gen:LOCK is Good, Actually - Intro

[gen:LOCK ad]. “How so, Monica Rial? We still have no context!” [Footage stops, like VHS footage. Muffled.]Yeah, for a show that had as much star power and big money backing as it did, being produced by both Rooster Teeth Animation and Michael Jordan’s Outlier Society Productions - yes, he has a production studio, oddly enough - gen:LOCK’s marketing campaign was, uh… not the best.

Ya know, RWBY might be a mess, but it at least knew how to put the right foot forward. The Color Trailers were eye catching, breathtaking, and simply iconic. Granted Volume 1 as a whole didn’t really match up to what the trailers suggested the series would be like, but they still got you invested in the characters, story… okay, maybe not the story, but definitely the world. Meanwhile, gen:LOCK’s answer to the Color Trailers was… Character reveal trailers. Beleaguered sigh.

For as much as I love gen:LOCK’s main cast, there’s no real way to get a sense for who they are or what they’re like from these trailers. Instead of introducing us to their everyday life before being approached for the gen:LOCK program, we instead get Dr. Professor David Tennant talking to General Monica Rial about them all in first person perspective. Which… again, you’d think with the amount of budget this show had, they’d go for the former instead of the latter. Ya know, sci-fi Color Trailers, Super Sentai edition? Or even just Character Shorts?

I mean if Volume 5 was allowed to dump half its budget into three unnecessary character shorts, surely gen:LOCK could’ve done the same. But for as much as I’m crapping on the show’s marketing - which yeah was just that poor; apparently everything is a spoiler, even the opening hooks and the characters themselves - gen:LOCK as a whole actually turned out… pretty good. Not amazing, but definitely not the dumpster fire a lot of people have made it out to be.

Like honestly, with only eight episodes, gen:LOCK’s first season is essentially a much more complete and polished version of RWBY Volume One, with less emphasis on the actual overarching story and who our baddies are, and more of a focus on introducing us to the world and building up the main team’s dynamic before they pull a Fall of Beacon… which they still did in their first season. Well, uh… kinda? Y-Yeah I don’t know, but let’s just keep moving forward for now.

But some have to gone to say that everything in the show is hot garbage, that all of the characters, stories, and animations are horribly awful to the nth degree, and that anyone who so much as enjoys even a single moment of the series is an idiot who should be ashamed of themselves and send themselves off into the sunset on a burning funeral pyre. To which I say… so long as I get to go out like a viking, cuz dang I’ve enjoyed this show.

I’m not absolutely enamored with it. Specifically the animation takes some getting used to, and the writing isn’t always the best, and it’s very difficult for me to enjoy mecha anime to begin with, but when it comes to the characters, especially Cammie - “I swear pretty fine” (Episode 4) - there’s just something about this show I find incredibly charming. Again, that’s not to say this show is amazing by any means, but to say it’s an absolute dumpster fire is a bit of a stretch.

Especially when it comes to people whose brands, personas, and hobbies are to hate and bash pretty much anything Rooster Teeth creates, because hey if you enjoy something I dislike I’m going to tell you how dumb and stupid you are while pretending that I’m not the toxic one, I’m just a little tired myself. When it comes to Rooster Teeth productions, you never really can set the bar for the writing incredibly high, but that’s never what these shows are about.

I mean, if people can be obsessed with the nonsense that is Kingdom Hearts and still wind up crying their eyes out by the end - myself included - I think we can give the same acceptance to RWBY, Nomad of Nowhere (WHERE IS SEASON 2?), and definitely to gen:LOCK. So today, I’m going to share why I kinda enjoy gen:LOCK, and you’re going to deal with it. And if you have an issue with me liking the show… please find something better to do. Might I suggest quilting?