Changes made to content

... Thursdays. ⏎ How was the first episode? ⏎Caitlin Moore ⏎ Rating: STARS RISE UP! STARRISE! ⏎ Moonrise could have had an immaculate first episode, and I still would have deducted at least a star for the final line of the episode: after a holographic rebellion leader makes a rousing speech about how the moon must secede from Earth, he shouts, “Moon, rise up! MOONRISE!” While I wasn't impressed with the script overall, this line was so cheesy it left me breathless. My husband and I spent the next twenty minutes shouting, “MOONRISE!” at each other. When my cat, Maya, screamed at me for dinner, I shouted “MAYARISE.” My husband just turned to me and said, “Moonkanda forever.” It is just too ripe for mockery. ⏎ We were already primed for this by just how jarring the episode's conclusion was. It started in media res with a bunch of pretty young adults traveling in military vehicles before being assaulted by either robots or enemy soldiers in power suits before jumping back to one of those pretty young adults as a small child and his brother trudging through a fiery landscape—and finally jumping forward to those same pretty young adults doing the kind of stuff rich people in Los Angeles get up to. However, there was zero work put into establishing what the conditions were like on the moon and why they would resent Earth's government. But, well, that's Tow Ubukata for you! Proper noun mush and poor pacing is pretty much synonymous with his name in the circles I run in. ⏎ To be clear, the episode wasn't an awful way to spend a half an hour. Jake Shadow's friends are a bunch of spoiled brats, and Jake does a good impression of one himself. The episode was quite beautiful overall; while orbital elevators have been around as a science fiction concept for a long time, the fanfare of the rich corporatists around the opening of a new shaft creates a sense of dazzling opulence. As previously established, all the characters are very pretty, thanks to designs by Hiromi Arakawa, and the contrast between their exhausted expressions in the cold opening versus them swanning around a pleasure cruise is effective. ⏎ But there was a pervasive sense of disconnect for the entire episode. I could tell the characters were the same people, but none of the time jumps seemed connected in any way. I never had a sense of what was happening, what we were building up to; in fact, there was little sense of buildup at all. And still, I'm not sure what Jake's long-lost brother has to do with the moon rebelling—or what that has to do with the AI that's running the world. I don't mean that it made me feel intrigued, like made me want to see how all the pieces fit together; it just felt incongruous. ⏎ But at the very least, my husband and I have a new in-joke, and what could possibly be more important? ⏎ Richard Eisenbeis ⏎ Rating: 4 ⏎ I know a...