Roboposting 5.3.

[yvannairie]

IDK man. I do have a lot of fun watching Earthspark and I think it has a lot of heart and sincerity in it that I find refreshing after a descent into cynicism for the franchise, but it does have a very "lost and found in the edit" feeling.

I think the artistry on display is very good. Everyone has very high appeal, characters move and emote in a way that has clear stylistic intentions, and I think that ends up elevating scripts that really feel... just... one draft away from perfection. It always feels like the narrative had punches it wanted to land, and the consequences mostly arrive as I would expect them to, creating a satisfying viewing experience in the moment, but the show is also very shameless about moving things into position, and lacking in a sense of continuity as a result of that.

I think the cast is just way too big this early on. We're already seeing Mo, Robbie and their folks losing focus as the story becomes more about the Terrans teaching and playing off of each other, and Hashtag is pretty much the only one of the triplets where her personality is fully contextualised by her surroundings, with Jawbreaker and Nightshade taking on significant backseat roles and thus having constraints on their development as characters (especially Jawbreaker. I am very sad about that, I was so excited for him, and my excitement hasn't lessened because I feel like he's an excellent example of an autistic character written with compassion and attention to detail). Even Thrash is getting let off the spotlight more, which diminishes the group dynamic as a whole.

There's just not a lot of things building organically on each other, at least in this second batch. I think the first batch was much better about this, and now when the tone is better established, it's just a shame that they're not capitalising on that as much. Events constantly feel like they're just a hair out of order, there's just a little bit too much going on, and that's because they have less than ten episodes per season to get their affairs in order for the big climax. And it results in the intermediate episodes feeling disconnected from the plot except for the lore details, which all go unremarked because the plot isn't about GHOST, it's about the Maltos.