The New Sci-Fi Series You Need To Keep Your Eye On, It’s Breathtaking
Scavengers Reign, the new animated sci-fi series on Max, is already receiving very positive reviews and wowing critics with its stunning visual style and intense storytelling. Writing for The Verge, Andrew Webster draws connections between the visual language of the series and the work of the late Jean “Moebius” Giraud. The highly influential comic book artist was also involved with storyboards and concept designs for films like Tron, Alien, The Abyss, and The Fifth Element.
The new animated series Scavengers Reign, releases this week on Max and it looks incredible.
Seeming to use Giraud’s work as its beginning, Scavengers Reign creates a truly alien world that is brimming with originality and beauty, along with more than a little horror and brutality. The series has at times an almost psychedelic quality, stretching the limits of the imagination and the audience’s perception. It’s a world where none of the rules we’re used to on Earth seems to ever apply.
Essentially the story of a spaceship wreck, Scavengers Reign follows the survivors of the crash of an interstellar cargo ship who are stranded across various regions of an unknown and inhospitable planet. There are three primary groups of survivors depicted in the series, each trying to stay alive long enough to return to the crashed vessel and escape the alien world. While one character, Kamen (Ted Travelstead), is stranded alone, the other characters are in pairs.
From gas mask slugs to animals whose insides can be used as light bulbs, the alien life depicted on this planet appears at times to be useful, but nothing on the planet is quite what it seems.
Scavengers Reign introduces us to Azi, voiced by Wunmi Mosaku, who is teamed up with a robot known as Levi (Alia Shawkat). Meanwhile, Sam, played by Bob Stephenson, is fighting for survival alongside Ursula (Sunita Mani). But the human characters exist in a world that defies logic and expectation, drawing viewers in with its imaginatively bizarre creatures and mysterious elements.
From gas mask slugs to animals whose insides can be used as light bulbs, the alien life depicted on this planet appears at times to be useful, but nothing on the planet is quite what it seems.
The world building of Scavengers Reign is incredibly detailed, with a seemingly endless array of strange new creatures. From cloning jellyfish to floating balloons that are actually alive, there are unique and unusual life forms all around the planet. The details of the world are grounded in a reality, even if that reality is incredibly strange and confusing.
The series includes a number of dark, bloody, and violent elements, along with deep transformations of the characters as they struggle to navigate an increasingly confusing and hostile landscape.
The alien world of Scavengers Reign is beautiful to behold, but it is also frequently grotesque and dangerous, with predators and plant life that threaten the humans’ survival at every turn. Some of these threats are easy to spot as they approach the human characters with obvious violent intent. Others are more subtle, using apparent hypnotic powers and other devices to control their intended prey, often with terrifying results.
Throughout the first season of Scavengers Reign, ominous threats continue to grow as the humans become drawn further into the world they seek with increasing desperation to escape. The robot Levi, for example, becomes infected with mold and spores from the planet that begin to overrun its circuitry, while a bizarre creature that resembles something of a monkey and a frog threatens to control Kamen’s mind.
The series includes a number of dark, bloody, and violent elements, along with deep transformations of the characters as they struggle to navigate an increasingly confusing and hostile landscape.
Across the 12 episodes of its first season, Scavengers Reign is constantly producing incredible visuals and captivatingly bizarre creatures. So the Moebius connection seems to be strong as inspiration, but that does not keep the series from feeling incredibly unique and unlike most anything out there. At a time of increased focus on science fiction, it can often seem that everything traffics in the same tropes and that every creature has the same design.
Not so with Scavengers Reign, which offers a truly unusual, engaging, and strange environment. The season still manages, however, to provide hope for its characters and a hint that even more bizarre discoveries await them. If you’re looking for something truly unique and unusual, take a trip into the unknown with Scavengers Reign streaming now on Max.
