Stargate SG-1: Season 1 + anime: Someday's Dreamers

[meganbmoore]

Finally watched season 1 of Stargate SG-1, which has been in the backlog since sometime in the summer.  The series takes the idea of the movie(where the Egyptian god Ra was actually an alien and had taken a group of egyptians millenia ago to colonize another world) and runs with it with other gods also being aliens and having colonized other worlds with humans who viewed the alien as a god(a few other genuine alien species are thrown in for good measure)    They aren't being picky about which mythology the gods come from(off the top of my head,we've had egyptian, norse, grecoroman, babylonian and I think some mayan mythology already) so they shouldn't be running out of myths anytime soon.

It does have a bit of a "planet of the week" feel, and it's share of first season flaws, but the mythology angle is a big pull for me, and the characters are appealing.  I especially like Teal'c, the Moses-like Data-type(it makes sense if you watch it...) character(a lot of it is his face when teasing is going on) and Richard Dean Anderson manages to NOT make me think "MacGuyver and sidekicks" every time he's on screen(the fact that I've seen maybe 5 eps of that ever likely helps) Carter occassionally wanders a little too close to the "spunky and intelligent action heroine" cliche at times, but manages to stay on the right side of that line, and is likable enough for me to not hold it against her.  Jackson is a lovable dork who tends to randomly spout off about mythology, so I'm naturally inclined to like him.

I also watched the short anime, Someday's Dreamers, largely because I wanted something light that I could watch and make icons at the same time.  It's essentially set in modern day Tokyo, only where magic is real and magic users are a part of everyday life and, after being trained and licensed, provide services.  It's chiefly about Yume, a clumsy girl from the countryside who comes to Tokyo to study and get licensed over the summer.  It's rather cute and sweet, if a little too much so.  It's a likable anime with MOSTLY endearing characters(like most anime/manga OCKs-Obligatory Cute Kids-Runa is typically annoying and only occassionally all that cute once you look past her design.  Still, she has nothing on, say, Shippo.  And really, I think I could count the actual appealing OCKs on one hand if I didn't include the Fruits Basket kids.)  There's nothing to dislike about it, but really nothing to obsess over either.  It was nice and fun, and I liked the animation(except for Yume's antennae-why must so many animes and mangas give girls antennae hair?) but not amazing.    I'll likely check out the manga when I go to Waldenbooks tomorrow, as it seemed to have chunks of story cut out.

Comments

[booster17.livejournal.com]

I think the big advantage SG-1 had out of the gate was that it was garanted two seasons to start with. So the writers had the luxery of time to set up, create and gently introduce the big background of all the races, aliens and old history behind them.