#it shows like how society treats carnivores as like monsters

[doopn00p]

“I still see him sometimes…”

[relax-and-read-on]

Math San, I Gotta Ask For More Of That Primarch planet Swap AU, The Amount Of Imaginations That Is Going Through My Head Is Insane, But Headcanons are enough of you do not want to update, As I Am also Genuinely Interested In The Headcanons as well.

Hello hello!!! I am *slowly* going back into updating my blog again, so!

Primarch planetswap au: HC edition!

Lorgar (From Terra): actually quite close to his father and Malcador. Has the habit of walking into Malcador rooms and face planting on the old man bed to complain, after a hard day of not strangling the high lords.

Angron: On Inwit, he had the disastrous habit of running toward all the giant carnivorous monster. Due to his empath power, he ended with a monstrosity called "Land-Orca" that he treat like a dog as a pet.

Fulgrim of Nuceria: Sign language was actually the primary one in the slave pits, to communicate away from the guards. The system that Fulgrim and his sons use together is different from any other, and quite secretive. He actually started teaching it to Ferrus.

Alpharius Omegon on Chtonia: They were actually homeless, until emp showed up! They never wanted their full identity as two knows to other, as it could have compromise their secret statut of vigilante, fighting back the local gangs.

Magnus of Medusa: Think rocks are tasty, okay? He never quite got over his habit of eating sand, but now it's mostly crystal. Has an actual chart ranking the tastiest ones, and fucking LOVE how tasty fossil are.

Leman of Delivrance: Has yet to fully understand that has wolf dna, and as such fight a lot of his instinct. Insist on touching everyone he consider family, and check on the regular where everyone is, and if they are ok. Always eat last too.

Konrad on Maccrage: when he was a child and having really bad convulsion, his mother gave him a pet ferret (wich used to be common pets for Romans) as some kind of alert animal. Konrad doesn't deal well with food often, so his beloved lil friend (called Regulus) became the fattest, happiest noodle.

Ferrus of Caliban: He actually has a romantic side! He grew up hearing songs of knights and princess, and then ended up becoming a knight himself! And while incredibly chivalrous, the realm of the arts (outside a forge) stay incredibly foreign to him. He does love nowaday harlequin romance novels.

Horus on Nostramo: In spite of having created a rather criminal society, he made extreme effort to make it a true meritocracy. Any street urchin can become a mob enforcer under him... If they navigate properly the treacherous world of the mafia.

Sanguinius of Fenris: He actually is a supremely picky eater, and does not trust 95% of vegetables. He only ate meat until he was found by the Imperium, he's not a goat, why do they keep waving kale at him?!

Lion on Colchis: Fully, 100% aware that the chaos gods are real, and actively pray to them. He has his "religion of the Emperor" that he actually use as a facade, since it annoy Emp so much, he doesn't look into his "true" belief.

Perturabo on Chemos: has actually developed full AI again, but hide it HARD from Emp and the Mechanicus. He like his robots!! He think that they should have rights! Why can't the Imperium be less stupid about this... Vaguely in love with Rogal and his Cool Armours.

Jaghatai on Baal: Became quite the warlord, locally. Was especially curious of the use of radiation, and definitely made some horrible WMD back in the day. Currently falling in line with the Mechanicus, as every vehicules present on Baal was almost holly in their culture.

Rogal of Nocturne: Created some really, REALLY advanced fortification that can, somehow, follow the landscape change. Is pioneering the use of dragon scales mixed with special metals, creating something that might be stronger than ceramite. Does not understand why Perturabo is always hanging around.

Roboute on Barbarus: decided to fight necromancy with fire... Artillery fire, to be exact. He brought the industrial revolution to Barbarus, and has pretty intense plan for terraforming the planet. Hasn't stopped working in.... Approximately 50 years.

Mortarion of Prospero: Like in many of my hc, Morty is intersex. He's lucky to have landed on Prospero, where androgyny is a sign of beauty. He actually like cultivating that appearance, and if asked what his gender is, he usually just reply "mushroom".

Corvus of Chogoris: if it's me, then you bet Corvus is a transwoman lol. She wear traditional mongolian ceremonial outfit as a power move, because *no one* expect her to be able to move this easily in all those heavy clothes.

Vulkan of Olympia: VERY close to all 3 of his siblings! He was never a fighter there, and instead worked hard to promote a democratie and division of power. He still is in contact with all of them, especially Calliphone. She keep teasing him about his possible crush on a certain Oracle...

[hapuriainen]

Hapuriainen's Animation & Comics & Games of 2020

It is again time for the annual compilation!

Manga:

Attack on Titan

I'm so sad this is so close to end... It's been my main thing for a few years now. Eren definitely didn't take the route I expected but I still find this consistent with his character and a bold and interesting move from the author.

(My notes say I also finished the jr high spin-off manga but it's not worth talking about)

Awards given: Best Side Girl (I still like Gabi, haters gonna hate), Best Boy (ditto Eren)

One Piece, My Hero Academia My interest in OP is still at an all-time low and I'm just waiting for the arc to end. There are so many characters and I have little idea what their deal is, Carrot hasn't been interesting in ages and currently Yamato is the only character I care for. Same for HeroAca; at least the excruciatingly long action scene is finally over.

Undead Unluck New Jump series! I think the main duo have a really good dynamic, but they're pretty much the only thing I care about and I'm very lost with what the plot is actually supposed to be about.

Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro

I like detective stories so here's one from the Assassination Classroom creator! The detective stuff itself could get rather nonsensical and as the story progressed more and more fantasy elements were added, but the titular character was entertaining enough to keep me interested. The viewpoint character was refreshingly (for a Jump series) a girl and her dynamic with Neuro (an ordinary schoolgirl and an arrogant amoral troll demon) was great.

Awards given: Best non-romantic relationship (Neuro & Yako)

Spy x Family

Super fun and the characters are cute!  The main couple has such great chemistry and in general I enjoy following characters who are really competent at their job. Not surprised that this has become hugely popular.

Awards given: Best romance (it is rare to get me to ship anything but the main couple here is just so cute)

Delicious in Dungeon

This manga has amazing character design and the author clearly loves to play around with it, like by drawing each character as each other's races, or making clones of everyone but each clone is a little different so you can guess which is the real one with the characters, and there's so much thought put to the outfits too. And then there's of course all the worldbuilding around how an RPG dungeon and the creatures in it could work, but it's presented simply enough that the story is still easy to follow. I also like the upbeat atmosphere; maybe I could get a bit more emotionally involved if there was more drama, but I still really like this as it is.

Awards given: Best character designs

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

Reread one of my favourite manga ever and it's still just as good. I love how the manga still has a positive vibe to it, under it there is the quiet melancholy of a world that is close to ending. And it's wonderful how uninterested the story is answering any of the worldbuilding questions it sets up.

Beastars

This was incredibly interesting in how it presented an animal society where the carnivore-herbivore differences couldn't be just explained away with "the differences don't really exist", and the story looks at this from so many different angles. Pairs really well with Zootopia for a completely different approach. Louis was a really interesting character with how he publicly managed to appear as if he was a good candidate to be the next ambassador for the peace between the animals but was actually very cold and broken inside, and I really liked his breakdown moment. The ending was pretty meh though.

Awards given: Best Side Boy (Louis)

Kannagi

This one has really cute character designs but apart from that it's a pretty generic harem story. Except for the twist that the main girl already had been involved with a boy which caused otaku to shred their manga or whatever. I believe I would have enjoyed this more if it finished back when it went to hiatus since at this point it didn't do much for me.

Witch Hat Atelier

The main girl is the kind of heroic, friendly, plucky goody-two-shoes protagonist I really don't like but apart from that this is a great manga. I love the art, and the way the magic works is really well set up but also easy to understand. Great outfits too!

Anime:

This year I learned that in order to clear stuff from your anime watch list you need to actually watch anime. So unexpectedly I think I watched a lot more different series than usual.

Attack on Titan

It was my plan to watch seasons 1-3 before jumping on board with the last one, and of course I dragged my feet for the entire year and had to marathon the whole thing in autumn. I still prefer the manga, but the anime does have great colours, soundtrack and voice acting and some of the action scenes were amazing. But I really hate what they did to Historia in season 3... The final season has been excellent so far and I can't wait for the big scene in the next episode.

Awards given: Best OP (all the Linked Horizon ones)

Ouran High School Host Club

Haruhi continues to be one of the best girls in the anime and manga industry ever with her confident and no-nonsense attitude, and Tamaki's oblivious and overflowing friendliness makes for a great counterpart to her. And the opening theme is so darn catchy.

Awards given: Best Girl (Haruhi)

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Finally managed to watch this. I love the iconic character designs and all the chaotic energy. Kamina for best bro. I've never cared for mecha, the girls were nice but the writing around them sucked and the second half wasn't as strong as the first one, but still a good package overall.

Awards given: Best ED (don't care for the song that much but Simon looks somehow really cool in the second ending)

Haibane Renmei

Another one that had been on the watch list for years. A lovely quiet and contemplative show. Visuals were rather dull though but maybe it's better for a show like this that the characters didn't have bubblegum pink hair.

Digimon Adventure 2020

This started promising but has since lost steam. I really like how different the story is from the original Digimon Adventure, and compared to Precure it's super nice how not every episode has the exact same structure, and the cast has different roles and regularly gets split up instead of shoehorning everyone into every conflict. But on the other hand the characters feel way more samey and flat, and the original "kids want to return to their home from the Digital World" plot was a lot more personal than the current one about global crises and prophecy jargon. And some of the action scenes last way too long.

Awards given: Worst side boy (Agumon and his evolutions, it is of course expected that he'd get a lot of screen time but I'm so over how much he's constantly pushed in your face in the franchise)

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka?

This wasn't afwul but still left me kind of cold. I think the character designs were a problem here, in general I'm used to brightly coloured anime characters but this was trying to be a very serious story about child soldiers who know they're going to die young. But when they were colour-coded and always wore the same clothes (and mostly had pretty generic animu girl personalities) they felt so artificial which made it harder to get into the drama. Nice OP song.

Yashahime

Inuyasha was my first show after really getting into anime so I was super hyped for any kind of new content. So far this has unfortunately been rather dull since I'm not particularly interested in either of Sesshoumaru's daughters, and the way the show treats the absence of the old cast is annoying. Just either show them or make it clear we're not supposed to care about them, now it's just annoying how their disappearance is treated as a mystery but the three heroines know barely anything about their heritage and don't even seem interested in learning either. But I'll watch this to the end for Moroha.

Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angels, Twin Angel Break, Pretear, Happy Seven, Healin' Good Precure

Watched a lot of magical girl stuff this year too, these being shows that play the tropes straight. The Twin Angel seasons had different flaws but were otherwise watchable aside from the awful Twin Angel Break heroine. Pretear had surprisingly nice character writing and I feel I would really have liked this if I saw it at an earlier part of my anime hobby experience but now it doesn't feel so special any more. Healin' Good Precure has been rather dull.

I also watched a bunch of Precure movies, out of which only the Star Twinkle Precure one was actually good, and the Spring Carnival crossover movie was also good in an absurd way, while the rest ranged from awful to somewhat decent.

Awards given: Worst girl (Meguru - Twin Angel Break), Biggest WTF (Happy Seven suddenly going from monster of the week shenaningans to alien mass destruction weapons)

Concrete Revolutio, Myriad Colors Phantom World, Re:Creators

Also some anime where the magical girl was a side character. Concrete Revolutio was an unpleasant mess with nice visuals, Myriad Colors was a pretty boring otaku high school harem thing and the magical girl episode was also rather bland, and Re:Creators had a lot of potential with the "anime characters come to our world" setting but the result was somewhat uneven. Re:Creators had the best magical girl out of these three.

Awards given: Worst non-romantic relationship, Worst side girl (Setsuna from Re:creators, with the main boy) not really an awful character on her own, but the writing around her was pretty bad, let's also give Worst Boy for the said main boy

Nausicaa

I watched the first half of the movie over a decade ago and didn't manage to finish until now. After seeing so many other Ghibli movies this didn't do much for me, but the animation and nature were still beautiful.

Western:

Most Popular Girls in School

The newer seasons didn't reach the heights of the earlier ones but there's still something entertaining about a very raunchy Barbie doll stop motion show. Also pairs well with the Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse for a fun but more child friendly Barbie experience.

Frozen 2

I'm wondering if these really are the only Western piece of media I consumed this year? I certainly didn't go to movies after March. Anyway, like the previous film I had major problems with the plot and characters (I don't think Elsa's story was set up properly, Kristoff's sub-plot feels like an afterthought when he doesn't factor to Anna's sub-plot at all, Olaf is annoying, too much Lore) but ultimately I still had a good time. I like the costume design, the idea for Elsa's arc is fine, the songs are great and there were plenty of good scenes too, and the lullaby was beautiful. I'd say that like the original Frozen this was patched together from perfectly serviceable pieces that didn't quite work combined.

Awards given: Worst romance (not the pairing itself but the way Kristoff x Anna was written)

Games:

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

Early this year I just decided not to open this app for the daily money-grubbing grind and haven't touched it since. I'm free!

Animal Crossing New Horizons

However the daily grind continues here! It's been way more enjoyable, primarily due to lacking the microtransactions/limited time item angle and also for being so much more customisable. And the nature is so pretty... But I've reached a point where even this has started to feel kind of stale.

Super Mario Odyssey

My first Mario game since Super Mario World so of course I'm blown away by everything. I like how colourful and welcoming the worlds were, Cappy was a surprisingly enjoyable sidekick/mascot and also the game was easy enough and had a simple linear plot so it was far easier to approach than Zelda BotW which is still on hold.

Plans for 2021

Actually play Zelda BotW

Maybe finally Evangelion?

Finally finish the mostly disappointing Digimon Adventure tri

Various magical girl sequels and remakes

[sir-phineas-lost]

My thoughts on Beastars

Wow. I went in expecting a more melodramatic version of Zootopia and ended up with something intense, deep and extremely horny. Beware of spoilers.

1) Man that opening just draws you in like a black hole doesn’t it?

2) Doesn’t seem to go anywhere though. This prissy private school sure is chill about the fact that one of its students was murdered on campus.

3) Ah, Legosi is instantly relatable by virtue of being a total sweetheart who happens to suffer from resting-serial-killer-face.

4) Oh boy, I’m guessing I shouldn’t browse the Haru-tag at work. Honestly though it is refreshing to see a female character who isn’t judged for sleeping around, by the narrative that is. The way other characters treat her is...uncomfortably real.

5) Luis is fascinating to watch because it is immediately clear why everyone at school adores him and that he isn’t just the furry-equivalent to one of those rich bishounen boys who are jerks but get away with it that you see in other school-drama anime, but at the same time he is barely keeping himself from stabbing everyone around him in a blind rage and it makes all of his interactions incredibly toxic. He reminds me of Griffith from Berserk

6) My biggest complaint is that there is a theme of marginalization here that doesn’t quite work because they can’t seem to decide what the power-dynamic between carnivores and herbivores is. Are carnivores ostracized by the herbivore majority who fears them or are herbivores living in a society where carnivores who are born much stronger and more dangerous than them can literally chew them up and get away with it? It’s another one of those cases where it seems like they want to be nuanced and examine something from both sides but ultimately just end up kinda wishy-washy about it. As an allegory for social-issues it fails completely.

7) I can’t fault the show too much though because it is more interested in examining what this means for our three leads on a personal level and their struggles between their own desires and their inborn natures. Legosi was born with a lot of natural strength and power but does his best to be as harmless as possible. Not only does he repress his predatory instincts he is also keenly aware of how big and strong he is even compared to other predators and does his best to avoid harming anyone. This puts him into conflict with Luis who was born with nothing and at the complete mercy of more powerful people, so he struggles to obtain a lot of social power and gets pissed with Legosi who has power but won’t use it. The thing that pushes him further and further towards a dark path is how often he is reminded of just how weak he is physically compared to carnivores. And Haru has grown up knowing that as a very smol and weak rabbit she is likely to be the target of predators, both real and metaphorical, so she tries to live her life as if every day could be her last and gets treated alternately as a sex-toy or as a pariah by those around her. And when she finds a relationship with someone who genuinely sees her for who she is she physically can’t get intimate with him because her inborn nature won’t let her.

8) Speaking of which: OH COME ON! The main ship of this show has awkward virgin boy/sexually confident girl dynamic, genuine openness about their feelings after minimal dancing around the issue, a major height difference AND a monster-fucker dynamic where the guy kinda wants to rip the girl apart with his teeth while screwing her. This ship was engineered in a lab somewhere to appeal to me, specifically.

9) The CG animation in this is amazing. It is really fluid and clean in a way that makes the action-scenes pop and the faces in every dramatic conversation are really expressive. It also experiments with different styles of animation to convey different tones. If there is a competition for best anime-opening everyone else can just go home already. You can’t beat stop-motion puppet animation with both adorable and creepy imagery.

10) I love how the ending-credits scene is basically “Oh right this was supposed to be a murder-mystery wasn’t it?”.

[kayanne369]

Original characters for the book.

One thing to bring up that is important to understand about this world before I go further is how magic actually works in relation to people. Magic is a force of nature. With practice and patience, anyone can really learn to use amateur spells and incantations. However, every so often there is a sudden and unpredictable surge of magical energy that sweeps across the world. It causes no harm, but does have a strange effect on very young children that are exposed to it in that their natural magical abilities are great increased. Within a few days of being exposed, they start to show signs of magical awareness far beyond their years. Another very strange side effect is that a few weeks or even days, after their exposure, they will call a familiar to them. Not a lot of research has been done as to why this is, as many children do not actually recall doing so, so it’s is surmised that the surge or magic, or the Tendon Wave as it is called within the magic community is in fact primarily responsible for this. A familiar can be basically anything, from animals to fea creatures to monsters and there are a hellava lotta campfire stories about them.

 This is where the characters come in.

 There are six primary characters but the story for the most part follows two, a man and his daughter. Tracy is a rough talking, but ultimately very protective and caring individual from Scotland who’s life is somewhat turned around when he meets a young women by the name of Nell. Though it is primarily Tracy’s story we’re following, Nell the inciting incident that pushes the plot forward. Nell is a bubbly, energetic, motherly and somewhat dim-witted cockney wench with a passion for all things magic related. She grew up on the east side of London. He parents died when she was very young and was primarily raised by her grandmother who, like her, was very well versed in the ways of magic and raised her child from an early age to be the same. She even managed to calculate the likelihood of when the next wave of was going to be and purposefully exposed Nell to it. It back fired slightly when the next week a large bear appeared at the door, but after a few frantic minutes of screaming and throwing fire bolts, the bear shrank down to the size of a mouse and jumped into the young Nell’s hands, to which her grandmother rationalised that the bear was likely a creature of magic. They grew up together and were relatively happy. Nell’s magical abilities grew stronger and stronger and she became an expert at healing magic. One day, her grandmother showed the young Nell a book that her father had given her as a young woman that was filled with illustrations and stories of magic and spells a all manner of strange and wonderous creatures. She told Nell that she and her father had been researchers and intended to create the first ever full encyclopaedia of magic. This caught the young witch’s imagination a and she promised that she would complete the book. When her grandmother died, she sold the house that had been left to her and decided to set out with her bear friend and complete the book. It’s around two weeks after this event that she runs into Tracy. Her familiar is actually a kind of changling. He is locked in the form of a bear, but is able to change his size to whatever he wishes. They haven’t done much experimenting on how big or small he is actually able to get. He cannot talk, but is sapient and is honestly around 100 years old. She tends to ride on his back when they’re away from civilisation.

 Tracy comes from a tiny village where he used to work as a blacksmith with his father. When he was 16, he was chopping wood in the forest when he heard a small cry. He followed the cry and found a small creature, very much like a cat but with longer limbs and a strangely human shaped head. Realising that the creature was magical in nature, he thought it best to leave it to its fate, but found himself unable to leave such pitiful a creature to perish alone, and brought it back home with him. He kept the creature secret in his room, noting how it’s shape would repeatedly shift between more feline in nature then back to humanoid. Not knowing what this creature could be, he decided that he would volunteer to head into the city next time his father needed supplies, and attempt to find a book or expert that could tell him what it was. However, before he could depart, his father found the tiny creature while searching for something in his room. They two got into a huge fight, primarily about Tracy keeping secrets, during which the creature fell to the ground. Tracy made a grab for it, but before he could, the creature twisted its body around and transformed into a tiny brown kitten that landed on its feet and scampered under the bed. Realising that the creature was likely connected to his son in some way, Tracy’s father sent him away, partly for his own safety as he knew that if the villagers found out, they’d likely attack the little creature. So he left and has pretty much spend the last 9 years of his life raising the little creature who he named Disarray, or just Disty for short.

He honestly doesn’t have much of a plan for what he’s doing and has lived his whole life as a drifter, traveling from place to place, earning coin where he could, stealing when he had to, and basically doing all he could to make sure his adopted daughter was safe and well fed. The two have built a strong bond over time where he genuinely does view her as his own child, or at the very least a very close younger sister. Disty did over time grow more humanoid, though she is still not entirely able to control her transformation abilities as she has no-one to teach her. She is capable of human speech, though it often comes out rather nasaly, much like a cat’s meow. She genuinely hates it and is always trying to become more human every day. She is rather clumsy as her feet never really did fully transform and it’s very difficult to run upright. She is, however, very fast and agile when on all fours and has developed a sharp wit and even sharper tongue over her short 9 years.

 Akron, or Aki as he’s normally called, is a good few years younger than the rest. Where Treacy and Nell are around their mid 20s when the story takes place, where Aki is only 19, soon to be 20 and only met his familiar for the first time a few years ago. The son of a lord, he’s a member of a very old and very wealthy family that holds a very high standing in society. He grew up in a manner house, surrounded by servants, many of whom were not treated particularly well and never having to work for anything. Though not spoiled exactly, he was and still is a very sheltered individual and has little to no working knowledge about how the outside world works. He is, however a very quick learner and has a surprisingly good work ethic as well as an almost innate need to protect people. Yuhin, his familiar, was discovered in a humanoid form, lurking around the outskirts of the estate and brought inside to be held until the police arrive. Upon seeing each other, Yuhin and Aki developed an almost instantaneous connection with each other and Aki practically pleaded that the creature be set free. After a brief conversation, the head of the house agreed to not inform the authorities on the condition that the creature become a servant within the household. Aki protested, but Yuhin agreed without much of a second thought. The arrangement was fine for a few years, but eventually, Yuhin’s true form was discovered by one of the servants who proceeded to scream the place down and for fear of what he could do, Yuhin was locked away in the cellar to await the authorities. Panicking, and filled with guilt and fear for his friend, Aki basically ordered the servant guarding the cellar at knifepoint to let him out. He did, and they both ran off into the night with no words spoken to anyone. Aki’s a somewhat pessimistic person and has a lot of self doubt. He is quite good at elemental magic.

Yuhin is honestly one of my favourite characters to write for as at his core, he’s a slimy, smarmy bastard with the that kinda gives the impression that he’s trying to sell you something that will break in three days. He’s manipulative, cunning, apathetic and a literal monster. His species is a very violent one, resembling demons, with horns on their heads, wings on their backs, ashy, red skin, sharp talons and teeth and a very thin prehensile tail. They’re primarily carnivores and humans are generally their prey. So he doesn’t really hold much of a grudge against the family that tried to lock him up. He finds his feelings for Aki relatively confusing. At first, he told himself that he was simply trying to trick the boy so that he could kill and feed on him later, however this went right out of the window a few hours after he arrived when Aki fell asleep at his writing desk and Yuhin felt nothing but the desire to lay him on a more comfortable surface. Yuhin is very good at transformation magic and turn himself into a human if he wishes. Yuhin is aware what the Tendon wave is, but never thought that it could affect sapient creatures.

[avanneman]

Jurassic Park V—Not Bad!

I’ve already lurched and lumbered my way through the first four Jurassic Parks, so there’s no reason to keep quiet about No. 5, aka Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom—which I would rate as actually the third best in the franchise.

My rankings are quite idiosyncratic, because I give first place to the generally unloved Jurassic Park III, which can be described with some accuracy as “The Awful Truth Meets Dinosaurs”, but since I love The Awful Truth and I love dinosaurs, where’s the problem?1 Jurassic Park III was a slimmed down version of the first two films, less weighted down with stars and “meta” speculation about God and man and dinosaurs and that’s why it worked for me.

I’d rank the original Jurassic Park second to JP III. The CGI and the life-size dinosaur animatronic models of JP I came as a revelation, and, despite too much talk, and too many ideas, Spielberg’s original dino versus human setpieces were undeniably brilliant. JP II I found to be a real clunker, simply rehashing everything that had been done better the first time around. JPIV was marginally better, but only marginally.2

JP V shines for having the guts to realize that it’s time to take the dinos off Isla Nublar. That island bit has been done to death, amirite? The film spends about 45 minutes getting the leads—Chris Pratt as dino-“handler” Owen Grady and Brice Dallas Howard as reformed corporate tight-ass turned nature lover Claire Dearing—back on the island to save the dinos because the whole place is going to blow, thanks to a monster volcano that sort of materialized out of nowhere. Despite a kick-ass fight between a horned dinosaur (not a Triceratops, which is the only one I can recognize) and a carnivore (maybe an Allosaur), a lot of the action here, particularly the almost ever-present lava flows, comes uncomfortably close to B-movie production levels. Lava is treated like some sort of obnoxious goo that’s really gross if it gets on you. Real lava is at least 1000° F, and if it’s flowing near you you’re not toast, you’re ashes.3

As you might expect from these films—JP III excepted, which is one reason why I like it so much—we discover that there are evil, corporate interests at work behind the scenes, who want the dinos for evil, corporate things, and our heroes, who’ve been joined by a couple of other virtuous dino-lovers, have been outhustled, outwitted, and outgunned, and the dinos are not being shipped off to another dino Eden but rather to an enormous chateau that appears to be located somewhere in the Rockies—the gatekeeper’s cottage at the entrance of Steven Spielberg’s Colorado getaway, perhaps. As the camera follows the train of trailer trucks bearing the dinos away to this (no doubt evil) mountain lair, a hilarious example of overwrought product placement occurs: as the last truck enters the parking lot, the camera veers to the left to give a quick glimpse of the polished fanny of a Rolls-Royce! A Rolls! Wow, these people are rich!

Yeah, I forgot to tell you the exact setup of this evil mountain lair. It’s got this old dying rich guy who I guess owns the place, and this evil other guy, and a dried-up, mysterious governess type, and this poor little rich girl chick, sort of like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with dinosaurs! Sounds strange, I know, but it pretty much works. Naturally, a bunch of rich evil capitalist types show up for a dino auction, and a satisfying number of them get eaten, though I personally would have liked to see a few more end up as dino chow, and there’s also a big battle between a “good” velociraptor—she shows “compassion”, Owen tells us4—and a bad, souped up dinosaur, sort of a velociraptor on evil steroids. Yeah, it is “unusual” to see all this taking place amidst black walnut wainscoting and carved ceilings, but, as I’ve said before, Americans like to look at wood and, as I’ve also said before, it works. As a final kicker, we learn that the little girl isn’t literally anyone’s daughter—she’s the clone of her dead mother, which would make her her mom’s twin. Being a clone herself, she decides that other clones have the right to live as well, and she releases the dinosaurs, though how they’re going to live in Colorado—well, I guess they’ll have to work that out for themselves.

I get the feeling that there was more backstory for the clone girl (Isabella Sermon as “Maisie Lockwood”5) that got cut out, reasonably enough, to make room for the dinos. There’s also a (highly dispensable) prologue and postlogue of sorts in the form of “congressional testimony” delivered by entirely too full of himself for my tastes Jeff Goldblum, returning as chaotologist Ian Malcolm6 to ruminate aimlessly on “man” (or I guess “humans”) and “Nature”, invariably making us look like the bad guys! Thanks for nothing, Jeff!

Afterwords Is there room for a Jurassic Park VI? Why not? It’s not like Hollywood is going to run out of evil capitalists any time soon!

Because there’s nothing like wrasslin’ and hasslin’ a Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus to bring a divorced couple (William H. Macy and Téa Leoni) back together. ↩︎

If you’re interested, I go into all this in excruciating detail in the piece linked in my first paragraph. ↩︎

At one point, Owen appears to get some lava on his shoe, as though it were hot tar. ↩︎

Sorry, but the notion that a reptile can show compassion is almost as hazardous to your health as the notion that getting lava on your shoe is merely an inconvenience. ↩︎

A rich girl named “Maisie”? Perhaps a clever screenwriter was thinking of Henry James’ classic exercise in POV, “What Maisie Knew”. ↩︎

Absolutely nothing Dr. Malcolm ever says has the least bit to do with chaos “theory”. ↩︎