Spider Rose

My problem with Spider Rose

The only Season 4 episode I liked was Spider Rose (it is actually a dramatic improvement on the source story). But there is one problem I can't ignore.

Here is the description of *Colonel Doctor* Jade Prime from Bruce Sterling's story:

"A Shaper's face appeared, one of the Oriental-based gene lines, smooth raven hair held back with jeweled pins, slim black eyebrows arched over dark eyes with the epicanthic fold, pale lips slightly curved in a charismatic smile. A smooth, clean actor's face with the glittering ageless eyes of a fanatic."

Shapers are the genetically perfected Übermensch counterparts to Spider Rose's cyborg Mechanist set. The two scientists in Swarm were Shapers. They are physically perfect (which is why Swarm wanted to breed a human caste of symbiotes with them), and their minds bred for high IQ to the point where some became hyperintelligent enough to be seriously unstable.

They were not jagged toothed scarfaced monstrosities like the Jade Prime of the episode.

My problem is this: the animators had such Hollywoodesque contempt for the IQ of their audience, that is, us, that they had to uglify Jade Prime so we would know him for a villain. Because he's ugly.

It irritates me out of all proportion, but there it is.

A traumatized cyborg seeks revenge against the people who killed her lover. Along the way, she finds possible healing, though.

This was an interesting episode, and certainly more in line with what I was hoping for. After a music video and a sophomoric comedy short, we finally get a science fiction story. The science fiction elements were pretty cool, but the short runtime meant that you didn't really get a lot of detail.

The art is amazing, which perhaps explains why it's so short. It's in a pretty realistic style and has a solid emotional base. You get to know the cyborg's suffering fairly well during your brief time with her, and her emotions come through well in the artwork. The voice acting captured the characters well, too.

I would have liked to have seen something a bit more exciting during the climax, but the action sequences were done well. It definitely gave off vibes of Heavy Metal, especially the climactic fight, which was gory and intense.

The most essentially science fiction part of the episode is not really the cyborg. It was her payment for a salvage job -- an alien pet that gives her a reason to live besides vengeance. It was interesting and kept the episode from being something as straight-up "here's some badasses in a gunfight" like Kill Team Kill.

Overall, definitely an episode for people like me. If we had an entire season of episodes like this, I would be satisfied, but I hope we get some more crazy stuff like ZIma Blue, The Witness, and Jibaro.

This one was maybe the closest to what Love, Death and Robots used to be, and yet, you will not find me re-watch it. It has elements that we have explored before, but this time, it is told in a less shocking or exciting fashion. Nothing unique about our character, we've seen this done multiple times, just about watchable. I'd say it was ok-ish overall, but just below average. Unfortunately, it will not get better than this when it comes to storytelling or vibe...which is annoying and disappointing for something that used to make people go "whoah, now what is something creative". I also found something about our character's face being a bit too much in terms of animation, but that is just a small thing, might be just me.

This story feels like a retread of a previous seasons.

The one with a human going in to space to investigate a hive mind entity and then decides they would make a better queen and ruler of the hive and then finds out the old hive / queen isn't happy about that idea.

The agenda of the aliens is kind of unclear did they send the cute pet on purpose to harvest the spider rose / human / augmented dna ? Or where they merely trying to maintain their ' arrangement' ?

The timing of the villain attack is also somewhat circumspect and coincidental.

Animation and voice acting off the charts with amazing sound stage to sell it.

There are some interesting themes in this one, and it evokes similarities with what must have been done by the same studio, the sci-fi episode in the previous season, the one about hive-mind extra-terrestrials. I must admit I _loved_ that one -- the one in season 3, it actually had a novel story, certainly one that's worth pursuing which it tried to do.

Anyway, this may just be done by the same studio, it bears some visual style similarities for me to think so.

But unlike the other one, this one doesn't really explore a particularly interesting theme. It's visually striking, but the show already set the standard for 3-D animation, and I, for one, expect no less.

The theme that I liked -- which the episode didn't manage (or bother) to fully explore -- is loneliness, despair, desire for revenge and last but not least, _pets_! :) It ended too soon for me to have a lasting impression, which I think is its chief shortcomings, perhaps even the only shortcoming -- there is an interesting theme there somewhere, vaguely painted and lazily left unexplored.

Twice the story and half the animation quality (even at the same run length) would have improved this one by a margin, I'd say. Alas.