Scavengers Reign

Elsewhere in the universe, it's raining scavengers on a planet where scavengers reign.

You know those threads that pop up online basically once a week where people get real huffy talking about how cartoons aren't just "kids' stuff"? (Granted, it's usually part of a larger conversation about the many ways in which animation is so often devalued as a medium, but that's another can of worms for another time).

In these threads, people will list off dozens of animated titles to prove this point, usually focusing on cartoons that contain scenes, themes, visuals, and language intended for non-children audiences, but the tone of these lists is often inconsistent on what qualifies a cartoon as "not just kids' stuff". Many people see adult themes even in what are otherwise considered "kids' shows" such as Bluey and Adventure Time and Steven Universe, while others counter-argue that many M-rated shows such as South Park or Rick & Morty tend to appeal just as much to younger audiences than to actual adults.

Sex and violence are what usually separates the kids stuff from the adults stuff, but it's not like kids are beyond understanding either concept.

Well, in my unyielding quest to find an answer to this question, to decipher what qualities best fit most people's idea of what "adult animation" is, I think the best answer I can currently come up with is: an animated show that is very serious, that contains little to no comedy, and probably features a lot of the crushing, depressing reality that most adults typically deal with on the regular. If it reads like a heavy movie that any cinemaphile or critic would love to rave about, but probably wouldn't go over well for movie night, it probably fits the bill.

By this metric, Scavengers Reign is a pretty good example of "adult animation".

Sometimes in fiction, it feels like the only emotions adults are ever allowed to feel are pain and confusion and frustration, like that's just our default state of mind, and that's what defines us as an "audience".

An original title developed for (HBO) Max currently running for a single 12-episode season, Scavengers Reign is a slow-burning sci-fi drama serial about a small group of scientists trying to stay alive on a hostile alien world after their primary spaceship has crash landed, leaving them at the mercy of the planet's thriving and extremely dangerous wildlife. Separated into three groups, the survivors were all flung to different quadrants of the planet via their escape pods, and - being unable to communicate with one another - now fight for their survival as they attempt to relocate their ship in the hope that they might still be able to get back home some day.

Walking a razor's edge between gritty realism and artsy stylization, the influences on display are pretty clear, but create a unique blend of a presentation that stands on its own merit as a result.

The show moves at a steady, uniform pace, each episode a direct continuation from the previous one, like a big 12-episode movie. Story elements are kept decidedly light in favor of maintaining a foreboding and often unsettling atmosphere, and the show leans hard against its visual strengths, relying more on its fantastical alien backdrops and immersive cinematic scenes over character study or plot. And make no mistake, in terms of presentation, this show is any artist's wet dream.

Taking clear inspiration from classic sci-fi artists like Moebius and John Harris - coupled with some wild and often very geometric creature designs somewhere in the ballpark of Masaaki Yuasa - this show looks and reads like a graphic novel to me. Every shot is framed in a perfectly comic book-y format that makes me wonder if it was originally envisioned as such. Research shows it was developed from a pilot series a few years back on Toonami/Adult Swim, but given its predilection for perfectly thumbnailed visuals, I wouldn't be surprised either way. The show's laidback, smooth pace is perfect for giving you ample time to gush over its absolutely gorgeous artwork.

Moments like these have no bearing whatsoever on the story, and exist simply to create a sense of mystery. It's a pretty rare thing to see in a serial production, and I loved every minute of it.

The cinematic approach also works to great effect when contrasted against the show's sparse but intense action sequences. Following in the footsteps of other captivatingly surreal animated movies like Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage) and Angel's Egg (Tamago no Tenshi), there are many scenes that convey a certain inescapable wonder - almost being simply weird for weirdness' sake - and are never explained or shown to have any consequences; they simply exist. That kind of ethereal show-don't-tell curiosity is something that I feel has been missing from animation for a long time, and quite frankly served as the main attraction of the show for me.

The other thing I want to highlight is that unlike a lot of other sci-fi productions, the hostile wildlife in this show feels very...squishy, to put it one way. As any nature-lover can tell you, our own real-life Earth biology is already pretty bizarre when you get up close and personal with it, and rather than just populate the world with angry spiky gorillas or giant sand worms, Scavengers Reign embraces all the gross and goopy parts of its flora and fauna, inside and out. Body horror and spilled innards are frequently on display here, alongside plenty of other violent and squicky natural processes that are quite normal to encounter in nature, but aren't exactly welcome conversation topics at the dinner table. The imagery is absolutely visceral.

True horror is not a hairy creature cloaked in darkness snarling at you with big sharp teeth, it's weird little fungi that burrowed into your skin overnight that threaten to rip you apart from the inside when you least expect it.

Moving past its incredible visual presence, everything else about the show has a decidedly grave and extremely grounded, realistic vibe to it, all but completely devoid of comedy or joy. Very rarely do the characters get a single moment to relax or even crack a joke. We get occasional glimpses into the survivors' pasts on the ship before it crashed, but they really only serve as little flashes of hope to hold onto, giving them the drive to keep pressing forward. The show's focus is clearly on grim survival in a hostile world, and doesn't leave time for much beyond that.

As such, although I enjoyed their individual adventures, I didn't find myself connecting to the characters very much. They all more or less fall into a few common personality archetypes, and mostly only serve as pieces on the game board for wild alien encounters to happen to. I feel like I barely got to know Ursula and Sam outside of their "grizzled old man and eager young apprentice" dynamic, and aside from Azi hoping her girlcrush is still alive in the remaining cryo pods onboard the ship, her only real defining character trait is her raw determination and will to survive.

In many ways, we get more characterization from the wildlife than we do the humans, which is something I'm sure a certain subset of people will be more than okay with.

Kamen (pronounced like "Cayman", not like the famous Rider) felt like the only character who really had any development, and that was only by virtue of his depressing, self-destructive behavior. After being mentally bonded to a little psychic salamander type creature - it communicating with him by inducing hallucinations of relevant memories that match the emotion of what it wants to say to him - the creature begins taking advantage of his penchant for primal violence and spurs him on to kill bigger predators for it to feed on, subsequently growing itself into an unstoppable menace.

When Kamen finally snaps out of his hunger-driven hypnosis to face the nearly indestructible monster he's created, he simply abdicates his responsibility to do anything about it and offers himself to be consumed by the creature as well. The kicker is that it eats him but chooses to keep him alive within its goopy innards, continuing to leech off his more dangerous emotions like self-righteousness and greed in its new quest to become the top apex predator of the planet. It's character development of a sort, but negative character growth in a show that already doesn't rely on exploring its cast does not make for an easy watch.

Disrupting the food chain on behalf of a squishy telekinetic amphibian who can show you memories of your implied dead former lover isn't very rock and roll of you, Kamen.

Now, don't mistake my tone for criticism here. I say all that not to suggest I thought these characters were POORLY written - nor that I hated the show in that regard - I just found it difficult to latch onto because, by its nature, the characters only exist to push the dour and brutally realistic vibe of the show. I have a strong bias in favor of character-driven narratives, and while I did enjoy the show overall, this means I'll be in no hurry to revisit it any time soon.

No joke, working in IT, this is what it feels like sometimes when terminated employees return their laptops.

One of the only real moments of levity comes (amusingly enough) in the form of Levi, the all-purpose robot assistant that initially lands on the planet with Azi. During their journey, a strange slime or fungus-like substance begins growing inside of its body, fusing to its circuitry and hardware, bridging its own organic life with Levi's synthetic body and internal algorithms. The addition of a sentient, feeling lifeform interfacing directly with Levi's programming results in it developing a "personality", effectively embodying everyone's favorite sci-fi trope: the robot gaining a soul.

After some additional heartstring-tugging story beats, Levi goes on to become an entirely new and completely self-aware semi-organic being - the first of its kind - disavowing all manner of former human servitude. In a move straight out of a Ghibli movie, Levi uses its newfound consciousness and advanced learning to evolve into a sort of caretaker of the planet. Sure, it's a bit of a cliché, but it honestly added quite a lot to an otherwise visually colorful but tonally bleak show. If nothing else, it at least proves that "adult animation" doesn't have to be all unflinchingly grim all the time, and I do appreciate that.

Eat your heart out, Laputa: Castle In The Sky.

It's a tricky concept I often find hard to wrap my head around. I've been watching cartoons since early childhood, most of them bound by the odd and sometimes totally arbitrary limitations required by network censors to maintain an "all ages" rating. But as I alluded to earlier in the review, age ratings are a suggestion, not a rule. Many of the shows I wasn't allowed to watch as a young kid such as The Simpsons or South Park only barely qualify as "adult animation", since their so-called objectionable material (swearing, slurs, and poopsocking while playing World of Warcraft) is generally more appealing to Beavis and Butthead-esque teenagers than 30-something adults.

Similarly, there are a lot of "Y7" rated shows (that's "all ages, but recommended 7 and up" for non-US readers) that I enjoyed as a kid but didn't truly appreciate in greater magnitude until I hit adulthood, like Gargoyles or Animaniacs for example. Both are cartoons that you can reasonably enjoy as a child, but Gargoyles follows intricate storylines and features many complex, gray-moral characters, while Animaniacs is filled with dated hyper-specific cultural references and double entendre-laden jokes that will soar over most kids' heads. Both don't truly gain their appeal until you watch them through a set of adult eyes, yet that doesn't qualify either of them as "adult animation" either.

Let's, uh, not tell Katara and Sokka what happened to their Gran-Gran while they were out saving the world with Aang, yeah?

With that in mind, it should be easy to see why I'm always so ambivalent about new shows that bill themselves as such. It's a weird headspace for me to exist in, because on one hand I absolutely WANT more shows like Scavengers Reign. We've needed more experimental and unconventional animated shows for years - especially after MTV's Liquid Television stopped being profitable - and yet the only (American) companies who even seem remotely willing to produce or distribute them are being headed by executives foaming at the mouth to axe and/or loophole them into easy tax write-offs and dollar signs. They only see "adult animation" as a quick buck to capitalize on, and I don't trust them to give creators the artistic freedom they need in order to fuel shows like this.

On the other hand though, I don't want to invoke the Monkey's Paw and live in a future where we are blessed with a bounty of new experimental and uncensored animated shows, but they're all gritty, serious, and realistic, always trying to out-extreme each other at every turn. I live in the US - a heavily capitalist and still very young country that's actively sliding into fascism because entire swathes of its citizens can't admit that the entire country's history is built on lies and racism and genocide - and sometimes I just want to watch a show that appeals to me as an adult but isn't hellbent on crushing my soul in the process, you feel me?

I would have really appreciated more little scenes like this, even though I know this little happy moment only builds into something sinister and painful later in the episode.

Sorry, got a little off topic there. I really did like this show, I'm just using it as an example to come to terms with my complex feelings about the state of animation in my adult years, so please forgive me for that.

Anyway, if I've somehow piqued your interest after all this rigmarole, great! The show is only a single season long and concludes its primary plot arc while leaving a few details open ended in case another season* comes to pass, so it's extremely easy to pick up and watch as a one and done affair. That said, I strongly do NOT recommend watching it solely out of FOMO. Scavengers Reign is a very cool and very unique show that does deserve your attention, but only if it sounds like something you genuinely want to check out. It's a show that is - above all - aggressively itself, and it's very much NOT going to be everyone's cup of tea (and I mean that in a good way!). Just know what you're getting into before you get into it.

*The show was unfortunately nixed during its time on Max (what else is fucking new), and Netflix has apparently picked up the rights, so another season isn't *impossible*, but given everyone's track record here, I wouldn't hold my breath, personally.

Feels like every time I turn around there's some new bullshit going on with every single production company and streaming service. Guess Amarant Coral was right when he said "the only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty."

If you've already seen Scavengers Reign and are looking for some recommendations for follow-up, here are my top picks. Number one, easily, is Primal by Genndy Tartakovsky. As with everything he touches, it's a visual masterpiece, and similar to Scavengers Reign, it's extremely slow and spaced out, organic and alien, and absolutely brutal to boot. Another easy choice to recommend is Love Death & Robots, but with the caveat that that's an episodic variety show that'll absolutely give you whiplash from the sheer number of attempted Shyamalan-esque last-minute plot twists.

For more shows about the weird squishiness of nature illustrated in some spellbinding visuals, you *might* also enjoy an anime called Mushi-shi. Or if you're just into general alien sci-fi nonsense and want something that isn't afraid of being a little more cartoony, consider watching (slightly) less serious shows such as Kaiba, or even Space Dandy for that matter. What we consider "adult animation" should not be limited by whether or not it will impress stuffy cinema snobs!

Weird animated sci-fi is like the mother's milk that sustains me. May her tits never run dry.

One final note: yes, I know, I realize the irony of putting this review in the "Normal" Review list and not in the 18+ section despite using it to talk about the concept of adult animation. Then again, since this is an adult website from end to end, it should be assumed that everything I say and post here is already 18+, in a sense. Well, maybe I should just rename that other Review section to "the Porn Section" to avoid confusion...