Exosquad DVD review

[darkwing_duck1]

Based on my memories, I had been saving up for this one, but upon getting it, I find myself not as impressed as I once was.

First, the "tale of the tape"

Released by: Universal

# Eps: 13 22min eps

Video Transfer: better than some...very few "interlacing" problems

Audio Transfer: clean and crisp.

Extras: none

Review: The story is about as good as I remembered. In a nutshell, think RDM's BSG, only with the Neo-Sapiens as the Cylons. It's told in an adult, but non-graphic manner (people die, for example, but no gore or gratuitous violence).

My biggest problems come not from the transfer to DVD (which is usually my beef), but the source material itself. For all the sophistication of the plot, it's serviced by some very poor animation and dialogue work.

Many "long" and "meduim" shots are ruined by the use of very jerky overlays of foreground on background, making it look very poorly integrated, esp in battle scenes. The figure art is highly detailed, which makes close ups and two shots look farily decent, as long as motion is kept to a minimum.

Visually, the closest set to this I can think of is the WildCATs series, which had the same general problems.

The dialogue was ok, but the vocal performances by most of the cast were sub par. The Neo characters seemed the most settled into their parts, while the actors voicing the humans seemed to feel a need to bark their lines out drill ground style.

The music is some of the most repetetive I've seen in animation...3 basic pieces that get reused OVER and OVER: a "fight music", a "sneaking/preparing music", and a generic filler music used for most everything else.

It's realy a shame; I was so looking forward to this one...but it's going into my "resale" pile. Guess this time memories played a trick on me.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, ExoSquad was animated by Akom, consistently one of the worst overseas studios producing animated television in the '80s and '90s. In fact, I'd call the animation on its second season just about the worst I've ever seen from Akom, and that's saying something.

Also the design work was badly flawed. The writers, to their great credit, went to the trouble to research the Solar System and write about its actual geography, but the people responsible for the storyboards, backgrounds, etc. just made up a bunch of random and physically impossible nonsense, like Olympus Mons on Mars being an impossibly tall and slender needle of a mountain and Saturn's moon Enceladus being a rectangular slab of rock. Yet another reason why a show that was very impressive on the page turned out disappointing on the screen.

 

[Leroy]

Bummer about the video quality I had a feeling this show would get mediocre treatment on DVD. As for the animation quality yeah it's bad but there is more to a show than the animation like story and characters. As for science mistakes I wouldn't be too critical since in Star Trek they are a dime a dozen.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Bummer about the video quality I had a feeling this show would get mediocre treatment on DVD. As for the animation quality yeah it's bad but there is more to a show than the animation like story and characters. As for science mistakes I wouldn't be too critical since in Star Trek they are a dime a dozen.

I guess I didn't say it right. The quality of the video TRANSFER is quite good...better than some I've seen of newer shows. It's the animation itself that is mediocre.

 

[Leroy]

darkwing_duck1 wrote:
I guess I didn't say it right. The quality of the video TRANSFER is quite good...better than some I've seen of newer shows.

I stand corrected I guess I must have read your post wrong. Too bad they didn't just release the show in its entirety instead of the idiotic "testing the waters" of a season release for a niche show. I still think these shows have good resale value you could probably double your money back after they go oop like WildCATS.

 

[Christopher]

As for the animation quality yeah it's bad but there is more to a show than the animation like story and characters.

Obviously, but the animation was so bad that it undermined the story and characters.

As for science mistakes I wouldn't be too critical since in Star Trek they are a dime a dozen.

You're missing the point. It's upsetting that the writers actually made an effort to get the science right but their artistic collaborators invalidated their efforts with sheer laziness. Generally the situation in Star Trek was the reverse: the folks in the art department knew their science quite well, but it was the writers and producers who didn't care enough to get it right.

 

[Leroy]

Christopher wrote:
Obviously, but the animation was so bad that it undermined the story and characters.

But how bad does the animation have to be for a production to have it's characters and story compromised? I'm saying this because I like a lot of old cartoons and want to know if I'm just fooling myself into thinking they're good despite crappy animation.

Christopher wrote:
You're missing the point. It's upsetting that the writers actually made an effort to get the science right but their artistic collaborators invalidated their efforts with sheer laziness. Generally the situation in Star Trek was the reverse: the folks in the art department knew their science quite well, but it was the writers and producers who didn't care enough to get it right.

Ok I understand now I agree with that.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Things like the Olympus Mons being wrong aren't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something as basic as not making sure that engine "glows" line up right with the engines supposedly producing them, or fleet shots that look like they had only two elements (background and fleet) and the fleet "moves" by sliding the foreground cell across the background plate.

 

[Christopher]

Christopher wrote:
Obviously, but the animation was so bad that it undermined the story and characters.

But how bad does the animation have to be for a production to have it's characters and story compromised? I'm saying this because I like a lot of old cartoons and want to know if I'm just fooling myself into thinking they're good despite crappy animation.

The point is, it would obviously have been desirable to have good animation to accompany the good writing. I don't know why you're defending incompetence as an acceptable thing. Ideally, all aspects of a production should be as good as possible.

And animation is not just a disposable adjunct to the writing. If it were, the story would be in prose or on the radio. Animation is an artistic medium, an intrinsically visual one. The script and the visuals are supposed to complement each other; indeed, in much animation, the script is merely supplementary to the visuals. (Samurai Jack is a sterling example. There are other ways to tell a story than with words.)

Now, sure, a good story can be enjoyed even if it's accompanied by dreadful animation. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter whether the animation is good or bad, or that it wouldn't be far, far preferable for the animation to have been done by somebody with actual talent.

ExoSquad isn't alone in this failing. Around the same period, maybe a bit later, there were two shows syndicated by Hearst Entertainment, The Legend of Prince Valiant and Phantom 2040, which had superb, sophisticated, adult-oriented writing and excellent voice casts (Valiant, like ExoSquad, had Robby Benson in the lead role), but truly abysmal animation, even worse than Akom's ExoSquad work. It was sad to see. I've often wished that these shows could have their animation completely redone, using the same voice and music tracks (but better sound effects). But it would be a very expensive undertaking.