Glass Fleet
Aug. 1st, 2008 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatTonight I finally watched the last disc of Glass Fleet, so now I'm going to talk about it for a while.
Things I really liked about the last parts of the series:
1) Cleo and Michel finally, after a couple of episodes of extremely low-key semi-flirting, made out. What can I say, I was mostly watching the series for those two characters and I liked their dynamic and by the end of disc five I was complaining at the screen for them to make out already! Which they did, in a scene that was really surprisingly tender and effective.
2) While I'm shipping, Heizak's crush on Sylua is completely adorable. She's a cute, confident ninja maid (who, it turns out, has a great many skills other than making sure Michel has a hot cup of tea WHENEVER, WHEREVER) and he's the glass ship's big musclebound crazy gunner/weapons freak. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE ROYAL FAMILY'S SECRET DATING TECHNIQUES! Which in Heizak's case appear to involve blushing a lot and flailing helplessly when Sylua holds his hand.
Okay, I'm done now.
3) Rachel, the Space Pope's Beautiful Daughter and Vetti's Wife of Political Convenience, went completely off the deep end and it was glorious. I have some issues with the general depiction of female characters in this series which we will get to in a minute, but I don't have the heart to hold them against Rachel's headlong leap off the brink of sanity because her crazy made her so much fun to watch. I ended up cheering her on, just because.
4) Cleo's development from largely selfish space pirate who's planning to take over the galaxy because he thinks it's his right and is mostly in it for himself to someone who's really not thinking of himself because the lives of everyone in the galaxy are at stake and that's way more important is kind of nice to watch. It isn't handled, perhaps, as smoothly as it could be, but it is believable, I thought.
5) And the climax, in which all of the various crazy plot threads all come to a head more or less simultaneously and there are heroic sacrifices and heroic almost-sacrifices and a swordfight standing on top of a wrecked spaceship and the bad guys get their comeuppance and Vetti's crazy finally breaks and he sees the light and sacrifices himself to allow Cleo to save everyone, and they all live happily ever after and Cleo and Michel have lots of sex.
Oh, wait, that only happened in my head.
Memo to Gonzo: You can't spend an entire series on CRAZY VETTI IS CRAZY and then, in the last few minutes, have him kill the hero, get a session of Epiphany Therapy talking to the hero's spirit, and leave him Magically Redeemed and universally accepted as the proper ruler of the universe when, a couple of scenes before, he was licking a bloody sword. It doesn't work. Ever. And also, you suck.
I mean, I was anticipating Cleo's death from way back, but if you're going to redeem your villain and let him actually survive the experience, you should ideally take the time to make him sympathetic, and no, showing us his traumatic backstory doesn't actually count under the circumstances. Having Vetti come to his senses and give up his life to save Cleo would have made much better dramatic sense and been better for everyone, especially Michel, who would not be left following the guy who killed her father and her brother and, you know, drugged and raped her.
I am just saying.
And while I'm on the subject of Michel, way to not actually let the female lead do anything of particular significance. Glass Fleet isn't entirely devoid of cool female characters: Eimer turns out to be fairly awesome, and Sylua is also quite cool, and while I won't say that Rachel is a strong female character she's certainly fun to watch in her insanity. But as far is Michel is concerned, it appears as though, having successfully drawn Cleo into actually giving a crap about the fate of the galaxy, she's mostly discharged her duties to the plot and is still around chiefly because she's a lot more charismatic than either Cleo or Vetti and someone has to keep the various bits of the army from wandering off in disgust. Which is disappointing, because I really did like Michel and I think she had a lot of potential that wasn't really explored, in favor of focusing on Cleo (who I also liked, but, you know) and Crazy Vetti Is Crazy.
Final verdict: it's an entertaining series in its crazy, crazy way, but I'm just going to pretend that my version of the ending is what happened and ignore the last few scenes of the last episode, because wow, that really kind of sucked.
Things I really liked about the last parts of the series:
1) Cleo and Michel finally, after a couple of episodes of extremely low-key semi-flirting, made out. What can I say, I was mostly watching the series for those two characters and I liked their dynamic and by the end of disc five I was complaining at the screen for them to make out already! Which they did, in a scene that was really surprisingly tender and effective.
2) While I'm shipping, Heizak's crush on Sylua is completely adorable. She's a cute, confident ninja maid (who, it turns out, has a great many skills other than making sure Michel has a hot cup of tea WHENEVER, WHEREVER) and he's the glass ship's big musclebound crazy gunner/weapons freak. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE ROYAL FAMILY'S SECRET DATING TECHNIQUES! Which in Heizak's case appear to involve blushing a lot and flailing helplessly when Sylua holds his hand.
Okay, I'm done now.
3) Rachel, the Space Pope's Beautiful Daughter and Vetti's Wife of Political Convenience, went completely off the deep end and it was glorious. I have some issues with the general depiction of female characters in this series which we will get to in a minute, but I don't have the heart to hold them against Rachel's headlong leap off the brink of sanity because her crazy made her so much fun to watch. I ended up cheering her on, just because.
4) Cleo's development from largely selfish space pirate who's planning to take over the galaxy because he thinks it's his right and is mostly in it for himself to someone who's really not thinking of himself because the lives of everyone in the galaxy are at stake and that's way more important is kind of nice to watch. It isn't handled, perhaps, as smoothly as it could be, but it is believable, I thought.
5) And the climax, in which all of the various crazy plot threads all come to a head more or less simultaneously and there are heroic sacrifices and heroic almost-sacrifices and a swordfight standing on top of a wrecked spaceship and the bad guys get their comeuppance and Vetti's crazy finally breaks and he sees the light and sacrifices himself to allow Cleo to save everyone, and they all live happily ever after and Cleo and Michel have lots of sex.
Oh, wait, that only happened in my head.
Memo to Gonzo: You can't spend an entire series on CRAZY VETTI IS CRAZY and then, in the last few minutes, have him kill the hero, get a session of Epiphany Therapy talking to the hero's spirit, and leave him Magically Redeemed and universally accepted as the proper ruler of the universe when, a couple of scenes before, he was licking a bloody sword. It doesn't work. Ever. And also, you suck.
I mean, I was anticipating Cleo's death from way back, but if you're going to redeem your villain and let him actually survive the experience, you should ideally take the time to make him sympathetic, and no, showing us his traumatic backstory doesn't actually count under the circumstances. Having Vetti come to his senses and give up his life to save Cleo would have made much better dramatic sense and been better for everyone, especially Michel, who would not be left following the guy who killed her father and her brother and, you know, drugged and raped her.
I am just saying.
And while I'm on the subject of Michel, way to not actually let the female lead do anything of particular significance. Glass Fleet isn't entirely devoid of cool female characters: Eimer turns out to be fairly awesome, and Sylua is also quite cool, and while I won't say that Rachel is a strong female character she's certainly fun to watch in her insanity. But as far is Michel is concerned, it appears as though, having successfully drawn Cleo into actually giving a crap about the fate of the galaxy, she's mostly discharged her duties to the plot and is still around chiefly because she's a lot more charismatic than either Cleo or Vetti and someone has to keep the various bits of the army from wandering off in disgust. Which is disappointing, because I really did like Michel and I think she had a lot of potential that wasn't really explored, in favor of focusing on Cleo (who I also liked, but, you know) and Crazy Vetti Is Crazy.
Final verdict: it's an entertaining series in its crazy, crazy way, but I'm just going to pretend that my version of the ending is what happened and ignore the last few scenes of the last episode, because wow, that really kind of sucked.
