Roughnecks - The Starship Troopers Chronicles - The Complete Campaigns

While the movie was OK, having read the book severly biased my opinion of it. This CGI animated series just about redeemed Mr. Verhoeven. The stories were pretty good and exciting. Only caught them sporadically when it aired so I was excited when I saw the complete boxed set on sale. So here it is in all of its bug bashing glory. The CGI still looks good, though there are a few rough spots, but I didn't see that detrating from my enjoying the series. Characters were interesting, the action intense, though the gore was kept way down (most of it off-screen or inferred). While this isn't completely true to the novel, it is much more watchable than the live-action.

Unlike the movie, this series had better weapons for the troops (heavy weapons)and better tactics (coordinated air and ground operations). Like current special operations. Not quite like the book in that suits were of limited use compared to the book. I enjoyed the series more then I thought I would.

roughnecks is one of my favorite childhood memories, not to mention it is a great show with ground breaking special effects for its time.

Is this a fun TV show that draws from Heinlein story and the movie based on the book? - yes. Sadly, I did find it had some flaws. I am a Huge fan of the book and the movie. This show draws more on the book and leaves the satire of the movie behind. Not to say that it does not have a good sense of humor to it, when you are dealing with a war with Giant bugs you need to have some humor ;), it is just not the same type of dark humor / satire. Guess it depends on your preference - do you want a more gung ho war action movie like the book or do you want a political satire with action etc?
Anyway - one of the major issued I had was the music choices. A constant techno style beat is playing in the backround of each episode. So much so that I wish the audio options had an ability to turn off the music for each episode. You can tell the animators were being rushed at times- they do good work but the animation quality seems to change from episode to episode.
On the positive side- The movie changes some of the things from both book and film but keeps the action fun and exciting. The characters are well established and you have a good dynamic between all the man players- even a "love" triangle introduced in the movie and continued in the show that strangely still works.
Not a bad set of disk I was just looking for a bit more with so many super positive reviews I guess my standards were a bit too high.

That sums up most of my feelings towards this rewrite of the Starship troopers universe. It didn't have the harshness or brutality of Heinlen and lacked to proactive scenery and violence of the movie (I know it is a cartoon) additionally all the stories wrap up to neatly to early and the ending to the series is nonexistent, 1 more hour and the show could ahve finished but instead you are left with a cliffhanger.