Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Season 1 Thoughts

 I didn't call this a review on purpose, as I won't be touching on many things that I would in an actual review. So more just thoughts on the first season of the show, which I finished yesterday. 

First of all, one reason I avoided it for so long is that the 3D CGI animation thing often bothers me. It's not something I can really explain fully. It doesn't always. Shrek movies are fine. Incredibles? Great! But things that I originally saw in live action (like Star Wars) or traditional 2D animation (like Mickey Mouse cartoons) when translated to 3D CGI are just... hard to get into. For the first case, it could be uncanny valley reaction. But for the second, I don't know. I'm just becoming an old fuddy-duddy, I guess, as I approach my late 40's. 

As I watched this first season, some episodes bothered me more than others, but the more I watched, the more used to it I got. 

As for the show itself, it's great for fleshing out the Star Wars galaxy. Very useful to me as I plan the next adventure for my d6 Star Wars game. It's giving me some ideas for sure. There are some odd things about the show, though, and I don't mean that it's too heavily focused on Anakin and Obi-Wan always being in the most important actions. The first episode (maybe the pilot?) made it seem like this was going to be an anthology style show, jumping around the galaxy showing us different Jedi or other important characters in different systems. But only a few episodes were like that. Pretty much it's the Obi & Anni show. OK, I can live with that. 

Next, man, the Jedi and Clone army are ridiculously horrible at war. The first multi-episode arc is about the Separatists' "secret weapon" which is just a big ion cannon. And no one in the Republic stops to think, "Hey, we're fighting droids, maybe we should build one of those! Or at least issue ion rifles to our clones instead of traditional blasters!" Sure, we can hand-wave that way as Palpatine purposefully using substandard troops to play both sides off the other and make the war last longer, but no one thinks of that? They have "droid popper" ion grenades, so why not more weapons that can take out their enemies more easily? 

The way the episodes begin is interesting, too. Since there are some stand-alone episodes and some small arcs, and they all begin with a recap, it can get confusing at times. Sometimes it's just setting up a new story (single ep or arc) and sometimes it's recapping the previous events in the arc. And I often went back to check the episode before the one I was watching to see if I had skipped one by mistake when it was a stand-alone or new arc. I was watching these during my lunch breaks and free afternoon time the past few weeks, so it could be easy to forget which episodes I'd watched already. I like that they do the intros, setting up each episode, as it allows for more casual viewing, even of the episodes that make up a minor arc. 

Finally, it's nice to see some of these characters I've heard/read about for years. Especially, I got my son a LEGO Star Wars sticker book years ago, and it has all kinds of characters I'd never heard of before that, like Kad Bane and Assaj Ventress. 

I will start in on Season 2 during my lunch break today.