedies possess protagonists who desire and antagonists who, however light-heartedly, thwart them.  Keep an eye out for the classic conflicts of literature: Man against Nature, Man against Man, Man against Society, Man against Self, and Man against Fate (sometimes colluded with the Supernatural).  Can you recognize any of those elements over the course of the production? If the conflict onscreen makes not one lick of sense to you, then there’s a rot somewhere down in the source.
3. Beginning, Middle, and End: The beginning establishes our characters and the basic setting, the middle deepens our empathy for said characters and spotlights the central conflict, and the ending rises to climax and offers a resolution.  While certain structural dynamics, like pacing and scene compression, lay with the director and others, a solid screenplay should limit the necessary work by clearly marking those divisions.
2. Characterization outline: Actors bring characters to life, but the screenplay provides the clay they work with.  This is especially important in indie productions, where the individual talents of a big name actor or director won’t swoop in to uplift a shoddy script.  A character profile should provide at least four things:
1. Consistency: Do the characters seem to wander all over the place?  Hold wild swings of thought and values from beginning to end without a sensible reason given?  Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little scripts, so losing track of who the characters are supposed to be is a serious foundational problem. 
2. Complexity: This may not seem that important if you’re writing, say, a slasher film with disposable teen bodies, but a profile should allow enough complexity to avoid base stereotypes and provide sufficient character motivation, which even the best actors require to fully breath into their roles.
3. Individuality: This goes hand-in-hand with complexity.  Are the characters     mirror images of one another, with hardly any deviation of traits or motives?  If so, it makes for a bad screenplay and a boring film. 
4. Exaggeration: This might seem to clash with the warning about stereotypes above, but tasteful exaggeration, particularly in tense moments, can deepen characterization, arouse interest, and forge empathy onscreen.  Though actors hold the reigns on how effectively this comes across in action, if the scene calls for an “angry outburst,” but fails to determine how angry and at whom (or what), then it will fall a bit flat in all but the most capable performances.
   

   

Take the guidelines above with a grain of salt, but when you next walk into a theater or sit down for your monthly “Netflix and chill,” keeping an eye out for those points. Next time, we’ll visit the directors and how they solve the calculus of film making.

Until then, keep watching.

"King of the Monsters" is a lot of fun, but not much else

 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Movie: Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Director: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe

Verdict:

Delightfully destructive and gleefully brain-dead, the newest arrival in Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse comes rolled up in an generous helping of mindless carnage and top-of-the-line action that's bound to keep you entertained for the whole 2-hour ride, if you can look past the monster-sized plot holes in this cookie-cutter blockbuster narrative.

In depth:

Nothing beats the freedom that comes from walking into a movie theater and knowing exactly why you’re there and what you're in for. Dramas, comedies, and the other broad genres can have so many layers these days, pretending to be one thing at face value, but soon morphing into something else entirely. Rom-coms can switch up to smart satire at the drop of a hat, while a supposed historical drama can quickly turn darkly anachronistic. But when you step into a theater and see Godzilla: King of the Monsters flashing at the top, you don’t have to guess; even without seeing any trailers, you expect a big, brawly clash of souped-up lizards, giant bugs, and other nightmarish nasties in a colossal clash for supremacy. And I’m pleased to say that King of the Monsters definitely delivers on that promise, fueling a special effects blast of brutal beasts even if the story itself proves but a flimsy front for the titanic on screen tussles.  

The film takes place a few years after the mutant showdown in San Francisco. Paleobiologist Emma Russell, played by Vera Farmiga, is a scientist under the employ of Monarch, the government’s crypto-zoology agency tasked with keeping tabs on the giant beasties - now dubbed “Titans” - distributed all over the world.  Still reeling from the loss of her son in the San Fran rampage five years earlier, Emma and her precocious 12-year-old daughter Madison (the talented young Millie Bobby Brown) work in the jungles of China, testing out the good doctor’s crowning achievement: the Orca, a sonic device that can communicate with, and potentially control, the Titans. After a tense but ultimately successful test against the larval form of Kaiju favorite Mothra, Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), a colonel-turn-eco-terrorist intent on using the Orca for his own nefarious purposes, crashes the celebration and kidnaps the mother-daughter duo. Word of the attack reaches ranking Monarch scientist Dr. Ishirō Serizawa (Watanabe), who with his team calls on the one scientist who could help them retrieve the Orca: Mark Russell (Chandler), Emma’s ex-husband and co-inventor of the little Pandora’s Box. But as Mark, Serizawa and the rest of the Monarch team track down Jonah, the reigning reptile himself seems antsier than usual, and all trails point to a Monarch outpost in Antarctica, where hidden agendas and a mysterious dormant Titan threaten to unleash a truly apocalyptic danger into the world.

King of Monsters is above all else a love letter to the classic Kaiju clashes of the older Toho films, while still sticking close to the MonsterVerse's grittier feel. Its tone veers a bit to the right of its 2014 predecessor, which felt more like a cosmic horror story cut from H.P. Lovecraft than a classic monster fight film. Godzilla sewed human insignificance into the fabric of its plot, with Godzilla and the MUTOs clashing before so many anthills disguised as skyscrapers. Though King of the Monsters hardly thrusts humans onto the stage as equals, their more active presence in the monster scuffles paradoxically drew more attention to the Kaiju action. The stakes felt more elevated thanks to Monarch’s hands-on approach to aiding Godzilla compared to the “watch and wait” mentality Serizawa and co. pushed in the first film, and the monsters themselves felt more threatening as a result. This elevated perspective proved crucial with the appearance of Mothra, Queen of the Monsters and probably Godzilla’s most beloved co-star. She has historically been portrayed as a benevolent entity, with a connection to the planet and dedicated to maintaining its balance and the life it contains. This adds another layer to the film and its protagonists - of whatever species - and moves it a touch past the obligatory Kaiju cage matches.

Still, let’s not kid ourselves: those "cage matches" are the reasons we’re parked in our seats for two hours and change, and thankfully, King of the Monsters delivers the goods in full. The special effects crew went all out in this one, giving Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, and the rest a fitting Hollywood facelift as they duke it out on screen. They even managed to nail each Kaiju’s personality down with effects alone, whether it’s Mothra's peaceful night floats complete with simmering lights and sparkles, or Ghidorah’s heralding in a typhoon vortex of lightning and chaos. The MUTOs and even Godzilla at times felt a bit too mundane as monsters in the last flick, or at least as mundane as 100-story gargantuans can get. But King of Monster's combination of fitting music, sharp effects, and narrative hooks elevated the Kaiju to the status of gods clashing on the big screen, and I hope Legendary maintains and develops this winning strategy for the creature features to come.

But alas, as the Kaiju light up on screen with their big fights and even bigger personas, the narrative flops around like a dead fish in their footsteps. The screenwriters didn’t just drop the ball here; they never picked it up to begin with. A deluge of plot holes makes untangling any semblance of a coherent story nearly unfeasible. Characters will wait until the last possible minute to reveal critical information; plot twists get telegraphed worse than finishing moves on a WWE special. The list can go on, but one particular gaffe stands out as especially egregious. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say it involves someone overhearing a conveniently sensitive conversation on an intercom, getting her hands on a valuable piece of equipment that should have been under lock and key, and then simply strolling out the front door - of a heavily fortified and well-armed terrorist base. There's coincidence, and then there's GTFO, and the plot’s heavy reliance on these and partial information withheld for no good reason breaks the suspension of disbelief worst than the giant CGI critters running loose.

But the only thing worse than a narrative scaffolding built of wet tissue and toilet paper rolls is a lack of compelling characters to swing through it. Okay, I get it - this is a monster flick, not Citizen Kane, and neither the first Godzilla, nor Kong: Skull Island offered up any Oscar worthy performances. But besides hosting more sensible plots, those films somehow managed to tease an ephemeral crap out of us for at least some of their characters, either through strength of acting (Bryan Cranston’s heart-wrenching performance comes to mind) or the pathos such a hopeless situation tends to inspire for its cast.  In King of the Monsters, the human motives became more a nuisance than anything else save for their aforementioned function of blowing the action to a bigger scale, and not even Ken Watanabe’s underrated performance can fix the lack of interest or chemistry on screen. Even the major character deaths didn’t really hit home for me, since they came about largely through plot-induced stupidity that looked more artificial than the CGI. A bad plot might be saved by compelling characters, but if you have a bad plot and weak characters, then you’ve got a problem, Houston.

But seriously, you should forget all of that - forget the flimsy characters, flimsier story, and the stupidity-induced plot holes.  Why? Because you’re not here for those. At the end of the day, the only objective criterion by which a movie should be judged is whether or not it has its intended impact on its audience. You don’t file into a movie titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters to experience compelling human drama or well-crafted story. You came to see a giant, radioactive, fire-breathing lizard and his friends smash faces and skyscrapers in equal measure.  King of the Monsters will never top anyone’s best of the year list, but I had a good time despite its many, many faults, and if you adjust your expectations and shed the critical glasses for a minute, you just might, too.

Score: C+

June Releases

June Releases

It's summertime here in the States, and the weather's just right for cool flicks, seasonal beats, and fine television fanfare to help you beat back the heat. Hollywood, as always, provides a good showing of savory cinema sequels all hoping to claw their way to box office stardom. X-Men: Dark Phoenix sees the return of arguably the franchise's most powerful entity, while Men In Black International hopes to stoke interest in this long-running cash cow with neither Will Smith's subtle charm, nor Tommy Lee Jones' practiced charisma, to chug it along.  Not to be outdone, animated films caught their case of sequelitis, with The Secret Life of Pets 2 coming out next week, while Toy Story 4, scion of the world's most beloved 3D film franchise and literal granddaddy of the whole medium, touches down with doubtless much rejoicing and squealing from fans later on in the month.

Though I don't often spotlight books in these summaries, June is cranking out a couple of noteworthy page turners. Chief among them is How Could She, Lauren Mechling's first adult novel about a 30-something transplant to New York who transitions into life's ups and downs amidst a cutting, satirical backdrop of  21st-century multimedia saturation.

Rounding out the media marvels, the Boss will finally release his long-awaited solo album Western Stars on the 14th, while the Jonas Brothers take their first swings at the Billboards in over a decade with Happiness Begins.  Meanwhile, Kevin Bacon returns to the small screen as a corrupt FBI vet who partners with a DA (Aldis Hodge) to solve crimes in Showtime's City on a Hill.  For these and more releases this month, check out the links below as always.

Movies

https://www.movieinsider.com/movies/june/2019 

Games

http://www.ign.com/games/upcoming?time=1m 

Books 
http://www.bookreporter.com/coming-soon 

Music 
https://uproxx.com/music/new-albums-coming-out-this-month-june-2019/

Television
https://www.tvguide.com/coming-soon/

See you at the movies! 

One-Punch Man is back, but the resuts are mixed

Hero may not be drawn to scale

Show: One Punch Man, Season 2

Genre: Animation, action, comedy

Network: Hulu

Premiered: April 9th, 2019

So what do you get when you cross an awesome series, massive hype, and a premiere date that keeps getting pushed back to the far side of the universe every few months? Probably the explosive powder keg of edgy chatter that accompanied the release of anime phenom One-Punch Man's second season. Penned by the exemplary manga writer (and not-so-exemplary artist) ONE, this brilliantly-paced, satirical superhero yarn struck the 2015 anime world with the force of a meteorite, battering its adversaries with the overwhelming might of its strong story and fluid animation. For anime fans and casuals alike, this 12-episode buffet sated a TV hunger they never knew they had, and the withdrawal after it left the airwaves proved almost unbearable to the many viewers starving for more. But with no announcements and hardly a word from the creators, fans clung desperately to the hope of a future release like a life preserve until finally, an announcement two years back heralded the beloved series’s triumphant return. Or...it would have, until word got out that studio Madhouse, the artisans behind Season One’s dazzling spectacle, won't be returning to the drawing board. Instead, JC Staff - a group not exactly known to dazzle fans with the power of their presence - took the helm. This move was decried as the end of the world even before the season premiere, but is the switch to a different studio really that crucial to spoiling such a beloved, acclaimed show? Let's find out...

Synopsis

In a world filled to the brim with monsters, alien attacks, and other threats to the safety and welfare of mankind, Saitama looks like just your average hero for fun, sweeping in to rescue folks from the world’s myriad dangers in between bargain shopping and vegging out on his apartment floor. But Saitama isn’t just your run-of-the-mill, pajama wearing caped crusader; through a “rigorous” training method, he somehow accidentally became the strongest being in existence, capable of killing any villain he comes across with just one, lazy punch. Unfortunately, the wages for this phenomenal power are paid in baldness and boredom, and as the threats pile on and would-be disciples land on his doorstep seeking the secret to his power, our hero bumbles through his existential ennui with a dry wit and one desperate yearning: to find a foe strong enough to give him that one good fight.

The Good

I’m dodging the giant pink animation elephant in the room for now and just going to say that OPM Season 2 is still the same show at heart as before. The characters we all know and love are back, and bless 'em, they haven't changed a bit. Saitama is as lazily indestructible as ever, though he now thoughtlessly doles out common sense wisdom to everyone he meets, morphing him into some latter-day Bodhisattva and captivating some of the best of the best in the hero biz. This season finally gives a proper introduction to one of the series' more popular characters: the psychic diva Fubuki, or “Hellish Blizzard,” as per her hero name. The stunning, green-haired beauty has been a fan favorite since her debut in the webcomic, and her rendezvous with Saitama sheds a bit more light on the dodgy politics saturating the hero world. At the same time, it still adheres to the series's absurdist comedy, rooted in elaborate setups which lead to hilariously anticlimactic conclusions. Episode three showcases this brilliantly, with a serial escalation of fights and hype behind one particular character, only to see him get one-punched - or "one-chopped," in this case - like the Saitama afterthought he ultimately is. And speaking of scuffles, the battle between Genos, Saitama’s chief “disciple,” and the bald hero’s self-proclaimed ninja rival Speed-o'-Sound Sonic, possessed a fluidity and cinematography that exceeded my expectations, and the third episode's spotlight on Garou, the monster-obsessed antagonist this season, propels this kernel of competence into something approaching wonder.

The Bad

...Do I really need to state the obvious?  Fine, here goes: the animation quality, at least for some parts, gets stuck somewhere between “hot royal mess” and “something my sick dog fertilized the lawn with last night.” I'm leaving the fight scenes out for now, since that's an equine of an entirely different hue I discuss down below. Rather, it's what JC Staff does - or doesn't do - with its characters when they're not bleeding or in mid-punch that will leave you scratching your head. For one, it is very lazy; often, the characters are mere still shots with their mouths flapping, veering entire scenes to a level of uncanny artificiality that'd make the Stepford Smilers blush with envy. It doesn't help that for the first two episodes, the folks at JC Staff leave a lot to be desired with their fight scenes. Sure, Genos and Sonic’s epic showdown actually lives up to the overused adjective, but Saitama’s clash with Blizzard and her crew drew little more than a snooze out of me. One blatant gaffe I noticed during their fight made it look like Blizzard suddenly teleported to near Saitama’s head from over thirty feet away, ready to swing in with her box cutter, instead of the desperate charge it had been accurately depicted as in the manga. This was the only part of the fight that elicited more than a yawn from me, though I don’t think “snorting while trying not to laugh” is what JC Staff was shooting for. Beyond the laziness, and short of the best of the action scenes, the animation is passable, if not stellar. Still, fans can’t resist comparing it to the magisterial ease of the past season’s visual accomplishments, even with mundane matters like facial expressions. Madhouse managed to etch the personalities of each character into every tick and twitch of their faces, and every slump of their frames - even Saitama, who ain't exactly the most expressive guy around. But seeing these beloved characters rendered so dully gave a shock to the system of long-time fans, and I doubt the phenomenal first season would have sparked nearly as much acclaim had JC Staff been manning the ship from the get-go.

The Ugly

The animation.

All joking aside, the animation quality, particularly as it concerns the fight scenes, roams all over the map. Had this review gone up before the third episode, I would have judged it an unqualified bad; the hero clashes in the previous two episodes didn't inspire much beyond disappointment, Genos vs. Sonic aside. But then they drop episode three, and surprised everyone with a startling growth spurt from out of the dregs. Garou's curb-stomp across the faces of dozens of heroes reached a height of skillful depiction the naysayers would have thought impossible when the studio released its announcement trailer some time ago. It doesn't quite approach Madhouse's mastered fluidity and seamless execution, but JC Staff pulls off a valiant effort nonetheless, and has a knack for manipulating shadow and lighting to the service of high-octane movement that surpasses even their eulogized predecessor, and in my opinion, this style better fits the somewhat darker tone of this season. The reason I don't count this as a definite good is that we just don't know what to expect in the upcoming episodes: JC Staff may continue the upward march, shattering every negative expectation like the force from Saitama's apocalyptic fists; or they may slide back to the wonky mouth work and still images of before. It's anyone's guess at this point. Besides that, almost every scene so far has been lifted straight from the manga's pages. This is great, on the one hand, since ONE is, if nothing else, an outstanding storyteller, so you can’t go wrong with keeping faithful to the source. But too much faith can shutter the creative juices, and dogmatic adherence to the manga might prohibit JC Staff from making the acceptable breaks from the printed page necessary for every adaptation.

Tune In or Tune Out? 

Tune In. Never mind the seesawing animation quality, never mind the broken pedestal or ruined, mostly unreasonable, expectations; at the end of the day, this is still One-Punch Man, one of the best manga series to come out of Japan in the past decade. ONE's humorous tale of a superhero world beholden to image and devoid of meaning and the caped baldy who wanders that mire carries an evergreen resonance to modern life, no matter what package it comes wrapped in. JC Staff's style may, to old fans, feel like a bitter pill to swallow, but given some time and an open mind, it might still prove just what the doctor ordered.