After sniffing disdainfully at the knowledge of its existence for about a year or so, I started watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated series, and I was very pleasantly surprised.
It certainly has its flaws. One, in my opinion, is the voice actor for Obi Wan, who manages to turn his sympathetic, serious yet positive character into a moronic, inopportunate-quipping, ironical bastard. Anakin has a padawan? Eh? Wasn't he a padawan himself? Never mind, the padawan, Asohka, is somewhat annoying, but no more so than Anakin himself, so it's not a real flaw. Kids dig spunky girls, I guess. Another flaw is the complete uselessness of all, and I do mean all battle droids. All they do is talk, argue, say 'Roger, Roger' and then die. They are annoyingly stupid, even more so than Jar Jar Binks in the movies.
Then why is this series an antidote?
Because, as long as you do keep in mind that this is a children's show, it's pretty damn awesome.
Finally, Anakin Skywalker is a hero, instead of a moping emo. Ok, he suffers from a severe case of Harry Potter syndrome, that is to say, he breaks all the rules all the time, but he's never punished for it because in the end, him breaking the rules saved the day--but he's cool! He's still a Marty Stu who is the most powerful Jedi, but at least you can believe this man is a real Jedi, a brilliant strategist, a powerful influence in the Senate and a logical pawn for Palpatine to covet for the Dark Side. His voice actor is also very good.
Another point for the series is her rendering of Amidala. In the last trilogy (or the first, whatever you want to call it) she was mainly a pretty face and Anakin's love interest. Aww look, isn't it sweet how this 9-year-old boy is falling in love with this 14-year-old-actually 20-something queen? In the animated series, the two are a couple, but you wouldn't actually say so. There are no sickening lovetalks, as a matter of fact, most of the time when they do find themselves alone with one another, Anakin and Amidala fight over risks and responsibilities. Amidala is still often the damsel in distress, but most often she manages to get away by herself; she no limp Sue. And she has political influence, which she uses to try and stop the war. She's a real person, and I still don't give a damn about her, but she' a hell of a lot more interesting than she was in the movies.
General Grievous has a returning role. As a character and villain he sucks, but man, his design is hot! Especially when he's fighting or running. I love Grievous. Most villains are rather good in this series. Ventress, Bane and Dooku are all sufficiently bad-ass, even if they lose. I wonder when they'll bring in Aurra Sing.
But the best, the absolute genius of this series, are the clones. In the original movie trilogy, I didn't even realise the clones were humans. It just never registered. In the second trilogy, which was more or less ABOUT the clones, that somehow didn't seem important either. They were an army, all with the same face, but they were never humanized. In the animated series, the clones are persons. People with likes and dislikes, all the same but radically different. A few of them return every few episodes, and I think they are exactly what was missing in the movies. All clones are bred to fight for the republic. Dying is not important as long as they do their duty. But under their inbred orders, they're still humans with human needs, fears, hopes and, sometimes, dreams. They have one voice actor, and he is marvelous.
The whole story becomes a lot more painful if you realise that all those hundreds of thousands of clones the Jedi so blithely send to their deaths are all thinking, feeling men. Hearing a clone scream and then die, and then watching Anakin and Asohka joke and laugh about how they showed the separatists, makes the Jedi look a lot less heroic than when the clones didn't have a face or a personality.
And that makes this series, which is so clearly for kiddies, a whole lot more mature and interesting than the so called Dark Third Part of the new trilogy.
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