Pacific Rim fans even tho there have been just two Pacific Rim films the world of Pacific Rim has seemed to catch on with people and who can blame them it's giant monsters fighting equally giant robots that right means that the Pacific Rim franchise is going to be awesome. Well a new piece of media from the franchise / world of Pacific Rim has just been released and so I thought that i'd give you my first impressions of this new animated Netflix series and so here are my first impressions of the show the only just released 2021 show that is called simply "Pacific Rim: The Black" enjoy the post everyone.
The plot of the show just based of the first episode (which is what i'm doing this first impressions based of) seems to be that brother and sister Hayley and Taylor have lived there lives in relative safety away from Kaiju attacks but five years after there parents who are both Jaeger pilots go missing Hayley and Taylor find a decommissioned Jaeger that was used for training and vow to find their parents. In all honesty the plot to this show or at least this first season seems pretty straight forward and very predictable but I could be wrong and the show's setting is pretty unique since the show is set in Australia as such I do hope that the story gets better or at least a little less predictable otherwise I can very easily see this getting cancelled after season two assuming that it already has a season two tho that is.
Starring in this episode is Gideon Aldon as Haley Travis , Former Disney Channel and Austin & Ally star Calum Worthy as Taylor Travis and Erica Lindbeck as Loa. Also starring in this episode is Alexandra MacDonald as Brina , Jason Spisak as Ford , Nolan North as Marshall Rask , Camryn Jones as Young Hayley Travis , Cole Keriazakos as Young Taylor Travis , Bryton James as Corey , Ron Yuan as Shiro Ito and David Errigo. Jr. as Root.
In terms of what I thought about the acting that's in this episode in all honesty the acting that's in this episode is pretty bad but that's to expected since even tho the whole series has been released i'm doing this post just based off of the first episode and no one expects good acting in the first episode of a new show. As such that does give me hope that the acting in this show does indeed improve over the course of the first season altho given that this first season is only seven episodes long I really don't see that being the case at all if anything I see the acting getting better in season two and since this is a Netflix we now that this show is getting a second season since they give all of there animated shows multiple seasons but yeah just based of this first episode the acting isn't that good but there's huge rooms for improvement which in my opinion is a very good thing.
Doing the animation for this episode and thus the rest of the series are the greats and future legends over at Polygon Pictures Inc. In all honesty the animation in this episode is alot better then what I thought that it was going to be since you don't really expect the animation in a TV show anime to be really good but the animation in this first episode really did blow me away but for some reason the makers of this show chose to have the Jaeger (the giant robots that fight the giant monsters) move really slowly which to me just didn't seem that exciting and it takes alot of excitement out of the episodes action scenes in my opinion and i'll possibly go into further detail on this later on this very post but we'll see.
Now in terms of where this show fits in the Pacific Rim film franchise timeline I honestly cannot say since this show doesn't make it obvious where in the timeline this is show is meant to take place. Which I think is a good thing since if they did tell where in the Pacific Rim film franchise timeline that this show is meant to take place then it would have the die fans of of both Pacific Rim and Pacific Rim: Uprising wondering where are the main characters of those films and why aren't they helping out those in Austrailer but if they don't tell you where in the timeline that this show is meant to take place then it means that you can focus more on the story being told as well as characters and alot of other things in my opinion.
I honestly feel that this is a show that you can watch regardless of if you have watched the Pacific Rim films or if you haven't seen the Pacific Rim films. Since just based of this first episode it does a good job of telling what a Jaeger is and how to pilot a Jaeger as well as how many it takes to pilot a Jaeger as well as being it's own thing with it's own set of characters who have there own alleys and who have there own villains to fight as such this movie tie in / spin off doesn't really require you to have seen either of the Pacific Rim films in my opinion.
There are a few things that I didn't like about this episode the first of which being the fact that Taylor (so far at least) is a pretty unlikable character and the other one being that the episode itself is kind of boring. While I do fully understand where Taylor is coming from since he wants to protect his little sister Hayley it's how he goes about doing that that makes him a pretty unlikable character so far and given that episode has a pretty average running time for animated episode not that much happens in this episode plot wise which makes this episode feel like your typical pilot episode in that it's just setting up the rest of the show all the while doing nothing unique , new or slightly interest all of which serve to make this episode fairly boring in my opinion.
Speaking of the running time for this episode this episode has a total running time of twenty eight minuets and thirty two seconds. Which is about the average running time for a show that's being made for and released on / via Netflix it's just a shame that the episode itself doesn't have enough story to cover that running time and as such I honestly feel that this episode should have been at least twenty two minuets long since that would have given this episode much better pacing and while it wouldn't have made the episode less boring it would have helped to make the episode a lot easier to watch in my humble and honest opinion.
Now then boys and girls this is an action show after all and there is action to be had in this episode and so that means that I have to discuss the action that's in the actual episode itself. This is where having the slow moving Jaegers is a bad idea because it slows the action down to a crawl since your waiting for the Jaeger to throw a punch or defend itself which even the action in this episode is really cool looking it's a chore to get through due to how slowly the Jaegers at least in this episode are being animated but that's just what I think anyways.
Overall this really isn't the best episode to open this new show on and since you only get one chance to make a good first impression I have to say that just based of this one episode this show has made a bad first impression on me personally. Yes there are some good things to be found in this episode but there are alot of bad things in this episode and i've discussed both the good and that bad things in this episode in this very post but since these are only my first impressions of the show I won't be giving "Pacific Rim: The Black" a rating since it's never fair to judge an entire show just based off of the first episode since any show can have a bad first episode just like any show can have a good first episode in my opinion , as for where I got the images that I used in this post well I got the images that I used in this post from the official Pacific Rim fandom wiki page as well as Google Images with my preferred website for images from this show being the official Pacific Rim fandom wiki page just due to how high quality and in some cases how high definition the images that are featured on the Pacific Rim fandom wiki page truly are.