Force Watch: Simpsons: Much Apu About Nothing/ Halo Legends Origins Part I and II

Jmac:

So since we have had a lot going on lately we decided to make the Force Watch around 30 minutes. I picked Halo Legends Origins and Kmac picked a random episode from the Simpson’s early seasons. ‘Much Apu About Nothing’ just so happens to tie into the newest 4th of July release on the ‘Simpsons Tapped out’ game that we both play on our phones.

Much Apu About Nothing is about Apu gaining his citizenship after sensationalized news stories and usual Simpsons rabble rousing causes immigrants to be blamed for increased taxes...... hey that sounds exactly like what's happening right now in America with the whole “No Amnesty” “We hate any immigrants...(even though we won't pick our own fruit, and the ones that get in legally are generally much more intelligent than the bigots)”

Anyway I digress, Homer attempts to teach Apu about America so he will pass his citizenship test, and Homer like many simpletons in America completely has no idea about real US history.

Its a pretty funny episode, but the Right is more the brunt of the jokes, so its a more liberal Simpsons episode.

I give it 4.6 star spangled Ganeshas out of 5.

Kmac:

I used to watch Jmac play Halo after Geology class in college, or rather I used to nap while he played Halo after Geology class in college. Either way I was familiar enough with the game to know the main character, Master Chief, and that he communicated with a hologram. Oh, and there are aliens. Jmac has tried to get me to watch the Halo Origins before and now that he had a captive audience, he wanted me to  appreciate the backstory of his game.

I can’t say that I care more about the game now, but the two part cartoon series was not terrible. I enjoy history stories even if they are fake and I didn’t find knowledge about any other part of the series was at all necessary. The Halo Origins story speaks to the cyclical nature of history. In this universe many different races are threatened by an outside force and create super weapons, Halos, to destroy the evil and repopulate the planets. Because the weapons wipe out the intelligent beings, the different races are left to rebuild the knowledge base that made the weapons possible in the first place. I could care less about the other alien races but I thought the idea of man’s journey was interesting.

The origins story compares war to a virus that we are never able to shake. That we fight each other until there is a bigger threat and that once the bigger threat is gone we resume what we were doing. I kept trying to get Jmac to talk about these ideas with our own history. The story also speaks to man’s desire to explore first our world and then the stars. Again I wanted to talk about our own history. So I enjoyed the story by being a history nerd but I can’t say that it made me want to play the game.

I would say this is worth the twenty minute watch on youtube for the ideas it presents in relation to our actual history. The animation is well done and the voice acting is good. You don’t have to care about the game to enjoy this short.

I give Halo Origins 3 out of 5 existential questions.