Topic: The Unoffical TV Show Mega Thread

Pretty sure that was me.

@seaboyluca Apologies, my aqueous acquaintance!

@TheJGG
Lol, no problem my beanie wearing friend. 🤗

I think it's just that we're all in such a rush these days that if you're not inherently attached to the fandom like me, you just move on to the next thing if you don't like what you see in the trailer. There's like five or six streaming services out there with thousands of programs released every year I barely have the time or attention span to care about all the latest big releases. Doesn't help that I already have a cynical view towards modern entertainment's slipping quality.

If anything, I prefer to look towards the classics, the older titles I never had a chance to explore before. A lot of quality black and white films I never got to see. A lot of Hitchcock works I never got to experience. There's a whole goldmine of old movies and TV shows I still need to catch up on, including The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad - the big three kings of television. Then of course, there's the dark horse titles that received better acclaim over time like Mad Men. Don't forget HBO's other classics like Deadwood and Westworld.

HBO - simply the best! lol Quite a few TV shows I'm looking forward to watching for the first time were produced by this awesome network.

Maken-Ki! Season 1 (Blu-Ray).

Takeru is a first year high schooler excited to enroll in Tenbi Academy, a historically all girls school which just went co-ed. In his mind this gives him the chance to hit it off with lots of babes (including childhood friend Haruko, all grown up), but gets more than he bargained for when he learns it's a combat school of sorts, where everyone is required to train with magical weapons called "Maken", and most of the girls would sooner kick his butt than go out with him.

One quick look would tell anyone this is a fan service centric harem series, but when I watched it years ago I thought it balanced that well with the more action oriented battle stuff. Upon rewatch, it's a lot more harem fan service fluff than I remembered (in comparison to the action, which while present wasn't nearly as involved as I had remembered). It's certainly serviceable for the fan service aspect (it even does that thing where the female characters' features are often visible through their clothes), but it won't appeal to anyone who isn't already into fan service anime.

To be fair though, they've practically spelled out the plot for you in the theme song's lyrics:

A little boy named Presley found a secret out this year
That he was once a Pharaoh when Egyptians ruled the world
And now some sorcerer named Scarab tries to get him day and night
But Presley has four guardians to protect his very life!

He has the Mummies! From 1525 BC!
He has the Mummies! Protection for the new Rapses!
He has the Mummies! They're hanging by the 'Frisco Bay!
He has the Mummies! Protectors of the world today!
(Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!)
He has the Mummies! From 1525 BC!
He has the Mummies! Protection for the Pharaoh teen!
He has the Mummies! They're hanging by the Western Gate!
He has the Mummies! They're gonna save the world today
The Egyptian way
They're Mummies Alive!

God, I remember singing to that song many times as a kid. This was a time when the Pokémon theme song was popular too. And it's so cheesy, the way they dump plot exposition in the theme song, but the opening verses feel like one of those hilarious lyrics where you would recite as a meme, just for the laugh of it.

I love my childhood cartoon theme songs. Always a blast revisiting them.

@Maxenmus That reminded me of The Munsters

@Kermit1 It's not bad. Definitely before my time though.

Heard a movie remake's coming out.

@Maxenmus way before my time too.

The movie remakes trailers out and it's garbage. They have even done editing for the movie yet.

I mean, it's Rob Zombie, so I was never expecting much in the first place to be honest.

@Maxenmus It's his first PG movie... His wife is even in one of the lead roles... The budget was 40mil... Nah he couldn't be making this movie so his friends could have a huge paycheck... Maybe

Worked for Adam Sandler.

@Maxenmus, now that I've seen it, that trailer looks sooo familiar, but I don't think I've actually seen the show.

It totally has that late 90's/early 00's look of a western cartoon trying to capitalize on the anime boom in terms of style (kinda like Teen Titans or Jackie Chan Adventures), so I should have been just the right age for it if I'm right about the timeframe. Must have been on at a time/channel I couldn't catch it (similar to MedaBots, which I only saw one or two episodes of back in the day), or it was on up against something I was more into.

@RR529 Hah, MedaBots. Haven't heard that name in a long time. Alongside Big Bad Beetleborgs (which capitalized on the Power Rangers boom), MedaBots was definitely one of those second-tier knock-offs that unfortunately didn't receive the popularity their creators sought. I could barely remember Beetleborgs until you mentioned MedaBots, which aired around the same year as Beetleborgs in Singapore.

I think I only watched these shows at all back then because I'd watch anything that was aired on Kids Central (the aforementioned Singapore kids channel), so I got a hodgepodge of shows from different networks, ranging from the A-listers like Rugrats and The Powerpuff Girls to the B-listers above like Beetleborgs and Little Bear. Thankfully, I would acquire cable channels as I got older and got introduced to the Big Three of animated networks: Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network (Disney Channel was my go-to network though).

But for what it's worth, these 2nd tier shows do still carry a sense of nostalgia with them, to a more interesting time when Fox Kids had a Digimon movie. lmao

The latest episode of The Orville has one of the best space battles I've ever seen, palpable tension and big emotions. The Orville, what are you doing to me? 😭

Finished off Ms. Marvel last night.

I didn't go in particularly expecting anything with it, but I ended up enjoying myself in the end. I actually really enjoyed the moments with her & her family/friends (sure, it's a bit cringe, but much like Turning Red I think that's a bit intentional & think it had a similar vibe). I do think they tried biting off more than they could chew narratively, they should have either focused on her coming to grips with her powers while avoiding/dealing with the DoDC OR focused on the origin of her powers/family & the Djinn, but not both. I'm still not sure exactly why Kamran got powers after his mother died sealing the rift.

I know there was some controversy with how they changed her powers (& origin) from the comics, though as I'm not coming to it from that angle it didn't bother me.

It's kinda complicated.

Back then, when Fox still owned the rights to the X-Men, Marvel got sick of it and killed them off in the comics and changed their focus to a different kind of mutants simply known as... "The Inhumans" (cue dramatic music). The Inhumans, while being around since 1965, were going to replace Th X-Men in terms of tackling similar stories of prejudice. This is basically what they did anyway with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when Fox still had control of the mutants. Ms. Marvel was introduced shortly after the X-Men were killed off, I think (or some time around that), even though she's always been intended to be a mutant (said co-creator of Ms. Marvel, Sana Amanat).

"Here's a really important thing that people do not know – when we were thinking about the character of Kamala back, back, back in the day in 2012, 2013, when [G.] Willow [Wilson, comic book writer] and myself were ideating, we originally wanted to make her a mutant. That was the whole intention, to be able to do that.”

So no, the change isn't that controversial to begin with. She's just becoming what she's always meant to be now that the mutants have returned home to Marvel.

As a comic reader who never bothered with Ms. Marvel comics, I didn't watch the show not because of such a change that matters little to me (even though I think it's a shame Inhumans fans will probably never gonna get a decent adaptation from now on), but because the show looked like it targeted a much younger demographic than me. It's fine that it's basically Marvel's Lizzie McGuire, but I've outgrown such shows, unfortunately. I've kinda outgrown Marvel too, in fact. Always been more of a Spider-Man fan than a Marvel fan. Read every single one of Spidey's comics; didn't bother with the Avengers or the other titles.

Tekkaman Blade II - 90's anime OVA miniseries that I first watched uploaded onto YouTube nearly a decade ago. Found out it had been remastered & released on Blu-Ray so here we are.

Focuses on a group of "Tekkaman" (pretty much people who can transform into mecha like superheroes) who fight to protect humanity from alien invaders (whom humanity copped the Tekkaman tech from).

I believe it's a sequel to an older series (being a II and all), though that doesn't seem to be too integral to the story (it focuses on a new generation of heroes being trained to take the reigns), and it's an absolute blast. It has a cool visual style/aesthetic, great action, and mixes the mecha/superhero theme with a sort of fighter pilot/Top Gun vibe that really gelled with me. The main female lead can be perhaps a bit whiny (at least when it comes to the prominent romance subplot), but overall I can't find much to fault with it (even at such a short length I think it managed to land the ending pretty well).

This makes me happy

Forgot to mention, but I watched Man VS Bee last weekend. It was actually pretty amusing, and definitely had some Mr. Bean energy in spots even though he wasn't specifically playing that character. I think my favorite scene may have been when he was fiddling with his pants in front of the police officer.

@Kermit1, I know Cars gets dumped on a lot, but I am weirdly really excited for Cars: on the Road as well. The announcements of Monsters at Work & Baymax! haven't affected me the same way, but I might be sure to watch this one.