Given all the jokes that this show, a Taiwanese puppet drama written by Gen Urobuchi that feels like a wuxia-style DnD campaign, was "anime of the season" I have elected to drop this review into my anime review slot of the week instead of the tv series/movie one, although I will note that it is 100% non-animated. That's the short sell for the series by the way, "the writer of Madoka Magica does a fantasy that feels like a Chinese-inspired Dungeons and Dragons campaign, except that it's all told through Taiwanese puppetry action with details on the same level as The Dark Crystal."
One technical note, I watched a Crunchyroll which used the Japanese dub for the series but left all of the names in Chinese in the subtitles (which made me glad that everyone had distinct designs at least since the names rarely even sound similar). I am going to follow that and continue using the Chinese names, hopefully it'll still be clear who I'm referring to!
Orio is the newest citizen of the city of Cobble and is a little perplexed by it. Like it's name suggests, Cobble is put together by dolls, marionettes, and other puppets who are all accompanied by an Odd and their job in society is determined by their ruling board and regulations. Yet things don't seem to be working out for Orio as they should, is this a sign that there is something else at work within, or outside, the city?
This is a comic where I'm quite happy that I either hadn't found it by this time last year or simply waited another year to review it since if I had talked about this comic last year it would have been a rather different review. I would have focused on the story and said that it was going to be about Orio adjusting to life in this town of dolls and marionettes, and tyet as the second chapter opens she is being tossed out of the town and meets a stranger from another town and it turns out that their world is even odder than I would have guessed. That revelation reminded me of why I love fantasy however, when you're telling a story set in a different setting than where the reader lives (say, fantasy, science fiction, or even historical fiction to an extent) you can play around with the setting so much, you can even trick the reader into assuming certain things about the setting ("ah, so they're all dolls and just don't really care about where they came from or the rest of the world, okay") before revealing that things aren't what they seem ("oh so there are other places and other people in this world so we might actually address where they all came from? Ooooooooh").
The setting isn't the only reason I really like this comic, I adore the artwork for it's clean lines and shading and smart use of color schemes (lots of beiges and grays when Orio is in the city and becoming a bit more colorful outside of it). I'll admit that Orio isn't the most engaging main character, I actually thought until the end of the first chapter that she was actually mute, and even Bauble's mischievous antics can't quite make up for that. But this comic is young and, based on the way several events have already played out, Orio is sure to grow and become a more interesting, complex character while the world also gets deeper and deeper.
I'd heard a few people recommend this series in the past year, most recently the fairy-tale webcomic Erstwhile likes to include recommendations to other works which are adaptions/re-tellings, and found out that convientely enough it was streaming on Netflix. I haven't actually seen any works involving Jim Henson's puppets except for The Muppets (to my knowledge anyway and I think I'd remember something like this) but this seems like as good a place as any to start.
Jim Henson's The Storyteller
Summary: Join and old storyteller and his dog as they retell old tales, happy and sad alike, around the fireplace
The Good: The series is on the short side, clocking in around six hours all told and each episode is a bit under a half hour, and I thought that the pacing worked well and that none of the tales were compressed or overly drawn out (I'd imagine the length also probably helped this reach a wider audience of younger viewers, it feels more like an All-Ages show than one strictly for children or adults). I've read a number of fairy tales over the years so it was nice to see some old ones reappear (such as Stone Soup which was a staple of my childhood) as well as ones I didn't know (such as All Fur, funny enough it's also the same tale Erstwhile is currently adapting). The stories are from all over Western Europe, with one or two coming from Russia of course, and that diversity also let each tale feel distinct. Best of all there were no attempts at shoehorning in a morale at the end of each story, while some had an unstated lesson in them some of them were just stories and sometimes that's what they need to be, just tales told around a fire.
The Bad: A story told in tv or movie format has two very important aspects to it, audio and video (aside from plot, although occasionally some directors seem to think that one is optional) and I'm always more drawn to the visuals of a story than the audio. So when I have a story where the visuals aren't as strong, which was mostly due to the aging which I talk about below, I have much less incentive to actively watch the video instead of simply playing it in the background and I really had that problem here. The stories were interesting, just nothing that demanded a visual and audio medium instead of a text medium and I might have payed more attention in that area. This isn't a fault of the story per-say, it simply didn't grab me enough to make me want to see and hear every detail instead of just listening and popping in and out with the video.
The Audio: The show has the right balance between narration by the storyteller and letting the story progress on it's own and aside from the narration there was some background music but not a lot that stuck with me. A few did, most notably the music played with the ending credits, but perhaps in such a dialogue heavy show it's good that the music didn't overshadow the meat of the story.
The Visuals: The film itself has aged poorly and looking bad by any standard which is always a shame. The puppetry and costuming looked fine, although with the grain and small size of Netflix's viewer it would be nearly impossible to see strings manipulating the puppets or such anyway. It does take a little bit of time to get used to see puppetry instead of CGI, the movements are much more fluid than what CGI can make and that realistic motion almost makes them appear "too real" and in the process stand out even more. It's an interesting change of pace for someone whose so used to CGI and I'd love to show a few episodes of this to other people who also aren't familiar with Henson's works just to see their reactions as well.
An interesting show but I doubt I'll be checking out the other part of it, it seems a few years later the same crew make a second series focusing on Greek myths (which I do like, with a name like Helen you simply can't avoid them) but I don't feel like I'll get anything out of it. Ah well, both series are streaming on Netflix instant for those interesting in trying it out themselves.
