Mars Express (2023) – Laurent Sarfati & Jérémie Périn
My first impression of the animation from the moment Mars Express started was somewhat mixed. Every time I’ve seen rotoscoped animation in the past it has been jarring with some feelings of the uncanny valley. The moments of the people’s walking, their arms flailing and even their facial expressions are often much smoother and more realistic than expected for animation. However, with Mars Express they achieve an rotoscoping effect that you very quickly get used to that looks surprisingly good and blends well with the artstyle of the background and surroundings. The artstyle is my favorite aspect of this movie as it often gives me a similar impression to movies like Blade Runner with it’s vast dystopian Earth cities covered in neon lights, Evangelion with its mega infrastructure and even a little bit of 2001 Space Odyssey with the elongated spaceship traveling through the empty voids of space.
The story of Mars Express is not particularly original and in my opinion is its weakest aspect as it follows some classic science fiction tropes about that problems and dangers of AI as well as the prejudices people have against digital human-like intelligence. Despite its heavy reliance on tropes I find that it succeeded in delivering a well thought out and logical story. However, while the story may be comprehensible I’m not sure it manages to say what it intended to say about the subject of AI. Our main protagonist is a detective who has a partner who is an AI-like intelligence who had once been human, but who had been restored into a robot body with a copy of their mind. The plot in my opinion appears to contradict itself a little bit in whether or not the dangers of such AI is worth the risk because there are multiple different types of AI being shown. The first is a lab made AI that is susceptible to manipulation and poses a risk to humans if bad actors are able to control them. The other is a kind of uploaded intelligence of a human mind that may no longer be fully human, but still feels human emotions. It may be possible that the intent was for the characters to conflate these two types of beings to demonstrate a natural prejudice to anyone or anything that isn’t fully human.
I believe Mars Express is a solid movie that is easily digestible for most people while still delivering complex ideas. The world of Mars Express is highly compelling with its choice of technology, society and infrastructure and while the plot is considerably existential it doesn’t paint a picture of the future that is needlessly bleak.
Scavengers Reign (2023) – Joe Bennett · Charles Huettner
It’s been awhile since I have seen a show like this and it makes me wish more animated science fiction was produced. Animation is expensive to produce so a show like this is a big risk to take. I am not certain at how this particular show was received, but I hope it does well so we can see more like this in the future. There seems to be an unfortunate stigma around animation in the western world as being mostly for children. I believe this bad reputation has been improving over the last decade as the new generation starts having more influence over the creation of shows such as this.
The immediate thing that stands out to about this show is how beautiful it is. It’s colorful and soft yet still manages to be mysterious and even creepy at times. The animation felt a little strange to me. It might be a stylistic choice or maybe even a money saving measure, but it felt as if the frame rate was lower than it should have been. It makes it look a bit jerky, but it is consistent so I got used to it quickly. The voice acting felt a bit dull as well. It might have also been an intentional decision as the whole show was quite somber. There were a few situations that had more emotive voice acting, but in general everyone’s speech was mellow and sometimes even monotone. My only other gripe is the sheer ridiculousness of some of the biological horrors as well as the solutions the characters find to particular problems. It is presumed that they haven’t been on this planet for a very long time, but even in the first episode they found solutions to problems that involves several extremely improbable chances of finding in a row. It was interesting for demonstrating the uniqueness of the world but it made it difficult to continue my suspension of disbelief that what they were doing could ever occur.
Overall I enjoyed this show more than I did not. I hope to see more shows like this in the future and possibly a sequel. I think there is still a lot that can be explored about the world of scavengers reign. However, instead of relying on shock value of biological body horror and violence I hope to see something with more critical thinking such as a mystery and fleshed out story.
I suspect almost nobody has seen this series as there is no proper way to watch it with English subtitles. Three Body Problem is one of my favorite books so when this animated series was announced it quickly got my attention. The trailer was magnificent in my opinion and did a great job of showing the very subtle and scary nature of how Trisolaris is always observing and plotting against humanity. Once it actually began airing I discovered that there was no way to watch it and that it was in fact an adaptation of the second book, The Dark forest, rather than the first book Three Body Problem. The Dark Forest is what I believe is the best part of the trilogy so that was great news. After waiting weeks and then months for some kind of translation or way to watch this I lost my patience and decided to do whatever it takes to translate it and create subtitles myself. Knowing absolutely no Chinese myself this was a bit of a difficult task. In the end I found some software that was able to process the video file itself and identify text on screen and extract the Chinese text and the timing in the video into a series of images. Then after feeding the images to OCR software to convert it into Chinese text I used a combination of Google translate and ChatGPT to translate the text into English. After a lot of grammar editing I combined everything back into a properly timed subtitle file and muxed it together with the video. Then I was able to properly watch the episode.
After putting in so much work I was rather disappointed in the end. For the majority of the series they focused on what is arguably the least interesting part of The Dark Forest. On top of that the pacing was awkward and the tone made it feel like a comedy when the source material was much more serious. The plot starts by showing the climax of the first book which involves the destruction of the ETO ship by slicing it into dozens of thin pieces using wires made of nano material. I enjoyed seeing this scene animated as it was quite the spectacular moment in the book. They also did this scene at the end of the recent live action adaptation of the first book. While that version was nearly all CGI for this scene as well I believe the animation did it far better. Another aspect of the animation that I believe they did a great job with is the character design. I don’t know how, but all of the characters are essentially exactly as I imagined them to be. I watched the live action adaptation prior to this one, but I think the actor they chose for Da Shi is not how I imagined him. Without the limitations of finding an actor who can play the role the animation is better able to characterize exactly as the book describes.
One of the aspects of the animated adaptation that I have seen get criticized frequently is the art style. Both the characters and the scenes seem to not appeal to many people. Personally I think the art is my favorite part of this adaptation and possibly the only redeeming quality. Without spending an obscene amount of money to make CGI at the level of Wandering Earth II this is the best that could have been done. With the amount of technology depicted such as space stations, futuristic cities, particle accelerators and alien space ships that are in the book I don’t think it would have looked quite right to use a more realistic style of CGI. The emotions that are able to be expressed by the characters with this style can also a bit more exaggerated as well as subtle which I think suits this show well.
I think this series had a lot of potential that it squandered with poor pacing and choosing the wrong aspects to focus on. The show only adapted a small portion of The Dark Forest so without another 4 to 5 seasons the slow pacing does not make a lot of sense. A lot of plots were clearly set up for later, but their plots went nowhere because the show ended before it could make much progress. Instead it spent a disproportionate amount of time on Luo Ji trying to get away from his responsibilities as a Wall Facer and abuse his position to find a woman from his writing and imagination. Then it turns into an out of place love story that goes on for much longer than it did in the book. They also changed some key plot points compared to the book which ended up devolving into a weird quantum time type nonsense. I didn’t entirely dislike the story they told, but I would have much preferred they stick to the source material more closely as I don’t believe the writers are as good at coming up with as fascinating fictional science as Cixin Liu.
I believe this show could still redeem itself with at least a couple more seasons as long as they resolve a couple of key issues. First and foremost the pacing needs to be sped up if they want to have any chance of making it to the most interesting parts of the book. In the next season they need to have Luo Ji come to terms with his role as a Wall Facer as quickly as possible and get to the part of the book that takes place in the distant future. Secondly the tone should be more serious rather than what I can only describe as a romantic comedy. And lastly and maybe most important of all is the plot should stick to the source material and adapt the story that people want to see. This adaptation could be great and I hate to see it in such an awkward state.
