TV

Star Trek

On the recent passing of a friend with whom I’d lost contact long ago, several of her friends started a Facebook group to celebrate her and share stories of her life. I feel honored to have been invited to be a part of that group. And it turns out (perhaps unsurprisingly) that many of these people share similar interests, and a discussion started about science fiction, to which my friend Christina said she’s tried but can’t seem to get into Star Trek and she feels like something’s wrong with her for it.

Now, I’m speaking as someone who’s watched all of the more-than-650 hours of Star Trek TV series, movies, and worthy derivative works (such as Star Trek Continues) that have been produced over the past more-than-60 years, so I feel somewhat authoritative when I say that … there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her for not getting into Star Trek! There’s so much to get into, and the focus of each series (and quality of its writing) varies greatly.

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Anime, late 2017

I’m really enjoying the new anime series “Kino’s Journey,” a remake of the 2003 series in which a traveler and a talking motorcycle visit many strange countries, staying exactly three days in each. It’s very Twilight Zone, setting up a strange situation and exploring how characters respond to it (like: what if there were a country where murder was legal?).

I watched the previous series five years ago, and I feel much the same about this remake: the episodes are largely standalone, the protagonist is mostly a blank slate, but the artwork is gorgeous. The theme of the series is “The world is not beautiful, therefore it is beautiful.” I can get behind that.

This evening I watched the episode “Kind Country,” which I remembered from the original as soon as I saw the little girl’s cherry hair-clip. It’s wonderfully bittersweet, as is the episode that’s coming up next week, “Country of Adults.”

I’ve also been watching the series “Recovery of an MMO Junkie,” which is a romance between players of an online videogame in their 30s. The concept is cute and it’s done with a sweetly innocent touch, but I’m disappointed that it seems to have run out of steam and coasted to a halt. Yesterday’s episode (the tenth one) is apparently the final one, aside from an OVA which Crunchyroll is broadcasting next week, if that makes any sense.

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