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<div>[[File:Morathi.jpg|500px|thumb|right|"Don't you wish your mother was hot like me?"]]<br />
{{Topquote|A scratch from an envenomed dagger, a sip from a poisoned chalice, a slight to a proud warrior's honour... In time these things may do far more grievous harm than the broadsword or the axe, my love...|Morathi}}<br />
{{Topquote|Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.|Groucho Marx}}<br />
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'''Morathi''' is the Queen of the [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Druchii]] from [[Warhammer Fantasy]], the supreme leader of their religious faction and mother to the racial leader [[Malekith]].<br />
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She is also perverted, incestuous, so-sexy-you'll-die-for-real-lolz, and pretty much a complete bitch as she was responsible for a lot of the actions that screwed over Elfkind. Don't believe us? Read and weep oh dear reader.<br />
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Her character suffered greatly from a 7th edition retcon, further worsened in 8e until in [[End Times]] her role in history was reduced to mostly "had a baby who is really important" and scheming on the side that kills a lot of people but contributes nothing to the story. Many fans were angered by her apparent and very disappointing death in the event, although it was later revealed she survived and may in fact still regain her glory as an important character.<br />
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She is usually seen mostly naked, although sometimes she covers her breasts or uses pasties, and always rides her Dark Pegasus named Sulephet into battle. Her model is one of the raciest in the Warhammer range as she wears a metal thong and little else, her perfect tits on display for everyone to see (something she uses with magic in a Black Library novel she gets a starring role in to render an entire mixed-gender garrison of soldiers into standing mutely while riding up and down in front of their fortress on Suluphet as they get shot to pieces with her crossbow forces). The model of her even has them helpfully pushed upwards for the best possible angle. It could be she does this because her son is so lacking in sex appeal she must make up for both of them....oh the harsh duties she must do!<br />
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==The Legend==<br />
She was originally a mere maiden, rescued by the first Phoenix King [[Aenarion]] from a [[Chaos]] slave caravan and he was so taken with her that he took her to be his new wife, having recently lost his first wife the [[Everqueen]] to a [[Daemons|Daemonic]] attack. Considering her actions later, the rumors of her being a [[Slaanesh|Slaaneshi]] Sorceress and using her magicks to charm Aenarion were most likely true. Aenarion moved his court to [[Ulthuan|Nagarythe]] and fell into a hedonistic lifestyle while his armies battled the Daemon apocalypse raging all around. Morathi eventually gave birth to his third child, Malekith, and encouraged Aenarion to sit back and relax as everything would turn out ''juuuuuuust fine''. [[Caledor the Dragontamer]], Aenarion's old friend, hated Morathi bitterly and knew she was wreaking havoc on his already damaged mind. In a last act of desperation, Caledor gathered his Wizards and began channeling magic to create a Vortex that would suck excess magic out of the Warhammer World so Daemons would have difficulty manifesting forevermore. Morathi encouraged Aenarion to slay Caledor for his betrayal, although upon reaching the site of the ritual he instead defended his friend against the might of Chaos itself.<br />
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After the disappearance of Aenarion and the trapping of Caledor within the Vortex, Morathi planned and groomed her son to take the throne. When the actual election came however, Malekith assured the Princes of the land he was willing to accept a vote for him rather than simply claim the throne by birthright. In a retcon in [[End Times]] this turned out to be a gambit to ensure the loyalty of the Elf people and the manipulations of Chaos robbed him of his birthright; however, in original canon this was simply the only moral choice he ever made. His friend Bel Shanaar was chosen instead, and Morathi raved and ranted like a wild woman over their "treachery". Only Malekith could calm her, and assure her they had made the right choice. He then took to the sea to explore the world like his father had, being gone for many years. During his travels he encountered [[Warriors of Chaos|human Chaos worshipers]] and random undead, fighting them for control of a magical crown. Curious, he placed it on his head and saw a future where Chaos would conquer his people. He immediately rushed home.<br />
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Prior to the 7e retcon, Malekith began searching his homeland for Chaos worship and discovered the Cult of Pleasure revering Slaanesh, with his own mother Morathi as the High Priestess to Slaanesh himself having corrupted a very large chunk of the Elf race to her way of thinking. She fled to the city of Anlec where a large number of cultists resided. Malekith led an army consisting of both his own army and the supporting armies led by the princes of Ellyrion, Yvresse, Chrace and Saphery. Malekith was successful in breaching the cities defences and confronted his mother in the cities palace. Though Morathi had the upper hand with her great sorcerous powers, she was defeated. Morathi was spared from certain death by convincing her son that she would give him her full support of the cults and help him gain the Phoenix throne. She was brought before the court of the Phoenix king in the city of Tor Anroc. Though she would have been executed for her Crimes, Malekith convinced Bel Shanaar to imprison her instead (Despite Imrik of Caledor's insistence that she must die, even offering to strike the deathblow himself).<br />
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He called a meeting of the Princes of Ulthuan to reveal a discovery about the Cult. Rather than point the finger at his mother, he accused Bel Shanaar of the heresy as Bel lay dying from poison Malekith had slipped him. He then declared that he himself was the fit ruler of the Elf race, and stepped through the [[Asuryan|Flames of Asuryan]] which select who is fit to be Phoenix King. Due to his treachery and the fact the Flames are designed to root out the unworthy, his full-retard plan resulted in him burning to bacon. His followers quickly slaughtered the unarmed Princes while Morathi rushed him out and kept him alive with her magic until a priest of [[Vaul]] loyal to his family sealed him in a suit of frozen armor that would reduce the misery of his blackened body.<br />
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In the retcon, Morathi was not involved in the story at all; he returned knowing that he was the true Phoenix King as desired by Asuryan while Bel Shanaar had been shielded by magic which disqualified him from judgement, and Malekith himself was only rejected because he was immature and filled with fear. His followers killing the Princes was apparently justified somehow, and everything that happened was all the fault of the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Asur]] because reasons and grimderpness. She still helped him survive however, and if anything was cast in a more motherly role than the manipulative one.<br />
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Either way, Malekith and Morathi gathered their supporters and their culture took a turn for the dark; pre-retcon Morathi summoned Daemons which feed on Elf souls to ravage the countryside while the formerly banned worship of the war god [[Khaine]] replaced all other faiths. Eventually the bitter civil war turned against the new Dark Elf faction, and as one final "fuck you" Morathi messed with the Vortex. When that backfired she, Malekith and the other Dark Elf sorcerers/sorceresses launched huge chunks of Nagarythe away from the land like boats, causing massive death and destruction across Ulthuan. They then settled in a new land to the west, a series of landmasses split by bodies of water that are vaguely in the shape of our real world North America, populated by vicious and nasty monsters as well as Chaos humans. These lands were called Naggaroth, and after destroying the High Elf colonies and humans who dwelled here the Dark Elves settled them. <br />
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During this time, in early editions it was implied Morathi and Malekith were lovers who also constantly vied for control of their race while planning to kill each other. Dark Elves set up many batshit insane celebrations such as a night where the Cult of Pleasure and/or Cult of Khaine are allowed to take anyone they want who can't buy their own lives in huge amount of slaves and slaughter them in any way they wish ([[Gav Thorpe]] went on record in regards to Elf storytelling that numbers don't matter, High Elves can lose millions as a statistic or ten as a tragedy and either way they will be dying out, and although Dark Elves always lose massive population due to stupid reasons will always be only in jeopardy in regards to the future but not currently on the verge of extinction). Later lore did away with the incest, Slaanesh worship, and plotting; Morathi went from the ultimate hedonistic schemer and rival to her son like a cougar version of Caligula to his dear sad mother sadly stricken with a mild case of dementia as she continued to believe that she was living in the court of Nagarythe and sometimes mistook Malekith for Aenarion whom she genuinely loved rather than manipulated, all while continuing her duties as high priestess of the Elf god of pleasure [[Atharti]] (as Gav Thorpe thought Elves worshiping Slaanesh makes no sense, since he thinks of them as [[Eldar]] in rat-infested shitholes). Either way, Morathi went to great pains to keep herself youthful. She bathed constantly in blood made from screaming Elf babies, a technique learned either from Slaanesh or Khaine directly depending on pre or post retcon.<br />
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As Naggaroth grew in power, Malekith saw the Chaos worshiping Elves as a possible threat to his power. He established Khaine as the official god of the Dark Elves, although loyalty was ultimately only to himself. The Witches were nonetheless loyal only to Morathi and their gods, Khaine and (in older canon) Slaanesh with the two factions politicking against each other while hiding their true allegiance from the rest of the race (as an open secret lacking only proof of course).<br />
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Morathi found another rival in [[Hellebron]], a priestess of Khaine who was becoming dangerously powerful within Morathi's Witch Elf forces. Morathi cursed her with a hag-like appearance Elves rarely ever naturally attain, causing Hellebron to hate her more than anyone else. Ironically, after the retcon Hellebron features in history more importantly than Morathi herself.<br />
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During the Battle of Finuval Plains, one of the many battles between the High and Dark Elves, Morathi faced off in magical duel with [[Teclis]] while Malekith dueled [[Tyrion]] below. With the Dark Elves having overrun much of Ulthuan, the battle was the deciding point between the two forces; Morathi's own Daemon force lead by a powerful [[Keeper of Secrets]] named [[N'kari]] (later retconned to be just more of Malekith's assassins) had badly injured Tyrion and hunted the Everqueen Alarielle, and the burning of her forest had weakened her powers so she could not help. Morathi and Teclis were evenly matched, although after suffering great injury Malekith managed to escape into the [[Warp]] to avoid being killed, and sensing her son flee the battle Morathi herself immediately retreated leaving her army to be cut down. After the retcon, Morathi is absent from the battle and Malekith fought Teclis in a battle of magic while Tyrion fought his forces.<br />
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In the [[Defenders of Ulthuan/Sons of Ellyrion]] novels, Morathi engineers the main plot as a repeat of the invasion which involved the Finuval Plain battle, although this time using a captured Ellyrion Reaver as a Manchurian Candidate who would assassinate Teclis and Alarielle prior to the attack. She used her rank as Slaanesh's High Priestess to call upon the loyalty of Slaanesh's current champion, a Warrior of Chaos who was kept entertained with Elf slaves for him and his men to torture and defile (use your imagination) until Ulthuan was entirely destroyed, whereupon he would be allowed to do as he would with her (que both chuckling that the other Slaaneshi would not survive it). During the ongoing war, the Witch Elves and Slaaneshi spent their time raiding each other's camps and torture-killing their allies when supplies of still-living High Elves were low. Morathi's plan was partially successful, with the cursed dagger the unwitting pawn carrying consuming the body and soul of an Elf maiden he'd fallen in love with to incinerate Teclis like Malekith, then pierce Alarielle's heart. Malekith (who she feared greatly in the novel despite planning to kill him) lead his forces to assault Ulthuan from the south with their navy and slay the greatest heroes of Ulthuan while the Slaaneshi Dark Elves and Warriors attacked from west to east and meet him in the middle at Finuval Plain II. The Champion used Slaanesh's magic of pride to force High Elf commanders and champions into terrible decisions while her beguile and mind control wreaked havoc on the lesser Elf defenders. The plan began to fall apart however when their pawn sought redemption for his actions, reuniting with his brother and fiance before joining the defending army. Alarielle herself was saved by Isha, and the Everqueen entity (made up of Isha and EVERY Everqueen who ever lived) took control of her body and healed the wound before joining the battle herself. The Everqueen's magic purified the Slaaneshi Champion, burning away his blessings to reveal an ugly old man who regretted sacrificing his only love on an altar in exchange for eternal youth, and in a battle of wills between Isha and Slaanesh the Champion was turned into a [[Chaos Spawn]] that was hacked away by the Asur forces. With the loss of their commander and the [[Daemonettes]] turning to ash all around them, the Dark Elves and Warriors looked to their Queen to find her flying inland from the battle. The forces routed, and were destroyed by the triumphant heroes. Meanwhile, Morathi's true plan had been revealed; in her madness she was only using her entire race, her son, and all the humans as a distraction for her to undo the Vortex and summon Slaanesh directly into the world to prove herself as his greatest servant. The Vortex was on an island lost in time and half in and out of the Warp like magical interdimensional amber. She stabbed a Mage to death, and cackled out her monologue to Caledor the Dragontamer when he appeared before her as an emaciated long-dead skeleton of an Elf. After calmly replying that he never liked her and had always seen her as the selfish insane little girl she was, he revealed his true form within the amber as being stronger than he had ever been and as youthful as in his prime. He lashed out at her using only his knowledge of reality, searing her mind and driving her into hysteric wailing as she fled from the island with her very soul bleeding. She somehow flew Sulephet home to Naggaroth in this state, eyes wild and screaming all the way. Her son fled from his battle similarly, his dragon mortally wounded and bereft of a large chunk of his armor and gear. This story's canonicity is doubtful as ALL of the concepts the story hinges on were retconned out. Although considering Morathi's damaged mental state in End Times, it may have simply happened in a very different way and remained canon...<br />
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In [[Storm of Chaos]], Morathi brought the Cult of Slaanesh back and allied them with Warriors of Chaos before flaunting themselves openly in Naggaroth. This was implied to put Naggaroth in a civil/religious war between the Temple of Khaine and the Cult of Slaanesh, but Games Workshop retconned Storm of Chaos out of existence so now this never happened.<br />
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===The End Times===<br />
In an effort to reboot Warhammer Fantasy, as it had been neglected for so long in favor of yet another Space Marine Chapter update, Games Workshop thrust the End Times upon the Warhammer world, where the slow slide into destruction becomes a non-stop express train. In the canon Naggaroth had become overrun with the legions of Khorne, with Karond Kar and Clar Karond destroyed. Ghrond was surrounded by an impenetrable thicket of magic thorns when Malekith and his army arrived fresh from liberating Naggarond. No longer able to coddle his spiteful but addled mother, Malekith left her alone in a tower there after destroying the entire Chaos invasion force and destroying everything of value from fortresses to slaves to silk handkerchiefs and anything else the enemy could claim, then gathered the entire Dark Elf race barring her guards to go claim his "rightful place as Phoenix King".<br />
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She left the tower however, disguising herself as one of her own followers who had been enlisted in Malekith's army, and tried to make Tyrion into Aenarion 2.0. Once Alarielle confirmed Malekith's legitimacy by marrying him (you know, her great great great great great great great great uncle) Tyrion and Morathi were wed, him drawing the [[Widowmaker]] like his ancestor and becoming Khaine's avatar (as well as her greatest lover). She was revealed to actually be the mortal incarnation of the goddess Hekarti.<br />
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After Tyrion was killed on the Isle of the Dead, Teclis undid the Vortex in order to bind the [[Warhammer Magic|Winds of Magic]] to mortals in an attempt to combat Chaos. She rushed to stop the whole thing, and broke down sobbing and shrieking when she saw Tyrion and Malekith die (though the latter was alive, but only just). In a fit, she killed all the mages in magic amber except Caledor the Dragontamer. Her actions created a breach that temporarily enabled Slaanesh himself/herself to partially manifest in the material world, forcing one of his/her arms through the rift to grab as many elves as he/she could. Realizing she'd fucked up worse than ever before in every sense of the term, Morathi tried to flee but Caledor held her down and both were taken by Slaanesh into the Warp.<br />
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Fans of Morathi, already unhappy with her increasing retcons rendering her useless, '''[[RAGE]]D'''. Her hatedom and High Elf fans cheered that Morathi was getting her just desserts (given Slaanesh's hunger for elf souls it could be literal). A small few continually insisted that it was just how she was going to be returned to Slaanesh's side, reincarnated as a Daemon Princess while others quickly bought her models thinking she would be removed from canon.<br />
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===Age of Sigmar===<br />
In [[Age of Sigmar]], Morathi really did make a return. During the Age of Myth, [[Malekith]] awoke alone within the Realm of Shadow without any memories. He took on the name Malerion and attempted to find others of his kind. Eventually he found Morathi, who had escaped up from Slaanesh's belly and out her mouth while he was in a food coma digesting all the aelf souls she had consumed. But Morathi was "changed" by the experience. She now had two forms: The first is her normal aelf form, whilst the winged, coiling, serpentine Grecian Medusa is her true form (which she transforms into by her own will or whenever she loses her cool). As she regained her memories, Morathi formed beings of pure shadow who celebrated around her. She met up with her son Malerion, and though there was a lot of bad blood between them, they worked together to find more aelves.<br />
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[[Sigmar]] eventually found them, and they joined his pantheon made from an assembly of gods and other powers of the Mortal Realms. Morathi stayed with Sigmar and rest of the pantheon, trying to feel Sigmar's "Stormhammer" outside of battle. When Sigmar proved immune to her charms, she moved on to [[Nagash]]. With a cry of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FL_eXQb4C0|"BEGONE THOT!"] Nagash struck Morathi, hurting and upsetting her enough that her true serpentine form was revealed (say what you will about Nagash, he keeps his pimp hand strong). Humiliated, Morathi fled. During this time [[Tyrion]], [[Teclis]] and Malerion learned that [[Slaanesh]] had the aelf souls and sought to trap him. They approached Morathi and, with the promise of the share of the bounty, they used her as bait and managed to capture and imprison [[Slaanesh]] somewhere between the realms of Hysh and Ulgu, siphoning souls from him in increments (too many at once would draw the attention of Slaanesh's followers or fellow Chaos Gods, or allow Slaanesh to break free). Morathi took her share of the aelven souls Slaanesh had consumed and made aelves from them who would go on to become the [[Daughters of Khaine]]. <br />
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She claims to be the Oracle of [[Khaine]] on account of having recovered his heart and leads the Daughters of Khaine, but in truth she is siphoning the prayer-power meant for the war god (stopping his potential rebirth in the process) in the hope of becoming a goddess herself- after that she plans to exact revenge on everyone who ever wronged her. Her war against the forces of Chaos and her bringing civilization to the Mortal Realms is mentioned, suggesting that she heavily influenced the Mortal Realms before the Age of Chaos.She has also since had another falling out with Malekith/Malerion and is said to be working as a part of Order only because she finds the other three Grand Alliances even less appealing to her tastes; she has become a sworn enemy to the forces of Chaos, the forces of Destruction are too uncivilized for her liking and the forces of Death too static and unappealing to someone whose people were nearly extinct (she probably also remembers the taste of Nagash's pimp hand). <br />
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As part of her transformation, she has not only bound the Bloodwrack Medusae to her will as her high priests, but also created two new species of [[monstergirls|monstrous yet beautiful female elf-kin]]; the [[lamia]]-like [[Medusa|Melusai]], and the Khinerai, who resemble either bat-winged [[Avariel]] or a less-monstrous take on the [[Harpy|Harpies]] of old Warhammer.<br />
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Ironically, Morathi's new fluff as having mutated into a [[lamia]]-like form as a result of exposure to the [[daemon]]ic powers of [[Slaanesh]] makes her kind of similar to the now-lost Slaaneshi champion, [[Dechala]] (that said, Slaanesh maybe holding her back to release later when its time for escapemurderfuckeatrevenge).<br />
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==== Broken Realms ====<br />
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Soon she was ready for the final stages of her gambit to ascend to godhood. First she had to steal an artifact from the [[Idoneth Deepkin]], the Ocarian Lantern; an object made by Teclis to retrieve elven souls from Slaanesh's belly, stolen by the Idoneth who feared Teclis would use it to track them down. Naturally, this was kept under heavy guard. So, sixty Khainites went into <s>the water</s> the temple. One Khainite came out, the <s>sharks</s> Idoneth took the rest. That one Khainite, although left blind and half-mad by the ordeal, had the lantern. <br />
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Then, Morathi had to secure some of the realmstone of the [[Warcry|Eightpoints, called Varanite]], having learned about it during the Age of Sigmar. She convinced Sigmar and [[Alarielle]] of the coming threat (please ignore the plot hole of Alarielle trusting Morathi given their history in the World-That-Was), getting Stormcast reinforcements from the former and getting the later to re-open the Genesis Gate and sweep aside the forces of Chaos guarding it. Morathi even sent a secret delegation to [[Katakros]], providing tonnes of bones imbued with the magic of Ulgu in exchange for a Bonereaper assault on Archaon's holdings. After acquiring the Varanite, Morathi and her Daughters of Khaine left their Stormcast allies to die.<br />
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This culminated in the ultimate ritual. Combining various sources of power, Morathi opened [[/d/#Vore|a portal directly into Slaanesh's belly]]. While she carried out this ritual, her capital city was attacked by both a massive Idoneth army led by [[Volturnos]] seeking to retrieve the lantern, and the followers of Slaanesh following a prophecy that could lead to the freeing of their deity. Once in the Chaos God's guts, using her weapon and the lantern as a guide, Morathi found the souls of the Cythai and the souls of the Phoenix Kings from the World-Thas-Was. She trapped the Cythai souls and consumed the Phoenix King souls until she reached the strongest - her former husband [[Aenarion]] (yes, THE Aenarion, sucks that after everything he did he got consumed by Slaanesh). She hesitated to absorb him, reluctant to erase what was the only man she ever genuinely loved. Enraged by Morathi's actions, Aenarion used this moment of weakness to launch a counterattack that split her soul and left her with two bodies - the elegant Morathi-Khaine (formerly the High Oracle) and the monstrous Shadow Queen. <br />
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But her ambition might come back to haunt her in the form of the Newborn - the offspring of Slaanesh spawned from his/her drool (yes, really) when Morathi's ritual gave Slaanesh a seizure. The Newborn followed her back into the Mortal Realms then flew away, the light of its passage making the followers of Slaanesh immediately break off the attack and seek it out. It eventually landed and coalesced into a beautiful and terrifying form that spoke to the assembled Hedonites, who now guard it while it gains in strength.<br />
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Back to Morathi. She returned from Slaanesh's prison and, fused with the essence of Khaine, became a goddess and declared herself Morathi-Khaine, bringing her plan to fruition. From here, she quickly subdued Volturnos and made a bargain with him, giving the stolen lantern and the souls of the other Cythai to him in exchange for a binding alliance with the Idoneth. From there Morathi led her forces to [[Cities of Sigmar#Notable Cities|Anvilgard]] and - aided by an insurgent syndicate - conquered the city of Anvilgard, renamed it '''Har Kuron''' and marking the end of her alliance with Sigmar. To that end the Stormcast were imprisoned rather than killed so they can't return to Azyr and warn him. <br />
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Morathi's plan didn't go off without a few hitches. Apart from the aforementioned Newborn of Slaanesh, a resistance movement of men and elves still loyal to Sigmar remains in the city, and one of the captive Stormcast was freed by a winged shadowy figure implied to have ties with Malerion.<br />
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==On The Tabletop==<br />
In her first incarnation, Morathi had two forms. Her basic form, High Oracle of Khaine, is a caster of absurd power, and not a slouch in close combat either. She can cast three spells per turn (and Unbind twice), her unique spell which is basically Arcane Bolt on steroids, adds 1 to her casting rolls and doubling the range of her spells, as well as her Command Ability that lets her choose 2 Daughters of Khaine units within 14 inches and have them either shoot or pile in immediately. She also has 6 attacks with her bladed wings and 3 attacks with her spear Heartrender, which is better than a lot of combat characters get. On defense, she has a 4+ Armor, a 6+ Ward (from her Daughters of Khaine allegiance), a -1 to hit from how gorgeous she is AND she can only take 3 wounds per turn.<br />
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But that's not all. Either when you choose or when you roll under the number of wounds Morathi has taken, she can get super angry and turn into her giant <s>Snake Mom</s> Shadow Queen form. In this form she loses a lot of her trickier abilities (all of her casting bonuses, -1 to hit, command ability, although she keeps her max of 3 wounds per turn) and instead turns into one of the most brutal beatsticks in the entire game, capable of going head to head with Nagash or Archaon and coming out on top. She gains a shooting attack that allows you to instant kill a model if roll over its number of wounds, between 6 and 2 attacks with Heartrender (which now does a flat 3 wounds as opposed to D3 in her Oracle form), 5 attacks with her Crown of Serpents, and 1 with her tail that does between 6 and D3 damage. That's a max of 29 wounds when she's at full health, enough to wreck anyone's day. Unfortunately, any wounds she takes as Oracle are double in Shadow Queen, so you're better off letting her transform, than waiting for her to take damage. All of this will cost you 480 points, so best make sure you're getting your points worth. It helps that she's one of the best models in the game (in a faction that already has a lot of the best models in the game).<br />
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===Broken Realms===<br />
Due to Morathi's new condition, she now costs 600 points but has both of her models active at the same time. Because of their "One Soul, Two Bodies" rule (which also incorporates the effects of the Iron Heart), her two models functionally share a single wound pool. Between that and the Shadow Queen's buffed attacks, she's now able to support her army and get stuck in at the same time, and opponents will have no choice but to deal with the Shadow Queen if they want to stop Morathi-Khaine from casting and buffing.<br />
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==Total War: Warhammer==<br />
To the surprise of very few Morathi, alongside her son, got to appear in [[Total War: Warhammer II]] as one of the starting legendary lords for the Dark Elves. She even got to narrate the Dark Elf faction trailer, with her voice actress sounding fittingly manipulative and conniving. Interestingly Morathi as presented in game seems to mix traits of both older and newer lore, she and her faction spread Chaos corruption, and a number of her skills indicate worship, or at least the willingness to deal with, the Chaos gods. However she can also be heard referring to, or beseeching various Cytharai gods like Khaine and Atharti. Of course even in recent lore Morathi was presented as someone willing to treat with, if not outright worship, the Chaos gods and their various daemons.<br />
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==Gallery==<br />
<gallery><br />
Image:Morathi Model.jpg|The offical [['Eavy Metal]] paintjob.<br />
Image:Morathi Mini.JPG|Morathi's miniature. Despite being older, and GW's well-known issues with female sculpts, its one of the better ones they've made.<br />
Image:Morathi Original.jpg|Morathi's original model. It was noticeably more conservative in dress.<br />
Image:Old Morathi.jpg|Morathi's earlier look in artwork. ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])<br />
Image:Morathi MMO.jpg|Rita Repulsa wishes she was this awesome.<br />
Image:Morathi And Teclis.jpg|Morathi and Teclis duel at Finuval Plains. In the narrative it was on opposite sides of a large valley, but whatever.<br />
Image:Morathi Regal Fanart.png<br />
Image:Morathi Kung Fu.jpg<br />
Image:Morathi Doesn't Like It When You Look Over Her Shoulder.jpg<br />
Image:Morathi Color.jpg<br />
File:The Sundering Malekith and Morathi.jpg<br />
File:Morathi 8th Edition.png<br />
Image:Morathi And Alarielle Diplomacy.jpg|Its her pleasure...<br />
Image:Morathi Fanart.jpg<br />
Image:Morathi Malekith Comic.jpg|Morathi and Malekith from the [[Warhammer Online]] comic.<br />
File:Morathi Total War.jpg|If you don't conquer Ulthuan this time Malekith, you're grounded!<br />
File:Morathi AOS Elf Form.jpg|Morathi's new look, now Morathi-Khaine.<br />
File:Morathi Snek.jpg|Morathi's other new look, the Shadow Queen.<br />
</gallery><br />
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[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Dark Elves]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:40k and Fantasy Gods]][[Category:Daughters of Khaine]]</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Ossiarch_Bonereapers&diff=372367Ossiarch Bonereapers2021-01-19T01:48:10Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Society */</p>
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<div>{{Age of Sigmar Faction|Faction=Ossiarch Bonereapers|Logo=Immortis-WC2.jpg|Alliance=Death|Motto=The Skeleton War is upon us! We ride against the [[Stormcast Eternals|fuckboys]]!}}<br />
<br />
{{topquote|Two can play at that game!|Likely Nagash after learning how Sigmar makes Stormcast}}<br />
{{topquote|Debt, an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.|Ambrose Bierce}}<br />
{{topquote|The bones of the skeleton which support the body can become the bars of the cage which imprison the spirit.|J. Ruth Gendler}}<br />
<br />
The latest addition to [[Nagash]]’s ever growing hordes (designed and sculpted by [[Maxime Corbeil]], a former dentist), the '''Ossiarch Bonereapers''' <br />
(Also known as '''The Boney Boys''', '''Bonecast''', '''Tomb Kings 2.0''', '''Bonechads''', '''Nagash's Taxmen''', '''The Boney Bean Counters''', '''Ossiarch Bean Counters''' or '''The IRS''') are the result of an eons old plan by Big Bone Daddy. <br />
<br />
Likely inspired by the [[Stormcast Eternals]], the Bonereapers are not mere skeletons given life by necromancy, but massive constructs of bone and countless warrior souls, making them all look impressively robust for undead. Since the Legions of Nagash are the mainstay, the Nighthaunt are the shock troops and the Flesh-Eater Courts are completely insane, these buff bone boys are the elite vanguard of the Grand Alliance. Given their themes of bones, undead constructs priest characters, architect characters and skull-throwing catapults... they're currently the closest thing we've got to [[Tomb Kings]] in AoS.<br />
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They also carry out the Bone Tithe; in addition to going out and killing shit to get their bones, the Ossiarchs give settlements they encounter a contract: Give up a set amount of bones whenever we stroll by, or face annihilation now. Understandably, most choose the former. Being unable to pay or even being rude to them also provokes a slaughter.<br />
<br />
Visually-speaking, they're what happens when Games Workshop decides to mix [[Tyranids]], [[Tomb Kings]], and [[Necrons]] into one army. <br />
<br />
==History==<br />
===Age of Myth===<br />
[[File:Slaves to Darkness vs Ossiarch Bonereapers 01.jpg|right|300px|thumb|SKULLS FOR <s>THE SKULL THRONE</s> Nagash! And all the other bones too!]]<br />
When Nagash was helping Sigmar build his cities he secretly began experimenting on undead, combining their bones and souls into newer, stronger undead warriors; the [[Morghasts/Hammurai|Morghasts]] and the first Bonereapers. Most were put into massive underground crypts Nagash secretly had built beneath the cities, but others were kept on the surface and brought into battle. The other gods saw the Bonereapers and really didn't like them because of how unnatural they were. In response, Nagash sent these Bonereapers to the edge of Shyish to lay low until he called on them (these Bonereapers who would go on to form the Null Myriad). He also sent at least twenty of them to wander the Realms on a long-forgotten mission (these would go on to become the Petrifex Elite). <br />
<br />
Strangely, none of the Order groups noticed until however long its been since the start of the Age of Myth that there were crypts full of undead warriors beneath their cities. Especially since they know about and need to defend against [[Skaven|enemies who specialize in creating massive complexes beneath your cities that they then invade from.]] <br />
<br />
===Age of Chaos===<br />
The Age of Chaos only effected the Bonereapers garrisoned at the edge of Shyish. By that time they had become resistant to magic, and they fought against demonic armies, their actions blunting the assault of Chaos on Shyish. During this time, Katakros led an army against Sigmar himself on Nagash's orders while the former was pursuing the latter for his betrayal. The battle resulted in the loss of Katakros' army, the Mortarch's defeat and subsequent confinement to a Stormvault.<br />
<br />
===Malign Portents===<br />
During this time, Katakros was freed from the Stormvault by fellow Mortarch, Lady Olynder. The Bonereapers on the edge of Shyish acted as a military force protecting the skeletal work crews who carried grains of Shyishan realmstone to Nagashizzar for Nagash to use to build the Black Pyramid.<br />
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===Soul Wars===<br />
After the Necroquake, Nagash decided the time was right to wake up everyone beneath these cities, who (according to the most recent Stormcast) apparently marched back home, making them relatively pointless. In that respect, these tombs seemed to mirror the Stormvaults Sigmar had strewn about the Realms to contain various dangerous contraband like [[Katakros|a certain Mortarch]].<br />
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When the Bonereaper legions arrived in Shyish, Nagash got back to his pet-project of making super-skellies, and perfected the process. This involves taking souls and distilling them down to their most choice elements. This involves ripping apart their identity and keeping parts considered useful (suck as skills and knowledge) while discarding the parts that aren't useful (such as fears and loyalties to anyone but Nagash) and replacing those parts with something better (like loyalty to Nagash), with the strongest-willed soul among them becoming the identity of the new Bonereaper. Then these fragmented souls are put into specially crafted bone constructs. By doing so, he artificially created individuals who were warriors, leaders, bodyguards, artisans, architects, philosophers and sculptors all in one, [[Adeptus Custodes|which sounds a little familiar.]]<br />
<br />
The Bonereapers have had a meteoric rise that's led to them making their mark across the realms. In Shyish itself, the Kryptboyz Ironjawz Warclan have focused their efforts on fighting the Bonereapers due to wanting to destroy their settlements and wear their bones as trophies. In Chamon, the Null Myriad have waged a series of wars against the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizard Constellation as they fight for control of the realm's edge. The Ivory Host legion were sent to conquer Ghur, and in building their cities have positioned themselves for conflict with several Mawtribes and the free city of Excelsis. The Ivory Host also clashed with a [[Sons of Behemat|Mega-Gargant and indirectly led him to become the mercenary known as One-Eyed Grunnock]]. They have also sent forces into Hysh that have come into conflict with the Lumineth. <br />
<br />
The most notable conflict the Bonereapers have entered into is the ongoing War for the Eightpoints, where Katakros led the Mortis Praetorians and detachments from other Legions into the Eightpoints alongside Olynder and a Nighthaunt army to take the Eightpoints for Nagash. They succeeded in capturing and fortifying the realmgate leading to Shyish, and have established a base of operations. However, Katakros' campaign was halted by the return of Archaon, who defeated him in battle and the conflict has become a war of attrition.<br />
<br />
==Society==<br />
[[File:Ossiarch Bonereapers Society.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "pyramid scheme".]] <br />
All Ossiarch Bonereapers are built for a specific purpose and assigned a role based on the souls from which they’re formed. This is codified through a caste system, with Nagash at the top, then Mortarchs Katakros and Arhkan, then the highest ranking Ossiarchs underneath and various ranks beneath that. The Bonereaper caste system has a cartouche representing each caste (though Nagash's is just to symbolize him). While there is a Mortarch cartouche, only Katakros wears it because Arkhan predates the Bonereaper system (and everyone but Nagash) by several eons, and despite their alliance he's too proud to wear Katakros' symbol. While they're all obedient to Nagash and fearless, the Bonereapers used in battle are sapient and the characters at least have enough individuality to have names and traces of personality.<br />
<br />
While many Ossiarch Bonereapers are warriors, there are castes of groups such as crafters and preachers. There is movement between castes, but only downwards, and as a punishment for failure. A Liege Kavalos who fails in their mission, for example, may be remade as a Kavalos Deathrider. If the offense was major, they might get remade as a steed. The lowest caste are the exiles collectively referred to as Parrha, consisting of the worst offenders who get broken and remade into warped skeletal aberrations incapable of fighting and the Bonereapers value them less than the Imperial Guard values the life of its rank and file soldiers (for the uninitiated, that's really saying something).<br />
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The Ossiarch Bonereapers can be found all across the Mortal Realms, aiming to conquer everything from Azyr to the Eightpoints. At present, the majority of the Ossiarch Bonereapers are concentrated in Shyish, inhabiting the nations that surround the Shyish Nadir. This allows them easy access to a vast source of magical power and establishes them as a permanent garrison around this most valuable of territories. Apart from Shyish, the largest concentrations of Bonereapers are in Ghur and Chamon.<br />
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The Ossiarch Bonereapers build according to principles laid down in the Principia Necrotopia, a set of guidelines that ensure optimal construction: <br />
<br />
In the first stages of colonizing a new region, the Ossiarchs will establish tithing sites. Presumably, this involves mapping out surrounding settlements and segments of the region into their own tributaries, with each section's inhabitants made to sign a contract to begin paying the Tithe. They contruct shrines known as Bone-Tithe Nexus, which act as locations for vassals to dump their bones and are enchanted to give out powerful curses to ward off any scavengers seeking to steal from it. <br />
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Next, they will fortify key territories with small fortifications, following up with a number of Mortisan workshops to fuel the next stage of their expansion. These small holdings will eventually develop into vast and imposing fortresses, growing ever upward as the Bonereapers’ numbers grow. These are not just barracks, but places of culture for the Ossiarchs.<br />
<br />
Ossiarch scholars will endlessly study scrolls in charnel libraries, recording the details of cultures in the Mortal Realms they have subjugated and those they seek to subjugate. These vast citadel-states eventually resemble Nagashizzar itself.<br />
<br />
===The Bone Tithe===<br />
[[File:Bone tithe.jpg|left|300px|thumb|Put your spines into it. Literally!]]<br />
The Bone Tithe is instrumental to their society and Nagash's way of setting himself up as mob boss of the realms. Upon arriving in an area, the Ossiarchs send out scouts to get the lay of the land. When they find a settlement they want tribute from, a representative - in practice usually a Mortisan - approaches and makes them an offer they can't refuse; give "x" by the deadline at regular intervals, or we kill you all and takes your bones and souls for our use. To communicate, the Bonereapers draw on prior research for the local language; it doesn't matter if the vernacular's out of date by a few centuries or so, as long as they can be understood. If that doesn't work, the Bonereapers use other means, including killing a local and using their spirit as a translator if all else fails. If the locals refuse, attack them or are rude enough, [[Grimdark|the Bonereapers make good on their threat, slaughtering everything in the settlement that has bones, right down to the last child and stray animal]]. If they are feeling "nice", the Bonereapers might only kill the dissenters. <br />
<br />
When demanding the Bone Tithe, what/who the bones come from plus the amount and condition required depends on the situation and Bonereaper legion in question. Human bone is the most widely used; dwarf bones aren't common enough, elf bones are but don't replenish fast enough and greenskin bones are coarse, porous and prone to spontaneous fungal growth unless treated properly. While animal bones are also used, such as to repair Kavalos steeds or make Gothizzar Harvesters, that's not always the case and it depends on what animal they're from (Rhinoxen and Bleaklake crocodiles are some of the popular choices). The Bonereapers (though inbuilt or learned ability, it's not clear) CAN tell the difference between what race or species a specific bone comes from, so trying to cheat them by mixing in different kinds of bones doesn't work. They also respond to trickery the same way they respond to failure or refusal - immediate slaughter (as a human town learned to their cost when they tried to trick the Bonereapers by mixing pig bones in with human bones). <br />
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Sometimes things are even worse. A particularly war-horny leader, most often from the Stalliarch Lords (more on them below), will give nigh-impossible demands to increase the chance of failure. What kinds of demands? How about asking the population for detailed records on the city's family lineage going back to the founders and the condition of ''every bone in their bodies''. Or maybe they ask for just one tonne of bones ''every day'' (for extra lulz, the offer is made at night and has to be completed the next day). They might instead, or also, [[That Guy|arrive early to extract the Tithe just to get a good slaughter out of it]]. However it ends, the bones of the Ossiarch's victims are sorted through, the good bones taken for future use the sub-par ones discarded (same with their victims souls). Strips of skin and flesh from these unforunates are hung from the Bonereapers' spears as a warning to anyone who considers not paying the tithe.<br />
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Ultimately, they have a term related to the Bone Tithe called the Terminus Concept, referring to the point where a society can't provide enough bones so they get slaughtered and their bones are taken. For the truth is that the Bone Tithe - short term or long term - is ultimately unsustainable for the payers, and the Bonereapers know it. This all proves that, while Nagash is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he'll always find a way to be a <s>boner</s> [[Eldrad|huge skeletal dick]] about it.<br />
<br />
==Forces==<br />
[[File:Bonereaper army.jpg|right|500px|thumb|'''Angry Dooting Intensifies''']]<br />
*'''Mortek Guard:''' Rank and file infantry of the Bonereapers. Well armored and shielded, they have the choice of swords or spears and optional greatswords as weapons. Their primary role is to create massive shield walls to protect their leaders.<br />
*'''Morghast Harbingers and Archai:''' You know em, you love em. Nagash's original sculpted bone construct based on not-angels from the World-That-Was now served as prototypes to the current regime of spoopy skeltals. Flying blenders armed with either halberds (take these) or twin swords (dont take these). Harbingers are your chargey bois, while the Archai are bodyguard bois.<br />
*'''Necropolis Stalkers:''' Four-armed skeletal constructs the size of Kurnoth Hunters with four faces, each one has the soul of four warriors, and switches between which one is dominant, altering their fighting style accordingly. Their name's ripped from the Necropolis Knights and the Tomb Stalkers. <br />
*'''Immortis Guard:''' Four-armed <s>Grave Guard</s> <s>Tomb Guard</s> elite skellingtons armed with a halberd in one set of hands and a shield in the other. Like the Morghasts, Immortis are the bodyguard bois to the Stalkers' chargey bois. <br />
*'''Kavalos Deathriders:''' Essentially bony knights somewhere between Black Knights and Varanguard in power level, and who serve Bone Daddy. Each one has the soul of dozens of warriors to draw on their knowledge and is proportionately arrogant. They have undead birds roosting on their banner poles that act as spies and messenger birds. For added creep factor, these guys normally walk at a slow and ominous trot, only sprinting when going into a headlong charge.<br />
*'''Mortek Crawler:''' Screaming Skull Catapult 2.0 with an obligatory patent-friendly rename. In addition to flaming skulls, it can also hurl a cauldron of Death Magic that works based on bravery or a cursed stone that gets more powerful the more damage the Crawler takes. It's also powered by a bone-made hamster wheel and multiple legs.<br />
*'''Gothizzar Harvester:''' A big monster construct with weapon hands and half a skeleton for a codpiece that helps harvest bones. The Harvester uses them to make new constructs on the fly or repair damaged ones. Their weapon arms come with either enchanted maces or scything blades for hands.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulreaper:''' Your offensive caster for the Bonereapers with a scythe that doesn't like hordes.<br />
*'''Mortisan Boneshaper:''' The healers/builders of the Bonereapers. Formed from the souls of artists, they’re in charge of building the extravagant bone cities and other architecture of the legions. They all possess a friendly rivalry with each other that pushes them to one up another’s artwork.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulmason:''' Miniature Arkhans with four arms who are in charge of hunting and fusing souls for their various constructs. They ride into battle on bony [[Fyodor Karamazov|thrones with chicken legs]].<br />
*'''Liege-Kavalos''': Field generals with skeleton mounts placed in charge of leading the Bonereaper armies. They are forged as a cruel mockery of Sigmar’s Lord-Celestant on Dracoth.<br />
<br />
===Famous Legions===<br />
*'''Mortis Praetorians''': The 10,000 strong personal army of Katakros, created out of the souls of those he personally knew in life. They have gained a fearsome reputation for their tactical acumen, especially in Shyish. [[Ultramarines|The poster boys who are a jack-of-all-trades, big on tactics and led by an ancient leader who was the basis for future generations]]. They also have the only two Bonereapers with a single original soul; Katakros himself and Zandtos.<br />
* '''Petrifex Elite''': Made up of nomadic armies crafted from prehistoric fossilized bones, they are known for being slow-moving and a near impenetrable wall of bone. While fossilized bone tends to be fragile, the Petrifex Elite enchant them to be tough and also include already supernaturally tough bones among them (ie; the bones of godbeasts). Led by Mortisans, [[Necrons|they only exist to slay and find ancient bones to build more of themselves and make themselves even deadlier]]. They have forgotten why Nagash wants them to do this, and their leaders eschew personal identity to the point of using titles instead of names, as mandated by their most senior Mortisan, the Grand Necromystic.<br />
* '''Null Myriad''': The first Ossiarch Bonereapers made during Nagash's experiments in the Age of Myth. The Null Myriad were later refined and bolstered using the bones and souls of the countless dead who helped construct Nagash’s Black Pyramid and the best of Arkhan's Black Disciples. They are a solemn yet prideful lot with high resilience to magic and were given to Arkhan to be his personal legion; they're so loyal to Arkhan that they defer to him even over Katakros himself. Their resistance to magic extends to the power of Chaos, so they're used to inhabit the most inhospitable parts of the realms. Recently Arkhan made an alliance with Katakros, and the Null Myriad's job is to secure magic-heavy locations in the realms so Katakros can control the sources of their magic. The Null Myriad forces in Chamon have come into conflict with the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizards Constellation who also dwell there.<br />
*'''Ivory Host''': Outwardly, they appear as honorable warriors, but hidden away in their bodies is a monstrous frenzy that turns them into clawing slavering beasts. Fitting considering they are constructed from beast and monster bones. Tasked by Nagash to conquer Ghur, they overcompensate for their bestial anger by being meticulously clean and making everything of theirs as much of a work of art as possible. Also known for [[Tomb Kings|being the only Ossiarchs who build ships, use the color gold regularly in their attire and are led by a monarch]]. Currently they’ve claimed the realmgate of Greedmouth and established the Ivory Citadel in the southwestern corner of the Ghurish Heartlands, putting them awfully close to numerous [[Ogor Mawtribes]] and the [[Cities of Sigmar|free city]] of Excelsis. <br />
*'''Stalliarch Lords''': A cavalry centric force who are [[Creed|skillful tacticians]] and like to make impossible demands so they have an excuse to raze cities and slaughter people (on the rare occasion that someone meets their outrageous demands they keep their word... but remember the Terminus Concept). They even force the Bone Tithe on other death factions, as was the case when they subjected a keep of Blood Knights to it and offered them a way out if their leader defeated a Liege-Kavalos in a duel to the death (he didn't). So in addition to being [[Kharn|psychopaths with zero regard for life, they're also team-killing douchebags]]. Basically [[That Guy]] as a cavalry-loving undead legion.<br />
*'''Crematorians''': These Bonereapers are burning with an internal fire to the point where some of them literally explode when killed. Some of them have recently realized that they don't really have a purpose other than to fight and explode, and aren't too happy about that. In fact, their leaders [[Noblebright|have made pacts of friendship to repair each other if any of them are destroyed and the chief Liege-Kavalos scours the libraries of everyone they encounter in the hopes of finding a way to undo their fiery curse, and is implied to be on the verge of a breakthrough]].<br />
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==Significant Skeletons==<br />
* '''[[Katakros|Orpheon Katakros]], [[Mortarch]] of the Necropolis''': In life he was the greatest strategic genius in all the Mortal Realms, and undeath has done nothing to dull his mastery of military tactics. He's been given a new body of enscrolled bone by Nagash himself which looks like a [[Jojo's Bizarre Adventure|JoJo stand]] rather than a skeleton. He goes into battle surrounded by various attendants; the Liege-Immortis, the Aviarch Spymaster, the Gnosis Scrollbearer, and the Prime Necrophoros.<br />
*'''Arch-Kavalos Zandtos''': Both in life and in death, Patru Zandtos has been Katakros’ most trusted lieutenant. In life he was a refined, death-obsessed assassin who treated killing as a sacred art and hated the loud butchery of battle. In undeath, through the manipulations of Nagash and Katakros, he’s now a death-purist who wishes to “cleanse” Shyish of anything still living.<br />
*'''Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe''': The grim tallyman in charge of recording/judging the Tithe. He carries the severed heads of those foolish enough to refuse to pay the Tithe and has a coffin on his back, making him look like a giant beetle. Though officially he’s under Katakros in the OBR hierarchy, he’ll only receive/carry out orders from Big Bone Daddy himself.<br />
*'''[[Arkhan the Black]]''': Yeah, he's part of the army despite technically being just an "average" liche as opposed to a bone golem thing. Likely because apart from Nagash, he's the most privy to understanding how they are made without being one.<br />
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==Spooky Melodies for your Bony Boys==<br />
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*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DsZivjop_s Spooky Scary Skeletons! a remix for a revamp]<br />
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHAX1K4sKQ The Dead March returns for AoS!]<br />
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==Trivia==<br />
* The architecture of the Ossiarch Bonereapers was likely inspired by the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary Sedlec Ossuary] in the Czech Republic. The Sedlec Ossuary is a Roman Catholic church where the bones of thousands of people have been artistically arranged to form the decorations and the furnishings of the chapel (it's also called "the Bone Church"). This was done several centuries ago for creative interment reasons with many dead and not enough space to bury them on holy ground.<br />
* On a comical note, "Kavalos", the name for Bonereaper cavalry, translates to "crotch" in Greek (the Greek word is "kaválos"). Makes more sense when you think of [[Katakros]]' defining trait lookswise, and how his name even sounds like the Greek word.<br />
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==Gallery==<br />
<gallery><br />
File:Bonereaper vs Kharadron.jpg|Sky Pirates vs Bone Golems.<br />
File:Cavalry-bonereapers.jpg|As if Blood Knights weren't bad enough, Bone Daddy brings out Kavalos Deathriders too.<br />
File:Gothizzar Harvester.jpg|"Oh those bones, oh those bones, oh those skeleton bones. Oh mercy how they scare! With the toe bone connected to the foot bone..."<br />
File:Bonereaper city.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Welcome to Necrotopia. Please remember to remove all skin and flesh before you reach customs.<br />
</gallery><br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
*[[Nagash]], their jerk of a god whom they give their undisputed loyalty to (yes, really!)<br />
<br />
{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}<br />
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[[Category:Age of Sigmar]]</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Ossiarch_Bonereapers&diff=372366Ossiarch Bonereapers2021-01-19T01:47:40Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Society */</p>
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<div>{{Age of Sigmar Faction|Faction=Ossiarch Bonereapers|Logo=Immortis-WC2.jpg|Alliance=Death|Motto=The Skeleton War is upon us! We ride against the [[Stormcast Eternals|fuckboys]]!}}<br />
<br />
{{topquote|Two can play at that game!|Likely Nagash after learning how Sigmar makes Stormcast}}<br />
{{topquote|Debt, an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.|Ambrose Bierce}}<br />
{{topquote|The bones of the skeleton which support the body can become the bars of the cage which imprison the spirit.|J. Ruth Gendler}}<br />
<br />
The latest addition to [[Nagash]]’s ever growing hordes (designed and sculpted by [[Maxime Corbeil]], a former dentist), the '''Ossiarch Bonereapers''' <br />
(Also known as '''The Boney Boys''', '''Bonecast''', '''Tomb Kings 2.0''', '''Bonechads''', '''Nagash's Taxmen''', '''The Boney Bean Counters''', '''Ossiarch Bean Counters''' or '''The IRS''') are the result of an eons old plan by Big Bone Daddy. <br />
<br />
Likely inspired by the [[Stormcast Eternals]], the Bonereapers are not mere skeletons given life by necromancy, but massive constructs of bone and countless warrior souls, making them all look impressively robust for undead. Since the Legions of Nagash are the mainstay, the Nighthaunt are the shock troops and the Flesh-Eater Courts are completely insane, these buff bone boys are the elite vanguard of the Grand Alliance. Given their themes of bones, undead constructs priest characters, architect characters and skull-throwing catapults... they're currently the closest thing we've got to [[Tomb Kings]] in AoS.<br />
<br />
They also carry out the Bone Tithe; in addition to going out and killing shit to get their bones, the Ossiarchs give settlements they encounter a contract: Give up a set amount of bones whenever we stroll by, or face annihilation now. Understandably, most choose the former. Being unable to pay or even being rude to them also provokes a slaughter.<br />
<br />
Visually-speaking, they're what happens when Games Workshop decides to mix [[Tyranids]], [[Tomb Kings]], and [[Necrons]] into one army. <br />
<br />
==History==<br />
===Age of Myth===<br />
[[File:Slaves to Darkness vs Ossiarch Bonereapers 01.jpg|right|300px|thumb|SKULLS FOR <s>THE SKULL THRONE</s> Nagash! And all the other bones too!]]<br />
When Nagash was helping Sigmar build his cities he secretly began experimenting on undead, combining their bones and souls into newer, stronger undead warriors; the [[Morghasts/Hammurai|Morghasts]] and the first Bonereapers. Most were put into massive underground crypts Nagash secretly had built beneath the cities, but others were kept on the surface and brought into battle. The other gods saw the Bonereapers and really didn't like them because of how unnatural they were. In response, Nagash sent these Bonereapers to the edge of Shyish to lay low until he called on them (these Bonereapers who would go on to form the Null Myriad). He also sent at least twenty of them to wander the Realms on a long-forgotten mission (these would go on to become the Petrifex Elite). <br />
<br />
Strangely, none of the Order groups noticed until however long its been since the start of the Age of Myth that there were crypts full of undead warriors beneath their cities. Especially since they know about and need to defend against [[Skaven|enemies who specialize in creating massive complexes beneath your cities that they then invade from.]] <br />
<br />
===Age of Chaos===<br />
The Age of Chaos only effected the Bonereapers garrisoned at the edge of Shyish. By that time they had become resistant to magic, and they fought against demonic armies, their actions blunting the assault of Chaos on Shyish. During this time, Katakros led an army against Sigmar himself on Nagash's orders while the former was pursuing the latter for his betrayal. The battle resulted in the loss of Katakros' army, the Mortarch's defeat and subsequent confinement to a Stormvault.<br />
<br />
===Malign Portents===<br />
During this time, Katakros was freed from the Stormvault by fellow Mortarch, Lady Olynder. The Bonereapers on the edge of Shyish acted as a military force protecting the skeletal work crews who carried grains of Shyishan realmstone to Nagashizzar for Nagash to use to build the Black Pyramid.<br />
<br />
===Soul Wars===<br />
After the Necroquake, Nagash decided the time was right to wake up everyone beneath these cities, who (according to the most recent Stormcast) apparently marched back home, making them relatively pointless. In that respect, these tombs seemed to mirror the Stormvaults Sigmar had strewn about the Realms to contain various dangerous contraband like [[Katakros|a certain Mortarch]].<br />
<br />
When the Bonereaper legions arrived in Shyish, Nagash got back to his pet-project of making super-skellies, and perfected the process. This involves taking souls and distilling them down to their most choice elements. This involves ripping apart their identity and keeping parts considered useful (suck as skills and knowledge) while discarding the parts that aren't useful (such as fears and loyalties to anyone but Nagash) and replacing those parts with something better (like loyalty to Nagash), with the strongest-willed soul among them becoming the identity of the new Bonereaper. Then these fragmented souls are put into specially crafted bone constructs. By doing so, he artificially created individuals who were warriors, leaders, bodyguards, artisans, architects, philosophers and sculptors all in one, [[Adeptus Custodes|which sounds a little familiar.]]<br />
<br />
The Bonereapers have had a meteoric rise that's led to them making their mark across the realms. In Shyish itself, the Kryptboyz Ironjawz Warclan have focused their efforts on fighting the Bonereapers due to wanting to destroy their settlements and wear their bones as trophies. In Chamon, the Null Myriad have waged a series of wars against the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizard Constellation as they fight for control of the realm's edge. The Ivory Host legion were sent to conquer Ghur, and in building their cities have positioned themselves for conflict with several Mawtribes and the free city of Excelsis. The Ivory Host also clashed with a [[Sons of Behemat|Mega-Gargant and indirectly led him to become the mercenary known as One-Eyed Grunnock]]. They have also sent forces into Hysh that have come into conflict with the Lumineth. <br />
<br />
The most notable conflict the Bonereapers have entered into is the ongoing War for the Eightpoints, where Katakros led the Mortis Praetorians and detachments from other Legions into the Eightpoints alongside Olynder and a Nighthaunt army to take the Eightpoints for Nagash. They succeeded in capturing and fortifying the realmgate leading to Shyish, and have established a base of operations. However, Katakros' campaign was halted by the return of Archaon, who defeated him in battle and the conflict has become a war of attrition.<br />
<br />
==Society==<br />
[[File:Ossiarch Bonereapers Society.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "pyramid scheme".]] <br />
All Ossiarch Bonereapers are built for a specific purpose and assigned a role based on the souls from which they’re formed. This is codified through a caste system, with Nagash at the top, then Mortarchs Katakros and Arhkan, then the highest ranking Ossiarchs underneath and various ranks beneath that. The Bonereaper caste system has a cartouche representing each caste (though Nagash's is just to symbolize him). While there is a Mortarch cartouche, only Katakros wears it because Arkhan predates the Bonereaper system (and everyone but Nagash) by several eons, and despite their alliance he's too proud to wear Katakros' symbol. While they're all obedient to Nagash and fearless, the Bonereapers used in battle are sapient and the characters at least have enough individuality to have names.<br />
<br />
While many Ossiarch Bonereapers are warriors, there are castes of groups such as crafters and preachers. There is movement between castes, but only downwards, and as a punishment for failure. A Liege Kavalos who fails in their mission, for example, may be remade as a Kavalos Deathrider. If the offense was major, they might get remade as a steed. The lowest caste are the exiles collectively referred to as Parrha, consisting of the worst offenders who get broken and remade into warped skeletal aberrations incapable of fighting and the Bonereapers value them less than the Imperial Guard values the life of its rank and file soldiers (for the uninitiated, that's really saying something).<br />
<br />
The Ossiarch Bonereapers can be found all across the Mortal Realms, aiming to conquer everything from Azyr to the Eightpoints. At present, the majority of the Ossiarch Bonereapers are concentrated in Shyish, inhabiting the nations that surround the Shyish Nadir. This allows them easy access to a vast source of magical power and establishes them as a permanent garrison around this most valuable of territories. Apart from Shyish, the largest concentrations of Bonereapers are in Ghur and Chamon.<br />
<br />
The Ossiarch Bonereapers build according to principles laid down in the Principia Necrotopia, a set of guidelines that ensure optimal construction: <br />
<br />
In the first stages of colonizing a new region, the Ossiarchs will establish tithing sites. Presumably, this involves mapping out surrounding settlements and segments of the region into their own tributaries, with each section's inhabitants made to sign a contract to begin paying the Tithe. They contruct shrines known as Bone-Tithe Nexus, which act as locations for vassals to dump their bones and are enchanted to give out powerful curses to ward off any scavengers seeking to steal from it. <br />
<br />
Next, they will fortify key territories with small fortifications, following up with a number of Mortisan workshops to fuel the next stage of their expansion. These small holdings will eventually develop into vast and imposing fortresses, growing ever upward as the Bonereapers’ numbers grow. These are not just barracks, but places of culture for the Ossiarchs.<br />
<br />
Ossiarch scholars will endlessly study scrolls in charnel libraries, recording the details of cultures in the Mortal Realms they have subjugated and those they seek to subjugate. These vast citadel-states eventually resemble Nagashizzar itself.<br />
<br />
===The Bone Tithe===<br />
[[File:Bone tithe.jpg|left|300px|thumb|Put your spines into it. Literally!]]<br />
The Bone Tithe is instrumental to their society and Nagash's way of setting himself up as mob boss of the realms. Upon arriving in an area, the Ossiarchs send out scouts to get the lay of the land. When they find a settlement they want tribute from, a representative - in practice usually a Mortisan - approaches and makes them an offer they can't refuse; give "x" by the deadline at regular intervals, or we kill you all and takes your bones and souls for our use. To communicate, the Bonereapers draw on prior research for the local language; it doesn't matter if the vernacular's out of date by a few centuries or so, as long as they can be understood. If that doesn't work, the Bonereapers use other means, including killing a local and using their spirit as a translator if all else fails. If the locals refuse, attack them or are rude enough, [[Grimdark|the Bonereapers make good on their threat, slaughtering everything in the settlement that has bones, right down to the last child and stray animal]]. If they are feeling "nice", the Bonereapers might only kill the dissenters. <br />
<br />
When demanding the Bone Tithe, what/who the bones come from plus the amount and condition required depends on the situation and Bonereaper legion in question. Human bone is the most widely used; dwarf bones aren't common enough, elf bones are but don't replenish fast enough and greenskin bones are coarse, porous and prone to spontaneous fungal growth unless treated properly. While animal bones are also used, such as to repair Kavalos steeds or make Gothizzar Harvesters, that's not always the case and it depends on what animal they're from (Rhinoxen and Bleaklake crocodiles are some of the popular choices). The Bonereapers (though inbuilt or learned ability, it's not clear) CAN tell the difference between what race or species a specific bone comes from, so trying to cheat them by mixing in different kinds of bones doesn't work. They also respond to trickery the same way they respond to failure or refusal - immediate slaughter (as a human town learned to their cost when they tried to trick the Bonereapers by mixing pig bones in with human bones). <br />
<br />
Sometimes things are even worse. A particularly war-horny leader, most often from the Stalliarch Lords (more on them below), will give nigh-impossible demands to increase the chance of failure. What kinds of demands? How about asking the population for detailed records on the city's family lineage going back to the founders and the condition of ''every bone in their bodies''. Or maybe they ask for just one tonne of bones ''every day'' (for extra lulz, the offer is made at night and has to be completed the next day). They might instead, or also, [[That Guy|arrive early to extract the Tithe just to get a good slaughter out of it]]. However it ends, the bones of the Ossiarch's victims are sorted through, the good bones taken for future use the sub-par ones discarded (same with their victims souls). Strips of skin and flesh from these unforunates are hung from the Bonereapers' spears as a warning to anyone who considers not paying the tithe.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, they have a term related to the Bone Tithe called the Terminus Concept, referring to the point where a society can't provide enough bones so they get slaughtered and their bones are taken. For the truth is that the Bone Tithe - short term or long term - is ultimately unsustainable for the payers, and the Bonereapers know it. This all proves that, while Nagash is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he'll always find a way to be a <s>boner</s> [[Eldrad|huge skeletal dick]] about it.<br />
<br />
==Forces==<br />
[[File:Bonereaper army.jpg|right|500px|thumb|'''Angry Dooting Intensifies''']]<br />
*'''Mortek Guard:''' Rank and file infantry of the Bonereapers. Well armored and shielded, they have the choice of swords or spears and optional greatswords as weapons. Their primary role is to create massive shield walls to protect their leaders.<br />
*'''Morghast Harbingers and Archai:''' You know em, you love em. Nagash's original sculpted bone construct based on not-angels from the World-That-Was now served as prototypes to the current regime of spoopy skeltals. Flying blenders armed with either halberds (take these) or twin swords (dont take these). Harbingers are your chargey bois, while the Archai are bodyguard bois.<br />
*'''Necropolis Stalkers:''' Four-armed skeletal constructs the size of Kurnoth Hunters with four faces, each one has the soul of four warriors, and switches between which one is dominant, altering their fighting style accordingly. Their name's ripped from the Necropolis Knights and the Tomb Stalkers. <br />
*'''Immortis Guard:''' Four-armed <s>Grave Guard</s> <s>Tomb Guard</s> elite skellingtons armed with a halberd in one set of hands and a shield in the other. Like the Morghasts, Immortis are the bodyguard bois to the Stalkers' chargey bois. <br />
*'''Kavalos Deathriders:''' Essentially bony knights somewhere between Black Knights and Varanguard in power level, and who serve Bone Daddy. Each one has the soul of dozens of warriors to draw on their knowledge and is proportionately arrogant. They have undead birds roosting on their banner poles that act as spies and messenger birds. For added creep factor, these guys normally walk at a slow and ominous trot, only sprinting when going into a headlong charge.<br />
*'''Mortek Crawler:''' Screaming Skull Catapult 2.0 with an obligatory patent-friendly rename. In addition to flaming skulls, it can also hurl a cauldron of Death Magic that works based on bravery or a cursed stone that gets more powerful the more damage the Crawler takes. It's also powered by a bone-made hamster wheel and multiple legs.<br />
*'''Gothizzar Harvester:''' A big monster construct with weapon hands and half a skeleton for a codpiece that helps harvest bones. The Harvester uses them to make new constructs on the fly or repair damaged ones. Their weapon arms come with either enchanted maces or scything blades for hands.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulreaper:''' Your offensive caster for the Bonereapers with a scythe that doesn't like hordes.<br />
*'''Mortisan Boneshaper:''' The healers/builders of the Bonereapers. Formed from the souls of artists, they’re in charge of building the extravagant bone cities and other architecture of the legions. They all possess a friendly rivalry with each other that pushes them to one up another’s artwork.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulmason:''' Miniature Arkhans with four arms who are in charge of hunting and fusing souls for their various constructs. They ride into battle on bony [[Fyodor Karamazov|thrones with chicken legs]].<br />
*'''Liege-Kavalos''': Field generals with skeleton mounts placed in charge of leading the Bonereaper armies. They are forged as a cruel mockery of Sigmar’s Lord-Celestant on Dracoth.<br />
<br />
===Famous Legions===<br />
*'''Mortis Praetorians''': The 10,000 strong personal army of Katakros, created out of the souls of those he personally knew in life. They have gained a fearsome reputation for their tactical acumen, especially in Shyish. [[Ultramarines|The poster boys who are a jack-of-all-trades, big on tactics and led by an ancient leader who was the basis for future generations]]. They also have the only two Bonereapers with a single original soul; Katakros himself and Zandtos.<br />
* '''Petrifex Elite''': Made up of nomadic armies crafted from prehistoric fossilized bones, they are known for being slow-moving and a near impenetrable wall of bone. While fossilized bone tends to be fragile, the Petrifex Elite enchant them to be tough and also include already supernaturally tough bones among them (ie; the bones of godbeasts). Led by Mortisans, [[Necrons|they only exist to slay and find ancient bones to build more of themselves and make themselves even deadlier]]. They have forgotten why Nagash wants them to do this, and their leaders eschew personal identity to the point of using titles instead of names, as mandated by their most senior Mortisan, the Grand Necromystic.<br />
* '''Null Myriad''': The first Ossiarch Bonereapers made during Nagash's experiments in the Age of Myth. The Null Myriad were later refined and bolstered using the bones and souls of the countless dead who helped construct Nagash’s Black Pyramid and the best of Arkhan's Black Disciples. They are a solemn yet prideful lot with high resilience to magic and were given to Arkhan to be his personal legion; they're so loyal to Arkhan that they defer to him even over Katakros himself. Their resistance to magic extends to the power of Chaos, so they're used to inhabit the most inhospitable parts of the realms. Recently Arkhan made an alliance with Katakros, and the Null Myriad's job is to secure magic-heavy locations in the realms so Katakros can control the sources of their magic. The Null Myriad forces in Chamon have come into conflict with the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizards Constellation who also dwell there.<br />
*'''Ivory Host''': Outwardly, they appear as honorable warriors, but hidden away in their bodies is a monstrous frenzy that turns them into clawing slavering beasts. Fitting considering they are constructed from beast and monster bones. Tasked by Nagash to conquer Ghur, they overcompensate for their bestial anger by being meticulously clean and making everything of theirs as much of a work of art as possible. Also known for [[Tomb Kings|being the only Ossiarchs who build ships, use the color gold regularly in their attire and are led by a monarch]]. Currently they’ve claimed the realmgate of Greedmouth and established the Ivory Citadel in the southwestern corner of the Ghurish Heartlands, putting them awfully close to numerous [[Ogor Mawtribes]] and the [[Cities of Sigmar|free city]] of Excelsis. <br />
*'''Stalliarch Lords''': A cavalry centric force who are [[Creed|skillful tacticians]] and like to make impossible demands so they have an excuse to raze cities and slaughter people (on the rare occasion that someone meets their outrageous demands they keep their word... but remember the Terminus Concept). They even force the Bone Tithe on other death factions, as was the case when they subjected a keep of Blood Knights to it and offered them a way out if their leader defeated a Liege-Kavalos in a duel to the death (he didn't). So in addition to being [[Kharn|psychopaths with zero regard for life, they're also team-killing douchebags]]. Basically [[That Guy]] as a cavalry-loving undead legion.<br />
*'''Crematorians''': These Bonereapers are burning with an internal fire to the point where some of them literally explode when killed. Some of them have recently realized that they don't really have a purpose other than to fight and explode, and aren't too happy about that. In fact, their leaders [[Noblebright|have made pacts of friendship to repair each other if any of them are destroyed and the chief Liege-Kavalos scours the libraries of everyone they encounter in the hopes of finding a way to undo their fiery curse, and is implied to be on the verge of a breakthrough]].<br />
<br />
==Significant Skeletons==<br />
* '''[[Katakros|Orpheon Katakros]], [[Mortarch]] of the Necropolis''': In life he was the greatest strategic genius in all the Mortal Realms, and undeath has done nothing to dull his mastery of military tactics. He's been given a new body of enscrolled bone by Nagash himself which looks like a [[Jojo's Bizarre Adventure|JoJo stand]] rather than a skeleton. He goes into battle surrounded by various attendants; the Liege-Immortis, the Aviarch Spymaster, the Gnosis Scrollbearer, and the Prime Necrophoros.<br />
*'''Arch-Kavalos Zandtos''': Both in life and in death, Patru Zandtos has been Katakros’ most trusted lieutenant. In life he was a refined, death-obsessed assassin who treated killing as a sacred art and hated the loud butchery of battle. In undeath, through the manipulations of Nagash and Katakros, he’s now a death-purist who wishes to “cleanse” Shyish of anything still living.<br />
*'''Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe''': The grim tallyman in charge of recording/judging the Tithe. He carries the severed heads of those foolish enough to refuse to pay the Tithe and has a coffin on his back, making him look like a giant beetle. Though officially he’s under Katakros in the OBR hierarchy, he’ll only receive/carry out orders from Big Bone Daddy himself.<br />
*'''[[Arkhan the Black]]''': Yeah, he's part of the army despite technically being just an "average" liche as opposed to a bone golem thing. Likely because apart from Nagash, he's the most privy to understanding how they are made without being one.<br />
<br />
==Spooky Melodies for your Bony Boys==<br />
<br />
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DsZivjop_s Spooky Scary Skeletons! a remix for a revamp]<br />
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHAX1K4sKQ The Dead March returns for AoS!]<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
* The architecture of the Ossiarch Bonereapers was likely inspired by the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary Sedlec Ossuary] in the Czech Republic. The Sedlec Ossuary is a Roman Catholic church where the bones of thousands of people have been artistically arranged to form the decorations and the furnishings of the chapel (it's also called "the Bone Church"). This was done several centuries ago for creative interment reasons with many dead and not enough space to bury them on holy ground.<br />
* On a comical note, "Kavalos", the name for Bonereaper cavalry, translates to "crotch" in Greek (the Greek word is "kaválos"). Makes more sense when you think of [[Katakros]]' defining trait lookswise, and how his name even sounds like the Greek word.<br />
<br />
==Gallery==<br />
<gallery><br />
File:Bonereaper vs Kharadron.jpg|Sky Pirates vs Bone Golems.<br />
File:Cavalry-bonereapers.jpg|As if Blood Knights weren't bad enough, Bone Daddy brings out Kavalos Deathriders too.<br />
File:Gothizzar Harvester.jpg|"Oh those bones, oh those bones, oh those skeleton bones. Oh mercy how they scare! With the toe bone connected to the foot bone..."<br />
File:Bonereaper city.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Welcome to Necrotopia. Please remember to remove all skin and flesh before you reach customs.<br />
</gallery><br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
*[[Nagash]], their jerk of a god whom they give their undisputed loyalty to (yes, really!)<br />
<br />
{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Age of Sigmar]]</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Ossiarch_Bonereapers&diff=372365Ossiarch Bonereapers2021-01-19T01:43:03Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Age of Chaos */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Age of Sigmar Faction|Faction=Ossiarch Bonereapers|Logo=Immortis-WC2.jpg|Alliance=Death|Motto=The Skeleton War is upon us! We ride against the [[Stormcast Eternals|fuckboys]]!}}<br />
<br />
{{topquote|Two can play at that game!|Likely Nagash after learning how Sigmar makes Stormcast}}<br />
{{topquote|Debt, an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.|Ambrose Bierce}}<br />
{{topquote|The bones of the skeleton which support the body can become the bars of the cage which imprison the spirit.|J. Ruth Gendler}}<br />
<br />
The latest addition to [[Nagash]]’s ever growing hordes (designed and sculpted by [[Maxime Corbeil]], a former dentist), the '''Ossiarch Bonereapers''' <br />
(Also known as '''The Boney Boys''', '''Bonecast''', '''Tomb Kings 2.0''', '''Bonechads''', '''Nagash's Taxmen''', '''The Boney Bean Counters''', '''Ossiarch Bean Counters''' or '''The IRS''') are the result of an eons old plan by Big Bone Daddy. <br />
<br />
Likely inspired by the [[Stormcast Eternals]], the Bonereapers are not mere skeletons given life by necromancy, but massive constructs of bone and countless warrior souls, making them all look impressively robust for undead. Since the Legions of Nagash are the mainstay, the Nighthaunt are the shock troops and the Flesh-Eater Courts are completely insane, these buff bone boys are the elite vanguard of the Grand Alliance. Given their themes of bones, undead constructs priest characters, architect characters and skull-throwing catapults... they're currently the closest thing we've got to [[Tomb Kings]] in AoS.<br />
<br />
They also carry out the Bone Tithe; in addition to going out and killing shit to get their bones, the Ossiarchs give settlements they encounter a contract: Give up a set amount of bones whenever we stroll by, or face annihilation now. Understandably, most choose the former. Being unable to pay or even being rude to them also provokes a slaughter.<br />
<br />
Visually-speaking, they're what happens when Games Workshop decides to mix [[Tyranids]], [[Tomb Kings]], and [[Necrons]] into one army. <br />
<br />
==History==<br />
===Age of Myth===<br />
[[File:Slaves to Darkness vs Ossiarch Bonereapers 01.jpg|right|300px|thumb|SKULLS FOR <s>THE SKULL THRONE</s> Nagash! And all the other bones too!]]<br />
When Nagash was helping Sigmar build his cities he secretly began experimenting on undead, combining their bones and souls into newer, stronger undead warriors; the [[Morghasts/Hammurai|Morghasts]] and the first Bonereapers. Most were put into massive underground crypts Nagash secretly had built beneath the cities, but others were kept on the surface and brought into battle. The other gods saw the Bonereapers and really didn't like them because of how unnatural they were. In response, Nagash sent these Bonereapers to the edge of Shyish to lay low until he called on them (these Bonereapers who would go on to form the Null Myriad). He also sent at least twenty of them to wander the Realms on a long-forgotten mission (these would go on to become the Petrifex Elite). <br />
<br />
Strangely, none of the Order groups noticed until however long its been since the start of the Age of Myth that there were crypts full of undead warriors beneath their cities. Especially since they know about and need to defend against [[Skaven|enemies who specialize in creating massive complexes beneath your cities that they then invade from.]] <br />
<br />
===Age of Chaos===<br />
The Age of Chaos only effected the Bonereapers garrisoned at the edge of Shyish. By that time they had become resistant to magic, and they fought against demonic armies, their actions blunting the assault of Chaos on Shyish. During this time, Katakros led an army against Sigmar himself on Nagash's orders while the former was pursuing the latter for his betrayal. The battle resulted in the loss of Katakros' army, the Mortarch's defeat and subsequent confinement to a Stormvault.<br />
<br />
===Malign Portents===<br />
During this time, Katakros was freed from the Stormvault by fellow Mortarch, Lady Olynder. The Bonereapers on the edge of Shyish acted as a military force protecting the skeletal work crews who carried grains of Shyishan realmstone to Nagashizzar for Nagash to use to build the Black Pyramid.<br />
<br />
===Soul Wars===<br />
After the Necroquake, Nagash decided the time was right to wake up everyone beneath these cities, who (according to the most recent Stormcast) apparently marched back home, making them relatively pointless. In that respect, these tombs seemed to mirror the Stormvaults Sigmar had strewn about the Realms to contain various dangerous contraband like [[Katakros|a certain Mortarch]].<br />
<br />
When the Bonereaper legions arrived in Shyish, Nagash got back to his pet-project of making super-skellies, and perfected the process. This involves taking souls and distilling them down to their most choice elements. This involves ripping apart their identity and keeping parts considered useful (suck as skills and knowledge) while discarding the parts that aren't useful (such as fears and loyalties to anyone but Nagash) and replacing those parts with something better (like loyalty to Nagash), with the strongest-willed soul among them becoming the identity of the new Bonereaper. Then these fragmented souls are put into specially crafted bone constructs. By doing so, he artificially created individuals who were warriors, leaders, bodyguards, artisans, architects, philosophers and sculptors all in one, [[Adeptus Custodes|which sounds a little familiar.]]<br />
<br />
The Bonereapers have had a meteoric rise that's led to them making their mark across the realms. In Shyish itself, the Kryptboyz Ironjawz Warclan have focused their efforts on fighting the Bonereapers due to wanting to destroy their settlements and wear their bones as trophies. In Chamon, the Null Myriad have waged a series of wars against the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizard Constellation as they fight for control of the realm's edge. The Ivory Host legion were sent to conquer Ghur, and in building their cities have positioned themselves for conflict with several Mawtribes and the free city of Excelsis. The Ivory Host also clashed with a [[Sons of Behemat|Mega-Gargant and indirectly led him to become the mercenary known as One-Eyed Grunnock]]. They have also sent forces into Hysh that have come into conflict with the Lumineth. <br />
<br />
The most notable conflict the Bonereapers have entered into is the ongoing War for the Eightpoints, where Katakros led the Mortis Praetorians and detachments from other Legions into the Eightpoints alongside Olynder and a Nighthaunt army to take the Eightpoints for Nagash. They succeeded in capturing and fortifying the realmgate leading to Shyish, and have established a base of operations. However, Katakros' campaign was halted by the return of Archaon, who defeated him in battle and the conflict has become a war of attrition.<br />
<br />
==Society==<br />
[[File:Ossiarch Bonereapers Society.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "pyramid scheme".]] <br />
All Ossiarch Bonereapers are built for a specific purpose and assigned a role based on the souls from which they’re formed. This is codified through a caste system, with Nagash at the top, then Mortarchs Katakros and Arhkan, then the highest ranking Ossiarchs underneath and various ranks beneath that. The Bonereaper caste system has a cartouche representing each caste (though Nagash's is just to symbolize him). While there is a Mortarch cartouche, only Katakros wears it because Arkhan predates the Bonereaper system (and everyone but Nagash) by several eons, and despite their alliance he's too proud to wear Katakros' symbol. That said, the Bonereapers used in battle are sapient and the characters at least have enough individuality to have names.<br />
<br />
While many Ossiarch Bonereapers are warriors, there are castes of groups such as crafters and preachers. There is movement between castes, but only downwards, and as a punishment for failure. A Liege Kavalos who fails in their mission, for example, may be remade as a Kavalos Deathrider. If the offense was major, they might get remade as a steed. The lowest caste are the exiles collectively referred to as Parrha, consisting of the worst offenders who get broken and remade into warped skeletal aberrations incapable of fighting and the Bonereapers value them less than the Imperial Guard values the life of its rank and file soldiers (for the uninitiated, that's really saying something).<br />
<br />
The Ossiarch Bonereapers can be found all across the Mortal Realms, aiming to conquer everything from Azyr to the Eightpoints. At present, the majority of the Ossiarch Bonereapers are concentrated in Shyish, inhabiting the nations that surround the Shyish Nadir. This allows them easy access to a vast source of magical power and establishes them as a permanent garrison around this most valuable of territories. Apart from Shyish, the largest concentrations of Bonereapers are in Ghur and Chamon.<br />
<br />
The Ossiarch Bonereapers build according to principles laid down in the Principia Necrotopia, a set of guidelines that ensure optimal construction: <br />
<br />
In the first stages of colonizing a new region, the Ossiarchs will establish tithing sites. Presumably, this involves mapping out surrounding settlements and segments of the region into their own tributaries, with each section's inhabitants made to sign a contract to begin paying the Tithe. They contruct shrines known as Bone-Tithe Nexus, which act as locations for vassals to dump their bones and are enchanted to give out powerful curses to ward off any scavengers seeking to steal from it. <br />
<br />
Next, they will fortify key territories with small fortifications, following up with a number of Mortisan workshops to fuel the next stage of their expansion. These small holdings will eventually develop into vast and imposing fortresses, growing ever upward as the Bonereapers’ numbers grow. These are not just barracks, but places of culture for the Ossiarchs.<br />
<br />
Ossiarch scholars will endlessly study scrolls in charnel libraries, recording the details of cultures in the Mortal Realms they have subjugated and those they seek to subjugate. These vast citadel-states eventually resemble Nagashizzar itself.<br />
<br />
===The Bone Tithe===<br />
[[File:Bone tithe.jpg|left|300px|thumb|Put your spines into it. Literally!]]<br />
The Bone Tithe is instrumental to their society and Nagash's way of setting himself up as mob boss of the realms. Upon arriving in an area, the Ossiarchs send out scouts to get the lay of the land. When they find a settlement they want tribute from, a representative - in practice usually a Mortisan - approaches and makes them an offer they can't refuse; give "x" by the deadline at regular intervals, or we kill you all and takes your bones and souls for our use. To communicate, the Bonereapers draw on prior research for the local language; it doesn't matter if the vernacular's out of date by a few centuries or so, as long as they can be understood. If that doesn't work, the Bonereapers use other means, including killing a local and using their spirit as a translator if all else fails. If the locals refuse, attack them or are rude enough, [[Grimdark|the Bonereapers make good on their threat, slaughtering everything in the settlement that has bones, right down to the last child and stray animal]]. If they are feeling "nice", the Bonereapers might only kill the dissenters. <br />
<br />
When demanding the Bone Tithe, what/who the bones come from plus the amount and condition required depends on the situation and Bonereaper legion in question. Human bone is the most widely used; dwarf bones aren't common enough, elf bones are but don't replenish fast enough and greenskin bones are coarse, porous and prone to spontaneous fungal growth unless treated properly. While animal bones are also used, such as to repair Kavalos steeds or make Gothizzar Harvesters, that's not always the case and it depends on what animal they're from (Rhinoxen and Bleaklake crocodiles are some of the popular choices). The Bonereapers (though inbuilt or learned ability, it's not clear) CAN tell the difference between what race or species a specific bone comes from, so trying to cheat them by mixing in different kinds of bones doesn't work. They also respond to trickery the same way they respond to failure or refusal - immediate slaughter (as a human town learned to their cost when they tried to trick the Bonereapers by mixing pig bones in with human bones). <br />
<br />
Sometimes things are even worse. A particularly war-horny leader, most often from the Stalliarch Lords (more on them below), will give nigh-impossible demands to increase the chance of failure. What kinds of demands? How about asking the population for detailed records on the city's family lineage going back to the founders and the condition of ''every bone in their bodies''. Or maybe they ask for just one tonne of bones ''every day'' (for extra lulz, the offer is made at night and has to be completed the next day). They might instead, or also, [[That Guy|arrive early to extract the Tithe just to get a good slaughter out of it]]. However it ends, the bones of the Ossiarch's victims are sorted through, the good bones taken for future use the sub-par ones discarded (same with their victims souls). Strips of skin and flesh from these unforunates are hung from the Bonereapers' spears as a warning to anyone who considers not paying the tithe.<br />
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Ultimately, they have a term related to the Bone Tithe called the Terminus Concept, referring to the point where a society can't provide enough bones so they get slaughtered and their bones are taken. For the truth is that the Bone Tithe - short term or long term - is ultimately unsustainable for the payers, and the Bonereapers know it. This all proves that, while Nagash is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he'll always find a way to be a <s>boner</s> [[Eldrad|huge skeletal dick]] about it.<br />
<br />
==Forces==<br />
[[File:Bonereaper army.jpg|right|500px|thumb|'''Angry Dooting Intensifies''']]<br />
*'''Mortek Guard:''' Rank and file infantry of the Bonereapers. Well armored and shielded, they have the choice of swords or spears and optional greatswords as weapons. Their primary role is to create massive shield walls to protect their leaders.<br />
*'''Morghast Harbingers and Archai:''' You know em, you love em. Nagash's original sculpted bone construct based on not-angels from the World-That-Was now served as prototypes to the current regime of spoopy skeltals. Flying blenders armed with either halberds (take these) or twin swords (dont take these). Harbingers are your chargey bois, while the Archai are bodyguard bois.<br />
*'''Necropolis Stalkers:''' Four-armed skeletal constructs the size of Kurnoth Hunters with four faces, each one has the soul of four warriors, and switches between which one is dominant, altering their fighting style accordingly. Their name's ripped from the Necropolis Knights and the Tomb Stalkers. <br />
*'''Immortis Guard:''' Four-armed <s>Grave Guard</s> <s>Tomb Guard</s> elite skellingtons armed with a halberd in one set of hands and a shield in the other. Like the Morghasts, Immortis are the bodyguard bois to the Stalkers' chargey bois. <br />
*'''Kavalos Deathriders:''' Essentially bony knights somewhere between Black Knights and Varanguard in power level, and who serve Bone Daddy. Each one has the soul of dozens of warriors to draw on their knowledge and is proportionately arrogant. They have undead birds roosting on their banner poles that act as spies and messenger birds. For added creep factor, these guys normally walk at a slow and ominous trot, only sprinting when going into a headlong charge.<br />
*'''Mortek Crawler:''' Screaming Skull Catapult 2.0 with an obligatory patent-friendly rename. In addition to flaming skulls, it can also hurl a cauldron of Death Magic that works based on bravery or a cursed stone that gets more powerful the more damage the Crawler takes. It's also powered by a bone-made hamster wheel and multiple legs.<br />
*'''Gothizzar Harvester:''' A big monster construct with weapon hands and half a skeleton for a codpiece that helps harvest bones. The Harvester uses them to make new constructs on the fly or repair damaged ones. Their weapon arms come with either enchanted maces or scything blades for hands.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulreaper:''' Your offensive caster for the Bonereapers with a scythe that doesn't like hordes.<br />
*'''Mortisan Boneshaper:''' The healers/builders of the Bonereapers. Formed from the souls of artists, they’re in charge of building the extravagant bone cities and other architecture of the legions. They all possess a friendly rivalry with each other that pushes them to one up another’s artwork.<br />
*'''Mortisan Soulmason:''' Miniature Arkhans with four arms who are in charge of hunting and fusing souls for their various constructs. They ride into battle on bony [[Fyodor Karamazov|thrones with chicken legs]].<br />
*'''Liege-Kavalos''': Field generals with skeleton mounts placed in charge of leading the Bonereaper armies. They are forged as a cruel mockery of Sigmar’s Lord-Celestant on Dracoth.<br />
<br />
===Famous Legions===<br />
*'''Mortis Praetorians''': The 10,000 strong personal army of Katakros, created out of the souls of those he personally knew in life. They have gained a fearsome reputation for their tactical acumen, especially in Shyish. [[Ultramarines|The poster boys who are a jack-of-all-trades, big on tactics and led by an ancient leader who was the basis for future generations]]. They also have the only two Bonereapers with a single original soul; Katakros himself and Zandtos.<br />
* '''Petrifex Elite''': Made up of nomadic armies crafted from prehistoric fossilized bones, they are known for being slow-moving and a near impenetrable wall of bone. While fossilized bone tends to be fragile, the Petrifex Elite enchant them to be tough and also include already supernaturally tough bones among them (ie; the bones of godbeasts). Led by Mortisans, [[Necrons|they only exist to slay and find ancient bones to build more of themselves and make themselves even deadlier]]. They have forgotten why Nagash wants them to do this, and their leaders eschew personal identity to the point of using titles instead of names, as mandated by their most senior Mortisan, the Grand Necromystic.<br />
* '''Null Myriad''': The first Ossiarch Bonereapers made during Nagash's experiments in the Age of Myth. The Null Myriad were later refined and bolstered using the bones and souls of the countless dead who helped construct Nagash’s Black Pyramid and the best of Arkhan's Black Disciples. They are a solemn yet prideful lot with high resilience to magic and were given to Arkhan to be his personal legion; they're so loyal to Arkhan that they defer to him even over Katakros himself. Their resistance to magic extends to the power of Chaos, so they're used to inhabit the most inhospitable parts of the realms. Recently Arkhan made an alliance with Katakros, and the Null Myriad's job is to secure magic-heavy locations in the realms so Katakros can control the sources of their magic. The Null Myriad forces in Chamon have come into conflict with the Seraphon of the Thunder Lizards Constellation who also dwell there.<br />
*'''Ivory Host''': Outwardly, they appear as honorable warriors, but hidden away in their bodies is a monstrous frenzy that turns them into clawing slavering beasts. Fitting considering they are constructed from beast and monster bones. Tasked by Nagash to conquer Ghur, they overcompensate for their bestial anger by being meticulously clean and making everything of theirs as much of a work of art as possible. Also known for [[Tomb Kings|being the only Ossiarchs who build ships, use the color gold regularly in their attire and are led by a monarch]]. Currently they’ve claimed the realmgate of Greedmouth and established the Ivory Citadel in the southwestern corner of the Ghurish Heartlands, putting them awfully close to numerous [[Ogor Mawtribes]] and the [[Cities of Sigmar|free city]] of Excelsis. <br />
*'''Stalliarch Lords''': A cavalry centric force who are [[Creed|skillful tacticians]] and like to make impossible demands so they have an excuse to raze cities and slaughter people (on the rare occasion that someone meets their outrageous demands they keep their word... but remember the Terminus Concept). They even force the Bone Tithe on other death factions, as was the case when they subjected a keep of Blood Knights to it and offered them a way out if their leader defeated a Liege-Kavalos in a duel to the death (he didn't). So in addition to being [[Kharn|psychopaths with zero regard for life, they're also team-killing douchebags]]. Basically [[That Guy]] as a cavalry-loving undead legion.<br />
*'''Crematorians''': These Bonereapers are burning with an internal fire to the point where some of them literally explode when killed. Some of them have recently realized that they don't really have a purpose other than to fight and explode, and aren't too happy about that. In fact, their leaders [[Noblebright|have made pacts of friendship to repair each other if any of them are destroyed and the chief Liege-Kavalos scours the libraries of everyone they encounter in the hopes of finding a way to undo their fiery curse, and is implied to be on the verge of a breakthrough]].<br />
<br />
==Significant Skeletons==<br />
* '''[[Katakros|Orpheon Katakros]], [[Mortarch]] of the Necropolis''': In life he was the greatest strategic genius in all the Mortal Realms, and undeath has done nothing to dull his mastery of military tactics. He's been given a new body of enscrolled bone by Nagash himself which looks like a [[Jojo's Bizarre Adventure|JoJo stand]] rather than a skeleton. He goes into battle surrounded by various attendants; the Liege-Immortis, the Aviarch Spymaster, the Gnosis Scrollbearer, and the Prime Necrophoros.<br />
*'''Arch-Kavalos Zandtos''': Both in life and in death, Patru Zandtos has been Katakros’ most trusted lieutenant. In life he was a refined, death-obsessed assassin who treated killing as a sacred art and hated the loud butchery of battle. In undeath, through the manipulations of Nagash and Katakros, he’s now a death-purist who wishes to “cleanse” Shyish of anything still living.<br />
*'''Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe''': The grim tallyman in charge of recording/judging the Tithe. He carries the severed heads of those foolish enough to refuse to pay the Tithe and has a coffin on his back, making him look like a giant beetle. Though officially he’s under Katakros in the OBR hierarchy, he’ll only receive/carry out orders from Big Bone Daddy himself.<br />
*'''[[Arkhan the Black]]''': Yeah, he's part of the army despite technically being just an "average" liche as opposed to a bone golem thing. Likely because apart from Nagash, he's the most privy to understanding how they are made without being one.<br />
<br />
==Spooky Melodies for your Bony Boys==<br />
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*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DsZivjop_s Spooky Scary Skeletons! a remix for a revamp]<br />
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHAX1K4sKQ The Dead March returns for AoS!]<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
* The architecture of the Ossiarch Bonereapers was likely inspired by the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary Sedlec Ossuary] in the Czech Republic. The Sedlec Ossuary is a Roman Catholic church where the bones of thousands of people have been artistically arranged to form the decorations and the furnishings of the chapel (it's also called "the Bone Church"). This was done several centuries ago for creative interment reasons with many dead and not enough space to bury them on holy ground.<br />
* On a comical note, "Kavalos", the name for Bonereaper cavalry, translates to "crotch" in Greek (the Greek word is "kaválos"). Makes more sense when you think of [[Katakros]]' defining trait lookswise, and how his name even sounds like the Greek word.<br />
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==Gallery==<br />
<gallery><br />
File:Bonereaper vs Kharadron.jpg|Sky Pirates vs Bone Golems.<br />
File:Cavalry-bonereapers.jpg|As if Blood Knights weren't bad enough, Bone Daddy brings out Kavalos Deathriders too.<br />
File:Gothizzar Harvester.jpg|"Oh those bones, oh those bones, oh those skeleton bones. Oh mercy how they scare! With the toe bone connected to the foot bone..."<br />
File:Bonereaper city.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Welcome to Necrotopia. Please remember to remove all skin and flesh before you reach customs.<br />
</gallery><br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
*[[Nagash]], their jerk of a god whom they give their undisputed loyalty to (yes, really!)<br />
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{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}<br />
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[[Category:Age of Sigmar]]</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Mandalorian&diff=450382Star Wars:The Mandalorian2021-01-19T01:36:18Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: </p>
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<div>[[Image:The_mandalorian.jpg|right|200px|thumb|[[Goblin Slayer|''Bounties?'']]]]<br />
Because Disney didn't have enough money, they decided to try their hand at streaming services (despite already owning Hulu), and created Disney+ as a collection of their shows and movies. And with any streaming service, you need a flagship title. Thus, ''The Mandalorian'', the first live action Star Wars television series.<br />
<br />
The show itself lives and breaths off your nostalgia for the Fetts, giving you a new lead character wearing the cool ass armor, bounty hunting, getting in gunfights, et cetera. The show's set five years after ''Return of the Jedi'', and leans into spaghetti western's so hard you wonder why Clint Eastwood hasn't shown up (John Wayne's grandson does do much of the stunt work for the titular character). Whether you like this show pretty much comes down to the question of can you accept [[Goblin Slayer|a show where the main character's face is never seen]] and whose name is almost never spoken (probably, considering this site's demographics), and can you stand a story wrapped entirely around the finger of a baby yoda who is the most well know spoiler since (joke.exe).<br />
<br />
If you like the 2012 [[Judge Dredd]] movie you will like the show. It also might be one of the closest depictions of a Space Marine we are going to get for the foreseeable future on the "big screen". The Mandalorians (this group at least) have become almost a cult regarding "The Way," their warrior code. Highlights include a [[Looted]] [[All_Terrain_Soup|AT-ST]], getting to watch a [[Men_of_Iron|IG-11]] aimbot entire groups of hostiles multiple times (hell just watching IG-11 ''move'' is amazing), and an episode shot like a horror film except that [[awesome|the protagonist is the hunter]]. The final two episodes are a callback to almost every episode except "The Prisoner" & "The Gunslinger" and numerous characters return and get to be their own brand of awesome. The show also brought back the old style Mandalorians - it's a creed and a way of life, not a species or race. You are a Mandalorian because you chose to be, and because you follow the Mandalorian code, not because you're born that way.<br />
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There are several hiccups in writing but those might be smoothed out later, or can just be written off as the galaxy being just that big and individuals not having the same info as the audience. Overall it is the most well received addition to Star Wars since ''Empire''. With the show actually understanding why and how certain reveals should work, ie. not making there be anything special to us (the audience) about the Mandalorian's face/name, it is special because of his code not because he has laser eyes or something.<br />
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A second season (it was inevitable) was announced in November 2019, finished filming in March 2020 and arrived on Disney+ in October 2020. Several characters from elsewhere in the franchise such as Boba Fett, Bo-Katan (Duchess Satine’s redhead sister from the Clone Wars, who also happens to be the last known wielder of the Darksaber before Moff Gideon turned up with it in the final episode of season 1) and Ahsoka Tano have made appearances, plus Luke Skywalker himself showed up in the final episode of Season 2. <br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
{{spoilers}}<br />
*Mando/Din Djarin is a cool protagonist and Pedro Pascal manages to play him really well despite having his face hidden behind a helmet most of the time<br />
*Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu<br />
*IG-11 <br />
*Moff Gideon, played by Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad-fame, as the main villain<br />
*Several good strong female characters showing Rey how it's meant to be done<br />
*Mando's ship, the Razor Crest<br />
*Callbacks to Mandalorian-related things from [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars]] and [[Star Wars:Rebels]]<br />
*Live action debut of Ahsoka Tano<br />
*Return of Boba Fett. He is a Mandalorian and the thing about Almec saying Fetts aren't Mandalorian in TCW (he was clearly biased against them due to his position) is now set to rest.<br />
*Worldbuilding<br />
*Redesign of TIE Fighter with folding wings<br />
*Brings aspects from the old EU into Disney Canon<br />
*Shows that the Empire didn't just disappear overnight and that there are still remnants out there<br />
*Clearly made by people who love and understand Star Wars<br />
*Dark Troopers. If you thought all battledroids are just cannon fodder relying on their numbers to win, think again. Dark Troopers are basically Terminators and can be genuinely terrifying. Not only are they blaster-proof, they can also fly using rocket boosters.<br />
*Tons and tons of fan service<br />
*Luke Skywalker makes an appearance, not the old grumpy disgrace we saw in The Last Jedi but Grandmaster Luke Skywalker<br />
*Makes use of some pretty groundbreaking special effects techniques, continuing the Star Wars tradition of trying to push special effects to new levels. Bye bye greenscreens, hello future. <ref>https://www.starwars.com/news/the-mandalorian-stagecraft-feature</ref> (see more below)<br />
*Has single-handedly restored hope in the franchise after many had lost it due to the sequel trilogy<br />
<br />
== Almost-Holodeck Soundstage ==<br />
<br />
So we mentioned above there is new special effects in play here. The Mandalorian makes use of a brand new soundstage that consists of a large circle of extremely high resolution LED screens surrounding the actors on almost all sides, projecting distant scenery rendered in real time with Unreal Engine, controlled by the camera's movement. This can be shot directly by the camera, with a computer figuring out the compositing later with a higher quality render for the final cut.<br />
<br />
The biggest impact it has is on reflections and ambient lighting on the subjects. Using conventional green screen tech, getting the lighting to match the setting is quite difficult, and getting reflections requires extensive post production work to the point of not being practical in most cases. With the screen set used for Mandalorian, any reflections on metal surfaces (such as shiny, polished armor) are natural and the lighting of the final composite shot will PERFECTLY match the principal photography.<br />
<br />
==Bad qualities==<br />
*Some episodes can feel like filler<br />
*It's not [[Star Wars:Rebels]] but bad guys can still sometimes feel pretty incompetent. <br />
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{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:Rebels&diff=450163Star Wars:Rebels2021-01-19T01:30:53Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Thrawn */</p>
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<div>Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].<br />
<br />
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.<br />
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[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]<br />
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Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.<br />
<br />
<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike><br />
<br />
==Season 1==<br />
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]<br />
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season. <br />
<br />
Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.<br />
<br />
The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.<br />
<br />
==Season 2==<br />
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.<br />
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The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.<br />
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It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.<br />
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==Season 3==<br />
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons. <br />
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[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]<br />
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Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.<br />
<br />
For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.<br />
<br />
==Season 4==<br />
<br />
The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.<br />
<br />
<br />
The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].<br />
<br />
==The Good==<br />
<br />
* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.<br />
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.<br />
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships<br />
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.<br />
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail<br />
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.<br />
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)<br />
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters<br />
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always<br />
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed. <br />
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit<br />
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case<br />
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.<br />
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])<br />
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).<br />
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media. <br />
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.<br />
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.<br />
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.<br />
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.<br />
<br />
A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
<br />
* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.<br />
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.<br />
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.<br />
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns<br />
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars<br />
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].<br />
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots. <br />
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].<br />
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.<br />
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.<br />
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.<br />
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]<br />
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems<br />
<br />
==Imperial Incompetence?==<br />
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:<br />
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.<br />
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.<br />
<br />
Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic. <br />
<br />
However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.<br />
<br />
Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].<br />
<br />
This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.<br />
<br />
==Thrawn==<br />
<br />
Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy. <br />
<br />
Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.<br />
<br />
Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, which effectively throws off Wullf Yularen... but not Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? Thrawn knows the scapegoat officer isn't that skilled, plus someone as subtle as Fulcrum wouldn't get caught as easily as the scapegoat was... but the kicker is the helmet Ezra was captured with; Thrawn immediately recognized the custom paint-job as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra proved Kallus was no longer loyal to the Empire. <br />
<br />
In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.<br />
<br />
Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, which is where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu who enabled the Rebels to escape. To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:Rebels&diff=450162Star Wars:Rebels2021-01-19T01:22:14Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Thrawn */</p>
<hr />
<div>Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].<br />
<br />
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.<br />
<br />
[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]<br />
<br />
Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.<br />
<br />
<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike><br />
<br />
==Season 1==<br />
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]<br />
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season. <br />
<br />
Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.<br />
<br />
The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.<br />
<br />
==Season 2==<br />
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.<br />
<br />
The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.<br />
<br />
It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.<br />
<br />
==Season 3==<br />
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons. <br />
<br />
[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]<br />
<br />
Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.<br />
<br />
For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.<br />
<br />
==Season 4==<br />
<br />
The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.<br />
<br />
<br />
The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].<br />
<br />
==The Good==<br />
<br />
* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.<br />
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.<br />
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships<br />
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.<br />
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail<br />
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.<br />
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)<br />
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters<br />
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always<br />
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed. <br />
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit<br />
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case<br />
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.<br />
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])<br />
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).<br />
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media. <br />
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.<br />
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.<br />
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.<br />
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.<br />
<br />
A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
<br />
* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.<br />
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.<br />
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.<br />
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns<br />
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars<br />
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].<br />
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots. <br />
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].<br />
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.<br />
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.<br />
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.<br />
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]<br />
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems<br />
<br />
==Imperial Incompetence?==<br />
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:<br />
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.<br />
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.<br />
<br />
Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic. <br />
<br />
However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.<br />
<br />
Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].<br />
<br />
This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.<br />
<br />
==Thrawn==<br />
<br />
Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy. <br />
<br />
Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.<br />
<br />
Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, which effectively throws off Wullf Yularen... but not Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire. <br />
<br />
In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.<br />
<br />
Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:Rebels&diff=450161Star Wars:Rebels2021-01-19T01:21:32Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Thrawn */</p>
<hr />
<div>Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].<br />
<br />
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.<br />
<br />
[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]<br />
<br />
Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.<br />
<br />
<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike><br />
<br />
==Season 1==<br />
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]<br />
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season. <br />
<br />
Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.<br />
<br />
The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.<br />
<br />
==Season 2==<br />
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.<br />
<br />
The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.<br />
<br />
It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.<br />
<br />
==Season 3==<br />
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons. <br />
<br />
[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]<br />
<br />
Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.<br />
<br />
For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.<br />
<br />
==Season 4==<br />
<br />
The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.<br />
<br />
<br />
The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].<br />
<br />
==The Good==<br />
<br />
* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.<br />
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.<br />
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships<br />
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.<br />
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail<br />
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.<br />
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)<br />
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters<br />
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always<br />
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed. <br />
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit<br />
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case<br />
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.<br />
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])<br />
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).<br />
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media. <br />
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.<br />
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.<br />
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.<br />
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.<br />
<br />
A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
<br />
* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.<br />
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.<br />
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.<br />
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns<br />
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars<br />
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].<br />
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots. <br />
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].<br />
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.<br />
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.<br />
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.<br />
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]<br />
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems<br />
<br />
==Imperial Incompetence?==<br />
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:<br />
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.<br />
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.<br />
<br />
Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic. <br />
<br />
However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.<br />
<br />
Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].<br />
<br />
This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.<br />
<br />
==Thrawn==<br />
<br />
Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy. <br />
<br />
Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.<br />
<br />
Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire. <br />
<br />
In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.<br />
<br />
Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:Rebels&diff=450160Star Wars:Rebels2021-01-19T01:20:51Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* The Bad */</p>
<hr />
<div>Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].<br />
<br />
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.<br />
<br />
[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]<br />
<br />
Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.<br />
<br />
<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike><br />
<br />
==Season 1==<br />
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]<br />
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season. <br />
<br />
Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.<br />
<br />
The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.<br />
<br />
==Season 2==<br />
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.<br />
<br />
The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.<br />
<br />
It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.<br />
<br />
==Season 3==<br />
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons. <br />
<br />
[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]<br />
<br />
Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.<br />
<br />
For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.<br />
<br />
==Season 4==<br />
<br />
The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.<br />
<br />
<br />
The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].<br />
<br />
==The Good==<br />
<br />
* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.<br />
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.<br />
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships<br />
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.<br />
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail<br />
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.<br />
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)<br />
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters<br />
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always<br />
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed. <br />
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit<br />
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case<br />
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.<br />
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])<br />
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).<br />
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media. <br />
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.<br />
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.<br />
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.<br />
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.<br />
<br />
A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
<br />
* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.<br />
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.<br />
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.<br />
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns<br />
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars<br />
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].<br />
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots. <br />
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].<br />
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.<br />
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.<br />
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.<br />
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]<br />
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems<br />
<br />
==Imperial Incompetence?==<br />
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:<br />
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.<br />
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.<br />
<br />
Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic. <br />
<br />
However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.<br />
<br />
Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].<br />
<br />
This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.<br />
<br />
==Thrawn==<br />
<br />
Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy. <br />
<br />
Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.<br />
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His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire. <br />
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In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.<br />
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Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).<br />
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{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:Rebels&diff=450159Star Wars:Rebels2021-01-19T01:18:48Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Thrawn */</p>
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<div>Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].<br />
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''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.<br />
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[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]<br />
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Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.<br />
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<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike><br />
<br />
==Season 1==<br />
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]<br />
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season. <br />
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Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.<br />
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The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.<br />
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==Season 2==<br />
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.<br />
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The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.<br />
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It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.<br />
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==Season 3==<br />
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons. <br />
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[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]<br />
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Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.<br />
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For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.<br />
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==Season 4==<br />
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The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.<br />
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The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].<br />
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==The Good==<br />
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* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.<br />
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.<br />
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships<br />
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.<br />
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail<br />
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.<br />
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)<br />
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters<br />
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always<br />
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed. <br />
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit<br />
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case<br />
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.<br />
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])<br />
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).<br />
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media. <br />
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.<br />
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.<br />
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.<br />
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.<br />
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A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.<br />
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==The Bad==<br />
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* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.<br />
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.<br />
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.<br />
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns<br />
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars<br />
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].<br />
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots. <br />
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].<br />
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.<br />
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.<br />
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.<br />
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]<br />
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems<br />
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==Imperial Incompetence?==<br />
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:<br />
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.<br />
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.<br />
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Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic. <br />
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However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.<br />
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Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].<br />
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This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.<br />
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==Thrawn==<br />
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Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy. <br />
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Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.<br />
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His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire. <br />
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In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.<br />
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Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).<br />
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{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450323Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T01:08:18Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
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<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
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[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
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The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
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Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
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Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
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==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
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Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
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Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
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But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
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* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
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However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
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* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
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All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
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After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
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==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
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BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
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Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
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==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
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Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
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Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below. <br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450322Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T01:07:10Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
<br />
Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
<br />
Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and a source of one of the Indiana Jones references (see below). <br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450321Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T01:04:42Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
<br />
Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
<br />
Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad Bane, which one character actually calls him in the show, albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's a love letter to fans of old westerns and doesn't take crap from anyone. <br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450320Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T00:57:45Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
<br />
Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
<br />
Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad Bane, which one character actually calls him in the show, albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still). Since Boba's still a kid, someone else needs to be the galaxy's ultimate bounty hunter and Cad the chad definitely delivers, plus the character's a love letter to fans of old westerns.<br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450319Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T00:55:50Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
<br />
Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
<br />
Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad Bane, which one character actually calls him in the show, albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still). A love letter to fans of westerns and the galaxy's ultimate Bounty Hunter while Boba's still a kid.<br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450318Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T00:51:55Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
<br />
Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
<br />
Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
<br />
==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
<br />
But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
<br />
==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
<br />
But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
<br />
==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
<br />
This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
<br />
==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
<br />
There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
<br />
==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
<br />
==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
<br />
Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
<br />
Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
<br />
There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
<br />
Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
<br />
Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
<br />
{{Star Wars}}</div>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184http://2d4chan.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Star_Wars:The_Clone_Wars&diff=450317Star Wars:The Clone Wars2021-01-19T00:50:15Z<p>2406:3400:20F:FFC0:1C83:AD7A:6AB8:D184: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{awesome}}<br />
'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.<br />
<br />
[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]<br />
<br />
The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.<br />
<br />
Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.<br />
<br />
Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]<br />
<br />
==Origins==<br />
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.<br />
<br />
Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.<br />
<br />
Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.<br />
<br />
But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:<br />
<br />
* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)<br />
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order. <br />
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.<br />
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.<br />
* And many others.<br />
<br />
However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as<br />
<br />
* Babysitting episode/movie.<br />
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.<br />
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).<br />
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.<br />
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.<br />
<br />
After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.<br />
<br />
==Season One==<br />
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase. <br />
<br />
BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.<br />
<br />
==Season Two==<br />
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot. <br />
<br />
Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.<br />
<br />
==Season Three==<br />
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring. <br />
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Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.<br />
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Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.<br />
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==Season Four==<br />
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.<br />
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But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.<br />
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==Season Five==<br />
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.<br />
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But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].<br />
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==Season Six== <br />
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.<br />
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This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.<br />
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Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:<br />
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==Season Seven==<br />
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.<br />
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There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough.<br />
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==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)<br />
*Clones in general<br />
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a background male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood).<br />
*Anakin and his Characterization<br />
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad<br />
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').<br />
*The writing<br />
*The cinematography in general<br />
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively<br />
*Admiral Tarkin<br />
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.<br />
*Death Watch<br />
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.<br />
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.<br />
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.<br />
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)<br />
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy<br />
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.<br />
*Plo Koon<br />
*Darth Maul<br />
*Sam Witwer<br />
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.<br />
*Battle Of Ryloth<br />
*Mandalore<br />
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.<br />
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?<br />
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers<br />
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard<br />
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.<br />
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo.<br />
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==The Bad==<br />
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}<br />
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Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.<br />
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Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!<br />
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There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.<br />
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Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then an attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was 'murdered') and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.<br />
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Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.<br />
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