- Salvaged Story: This album corrects a few of the common complaints about Asterix:
- First, the lack of well-written female characters—the Sarmatian women are important to the plot and competent warriors (while previous albums ridiculed the idea of women fighting or driving a chariot).
- Second, Obelix, who was either attracted to beautiful women who did not like him (like Panacea and Influenza), or attracted women he did not like—here, he reciprocates the advances of one Amazon, but has to go back to Gaul (after giving her his address, still).
- And third, in prior albums, Asterix entirely relies on the magic potion for fighting. Here, a significant plot point is that the potion becomes frozen and useless in the cold of Sarmatia and Asterix has to fight without it, and still gives a good account of himself.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the main complaints about the book is that the story could easily have been "Asterix in Russia" or "Asterix in Ukraine." However, aside from a joke about local men having female-sounding names (at least to French ears), one or two visual nods to the culture (such as red stars on the horses, quasi-Cyrillic letters in the dialogue, or a balalaika at the end), and a borscht reference, there is no satire or cultural references to modern day Russia —or even its history, for that matter, as the amazon culture in the book is mostly improvised by the creators. Since Asterix books are well known for making the setting feel like a playful spoof of the region it portrays this felt like a tease at best. In fact, the Sarmatians in "Asterix and the Chariot Race", despite their limited screen time, did more to fulfill fan expectations for how the series might spoof the Russians. Given that in the current climate, Russia is one of the few nations most of the world wouldn't mind seeing sharp satire about, this especially felt like a letdown (mind you that the book was published just before the Russian-Ukraine war so it's not like this was made to avoid potential controversy).
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Kalashnikovna. Despite the entire plot centering around her rescue, the character does very little, mainly serves as eye candy (for both the reader and the Romans), and ultimately just vanishes from the narrative. Given her status as an important character and her cool design, it's disappointing that she is one Amazon we don't get to see in action or learn more about. This is especially frustrating since she is the niece of two of the main new characters, and her rescue is their entire stake in the story.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/AsterixAndTheGriffin
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