I wrote about Blue Eye Samurai recently. To open that blog, I said that my bar for sitting down with an animated series in 2023, let alone enjoying one, is very high, to the point where I hadn't seen a series as good as Blue Eye Samurai in years. I don't know what’s in the water right now, but having gone so long between passions I'm about to write about the second piece of life-changing animation I've seen in the same week.
UPDATE May 31, 2024: The show has moved to Netflix this week after being let go by Max, so we've re-upped our 2023 review to help out anyone who hasn't seen it yet!
While I was gushing about Blue Eye Samurai online and to friends, I kept getting told, "Yeah dude, but what about Scavenger's Reign, have you seen that?", to which I had to reply "No, but it looks incredible, I will definitely be checking it out after Blue Eye Samurai". Well, with Mizu's adventure in the books over the weekend, I finally had the time to check Scavengers Reign out, and holy shit.
This show is unreal. It's everything I've ever wanted from a sci-fi animated series. It's weird, it's wild, it's completely uninterested in doing things by the book. Imagine if Moebius sat down to make a sci-fi castaway series, then collaborated with Miyazaki on designing 117,000 weird little alien guys, and you feel mildly uncomfortable the entire time you're watching it. That's what Scavengers Reign is.
Set in the future, it tells the story of the survivors of the crew of the Demeter, a deep space colony ship that crashes on Vesta, a remote alien world. For most of the 12 episodes we're only following five people, split across three groups/storylines: Sam (the Demeter's captain) and Ursula (the ship's horticulturist), Azi (a cargo worker) and Levi (a robot) and finally Kamen, a guy who is...having some problems in his life that have not been helped by crash-landing and meeting some local wildlife.
Things happen to these people. Some of them die, some of them don't, they meet some other people, stuff happens. Each survivor has a story to tell, but for me the highlight of the show wasn't narrative; It was Scavengers Reign's never-ending mission to show us as many weird little alien guys as possible.
As you can probably tell by glancing at even a single screenshot from this show, it looks incredible. The colours, the designs, this is a visual feast, and I mean no offence here to the writers--the story is fine!--to say that I could have sat down for all 12 episodes with the show on mute, just looking at the backgrounds, and I still would have had a good time.
Vesta itself is a sight to behold, but the real stars are the countless little freaks that have been designed and brought to life for Scavengers Reign. They're in every shot. The survivors can't take a step, sit down or touch a tree without disturbing some odd little creature that looks and behaves like nothing you have ever seen before.
They crawl then turn into balloons. They look like a tree but then turn into birds. They're birthed by flowers with lightbulb blooms, they're monkeys with shark teeth that can swim, they're axolotl with jedi mind powers. The creatures of Vesta are all just so weird, and unsettling, and they are absolutely essential to what makes Scavengers Reign so compelling, because this is supposed to be a show about being stranded on an alien planet, and these guys really make the situation feel alien.
I was equal amounts anxious and horrified in almost every damn scene in the entire series, because--as the show will quickly establish--this is an alien world! We don't know shit about it! Every flower can kill you, every cute little guy can kill you, the weather can kill you (spoilers: all three of these things kill loads of people). The situation these survivors are placed in is unknown and utterly terrifying to them, and I felt the exact same way throughout.
Beyond their contextual purpose, though--and as someone who spends a lot of time just admiring little details like this--I also just love the aliens from a visual standpoint. I'm in awe at the sheer breadth of variety and uniqueness among them. To sit through Scavengers Reign is to be introduced to dozens of types of animals you could never have previously conceived, and that is its own little joy. Hah, look at this guy. And get a load of this cute little weirdo! And his friend! Little visual thrills, all the way from beginning to end.
I'm so glad this show got made. It's 2023, I honestly would not have thought, in this age of streaming metrics and focus-tested banality, that a place like HBO would have given money and space for a Moebius-ass animated series about a bunch of colourful little Murder Muppets. Yet here we are! Thank you, everyone involved, however you got this made, you've made a show--and some little guys--who are going to stick with me for a very long time.
