A few months ago I stumbled across “Scavengers Reign”, and I wolfed down all the episodes I could find in one sitting. This is one of the rare ones, kids; if you have a wide foundation in sci-fi, you really can’t miss out on this: hauntingly beautiful, expert narrative and character building, incredible world construction, and just full of references that make you feel like a smarty-pants.
This show is just so damn beautiful. It reminds me of “Valley of the Wind” and you can totally see the anime inspiration here; but, then again, how can you do any animation today without being inspired by things like Studio Ghibli. Even the haunting piano music which serves as the main theme tugs at the ol’ heart muscle. The environments are so rich, and the creature designs are so well thought out, that I found myself just staring at the screen, speechless.
It starts with a ship wreck. The crew are forced to abandon ship and do what they can to survive on a plant teeming with alien life. And they do a really good job of making it alien. Some of the critters are intelligent, a lot of them are not. And the characters are forced to use the environment they’ve landed in. A lot of they things they run into serve a distinct function; as if they were genetically engineered for a purpose.
We are very much in retro science-fiction here. The look of the ship could have come out of the “Alien” franchise. The show is one long ode to the sci-fi of yesteryear. It’s a love letter, really, to sci-fi from the late seventies through the nineties. It’s definitely not for everyone, but, if you liked films like “Moon”, or just enjoy futures of the past, you’re going to like this. It’s streaming on HBO, if you want to track it down.
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