I also suspect cartoonists are trying to torture me


This one lured me in with the title “Cave of the Mega-Spider”, and the first shot is of a big toothy dinosaur. OK, this is acceptable. Then said dinosaur tears open a spider silk blob…and there’s a dead, dessicated hominid inside? What the heck? Anachronism! Then the giant fanged mega-spider makes an appearance, and it’s kind of awesome, until it opens it’s mouth, vertebrate-style with mandibles, and starts hosing the dinosaur down with silk from the spinneret — in its throat. I cannot enjoy this anymore. I am offended.

Comments

  1. says

    I’ve been watching an anime called So I’m a Spider, So What? where a high school girl is reincarnated as an RPG-style spider and it’s been delightful so far (she accepted it as her fate very early as she saw no point in stewing over it). I thought of you when I first started watching it but I don’t think you’d enjoy it as the character art emphasizes two of her eyes to anthropomorphize her face even though all the other spiders who hatched at the same time had normal spider eyes. Also, she eats her prey by chomping and chewing.which makes for a more striking visual but it leaves behind bones instead of husks.

  2. blf says

    Silk rocketing from the mouth: Ah, a really early spider, back in the days of schism between the venom-front silk-rear (vfsr) and silk-front venom-rear (sfvr) cults.

  3. iiandyiiii says

    I love Primal! Genndy Tartakovsky is a genius (in cartoons, not in science). It’s meant to be much more of a fantasy than anything like a stone-age narrative.

  4. raven says

    Then said dinosaur tears open a spider silk blob…and there’s a dead, dessicated hominid inside? What the heck? Anachronism! …

    It’s a metaphor.
    The spider is really the Republican party.
    The dessicated human is the American people after 4 years of Trump and supply side economics.
    The dinosaur is Nancy Pelosi.

  5. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @4:
    same here. Glad to hear I wasn’t alone thinking this looked a lot like Primal by Gendy Tartskovsky.
    Primal takes a different approach to the work by keeping the audio music with no dialog, not even pseudolanguage.
    Mixing primitive humanoid with dinosaurs is the only excursion from history it makes. Gendy is a genius of his craft.

  6. gjakab says

    Oh yeah, Primal’s definitely not about scientific accuracy – it is, in essence, pseudo-prehistoric fantasy. It is, however, a highly memorable piece of dialogue-less storytelling; it’s stunning how much emotion and characterization it gets across with nothing more than facial expressions, body language and nonverbal sounds. Also has plenty of kick-ass action.

    It has one 10-episode season so far, and I’d say it’s very much worth watching, even if you’d normally be irked by the inaccuracies.

  7. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 7:
    S2E1 is out now. S1 ended on a weird cliffhanger, S2 premier apparently continues that direction. I haven’t seen it myself, only saw it listed on IMDB.
    I strongly agree, Gendy is a master storyteller and gets them across through art, and isn’t dependent on verbal dialog like most stories.
    Obviously I got hooked by Samurai Jack, and its FINALE series sealed it.

  8. davidc1 says

    Well there is a spiting spider that shoots silk threads from it’s mouth to pin down it’s prey .
    Scytodes thoracica is the name of the one that you can find in houses in GB .

  9. waydude says

    Oh, uh Primal i have always assumed takes place on a another fantasy world like Wizards (the old 70s movie) or something. you should see the flying vampire hominid things