The Ancient Scrolls (to date)

It's nice. It's classic. It's a bit ho-hum in comparison to the others, but only because I've seen this image so often. It's like the only surviving shot that gets passed around, and they made it into posters and stuff too. But it's good! I like that it centers everybody around the sword, even though it feels like it gives that sword more prominence than it needs to have. I mean, they all have their weapons, and Rohan's isn't any 'more special' than the other weapons. They were certainly planning to have more of a reveal to it, but they never got there, so the only difference is that Rohan's simply had that sword the longest.

I like that Ivar isn't completely cut off, but - ooh, they're tryyyyiiiiiing. Literally every promo shot gives him the least amount of attention, which is so annoying. I guess it's roughly equal here, but it still seems like his is the 'least equal' compared to the others. And it's too bad they didn't have the lighting for everyone coming from the sword. Rohan and Angus are lit from the right, but so are Deirdre and Ivar. Oh well.

Neat that they had the Temran army at the bottom, but Kells' castle in the back. To be fair, those are the most prominent images in the show.

It's fine. Let's not drag this out. As for the colour, I'm sure it was much less faded 25 years ago. :P

I love how much mileage they got outta that photoshoot. One shot is one of the very, very few promo posters that survived, so I assume it got plastered everywhere. Another shot is the cover of one of the FoxKids magazines that Kitty scanned (and it's the "Now let's do a silly one!" of the bunch). And now a third shot is happening for this tape. :P I'm not knocking it - that's awesome. This is what we call 'efficiency' and a 'return on investment'.

If you're wondering, yes, Ivar is shoved to the back in two of them! In the third one (the promo shot), he completely ruins my understanding of how tall everybody is, because later on in the show, it truly does seem like Rohan is taller than Ivar is. And they treat him like he's taller too, so having Ivar be the one towering in that pic is so funny. In fact, let me put that pic here for you, so Reddit doesn't go down and delete it later.

Right? See? Ivar looks taller. By a lot. And that's what I thought everyone's height was. Then I was rewatching the episode where Angus gets his armour, and Rohan and Ivar are standing next to each other in Cathbad's chamber in the beginning, and I'm squinting like, "... Is... Is Rohan taller?" I dunno. To be continued. I should add that to my list of interview questions, I guess.

Also, on the back, those three shots of the characters? There's a slide - like a physical media plastic slide that you would put into a carousel slide thingy, which would be projected onto a wall - with that picture of Deirdre. It was for promotional purposes too. I'm assuming that the other three and the one from Tape #1 with Rohan were also slides. And the only reason that stands out to me is 'cause I saw a guy selling them on eBay while I was looking for these tapes.

Also-also, kudos to the Italian release for finally naming the episode where Deirdre gets her armour after Deirdre. The English version didn't wanna do that, and neither did the German version.

I had two copies of this: one with the metallic silver sticker, and one where it got taken off and ripped a bit of his hand off. I scanned the one with the sticker. You know what his hand looks like: it's a still from the episode.

So this is where I got a little worried when came to my appreciation of the covers. I like that they used a key moment from one of the episodes as the cover, but it sucks that it's just a moment from the episode. It feels lazy, I guess. And again, that's in comparison to the others. This is perfectly fine, and if they all followed this format, I wouldn't have even noticed. Technically, yeah, it'd be a downgrade after the first two tapes had an arranged poster and a shot from a photoshoot, but there are 25 tapes in total. It's not the end of the world, and it's from an episode that's on tape. What more do you want from them?

I'm happy Ivar got a cover all to himself. I do wish it was something that captured him and Angus, since it's both their episodes, but it's totally fine. Angus gets treated right on most of these, which I am so happy for. This is all for Ivar, bbyyyyy - even on the back.

Man, they did the Sea Serpent dirty with that pic, though. You couldn't even have one with his whip in the air? It has to dangle like that? :(

This! Is! What! I'm! Talk! Ing! A! Booooouuuuuuuttttt!

NOW we're getting some arrangements (Angus, I am so sorry you got Mike Wazowski'd behind the shiny, silver, metallic sticker, but it's how you would've wanted to go out). These are two stills from two episodes, cleverly arranged to be like, "Here's one from the first episode on the tape, and the bottom one's from the second episode." And it's very likely that I'm wrong here, because despite what you may believe, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the whole series, but I genuinely don't know where in the "Taming of Pyre" episode that top one with Deirdre is from. I don't think it's from that episode at all - which is so hilarious to me. The bottom one is from the opening scene with them, where Cathbad's testing out the strength potion (which he never uses again, even though three seconds of super strength still has a use). But the top one - Idk. I love it.

Actually, I think it's from when Angus get frozen in the pixie field? So basically both of those images come from the same episode, and the one with Deirdre comes after. What an interesting choice that I know has no explanation beyond "girl goes top, boy goes bottom."

I like that they brought the sword back again, as if going for some sort of consistency with the first tape. I love that the sword is being used as a separator for nothing, since the split between the two images is horizontal, not vertical. So they just stuck the sword in there for literally no reason, 'cause it's not dividing anything. And they moved it higher on this tape than they did on Tape #1, so there was still some editing done to it, but they - just... I don't know. I don't know what the plan was. I love it. It's amazing. It's the first of many beautiful choices to come. It's visually engaging because stuff is happening, and I'll be damned if the sword didn't add something to that after all. :D

Then for the back - THIS is interesting!! Take a look at that boxed image in the top left. Do you know what that is?

From my internet shenanigans, I'm very, very confident that that's the box art for the infamous tape #25 that I wasn't sure existed until I found the cover. So that's really cool - that should've been a poster of its own, but I haven't come across one like that. I dunno if I want to muse about it here, but I love that Rohan's the only one not wearing his armour. It feels really well-composed, and oddly meaningful as the art for the final tape. :) Someone could write a whole essay about that!

Someone else. See my vision. Write it for me.

There are layers to my emotions for this one.

First, by now, you know I'm not a Rohan girlie. I'm an Angus girlie. But this is an excellent image for the Rohan girlies out there. I have no idea where this picture even came from - it doesn't really look like it came from a dedicated photoshoot, but I have no idea what episode it would've been taken from. It's a damn good shot of him, though. If this show had blown up the way Saban had wanted, this poster would've been on so many walls beside the Backstreet Boys. Very heart-throb.

Second, huh. What. I thought we were doing composed shots of different episodes. We're back to single shots again? Okay. I mean, sure, fine, I really like this one, and it's actually darker than the image appears on my screen (sorry, I don't know how to do colour grading, but the left-hand side looks like a smoky gray when it's more of a dark blue in real life - you know what? Let me try to take a crack at it for you).

Damn. That looks very good. I am an excellent image editor. Please don't make me do this for all of them aaaaaarrgghhhhh, I'm gonna have to do this for all of them aren't I. Fml. Well, this is really the only one I have that deserves it. This was one of the sealed ones too, btw. The one that had its corner crushed on the way over to me. Film was fine, but there was something rattling in there that the digitization guy was very kind enough to remove.

But you get what I'm saying: it's weirdly (in a good way! Like in a surprising way!) dark and kinda moody, like it's from a movie or something. Idk. It's just quite the switch from the others that are heavy on white compared to this one, which is suddenly so intense. I like it! There is no plan for what gets slapped onto these things other than, "Make it look good." And everyone had a different idea of what that was. I LOVE IT.

Do you UNDERSTAND.

This is, out of all the ones I have so far, my absolute favourite cover. What the hell is happening?! Why's there a random solider in the middle?! Why's he looming over Maeve and why does she look so tiny?! Why is Rohan getting an In Memoriam fade?! Why is he so disappointed about it, when clearly Maeve is having a ball - ohhh, she killed him, that's why.

I wanna watch this episode, 'cause it doesn't exist. It looks fantastic. I love this - I genuinely think the only thing that could've improved it is another sword that's separating nothing, but I guess that's what the random soldier in the middle is here for. 10 out of 10, if Tape #5 was a snapshot of Braveheart, this is the snapshot of that weird-ass prequel starring that guy who played Francis from Malcolm in the Middle. Just completely different ends of the spectrum here, back-to-back across the tapes. WHAT the hell is even happening. Why did they pick that picture of the horse? What's going on???!!!

Also there's no way they ran out of ideas for the boxed pictures on the back. You're already reusing Rohan's picture? You could put anything in there. Come on, folks.

Do. You. UNDERSTAND.

They really just let everyone run off in different directions. Everyone was unsupervised. What's the title of the tape? "Aideen and Deirdre." Who's on the cover? Angus and Rohan. PHENOMENAL CHOICE, no notes, absolute perfection.

Actually, you know what? Lemme try colour-correcting this too, so it's closer to what I'm seeing IRL. Hang on a sec.

Damn, I am really good at this. I kinda don't wanna replace the ones I have up there, 'cause I'm trying to keep the integrity of the images and I don't 100% trust myself to do it 'right,' but this is genuinely what it looks like to me: blue undertones, dark but not as dark as tape #5, questioning myself on whether they're stuck in an ice cave or something... I guess maybe I made Rohan's armour a bit richer than it is IRL, since I'm looking at the box and the gold seems duller on the box than I have it in this edited version. See - that's why I don't want to replace the raw scans with my own edits. I can't get it exactly to match what I'm seeing. But this is an extremely close interpretation, so I hope it gives you an idea of the difference between the raw scans and my eyes.

Yeah, he's a little too yellow-gold. It's paler. Like how the bottom-right corner of his torso is a paler yellow (above his belt, opposite side of the side with the dagger)? That should be the colour of his upper-left - uh... quadrant. That looks too yellow, and it should be the bottom-right colour. But the rest of it looks fine. The helmet's really that red, Angus' armour is fine - well, the title at the bottom's a bit too sharp. Whatever. I did my best. It looks closer. :) Use these riddles to piece together how it's supposed to be.

I had two of these as well. The other one had the sticker covering her whole bicep, still horizontal. I just picked this one 'cause I thought it'd be neat to show her arm rather than more of her boob.

As you'll notice, this tape has NO PATTERN following after the previous one. It sorta goes back to having promo shots, but it's also got a whole 'thing' happening back there where it's like, "DEIRDRE, TURN AROUND, THERE'S A GUY BEING BLASTED BEHIND YOU!" It's just a Temran though. She doesn't care. Why is she posing on the battlefield? Doesn't matter. I'm loving the energy. Why is there a random guy? I literally just felt myself resigned to not ask anymore questions, and there's another question. It doesn't matter. She's having a great time, and that's what counts.

Eh. I don't wanna colour-correct this one. It's the same thing, just a little darker. It's more of an orange sunset in the back. It's nice, but I don't know if you're missing the emotional impact like you were for tapes #5 and #7. I needed you to understand those.

I don't know if I like this one very much. If this was used as tape #3's cover, I'd be disappointed, because I liked the one they actually chose for #3, since it's more... I dunno - 'personal'? If they kept doing photoshoot shots, I'd get kinda bored. Not that I don't like them, but what am I learning about this show right now? We're on episode 18 and the other episode with the magic sleeping mist, and there are specific things happening in them. But - like... we're getting a generic shot of the four of them again.

It's nice! Don't get me wrong - it's a good shot. But it's kinda bland when you look at the personality the others were giving. It's not even doing tape #1's, "OOooh, we're about to embark on a magical fantasy journey, come aloooong." It's more like tape #2? Where it's fine, but again, I'm not getting any specific moment from this. It's just generalized imagery over a sunset.

If you look at the bottom, you'll see the ass of a horse. I assume there were some guys battling down there. But I can't see 'em, so again, what's my takeaway for this? Not a ton. You're not selling me on anything. Least favourite so far.

God, Angus is hot.

"Deirdre, we're gonna need you to pose like a heroic warrior ready for battle. Like tape #2 or something. Just not that same pose, since we need some variety.

"Okay. :)"

"Angus, we need you to do a pose like that too."

"Hmm? Sorry, I was busy thinking about mahogany furniture and a dimly lit study that was gently warmed by an educated fire."

"... Can you... do that heroically?"

"Everything I do is heroic."

"Can you do that into the camera?"

"No. :)"

"... It's giving 'underwear model', but let's be honest, that's the core of his character. Go with it."

"I have lifted my knee."

"We're not going to see your knee-"

"You'll feel it."

"It seems implausible, but he's objectively correct yet again."

Before anyone says anything, please look at Rohan, then look at this:

Perfect. No further comment.

I'm honestly just assuming this is the second in the four-episode-a-tape release, because I've only seen one other clamshell floating around, and I assumed that would just be the first four episodes. I don't know. But as a much better clue, on the side of the case, you see Angus. It's just this image again, but they have him there. AS WE ALL KNOW, Angus is the second most important character out of the five Mystic Knights. It goes Rohan, then Angus, then Deirdre, then Ivar. I KNOW the show gets flip-floppy about it, but everything they set up in the first half (and stuff that happens throughout the show) reiterates that over and over. But in the transformations, they always have Deirdre going second. So if their plan was to have a different character on the side of each clamshell case, they would be starting with Rohan regardless, and then there's a good chance it would be Deirdre second and Angus third.

I suppose I could just check the episodes... :/

... ?? It's starting at episode 9. How the hell did they split these episodes up? :( Okay, well, then I guess this is clamshell tape #3. Damn. Angus has been robbed yet again. -1 point to whoever designed this.

Is this or is this not the same weird ice cave they have Angus and Rohan standing for the cover of tape #7. I don't know. I also don't know what's happening in this image. I like the group show a lot better - way more than I like tape #9, which is also generic, but is way more bland than whatever this is - but I don't 'get' it. And it feels like I'm supposed to 'get' it.

Why are they in a cave? What does this have to do with where they are in the series or in the episodes on this tape? Whatever - I'm confused, I didn't even know there was any home release a year ago, and now I'm trying to decipher the order of two separate ones. This one's okay - it's interesting, and I like it. I just don't know what's going on. Are they trapped? They don't seem trapped. They might be, and Rohan's having a good time, but he'd be having a good time even if he was trapped.

The picture on the back is that faded, by the way. The front could be adjusted to be a little darker, but it's not a huge deal. The back, though - that's just what happens after 25 years, I think. Even though this one also arrived in its original plastic. :P With a little sticker on the plastic for some kind of Italian cookie! Not as a tie-in, just as an ad, I guess. Like someone put a sticker on saying, "Oreos! :)" on it. I have a picture of that, but I didn't think it was interesting enough to bother doing anything with it.