The Story

Bloom thought that she was just a normal girl until an accident happened and she almost killed her mother with some magic. At that point, she got admitted into a special school in “Switzerland”. Really, it was a magic school for fairies. Most of the students there are fairy born, and Bloom doesn’t fit in right away. Things go crazy, around the school, however, as Burned Ones, a monster that had been thought to be gone for a long time start to show up again. Bloom also needs to figure out where she is from and how she fits into this world that is very new to her.

Thoughts On The Show

The Plot

This story is pretty predictable, though that’s not a horrible thing. Now, I don’t know that the show tries to be predictable, but a lot of the twists and turns it has coming are quite predictable. This is a bit of a knock, especially in the later episodes where everything falls into place in a way that you’d expect. There were a few interesting twists on things, but overall it felt like a young-adult story that had been done a lot of times before. And while it is a young-adult show, there is a lot of swearing in the show as well, not bad, but a surprising amount.

The Characters

The characters in the show are fine as well. In the dorm, the four girls that Bloom shares are room with are more interesting than here. Bloom falls into the boring main character trope. I’ve talked about it before, but the idea is that the main character is supposed to be standard enough that the viewer, or reader in the case of books, can insert themselves into the role that they are playing. It can work fine, but it has to be done with a deft hand, and it works better in books than shows. In this, all of her dormmates are more interesting than her, the love interest is more interesting than her. Bloom should be more interesting, and she is the main focus, but everything around her feels rushed somehow but also like it doesn’t mean as much or feel as intense as it should. Also, this is supposed to be high school aged kids, I’d believe college, it’s odd.

The Bad Guy(s)

Fate: The Winx Saga ends up having surprisingly interesting villains. I think that is the strong point of the show. Multiple villains show up throughout the show so I won’t spoil them all. One of the first we meet is another student named Beatrix. The villains definitely have their own agenda and believe what they are doing is right. For me that is one thing the show gets right. You can feel how bad these people are, but also that they so firmly believe they are the heroes of the story as well. Even the burned ones, who are more of a mindless drove are interesting monsters.

But Is the Show Good?

That’s what we are all really here to find out. Is Fate: The Winx Saga a good show? I’d say, kind of. In terms of world building, it is good. They have created a very interesting setting, a good school, and some very interesting ideas with the burned ones and how everything is working. In terms of the story, it’s a bit of a mess. I think it falls into too many tropes, which is common for young-adult focused shows. Locke And Key is another fantasy young-adult focused show, and while it strips away a lot of the adult content from the comics, it still keeps much of the spirit of it and the show has a lot of whimsy and tension to it. Fate: The Winx Saga doesn’t have that nearly as much. It comes across more as a CW show.

So, no, it’s not a good show, but did I enjoy watching it, generally yes. It was entertaining, like I said, the world building and the villains are good in the show and they deserve more than this standard young-adult handling of the story. But even with that issue, it didn’t get in the way of this feeling like something big and something different. It’d have been easy for it to feel like generic fantasy, but it doesn’t and that’s a credit to the show. I’ll definitely be checking out the second season if it comes out.

Should You Watch It?

I’ve tried to lay it out well so that you will know if this is the show for you. I think there is something enjoyable to watch there. But if you can’t stand the standard CW young-adult tropes, you won’t like this. Flat out as simple as that, if you are willing to dive into the world that is being created and just let the trope filled story lead you through it, it’s a fun watch. It isn’t anything deep, a popcorn show is what I’d call it, but it’s also not as bad as my knocking it would suggest.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

The story starts with a young business man dying, and then being reborn in a fantasy world. There, he is raised as the grandson of Merlin Wolford. He learns about magic but not so much about common sense. When Shin, the grandchild, turns 15, the king of Earlshide recommends that Shin be sent to the magic school there to learn more about magic and maybe something about common sense.

Let me start by saying, this is an anime of two halves. The first half is a pretty traditional anime with an isekai. Shin knows that something is different and he can visualize magic in a different way because of what he knew from being science on Earth. The second half is something completely different. It goes off into an adventure of romance, fan service, and just being poorly written plus a weird storyline for the kingdom of Earlshide being under attack, and okay villains? It’s been a bit since I saw this, mainly because Kristen also wrote something up for Twin Cities Geek and you can see her article here.

I think that the story starts out with a fairly standard idea, they don’t really delve into the fact that he knows stuff from the Earth, and really that thread it kind of thrown away throughout the anime as it becomes less focused on that and more on the team of heroes being built up, some training montages, and fan service. Again, I think I’ll probably beat this part of it to death, they go off and spend time training, doing things that aren’t related to the fact that this team is probably the most powerful group of magic users in the land, more so than then trained adults, and they go off and have a training session because people dying isn’t that big a deal and because they wanted to. It loses the tone of the anime a lot.

The Wise Man’s Grandchild also lacks in character development. Merlin sends Shin to learn because he doesn’t have any common sense. In the end, Shin has maybe a tiny bit more common sense but not much. To put it in something like D&D terms, if Shin has a 6 in Wisdom to start, which is really bad and is a -2 modifier, he is maybe at 8 which is still a -1. He gets by on being able to manipulate magic with his knowledge of science. And the people he’s around don’t get much smarter either or have arcs of their own. This story could have done a lot with Shin learning and becoming a good leader, but that wasn’t needed simply because he’s always more powerful. There are other anime that have used that powerful trope well and they still have to learn, because as Uncle Ben would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

So, I’ve mentioned fan service, I’ve mentioned the story, I’ve mentioned the characters, do I recommend this anime. Nope, I don’t think it’s a good anime. If you were to stop half way through you’d have equally as good a story be just fine but nothing special. In terms of isekai there are so many anime out there that are better in the genre. The Devil is a Part-Timer, Overlord, No Game No Life, Sword Art Online, and Restaurant To Another World, and I don’t even love all of those. The Wise Man’s Grandchild is just a so so anime at the start and a below average one at the end. I’d skip it i I were you.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

In a world where spontaneous human combustion is a thing, and when it happens, the people turn into monsters, there is a special elite set of stations. Station 8 was created because every other station either has allegiances to their area, the Hijima corporation, or the religious order, and everyone is supposed to be working to figure out the cause of spontaneous human combustion, but they aren’t and Station 8 is tasked with figuring it out. That’s where new recruit, Shinra Kusakabe, is assigned. He’s a 3rd Generation pyrokinetic which mean that he can create and manipulate fire. Can he complete his dream of becoming a hero and help figure out what happened years ago when he lost his mother and brother in a fire?

This is a pretty standard anime in that it has a big ensemble cast of characters who all get their moment to shine, there is a lot of fighting and completely absurd situations that happen. There’s humor and fan service, and it kind of meanders towards the main plot at times, introducing new characters along the way, and then will rush through other parts of the plot. That said, I like the story. I think that it’s fun, and it’s not an anime that I’m going to think about after watching it, but I’ve had a good time watching it, and I feel like in 2020 that’s what I really want, and more so when it starts to get darker earlier, it’s just nice to have a show that you can pay attention to but doesn’t demand all of your brain power.

The cast of characters is what really makes this show. I think that the villains, while mainly just monsters, work pretty well, and I like the whole of station 8. They’ve done a solid job in the show of giving them all their moments, though the show does focus mainly on Shinra. There are plenty of other characters, like Arthur, Iris, Maki, and more that are getting a lot of chance to shine. While Shinra often gets to take down the biggest bad guy, in combat, it’s not like some anime and shows in general where the side characters get beaten up and the main character then comes in and saves the day for everyone. In this, everyone is very good at what they do and fairly competent about it, as competent, if not more than the main character.

The story itself makes a fair amount of sense actually, in an anime way. I think that they do a solid job of building the world out further and further as they go, which is really great because they don’t do a knowledge dump on you at the start. You learn more as you go, possibly matching when the creator learned the stuff or decided on stuff, but it works. And I think that it really is so character driven around Shinra most of the time, it also works. He has good motivation for what he is doing, why he is doing it, and an attitude that makes sense for the story and for the problems that he needs to overcome.

Let’s talk a bit about fan service. I wrote about Food Wars! last time and the fan service for Fire Force is no where near on the same level. There is a character who will lose articles of clothing at times and shots of cleavage, but for the most part the losing of the clothing is more for comedic affect than for fan service reasons. That isn’t to say that there aren’t characters who are drawn the way they are drawn so as to be fan service almost every time they are on the screen. That is certainly something that is the case for a few of the female characters. There is also an episode where there is a nude calendar shoot, but that is all the male characters in the calendar, and also no nudity is shown.

Overall, I think this is a pretty classic anime in terms of what it does. And I like that about it. It’s a show that doesn’t pretend it’s going to go that deep, but it also isn’t a random nonsensical plot to it. I would recommend this one to most anime fans, I think some will find it a bit to light and goofy for their taste, but I think that this is a pretty safe anime for most people to watch and enjoy.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

Soma has worked with his dad at their little family diner his whole life. People love his dad’s food and his cooking as well and his dad is always pushing him to be better. Than one day Soma’s dad just leaves to go help a friend with his restaurant and tells Soma to transfer in and go study at Engestu Teahouse Culinary Academy, a top and fancy school in Japan. The problem for Soma is that he’s a transfer student and everyone else has come up through the ranks, so will his humble cooking background help him or get him into trouble?

Obviously, it’s going to get him into trouble, this is a completely absurd anime after all. He comes in with a brash and confident attitude not knowing what he doesn’t know. But that is kind of the charm of the show, it’s about Soma, who is an amazing cook but who will work harder than anyone else just to improve. He won’t let something stop him, he’ll instead spend the time and effort and be able to think on his feet better than everyone else. It’s an anime, so that’s not really a spoiler for it, it’s how most anime stories go. It’s how it makes its twists and turns work well and how they can have Soma struggle but also not just overcome everything instantly after he’s struggled.

The rest of the characters help make the show as well. You have a wide variety of students that are definitely stereotypes of what you’d expect to find in a very fancy school. It has a nice ensemble cast for it with Soma obviously being the lead, but there being a good number of other characters who fill in around him. Now, it does take on a slightly harem anime feel to it, but compared to a lot of anime that delve into that genre, this one doesn’t spend nearly as much time on that, and you have a much better diversity of male and female characters.

Now that I have mentioned that, I would be remiss to not mention that this anime has a lot of fan service. The whole idea of the food is that it’s so tasty and intriguing that it brings one to ecstasy which is shown in a lot of fan service. Now, again not just the female characters but the male characters as well. It does however, focus more on the female characters and there is more fan service from the female characters beyond that as well. I don’t appreciate the level that it is taken to at points, there is always a scene or two per episode, sometimes more, and they can just drag on a little bit, but I don’t feel like it ruins the anime, it eventually becomes something you gloss over while watching it.

Instead, I think this show stands more on the premise of it. The story is actually enjoyable, and it is interesting to see battles surrounding food which are almost edited like the style of Dragon Ball Z at times where a battle can take two episodes (or more), and in here you get that as well with intense cooking competitions. So it’s interesting to see the same trope that is fairly common for anime used in such a different way. And the arcs are good and interesting. You get to see character growth from a lot of characters, not just the main ones, and new characters are added in good ways to help drive the main story forward and the main character forward. Plus there is a lot of interesting and tasty looking food.

Overall, this anime isn’t going to be for everyone. I found it a ton of fun through two seasons, which is how much is up on Netflix right now. And the dub is very good for the anime. But there is a lot of fan service, and that will not be for everyone, and for good reason. I think that there’s a good enough show for me to get around it, but that is something that is on the edge for me. The food is fun and the whole show is very interesting. So if you’re an anime fan, it’s one to checkout, not a good jumping in point though.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

Umbrella Academy is based off of a comic by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. The main premise of the show and comics are a family of super powered young adults who grew up in The Umbrella Academy. A weird household where their adoptive father trained them into a group of super heroes. But things didn’t go well for long. In season 1, their father has passed away and Vanya is starting to remember what her powers were, meanwhile, Five, one of the siblings, figured out how to time travel and eventually finds out that the apocalypse is about to happen. They have to find a way to put their differences aside so that they can stop the apocalypse. It’s a really fun season and they don’t do that well at stopping the apocalypse. In fact, Five has to jump everyone into the past and they get separated along the way. They find themselves in Dallas in the 1960’s with a number of them landing right around 1963, and Five, of course, finds out that because of something they’re going to do, the apocalypse is going to happen again, just way sooner. They have to figure out how to come together again so that they can stop the apocalypse yet again, and for some reason, their father is in Dallas as well.

Overall, I think that this season is stronger than the first season. The first season starts off quite rough with introducing all of the characters and not much happens for a few episodes. However, I think that the first season maybe had a few more highlight moments. This one tells a great story, but has less that stands out as being quite as fun as a some scenes and characters in the first season. Another way to put it is that while season two is more consistently good across the board, I don’t think there’s really anything bad about it, season one had some higher highs but a bunch of lower lows as well. I do miss Hazel and Cha-Cha though, they were a real highlight from Season One for me.

They did a good job of keeping the characters true to who they were in the first season. I don’t think that anyone has changed massively, though some of them who have been there longer in the past do adjust slightly. I think that Five who is kind of a wild card in season one still maintains that which makes him very lovable and such a good character. I think that Klaus actually takes a little bit of a step back in this one, he was the standout character from season one, and in this one, I think that he’s given less of a role in order to let some of the other characters shine, one in particular, but that’d be a major spoiler. I also think that they gave Diego and Luther more to work with this season, so while Klaus took a step back, you had everyone else maintain or take a step forward.

Final thing I do want to talk about quick is the music. There are some shows that get the music spot on, and this is one of those shows. Everything worked so well in season two, and you get some montages with music that you just don’t expect. And that makes it stand out even more. There are again some spoiler moments that just so work incredibly well. It makes sense that the music is good since the comics were created by Gerard Way, but I’m not sure how much he’s involved in the show. But I’m glad they kept a strong musical influence on the show and I think that they just nail it for this season.

So, is this worth checking out? You need to see season one first, and that can be a bit of a slog, especially early on. I think that if you can get through two episodes of season one it does become more consistent, and I’d say that it’s worth it. But without watching that, season two won’t make that much sense, so just be aware of that. I really enjoy the show and I think that season two is one of the better seasons of a Netflix original show, they go deep with it while still having fun. So, yes, I’d say that it’s worth checking out, just be aware that the show as a whole is a bit goofy, so while it can be serious, it tends to be more goofy than serious.

Did you like season 2 of the Umbrella Academy?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

In Ragnorak, Magne, a large but not always the most confident boy due to dyslexia, moves back to Edda, Norway where he was born with his mother, Turid and brother Laurits. It’s a sleepy town with one big industry, Jutul Industries that has most of the jobs. Magne and Laurits are dropped into a new school where Laurits fits in very quickly but Magne has trouble making friends, except for one other loner, a girl named Isolde. But there’s more going on in this town than meets the eye. Magne has an odd encounter with a shopkeeper right away when they come to town and he starts to notice things changing around him. From there the story takes some fantastical turns.

Let’s talk first about how I watched this show. Fairly often when watching shows from other countries I’ll watch it subtitled, this one I did not. I watched it dubbed in English. And I will say compared to some others I’ve seen dubbed, it works well. Yes, the mouths are off because of speaking another language, but overall I felt like it worked. What really works is t hat the voice actors are the same people who did the original voices, this means that you still get the same tone to match their facial expressions since they knew how they said it in the first place. So even if the moths don’t like up with what is being said, you don’t lose the feel. And I think the fact that they are going to carry a Norwegian accent into their English works as well. Growing up in Minnesota surrounded by a bunch of second a third generation Norwegians, there are a lot of mannerisms and speech patterns that carry over into the show. If you’re not as familiar with English/Norwegian speech patterns, I think it’ll still work fine, but might be easier subtitled.

I won’t go too much more into the story than I did in my little introduction, but I really liked it. It definitely has some young adult elements to it, but it isn’t completely young adult. The fact that they are high school students is always going to lend itself a little bit to that, but it does a good job of not dumbing it down to that level. I really enjoy how it delves into Norse Mythology in some ways. There are definite nods to things in the mythology that I didn’t notice right away but eventually became clearer and more interesting. The story is not extremely complex, but it doesn’t need to be, it has enough layers without feeling like it’s overly dramatic or overly convoluted. And they do a good job of developing character in a short time because the season is very short and the episodes aren’t all that long, the final episode is just over thirty minutes.

The look of the show is just beautiful. Now some of that is because Norway has amazing landscapes, because when it comes to special effects those do struggle at times. They clearly don’t have a massive budget for them, but for the most part there aren’t many in an episode. The rest of the filming, that of more standard school or house shots work for the most part. The inside and outside of the Jutul household always seems a bit disconnected because we never get to see a good transition between inside and out, but otherwise everything flows well and builds out the town of Edda.

Overall, this is a very fun show. I think that they do a good job with their blending of the mythology into a modern setting. It is a quick watch at only 6 episodes but still manages to pack a lot into those episodes. If you like that sort of mythology and real world blend, this is definitely one to checkout. And if the concept of Norse Mythology is interesting, I think it’s so fast that it’s probably worth it, even if you don’t love the idea of that fantasy real world blend. One that I’m looking forward to the second season of.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Season One Spoilers To Follow

Season Two picks up fairly quickly from season where, where the Knights of Saint Christopher have had their memories erased and various acolytes of the Order of the Blue Rose have been tasked with keeping an eye on them. There’s one issue, though, they keep on getting their memories back as the werewolves keep healing them. To add to that, the werewolves keep on almost escaping because someone is doing magic, and the Knights, without their memories can’t stop them from coming out. Things go from bad to worse when a new magical organization shows up, this one with the plan of bringing magic to the masses, but what is the cost of that going to be. Meanwhile, Alyssa Drake is struggling to control her own magic for some unknown reason.

I think a good starting point for talking about this is that season two is probably more absurd than season one. There are some cameos in it that are just hilarious and extremely well done. And a lot of the situations are completely out there. That said, this has always been a show about secret magic, werewolves, and college, so it was never a show that took itself too seriously. They do a good job of setting the tone for that early in the first episode of season one. So I like that this has continued down a pretty cheesy path as that’s one of my favorite things, cheesy monsters. And I don’t feel like it’s too overbearing though, there are some real moments that happen in it with the characters, and there are real stakes so it’s not just about the goofiness, though that was a highlight of season two.

In terms of the acting, it’s on par with the previous season. Basically all the main players who survived season one are back again and play large roles. They do a good job of giving Randall more to do as well as Gabrielle this season, though both did a fair amount in season one. But they become very important characters in season two. And the new characters introduced are fine, I think that the sect of magic users who want to bring magic to the masses are okay. Their acting is not always the best, nor is their motivation properly defined. I think this added group muddies the waters a bit too much, and they really are trying to lean into everything being grey, but not in a way that really works all that well. And I feel like the character development of Jack Morton and Alyssa Drake kind of takes a bit of a step backwards. Now, I know the rules that characters shouldn’t get together because once the ones you are pulling for do, they become more boring. However, they had ways to keep them apart, and they used them quite well early on in the season, but later, especially Jack’s motivations are messed up with what we have known his personality to be.

With that said, I have to go back to this being a cheesy show about monsters, werewolves, and magical secret societies, 90% of which takes place on a college campus. It doesn’t take itself seriously, the writing isn’t high quality, so I don’t expect it to be handled perfectly. When I watch The Order, I’m doing so because I want to have fun, and this season hands out a ton of fun. If you enjoyed the first season, it’s more of the same, just with a less well defined bad guy. If you didn’t, this season won’t change anything for you. And if you haven’t watched it but like cheesy monster college shows, it’s a very specific genre, you’ll enjoy this show. I’m hoping the numbers will do well enough for season three, because I think there’s ways to go with the story that will be interesting, but if not, it ends in a solid spot.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

The Witcher is the story of three different characters, you have Yennefer the witch who can harness chaos to perform amazing acts of magic. You have Ciri the princess who has her own powers. And you have Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher. The show is about how they got to where they are in the present and how their stories intertwine. This is done through vignettes. For Geralt, it is about how he has to take responsibility and how while Witcher’s are monster hunters, he wants to be more than that. For Yennefer, it’s about what she’ll do for power and if it was worth it. And Ciri, it’s about staying alive.

I’m not going to go more into what the plot is, because, firstly, it’s a lot of vignettes that are working around the main points for the main characters and how it brings them all together. I’m also not going to do it, because it’s not a cohesive story. That’s one of my biggest knocks against the show is that for basically every character but Ciri, the vignettes jump all over the place and because of that you don’t get much payoff for the story. And even the vignettes are inconsistent. Some of them are told extremely well with a deft touch, and some of them beat you over the head with foreshadowing very obvious things. And even with the characters, Geralt’s stories are generally pretty good and they do come together with a solid payoff. Geralt is also tied to Ciri, and while her story wanders a little bit, there is more of a point to it. Yennefer, on the other hand, has her story wander a lot, and they try and make her a pretty sympathetic character, but really fail at it in my opinion.

The acting in the show is inconsistent as well. Henry Cavill is very enjoyable as Geralt. And there are other portrayals that work well, I think that Ciri is solid. But again, Yennefer’s acting, Anya Chalotra, is just lacking for me. And I put that more on the story than Anya’s actual skill as an actor, but she is given a story that is extremely unfocused and just ends up not having enough to work with in it. For me, a lot of acting issues can probably come down to the writing, but it was a shame because Cavill really does do a good job as Geralt and he makes the show watchable, otherwise, I don’t think anyone else would have been able to carry it.

The same for the world building in the show, it’s just inconsistent. The world itself is extremely interesting, the monsters who show up and things like that are different and really cool. But, you get bits and pieces of the world and how it works given to you generally not in the right order and not at the right speed. I don’t want an information dump, which they don’t do, but they mainly just pull things out of thin air with little to not explanation in the middle of episodes. It’s something, like the acting and the writing, that I hope they can clean up in season two. It goes too much between trying to have some Game of Thrones feel to it and epic monster hunting and back again without explaining why or how things are working.

And really, the same again for the effects in the show. Some of the things looked really cool. I know that the dragons weren’t the favorite for a lot of people, but I liked the design used there. But the opening scene is horrible. It’s such a bad use of green screen, Geralt feels like he’s on a sound stage maybe with the monster there, but there’s nothing else that he can interact with. The trees in the shot are horrible and static and just look so obviously fake. I think that it does get better and maybe a little more consistent throughout the show, or at least after that first scene, but it’s the first thing people see and it looks so bad.

Overall, this is a show that I generally did enjoy. I thought that once it get going, about episode four, it was interesting, because they created a more cohesive story for Geralt. But then they’d keep through Yennefer’s story in as well and that would mess things up for me. From what I’ve heard, this first season was based off of a series of short stories, and it feels like that, but that’s not a good thing, it doesn’t feel like a good episodic show, it feels, too often, like the worst part of episodic shows. There’s also the timeline piece. They are extremely subtle about it, and that’s something that they needed to be more obvious about, and then there were things that they could have and should have been subtle about because it would have been a good payoff. I’ll watch the next season when it comes out, but I’d say, if it’s just kind of interesting, probably skip it.

Did you enjoy The Witcher? Is it on the list of shows to watch for you if you haven’t seen it? Should I play any of the games/pen and paper RPG?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Earth is in need of help, as is pretty common in sci-fi. So a group of scientist, colonists, and others head out into deep space to find a mysterious object, the volcryn, that seems to be giving off the same energy signature as telepaths on Earth do. Yes, there are telepaths on earth, and there is even one on the ship, Thale, who is dangerous, but also might be their only way to contact the volcryn. However, from the get go, things are not going like they should on the ship, the Captain Royd Eris is hidden away only showing up as a hologram, things are breaking down, and for this mission, everyone is on edge. As they go further into space and get closer to the volcryn, more things go poorly and it is clear that someone on the ship does not want them to reach the volcryn, all while the main character, Karoly d’Branin becomes more and more obsessed with finding reaching their end goal. Will they survive all the way to the end?

This show reminded me a lot of Helix, another SyFy channel show, set in space. It’s about who you can trust, or who you shouldn’t trust on the ship. And if what you’re going after is going to be worth the cost. I think that it Nightflyers, without delving into too much plot detail, is fairly standard in a lot of it’s handling of sci-fi tropes. I don’t think that’s always a bad thing, because there are a lot of interesting story elements, but for the most part, it feels fairly typical to stuff that I’ve already seen and stuff that has been a part of sci-fi for a long time. It does delve into some interesting areas about grief and humanity, but for the most part it leans into the horror and sci-fi elements in ways that you’d expect.

So while the sci-fi elements might not always be the most unique, I thought that it did a good job blending the elements of sci-fi and horror. And in the horror you actually get some more unique things, which tie back into the sci-fi nature of the show. With horror, I do believe that it is a bit all over the place at times. You some where it’s very psychological and other times where people are being frozen or jump scares or a pathogen loose in the air. But I have a soft spot for the blend of horror and sci-fi in my heart, because both of them can really dig into issues that would be too abstracted in a more realistic setting.

I think that the concept of the show works, I think while it is fairly standard, the story of the show works. I feel like they mess up some pacing in the show, there’s a large time jump for no good reason at one point in time, just to set-up the next horrific thing happening. I think the time jump is confusing as well, because it’s a slow burn show. Most of the elements are played out slowly over a long period of time and it works well in the show. You can tell the story is based off of George RR Martin, the Song of Ice and Fire series has a slow burn as well, and this matches it where a lot of the horror is based things and confusion moving slowly and building tension versus jump scares.

Would I recommend this show? It was pretty enjoyable and because it’s one season only, I think there are enough interesting horror and sci-fi elements in it that makes it worth checking out. The world building for something that basically only takes place on a spaceship is done really well. There’s a good amount of depth there, and that depth builds throughout the whole of the show, not just the the start with an info dump, but you never feel like they are info dumping on you and that you don’t have the information that you need. If you enjoy fairly heavy sci-fi with a good dose of horror thrown in, it’s definitely a show that is worth watching.

Have you seen the show, read the novella? How do they compare, is the novella worth reading if you’ve seen the show?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

So in Sword Art Online, we get introduced to Battle of Bullets, a player versus player and eventually a free for all last man standing tournament. Now, we have an eccentric millionaire/billionaire who has decided that they want to spend their money to create a team version of that, and that’s where we hop in. Karen, her real world name, hasn’t ever felt like she’s fit in, mainly because she’s so tall. A friend of hers tells her that in online gaming she can be anyone she wants to be and so she starts trying out various VR games, and all of them make her tall, except eventually when she hits GGO. There, she’s a really fast little character with a machine gun. She meets a mysterious character, Pitohui, in game name. She seems pretty easy going, all about shooting things and always up for the next thing, but there’s something off about her. Karen and Pitohui are going to enter this tournament but Pitohui has a conflict and gets another one of her friends, simply known as M to team up with Karen.

That’s the basics of the story without getting into spoiler level details. I feel like this show is lacking a bunch in plot. Now, I’m a tall person, and I standout in crowds depending on where I am, and I can understand for some people why it would be a big deal, but also as driving factor for Karen’s character motivations and actions, it’s a little bit weak. Compare this to season 2 of SAO, the main character in GGO there is someone who is trying to overcome a fear of guns after having to kill someone in self defense as a child and going to PTSD whenever she interacts with a gun or an image of a gun in real life. And she’s found that in GGO it feels different and hoping it’ll help her overcome some of that trauma. That, compared to being tall. Now, not to dismiss the bullying and everything that can go on with that in real life, but for the stakes of the show, it feels lacking.

The other things is the character of Pitohui. She’s this awesome fighter who has a bit of an eccentric personality. Who she is in real life is supposed to be a mystery, it isn’t. And her motivations are again a bit weird. This is going to have some spoilers coming up here, so you’ve been warned, I won’t give away home she is outside of the game though. Her biggest motivation is that she’s trying to find danger and excitement in a game. All because she was supposed to have gone into SAO when it launched but hadn’t been able to, and once she realized it was a death game, she wanted to even more so. There are obviously people who do things because of the adrenaline rush that are dangerous, but her idea is to find a game that’ll give her the same feeling, and because of Death Gun from SAO season 2, she’s decided on GGO. I think that this could have been done more interesting, make it a more subtle part of her character that slowly unfolds over time, but you get it quite quickly, that tied together with the other “twist” doesn’t work all that well.

Finally, I think that the story as a whole is lacking. The characters aren’t as interesting and the plot feels like it’s been vastly simplified. The motivations are weaker, the character development is slower, and the stakes feel so much lower throughout, even with Pitohui’s death wish. I think with SAO they were able to delve more into the psychology of people and what makes them tick as well as some simpler plot lines, and in GGO they want to do that, but everything is done on more of a simpler laid out level than it was in SAO. With that, they are also trying to be clever about stuff and just not managing to pull it off. M, this really mysterious character, turns out to be kind of a bust in real life and a cliche when he’s finally brought in that way. They try and have a number of twists or more shocking moments, but overall it’s too telegraphed and nothing really feels surprising about it. It also tries to pack the story with more action than SAO did, and that was part of the charm of SAO, you got to see a few boss fights or a few fights that really mattered, but not all of them, here we have multiple episodes that stretch over the tournaments and they try and do some plot in them, but it’s mainly action.

So, you can see that I’m down on this. I wouldn’t say that it’s horrible, it’s just lacking. They had a lot of things they could have done with the story, character developments that they could have had, but instead it’s more your typical anime where it doesn’t handle anything with finesse, it’s just simplified down. Would I recommend checking it out, not really, again, it’s just lacking. Will you be upset that you watched it, probably not, it does have a few moments, but it doesn’t feel like there’s all that much going on, so good background noise type of anime, in my opinion.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.