Arjuna #1:
Rebirth
Bandai
75 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
10/08/2002
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Arjuna #1:
Bandai
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I'm starting to get sick and tired of stuff where the earth is in peril from humankind and someone has to rise up and stop/save it. Why? Because it's too hard to do something like that well, to even do it without having it all fall apart in your lap. Now and Then, Here and There, a show I adore with all of my heart, follows a tune to this extent. It's pretty good. It's got interesting characters and a strong sense of loss and sacrifice. Stuff like that can really make a show. They like to call it integrity. When I was growing up, the kids used to watch a show called Captain Planet in the morning. Captain Planet was like the exact opposite of the show I just mentioned. It was a show that threw a group of racial stereotypes into a blender in a lame toss at being politically correct. Captain Planet was abrasive and about as subtle as an axe to the face. There was no sense of loss in Captain Planet, no self-sacrifice for the greater good, nothing. Just a bunch of Russians and Africans and weird Southern Americans with monkeys going around saving the world from cheesy bad guys with homophonic names like "Looten Plunder". Captain Planet was a stupid freaking show. I hated that show. I hated it because it didn't have any integrity. |
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And there's no love lost between me and Arjuna neither, following a typical schematic as your Captain Planet show might take. I don't recall how the heroes in that show were given their 'power rings', but I doubt it was the event of a fatal moped crash. That's where the dissimilarities stop. Juna is a normal young girl who loves archery and her weird slacker boyfriend Tokio. After the tragic ride in the country that takes her life, she's approached in a weird purgatory by a flying sprite that offers her the chance to live again if she doesn't mind fighting a group of badly rendered CG monsters called The Raaja. Juna seems reticent to accept this deal, but it is her life hanging in the balance. So she comes back, BOARDS A HELICOPTER and meets up with the flying sprite in person. Turns out that he's actually Wheeler from Captain Planet.** After getting a brief explanation of Wheeler's newfound telekenetic powers from the requiste "sassy preteen girl", the wheelchair-bound boy is quick to exhort her into her mission. What mission is that? I don't know, probably to stop Sly Sludge from dumping a tanker of oil into the ocean. |
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So Juna, after the absolutely necessary period of "doubt and confusion" in and about her newfound powers, saves the day by destroying the giant CG monstrosity attacking the nuclear power plant she was sent to save. It is then that the startling revelation is made. 'Oh my god!' She exclaims, 'The Raaja are born from the injuired Earth'. This would imply to me that it is mankind that's to blame for all the problems with the Earth's ecosystem. Well DUH. I don't see any animals belching toxic fumes into the sky. Though, my cousin did once own a dog that passed the most terrible gas one would ever smell. Everyone on the planet knows this lesson now. In fact, it's so ingrained into our psyches that it's going to start getting passed down in our genetic heritage. Now, when a child is born its genes will determine if it is fat, gay, and its amount of passion towards saving the enviornment by becoming a glowing green sprite, or summoning a giant blue man with green hair. If you want me to teach a lesson about man's inhumanity to the planet stop throwing freaking PIXIES at me to do it! I'm not five years old anymore and this show obviously is not intended for five year olds. |
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So why do people think this is going to get the message across? What is Arjuna going to tell me, how is it going to change my mind? With still images of styrofoam burger containers and a seabed covered in discarded soda bottles and tin cans? That's not going to change my mind. That's not going to change ANYONE'S mind. Nobody but the most pathetic, weak willed individuals are going to find some sort of enlightenment from something is trite as this. I've heard accounts of people that have actually "went vegan" for awhile on account of this show. That kind of spinelessness accomplishes only one thing, boring the ulcer deeper into my gut. The amount of ire this show (and its fans) inspires is good for my diet. That's none of your concern, though. Not right now. What you should be concerned about is this: Arjuna is just reiterating a story that we've all heard a dozen times over since we were little children, and this is probably one of the worst ways of doing it that has ever sprung up from the depth of some writer's mind. What's worse, I think, is the blatant abuse of Hindu mythology that the authors know absolutely nothing about. "Arjuna was a Hindu archer! OUR girl is an archer too! That's it! It's in the script." I can hear them emote, the lead writer shaking his fist to the heavens as if it were the very decree of god himself. I'm not a Hindu theologian, but I don't remember hearing about Arjuna spending much time protect power plants. Mostly, I think, he just killed his cousins. |
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