Dragons: Riders of Berk

And only Gift of the Night Fury. That characterization doesn't really pop up anywhere else, which is a shame.

edited 28th Jun '15 8:17:00 PM by KnownUnknown

I just miss the tough, confident and highly competent girl we got in the first movie. I can see why Hiccup fell for her in movie 1. I'm seeing that less and less lately as they get older and she just seems, as was said, the likable number 2.

EDIT I need to rewatch Gift of the Nightfury. We own it at my place. I don't remember Astrid's characterization much from that.

edited 28th Jun '15 8:31:34 PM by windweaver

I kinda wonder if episode thirteen is subtle foreshadowing to third movie because of the rumors about bittersweet conclusion

The more I watch the season the more I wonder if a fuller season got cut in two, and if the second set of episodes might be coming sooner than we think.

At first I thought that maybe this season in general was focusing on Dragon Edge, but there's stuff that feels... absent. Not like the arc is undeveloped, but like that's part of the setup that never arrive. The premise of the series on Netflix itself even mentions stuff that never comes up.

Likewise, there's no real climax to the season, which is odd for this series.

It feels kind of like the current series has more episodes but they specifically released the less plot intensive ones first. Sorta like how Jackie Chan Adventures had long seasons with arc episodes and oneshots in between - if you were to cut one of those seasons in half you'd get something like what we got here. And it makes sense: both Riders and Defenders had 20 episode seasons too.

edited 30th Jun '15 5:19:20 PM by KnownUnknown

Heather... Smacks of sueishness.

I am sooooo glad she didn't turn out to be Hiccup's sister

Eh, not really. Considering she's not above lying or attacking non-aggressive ships, as well as attacking her friends to 'scare them off', I don't think she quite fits the Mary Sue trope. Plus, people do point out that when she wants to do something 'bad', or does something 'bad', that it's bad, it's not like they're ignoring her 'bad' intentions.

OT: Having finally watched all episodes, I gotta say... Kind of a step down from Defends of Berk. Some episodes do stick out (more then others), but it doesn't have the same weight the TV show did. There's also some minor animation and model weirdness I noticed while watching, but I can at least let those slide.

edited 30th Jun '15 7:03:35 PM by DingoWalley1

She gets a cool new dragon that outdoes the combined force of the gang, She gets a cool new axe that would make Cloud Strife cry with envy and can match Astrid in combat ability, her parents died offscreen to make her backstory angsty. She comes in out of nowhere, attacking ships (including one Berkian one, for some reason) with no repercussions for doing so...

I still like her, and it wasn't awful, but she still caught a mild case of the Sue.

The animation bump compared to previous seasons is rather impressive.

Oh, and I like viking girl time.

edited 7th Jul '15 2:09:35 AM by Julep

Well...

Now what

Yep.

edited 8th Jul '15 8:11:55 PM by KnownUnknown

According to Wikipedia, they're splitting the series into two halves, and this was the first. Anyone have news when the next half is coming out?

Netflix is incredibly tight-lipped, so we might only find out when it shows up.

So apparently this is relatively old, but Netflix released the names of the next set of episodes while we weren't looking.

The next one appears to be an Astrid episode, the two after that seem to involve someone hunting... something... probably dragons, and the Skrill comes back later on (if it's even the same one, of course). But given how this series does names, most of those could be about anything really.

The years have trained me to expect werewolves any time a show names an episode "Bad Moon Rising," which is extremely unlikely in this case so who knows.

edited 12th Nov '15 1:42:06 AM by KnownUnknown

Season 2 is up on Netflix.

What an awesome surprise!

And so far so good. Astrid's Team might be the series' best episode so far. A great character plot for Astrid. Some of Dagur's best villainy yet. More Gustav. More Spitelout. More great mentor moments for Stoick. And a badass climax that involves the entire cast being totally badass, including a one on one axe-fight between Astrid and Dagur.

I'm surprised they fit it all into thirty minutes.

edited 12th Jan '16 11:42:56 AM by KnownUnknown

I really like the series as a whole and I loved the latest season. Even though there are some things which I wish they'd elaborate on, but I can understand why they don't do them.

One of those is the obvious fact that they really go out of their way to NOT show Astrid's parents/other relatives. Drawback of CGI: new models cost money and take time to make. So the writers do their best in trying to write them out of the picture.

Another one is the world. It just seems that what we see (Berk, Berserkers, Outcasts, little Dragin-Islands and Edge) is tiny in comparison to the rest of the world they live in. They need hours (or at least it seems that they only need hours in the cartoon) to fly from one island to the other. Meanwhile Trader Johann (who looks unlike the other vikings) talks about warm and sandy beaches and the 'Northern Market', and all those other places he's been to.

I understand that Hiccup is pretty much tied to Berk and can't get away. But I think they waste some great potential stories, by not exploring the rest of the world. It would be interesting to see how other culture deal with their dragons.

To be honest, I feel that while it's a very entertaining show and while I like the characters, I wish there's be a little more- 'worldbuilding'? It reminds me of that time I played 'Remember me' from Capcom, or Alice in Wonderland: Everything looks awesome and I dig the scenery, but there are invisible walls everyhwere keeping you from exploring.

I also think Viggo is kind of flat as a character. Smart but, I don't think he thought his plan through. Killing all the Dragons when you sell their wares and what they produce- I understand that rarity means something costs a lost more in the end and people are willing to pay a lot for it- but his end-goal doesn't seem very economically sound.

While I think its too early to call him a Flat Character, I can agree his endgame is a bad idea. Though there a chance can he was just hunting dragons for some kind of challenge.

If you thought Astrid's parents being MIA was bad, the Armorwing I'd say was worse. It wasn't until they named it that I realized it wasn't supposed to just be a Nightmare covered in scrap, but an actual new species. Given the dragons are the selling point, one would think the design of a new one wouldn't be the place to skimp on the budget.

That whole episode just felt cheap and useless. Hey, there's some sort of marriage or something between Snotlout's and Astrid's families, but it doesn't actually happen because, gasp, the two families hate each other. So the whole plot was worthless.

Oh, and Tuffnut accidentally marries Ruffnut and Fishlegs, except he actually didn't because he forgot that the instructor jumped of a cliff rather than teach him.

Maybe they were an episode short in the order and had to come up with something really quickly?

And @ the exploration thing, they're kind of limited in that aspect, since the second movie shows that they haven't actually gone all that far, and the show hasn't actually caught up with that movie yet.

I am curious about how Viggo is going to be handled, because the "villain that can't be talked down" is a big point in the second movie.

edited 19th Jan '16 9:12:58 AM by Zendervai

I kinda wonder how liked this show is .-. I mean its pretty well animated, but I'm not good at judging children's shows writing xD

The facial animation is pretty good, but the dragons....

The flight animations are so static, especially when you look at how good they were in the movies, with the wind visibly ruffling the wings and tails of dragons in flight, wings and tails adjusting to stabilize the creature mid-flight, wings flapping at sometimes irregular intervals to accommodate for burst of air or aerial acrobatics.

I mean, I know the show has a tighter deadline, but little things like that still get to me. Overall though, the animations for this show are fantastic.

Yet another season has come out with no fanfare.

Edit: Another season that begins on a seriously high note. The art seems to have taken another level of evolution, with a lot of characters getting subtle changes (Dagur in particular has some serious Angel Face now).

Second Edit: Three episodes in and this season is seriously awesome.

edited 26th Jun '16 1:15:34 AM by KnownUnknown

Seriously, this season is badass. Really badass.

This show is really starting to get good. Reminds me of Star Wars The Clone Wars' own steady climb in quality.

Also, there's a Musical Episode.

The only downside is that Hiccup is consistently and repeatedly a sap - by the end of the season, Viggo's ability to trap him all the time feels more on his being an idiot than on Viggo being brilliant. It's even lampshaded a bunch of times.

edited 27th Jun '16 7:57:41 PM by KnownUnknown

Well dang

Dagur really fucking turned around, didn't he

We sure he's gone for good? Because part of me feels like Sleuther was meant for him.

Argeed for the most part, but the last episode was all Mala. It played Poor Communication Kills to the point it was making me cringe.