It's time for Austin, Natalie, Patrick, and Rob to return to the secret origins of Waypoints: a chance to talk about animated TV shows. This week finds the gang catching up on The Dragon Prince at great length, and wrestling with some of their misgiving's about the morality the show is beginning to articulate, and the plot arcs that are unfolding at a breakneck pace. But first, they return to Rooster Teeth's GenLOCK, to discuss the end of its first season, and what the show has revealed itself to be about. Are they just cool robots, or something more?
Iâm really glad they revisited gen:LOCK! I really enjoyed that show a whole lot but yeah, I totally agree with all their criticism about how there was just barely any work done to flesh out or explain the world and the factions. I feel like the only reason I knew that The Union is actually evil is because thereâs one episode description that says something along the lines of âtheyâre fascists and theyâre invading/taking over everything!â
And I just wanna say I really love Val. Theyâre such a great character and as someone who is nonbinary itâs fantastic to see some actually really well done representation. Iâve rewatched the scene from episode 4 of them in the VR internet talking about it probably five or six times and I might have teared up once or twice because gosh itâs just so good.
Also I just got the part of the Dragon Prince discussion where theyâre talking about whose bedroom the mirror is in and Cadoâs hysterical laughter in the background is giving me life. I love Waypoint.
They do explain why the Union invaded at one point. When the Doctor and the lady general are talking she mentions that the Union found out he was building new more powerful mechs and thats why they invaded.
I want to watch GenLOCK just like I want to watch Doom Patrol but have no desire to sign up for another streaming service just for 1 series. Iâd actually be more likely to sign up for VRV if their Firestick App worked at all.
My 7 year old keeps asking if the new episodes of Dragon Prince are out and thatâs pretty cool.
With the Dragon Prince we have Callum who wants to be powerful and special amongst humans and we have Ez who is actually and naturally powerful and special amongst humans and I am wondering if the show is going to eventually have an antagonism between them.
Given that the brothers are physically split up at the end of the season, I have to imagine we will see some emotional distance and conflict develop between them. Will it get to a point like the previous King and Viren, I donât know, but the relationship between Callum and Ezran has been a little too smooth so far.
Went back to the ether in ep 4 of gen:LOCK to see Julians sister and you can actually hear her saying his name. Itâs the shot of her up close she says âJulianâ and then the wide shot of her looking at his back. Followed immediately by me sobbing. This is the proof I needed to not trust that shady ass rich guy.
I really enjoyed gen:LOCK for the character writing and performances but I definitely agree with the Waypoint crew that it was poorer for the lack of worldbuilding and faction development, particularly for the Union. Reading a bit on the wiki there is very clearly ideology and politics laid out for the factions (and the show as a whole) and itâs a bit disappointing we donât really get that conveyed through anything besides aesthetic and allusion.
Though I think their canonically calling the Polity-Union conflict the âGlobal Culture Warâ might be both a bit on the nose and extremely
In Last Airbender there is an abruptness to how characters develop aspects of their character. In particular when someone develops their bending.
It is weird because the transition from seeing the thing to doing the thing is seamless for the protagonists in the show and this would be extremely notable irl. But it is never acknowledged that the protagonists never have internalise new skills on screen.
And I cannot parse what it means.
So when Callum, and to a lesser extent Ezran, develop their powers in just this way I am not sure I read that to mean theyâre even more special. Because I donât understand if I supposed to suspend disbelief.
Another thing Iâve thought about a little bit is that Aavaros (who narrates the prologue in episode 1 season 1 apparently???) has at least one arcanum he wasnât born with as a startouch elf. He had to learn the primal arcanum somehow.
So where does the idea that arcanum cannot be learned come from? People in the world, at least Raylas master and the Dragon King were aware of Aavaros. So certainly some people in the world know arcanum can be gained and they are not spreading that around.
So like, what Callum did is special in that his success is the confluence of potential, training, and most importantly trying at all. Compared to someone like Claudia, who has training in using the primal arcanum, maybe potential to learn it, but would never try, because she knows it is impossible.
That would be a pleasing way to not meet the expectation Callum has got special potential to gain every arcanum.
thoughts on soren and claudia? I get the âwant to make dad happy and proudâ bit but soren, my guy,you straight up tried to murder a child and make it look like an accident his goofiness + his actions is a real tonal combo that doesnât quite work for me
Iâve been looking forward to hearing Rob talk about LOGH: Die Neue These for a while now. My memory of the original is pretty bad, but I was really put off by this new one from the very start with them deciding to have the first episode be all Reinhard and the second all Yang, covering the same timeframe. The original was somewhere around 100 episodes long and it felt like this one was considerably slower in a way that actually detracts from the story.
CG spaceships arenât as bad as all CG mecha, at least.
[image: two quote posters of in front of a flower. One says âMaybe we should be more skeptical of wasps in general. Austin Walker, Editor-in-Chief at Waypoint.â The other says âWasps attack. Are wasps pollinating? I donât think so. Iâm not sure. Donât ask me. I really donât know the answer to this question. Someone let me know. Maybe a bug scientist. Natalie Watson, Livestream Producer at Waypoint.â]
With regards to Robâs question of why and how anime airing around the 80s and 90s often had clearly higher production values than ones created today, there was an ANN Answerman column recently hitting on this exact topic.
Anime was one of those dumb investments in the '80s. Toy companies launched new lines of toys with break-neck speed, each one with an accompanying anime theyâd sponsor â the content of the show almost didnât matter. (âYou want to make a dark, dystopian series with heavy environmentalist themes? Sure, just show our robots a lot!â) Giant feature films, like the aforementioned Honneamise, or Akira, got greenlit without any real idea how theyâd make their money back. (And many of them didnât.) Keep in mind, this was the era when almost nobody outside of Japan knew or cared about this stuff.
The use of âFourth Turningâ is a reference - and Gray Haddock has confirmed this in interviews - to Strauss-Howe Generational Theory (wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StraussâHowe_generational_theory ). He hasnât expanded on the Unionâs beliefs much, but the gist of the theory is that human generations follow cycles with prevailing views and you can best understand future events through understanding past cycles/generations (and where you are in the current cycle). The cycles follow âHighs,â âAwakenings,â âUnravelings,â and âCrisesâ - each of which (in that order) is a numbered âTurning,â from first through fourth.
Again, summarising that theory, the Fourth Turning/Crisis part of the cycle is believed to be the time in generational cycles when old institutions and ways of life are destroyed and rebuilt, usually around perceived existential threats.
Rooster Teeth has kind of generally said this is a conflict between individuality/freedom/representation and monoculture/authoritarianism.
The metaphorical removal of agency/identity present in the Unionâs presentation is also significant. For example, the obscuring masks/helmets of Union soldiers vs. the Polityâs open face helmets, the spider tanks lacking the obvious cockpits of the Polityâs striders, the implied oppression represented by e.g. Val/entinaâs staunch hatred of the Union given her identity, etc.
With those points in mind, and the Union being explicitly âThe Union of the Fourth Turning Republicsâ, a bit of reading between the lines can lead to a few things. First, since the Polity seems to have controlled most of the world before the war kicked off, we can probably presume that the multicultural, generally accepting and diverse cast weâve seen is intended to be representative of the Polityâs institutions and approaches to the world. Second, with the Union explicitly identifying with âthe Fourth Turning,â Crisis, and actively working to destroy the Polity and its institutions, itâs safe to say they oppose those values (or at least, have a very different take on them). Again, a couple of Val/entina lines hint that non-binary and possibly LGBT people in general are not accepted in the Union (but donât say it explicitly).
The lack of identity being presented by Union soldiers and gear - and even, in a sense, the suggestion in the final episode that there are many more copies of Nemesis-Chase - also contributes here. One read of this is that itâs a critique of collectivism/communism or something else similar. But another, more interesting one would be that itâs a critique of assimilationist or supremacist ideologies in society. Gray Haddock has explicitly said that the show comes from his desire to:
I try to tell stories that reflects the natural diversity I see everywhere. To hold a mirror to that is becoming distasteful in aspects of western culture, and Iâm not happy about that. gen:LOCK has to be a fun show to watch, if you go too soap boxy you risk not being able to connect with an audience. But I want to tell stories through example. Thatâs what gen:LOCK allows me to do.
Given that thatâs where the creator is coming from⌠the Union as an authoritarian, supremacist, âWesternâ force that wants to strip away individuality and difference seems like the angle theyâre going for?
All that said: I completely agree with the podcastâs critique that this should be in the text of the show. And I really hope it comes out in Season 2 and later seasons if we get more. But as a fan, thatâs what Iâve been able to piece together about the setting.
The Dragon Prince criticism is really strong - I canât speak as much to genLock because I only watched the first episode and did not enjoy it. Iâm hopeful the season in Xadia will make more emotional sense! I appreciate that in Season 2 they stepped away from my original criticism that it was a little like watching a Hieron-inspired show where every character was also Sokka from The Last Airbender.
I think the fantasy theyâve set up is genuinely interesting. Unfortunately, I think in Callum and Viren we have two of the least interesting possible points of view into that setting. Season 3 sets up opportunity for Ezranâs solo perspective - hopefully he isnât reduced to an Amaya style aside.
