Rune Soldier

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the series already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole series beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.

This is a show I'd been meaning to watch for years, and only recently got around to it.  It's a fun little romp from the writer of Slayers about a group of female adventurers who try to find a mage for their party and end up stuck with Louie, a clumsy but good-hearted oaf who never does things the conventional way but somehow still makes it work.  

The characters are all ridiculously memorable.  There's Merill, a very traditional little thief who wants nothing more than all the gold she can get her hands on; she's always got a get-rich-quick scheme up her sleeve.  She's the closest to the Lina Inverse character; she's very short, feisty, and the butt of all the flat-chested jokes.  Then there's Melissa, the priestess of the goddess of battle.  She's the soft-spoken party healer, voiced by Kikuo Inoe, most known for voicing Belldandy.  Melissa's goal in life is to find a hero to serve in the name of her goddess.  There's Genie, the ex-soldier, whose mastery of the sword makes her more than a match for any man.  And then there's Louie.

I have to say, I'm really glad I waited to watch this until after I learned how to play Dungeons & Dragons, because I got *so* much more out of it than I would have otherwise.  This, as well as Slayers, were stories based on campaigns of Sword World (the Japanese equivalent of D&D) that the author participated in, and I can just imagine how they must have played out.

Louie seems like a multi-class build gone wrong.  He's got levels of wizard and fighter, but mostly monk.  The girls hire him on as a mage, but he has trouble remembering his spells.  He's brash and lacks the patience for magic, so he'll often try to hack at his foes with his sword instead, but he's also a terrible swordsman.  Louie's go-to attack is his patented "Louie Punch," and it seems to work on *everything,* often with hilarious results.

While there is good comedy to be had between the seasoned adventuring party and the brash noob, at times the girls are just total bitches to Louie.  He'll go out and punch a giant boar in the face, defeating it in one hit, but the girls are embarrassed by him because of his technique.  Really?  He killed the enemy, who fucking cares how he did it?  

The series also has a bit of a disappointing ending.  It at least wraps up the story arc it introduced and explains all the mysteries that had come up, but there are a lot of minor loose threads I would have liked to see addressed.  Will Melissa ever accept that Louie is a hero? Will Louie ever realize that his childhood friend Ila is actually in love with him? Who is Louie's real dad? It's a very open ending, leaving off with the party about to embark on another adventure, and I would have enjoyed another season.  Alas, it was not to be.

Despite this, I recommend the series, especially to anyone who likes fantasy or D&D.  You'll really get a kick out of it.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the series already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole series beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.

I had a lot of fond memories of Lois & Clark.  I watched the first season back when it originally aired, and remembered it being my favorite iteration of Superman.  After watching all four seasons, I still feel like that... but ONLY about the first season.  It had clever writing, lots of comedy, and Dean Cain plays by far the most interesting version of Clark Kent I've ever seen.  Teri Hatcher's Lois is a no-nonsense reporter that always gets her story and can kick some serious butt when she needs to, and I think John Shea's Lex Luthor is my favorite screen version of the villain.  The supporting cast is great, too, each of them having their little quirks to make them memorable.  The first season is a lot of fun and truly entertaining.  So by all means, watch the first season. And stop when you're done with it.

Season two starts with a number of mistakes.  First, they make the mistake of killing off their main villain way too soon.  It seems like all live-action versions of super hero stories do this.  Granted, it probably had something to do with the actor wanting to leave the show, but in some cases I'd rather see a different actor playing the same villain if only to give the show something to really keep it together.  A good villain is like a strong glue to a superhero show; without one, the story simply falls apart.  

Without Lex, the show is forced to bring out a string of ridiculous, non-threatening villains that just leave you scratching your head.  They briefly attempt to introduce a new crime syndicate, but most of what they do comes across as goofy comedy rather than anything that needs to be worried about.  The first boss is taken down quickly, and you have a glimmer of hope when freaking Bruce Campbell takes over as his son, but he ends up being in a total of two episodes.  It was very disappointing.

The writing also takes a sharp turn for the worse.  It's clearly an attempt to make the show more family friendly, but it comes across as dumbed down to the point that it's painful to watch.  The Christmas episode featuring Toyman is a prime example of this.

One of the things that got to me the most about this show, post-season-one, is that, in a completely shameless attempt to pander to the teen demographic, they replace the original Jimmy Olsen actor with then-teen heartthrob Justin Whalin (who also starred in such classics as "Child's Play 3", and later the big screen adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons).  In season one, Jimmy had been a clever, sympathetic aspiring reporter; maybe not someone you'd normally associate with the role of Jimmy Olsen, but he was a *good character*, which to me is more important.

In season two, Jimmy is suddenly and jarringly a teenage intern that the writers really don't know what to do with, and for a long time just pops up randomly around the office like "Hey guys, what's up?" grinning like an idiot and posing for the teen girls to swoon over.  For most of season two and three, my fiancee and I referred to him as "Fake Jimmy," and wondered what he did to "Real Jimmy," and how he'd managed to convince the entire staff of the Daily Planet that he was the same person...

Jimmy does eventually get better; the writers start giving him a real character to play somewhere in season 3.  Perry White mentors him and considers him like a son, and since he is the youngest person on the staff and the internet really took off during the time the show was airing, Jimmy became an expert hacker and the go-to guy for information.

Somewhere around season 3, the show departs from the dumbed-down kiddy formula to a soap opera style of writing, which is where it *really* got unbearable for me.  The worst of them was the entire string of episodes involving clones.  Lois and Clark were supposed to be married, but secretly a clone of Lex has come back and cloned Lois (who we referred to as "Clonis").  He replaces Lois with Clonis, and so Clark actually marries Clonis (*gasp*).  Meanwhile, Lex takes the real Lois to a secret underground lair where he plans to have his Indian manservant, Asabi, transfer their souls into perfect, cloned bodies (since his original cloned body is starting to fall apart).  Lois is, of course, not into this idea, but the writers had changed her from someone who could actually defend herself to a helpless damsel in distress sometime in season two, so she just waits around for Clark to save her.  Long story short, Superman saves her, Lex dies for real this time, but at some point during the whole fiasco Lois had been hit on the head and got amnesia, so there are another several episodes of them dealing with her not remembering Clark.  I wanted to burn my TV.

And oh god, don't even get me started on "Mike."  Mike is a god-like angel figure that shows up and randomly teleports everyone to a (very fake-looking set of a) flowery mountainside for Lois and Clark's finally real wedding in the beginning of season 4.  The whole scenario is very strange and heavy-handed and religious, and probably the lowest point of the whole show.  Like seriously, a random angel named Mike??? WTF?

There are a few episodes in season 4 which surprised me and were very well-written and clever, but it was very much too little, too late.  The season ends on a very random note, and it was clear they didn't know they wouldn't be picked up for another season.  I honestly can't even remember who the villain even was, only that, during the course of the episode, Lois and Clark found out that Clark's Kryptonian physiology was too different from human for them to ever have a baby, so they were all boo-hooing, and then they randomly found a baby in their living room.  They didn't question it or anything, were just like "yay, a baby!" and then the series ended.  I blame Mike.