tv-reviews


Ragnarok

Rating: ★★★

Amusing instance of the 'teen is actually a demi-god' genre. Young Magne is a Thor-alike being returning to his old hometown, where a crazy old lady awakens his latent powers after he shows kindness to the one-eyed old man named Wotan (heavy-handed much?). He and his (cough Loki cough) brother go through the motions of integrating into the local highschool. Magne makes a friend who immediately gets killed by the local Jotun family -- ancient giants who live on as modern-day big businesses and influential figures, and thence he gets caught up in a struggle against their power -- both hard and soft.

One weird point worth mentioning is Magne's affect throughout the show -- he constantly seems to be squinting at something off-screen and barely paying attention to people who are talking to him. No doubt this is down to him being 'dyslexic', which seems to be code for 'autistic' -- Magne has terrible social skills and a history of violent outbursts (which, oddly, we don't see in the show -- he always caves to pressure at points where you might expect him to flip the table, and only fights in defence of himself or others).

The series is still developing, and the second season will really be the test for whether the writers know what they're doing. There are some warning signs -- like the randomly-introduced new student who... does nothing, and has no impact on anything going on. However, the show also demonstrates promise. People don't always act in stilted plot-convenient manners, and there are slow-burn developments. Particularly good was Loki's arc. Whereas Thor struggles against the Jotun, and ends up trapped and snared by them, Loki befriends them, gets to know them, and then strikes with surgical precision -- publicly mocking and belittling the Jotun headmistress where she is powerless to stop him.