There’s been a welcome shift in popular culture over what feels like the past 5-10 years, a recognition that the animated medium of storytelling shouldn’t just be relegated to children’s tales, something Japan recognized years ago. Not that there aren’t incredible family friendly animated stories like Disney’s Up that I’ll keep coming back to till the day I die. Or the recent Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. That movie has no right to be as good as it is. But I feel that my generation, or perhaps just myself, watched Avatar: The Last Airbender back in the mid to late 2000’s and then never stopped asking for animated tales that grew with us, tackling ever more mature topics with the ingenuity and openness drawn worlds can provide. Though I will say Avatar: The Last Airbender ages like that perfectly soft hoodie: it’s a comfort I’ll keep coming back to even as the DVD’s start to wear with use. And then I’ll just stream it. But as a millennial working hard at adulting, I’m grateful to see a profusion of complex, deep and dark tales sketched onto the screen. In the modern streaming landscape, it started for me with Castlevania. What an incredible show. Impressive worldbuilding and character depth along with insane fight scenes rivaling the best the medium has to offer. Since then we’ve gotten Arcane, Blood of Zeus, Blue Eye Samurai, The Legend of Vox Machina, and Invincible, just to name a few. This is before going into the influence of Japanese anime, a genre that isn’t without its overly indulgent fan service and myriad other, at times frustrating, quirks. But anime is nonetheless a seminal subset of the medium with entries I adore. Ghost in the Shell was a significant source of inspiration for my novel. Oddly enough so was the Studio Ghibli classic Spirited Away, even if it is quite a different setting and subject matter. But if there is any common thread in all of the aforementioned animated stories, it’s that they took advantage of the medium’s greatest strength: a blank canvas that doesn’t need to mesh real people with CGI to tell a fantastical tale through the lens of the mind’s eye. Scavengers Reign did that in spades, and then some.
I won’t give any spoilers for Scavengers Reign, but then again I’m not even sure I could spoil the greatest aspect of it in a written blog. The art is otherworldly and capricious and mysterious and stunning. The basic premise as could be found in any blurb for the show is that a space freighter named the Demeter has crash landed on an alien planet. That’s as much as I’ll say plot wise. The planet, with it’s unique and unfamiliar ecology, microcosms of life and death and everything between, sets the show apart. Along with the characters, you experience that which is both unsettling and beautiful. My only sadness is that the second season remains uncertain. First Max canceled the show not too long after it aired, then Netflix gave it a trial period to see if it warranted more episodes. Now who knows, though it does seem likely the first season is the end even with the Emmy nomination. Either way, it’s well worth a watch. It tells a complete story in it’s first and perhaps only season, even if I can’t help but hope we see the seeds planted for further adventures on that terrifying world bear fruit.
All the best,
M. Weald
M. Weald 