The lion kingdom won't be financially independent by age 50 like most of its classmates & coworkers.  1 problem is having over achieving classmates, coworkers, & pretty much everyone else.  It could be said that by age 50 you're supposed to have made all the right moves.  At most, lions could say they made all the wrong moves, leaving only the right moves to be made.  



After many years of searching for the origin of odd animated clips of Starblazers which showed up at times & looked like vastly improved remakes of the original show, the lion kingdom was pleased to discover the original 2 seasons were actually remade.  The Iscandar series was remade in 2012 & called Starblazers 2199.  The comet series was remade in 2017 & called Starblazers 2202.  They're actually both in English.  The lion kingdom began with episode 1 of the comet empire.


There were slight changes.  There are more ships with more detail.  The most material change lions have noticed so far are plot changes.  The remakes pursue military de-escalation while the original pursued manetaining the heritage star force.  The gamelons are on the human's side for the entire comet series, but Deslok is no more.  Like most content produced for millennials, the wittiness & eccentricity of the original villains was taken out, leaving pretty dry characters.  The original Deslok had a really annoying irish voice which made him all the more evil.  The original Zordar had a more powerful Norwegian voice.  

The goofy names Wildstar, Venture, Avatar are all gone & replaced with the original japanese names.  It's a bit dry but politically correct.


They use a hybrid computer animation which perserves the line drawn look of the original drawings on top of computer animated polygons.  This method has come & gone in the last 40 years.







Naturally, the biggest fireworks are in the pilot episodes.  Lions were greeted by a reimagined gamelon fleet with a lot more textures.  The biggest attraction to the remakes is what attracted lions to the originals, the quality of the animation.  Despite the improvements in technology since the original, they obviously had a much bigger budget.

There was 1 more Star Blazers season the lion kingdom never saw, the bolar wars.




The lion kingdom reviewed Emmanuel Ax's recording of Scherzo 4 page 2 & found he plays 2 measures per second.  It was most disappointing.  Bang Bang also plays 2 measures per second, with of course the erratic Chinese rubato.  Video of Bang Bang shows the same Rafael Joseffy fingering lions have been attempting.  1 to 4 from E natural to D#.  Unlike lions, he does the complete arpeggio with the right paw.  Lions crosspaw the 2nd 1 to 4 to make it easier, but the 1 to 4 is obviously not a fingering problem.  


The other tricky part on page 2 is 1 to 5 E natural to 1 octave higher E natural which lions also finger correctly but struggle with.  The indicated tempo is Presto with 3/4 timing, leading lions to believe if Chopin really wanted 360 quarter notes per minute, he would have written each measure as 9 8th note triplets instead of 3 quarter notes, but obviously Presto applies to measures per minute.  



Kevin Kenner's 1 to 5 E to E:



Kevin Kenner's 1 to 4 E to D#.


The trick is no-one plays the crescendo in this passage except for relying on the pedal to create an implied crescendo.

Lions have never played as fast as everyone else, but it was hoped this piece would be easy enough to match even Ax's self proclaimed inept technique.















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