Before reading any further, please understand that
Pacific Rim is a perfect movie. I simply will not hear any contrarian blasphemy suggesting otherwise. Guillermo del Toro takes a frankly dumb premise (giant robots punching giant monsters) and executes it with so much care and passion that it becomes transcendent cinema. It builds on established genre tropes and transforms them into something new and distinct. It is, in part, a live-action anime, and yet it’s not really surprising that the new Pacific Rim anime on Netflix falls far short of the 2013 movie’s perfection.
Pacific Rim anime. It just very much is indeed an anime.
The single most memorable line of the
Pacific Rim franchise came in the first movie when Idris Elba’s battle-armored mech marshal, Stacker Pentecost, proclaimed, “Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!” In the first season of
Pacific Rim: The Black, which hit
Netflix on March 4, Stacker’s name is now relegated to Easter-egg status among a new generation of Jaeger pilots. They have big blue doll eyes, anime-style no-noses, and chins so sharp you could lance a Kaiju Skinmite with them.
Animated by
Polygon Pictures the Japanese studio known for its 3DCG Godzilla trilogy
The Black jumps forward to some indeterminate point in the monster-filled future. In doing so, it skips over what seems like a crucial bit of narrative: namely, said apocalypse. Apparently, it was rescheduled and happened mostly offscreen. What’s left in these seven easily-binged episodes is a post-apocalyptic Australia, straight out of
How Netflix s Pacific Rim: The Black References The Movies cinemablend.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cinemablend.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Developed by
Voice Cast
Premieres
Format
Half-hour anime; three episodes watched for review
Pacific Rim: The Black is a far cry from its source, ratings-wise. The overwrought fun of the first film was a PG-13 wrecking wonderland;
The Black is a violent, dark, hard R. Within the first five minutes of the pilot, Jaeger pilots are directly killed by a kaiju monster; after 10, an entire city population has been wiped out. And it gets only more dour from there.
Pacific Rim: The Black is a much more depressing, bleaker take on the franchise, and arguably is better for it. Here, Australia is the setting for these oversized battles, but unlike the films, the battle between humanity and monsters is effectively over. A last-ditch effort involves the parents of Taylor (Calum Worthy) and Hayley Travis (Gideon Adlon) co-piloting a Jaeger to fight off the last batch of beasties as they also guide a bus filled with passengers (adults and children) to safety. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps,