Ranma 1/2 Season 1 (2024) and Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew: My Thoughts
Date: 2025-2-20
My wife and I finished the first "season" (half season?) of the Ranma remake alongside the new Star War (Skeleton Crew) like a month ago, and as part of my resolution to log and reflect on all of the art I watch/read/play this year, I had writing about them as a to-do for some time, but have felt really stymied by the sort of "blank piece of paper paralysis". But as I sit here now, forcing myself to write about them, what I'm really stuck with is that I didn't emotionally react really *all that much*.
And that's fine, of course! But, I think it's kinda interesting. For example, like with, say, Yu-No or Re:Cutie Honey or other things I've been really, really struck by lately I have tended to feel almost *compelled* to write; the words have come really really quickly and really really easily. But, when it's come to things that I found myself really not liking all that much or just being a bit "meh" about, I fired off a quick thing on Letterboxd or whatever and called it that.
With Ranma and Skeleton Crew, they've sat in this sort of interesting mind queue of sorts where I felt more than meh--a LOT more, in fact--but less than absolute love, and that's a middle ground I'm finding myself really challenged to write about. I think it's also that both of these mEdIa PrOpErTiEs hold real meaning to me: one is an anime series whose original show I watched as a kid through bootleg swap-meet fansubs and the other is stinkin' STAR WARS--and whether it's gauche to say in TYOOL 2025 or not, I love Star Wars.
So I'm left to ponder: have I been finding it hard to write about these two because I didn't feel very much that made me compelled to write in the first place, or is it because some part of me feels like I "owe" these shows some sort of deeper level of capital-c-Criticism writing/reflection? Maybe a bit of both? Lacking any sort of broad throughline, I'll just sort of stream-of-consciousness my thoughts of each as they occur to me now and we'll call it good.
Skeleton Crew: I expected to really dislike this, I'll admit. I don't think I'm alone in that. I don't dislike the brief, exactly--I loved Stranger Things despite being too young (1987 birth) to really feel all that strongly for kids-on-bikes style stuff--but I've never seen The Goonies for instance and I tend to not really trust post-Disney Star Warses very much. But this show had the juice! It was really, really nice that Jude Law wasn't phoning it in, and I do love me some robots, and I loved the pirate ship robot. "I don't know anything about no At-Attin" has become a sort of inside-joke catchphrase between my wife and I, and a stuffy of ours we love very much (who is a cute little bear named Patches and who "watched the show with us" and who we built a pirate ship for and no I will not be taking any questions) loves to quote that line as well. I was charmed! I dug it.
Ranma: In my sort of platonic ideal minds-eye, the Ranma remake looks how anime """"should"""" look. My formative animes were all of the sorts of shows/OAVs/movies that formed the bedrock of the anime con viewing rooms throughout the 90s and very early 2000s, and this show looks to those shows what Shovel Knight looks like to NES games. It looks how my memory of 80s OAVs looks, and I adore it for that. I also just think it's charming and cute and funny and I just really had a lovely time with it.
So there you have it, I can check off those to-dos in my journal now at last. Cheers.
