General Star Wars Animated Series

Speaking of Ahsoka

Boy. Ahsoka rescued herself from the scrappy heap so hard it's almost hard to believe she was hated when she first showed up.

Nice to see her back.

Her character concept sounded stupid (a Kid-Appeal Character who never showed up in movies already full of such characters), and the movie did her no favors. But yeah, she did great.

Her character concept was stupid.

But there's a little secret about writing. Something often overlooked, that frequently results in things being way better than they deserved to be or a total waste of amazing potential. That secret?

Concept doesn't really matter. In terms of how enjoyable a work is, concept isn't really that important.

Execution is what matters most. A strong execution can salvage a stupid concept. But even the most brilliant concept in the world can't survive a shoddy execution.

Ahsoka is an obnoxious, overbearing, ever-present cliche that was executed very well, and her popularity in the fandom is a testament to that.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 17th 2020 at 4:27:36 AM

The show did a great job integrating its original (or more-or-less original) characters with the movie cast. Ahsoka’s the obvious one, but I can’t think of any major recurring characters that were Scrappies, and most of the ones I can think of off the top of my head were Ensemble Darkhorses.

Edited by BadWolf21 on Mar 17th 2020 at 5:29:04 AM

Thing is, Ahoska started out as obnoxious and overbearing, but she got better as time went by. That's the whole point of having a character with flaws like that, they get to grow out of them. If you do it right of course.

I'd actually credit that to the writers getting their sea legs. Being an annoying tagalong kid isn't a character flaw; it's just the cliche that she was designed to be.

But as the writing improved, so did Ahsoka. And the writing improved immensely once the writers figured out what they were trying to do here, stopped doing scattershot vignettes at random points of the Clone Wars, and decided to build a serious narrative.

They even made Jar Jar Work◊

Pirate: HE'S A PLAGUE!!!

okay maybe they kinda had a little fun with it

My hot take is that Ahsoka was fine even in Season 1.

(can't speak for the movie since I haven't seen it in a decade and I don't want to because it was bad)

I did think Ahsoka was fine in season 1, but she was still better later.

And she was bad in the movie, but honestly so was everyone? The movie was not a particularly good introduction to the quality of the series.

So I'm watching the first episode of the new Ahsoka arc. I like how Ahsoka refers to Anakin as her older brother. It makes what happens even more of a gut punch.

So I just found this video on the final fight between Maul and Obiwan in Star Wars Rebels.

It certainly puts it in perspective, with a lot of details I missed, and even justifies the briskness of the fight.

That point about Maul attempting to use the exact same trick he used against Qui-gon all those years ago sailed right over my head. Nice moves there Rebels writers.

I've always said Obi-Wan is a man who learns from mistakes, not just his own, but others.

He learned from Maul's mistake of not taking advantage of the High Ground and made sure he didn't get caught in the same trick when Anakin tried what Obi-Wan pulled off years earlier, and now he's shown having learned from his master's mistake during their fight with Maul.

Maul using the same trick also shows how much he stagnated since his downfall.

He should have known Obi-Wan would have never fallen for the same trick that killed his master, the trick he saw him do yet Maul still did it & thus payed dearly for it.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 21st 2020 at 1:41:23 AM

Obiwan switching to Quigon's stance may have planted the idea in Maul's head. The one thing about darksiders is they can be overly blind to their opponents.

Maul's arrogance got the better of him again.

They seemed to repeat their stances of their first fight for a moment, then went back to what they used years later, but he still pulled that old move. Says a lot.

Edited by Blueace on Mar 21st 2020 at 11:49:34 AM

TIL Rebels has a manga adaptation.

....... Is the art good?

Has the usual bouncing around, it generally is IMO.

5x Almost like Obi-Wan baited him into trying it.

Yeah I absolutely love how most of the fight is happening in their minds before a single swing is taken.

Here's another one from the same guy, this time about the Obiwan/Yoday vs Anakin/Palpatine duels.

I'm glad someone else agrees with how much fun Palpatine was having during his fight with Yoda. I've been saying that for years. I've never seen anyone have so much fun during a death match.

Also, the point about Obiwan being a coward is something I never considered. Even if you say he didn't want to go near the lava, I do have to admit that not finishing off Anakin himself may have been a bit of unintentional cowardice on his part. It's not about the logic that the latter would burn to death: what he did was incredibly cruel. What was happening to Anakin (beyond being a rare aversion of Convection, Schmonvection) was horrific, and leaving him to die like that is a rotten thing to do to someone who you just called you're brother.

I can get it: it was an emotional moment. but still.

What Obi-Wan did was a human moment, albeit one that has the biggest of consequences.

And it really does give some context as to why Obi-Wan lied to Luke about Darth Vader and why Obi-Wan stated that the Emperor already won if Luke is unwillingly to kill Vader. He made that mistake once and he doesn't want Luke to do the same mistake as he did.

Obi-Wan straight up told Yoda that he would not be able to kill Anakin. Yoda sent him anyway, because Obi-Wan stood no chance against Sidious.

It was an unwinnable situation, but it was still a failing on Yoda’s part.

Well, there was also a terminally pregnant Padme who had just been Force-choked the fuck out in dire need of emergency medical attention; I personally can't blame Obi-Wan if he assumed that triple-amputation + lava induced fire would finish the job in fairly short order.

IIRC I think the novelization also had him sensing Sheev's arrival, so it was something of a "choose Padme or Anakin right frakking now" situation.

Edited by TheAirman on Mar 22nd 2020 at 5:25:47 AM

That’s a terrible explanation, in my opinion. It robs Obi-Wan of his agency and the situation of its pathos.

Also it makes no sense because Obi-Wan has several moments shout down at Anakin about how betrayed he felt. “Oops, ran out of time,” has no business being the reason Anakin survives their duel.