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I just watched Resleeved and aside from the outrageously stupid decision with Gina... I enjoyed it. It's not the best movie ever, but it's a decent action film and it actually tried. It earnestly made a goddamn effort to draw from the source material and do something with it instead of farting out crap cliches wrapped up in better concepts from the books. I liked the whole concept of how the clan dealt with succession, it didn't go overboard with RD'ing literally everyone, and the Hotel AI was an actual hologram instead of a ~Nanoswarm Construct~ operating through turrets and machinery. It engaged with Sleeves having histories, (even if it's just repeating Ryker's nicotine addiction, but still credit where due), Kovas was up and Envoy-ready without having to look in a mirror beyond just wanting toget a read on himself, and it treated VR like it's actual VR rather than The Matrix. Some of it you could see coming like the secret of the Succession tradition, but done so in a way that at least made sense in the confines of the setting and its own story. It was also just cool seeing them reference The Patchwork Man, through the song no less.Eau de MacGowan posted:i liked the chain guns that fired arrows for some reason The ones that loving burrow in and explode?  . They were loving awesome.Andrigaar posted:I was totally confused as to why you guys all thought he didn't figure out that detail, but you must've all listened to the English dub. It's pretty drat explicit that he does in the Japanese track. It doesn't say anything specific, but with the flashback Kovacs has it's pretty drat obvious he figures it out.
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Mar 24, 2020 14:11
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Breakfast All Day posted:A whole generation of TV writers has taken "compelling stories are character-driven" to mean "compelling stories are just exploring every permutation of plugging a cast of 5 characters into 2- and 3-character conflict template scenes" Or how they think the highest form of storytelling is "exploring relationships".
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Mar 24, 2020 18:44
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I have been sick with nothing to do all this week, so I finally cracked and put on Resleeved, and it’s not as bad as S2, but I can’t say I’d call it good. The action was a lot better in the part that I watched but that art style was so hideous I couldn’t finish it.
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Apr 9, 2020 15:02
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Something that definitely didn't work for me in s2 was the focus on the Protectorate/Quellist conflict which never seems like it has enough background to get me interested. Like if they wanted to make the Protectorate seem bad they needed to have the bad guy be some new person unrelated to Kovacs to make it clear that everyone is bad and not just this one guy with a hate boner.
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Apr 26, 2020 18:27
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muscles like this! posted:Something that definitely didn't work for me in s2 was the focus on the Protectorate/Quellist conflict which never seems like it has enough background to get me interested. Like if they wanted to make the Protectorate seem bad they needed to have the bad guy be some new person unrelated to Kovacs to make it clear that everyone is bad and not just this one guy with a hate boner. He’s also been carrying a grudge for 300 years. I posted about it before but the Carrera thing was a huuuuge missed opportunity to play with the concept of being on ice It makes sense for Kovacs to give a poo poo, it’s fresh. But why does Carrera care? It’s been three centuries. Surely someone has done worse to him in the meantime. Ugly In The Morning fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 26, 2020 19:15
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Even for Kovacs it's not exactly fresh. The second season starts 30 years after the end of the first. They just decided to re-use as many characters as possible. Edit: and Carrera is exactly the same and still an officer? It's not like he was resting in his ivory tower for 300 years. You'd think he'd change just a little bit. itry fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 26, 2020 23:27
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itry posted:Even for Kovacs it's not exactly fresh. The second season starts 30 years after the end of the first. Let's tear into Kovacs mind and pull out the people most dear to him to threaten him with. It's... *checks notes* people he knew for all of a week 30 years ago on another planet?... 
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Apr 27, 2020 06:31
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Let's tear into Kovacs mind and pull out the people most dear to him to threaten him with. "I am an outsider. An outcast. No one can know me." says Kovacs, flings his cape and dissolves into the shadows.
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Apr 27, 2020 07:03
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Let's tear into Kovacs mind and pull out the people most dear to him to threaten him with.
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Apr 27, 2020 07:54
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itry posted:Even for Kovacs it's not exactly fresh. The second season starts 30 years after the end of the first. True, it would at least be fresher though. This show is awful about its sense of time, the writers like throwing decades or centuries between events and yet everything feels like it happened in like a week.
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Apr 27, 2020 10:52
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I know humanity has supposed to have peaked or whatever, but it’s still a little funny to me that basically kovacs walked around with the same malfunctioning Alexa for 30 years instead of upgrading to a new AI/phone/whatever
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Apr 27, 2020 14:32
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Poe isn't like Alexa though, he's sentient and self-aware. He's a person. So throwing him in a dumpster and buying a 'Personal Dis-organiser Mark 2' is kinda euthanizing your chef because they sometimes burn your toast. That being said... Poe not patching himself up in 30 years because (plot) reasons is some ham-fisted writing. Ugly In The Morning posted:...everything feels like it happened in like a week. Basically. No sense of scale or time.
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Apr 27, 2020 16:15
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itry posted:Poe isn't like Alexa though, he's sentient and self-aware. He's a person. It also has the "power levels" tech issue of him just fitting on a pendant and running off it as casually as when tied to the Hotel.
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Apr 27, 2020 16:36
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itry posted:Poe isn't like Alexa though, he's sentient and self-aware. He's a person.
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Apr 28, 2020 07:42
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season 2 was so bad. Of course it was because they inexplicably hired the team behind the cw version of "the flash" superhero show. Rewatched season 1, and everything is better. One little thing: season 1, the guns are cool. They are sci-fi. The blow holes in things, shoot laser beams, or magnet bullets back into the magazine. Season 2? 300 years into the future and theyve got a buncha pistols that may as well be glocks, some kriss vectors that do nothing special, and the protectorate foot soldiers still have ak74s. The wedge guns looked cool, but didn't do anything sci fi. I'm not saying that guns need to be front and center, but to make a successful cyberpunk show you're usually gonna have at least one scene with a memorable overpowered future weapon. It gets used, its exciting and flashy, but it doesn't solve the problem the characters are facing. It sets the tone, it entertains, and it makes it feel futuristic. It's an emotional high point before another lull, that takes place before the lead up to the climax. It's a no-brainer part of successful pacing. You just make an evil looking prop and lift some throw away dialogue from an rpg source book and youre done. They totally failed. The people that made season 2 didn't understand the first season, the source material, OR the genre. The only sci-fi gun was kovacs pistols that boomerang to him, which is pretty much a yawn. Cause guess what? The interesting thing about the character, the conceit, is that HE CAN WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. He takes over and destabilizes situations by forming alliances and leading. Not because he's the best at punching people. Funniest gun scene in season 2? When the founders of Harlans world shoot a tree to death with glocks. Come on, use a power axe, or a chainsaw, or burn it. Shooting a tree to death? gimme a loving break honorable mention to kovac killing all of the loyal revolutionaries with the klobb from goldeneye Vim Fuego fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 07:56
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Vim Fuego posted:The only sci-fi gun was kovacs pistols that boomerang to him, which is pretty much a yawn. Cause guess what? The interesting thing about the character, the conceit, is that HE CAN WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. He takes over and destabilizes situations by forming alliances and leading. Not because he's the best at punching people. It's not like the guns in season one were entirely drawn from the books either. That magnetic spike gun is wholly their creation, the book equivalent was just a discreet silenced pistol that fired electromagnetic bullets and could use the electromagnetic barrel to pull them out of the body afterwards just to get rid of evidence. The force-pull handguns (like about half the elements of the season) are from the second book and even there they're just a minor detail for what he's using to shoot stuff with. (The magspike gun in the show was actually admittedly pretty neat). Though special mention to that "handgun" Quell has later in the second season that was clearly a hot glue gun with kibble. I don't normally poke fun at props, but they usually do a much better effort of obfuscating their origins.
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Apr 28, 2020 08:41
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Vim Fuego posted:
Maybe it was intentional since it shows even with poo poo tier weapons he can still get a good K/D ratio?
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Apr 28, 2020 13:11
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Tiggum posted:Except that Kovacs basically spends the entire season going "Hurry up and kill yourself so I can get a better version of you." Guess he got tired of waiting for patch day.
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Apr 28, 2020 13:16
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The thing about having crazy sci fi weapons that do weird stuff is that it’s a way to have visually striking and dynamic action scenes. The most creative they got in S2 was what, the scene where the hit squad had a nice game of catch for no reason? That scene was when S2 really started losing me, I was sitting there watching it, wondering why they were tossing a gun around like that. I get they wanted to show the pack mentality of the wolfed up sleeves but there’s ways to do that that aren’t totally nonsensical.
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Apr 28, 2020 13:53
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The thing about having crazy sci fi weapons that do weird stuff is that it’s a way to have visually striking and dynamic action scenes. The most creative they got in S2 was what, the scene where the hit squad had a nice game of catch for no reason? That scene was when S2 really started losing me, I was sitting there watching it, wondering why they were tossing a gun around like that. I get they wanted to show the pack mentality of the wolfed up sleeves but there’s ways to do that that aren’t totally nonsensical. The better way to show they move as a pack would be to just have the rest of the team discreetly glancing Carrera throughout the scene and start simultaneously start killing everyone in the room without saying a word the moment Carrera makes the first move.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:37
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Vim Fuego posted:season 2 was so bad. Of course it was because they inexplicably hired the team behind the cw version of "the flash" superhero show. I actually like the flash but that explains a lot because every plot and character on the flash is stupid as hell
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Apr 28, 2020 14:49
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The thing about having crazy sci fi weapons that do weird stuff is that it’s a way to have visually striking and dynamic action scenes. The most creative they got in S2 was what, the scene where the hit squad had a nice game of catch for no reason? That scene was when S2 really started losing me, I was sitting there watching it, wondering why they were tossing a gun around like that. I get they wanted to show the pack mentality of the wolfed up sleeves but there’s ways to do that that aren’t totally nonsensical. Same. That scene was exactly what a very stupid fourteen year old’s idea of what a cool action scene would look like. At that point I realized I was in very bad hands.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:25
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The better way to show they move as a pack would be to just have the rest of the team discreetly glancing Carrera throughout the scene and start simultaneously start killing everyone in the room without saying a word the moment Carrera makes the first move. And proceed to spray some urine on the furniture and rub their heads against the walls.
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Apr 28, 2020 17:32
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Next season: Goon 1: "boy I am hungry" Goon 2: *vomits 10 lbs of caribou meat directly into goon 1's mouth*
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Apr 28, 2020 17:52
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Even if you wanted to keep the whole part of “these guys were all killed by one gun” thing with that fight, there’s so many ways they could have had the team work together to use one gun instead of playing High Bodycount Ultimate Frisbee. If you have a team running around trying to keep one guy covered without actually dropping bodies themselves you could make a dynamic and interesting fight scene that doesn’t seem like something you took out of the back of That Kid’s school notebook. I’m still confused how S2 did so well with critics when it was pretty universally reviled by audiences.
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Apr 28, 2020 18:05
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Critics can be weird like that. Looking at RT the second season has only 33 reviewers, while the first has 95.
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Apr 28, 2020 18:22
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The discrepancy in the number of reviewers explains some of it, but it's wild S2 was better received by those critics than the first. The nosedive in quality or creative purpose was...very apparent. This show was never great, but at least S1 tried. It attempted to play with the existential cyberpunk aspects of the world, explore some of the consequences of this weird tech. But S2 was so lazy. Anything remotely interesting, like double-sleeving or the VR religious cult or the memory drugs or the Elders haunting people's stacks, gets used in the most pedestrian possible ways. The Elder is an angry vengeance killer, Harlan's World is a haunted burial ground, the VR cult is simply a fraud, and Kovacs' copy might as well be his little brother or something. Anything complicated it could say about consciousness or self or memory or humanity gets filed down to something totally unambitious. It's crazy that between Westworld and The Expanse, everything this season of AC tried to do was absolutely clowned by a better show. Like, [Expanse] Holden having half-conversations with a semi-conscious simulation of Miller that created itself inside the Protomolecule was an awesome, complex premise. The show addressed how truly alien and inscrutable the PM could be, how amorphous human consciousness is, how cold and unfeeling the mechanics of the show's setting are...they really went for it. Altered Carbon reduced the Elders to a Pharaoh's Curse, or like a vengeful Native American spirit. Its motivations are clearly human and don't really say anything more than, "colonial atrocities are bad." Which is fine, but...so what?
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Apr 29, 2020 01:17
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Not just stuff like aliens, look at how it basically ignored stacks entirely by just RDing everyone. It seemed like the show runners were actively opposed to interacting with any part of the setting in a meaningful way. E:Like, the central conceit of the setting is “people don’t really die anymore” so what do you do but write something where every character who is killed is explicitly Super Dead and Not Coming Back? It’s insane.
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Apr 29, 2020 01:21
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Yea, this season treated Real Death like it was nothing. In a society like this, destroying someones Stack would literally be the worst thing you can possibly do. Like the single most unforgivable sin. In season it was treated a bit more seriously, but nope, just end everyone for good. I also really miss how horny season 1 was. I wonder if netflix told them to tone is down.
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Apr 29, 2020 02:19
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That horniness kinda fit the setting where our bodies aren’t really our own, just a sleeve worn occasionally, so who loving cares about nudity? Like “oh this sleeve has a bit dick isn’t that hilarious? Your sleeve has a nice rear end, lucky you”
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Apr 29, 2020 02:28
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twistedmentat posted:Yea, this season treated Real Death like it was nothing. In a society like this, destroying someones Stack would literally be the worst thing you can possibly do. Like the single most unforgivable sin. In season it was treated a bit more seriously, but nope, just end everyone for good. S1 wasn't even that horny, it was kind of just casual about nudity. S2 went from people not giving a poo poo to austin powers gag type levels of hiding bits. It was more noticeable that S1's full frontal stuff.
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Apr 29, 2020 02:28
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beanieson posted:That horniness kinda fit the setting where our bodies aren’t really our own, just a sleeve worn occasionally, so who loving cares about nudity? That's exactly it. I loved how they leaned heavily in that your body is basically like a shirt or socks. An expensive one, so the poor have to be careful.
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Apr 29, 2020 02:30
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beanieson posted:That horniness kinda fit the setting where our bodies aren’t really our own, just a sleeve worn occasionally, so who loving cares about nudity? Like “oh this sleeve has a bit dick isn’t that hilarious? Your sleeve has a nice rear end, lucky you” Exactly. When I say it wasn't horny, I mean that a body was shown off the same way a new shirt or something would be. S2 was...weird.
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Apr 29, 2020 02:34
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I think a lot of the nudity in the first season was crucial to the exploration of the setting. It pushes the point that sleeves are just containers and the body is just a tool. Imagine Kovacs getting out of the tank, or Reileen's (major props to Dichen Lachman) fight scene without it. It would just be wrong.
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Apr 29, 2020 07:10
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twistedmentat posted:That's exactly it. I loved how they leaned heavily in that your body is basically like a shirt or socks. An expensive one, so the poor have to be careful. It's also why the books get so outrageously violent and fairly indifferent to said violence; Well that guy got blown into meaty chunks, his buddy got sliced apart with lasers, and the third corpse got a big chunky hole in his chest... okay, grab the stacks and spin them up in VR for questioning...  .There's a reason the division handling murders and violent crime on Earth is called "Organic Damage" rather than "Homicide". One of the coolest weapons in the second book is the Vibe Blaster; It's an ultrasonic shockwave gun that's designed to blast rock apart, and if it hits a human they're just instantly liquefied. And even then the Stack will survive, it's just a matter of sifting the goddamn thing out of about ten liters of organic pulp. itry posted:I think a lot of the nudity in the first season was crucial to the exploration of the setting. It pushes the point that sleeves are just containers and the body is just a tool. Aside from Lizzy (plot reasons, not the actress herself), all of the casting in season 1 was frankly perfect for every character. It's just tanked by the showrunners.
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Apr 29, 2020 08:24
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Aside from Lizzy (plot reasons, not the actress herself), all of the casting in season 1 was frankly perfect for every character. It's just tanked by the showrunners. I enjoyed season 1 and the interesting neo noir plot even though it really ran out steam near the end.
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Apr 29, 2020 15:22
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itry posted:I think a lot of the nudity in the first season was crucial to the exploration of the setting. It pushes the point that sleeves are just containers and the body is just a tool. Sooo I’m imagining... oh; it’s just season 2. The first season did nudity in a way that GoT or something didn’t, it wasn’t meant to be titallating, it was just there. When I say it was “causal” or “matter of fact” I mean the camera didn’t linger on it and it was never the point. The visual language they used was spot on for people treating sleeves like clothes. When you compare that to S2 going out of its way to hide it it’s really jarring. Neddy Seagoon posted:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- Kinnamon is how I pictured Ryker before I even knew Kinnamon existed. Ditto all the other characters, but when they cast him I was like  , it was so spot on.
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Apr 29, 2020 16:01
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Sooo I’m imagining... oh; it’s just season 2. To be fair to the show, they even actually managed to do something interesting with it that wasn't from the books with Reileen borrowing Ortega's sleeve and turning a tittilating scene into just skin-crawling revulsion  .
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Apr 29, 2020 16:15
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Neddy Seagoon posted:To be fair to the show, they even actually managed to do something interesting with it that wasn't from the books with Reileen borrowing Ortega's sleeve and turning a tittilating scene into just skin-crawling revulsion That was the one time they made turning Reileen into Tak’s sister actually effective. Funny how it was also one of the rare times they actually took advantage of the setting, too.
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Apr 29, 2020 16:29
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I think Season One was interesting as it changed some things up from the book I think for the better. Kovacs having more connection to his allies and giving them more personality was good. Making his sister the villain is an interesting angle that could have worked better. Changing the Envoy and Quellist stuff was very dumb imo and made the universe smaller. Season 2 is an unholy mashup of Books 2 & 3 with a helping of generic PG13 SciFi tropes. Also having people sleeved in different genders/ages was a thing. Like that little girl at the start who looked to have been resleeved in a middle aged junkies body. Or The hacker whose name I forget being resleeved as a dude and then also her husband the marine still being affectionate. In season 2, kid is put in new kid sleeve. Guy is bodyjacked by another guy, Carrera has a new sleeve but is another middle aged white dude. Yakuza boss is an older asian man. Mercenary lady is in a robot body on another planet that looks the same as actual body. Guys who are wanted for big bounties not changing their sleeves. Quell looks exactly like Quell... The only fake out was in the opening with Kovacs as the lounge singer which was fine. Couple this with lazy explanations and motivations and cliche "reveals" it just ends up underwhelming. I think some of the reviews being positive is that the First Episode of Season 2 is honestly pretty good. Or at least isn't a huge step down from season One. It just goes downhill quickly afterwards so if you just watch that one the worst is yet to come. Like the Hotel fight scene is very dumb, but whatever adding a dumb action scene isn't that egregious. Finally the Anime is dumb, but it is like 90 minutes as opposed to 8 hours. So it has decent action and some obvious twists, but its fits the Universe a bit better. Also a lot of the Yakuza goons and ninjas in it aren't getting RD'd. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 19:47
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