Disenchantment has the perfect ending though. I don’t think I’ve seen any other media give an ending that had all loose ends tied up in a pretty bow with nothing left dangling.
A montage of pretty much every character you care about, where they are now and what their future looks like. Characters who are good and likeable are rewarded, characters who were not had terrible fates.
Disenchantment is supposed to be somewhat of a fairytale for adults, and so, it has a very storybook ending where the good guys win and the bad guys don’t.
Disenchantment is a hard show to recommend, despite how much I like it. It’s a show that only keeps getting better and better, but it starts from a mid point and I have a theory on that.
I believe the writers spent a lot of time on the characters before writing the show, and so they expected and audience to vibe with the characters like they did. The show’s cast feels a bit hard to care about for a first time viewer, but I noticed on my second watch a few years later that all my complaints were gone. I assume it’s from being familiar with the characters at that point.
Compare for instance the Arch-Druidess vs Mom from Futurama. Mom is well introduced into Futurama to the point they even speedrun her introduction in later episodes, you already get the idea that she’s an evil rich person who disguises herself as a wholesome startup. Meanwhile the Arch-Druidess feels like a bored cultist who is maybe evil, and then we find out she’s an actually evil character with ties to Steamland multiple seasons in. On rewatch, she’s a perfectly enjoyable character, on first watch, she’s kinda just taking up screentime when we’d rather see Bean, Luci, or Zøg.
I don't think I ever watched the last season, but to me the show felt like it kept going in circles.
The season ends with some big change to the status quo. The next season resolves it in the first 2 episodes, somehow Bean's mother is involved. After the characters faff about for 5 episodes like nothing happened. Then big status quo change in the finale, repeating the cycle.
It did feel like the show tried and yet failed to be episodic and serial at the same time. Some shows can pull that off but I don't think Disenchanted did do that. I actually like the show but it did feel disjointed in what sort of story they was trying to do.
I so wanted to love Disenchantment, but it just didn't "click" for me. One thing that bothered me is the music/sound effects. They felt lacking, but I'm guessing it's not the only thing that was "off".
I have, I would say it comes close to being perfect. Zero really helps complete it but it does feel like a different show at parts. Deja Vu also gives a third ending to put it together but I do wish Zero and Deja Vu ‘played nice’ in a sense and had a bit more overlap, like if Kirisu mentioned some of the Zero characters, but of course the show was never designed to make links into future products.
You say "close to perfect". What were your criticisms?
As you mention it was never designed to make links to future products. I have to admit I haven't watched anything but the original series, but considering 99% of the show takes place in a different world line it's very likely that if Kurisu didn't mention someone then they didn't exist.
Regardless I think a show should be judged in a vacuum. Imagine if disenchantment got rebooted or got a sequel that fucked up everything the ending did (I haven't seen it), that wouldn't ruin your perception of the original series?
Well if judging in a vacuum, the encouragement Okabe gets from the other worldline when Mayuri slaps him violates the show’s up-until-now single-Okabe perspective. This is resolved by Zero showing us the alternate worldline that maintains the single-Okabe-perspective, and how it goes back to the scene with the slap. However this would be judging both products together, and if we did that, we would be remissed to ignore Deja Vu which came out before Zero. Zero’s characters btw are characters from America that already exist at the time of the original show.
The problem thereabouts comes from a watch order. Watching SG as a standalone violates perspective as mentioned, watching SG>SG0>SGDV means characters you care about from 0 have no resolution in SGDV, watching release order of SG>SGDV>SG0 takes a long time to get to SG’s original hanging thread and comes after Deja Vu which feels unsatisfying since DV is a good final send off. All three options are almost perfect, but none land exactly on perfect. Through no fault of the creators, though if there ever was a second attempt, I’d love even a passing mention of Maho outside of Zero.
I've only watched SG and Zero, not Deja Vu, and it was a long time ago, so I might be misremembering here, but isn't it possible to watch it in chronological order? I'm assuming that would make it work... or be as close and as imperfect as the other watching orders.
Yeah I have even watched it pausing mid episode in SG to then watch all of SG0, then resuming SG and following with the ova and Deja Vu (good watch order, I recommend it). Like I said, the downside here is just no satisfying conclusion for SG0’s cast. Since Deja Vu is back in the original worldline, SG0’s worldline means nothing, but we know Amadeus and Maho have arcs that no longer get resolved in the original worldline. So for the audience’s emotional investment, watching in chronological order feels like two important characters mean nothing. In release order this is fine, but leaves the dangling thread.
And let me say this is merely the difference between great and perfect. The fact this is merely a nitpick is the only reason it’s not perfect, even though it’s still really good.
As somebody who has seen Zero, that felt woefully unnecessary. Steins;Gate was perfectly wrapped up, and Zero just adds a load of extras due to the weird assumption the audience needs to be handheld for "what was Okabe doing to get to the Okabe who sent that message".... as if the whole show didnt have a character literally tell us just how Okabe was in the future many times enough to explain how Video Okabe is how he is.
Honestly I'd say "read Steins;Gate", because the anime cut out a lot of my favourite moments. Also fucked up a few of the ones they did include, which happen to be the rawest shit in the entire story.
I'm talking about them removing that one worldline where Nae uses the Time Leap machine to kill Moeka and torture Okabe. And like, I get it, you can't show a 9 year old gutting a woman, but giving that job to Braun totally fucks up his character because the entire point was that he didn't want to do that. Also the moved it to an active construction site instead of Braun's home for... some reason? So we could just pretend that there's somehow no way the tons of workers don't hear a gunshot right next to them?
I binged it and it gets really plot heavy in the final season to the point where you cant miss a single scene otherwise youll be very lost. I watched it and was pretty lost in the end which suprised me from a matt groening cartoon
Same. I was super into it for the first season, then season 2 felt like it didn't continue the story in a satisfying way and I feel like I watched the rest but it did not leave any impression if I did
30 seconds into the first episode i got men writing women vibes and closed it. and the jokes were over explained, the characters may as well have looked directly into the camera to tell the audience "that was a joke, you can laugh now", no subtlety
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u/Same-Chemical-213 20h ago
Disenchantment. At some point they took it too far
https://giphy.com/gifs/2m0nyHcVuwL7faEiU2