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Those of you who know me, know that I really hate Star Wars Rebels, but love The Clone Wars (as shown on this meme)

I know there are quite some amounts of people who like Rebels, but I just can't help but think it's awful. For one, the characters look like Disney-fied versions of TCW characters (this show was made not too long after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, so no surprise there) and non of the already existing stuff looks rigth. Now I know that's not really fair to say since Disney sequels also had completely different animators behind them. But their defense, there were a few Disney sequels that at least tried to replicate the look of the originals and I can believe they're the same characters. Rebels doesn't even try. I mean, the Inquisitor just looks like Brother from TCW season 3 (hell, that's literally what I thought it was when I saw the image of him, until a friend told me it wasn't), Vader looks as if they stretched him on Willy Wonka's taffy puller a little bit, Ahsoka looks like a cross between Pocahontas and Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Chewbacca looks more like a yeti than a Wookie,Anakin from an old holo message looks like an attempt to convert Jim Hawkins from Disney's Treasure Planet to CGI and Rex and the two or three of his surviving comrads... is that them? I mean, I know that people don't always look great when aging, but this? Even the lightsabers look wrong, they are too thin. The only already existing characters that made an appearance in this and kinda like their counterparts from other media are Leia and Lando and maybe Darth Maul. Though Obi-Wan also looks okay, I guess. And to be fair, I'll give it credit for one thing, it's one to see a more modest Twi'Lek character for once.
The show was really giving me very bad vibes from the very beginning. Right down to the trailers. I mean, the teaser clearly gave off an impression that it was gonna be very kid friendly. Literally, it had a narrated tag line "Get ready for the power of the Jedi" or something like that, but the delivery of it was such as if it so badly wanted to be sold just to kids. And very young ones at that. Now, I'm not against showing kids Star Wars related stuff, far from it, it's just that this feels like one of those things that treats its audience like idiots, even the kid audience. It also doesn't seem to have the feeling of tension and struggle of war TCW has, like not even close. I know you'll say "Well, unlike TCW, Rebells dropped the ball immediately by season 2". But that's the thing. TCW took it's time and gave time for the characters and feeling of war to develop and had a sense of depth. Rebells just feels like it wanted to focus more on stuff like... idk, mocking Storm Troopers? Yeah, they mock Storm Troopers A LOT in this show. And it's not funny. At all. I mean, one of the ways they do it is with Sabine doing it hulligan style by spray painting on them. The thing is, storm troopers are already mocked enough by the internet, fan base and parodies, Id thing it needs to be mocked by the franchise itself.
Hell, even one of the former clone troopers, Gregor, the one who had amnesia during TCW, into a loon almost at the level of Ed the hyena from The Lion King.
The characters. Good lord, the characters. I feel like I'm looking at a Star Wars take on every project starring teenagers that's made nowadays. Ezra's a clumsy, annoying fuck. Sabine, get this, she is the daughter. Of. Pre. Vizsla. Yeah, the fanatic and slammed in the head leader of Death Watch of Mandalor was the father of Sabine. WHAT?! When... When was it indicated anywhere, anywhere at all, that Pre Vizsla got laid and had kid? Nowhere! It seemed hinted that Bo-Katan may or may not have had the hots for him, but I do not recall seeing any indication as to him being the father of THIS.
And Maul! Are you goddamn kidding me? Are you seriously telling me you're making him a sympathetic villain? No. No, no, no, no, NO! This is NOT the kind of villain I can take seriously as a sympathetic villain. I'm sorry, I just can't take that, no matter how tragic his life was. Now, I know that not all villains are ruthless and unscrupulous like SW villains such as Dooku and Sidious or cold hearted tyrants like Thanos or even crazy psychotic maniacs like Joker or Cruella, but this is the same thing as Maleficent, in which you want to make a clearly irredeemable villain a sympathetic anti-hero. Again, not everyone is a full on villain with no chance of redemption, but not everyone is a sympathetic misunderstood one like MCU's Loki or Razer from Green Lantern the Animated Series or Demona from Gargoyles.
But the one thing that I personally find the WORST and most frustrating aspect of this show... It's the way all its seasons where marketed and the time it was released in.
For one thing, literally every new season that came out was marketed as the final one. Every single one. Seriously, the lines that were said in those trailers where such as if this was the end, but it kept going, as if to troll (while with TCW season 7, they went out of the way to shove the fact in our noses that it's the final one, right down to just putting "The Finale season" on the posters, as if to say it's really the end, as oppose to what they did with Rebells).
And the second thing is, this has the same problem as shows like Avengers Assemble and Thundercats Roar. And by that, I mean that it came out almost immediately after the previous project of the franchise was cancelled (Avengers Assemble came out after the cancellation of Ageners Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Thundercats Roar came out years after 2011 Thundercats reboot was cancelled). This show came out almost a month or so after the cancellation of TCW. And much like the two shows I mentioned, I felt a residual frustration and sense of betrayal when they, almost shamelessly, released this show almost immediately after TCW, which was a very good show and beloved by many and was very successful. And Disney just cancelled it literally out of nowhere, almost immediately after season 5 ended. Because they felt like it. I mean, that's what it feels like, I don't think there was any clear reason as to why the decided to cancel it, it felt like they just felt like doing it.

As for TCW, I love it. There's really the sense of hardship and struggle of war, very often there are very difficult questions asked throughout the show, the struggle of choosing between your own moral and duty, the political side of it, it's all done really well. The characters are very well done and some of my favorite aspects of this show are clone troopers, because part of the aspect of personal moral vs duty comes from them. And if you know me, I got pissed off very often throughout this show, for reasons I don't think most people do, which is when characters I like get killed or somebody being a manipulative and/or fanatic asshole.
And say what you will about the first two seasons, but I still thought they were pretty good and while it wasn't until season 3 that the tone got darker and the stakes got higher and more intense and struggles got more serious, I am fine with that, because the show was allowed to develop properly to that degree.
Years ago, I said I consider this a kind of a different universe, not necessarily directly connected to movies, and I still stand by that, mostly because of how characters are developed. Idk about you, but I personally feel that the characters are very different from their movie counterparts and given the way they are developed, I don't think it's really that compatible with the movies (Kinda like how the lore of She-Ra was heavily changed in the 2018 She-Ra reboot to the point of not really compatible with Masters of the Universe any longer), even when they tried so hard with foreshadowing and the way the show officially ends.
My main example is Anakin. With Ahsoka around, you could argue he was in check, even though he was very overprotective of both her and Padme. In movies, he remained a hothead that was easy to manipulate and be turned to the dark side, because you know he never even had an apprentice of his own. Same goes for Obi-Wan with his own love interest, Satine. And also, I'm sorry, but it doesn't really feel as if there was THAT big of a time gap between Episode II and III for THAT much to happen.

With that said, I think I made it clear what I meant with this meme. I mean, even looking at these two shows back to back 100% objectively, Rebels is inferior to TCW. I mean, if you like it, that's fine, but for me, it just feels like an insult to the franchise. Almost, ALMOST as much as the Disney movie trilogy and Resistance.

Meme (c) www.deviantart.com/baltofan95/…

Description
Those of you who know me, know that I really hate Star Wars Rebels, but love The Clone Wars (as shown on this meme)

I know there are quite some amounts of people who like Rebels, but I just can't help but think it's awful. For one, the characters look like Disney-fied versions of TCW characters (this show was made not too long after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, so no surprise there) and non of the already existing stuff looks rigth. Now I know that's not really fair to say since Disney sequels also had completely different animators behind them. But their defense, there were a few Disney sequels that at least tried to replicate the look of the originals and I can believe they're the same characters. Rebels doesn't even try. I mean, the Inquisitor just looks like Brother from TCW season 3 (hell, that's literally what I thought it was when I saw the image of him, until a friend told me it wasn't), Vader looks as if they stretched him on Willy Wonka's taffy puller a little bit, Ahsoka looks like a cross between Pocahontas and Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Chewbacca looks more like a yeti than a Wookie,Anakin from an old holo message looks like an attempt to convert Jim Hawkins from Disney's Treasure Planet to CGI and Rex and the two or three of his surviving comrads... is that them? I mean, I know that people don't always look great when aging, but this? Even the lightsabers look wrong, they are too thin. The only already existing characters that made an appearance in this and kinda like their counterparts from other media are Leia and Lando and maybe Darth Maul. Though Obi-Wan also looks okay, I guess. And to be fair, I'll give it credit for one thing, it's one to see a more modest Twi'Lek character for once.
The show was really giving me very bad vibes from the very beginning. Right down to the trailers. I mean, the teaser clearly gave off an impression that it was gonna be very kid friendly. Literally, it had a narrated tag line "Get ready for the power of the Jedi" or something like that, but the delivery of it was such as if it so badly wanted to be sold just to kids. And very young ones at that. Now, I'm not against showing kids Star Wars related stuff, far from it, it's just that this feels like one of those things that treats its audience like idiots, even the kid audience. It also doesn't seem to have the feeling of tension and struggle of war TCW has, like not even close. I know you'll say "Well, unlike TCW, Rebells dropped the ball immediately by season 2". But that's the thing. TCW took it's time and gave time for the characters and feeling of war to develop and had a sense of depth. Rebells just feels like it wanted to focus more on stuff like... idk, mocking Storm Troopers? Yeah, they mock Storm Troopers A LOT in this show. And it's not funny. At all. I mean, one of the ways they do it is with Sabine doing it hulligan style by spray painting on them. The thing is, storm troopers are already mocked enough by the internet, fan base and parodies, Id thing it needs to be mocked by the franchise itself.
Hell, even one of the former clone troopers, Gregor, the one who had amnesia during TCW, into a loon almost at the level of Ed the hyena from The Lion King.
The characters. Good lord, the characters. I feel like I'm looking at a Star Wars take on every project starring teenagers that's made nowadays. Ezra's a clumsy, annoying fuck. Sabine, get this, she is the daughter. Of. Pre. Vizsla. Yeah, the fanatic and slammed in the head leader of Death Watch of Mandalor was the father of Sabine. WHAT?! When... When was it indicated anywhere, anywhere at all, that Pre Vizsla got laid and had kid? Nowhere! It seemed hinted that Bo-Katan may or may not have had the hots for him, but I do not recall seeing any indication as to him being the father of THIS.
And Maul! Are you goddamn kidding me? Are you seriously telling me you're making him a sympathetic villain? No. No, no, no, no, NO! This is NOT the kind of villain I can take seriously as a sympathetic villain. I'm sorry, I just can't take that, no matter how tragic his life was. Now, I know that not all villains are ruthless and unscrupulous like SW villains such as Dooku and Sidious or cold hearted tyrants like Thanos or even crazy psychotic maniacs like Joker or Cruella, but this is the same thing as Maleficent, in which you want to make a clearly irredeemable villain a sympathetic anti-hero. Again, not everyone is a full on villain with no chance of redemption, but not everyone is a sympathetic misunderstood one like MCU's Loki or Razer from Green Lantern the Animated Series or Demona from Gargoyles.
But the one thing that I personally find the WORST and most frustrating aspect of this show... It's the way all its seasons where marketed and the time it was released in.
For one thing, literally every new season that came out was marketed as the final one. Every single one. Seriously, the lines that were said in those trailers where such as if this was the end, but it kept going, as if to troll (while with TCW season 7, they went out of the way to shove the fact in our noses that it's the final one, right down to just putting "The Finale season" on the posters, as if to say it's really the end, as oppose to what they did with Rebells).
And the second thing is, this has the same problem as shows like Avengers Assemble and Thundercats Roar. And by that, I mean that it came out almost immediately after the previous project of the franchise was cancelled (Avengers Assemble came out after the cancellation of Ageners Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Thundercats Roar came out years after 2011 Thundercats reboot was cancelled). This show came out almost a month or so after the cancellation of TCW. And much like the two shows I mentioned, I felt a residual frustration and sense of betrayal when they, almost shamelessly, released this show almost immediately after TCW, which was a very good show and beloved by many and was very successful. And Disney just cancelled it literally out of nowhere, almost immediately after season 5 ended. Because they felt like it. I mean, that's what it feels like, I don't think there was any clear reason as to why the decided to cancel it, it felt like they just felt like doing it.

As for TCW, I love it. There's really the sense of hardship and struggle of war, very often there are very difficult questions asked throughout the show, the struggle of choosing between your own moral and duty, the political side of it, it's all done really well. The characters are very well done and some of my favorite aspects of this show are clone troopers, because part of the aspect of personal moral vs duty comes from them. And if you know me, I got pissed off very often throughout this show, for reasons I don't think most people do, which is when characters I like get killed or somebody being a manipulative and/or fanatic asshole.
And say what you will about the first two seasons, but I still thought they were pretty good and while it wasn't until season 3 that the tone got darker and the stakes got higher and more intense and struggles got more serious, I am fine with that, because the show was allowed to develop properly to that degree.
Years ago, I said I consider this a kind of a different universe, not necessarily directly connected to movies, and I still stand by that, mostly because of how characters are developed. Idk about you, but I personally feel that the characters are very different from their movie counterparts and given the way they are developed, I don't think it's really that compatible with the movies (Kinda like how the lore of She-Ra was heavily changed in the 2018 She-Ra reboot to the point of not really compatible with Masters of the Universe any longer), even when they tried so hard with foreshadowing and the way the show officially ends.
My main example is Anakin. With Ahsoka around, you could argue he was in check, even though he was very overprotective of both her and Padme. In movies, he remained a hothead that was easy to manipulate and be turned to the dark side, because you know he never even had an apprentice of his own. Same goes for Obi-Wan with his own love interest, Satine. And also, I'm sorry, but it doesn't really feel as if there was THAT big of a time gap between Episode II and III for THAT much to happen.

With that said, I think I made it clear what I meant with this meme. I mean, even looking at these two shows back to back 100% objectively, Rebels is inferior to TCW. I mean, if you like it, that's fine, but for me, it just feels like an insult to the franchise. Almost, ALMOST as much as the Disney movie trilogy and Resistance.

Meme (c) www.deviantart.com/baltofan95/…