Plan of Dissent is the third part of the Umbaran arc and sees Jedi Master Pong Krell once again devising a plan that aims to get all of his troops killed. Instead of dying on the frontlines for nothing, a trio of clones (led by Fives) decide they’re going to take matters into their own hands and come up with a brilliant but risky alternate plan.

Of course they take the idea to Krell first, who dismisses it out of hand. Then they proceed to do it anyway and save the lives of countless clones.

As far as the story is concerned, the episode was essentially a set up for the ending which will lead into the next episode.

And I’ve been talking about Paths of Glory a lot since we started the Umbaran arc and never has it been more prevalent than with the cliffhanger at the end of this episode. Krell is out of control and clinging too much to orders and wants to see these men dead rather than be made a fool of. It’s very un-Jedi like, but that’s what they’re dealing with.

I can see why Dee Bradley Baker had problems with this arc. Watching Hardcase’s fate had me choked up, I can’t even imagine how it must have been to play that scene for Dee.

And while all of that is at the top of my mind, the thing I really want to talk about was the space battle. This might have been the finest Star Wars space battle we’ve seen since Revenge of the Sith. It was complex and intricate, bigger and better than anything we’d ever seen on the show before. The battle was truly breathtaking.

Credit where credit is due: the lighting schemes in this entire arc have been phenomenal, but this episode really pulled out all the stops. The interiors of the Umbaran ships were second to none, but perhaps the best shot I’ve seen this season (and perhaps the entire show) was the Return of the Jedi homage with the clones blasting their way out of the Umbaran supply ship. It was assembled, animated, and lit so well that I had a hard time believing I was just watching a cartoon.

And that wasn’t the only direct classic trilogy reference in this episode. The clones have to bluff Krell just like Han Solo on the Death Star in A New Hope by comlink, and there was some droid odds humour that I got a big kick out of.

I really don’t see how anyone could be complaining about these episodes.

I love these diversions with the Clones and I love seeing how they interact with different kinds of Jedi. And Pong Krell is certainly no ordinary Jedi.

Everything is boiling to a point in the next episode and if it’s a more direct homage to Paths of Glory than any of these others hinting at it, I’ll be happier than I can stomach.

Lucasfilm has been kind enough to provide us with another clip of the upcoming episode of The Clone Wars.

This is from the third and penultimate episode in the Umbara arc.

From the press release:

The battle for Umbara continues in “Plan of Dissent,” a new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, airing at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, November 11th on Cartoon Network.

After the Republic conquers an Umbaran airbase, General Krell orders Rex and his men on towards the heavily fortified capital. Realizing there’s a better plan, several clone troopers disobey orders to carry out a rogue, covert operation.

Dragon Ball Z: Level 1.1 hits stores this Tuesday, November 8th. Since this is the first time the original Dragon Ball Z is launching on Blu-ray, Funimation painstakingly restored the series frame by frame (and the results are stunning). Check out my review of Level 1.1 here.

Episodes: Level 1.1 contains episodes 1 – 17 of the original edit of the series (please note that this includes the original edit only, not the Kai version that has already been released on Blu-ray). Given all the audio options you can watch through the episodes at least three different ways. This release does not include the Next Episode previews, but honestly I prefer my anime without these previews so this choice was fine with me.

Audio: You can opt to watch in English or Japanese. If you watched the series on Cartoon Network, then I highly suggest going back and watching it in English again (Let’s face it, Dragon Ball Z’s awesome voice actors are the ones that took dubbing in North America to the next level!). Your options are:

DOLBY TRUE HD: English Dialogue with Japanese Music 5.1

DOLBY TRUE HD: U.S. English Broadcast Version 2.0

Original Japanese Mono: (With or without English subtitles.)

If you want, you can change the audio and subtitles at any time during the episode and check out the differences between the Japanese and English versions. It’s really neat for fans like me who enjoy both the Japanese and English versions of the series! My recommendation: put the English Dialogue with Japanese Music 5.1 on your surround sound system and blast it so your neighbors can hear every epic “Kamehameha!” as if you were with our heroes on the battlefield (they’ll love you for it, I promise.).

Picture: Clear, crisp, and beautifully restored. You can see the grain detail in the color and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look (if you don’t believe me, try pulling out any anime VHS you’ve got sitting in your closet, this remastered version is so much sharper!). The transfer of 16mm film to 1080p HD has not only preserved the original, director-approved color and classic 4:3 aspect ratio – it has also created a picture that looks much better than when we first saw the series on television in the 1990’s (for anyone who’s curious, Dragon Ball Z first aired in Japan on April 26th, 1989).

For me, it was great to watch this in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio – and it looks fine on today’s HD Televisions (I still have my tube TV for classic console gaming, so I actually tested this theory by playing the disks on both units with my PS3). Your HD TV will automatically letterbox to the proper size and it looks great.

The Bonus/Disk Features include:

The Marathon Feature: Watch all the episodes on each disk seamlessly with just one click! This connects all the episodes together so you can power through each of the two disks. Personally, I recommend this feature be viewed with a group of friends and your favorite beverages and snacks. I had a blast watching disk one in Marathon Mode – I hadn’t sat down and watched the original series from the beginning since it was on Cartoon Network, so this was a pretty epic occasion for me! You still might want to click through each intro/ outro sequence – but this is easily done on a PS3 (or your Blu-Ray player of choice). During Marathon Playback, you can summon up a small menu bar in the left corner of the screen and switch between episodes, audio, and subtitles at any time without having to return to the main menu.

Textless Openings and Closings – a great way to enjoy the art and editing in the intro and outro.

The Remastering Featurette is a neat way to see the painstaking process that these episodes had to undergo in order to be restored to HD quality. The side-by-side comparison of un-restored and re-mastered footage is pretty amazing! Check out this short clip from the Featurette:

Given the to-be-continued style that the Featurette ends in on the blu-ray, it looks like we’ll get a peek at more behind the scenes goodies with each upcoming Level.

Character Profile Card: Each release comes with a collectible character profile card. Level 1.1 comes packaged with Vegeta, and it’s printed with Chris Sabat’s signature and profile as well. It’s a very cool collector’s bonus!

All in all, this set is going to be a must-have for anime collectors out there who will enjoy seeing the series beautifully remastered to HD. I definitely recommend it to fans of the series and to those who need to watch it for the first time – set the disk to Marathon Mode and enjoy!

For more Dragon Ball Z goodness, check out Big Shiny Robot’s recent NYCC 2011 Interview with Chris Sabat, Justin Cook and Sean Schemmel about the Blu-ray, Kai, and more! You can also check out the trailer for the upcoming 1.1 Blu-Ray release on Funimation’s website.

Jedi Master Pong Krell will go down in the history books as one of the least compassionate Jedi generals in the history of the Jedi Order. He’s hard headed and not a very good strategist.

His strategy is very much like General Mireau’s in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant war film, Paths of Glory. Like Mireau (played with delicious hatred by George Macready), Krell knows exactly what he wants and he doesn’t care how many men die in the reality of the battlefield to obtain it. I was convinced that the third segment of this episode would begin with him ordering the clones through the frontlines regardless of the situation and that he would order the clones defending the mouth of the gorge to fire to the rear of Rex’s men to prevent further retreat.

Krell is that much of a sonofabitch.

And I really like it.

I think this episode was vastly superior to last weeks, even though we couldn’t have it without the setup provided. And I think Krell himself wouldn’t have succeeded without an equal amount of setup. Krell is commanded by Obi-wan Kenobi to take an air base supplying the capital city as quickly as possible. There are a few possible routes, but he sends Rex and his men right up the middle in a full frontal assault. He might as well have ordered them into a sausage grinder for all the good they were doing against the Umbarran millipede tanks. But the only thing that allowed his plan to work was the fact that Rex and his team had trained under Anakin Skywalker, who had taught them to think much more creatively than if they’d been assigned to Krell from the get go.

It’s very telling that Krell is assigned to this assignment at all. Where’s his army?

Oh, right. He ordered them to their deaths.

This was a very challenging episode for the clones. They’re more than happy to march into battle with a sensible plan, even it means their death. But give them a plan with no sense to it and no chance of survival? See how quickly they rebel.

It’s the challenges of the clones dealing with the fact that they have to acknowledge they were bred to die in the name of the Republic, but don’t want to do it for no reason, that makes this episode so damned compelling.

But even if this episode wasn’t so compelling, it was damn pretty to look at. Every frame of animation that takes place on Umbara is dripping with paint and brushstrokes, every moment able to be framed in a museum. The lighting schemes, the trees, the constant mist, the use of motion, it was all incredible.

I was particularly impressed with the camera moves in the first third of the episode, floating through the battle making you feel like you’re there. In fact, I found myself cringing every time we saw a clone brutally killed at the hands of the Umbarrans… And come to think of it, I did the same thing when the clones shot a wounded Umbarran, too. More than any other episode of the show (and certainly any of the movies) this might have been the most brutal installment of visual storytelling ever committed to film, save Order 66 and the death of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

Dee Bradley Baker needs to be congratulated. He voiced no less than a dozen different clones in this episode and each one was unique. He’s really shining in the role and I can’t wait to see how things boil over in this arc.

But there was still fun to be had. In the last third one of the clones lets out a classic line from A New Hope (“I prefer a good fight to all this sneakin’ around”) before stealing enemy ships they have no idea how to pilot. It added a much needed bit of levity to the episode.

Overall, I think this episode is structurally superior to last weeks. We were told the objectives, what was at stake, where and why, very clearly right at the beginning. The clones took action after action to make it happen, escalating the tension and the action as each thing they tried failed to work.

This episode was turned up to 11 across the board and I’m glad we’ve got two more episodes left on Umbara. Especially since I really feel like Rex and his men are on a collision course with Krell. And they’ve foreshadowed a confrontation beautifully, with the fire in Krell’s eyes and Rex clenching his fist…

I like where things are heading and I hope Walter Murch comes back to direct more episodes of the show.

I can’t wait for tonight’s episode.

It will be unlike anything we’ve seen. It’s directed by Walter Murch, who was as responsible for THX-1138 as George Lucas. And if you haven’t read his book, In the Blink of an Eye, you’re missing out. The man is a genius. His book taught me stuff about editing that I use every single day at work.

From the press release:

The Republic assault on the shadowy planet of Umbara continues in “The General,” a new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, airing at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, November 4th on Cartoon Network.

The fierce General Krell orders Captain Rex and the clone troopers of the 501st to conquer a heavily fortified Umbaran airbase. It is absolutely essential the clones succeed, for the rest of the planetary invasion depends on it. Krell will accept nothing less than victory, but the mission seems impossible – the clones must march overland through hostile territory and monstrously advanced enemy technology. Unless the clones can use their ingenuity to counter these threats, it will be a certain suicide mission.

This second installment in the epic four-part Umbara story arc raises the stakes and is filled with big screen cinematic action – and with good reason. Helming the episode as director is Walter Murch. A renowned film editor and sound designer, Murch won an Academy Award for his sound editing work on Apocalypse Now, and an unprecedented double-Oscar win for both sound and picture editing for The English Patient. A longtime friend and creative collaborator with George Lucas, Murch worked with Lucas on the films THX 1138 and American Graffiti. He quite literally wrote the book on film editing, the influential In the Blink of an Eye.

Bruce Timm has been a prominent animator for DC comics for many years, designing characters for Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited, to name a few. You might have seen him when he drew Conan O’Brien’s character, “The Flaming C.” At New York Comic Con 2011, Bicentennial Dan and Ticelli Bot got to sit down with them at a roundtable discussion about his latest work in Batman:Year One and Justice League: Doom.

Unfortunately, Timm’s interview was cut shorter due to time constraints.

Q: Last year you were mentioning something that you were working on that was big and secret that you weren’t really able to talk about.

BRUCE TIMM: Oh, that was probably The Dark Knight Returns. That’s probably what I was alluding to, it was nothing beyond that.

Q: Are you able to reveal any secret projects now?

TIMM: No, afraid not. I think everything’s been announced that I’m allowed to talk about, up to Dark Knight 1 and 2.

Q: How involved were you in getting Lauren Faust for Super Best Friends Forever and the Aardman Batman shorts?

TIMM: Oh, not at all.

Q: Are you going to be working with them at all?

TIMM: We’ve been talking with the producers on the DC Nation doing maybe possibly some stuff for them, but I’ve got to figure out a way to squeeze it into my schedule.

Q: When you’re looking for new projects that are within the DC Universe, is it difficult to deal with that wealth of riches that you have to choose from in the source material, or do you have a mental list of things that you say, “I’d really like to go back and do this if they gave me the opportunity.”

TIMM: It is kind of a broad question, and hopefully I can answer it in a way without insulting tons and tons of people, but…I wish there was more really strong source material like All-Star Superman or Batman: Year One for us to adapt into movies. There really aren’t. There’s a lot of good comics over the entire course of history, but in terms of finding a really well-known comic like Batman: Year One or Dark Knight Returns that’s not only a great comic but also famous and has its own name-recognition value, there aren’t that many of them out there. Is there a Dark Knight equivalent for Aquaman or for Green Arrow? No, there really isn’t. So there may be good stories out there, but they’re not on that same level. It definitely makes it easier when there’s a story like Batman: Year One or Dark Knight or All-Star Superman or The New Frontier. Something that’s really that strong and you can read the comic and go, “OK, I can totally see how that would work as an animated film.” There aren’t really that many properties out there that are like that.

Q: So it could work as a very successful story, but it might not translate into your area.

TIMM: Well, as a good example is Justice League: Doom. I read the Tower of Babel storyline when it first came out, and there were things about it that I really really liked, but for years everyone kept asking, “Oh, when are you going to do Tower of Babel? when are you going to do Tower of Babel?” and it doesn’t really work as an animated movie because there’s things that get up that don’t really pay off, it doesn’t have a movie structure to it, and it doesn’t really have a super larger-than-life quality to it. But then we were talking about it again just a couple of years ago, and going back and rethinking about the book because it’s a really, really strong idea for a movie: the idea that Batman has these contingency plans on how to take down the Justice League if they’d ever gone bad, and then those plans fall into the wrong hands and the villain actually puts those plans into action. It’s a really good, strong story motivator, so we felt like we could do something of our own with it. We’re always adapting ideas and things from the comics, but it may not always be a literal adaptation.

Q: Does DC’s relaunch do anything to you guys, or is it completely separate?

TIMM: It doesn’t really have anything to do with us. They’ve told us, “Don’t even worry about trying to make all the changes that they’ve made in the comics true in the animation.” At least not yet.

Q: This might be a silly question, but since Superman’s been in the animated universe, he never has the shield on the back of the cape. Is that just for aesthetics, or is that an animation issue?

TIMM: It’s just an animation issue. The shield is hard enough to draw on a flat surface. You try to draw it on a wrinkly surface….you know, a lot of people…(laughs) to me, I think it is kind of a silly question, because a lot of people are like, “I can’t believe they never put the shield on his cape!” and it’s just like, “Who’s looking at the back of his cape?” He’s got it on the front. It’s fine.

Q: It’s just something that I’ve noticed, but it doesn’t take away…

Q: I never noticed it before.

TIMM: Yeah, it’s just…I always forget that he even has it on his cape. I don’t think of him that way. To me, it’s just a red cape. He doesn’t…I don’t know. It’s funny.

BICENTENNIAL DAN: The DC Animated Universe has been going for 20 years. How does it feel to be the person behind the iconic versions of characters to an entire generation?

TIMM: Good. (laughs) I guess. That was a short answer.

BigShinyRobot would like to thank Bruce Timm for taking time to participate in this roundtable interview, as well as all the other members of the press and the coordinators. Batman: Year One is on the shelves and Justice League: Doom comes out next year. Don’t forget to check them  out!

Andrea Romano has been casting director on at least a dozen cartoons that you watched growing up. Casting such classics as Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toon Adventures, she has won 7 Emmy Awards and has proven herself to be a staple in the entertainment community. At New York Comic Con 2011, Bicentennial Dan and Ticelli Bot got to sit down with Andrea at a roundtable discussion about her latest work in Batman:Year One and Justice League: Doom.

Q: Kevin was saying something about the use of actors who were not voice actors per se, but people you thought of as being good actors for the job. Could you talk a bit about how that informs your casting choices?

ANDREA ROMANO: We have the opportunity with all the different television shows and cable shows and movies that are out there to see so many actors work, so you can gauge someone’s acting by that. It’s not like I have to go out and do auditions to say, “Jeez, is Nathan Fillion a good actor?” I can actually watch some of his work and say, “Yes, he’s a good actor.” Now, the next question is, “Do they have voice over experience?” If they don’t, I don’t shy away from them. It just means that I have to teach them maybe the technique to working on microphone. For instance, if they’re strictly a film actor, they tend to work very small because the camera’s right in their face and they have to work very small. We have to goose the energy a bit to get the right voice tracks to be animated.

You can cast a very wide net when you look at the entire entertainment industry. Firefly is a great show because there were so many talented actors in that. I think for one project or another, I’ve pretty much hired every single actor in that show at this point. But you basically look for good acting. Microphone technique and animation acting, you can teach in a very short time. I can’t teach acting in a four-hour recording session. Acting is something that they’ve got to bring to the table themselves. You think, “Here’s what the character looks like, here’s what the character is. Does that actor’s voice sound like what the character looks like? Do I think he’s got the acting ability?” Say, for Batman: Year One, I watched Ben McKenzie do Southland, and I thought, “Absolutely, he can handle what happens in Batman: Year One.” So I’m never afraid to take a shot with someone who’s never done it before because we don’t ever want to repeat ourselves.

However, for Justice League: Doom, it was a joy to get the response from the employers when they said that I could bring back the cast that I had cast some twelve years ago from the Justice League series. Some people who hadn’t worked together since we did the last Justice League a decade ago got to work together again. I said it’s like going to a family reunion where you’ve hand-picked your family (laughs). It’s really nice.

Q: Do you ever take a leap of faith where something tells you that this person is going to be perfect for the part?

ROMANO: Absolutely. A perfect example of that was when I was working on Teen Titans many years ago, there was a brand new actor in town named Greg Cipes, and he auditioned with 150 people for Beast Boy. I sat with the producer, Glen Murakami, and we listened to all the auditions and I said, “I’m convinced this kid is Beast Boy. I’m absolutely convinced he’s the right actor.” I kind of had to convince my bosses that this is the right guy, and sure enough, he was a wonderful Beast Boy. Then he went off and has begun this ridiculously huge voice-over career. But yeah, you do have to take that leap of faith and say, “It feels right to me. I think it’s right.” And I’ve been doing this now long enough that I should have some sense of it.

I can be wrong. I’m the first one to say, “You know, I brought this guy in and he wasn’t perfect, and I apologize,” but you gotta take a chance. You can’t just play it safe. You gotta go for something new and take a chance.

Q: One thing I’ve noticed in some of the newer movies is more natural sounding dialogue.

ROMANO: Good! We did that deliberately. That was a conscious decision.
Q: Does that affect the way you cast, or the way you will drive a session as a result of that?

ROMANO: Yeah, both of those things. There are some…for lack of a better term, “cartoon voice actors” who are always going to be broad. That’s what they do, and they can do multiple voices and have remarkable skill, but ideally, when you know that you want a very realistic style and you want it to be a live-action feature, you kind of look at the casting a little bit differently. Certainly the sessions you direct differently because you want that more intimate, quieter, more subtle performance.

BICENTENNIAL DAN: How does it feel to be the person who chooses all these voices that then go on to become the voices that people hear in their heads when they read these comics?

ROMANO: It’s an awesome responsibility. It’s huge. Hopefully I make the right decision, but I don’t have the ultimate say. My job as a casting director, when I’m casting something is to present options to the people who do have the ultimate say, which is essentially the money people, the publicity people, a bunch of people who have say. Any casting director’s job is to present options: “Here’s these five people. Tell me who you like and in what order.” If they’re celebrities, “I want this guy first, go to this guy next, go to this guy next.” If there are auditions, you just present the auditions to them and say, “I like these five guys. These are my favorites. Who do you guys like?” And then they say, “Go to this guy, and then this one.” Certainly it’s the producers and not myself that makes the decisions.

Q: You’ve been working with Kevin Conroy & Tim Daly for so long. When they come back after not doing it for a while, is there a little bit of a learning curve?

ROMANO: No, ]because they did the characters for so many years, it’s just like breathing. It’s like riding a bike. You don’t really have to think about how to ride a bike any more. You learn how to do it and you do it, which is why whenever I’m given a project like Justice League: Doom, my first question to my employers is, “May I go back to the original cast?” because I know it’ll make my job easier. First of all, I’m not going to have to re-cast all over again, and the actors will remember. Even though Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly aren’t acting in the same room together, they’re going to remember each other’s performances and what their performances are going to sound like, so they’ll have a better, fuller world that they can then act and react to.

Q: When an actor is auditioning for something like a Batman role or a Superman role, do you ever mention anything from Kevin Conroy’s performance or Tim Daly’s performance?

ROMANO: No, because actors want to create something themselves. They don’t want to emulate somebody else. They want it to be their performance. If they came in just to do an impression of Kevin, I would just get Kevin (laughs). Everybody wants to create it themselves, and that’s interesting too. I like all the new different incarnations. I think it was in San Diego, or one of you guys told me how many times I’ve cast Batman. I think I’m up to 12 now. I didn’t even know, but I like all of them. If for some reason I don’t like them, I’ll probably replace them. I mean, Batman is such a huge property. You can’t do a mediocre job. It has to be good.

Q: Do the short films give you an opportunity to add a bit of fun in terms of the casting because you’re maybe going to go out on a limb a bit further?

ROMANO: You know, for all the shorts that have been added to the DVDs in the DC Universe, “Catwoman” is the only one I cast. All the rest were done by other people, only because I was too busy. I had 10 projects simultaneously and I just couldn’t do them all, and I don’t ever want to sign up for something where I can’t give it a very good job. So “Catwoman was the only one I did.”

Q: Where did Eliza Dushku come from?

ROMANO: She had done Batman: Year One, and that piece came up short. We needed to do a little piece with it to make it a full-length feature, and there was a Paul Dini script that happened to be a Catwoman piece. We were like, “Eliza is available, she wants to do it, we’ve wanted to work with her for years, she’s on board for the long piece, let’s have her do both of them.” So it just worked out.

Q: You’ve been doing the DC heroes for so long, but how is it different from doing something like The Boondocks, which is not exactly “politically correct”, or…

ROMANO: (laughs) What do you mean? (laughter) It’s great because I don’t get stuck in a rut, then. I found that there was a period of time when I was doing almost exclusively action shows and I felt myself yearning to do something silly and fun. Years ago, when I was doing Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain and all those musical comedy shows, then I was doing BTAS and Superman, that was a nice combination of different kinds of cartoons. Then, it just happened that it was a bunch of action shows, and I really started longing for the sillier ones. So when The Boondocks came along, I just jumped at that. We’re making more of those, by the way.

Q: Are you ever uncomfortable with some of the material?

ROMANO: Always! Always uncomfortable! And the funny thing is because the artists record separately very often on that…I’ve worked with a bunch of rappers and I’ve worked with Quincy Jones, and a bunch of different people, and I have to read them in. And so I have to say the lines that the other actor had to say (laughter) which is sometimes…and I’ll say the “n-word,” and the actor will just freeze in front of me. And I’ll say, “It’s because I said the n-word, isn’t it?” (laughs)

Q: Of the non-traditional voice people, who was your greatest get? And of voices of any actors, politicians, whoever, who do you think a great voice for voiceover?

ROMANO: Wow…good question. You know who was my biggest get? Steven Spielberg. I directed Steven Spielberg in a Tiny Toons episode. That was crazy. I actually do remember sitting there as I slated the show, I turned around to the crew and went, “I’m Directing Steven Spielberg!” Because lots of people can say, “I’ve been directed by..” but very few can say, “I directed him.”

There’s all kinds of people that I would love to come and work with me. I want any actor who’s ever worked to come and play with me at some point. There’s so many…you know, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, I love his voice, there’s so much texture to it, it’s really nice.

Q: Any women?

ROMANO: There were a couple of people we tried to get recently, but…you know, the thing is that I don’t want to say because I may be able to get them, you know? There’s so many people.

BigShinyRobot would like to thank Andrea Romano for taking time to participate in this roundtable interview, as well as all the other members of the press and the coordinators. Batman: Year One is on the shelves and Justice League: Doom comes out next year. Don’t forget to check them  out!

Lucasfilm has once again given an advanced look at the upcoming episode of The Clone Wars. This week, we’re being treated to the first of four parts in the Umbara arc.

By all accounts, this is going to be the highlight of this half of the season and I can’t wait to see more. (According to Dee Baker, voice of the Clones, Walter Murch is directing the next episode of this arc and I couldn’t be more excited.)

From the press release:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns this week with the launch of an explosive four-part story arc that puts the clone troopers on the ground of a hostile alien planet while under the command of a ruthless general, Jedi Pong Krell.
Tensions run high as the clones carry out Krell’s difficult orders and embark on the deadly mission to take the capital of Umbara in “Darkness on Umbara,” a new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, airing at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, October 28th on Cartoon Network.

And does anyone else think those walkers look like Zentraedi Battlepods from Robotech? Or do I just have that on the brain?

A group of fans got together and put together this fantastic motion comic based on the death of Ultimate Peter Parker.

I am soooo far behind on my comics that I haven’t read this yet, but watching this gave me the chills. Marvel should hire these guys. They really knocked this out of the park.

It is odd, though, seeing how sometimes Bendis’ dialogue doesn’t exactly translate to being spoken. But that’s something minor. I hope we can see more motion comics from these guys, and I hope Marvel doesn’t sue them or make them take it down.

We are giving away Robotech: The Complete Original Series on DVD!

This might be one of my favorite cartoons ever and I can’t wait to share it with you. One of my children even got stuck with a middle name from one of my favorite characters in the show (Miriya Sterling)

A & E has put out a new, definitive, remastered edition with all the special features you could shake a fist at. It’s really an incredible set.

From the official description:

ROBOTECH is a sweeping science-fiction anime epic of humans defending their home world against alien domination. The saga is told through the eyes of characters caught up in a series of wars that erupts when a mysterious spacecraft crash-lands on Earth at the turn of the millennium. The secrets of alien knowledge aboard this vessel were unlocked, leading to the development of “Robotechnology” and the creation of a vast arsenal of robotic “mecha” to defend the Earth against the alien threats that would eventually strike to lay claim to the mysterious power source known as “protoculture.”
Carl Macek’s groundbreaking sci fi epic has enthralled audiences since it first appeared on American television in 1985. One of the first-ever anime imports, this saga spans three generations of mankind’s fight for freedom.

ROBOTECH: THE COMPLETE SERIES contains the remastered versions of all 85 episodes from the three Robotech Wars: THE MACROSS SAGA, THE ROBOTECH MASTERS and THE NEW GENERATION.

The contest will be open until Friday, October 28th. Winners will be announced on Monday, October 31th.

To enter, all you need to do is shoot us an email at editor (at) bigshinyrobot.com. Make the subject “FAREWELL, BIG BROTHER” (which might be one of the best episodes of the entire series. For an extra chance to win, you can go to our facebook page and invite all of your friends to like us. Or you can ask your followers on twitter to follow us @BigShinyRobot. Just be sure to mention in your email that you’ve done it.

If you can’t wait, you can get it on Amazon now for about $60. It’s also all streaming on Netflix.

Good luck.

I’ll leave you with some of Minmay’s singing: