Quarantine Control #1: Damaging the Curve

Welcome to the first installment of Quarantine Control, a new feature where Damage Control staffers will document what they’re watching, playing, or reading while staying at home. As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc and death around the world, remaining in the house (or wherever you live) and avoiding other people is the best way to flatten the curve. It’s working thus far, but health officials still recommend staying home for fear that the populace could get comfortable enough that the virus could resurge. There’s also a chance that could still happen later. Great time we live in.

Anyway, enough of that. It’s time to discuss what we’re watching to pass the time.

Geoffrey Barnes

Michiko & Hatchin (2008)
Source: Blu-ray
Episodes: 22

I’ve been busy tackling my modestly-sized anime Blu-ray backlog for the last several weeks, and I’ve successfully put a significant dent in it. The most recent and one of the most interesting series I’ve watched is Michiko & Hatchin, an entertaining show that has one of the most unique settings to ever grace an anime.

Michiko & Hatchin is an action-drama series that takes place in a fictional South American country clearly based on Brazil, and stars escaped convict Michiko Malandro and nine-year-old Hana “Hatchin” Morenos. They seem like an odd couple upon looking at them, but they’re travelling together because Michiko believes Hana is the daughter of her old love, Hiroshi. Notably, Michiko and other characters like Atsuko Jackson and Satoshi Batista (both of whom don afros) have Japanese first names despite being Afro-Latinx and Caucasian-Latinx, though Brazil does have a sizable-though-diminishing concentration of Japanese citizens.

The show is a lot of fun, to no surprise for one with such an abnormal setting for the medium. As an escaped convict, Michiko has to dodge the police and considerably worse criminals while escorting a tough and well-meaning nine-year-old girl, leading to a steady string of well-animated action and chase sequences. There’s also a healthy heap of drama and conflict between all the characters involved to drive the series’ overarching emotion, especially among the title characters. I can’t emphasize how refreshing it is to see these kinds of interactions between non-Japanese characters in an anime, from a team led by director Sayo Yamamoto (in her debut) that thankfully understood how non-Japanese people act. It’s also welcome to see several people of color gathered in one anime.

It’s a pity that uniqueness kept it from being successful in Japan, despite its good critical reception in the country. This had an effect on the second half of the series, where the animation wasn’t quite as fluid in parts outside the finale, and it felt a little cut short at 22 episodes — a bit shorter than the average 24 or 26-episode TV anime. It did slightly better in the US after it aired on Toonami, but still wasn’t as big as it could have been. There was still room for more exposition for the final character resolutions, but it comes to a fitting conclusion.

If you want to watch Michiko & Hatchin, you can do so either through the DVD or Blu-ray collection (there’s a new Blu-ray collection coming in June), or watch it on Funimation’s streaming platform. It’s a good one.

 

Series: Agent Carter
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 18

I’ve also spent time watching Marvel’s Agent Carter on Disney Plus, which continues the story of Agent Peggy Carter following Captain America: The First Avenger, a show I missed in its entirety when it aired on ABC. Fortunately, I found a show that was every bit as good and well-paced as I’ve heard. This interpretation of Carter was intriguing enough in the first Captain America film and the short included with it that the producers and writers felt they could make a show around her. I’d say they bet right.

Agent Carter takes place slightly after World War II in the late 1940s, where Peggy herself continues work after the war as a secretary for the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). This is more interesting than the concept sounds, when she gets involved in a side gig working as a secret agent to clear the seared name of Howard Stark with friend and assistant, Jarvis, in the first season. The series has the feel of a noir detective show, but doesn’t completely lean into those themes for it to inherit at least the slight feel of a Marvel film. But it’s still a different kind of show compared to what anyone might expect for a Marvel-driven series.

In fact, that’s likely why it underperformed. The audience that watches Marvel movies in droves has clearly wanted a superhero-driven show, similar to Heroes except with Marvel characters. Agent Carter is not that show, and Peggy herself has no superpowers — though other characters eventually develop them. The same could be said of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., though at least that was given a better opportunity to grow. Despite its length, Agent Carter is entertaining, even though the show’s production team clearly thought it would get another season given its ending. There isn’t a better time or venue to watch it.

I just happened to be watching two underappreciated shows starring women as their main characters for this feature, which I assure you was a total coincidence. Perhaps by this time next week, I’ll be playing something. But note the word “perhaps.”

Joseph Daniels

As an introvert who works for an essential service in a region of Canada successfully flattening the curve, my life hasn’t been drastically altered other than being unable to go to the library for a bit.  That said, I’ve been watching more stuff than usual anyway because why not?

 

Beastars (2019)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 12 (so far)

Every once in a while, a piece of media comes along that looks like it should only have appeal to furries, but upon release it takes the world by storm.  A few years ago, Zootopia broke out of its furry mold and caused ordinary moms to lust over very masculine tiger dancers.  This year, Beastars breaks out of the furry mold and into the mainstream, or as mainstream as you can get when it’s mostly just anime fans talking about how amazing this series is.  It might not be as mainstream as a Disney film, but Beastars sort of deserves to be.

First of all, it’s not animated like most anime usually is.  There are far less visual anime tropes at play here, and it makes the series seem like it was animated for an American audience.  Personally, I kept on thinking of the furry dating sim Something To Do With Love, although Beastars is animated much better and with greater detail.

Second of all, it’s written with a kind of emotional intelligence that you usually don’t see in Disney’s animated films.  The source material is to thank for this, written by Paru Itagaki, a mangaka whom had self-published her work prior to her breakout success with Beastars.  Despite her status as a relative newcomer to the industry, Beastars can already stand amongst greats like Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix.

Beastars feels like it’s written for people that already accept that anthropomorphic animals have the run of the place, and who want to see them act more like their animal counterparts than like people wearing fursuits.  Starring Legosi (a wolf), Haru (a rabbit) and Louis (a deer), the series examines the roles of carnivores and herbivores in a society somewhere between the utopian ideals of Zootopia and the more feral versions of nature seen in The Lion King, where predation isn’t just a way of life, it’s to be expected.  Where Zootopia acts like the world has evolved beyond its past, Beastars pulls the curtain back and reveals that this is all just a lie.  The world acts like it’s evolved beyond its past, but a Black Market is shown where meat, about as ethically sourced as you’d be able to claim in a world like this, is available for carnivores to purchase.  The poor go there to sell body parts that they feel they can live without, to give carnivores a taste of literal finger food.

Let’s not mince words, anyone who thinks that a world full of anthropomorphic animals would be all harmony and the embracing of differences like in the novels of Kyell Gold will have their illusions shattered right from the start when Tem the alpaca is killed in what looks like a predation incident.  This mystery remains unsolved; this didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, given how I was turned off from Game of Thrones by how long it was taking for anyone to respond to the mounting threat of the White Walkers shown during the very first scene of the first episode.  I think it goes back to when I was in high school and a girl who had been my next door neighbour for years went missing and to this day has never been found.  The lack of closure for Tem in season one reminds me a lot of the lack of closure for Brianne Wolgram, although I hear Tem’s murderer is going to be revealed in season two.

There’s a lot more that can be said about Beastars, and for that I would recommend reading Alex’s review.

 

Road Quest (2019)
Source: YouTube
Episodes: 12

In the years after they stopped doing weekly sketch comedy videos, Loading Ready Run have experimented with ideas for new content to produce for their YouTube channel.  In 2018, several members of the troupe went on a road trip from Victoria, British Columbia, to Dawson Creek, Yukon and filmed the entire journey.  Then it took a year and a half to edit it.

The final product is worth it, though.  The best thing about sending an improv comedy troupe on a road trip is that there is a lot of entertaining footage that can make it into the final product.

The best thing about sending an improv comedy troupe who actually lives in the area on a road trip is that the comedy bits don’t detract from the scenery.  Road Quest is as much a comedy show as it is a celebration of the beautiful vistas of British Columbia and the Yukon.  It’s similar to the “GP Bound” episode of Friday Nights they produced in 2013 except on a much larger scale and mostly unscripted.

The good news is, it worked as entertainment.  The bad news is, it was so much work to make that it’s currently not likely a second season will be made, at least not in the same manner.  It’s also probably one of the most elaborate things they’ve ever done and one of the most elaborate things anyone’s ever done for YouTube.

 

Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Source: CBS All Access (United States), Crave (Canada), Amazon Prime (worldwide)
Episodes: 10 (so far)

If you’re lucky and you live in Canada, you’ve had an opportunity to see this at no additional cost if you have the CTV Sci-Fi Channel as part of your television bundle.  If you’re not lucky… sorry about that, I guess I’m recommending yet another streaming service to subscribe to.

Star Trek: Picard is kind of like The Sarah Jane Adventures, in a way.  The BBC created Sarah Jane Adventures because they wanted to tell more stories focused around one of the most popular companions from classic Doctor Who, and CBS created Star Trek: Picard so that they could bring back the most beloved captain from 90’s Trek (90’s Trek is a term I’m using to describe the four shows that aired between 1987 and 2005).

A fair warning, this show isn’t perfect.  The first three or four episodes are paced very poorly (for a show called “Star Trek”, it takes a long time to actually go into space), and the show is perhaps a bit too dark at times; literally every cameo that didn’t have star billing in 90’s Trek ends up dead before the end of the season.  It reminds me of the movie 2012, where every scene of peril kills exactly one named character to show the viewer that this could’ve been lethal to the main characters but somehow it wasn’t.  It was lazy writing in 2012 and it’s disappointing now to see a familiar character show up just so they could die and so I began to expect it whenever I saw someone I recognized.  It’s almost the exact opposite of Kingdom Hearts, but instead of saying to myself, “Okay, this person’s coming back in the sequel”, I was saying “Okay, this person’s not going to make it to the end of the episode”.  One character actually survives his first two appearances before finally buying it.

That said, and despite the darker and less exploration-based nature of the show, it tells an interesting story… which admittedly could’ve been told in less time, but I imagine binging the show will work out a lot better than watching one episode a week.  It’s also interesting to notice that Patrick Stewart seems like a lost old man at the start of the series, but after he meets up with some of his old friends from the Enterprise, he is his old self once more.  He also might’ve lost some of his former vigor but his mind is as sharp as ever, especially when he lectures a reporter in episode one, disputing the othering of the Romulan race that the reporter was trying to do, and pointedly calling them people.  Not “Romulans”.  People.

In the end, your enjoyment of Star Trek: Picard will be determined by whether or not you’re on board with the darker turn the franchise has taken since the 2009 reboot and the 2017 premiere of Star Trek: Discovery.  I guess it’ll also be determined by whether or not your YouTube feed is full of the alt-right or not.  If the nonsense phrase “get woke, go broke” is anywhere in your vocabulary, you won’t like this show.  For the rest of us, if you like your science fiction darker and already watch shows like Black Mirror and were a fan of the modern Battlestar Galactica series, you’ll probably like Picard.

 

This first part of what should be an ongoing feature is starting on a Friday — a Good Friday at that. Future installments will be posted on Thursdays starting next week, though they won’t be quite as “Good” per se.