I was just wondering what all of you think of Reign: The conquerer. Its a new Anime about Alexander the great and its made by the people that made Aeon Flux. Its set in a futuristic, medievel world.
I think its pretty good, although its pretty hard to follow. I also like how the philosophers are cult-like wizard type characters. (Diogenes the DOG is hilarious, but Pythagorus is evil?!?!?)
Ok, this show keeps on getting weirder and weirder! Check it out, it plays on Cartoon Network, at midnight.
Just keep in mind that it is as far away from historical fact as possible…
We’re not allowed to watch it in my house because Inu Yasha was taken off Adult Swim to make room for it.
My husband is a very angry, spiteful person.
hmm…sorry, but Ive never heard of Inu Yasha…
shrug Well, I never watched it, so I have no idea how it’s actually spelled. All I know is that it was on Mon-Thurs at Midnight and my husband watched it religiously, and now it’s not, and he’s furious.
Good news about Inu-Yasha, it should be back on Monday or so, if my Tivo is accurate. I think the movement of Yu Yu Hakusho to Toonami from Adult Swim had more to do with the Inu-Yasha thing. (I believe Inu-Yasha is the show with the half demon guy and the present day girl in Feudal Japan, right?)
As for Reign, my roommate likes the show so much his favorite birthday present is his DVD of the first four episodes. I like it a lot too, after I got over the whole ‘Alexander the Great in a thong’ issue. (Which is much funnier when said in a ‘Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ voice…) Judging from the DVDs, Cartoon Network didn’t do near as much editing as they had for other shows <cough> Outlaw Star <cough>, and I like that.
Yeah I was surprised at the level of violence. Though the show is surreal and confusing.
I was watching episode 7 (Gordon’s knot I think its called) and Alexander is charging Darius’s army while horribly outnumbered. However the combatants are just plain…wierd! Sure you’ve got phalanxes of infantry and cavalry, but then they have wierd spinny things of death, columns of infantry who have knives for arms and stand on each other’s shoulders 
and the ‘Pythagorean cult’ which can only be described as four-armed flying aliens that spit triangles at people O_o
LOL! Yah it took me a while to get over the outfits in that show (yuck!) but now I’m REALLY addicted.
Don’t know anything about Reign, other than a preview of it caused my wife and I to dig out our old Aeon Flux videos to rewatch them.
Man, Peter Chung is weird!
Personally, I liked the fire-breathing elephants. Somewhat less plausible than the wierd as all get out end of the battle (its a spoiler for those who haven’t seen the episode). Don’t get me started on Alexander’s mom, she scares me.
Really? A friend of mine and I are watching it and every day after an ep I get an email from her telling me how this thing and that in the show was from stuff that really happened. Not all of it mind you, but enough that she can fill a few paragraphs each day on it. I don’t know that part of history well at all so I have no idea if its at all accurate.
It’s very educational. For example, who knew that Alexander was a kung-fu master?
Really? Would you mind copying them onto this thread?
Well, I haven’t saved all her emails, but here’s one regarding the ep “Persia Shall Fall.”
Zoroastrianism is still practiced by the very small Parsi community of India.
Another Real thing:
If you look carefully in the background in some scenes of Alexander’s camp, you will see a sun-shaped thing mounted on a banner. It’s a relatively small circle around which are large, long rays. This is a real symbol of Alexander the Great. In modern Greece, before they switched to the Euro, there’s a coin that has a profile of Alexander on one side and this sun-like symbol on the other. I vaguely recall you could also get a piece of jewelry at the National Museum with that symbol on it, a reproduction of something from his time.
I am also wondering if the Fabulous Doctor they have working with them is supposed to be Jewish. Not only does he have the Kabalistic tree of life as one of his diagrams, but did you notice his tent had big six-pointed stars on it? Then again, we’ve seen those stars pop up in decidedly non-Jewish imagery in other things on the show (like in the Tomb at Alexandria in Alex’s trippy vision.)
And…notice too how similar the crescent moon on the green background of the Persian banners looks like a Muslim flag. (Flag of Pakistan, at least!) I think the story about the lunar eclipse may be one of those that is also derived from history.
So… she’s calling it “weirdifying” (a term which I love and am stealing from her). So it might not be exactly as it occured, but there’s definite truth in there. I’m tellin ya, I get these emails from her all the time… so while its not word for word real history, I have to believe someone somewhere did a decent job researching it.
She also tells me the fella with the harp (his name begins with an H and I’ll butcher it if I try and spell it) was supposedly Alexander’s lover. I thought there was a slashy vibe there, but I thought it was just me.
Wow, entertaining and educational all at once. Neato!
Kool! Keep posting them as you get them if you want, or even better yet, send your friend here to the SDMB 
I keep telling my friends that the boards here are chock full of the smartest people with the best senses of humor. Pretty muich no matter what I’m liking at the moment there are people here who also love the things I love. There is nowhere else that I know of I can discuss “24”, anime, fanfic, rock music and fantasy books all under one ‘roof’. They are all vastly amused when I say such things as “oh, over on the SDMB they call Mrs. Palmer Lady MacPalmer”.
Said friend doesn’t do bulletin boards (she claims it’d suck up too much time which I can well understand) but if I tell her that her insight is educational to more than just me I’m sure she’ll happily allow me to post her emails here (the last one was edited to take out the personal junk, of course). This friend of mine adores Reign to pieces and plans on buying the dvd when it comes out so who knows, a chance to talk about it with people other than just me might lure her over here.
IIRC, he invented a martial art and trained his soldiers in it. There was a GQ thread(no link due to problems with hamsters and my Dad’s pc) asking which martial art came first. The oldest was actually from ancient Greece.
RE-Historical Accuracy
Weirdified is the perfect word. Pythagoras’ students were indeed a cult, with secret signs, and sacred mathematical ceremonies. Zoroastrianism is very real. Melville has a group of Parsis in Moby Dick “Lately Fedallah has taken to standing in Ahab’s shadow, so as to cast none of his own. The Devil, of course, is said to have no shadow.” Ahriman is, literally, Uhura Mazda’s shadow. Thus, Ahab becomes God and Fedalah the Devil. The car company is named Mazda becuase the conglomerate initially manufactured light bulbs. Uhura Mazda is, among other things, the god of light.
I’ve been assuming that other characters and events had a similar factual basis.
Okay kids, our wish has been granted. Sorta.
As I suspected, said friend is incredibly busy and she knows that once she came here and saw the interesting things people were talking about she’d get sucked in. So… she has sent me a Word file with all those emails I haven’t saved in it, and I promise to save any future ones. I shall post them here in pieces.
Just to inform you all of her credentials – she studied some Classical Greek Archaeology at college, though she was not a major in it. Most of her studies were of Greek architecture and city planning, but she says she always picks up a fair amount of history when you study this sort of stuff. She’s also read a lot of books and watched a lot of documentaries on ancient Greece, and she has been to Greece twice. However, she fully admits she is not an archaeologist nor does she claim more than a layman’s expertise. She says she could be wrong about some details or miss others. If people out there have anything to add or any corrections to make, please feel free and I’ll pass them along in the interest of adding to the general knowledge.
I’ll start posting her thoughts sometime within the next 2 days.
Color me educated!
Alexander’s troops were indeed trained in a martial art, as presumably was Alex himself. However, Alex did not invent it.
Mr Andrew spaketh
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