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Tales of the Jedi
755 Plays3 years ago
Zuhair and Andrew go back a long time ago and to a galaxy far, far away to provide their reactions to Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, the new animated series of shorts now available on Disney Plus!
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Transcript
Introduction and Engagement Rings with Jaren Solomon
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Animation Deliberation: 'Tales of the Jedi' and More
00:00:30
Speaker
On another entry of the Animation Deliberation podcast, the force is with us once more. We have six episodes of Tales of the Jedi streaming exclusively on Disney+, and we're going to talk about that much more right after these ads we have no control over.
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Meet the Hosts and Discuss Scott's Absence
00:01:46
Speaker
A one, two, three, it's time for animation, deliberation, a conversation, and the celebration of our favorite action animated series. Yeah.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, welcome back to another episode of Animation Deliberation, where we take action animation and cartoon seriously, but not too seriously. We are your hosts, I am Zuhar Ali. And I am Andrew Rogers. Hey Scott, he could not join us today because he is in a galaxy far, far away, hunting devils, as I am aware. So it will just be us, maybe we'll get a transmission in a few minutes. But for now, it is Andrew
Star Wars and Anime: A Storytelling Comparison
00:02:21
Speaker
and I. How are you doing today?
00:02:22
Speaker
I am doing fantastic. This was a really, really fun way to kind of round out the anime heavy lives that we have been living, I feel like to kind of get something back in the like pop culture animation realm, I guess. I guess. I guess it's nice. It's nice taking a break from subtitles. I'll give you that. Yes, that definitely is very nice to be able to do. But
00:02:51
Speaker
One of the things I enjoy about the Star Wars animated series is it kind of like takes the essence of anime and the fact that it's not episodic and is character development and story building and we're coming back and forth and stuff like this is kind of the closest thing we have to like English anime right now because I'm sure I'll regret saying that and think of something on the English terms in a few minutes but for now
00:03:22
Speaker
I like that we have this in, you know, it's 20 minutes. Don't got to read subtitles. Great, super detailed animation with fantastic music and awesome characters that we love. Like this animated Star Wars stuff may as well be anime. Yes, it's, it's not to take anything away from either side, whether it be anime or American animation. There's just something about
00:03:46
Speaker
I don't have to ask as many questions when it comes to the Star Wars universe because we've been so ingrained in it for so long. It's just a known thing, kind of like watching an MCU movie. Like, you know the rules, you know the world that you're existing in. Whereas every week it feels like we're questioning, well, what else could be possible in my hero academia's world? Like, this is very...
00:04:08
Speaker
We have a lot of definition. They expand it little by little. It's not these huge leaps and bounds like it feels like anime throws at us. I guess that's a little bit more of what I'm getting at. Yeah, I guess seven years compared to 40 years of content kind of does that. And I did have to look at the poster next to me to see make sure it was 40 years. It's 77 if I'm not mistaken. But it's just 40th year anniversary for Empire Strikes Back.
00:04:36
Speaker
I'm not doing the math right now. Anyhow, Star Wars is just- Maybe you were thinking 1977 or 77 years. Oh yeah, no, 1977. That's what I- Okay, that makes sense. I was like, not 77 years old, my dude. No, no, no, no, no.
00:04:50
Speaker
Okay we don't have much news to talk about but if you guys ever do and are very excited about something let us in because we want to be excited with you guys and like last week where we learned something three weeks after it became news maybe we missed it and you guys want to talk about it we want to talk about it with you. Other things we want to talk about with you is other anime that's trending right now.
00:05:12
Speaker
And that brings us to Anna Minutes. So we have two animated talk about today, Bleach, Thousand Year War, and Chainsaw Man. Let's go ahead and get Bleach out of the way because nobody else here watches it. Sound a little more defeated with that one.
00:05:30
Speaker
All right, so like I said last week, things are just getting wild with the show right off the bat. It's so cool that we get to see the the captains of the districts in the Soul Society again. But just like with My Hero Academia, I am so terrified for the well-being of all these guys, because these Quincy's just came out of nowhere, destroyed a thousand soul freepers. Oh, my God, I'm forgetting what they're actually called.
00:05:57
Speaker
But and then the ability to steal a Bandkai from one of the Reapers is ridiculous and terrifying and the hero that's supposed to save it all ends up getting trapped at the end of the episode. This is an exciting season. It makes me want to watch all the stuff that I missed. As always, great animation, great music, great action. This is going to be a fantastic season.
00:06:22
Speaker
Well, I'm nothing if not intrigued as you go into all of this, but it's just... It's the goal! And I know it's a studio that did Naruto, so you're gonna think the animation's super boring and lame. Yeah, of course. It's great. Alright, so since I've been yammering, why don't you kick us off with Chainsaw Man?
00:06:44
Speaker
A little pochita sounds here. All right, this episode just brought it back home. I was so worried that the action was going to fall off a little bit, but it just didn't. The first episode gave us a promise and this just continued to deliver on that promise throughout. It was so much fun to just watch him go wild, even without his full power. There's just so much happening every single time. You never know what direction they're going to take it.
00:07:10
Speaker
And then we got even more character development outside of the amazing action and the amazing animal-like characters as well. It's character-driven in this bizarre way because, like we've said, it's fanservice. They're bizarre. They're awkward. But I believe every bit of raw emotion that is coming out of them and the way that they interact, it's just so much fun. I can't wait to see where these characters go.
00:07:34
Speaker
And why is the cliffhanger we got of this episode this specific cliffhanger? I don't know. And one of the best outros to go with the songs. Also, this one really did it. The grabbing motion zoo is doing at me as I run out of time. I got to stick with just sounds and facial reactions and gestures because I don't want to respond to anything because it takes up time. But I can't sit still.
00:08:02
Speaker
Someday listeners, we will get a video feed so you can see the just maniacal things that we do to each other when we're not talking. As I
Anime Episode Titles: Spoilers and Streaming Practices
00:08:12
Speaker
watch all but one of the content that we cover. And I do have something to circle back on that I'm not going to talk about in the anna minutes that is just something very specific that the show and streaming network specifically has done.
00:08:27
Speaker
But it's a further conversation. So I'll let you have your minute. But before we move on, I do have more to say about Chainsaw Man. Okay. On that note. So me and my buddy William were talking about how annoying it's getting that these episodes have been
00:08:43
Speaker
ending on cliffhangers that lead to action-packed stuff like with the Bat Devil. Because the episode just started up and he was already like intestines everywhere. So I'm glad that the leech story opened up and we did get more of that beautiful map of fight sequence. You already went into enough detail about how amazing it was that he did that much with so little just so that he could fondle boobs. But
00:09:10
Speaker
I'm trying to tell myself similarly to how I'm convincing myself with Spy Family that this is a comedy that sometimes has cool action because my desire of the bigger world and stuff is kind of making me a little bit antsy. So I'm trying to give myself a way to dial it back so that when the universe building part of it does happen, I enjoy it a lot more. Boom.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean you bring up and we both brought up such good points like it's It's just the weird nature of shows lately that it feels like we're getting so much character development that action is only a piece of Literally everything that we're watching as of late and it's awesome But it's very much a frame of reference change I think is like how you have to approach almost anything like you don't know what you're gonna get Yeah, we have
00:10:08
Speaker
It's not that we've been lacking genres in anime lately, but I don't think I'm wrong in saying that we kind of keep up with more of the mainstream stuff. And there's an expectation with that mainstream stuff, like really popular titles, that like now that those ones are fitting out of the norm a little bit, it's kind of giving us something to adjust to in terms of like genre.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, because as much as Shounen and Isekai as genres still exist, Shounen is no longer just straight up like, we're gonna fight for the entirety of a 20-minute episode, there's more to it. And I would argue shows like Attack on Titan kind of like led that charge and we saw, okay, you can have
00:10:56
Speaker
all of it in one and now all of these other shows are starting to really, again, just follow up on that idea. The comedy nature of One Punch Man, the spy thriller of spy family. It's interesting. Like you mentioned the horror aspect of Attack on Titan.
00:11:22
Speaker
I did have another point. I was hoping those examples would draw it back, but that did not happen. I could tell you were circling it. Well, I'll go to my point that I did say that I wanted to bring up. And this is less about Chainsaw Man. And more about Crunchyroll, unless this is some mistake, is doing hands down my favorite thing. And if the streaming gods are listening, start doing this. When I go to watch the Chainsaw Man episode on Crunchyroll every Tuesday,
00:11:51
Speaker
The title is blank. Every single Tuesday, there's no title. So I can click into the episode and I have nothing. There is nothing to give it away. There is no knowledge about what could be happening. And even the title of this episode, which is Rescue.
00:12:06
Speaker
doesn't give anything away. But there's some of these shows that have gone back for so long, when you get to, you know, hundreds of episodes, like Black Clover, I'm watching, the title literally tells you, like, oh, the title of this episode is Black Bull versus the Crimson Lion, you're like, well, I know who those two characters are, I guess they're gonna meet up and fight this episode, like, it kind of takes the mystery out of it. In the same way that episode of spy family a while back,
00:12:32
Speaker
That was yours kitchen. I knew that we weren't going to get like a your thriller. I was like, oh, it's going to be your in the kitchen the whole episode. I'm fine with it. But having that mystery is so awesome. And just like start doing this on the first day that an episode premieres on any network. Just don't put the title and let it appear later. That would be so, so nice.
00:12:54
Speaker
I think I've gotten really good at just hitting play as fast as possible. Like my eyes never drift towards an episode title to the same point where I think it was some MCU show where it's kind of like there was spoilers in the name and I had no idea that was even the titles. I think it was Mandalorian actually, like even though it pops up on the screen like for some reason like my brain just shuts down to it or it doesn't pay attention to it.
00:13:20
Speaker
But I do 100% agree with that sentiment that we do not need episode titles. We just need episode numbers. Sure, as a post reference, maybe you're scrolling through it. It's like, yeah, that's the episode I want to watch. I mean, you don't rewatch stuff, so you can't really do that. I'm calling all the shots today. But yeah, I do agree that it just needs to hide that stuff.
00:13:45
Speaker
I still need to pull the trigger on Crunchyroll. But I also need to get Hulu TV because football. Ugh. I need to watch Blue Lock. Blue Lock is on my list. I just haven't had time to do that in because we've been doing not only anime but also all of the Star Wars stuff.
00:14:03
Speaker
Speaking of Star Wars stuff, that is it for our Anna Minutes. If there's anything that you guys want to talk about or want us to talk about, please write in, DM us, hit us up on all the social medias. We love to talk to you guys. And if there's any shows that we are missing out on, then we need to know. But moving on to more English speaking, unless there's freaky aliens involved. Oh, what's this? Huh, I am getting a hologram transmission.
00:14:34
Speaker
And you can't tell me that I'm lying to you, because this is an audio format podcast. Let's see what this is. Greetings and salutations, everybody. Jay Scottie here. Sorry, I can't make it on the podcast episode today, but I did want to provide some quick thoughts on Tales of the Jedi. So just a quick disclaimer, I am approaching this series not having seen the majority of the Clone Wars. I'd seen the episodes that kind of led right into the Bad Batch, and then just a handful of episodes outside of that. So that being the case, I didn't have the full content
00:15:06
Speaker
enjoy the series. Ahsoka is a character that I'm not as familiar with. I mean obviously she's made her way into the public limelight with a lot of her appearances so I know enough about her but it was great to have her story fleshed out a little bit more and see some of her adventures. That being the case I do think the episodes with Dooku just resonated a little bit more with me with their connection to the films.
00:15:29
Speaker
and just actually getting to see you know Dooku how he reacted to Qui-Gon's death seeing those first seeds of doubt with the Jedi being planted and some of his misgivings with their you know their dogma and their
00:15:45
Speaker
loyalty to a fault to the Senate and the hierarchy and whatnot. But the animation was all really, really well done. The episode with Yaddle versus Dooku really, really stuck out to me as my favorite. I'm just getting to see Dooku fully embrace the dark side, get that context that in fact he was the one that deleted Kamino from the Jedi library under the guise of Sifo DS.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, just all in all, really, really well done. If I did have any critiques about the series, I guess just some of the voice acting, the young Qui-Gon comes to mind. It was great to have Liam Neeson come back and reprise the role, but I didn't think the younger version of him matched up quite as well. But that, you know, that's just a nitpicking there. Also with Anakin, I know Matt Blanter, I believe the actor's name is, he's voiced him throughout
Listener Opinions on 'Tales of the Jedi'
00:16:40
Speaker
the Clone Wars, but I'm not as exposed to him. And again, maybe it's just not having the familiarity with his relationship with Ahsoka, but he didn't really feel like Anakin to me with being in that mentor role. So, you know, maybe that's just limited to my limited exposure, but
00:16:59
Speaker
Other than that, I really enjoyed the series. I will say if we get a second season, my hope would be as fun as it was to spend time with well-known characters like this and get more of their backstory. My hope would be that we would spend, with a title called Tales of the Jedi, I would hope we would spend more time with lesser-known Jedi. Some of those background characters like Kit Fisto, Plo Koon come to mind. I mentioned on previous cats, like getting the story of Quinlan Vos on screen.
00:17:25
Speaker
Would be would be excellent. So that's kind of where I'm coming out from but I don't want to steal too much thunder from Zuhair and Andrews. So Yeah, thanks for letting me chime in real quickly and may the force be with you and keep tuning in. That's T double-o in I in Any quick thoughts before we move on to our next hologram
00:17:48
Speaker
I think he just needs to watch all of the Clone Wars is really all that I want to say because yeah, it's only six seasons. I've only seen it like four times. It's fine. You rewatch something. I've watched that so many times through now. He brings up a lot of good points and I know it's the kind of stuff that we're just going to get into because.
00:18:12
Speaker
a lot of what he said is valid. And I can very much understand what he's talking about from a perspective of a not Clone Wars watcher. So don't worry, listeners, we have both watched Clone Wars and we'll kind of give that other side of the perspective as well. But it appears your hologram device is blinking over there. Do we have something else coming in? We do it's on hold for a moment because with the stuff that he said about wanting a second season,
00:18:39
Speaker
I kind of want to see Syphodias now and see what that collaboration with the Kaminoans was like and how he died. And I think that'd be a cool story. But we have many more sentiments and that blinking light is on the perspective of somebody who absolutely loves Ahsoka. So let the gaps be filled in.
00:18:58
Speaker
Hey guys, it's Haley Hobbs from the Source Pages podcast. I really wish I could have joined you to talk about Tales of the Jedi, but alas, there is no rest for the wicked. So here's just a voice memo to let you know what I think.
00:19:13
Speaker
And wow, we wow, we wow. I love Dave Filoni and the way he tells story and the way he fills in the gaps of Star Wars for us. He just doesn't matter than anybody else.
00:19:28
Speaker
the first one, baby Ahsoka, you're like, this is cute, great, yay, you know, her origin story with the force. And then from there, it just catapults us into Dooku's story feeling, you know, bad for him feeling on his side. And then the big freaking reveal of him being the one that deleted the archive information about Kamino and Saipo Dias and
00:19:54
Speaker
just him killing Master Yaddle and then it shifts us right in the fields to Ahsoka as a Padawan, throwing us back into the end of the Clone Wars where she and Rex have to take on all of their
00:20:09
Speaker
Colleagues and like just just crazy her being at Pavese funeral like that blew my mind So so amazing. I hope we get more and more and more content like this just all of the gap filling in I'm here for it. Thank you Dave Filoni All right, so the common message out of both of those and I'm sure the sentiment that we share is we need more of this Yeah, I
00:20:37
Speaker
I hesitate to call this anything other than filler, but in the good way. It just gave me stuff that I didn't know that I needed the information about. It's just so gripping to tell these stories that just make the universe more connected. It's like we said, it's been going on for 40 some odd years.
00:20:59
Speaker
And there's so much that can still be told and I absolutely love that we're just getting it piece by little piece by
The Impact of Smaller Star Wars Stories
00:21:06
Speaker
little piece. It does suck for the people who, you know, might not have all of those pieces. But I would argue this still can stand alone as long as you at least know who
00:21:15
Speaker
Ahsoka and Dooku are. So then giving us more of these stories where it is Saifo Diaz or it is Quinlan Voss, like as long as you know their name, you're still going to be gripped by these stories because Filoni and the entire Clone Wars team are just great writers and animators to bring you in. All right, so I want to stick on this conversation of filters real quick.
00:21:36
Speaker
Because one of the things that I've talked about with people who are willing to listen in regards to Star Wars is that because Disney now has the capability of putting out more content on a regular basis, they're hitting smaller stories. Not smaller in regards to impact, but smaller in regards to how it affects people and how it affects the galaxy as a whole.
00:22:05
Speaker
I absolutely love Mandalorian. I enjoyed Book of Boba. I'm kind of enjoying Andor, but, like, it's not blowing my mind. And that's okay. Because if we're going to... I would rather get these smaller stories that are enjoyable, that I can watch at my pace and maybe forget about the month after, and maybe it just sticks with me for a while. But I would rather have that than what they did with
00:22:33
Speaker
the sequel trilogy where it's just everything is big and I have to wait two years for it and everyone's got to be involved. It's got to be this huge thing. And in hindsight, I really didn't care about much of it at all. So with this expectation of everything needing to be so big, people aren't appreciating these smaller stories that we're getting in the form of Bad Batch and Andor and Mandalorian and
00:23:02
Speaker
Boba Fett and all that stuff. And I think it's like, it's okay to have the smaller stuff, but people need to... I've preached this so much about needing to understand gray area.
00:23:15
Speaker
Let these shows be enjoyable or just not your thing. That's OK. It doesn't have to be mind blowing or dog shit. There are options in the middle. And for me, Tales of the Jedi was incredible. I definitely need more of it. My only gripe with it is that the episodes weren't long enough.
00:23:35
Speaker
But if you're giving me more, that's perfectly fine. So, like, if we have to put it on the scale of, like, the original trilogy being incredible and Rogue One being the best Star Wars movie ever, you can fight me on that. And then coming down to, like, Mandalorian being really good, Boba Fett and Andor being mildly enjoyable. And honestly, nothing's really... doxial when it comes to Star Wars in my book, personally, but... it's okay to have these tears.
00:24:05
Speaker
And I don't know how else to get people to understand that, which is why I talk to a podcast more than I talk to people these days about the media I enjoy consuming. That is a very fair fact because I've had a lot of conversations about She-Hulk and you can imagine that's a very similar... Same with MCU! Yeah, no, very similar. Not everything happens to be Infinity War, which is better than Endgame.
00:24:27
Speaker
It doesn't have to be. It's okay for some movies to be mediocre and some shows to be better than movies. You don't have to love Ms. Marvel as much as I do, but you can appreciate how that smaller story affects things. And I don't have to love Captain Marvel as you do, but I appreciate the story that was put in there, the development of the character. And I don't know why I went to both the Marvels in that scenario, but
00:24:51
Speaker
It's okay to have middle grounds, people. Yeah, and it's exactly that, like, some things are gonna be for some people.
00:24:59
Speaker
I would argue that this is a plugin to Star Wars the Clone Wars, which is my favorite Star Wars thing period, just like the entire Clone Wars TV show, I think is the most beautifully well done thing. So you were going to be hard pressed the minute you said this was going to tack onto that story to get me to not enjoy it. But I know that there are going to be plenty of people who don't even pay attention to the Clone Wars and this isn't going to be for them. And I'm not going to take that away from them. I'm not going to say,
00:25:28
Speaker
oh you need to watch this but i'm also not going to let them tell me oh it's garbage because it's some animated show about side characters like no that's not it at all like there's just so much going on and like haley mentioned in hers and like jay scotty mentioned in his like there was just a lot of emotion there was a lot of character building and there's just so much that they put into these even though they were 12 to 16 minutes like i cannot
Ahsoka's Journey: Development and Anime Influence
00:25:58
Speaker
fathom how great and how emotionally gripping two of these episodes in particular were just some of the best things that Star Wars has done in a while in my opinion, because they just had me in the emotions so quickly and so viscerally. Yeah, it really was well done. We were talking about
00:26:21
Speaker
when we were doing the bad batch stuff was that when Clone Wars came out, it was on Cartoon Network. It had a smaller budget. The first season or so was a little more childish, but the stories ended up evolving.
00:26:38
Speaker
We talked about how Disney now has this ability to make the visualizations as stunning and lifelike as possible while still honoring the original artwork that they did. This is a perfect little hybrid.
00:26:54
Speaker
It looks amazing. Any time there's a scene in the woods with trees and shadows and light beaming through, it's just, I just want to pause and screenshot and set it as my computer wallpaper or something, especially like within the, the jungle book. I mean, Ahsoka's baby episode. Um, there's a line here, you know, it's from Wikipedia, but this is a very interesting line.
00:27:22
Speaker
In consideration to what we were talking about in the opening, comparing the series to the Clone Wars, Filoni noted that Tales of the Jedi was slower paced and a series of tone poems with less dialogue and more visual storytelling. This was inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki as well as Filoni's mentor, creator George Lucas. We were talking about how this is basically an anime, it's influenced by anime itself.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I love the word poems as a description. I couldn't have put it into a better word. I was searching for it. Like, if the movies are novels, this is a poem. It's not going to be anything spectacular, but a poem can still bring you to tears and evoke emotions. And that's exactly what these did.
00:28:05
Speaker
But yeah, no, the first episode, hands down, I think was the most beautiful of all six of them. It was like a matte painting. It felt like it was the old school backgrounds that they would do in movies on a grand scale. Like it was so perfect.
00:28:21
Speaker
Perfectly beautiful across the board and I love that we opened with that reminder of hey We have some of the best animation that you've seen out of a computer engine on our show Welcome to another six episodes like it just got me back in the moment in the fields and then just like the fact that they have all of this reference that they're continuing to Slowly update like the way Ahsoka looked compared to Clone Wars. You could see the way that her
00:28:51
Speaker
face was moving and emoting underneath the, I believe they're tattoos or even just birthmarks that she has all on her face like there was just so much more detail to those than there was in the original show.
00:29:06
Speaker
And you had all of that mixed with some planets that we saw previously. The planet that Dooku went to to investigate in the third episode was the same planet that the Bad Batch freed everyone or freed the senator from in like the middle of the series. So it was just that continuous like, hey, we're coming back, and we're just going to make it look as good, if not better, to the point that you're just sucked into again, this connected world where if you didn't know that was from Bad Batch,
00:29:35
Speaker
It doesn't matter, but because you do, you're like, wait, this forest feels familiar. I feel like I know this. Did I ever tell you my introduction to Clone Wars? No, I'm very curious. It was. So my friend had been telling me to watch it for months and months and months because I was enjoying Mandalorian so much. He's like, got to watch Clone Wars. It's so good. Yada, yada. And at that after credit scene,
00:30:02
Speaker
when he slices out of the TIE Fighter with the Darksaber, that's when I was like, what the hell is that? And the way that this man yelled at me, oh my god, I told you for so many months now to watch Clone Wars. That's where you get to see more of the Darksabers and breaking Mandalorians. Go watch it, right?
00:30:24
Speaker
And that was when we got a release date of like when the last season was coming out. So I made it a goal to like binge all of it in like a month and a half. So that I think I have like a week to spare where it's like right where it ended. It was like another week until I had to watch the last season every week and.
00:30:42
Speaker
that's kind of what it comes down to to where it's like when you see something like the Darksaber it's exciting and you want to know what it is but if you know you already know but if not they explain it well enough in Mandalorian season 2 they explain Ahsoka and the Night Watch and all that stuff well enough in these properties that you don't have to go back
00:31:06
Speaker
to enjoy this stuff. It's just really, really great writing. And back to the anime stuff, I totally forgot that.
00:31:14
Speaker
I always forget that Dave Filoni did Avatar, which is still a beloved series that was also in an anime format. Like that was like the first big series that he worked on. So like he gets storytelling, he gets continuity, he gets putting all this stuff together. And for all the people who don't watch anime, like this what you guys are loving from the Star Wars stuff now, all the Filoni related projects is what we love about anime. Just a big story in the continuity and nothing has to make sense because nothing is from this world.
00:31:44
Speaker
And I just got to go back to how stunning everything looks. Like this man's got a budget now. Nothing's 2D anymore. Everything has depth. Everything has glimmer. Everything has contrast. And it's it's the fact that they call it short poems. Like, yes, it is poetic. It's so beautiful for your eyes, for your ears. I'm sure if there was some 4D setting for this, all of it would feel amazing. But
00:32:11
Speaker
I love this animated stuff so much. It's so, so underrated and it's not like anybody who doesn't watch animated stuff has listened to this podcast for me to beg them to give a chance. I'm glad that you guys are here to appreciate it with me.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah it's just it's the fact that they somehow make it feel like it's real metal while also it was painted with a brush like just. I want to touch it I want to do it but it's just amazing across the board and.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I need to get into the plot now, and that's because there's so much else that I have to say, but we can't do this in episode order because they did it in- Let's start off with just talking about Ahsoka, because all these, we have six episodes, three of them are Ahsoka, three of them are Dooku. They are in different parts of the prequel trilogy, some before, some during, some after, so let's kick it off with talking about Ahsoka.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, I was honestly hesitant at that first episode with Ahsoka. I didn't really need prequel information, I guess. I wanted to know more of what happened to the Ahsoka that we grew up, or I grew up with, at least in Clone Wars, and what happened to her after the fact, and what happened after Order 66. So much of that information, but it was still really good out the gate.
00:33:37
Speaker
because they kind of let us know, hey, she came from a powerful people. It makes sense the way that she is a headstrong woman, seeing that her mother took her hunting as a baby while the father was home doing things like it very easily develops this character. But then
00:33:56
Speaker
I can't pick my favorite episode, but it either is episode four with Dooku or five with Ahsoka because that fifth episode was so, so good. Like I nearly lost it when my mind finally figured out where it was going because we have given Filoni the praise and he deserves it because that whole time I was just like, this is an interesting training arc.
00:34:22
Speaker
something's going on here, but when the pieces all fell into place and you heard the alarm klaxon and you watched her and Rex walk out of the shadows in the last couple seconds of the episode, it just suddenly hit home where it was all going and how amazing it was to see that she had grown this way because of her master, because of her friends, because of her companions. It was just
00:34:49
Speaker
It was so, so raw and visceral and I just can't put my finger on how great it was. And like the other bookend I'm also a little indifferent on, but that middle episode, that middle episode is one of the best things ever. I simultaneously knew what was happening and was thrown off when it happened in episode five.
00:35:16
Speaker
Cause when they were going through that training, it was like, oh man, like that really helped her when she actually had to fight clones. And when that scene happened of her and Rex walking out and that I was like, Oh no, I was thinking about it. I wasn't expecting you to show me the comparison of why we're having this episode. I thought it was a cool training montage. And like.
00:35:40
Speaker
Anakin has premonitions. It's one of the things that scared the Jedi Council. It makes you wonder like how much of this was actually in his subconscious, not just as a, you know, stubborn knight that is really good in battle and stuff like that, but there had to be something like a dream that he forgot about or something that
00:36:03
Speaker
because he had that love for his padawan instilled that level of protectiveness because he somehow knew because of his actions that was gonna happen.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, and him bringing that up and doing all of this, you could also see the very ways that it happened were perfect visual and emotional storytelling. And I kind of want to get Jay Scottie's take on this, having not seen the Clone Wars, that the minute I saw their outfits in each one of those moments, I knew that time had progressed. They told it in a perfect way.
00:36:39
Speaker
And to see that anakin was very graph at the start of that episode and slowly got warmer as time went on you got that feeling of hang on things are getting better he's learning how to be a mentor and a teacher he's hitting those emotional notes as well as.
00:36:55
Speaker
you know, she's growing, she gets the second lightsaber over time, her outfit changes, her hair gets longer. Like, there's just so much that they put into how the story was told, beyond just saying it, that is just, again, it keeps going. And then to top off the comment about, you know, hair being the way that you could tell time, I love that we also got to see Obi-Wan with the Jedi mullet one last time. At the start of the episode, I took very heavy note, I was like, that's, that's the mullet.
00:37:24
Speaker
this is like right after Attack of the Clones happened. Ahsoka has very distinct outfits too so seeing the progression of that kind of helped with the time frame a little bit because she went with like little like two piece to actually having like that no sleeve outfit to afterwards having more of the blue one. So that was a good indication of like time too but oh my god I just thought of this when they were going to the
00:37:51
Speaker
the session when Anakin was watching and he was like this isn't a test this is pathetic we saw Kanan and his master sitting in the bleachers across wait yeah I was not even Kanan was doing his testing right after Ahsoka oh my he was watching the whole time with his master and it was one of those things it's like us watching bad batch and have you seen Rebels?
00:38:21
Speaker
I have seen 98% of Rebels. So us seeing Bad Batch and seeing Rebels, we know Kanan. We know his story. And it's one of those things where it's like, if you haven't watched that and you're watching Tales, you're not missing anything from the episode. You're kind of missing something from Cold Wars because you don't get the end of Ahsoka, but I guess it tells enough. Anyways, you're not missing anything.
00:38:46
Speaker
But for me too, I missed Kanan in the Bad Batch and didn't click to me right away the first time I watched it that it was him in the first episode. But this time I saw him and I was like, oh no, my heart. It was almost like the start of Obi-Wan where it's like you got the scene of the temple being raided.
00:39:02
Speaker
I wasn't ready for that, but Filoni, you freaking god of a human being, those little details, the little micro moments in such a big story across so many planets, the placement of that stuff is so freaking well done!
00:39:22
Speaker
I think the big reason that I must have missed him is because I am just wondering what is up with the Goatman character because the one like old guy that Ahsoka goes on like the one episode trip with in Clone Wars and then like he was there like he was the one pounding his staff so he's in that episode he's in one of the episodes with Dooku and he was also like a cameo appearance in Obi-Wan he was one of the like
00:39:52
Speaker
tuned Jedi that we got to see when all of that happened in the Inquisitor's place. Like, I was just like, why is this guy continue to come back? He was a one off character in like a single episode of the Clone Wars. I was just I think that was the reason I was so like not focusing on anyone else. But was Plo Koon there?
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah, it was Plo Koon, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka together. I think that is also my one, not gripe, because again, this was all fantastic. Just give me a scene with Plo and Ahsoka though, because that is still the one relationship that has not been explored enough in my opinion. They teased how great it is, and the fact that he's the one that brought her into the Jedi Order,
00:40:35
Speaker
like give us that little bit more of them being companions give us the conspiracy theory that he is alive like just you know feed it back in bring it back tails more tails honestly he's pretty high on my list of give us a tale to the jedi uh couple episode arc just about him and his journeys as well there was a game it was phantom menace for the playstation one and you could pick
00:41:05
Speaker
was a two-player co-op game and you could pick Jedi that's like we hadn't even seen much in the movies so you had Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Kaido Moody, Plo Koon, and Mace Windu and in that game Plo Koon had an orange lightsaber and I can't remember exactly what his like his like single technique was but I absolutely loved it so whenever me and my cousin would play like he would be
00:41:30
Speaker
mace and I would be Plo Koon and we would just spend hours playing that so it's like I had this love of Plo Koon before I ever saw him in any actual content so when I saw him show up in this then I was like oh this character even more now like the fact that he's so mellow and one of the first times we see him is when they're stranded and running out of oxygen and the droids are blowing up like the extra bits of escape pods and he's just the one like be calm forces with us something's gonna come up we're gonna get help the
00:41:58
Speaker
and just like the meditation and think before you act type of the mentality that he had. I was just like, I already had this love for how much of a badass you were in a video game. Now your personality, the Uncle Iroh type of personality is what I'm being drawn towards. So yes, I 100% agree that we need more. I feel like with Anakin's roughness and Plo Koon's calmness, like that's where Ahsoka gets her.
00:42:26
Speaker
sense of just being able to think through because she had that balance of two great masters who were good at those two respective things. I did not expect to go into Plo Koon Ran today.
00:42:39
Speaker
No, it's great. I love it because it's very true, very insightful and like a big possibility. And I'm just going to throw out there. Kit Fisto is my other one from the LEGO Star Wars games. For some reason, I just always wanted to be Kit Fisto with the big booming green hair all the time in the background. So that's just another like he got his good service in the Clone Wars TV show, but like more is always welcome.
00:43:04
Speaker
So we have one more episode to talk about with Ahsoka and the fact that she was at the funeral was just so beautifully done. Her going to the other planet and kind of showing the farm life, the middle episodes of the final season of Clone Wars, I did not care for at all. I thought it was a waste of time. I did not care about the sisters or that story by any means. And this kind of gave me like,
00:43:33
Speaker
Inklings of that which bothered me a little bit because it was kind of a story we've seen a bunch of times before It's like Jedi and hiding somebody gets hurt. Oh my god had to use the force. There was a whole video game about it It's literally how he got in trouble But the way that it wrapped up so first part of it was great Seeing the sixth brother. He looks awesome
00:43:55
Speaker
Like, they kinda gave him the Darth Maul treatment, where it was like, build up, build up, build up, quick death. And again, this is supposed to be a poem, so like, everything of it looked beautiful, like, within the fire and everything. Oh my god, it was so good! Uh, but, yeah, dude. Um, him being able to talk to, or her being able to talk to Organa, excuse me.
00:44:16
Speaker
and have that relationship like she wants to get involved but she doesn't want to get involved. We saw a bunch of it in Obi-Wan where it's like the Inquisitors use the Jedi's need to help people to draw them out. All this stuff we do this all we're talking about is all the stuff from different content that we're able to pick up and know that it's established. But for the people who are watching this stuff that have maybe only seen the movies just get to enjoy it on its own like it's almost
00:44:46
Speaker
Like I can't even think of a good analogy of this. You just get that little bonus of I'm seeing more of this than somebody else does, but that it's still very clearly beautiful for the people who don't have that same reference. Yeah. So the only thing I'm going to jump in with is I totally agree. Like.
00:45:07
Speaker
it felt overdone in the exact way that, like you said, we had a video game like this, it felt like the first episodes of Obi-Wan, like, okay, she's in hiding, she's gonna have to save someone, the yada, yada, yada. Like, I wanted more out of that part, but the beginning and end were emotionally waiting enough that I was still so intrigued by the end of it of like, okay, now this explains how she's, you know, getting back into the fold, as well as like,
00:45:37
Speaker
that reminder that other people cared about Padme, other people were affected by what happened. It wasn't just that Obi-Wan saw her die. Bail was there at the funeral. The entirety of the people of Naboo had to go through this along with Ahsoka wanting to get her moment because she probably found out via the grapevine. She didn't talk to Obi-Wan again and be like, hey, whatever happened?
00:46:04
Speaker
She probably heard and then just went there without even thinking about it and Rex probably had to try and talk her out of it, but then didn't like there's just. So many layers to what had to have gotten to that point and to think that she did have a funeral was a whole other gut punch of like.
00:46:23
Speaker
wow, this was real, like, there's so many talks about what happens in Episode Three and how she dies from the Big Sad, but like, actually seeing it again just puts it into a perspective of like, I don't care how the acting and the script felt in that movie, she still died. And that's still a big deal for everything else that happens in Star Wars as a whole. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, I don't think that Six Brother as the Inquisitor,
00:46:52
Speaker
And I'm looking at the write up and it says six brother. Well, there's some write ups, but there's also several articles that say like there's other canon materials about the sixth brother, like later on. So I mean, maybe there's just a new six brother because this one clearly died.
00:47:13
Speaker
It could so yeah, they could both be name six brothers, but there is also a sixth brother that wears a different style of mask Like in them in the books. That's why I'm like, I don't know if this is six brother Regardless, yeah, he's massacred by an Inquisitor the six brother Ahsoka kills the Inquisitor and joins the rebellion this episode is this episode loosely adapts the events of the 2016 novel Ahsoka by EK Johnston I suppose
00:47:41
Speaker
It's going to be pedantic because neither of us actually has enough knowledge because neither of us have read the books if anyone out there has. Wikipedia doesn't lie. Exactly. Wikipedia doesn't lie.
00:47:51
Speaker
I think that's my one thing. I want more of that story. She didn't react when he knew her name. Why was this one of the Jedi that turned to be an Inquisitor like we saw in Obi-Wan? Don't just throw that nugget at me and tell me we're never going to find out what happened. For a moment, I thought it was going to be Plo Koon turned and was an Inquisitor, and I was about to lose my mind. You don't think that the Inquisitors got profiles on the Jedi that were supposedly alive?
00:48:21
Speaker
But, I don't know, there's a lot of Jedi. It's a weird gap, because the way the third movie ended, when Lucas was still in control, was, oh, there are two Jedi left, and it's Obi-Wan and Yoda, and that's it. And... Because another big plot hole was the fact that, um, why would anybody know that Anakin is Vader?
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah, somehow this Inquisitor knows when she was telling Obi-Wan, Anakin's alive, Anakin's alive. There's some classified information that obviously these Inquisitors get. Yeah, I don't know. It's that I would like to think that they wouldn't because of the idea that Ahsoka should have died at a whole battalion of clones on a ship.
00:49:12
Speaker
I don't know. It's it's a lot of imbalance in the storytelling and I'm willing to put it aside just for the purpose of that. They wrote it as though it was a tease of this person knows her. I think that was why I'm thinking like there has to be something more here. Why did they write this in this way? It's a little bit of metagaming the system.
00:49:34
Speaker
That like I know how stories work you do this for this purpose and that's kind of how you get into the expectation trap of things But that's my only like just give me more like you teased it. I want to know why I'm not complaining that they teased it. I just I just I personally think it is as simple as Inquisitors had to do their homework on high-profile Jedi
00:50:01
Speaker
and who would be a risk of possibly being alive. That's just me. It's the fact that he didn't recognize her until she used the Force, though. Like, I feel like if you knew who all of... Like, if you did your homework... Because the way that Clone Wars ended, too, the way Vader was looking at... Was it Ahsoka's lightsabers that she left behind? I think... I know it was the helmets, but I think her lightsaber was also there. I think it was a lightsaber, too, like...
00:50:30
Speaker
just kind of knows. Hmm. I believe it was her lightsaber because that's why I think she didn't fight with a lightsaber until she doesn't have any she completely left it behind. Yeah. My statements making more and more sense. All right, the last thing that I want to say about the first episode
00:50:50
Speaker
And then we're going to move on to Dookus because we're getting very close to the hour mark and there's a lot to talk about with Dooku. God, I love Star Wars. Good Star Wars talk. So one of my favorite things about the Ahsoka stuff was that Clone Wars and Rebels put a lot of emphasis on how people outside of the Jedi Council, how they perceive the
Cultural Perceptions of the Force in Star Wars
00:51:15
Speaker
force. They don't necessarily call it the force, but there is this
00:51:19
Speaker
entity, there's the spiritual being and the way that they manifest it and the way that they interact with it, you know, like the the witches from Darth Maul's planet.
00:51:32
Speaker
They think of it as magic. You have the bendu from rebels who doesn't think about light and dark. There's just merely the force and it's a way to interact with beings all across the galaxy. And then you have a small village like this where there is an understanding like the elders understanding of the people and of the environment and of the animals. So I think that was in regards to how the force is perceived. I think that was a beautiful
00:52:02
Speaker
example of reminding us that it's not just Jedi and Sith and light side and dark side. Like the force is just this this entity and there's other ways of using it and manifesting it that don't involve this war between good and bad.
00:52:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I love as much as again, we can get into the weird force powers that they end up coming up with later that, you know, we never saw before. I love the fact that there are other force powers, the fact that you can like reach out and commune with nature, that you can almost communicate with an animal on some lever level.
00:52:43
Speaker
Why do I keep calling it Ezra Miller? What does the Miller keep coming from? Oh, that's the Flash. That's the person that plays the Flash. Apologies for that. That was Ezra, though, right? Ezra Bridger, yes. Ezra Bridger, thank you.
00:53:02
Speaker
I just stopped dead my tracks like who are you talking about? Rager excuse me everyone. But yeah, there's just these continuous new ways that like the force doesn't have to just be this power. It is something that has just effects on the environment on your world as a whole. Like they're definitely
00:53:23
Speaker
is more force sensitive people out there than the Jedi or the Sith even know about that are just living their lives doing whatever you have the kid from the sequels that you used it to pick up a broom like it just exists and I love that constant reminder of it doesn't have to be used all the time to be the most powerful thing that it's just always with us. We're gonna move on to
00:53:50
Speaker
Dooku from Star Wars Jungle Book now. And you can't tell me that that first episode of the Snap Jungle Book. Oh my god, was I not ready for how much Qui-Gon Jinn was the anchor for Dooku totally going dark side? Oh my gosh, yes, like. Poem. Absolute poet. I can't get over the line that they're calling this poetry because it's just
00:54:19
Speaker
I understand how beautiful it is, but reading that line from Wikipedia just amped up the love and appreciation for this artistic nature so much. And I am awful at reading books. It's taken me two years to get halfway through the Old Republic book that I'm reading.
Count Dooku's Character Exploration
00:54:40
Speaker
And I've been dying to read the Dooku one. Maybe in six years I'll finish this one and start Dooku, but the fact that we're getting them as Tails' episode... Oh man, those three episodes were freaking incredible.
00:54:58
Speaker
And it's the constant reminder that it's a hairline edge between the light side and the dark side. Was he ever really gone from one side or the other? It was always a question of gray, a question of perspective in each and every one of these episodes. And these three episodes really put into focus what I love the most about
00:55:22
Speaker
The clone wars series in general that they were not just focused on the Jedi on Coruscant They went to these small worlds. They told these small stories Reminded us that hey it centers around the Senate and like that's our crux of the story
00:55:40
Speaker
but it allows us to tell amazing stories and i want a senate focused tv show like that's my one wish is to just let us talk about how these worlds are actually negotiating and what the trade federation did when they screwed everything up like how this actually affected the overarching world
00:55:59
Speaker
It's just there's so much meat there. But then again, to see it through Dooku's eyes, to see from the beginning, he always had those questions, whether it was the council, whether it was the Senate, that he was always seeing it. And it really hammers home. Was Dooku wrong? Were the separatists really wrong? Like, obviously, there was the big bad in the background that was, you know, the emperor.
00:56:25
Speaker
but the separatists were just leaving the senate because they believed yeah the puppets but like
00:56:33
Speaker
The separatists left because they believe that the Senate was corrupt and they were not helping enough people. And again, the Clone Wars gets into this so well because there are some of them that are like, separatists aren't bad. We're just leaving because we don't agree with what you're doing. And it shows that Dooku was always just one tiny step away from being like, but what if we did just get rid of the bad dictator? What if we
00:56:56
Speaker
We did just, you know, not follow these rules to a T. And then it also perfectly sets up, hey, Qui-Gon was a rebel in the entirety of Phantom Menace, just being like, you know what, Council? You guys can F off. I'm going to do my own thing on Naboo and go save some people. Like, it then just further develops how he came to be as a character.
00:57:19
Speaker
And I can't say I like this Dooku more than Clone Wars Dooku, because Clone Wars Dooku is amazing, and is the reason I love Dooku so much, but it's just... It is the same Dooku, but it's different chapters of his life. I have another excerpt for you. Please. I really just need to read this whole thing now. That was really not that long.
00:57:43
Speaker
Filoni warned that these aren't just fun, happy stories. It gets rough at times. He particularly felt that Dooku's life was surprisingly tragic and attributed some of the series' darker episodes to them being written during the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:57:58
Speaker
An aspect of Dooku that Filoni wanted to explore was a relationship with his Padawan learner Qui-Gon Jinn, who Filoni described as one of the best and in some ways most interesting Jedi because of his philosophy which is different from the Jedi Council. And where did he learn that if not from his mentor Count Dooku? Yeah, it's just...
00:58:21
Speaker
It's so perfect. I just love this analogy of him being the anchor that kept him from going to the dark side. Because you saw how he wanted to kill the senator. I was for it. But obviously, that wasn't the right thing to do. But Klygon being that anchor was like the sun's like he's here for the sun. The sun's the only thing that's going to convince him. Let him shame him other than like us shaming him because we don't
00:58:47
Speaker
fit on this high pedestal that apparently he only responds to. To find out how much Qui-Gon's death meant to him. Him having to see Windu surpass him to be on the council because of his actions. Like, that line of him in front of the tree when it started to rain in Master— Is it Yaddle?
00:59:11
Speaker
Yaddle Okay, when Master Yaddle was trying to like calm him down and just knew that something was up like
00:59:19
Speaker
poetry. Back to that word, poetry. That was when you felt the anchor snap off. Qui-Gon was the only thing holding him down. Qui-Gon just, it goes back to what I was talking about with the first Ahsoka episode and understanding the force works in different ways. I think Qui-Gon wanted to be this Nomad. He wanted to take the route that Ahsoka ended up taking.
00:59:44
Speaker
where there is no good or bad, there's just understanding of this entity that is everywhere. There's a beauty in that. It's something that's meant to be preserved and explored. And I understand that's essentially what the Jedi was going towards, but we even had this conversation with Windu and with Dooku of what have the Jedi become, if not tools of the Senate.
01:00:08
Speaker
And it bothered me so much when Dooku was talking to Yaddle and Palpatine about how the Senate is corrupt and they're using them in the wrong way and how they're not their own entity anymore. It genuinely had me wondering if he knew Darth Sidious was Palpatine before he became a Sith.
01:00:29
Speaker
Well, because if you're going to blame the Senate of everything, literally the cause of it is standing right in front of you. Kill him, not Mastrianal. At that point in the story in the timeline, I suppose he was still only the senator from Naboo.
01:00:43
Speaker
He wasn't the chancellor yet, which also – But that's still a piece of the corruption. Yeah, well, because a whole weird crux and point of conversation about Naboo is the fact they have a queen and a senator. So how could they get anything done? The queen is trying to do things for the people. The senators are all trying to do whatever for themselves.
01:01:01
Speaker
And it's just the continuous conversation about the ivory tower and how you can't put someone in control. The raw line from the woman in the bar in the first Dooku episode when Qui-Gon was like, why don't you elect another senator? And she just looked at him like, foolish child. It's not that easy. And everyone was on board with what was happening in that moment. Definitely, you could see it dawn on Qui-Gon.
01:01:28
Speaker
as for how deep it all went and how something was going to have to change at some point. So yeah, it's just, it's so good stitching together. And I love the way Filoni has been able to slowly peel back so many of these things that were, I'm going to say poorly written the first time. And I apologize for that comment, but allow me to explain. Well,
01:01:54
Speaker
There were articles and books that like got out of the cannon that he's now been able to like kind of redo. And like one of the big things that I remember was
01:02:04
Speaker
a word for word quote almost that Yoda was concerned about Dooku's curved lightsaber because curved only meant he was going to duel other people and who would you need to fight if you weren't bad. Like it's just makes Dooku this mustache twirly like oh he was bad from the start that's why his lightsaber is curved that's why it's unique.
01:02:26
Speaker
And this does not have any moment of that. This has, hey, he just understood that things weren't going right and made the decisions that he did that led to the air quotes dark side. I'm still kind of on team. Was the empire right or wrong in the originals? We don't know. Like we saw it from the side of the rebels, but the empire was arguably trying to do some things.
01:02:49
Speaker
like, you know, the stormtroopers. Yeah, but like stormtroopers in the last episode, who was like, we're, we love the Empire. And you love the Empire, too. Why are you thinking that? As long as we obey, we'll be good. Yeah, there's burn. Yes. And that's the only thing that I'm saying when I talk about poor writing is there's some stuff that feels that way back felt very on the news.
01:03:13
Speaker
And Filoni is just taking it back apart and saying, but maybe there's more to this story that we can tell. And like, Yaddle is another great example, because I remember being a kid in the library, there was this big Star Wars book, and it was like the history of the prequels. And I took it out from the library and Yaddle the puppet from
01:03:29
Speaker
The Phantom Menace that this character is based on if none of you knew this puppet shows up on the council like next to Yoda And in this book it was like oh, yeah It's Yoda's cousin or Yoda's brother like it was the idea that oh that they're all the same alien We just have to throw them in there Whereas instead we got this really interesting look at someone who agreed that there were issues on the council but
01:03:54
Speaker
brought in, hey, we're still doing good things, you need to work with us. Like you can atone for your crimes, but you can't go all the way dark. Like there was so much more that I didn't expect out of this character. And I know some people might not agree with that. But because I was just like, Oh, this is Yoda's cousin, to see that we got some substance was awesome. What if Grogu was Yodeling Yoda's kid?
01:04:21
Speaker
Okay, that would be very on-brand for Star Wars. Oh my gosh. I'm just waiting for that reveal now. Well, no. Yes, no, I don't know. Because Yaddle's... But Yaddle died. Yeah, so had a kid that's 50 years old now. And is a student with the Padawans at the Jedi Temple. Daddy Yoda's still there.
01:04:51
Speaker
Daddy Yoda. Words I never thought I would hear. Your father I am. Yeah, I... There's not enough time. Maybe there is time in the timeline. I don't know anymore. Yodas age weird, but regardless. Guru is 50, dude. Guru is 50. What did you think of Yaddle in all of this? To be a character that was literally just a background puppet in the Phantom Menace.
01:05:22
Speaker
I mean, how big was Plo Koon and Kid Fisto in the prequel movies alone? How big was the dude with the cane?
Enriching Star Wars with Minor Characters
01:05:35
Speaker
Like, the fact that we're able to expand on these characters and see familiarity, that's what's making this Filoni product as good as it is. It is those little moments, it is those little characters, it's understanding that
01:05:52
Speaker
we have this huge universe, these small moments that matter. When we get to see these characters like Hainan again, it gives us something because we understand what they went through. It's not something you just put in for a one-off and come back. Any portion of that that we can see again and again and reuse again and again and expand on these stories of is fantastic.
01:06:18
Speaker
Okay, so it's a lot of what I love about Naruto too. It's like you have characters like Asuma and Shisui and people who have stories that we we keep hearing like they died they died they died and then we get these sequences of like what they meant to this character and the bigger part of this story and how they affected that and then like down into Boruto stuff which is like when everybody has kids like you have pictures of these people who died in a previous series when they were like 17
01:06:46
Speaker
And us as the audience get to look at stuff and be like, that was like, holy shit, like that. This is how much this person matters to this person and influence this person. And like, where where are we at because of that? And like the kids from this whole other show, like, don't get it. And Star Wars is doing exactly what we love about anime in that sense.
01:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's all there. And I just suddenly had this dawning realization of why this tree in the Jedi Garden looked familiar. And if I'm not mistaken, that's where Yoda either begins or ends his quest in the Clone Wars to learn from Qui-Gon about how you become one with the Force. And now it's just this better layer of
01:07:36
Speaker
What do we think Dooku was hearing when he was standing at this tree? Was he possibly feeling Qui-Gon's anguish in that moment? And that's what made him switch. Seeing this almost random tree, but knowing that it was somewhere in the Clone Wars before, that it's somewhere in the Jedi Temple, we've talked about how it is something that works with nature,
01:08:00
Speaker
you know, possibly communing through this whole city of metal and rock, as Dooku put it, like this could be the one transition point for the energy of the universe to get into the Jedi Temple. And it's just raw and emotional. And like you said, Filoni's bringing back these little notes that literally didn't dawn on me until just now of like, wait, we have seen this tree before. Not necessary, but so you want to know where else you've seen it? So good. Where else have I seen this tree, please? Last Jedi.
01:08:30
Speaker
What? Is that the tree, the tree? No. The tree that, well, it's, they call it the Unetti tree. The name Unetti originates from the term neti, which was first used in a 1990s dark horse comic book series called Tales of the Jedi. The series explored the early days of the Jedi Order and events that take place almost 4,000 years before the Skywalker saga. The neti are shape-shifting species of trees with sentient intelligence.
01:08:57
Speaker
The Nettie helped guide the Jedi Master Noma Surrender as she pursues the dark Jedi X-Harsun. History was further expanded in Last Jedi when Rey discovers the Nettie saplings at Luke Skywalker's recursive cave on the planet Octo.
01:09:16
Speaker
Okay so I think it's the same kind of tree not the exact like it's not the tree they didn't move it. There is like a connection to this tree with the force with the force in the Jedi. The staff that the blind character from Rogue One.
01:09:40
Speaker
Like literally, his picture is Danny Yen's character. Yeah, Danny Yen's character. That's the reason I haven't brought him up in all of our talking about how other people use the Force, because I could not remember his character's name. Well, Force using Danny Yen, apparently his staff is from one of these trees. So which kind of, you know, like in this picture that Collider has posted up,
01:10:10
Speaker
Like he's pointing with the stick. And for, from my perspective, somebody who trains stick and staff, it's like, keep a point at your opponents. If you can't see them, obviously you just need to keep your weapon out. But knowing that there's like an essence of this thing, feeling the force and feeling everything around and actually having this quote unquote magical ability. Ooh, buddy. Yeah, it's.
01:10:37
Speaker
It's so good and I hope all of our listeners like. Are hearing the fact that we're looking these things up in the background and as we're talking about them were learning new things I think that's my favorite part of star wars is the ability to have these conversations and like know that there's such depth to anything that you may.
01:10:58
Speaker
want to have so just you know be open to these conversations to all of the listeners like we're not trying to sound pretentious and I hope we don't with this like oh there's more knowledge than what we're talking about because like that's the cool part of Star Wars is you can educate other people we've learned a lot I hope you are all learning a lot like just
01:11:16
Speaker
always remember this is the greatest part of it is the conversation that you can have like, Oh, did we notice this thing? That's so awesome. And I love that we've managed to connect trees, literal trees have been connected throughout the entirety of the Star Wars franchise. That's awesome. I just love Dave Filoni and the fact that he's making me look into the seven. Like we said, like, this could just be a dope ass tree.
01:11:40
Speaker
And we could think nothing more of it than that. But there are some people who probably saw that tree and they were like, oh my God. I mean, there's a whole Collider article about it. So clearly there's some.
01:11:51
Speaker
That's a bit to it, and of course, when I typed in tree in Dooku, the first thing that comes up is a great Deku tree, and I almost clicked on it until I realized it was a Zelda wiki, so I'm glad I didn't go out that rabbit hole. Sorry, start singing the Zelda songs. Yeah, no, it's, there's so many rabbit holes. Like 17 minute episode and just two characters. And this is probably one of our longer episodes talking about it.
01:12:17
Speaker
Honestly, the last time that I think that I have talked this hardcore on an episode to episode basis was Star Wars Visions. Like, if you go back and listen to that, Jay Scottie and I went this hard in on just all of the connective tissue and it's just Star Wars animation. I'm glad Filoni is continuing with animation as a medium that they use as well as connecting the universe in this way. It's coming together really, really well.
01:12:48
Speaker
If I could take the newer animated content, that's including the, if I could take Disney Plus animation versus Disney Plus live action, I'd say animation is doing a better job, despite how good Mandalorian is.
01:13:14
Speaker
Oh, are we talking just Star Wars? Disney plus Star Wars. Okay, I thought you were making a very bold claim. I was like, wow, that's insane. I am Groot. And what if against Miss Marvel and Moon Knight and WandaVision? That's what I was like, dude, what a call.
01:13:36
Speaker
No, in regards to Star Wars. Star Wars Disney Plus animation includes Bad Batch and the last season of Clone Wars, which could be a movie of its own, and now Tales of the Jedi versus Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Andor. I think animation's doing a better job. I think so. I think they're telling the extra gripping stories. Like, don't get me wrong, Mandalorian's good.
01:14:04
Speaker
But they're not telling like this same like, I need to know. Yeah, the first season is just like all filler episode episode like what is the monster of the week and that's fine. I thoroughly enjoy the Mandalorian don't think for a moment that I don't but just
01:14:20
Speaker
I was not expecting to talk for an hour and 20 minutes about Visions when I hopped on this call, and here we are. It was so easy to just get sucked into everything, and I'm sure there's things that we have missed at this point as well. Wait, was Visions actually an hour or 20? Or are you talking about this being closer to 20? I definitely just said Visions, didn't I? I meant this. When I jumped into the score- You were specifically how long that was?
01:14:49
Speaker
Do we need to twiddle our thumbs for like seven more minutes to get it above 20? Take the cake on the longest thing on our feed. Now I'm wondering what it is. We got some long ones. I don't know off the top of my head.
01:15:08
Speaker
I hope you all, if you did stay through all of this, thank you. I was also surprised that Liam Neeson was Qui-Gon. I'm surprised. I remember reading that Liam Neeson came back as Qui-Gon. I was surprised that he was not Qui-Gon in all of the episodes. The whole fact that he did that made it seem like he was going to play a bigger part. And I'm not complaining that at the part that he played, it's just he was only a small
01:15:37
Speaker
Oh, interesting. I wonder if he was just like in the recording booth for Obi-Wan and they were like, hey, you want to just say while we sign and while you're here. But it says series announcement in May twenty twenty two is revealed that Liam Neeson would reprise his role as Qui-Gon Jinn while his son. Miguel Michael, Richard would voice the younger version of the character. Oh, okay. Lancer reprising his role as Anakin Starward.
01:16:05
Speaker
And in Star Wars, and in Skywalker. Oh, fun stuff. Was Ian McDermand credited as
01:16:17
Speaker
The Emperor, because it sounded a lot more like him than it did the guy that they had doing it in Clone Wars. That's him. Okay, I was very much wondering. It was the perfect voice. He didn't say do it, he just said kill her, and I was like, no, say it, like give us, do the line, say the thing. I think when he just smiled, like all the fans just kind of knew.
01:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. And honestly, we have talked all of this about the characters. The fight scene between Dooku and Gatl was not even touched upon and was just between that and between the Ahsoka fighting those robots at the beginning of her training.
01:16:59
Speaker
is the best part of the Clone Wars and or rather Star Wars animation in general that like we don't have to worry about stunts. We don't have to worry about wire work. We can see these amazing flips and tricks and turns and like you're just sucked in immediately. Here's your comparison to Disney Plus Marvel. One of the things that we revel about
01:17:22
Speaker
in the Marvel stuff is how much we love the dialogue that we don't even care about the action as much. The dialogue in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the dialogue in WandaVision. It was so powerful and so strong. And that essence is being brought over to Star Wars as well with the conversations between these people, the political conflicts, the emotional conflicts, the philosophical conflicts. Like we care about the dialogue so much that we forgot there was action sequences.
01:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, seriously, it and like they were great, but they were just action like they don't give us as much to grab on to, I guess is the way that I will phrase it, especially when we're trying to do it, because I'm not about to describe a fight to all of our listeners, I'm gonna let them. But would I be lying if I did not listen to the soundtrack a couple times throughout the week to
01:18:12
Speaker
I have said it several times wholesale I think Star Wars has the best soundtracks across the board not theme song but just like or not soundtrack orchestral themes I can't think of words composition
The Legacy of Star Wars Music
01:18:33
Speaker
Either way, they just have so much going for them in every single musical piece. It's so good. If you guys ever want something really fascinating to listen to on that topic, Samuel Kim Music, Star Wars X, Parts of the Caribbean. Star Wars, wait, it's a crossover? Yes.
01:18:55
Speaker
You see, I have heard also Samuel Kim, great artist. I do listen to him on Spotify. I'm very upset. They've taken down a bunch of the demon slayer things off of Spotify.
01:19:08
Speaker
I couldn't find a bunch of them when I was at the gym this week because I usually try and do my max lifts listening to the Renkoku versus Akasa fight. Fun fact everyone. But no, he's really, really good. But the only mashup I've ever heard, which is great Star Wars mashup if you're ever looking for it listeners, life after death star, someone mixed the life after death album.
01:19:33
Speaker
from the notorious B.I.G. himself with Star Wars themes, and they're so, so well put together. It's a SoundCloud album. If you're looking for something fun and random, go give that a listen. I hate you that I can't find this crossover on my Apple Music now. Oh, the one that I mentioned? No, the one that I mentioned.
01:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think he, I'm guessing there's probably some cease and desist situations going on if it's not as easily accessible as it were. Honestly, my biggest thing is that like he's just redone a bunch of the Demon Slayer music. Maybe if you came out with the soundtrack, I wouldn't have to listen to this guy, Demon Slayer.
01:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, right. I would happily listen to the real thing, but this is the best that I've got. But we're into the depths of talking about music. I feel like we should probably close this out, because poor J. Scottie is also probably going to have to edit this at some point, and he's not even here and I feel bad. That is it today for the animation deliberation podcast. We hit the hour 20 mark as we were aiming to after cutting it down. I don't know if you're going to see it, but I'm sure it'll hit an hour 20 by the time I'm done with this monologue.
01:20:44
Speaker
As always, send your feedback. Send whatever you want to say. Send voice memos. Try to keep it under a minute if you can. But we love hearing from you. We love talking to you. Do you want to drop the social spiel?
01:20:56
Speaker
Yes, of course, you could follow us on all of our social medias. That's the best place to get updates on episode news, as well as some of the greatest memes, tech talks and everything else that we find to send to each other. You could follow us on Twitter at animation to live one or Facebook and Instagram also just animation deliberation.
01:21:15
Speaker
Do we still have the closer stuff? That's me just explaining all of that. Like, are we just explaining it twice? Yes, but I don't believe the Instagram is in there. And I feel like there's some things that are, we should really see if we need to update that or if we just need to cut it out because I'm just pulling it off every time. No, we did that before you existed.
01:21:44
Speaker
That's probably not true, but I was about to say I don't because it was actually when source pages started doing that first well Marvel Cinematic Universe started doing it first and then source pages did it but they came after we did So it was like the newer show was doing it. Why are we not doing it? so I asked Haley to send me the write-up and then I just made it that I
01:22:07
Speaker
And I, I joined the network right around the time that source pages was starting up. Like that's when I started going to after dark chats and stuff, because I remember it was like my third after dark. They were talking about the first source. And I made it, it might've, I think it was like right when I was starting, you guys added that in. It's like, got you on source pages.
01:22:30
Speaker
What? Yeah, because all the DC talk and I was like, hey, should I ask Angel if you want to talk about Batman stuff? Anyways. That's true. Check out source pages. Check out Star Wars Universe podcast, Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast, Avengers Assemble, PandaVision. Go to Strandepanda.com. Give everybody all the stars. Give everybody all the wonderful reviews. Tune in next time. That's T-W-O-N-I-N. B plus Ultra and always stay well.
01:22:59
Speaker
And until we see each other again in a galaxy far far away, muscle muscle.
01:23:06
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Animation Deliberation Podcast, a proud member of the Strandepanda Network. If you would like to contact us, you can email animationdeliberationpodcast at gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at animationdelib1. For this and other great shows, you can visit Strandepanda.com or join the great community that is the Strandepanda Chat Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash spchat. Tune in next time and remember, stay well.
01:23:34
Speaker
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