(no subject)

[skygiants]

We watched Scavengers Reign because it was enthusiastically recommended to genarti as fun animated science fiction about being stranded on an alien planet with interesting alien biology. Which is true! This is not incorrect! Not Mentioned was the extent to which it is also very definitely lovingly animated body-and-survival horror ..... every time we watched we checked in with each other like 'still good to proceed? not too much eugughghhhhhh?' '[grimly] let's watch at least one more episode and see what happens,' and in this way we eventually crawled through all twelve episodes.

NONETHELESS I do think it was very good, once we acclimated to the eugughghhhhhh factor. (I ended up higher on it than genarti did, in some part because I liked the ending for my favorite character better than she liked the ending for hers.) The first episode introduces you in media res to the several sets of people stranded on this planet that the show will be following:

- Sam and Ursula, an older man and younger woman traveling together, who've developed a plan to bring down their heavily damaged ship, the Demeter,, still in orbit around the planet with most of the crew in cryosleep; Ursula is fascinated by the planet and interested in learning more about it, while Sam is laser-focused on Getting Out Of There
- Azi, a motorcycle butch who's been in crop-growing survival mode supported by (a) Levi (unit), a pleasant manual labor robot whose behavior is becoming increasingly altered by some kind of planetary growth thriving in its innards
- Kamen, alone and still trapped in his escape pod, on the verge of death until he encounters a telepathic creature that brainwashes him into symbiotic/parasitic collaboration, and yet somehow his biggest concern is still His Divorce

Over the course of the story, we learn through flashbacks more about who these people were on the Demeter and what happened to strand them on the planet, while they cope (or don't) with the various challenges of the planet and the hope of escape provided by the Demeter. The real fears that the show evokes, IMO, are isolation and transformation -- being, yourself, transformed without your knowledge or consent, or, perhaps even worse, seeing your only companion changing into something unrecognizable and untrustworthy. These are things that scare me personally very much and so I often found this a very scary show! But -- like Annihilation or Alien Clay, the two other stories that Scavengers Reign reminded me of the most -- it also evokes the flip side of this fear, the beauty and wonder of the transformative and strange. The animators loved animating these weird alien ecosystems.

You can watch the trailer here:

Watch on YouTube

(The trailer is very clear and accurate to the amount of body horror in the show. From this you will be able to tell that we did not in fact watch the trailer before we began the show itself.)

A second season was planned, but has not been ordered and may never be made; IMO the first season does stand as complete but I would very much like to see the second season and I hope it happens.

Comments

[newredshoes]

OH. I listened to an amazing podcast episode with the creators a while back. For some reason, I was certain it was live-action, but it makes so much more sense animated. I don't think they knew when or how it would get distributed when I was listening to it (this might be an old episode). Anyway, I am glad to know it's That Good and I am totally putting it on my to-watch list!

[skygiants]

oooh I'll definitely be listening to this, thank you!! they ABSOLUTELY used the medium of animation to its full potential for this -- I'll be stoked for your thoughts if/when you watch :D

[goodbyebird]

Last year's Festivids had 3 stunning vids for the show. Would recommend!

[skygiants]

ooh, I was thinking about it for this year's Festivids but had not taken the obvious step of looking for last year's Festivids, thank you!

[mtbc]

I enjoyed it, it made a nice change, there was a gentle, thoughtful side to it.

[skygiants]

It did definitely have a sort of meditative quality at times! (sometimes just before somebody got sort of dissolved from the inside out, but)

[shipperslist]

Ohh this looks gorgeous! Like Ghibli gone horribly wrong yet still beautiful.

ETA: ...aaand of course it's not available here. *sigh*

[skygiants]

Yeah, I was thinking about Ghibli FREQUENTLY as I watched -- I think at least one of the creatures must have been semi-deliberately patterned off No-Face in Spirited Away.

oh no!! (... though might this work?)

[shipperslist]

Ohhh that looks promising! I'll check it out.

[jadelennox]

I felt bad how much I couldn't watch it with temvald but I have a shuddering creeping horror of parisitic fungus. Or parisitism. Last year I let a wasp-parasitized tomato hornworm run its whole lifecycle (well, the wasps' lifecycle I guess) and took a bunch of pictures and I was fascinated and also it was, like, the most horrific month of gardening I've ever had. It was a cool an interesting show! And also absolute nightmare fuel.

[genarti]

I'm not even usually bothered by parasitic fungus and parasitism -- I mean, I'm not unbothered, there's a lot that's augh augh augh about it, but it's not a specific Nope Can't Deal With This horror thing for me usually! (Although I had a similar experience with a tomato hornworm a few years back, and yes, I was both fascinated and viscerally horrified.) Anyway, it was a cool and interesting show and at least once an episode I had to go AUGH AUGH EUGHGHGHGHHHH WELL THE FOLEY TEAM IS DOING A GREAT JOB WITH THE SQUELCHING NOISES. AGAIN.

[skygiants]

S A M E. there seems to be a real gap between people who are like 'what a fun science fiction show! nice time!' and people who are like 'THIS IS. HORROR. THIS IS PEAK HORROR' and I am firmly on the latter side .... scary! very scary show!!!

[shadaras]

I adore the body horror of this series and have in fact used that element as a rec for people who I know also love it. xD But yes, if you didn't know that going into it, I can see how it'd be rather UM!!! and off-putting!

I loved Levi and Ursula, with Ursula's journey also being a delight. (and what's happening to Kris right at the end makes me ache for a continuation!)

[skygiants]

IT'S GOOD BODY HORROR. I'm not a body horror person myself but I can recognize the skill involved .....

I was extremely invested in the Levi-Azi dynamic!! (the one spoiler I did know was I'd seen this post on tumblr lol) and I am SO curious to know what was going to happen with Kris and the broader world ..... Weird Things! Probably Very Scary!!!

[sushiflop]

If you liked Scavengers' Reign I'd recommend checking out Scavengers, the pilot that started it all! I actually liked it a bit better than the show; Vesta is the main character here and the short knows it. It's dense on weird alien biology (in a very evocative way) and lighter, imo, on the body horror, and a great watch.

[mific]

Ooh, thanks for the link. That was great, too.

[sushiflop]

Glad you enjoyed!

[skygiants]

ooh, thank you so much for the link, I'll definitely be watching this!

[sushiflop]

Would love to hear your eventual thoughts! I was so full of opinions I wrote my own giant post about it.

[landingtree]

Oh I hadn't heard of this, thank you!

[sushiflop]

Hope you like it! I'm a huge fan of the short myself c:

[mific]

Scavengers Reign! I love it, but yes, lots of body horror. The ending made up for a lot of that, though, and I liked the adaptation and symbiosis of it better than the nostalgia of the short linked below.

[skygiants]

Yeah, the ending really worked for me! though I wanted to see more of the post-climax of everyone together and building .... alas, alas

[passingbuzzards]

That style of animation for something body horror-heavy feels like a smart choice, because I actually could watch that (and thus have to see it), whereas exceedingly realistic 3D-animated gore is guaranteed to make me glance away from the screen when it happens and miss it, lol. (Reminded by the trailer of Love, Death + Robots, where some of the more realistic + gratuitously gory shorts had me like, what is actually the point of animating viscera in loving 4K detail if 90% of the audience is going to look away for the given moment...!)

[skygiants]

right, I do NOT think I would/could have watched a live-action version of this show -- the animation does a really good job at navigating between wonder/horror/horrorwonder just by the fact of its particular stylization.

[scribe]

Lexx and I watched a few episodes of it and really enjoyed the animation, but couldn't get into the characters enough to feel compelled to continue. >_>

[genarti]

I clicked with some characters more than others, but for me, the exact style of animating... like... mouths and body language, specifically? the eyes were great! meant that there was a bit of distance. But yeah, it did take me longer than I expected to fully get into the characters, although eventually I was FULLY rooting for Sam and Ursula in particular. (I liked Azi a lot too, eventually, but Sam and Ursula's friendship had my heart.)

[skygiants]

It took me maybe three or four episodes to start caring about the characters -- they really very deliberately slow-roll you on them, I think. I did hit the point eventually where I started having big feelings about them, but it took a while for sure!

[viridian5]

I haven't seen Scavengers Reign but did see another TV series by the creators called Common Side Effects that I mostly enjoyed--its art style took some getting used to--that also has surreal and body horror moments. Common Side Effects is mostly about healthcare and the pharmaceuticals industry, as someone finds a mushroom that seems to be able to heal almost anything and has to deal with all the people who want to either destroy it (and him) or keep and exploit it for themselves.

[skygiants]

I kept seeing the icon for it while navigating the television and wondering if it's by the same creators because the style of Guy looks so similar! thanks for confirming, I might give it a try.