Well first off, if you have no idea what a steampunk story is I have to say shame on you. Where were you through the 1980's to the 1990's. To help those of you to remember the past or just to get an idea of what exactly is behind a steampunk story, check out the link to the wikipedia article on what is steampunk.       

So enough with the refresher course. Just recently I've been watching a new webisode on the internet called Riese. Located at (http://www.riesetheseries.com). It started out last year on the Chapter 1 story and then was just getting started on Chapter 2 toward the end of the year. Each chapter has at least 5-6 episodes in them which are at least 5-10 minutes long. In and of itself, that would not sound that impressive. But the cool thing about the webisode was that it was done

in a full production type of setting and environment. The costumes looked really good as well as the steampunk equipment being used. Each episode had a good story plot that built up on the past episode. Had a good sound track for ambience in the background. Dialog was crisp and clear. Basically this was not your do this in your garage and put it up on the internet type of production. They took real care and love in producing this and it showed.

Here's the basic story of Riese taken from their website.

Riese is a world of moral ambiguity and political intrigue.
A decimated land populated by characters from dreams and nightmares. Loyalties are ever in question, suspicion in the minds of all. The realm, however, was not always so cruel. Everything began with a peaceful nation called Eleysia.

The Kingdom of the Wolf, Eleysia was once prosperous due largely to the influence of Empress Kara and Emperor Ulric. This all changed when a coup d’etat, orchestrated from the shadows by a religious cult,
brought about a total regime change.

Taking the throne was Amara, the Empress’s cousin.
A power-hungry tyrant, Amara immediately utilized Eleysia’s wealth and power to begin colonizing the world, crushing nation after nation in order to unite the people under one banner. Even as she assaulted the world, an ominous, enigmatic group clearly wielded power over her. Called The Sect, they purported themselves to be the official religion of Eleysia, and began to spread alongside Eleysia’s borders.

Since the coup, the land has begun to die, resources are dwindling and compassion is fading. Humanity itself is seen as impure. People have grown restless, almost feral. Rituals and mythology have resurged, and the darker side of mankind has begun to reveal itself.

The true horror of the world is not in how it ends, but what will become of mankind as it fractures.And yet, despite the impending doom, a single beacon of light shines in Riese. A mysterious wanderer, she travels with her wolf Fenrir across this barren land. Branded as heretics by The Sect, Riese and Fenrir will pause to aid those in need as they travel, but they must evade capture at all costs. As she flees, she’ll piece together her past and her destiny, in a conflict that will hold the fate of this world in the balance - and the once peaceful kingdom of Eleysia will be the battlefield.

That is basically the story behind Riese. Unfortunately by the time of this review being put up, the production of Riese got some good news for funding but for us viewers it is slightly bad news. By Februrary 5th of this year, they went into partnership with Fireworks, a digital dristribution branch of ContentFilm, based out of the UK. Fireworks has been able to move a number of webseries to the mainstream media. So while the negotiations with Fireworks are still on going, Riese had to remove episodes from their online stream due to the negotiations. But they are hoping to have it back online when negotiations are finished. The good news about this is that people might actually be able to see Riese on TV in the coming future. Which would be interesting to see.

On a side note, in my opinion, it looks like a lot of shows now and in the future might be first coming out as webseries first. Basically to test the audience pool and to cut cost out of trying to run a full episode for TV. If they catch on with fans, they might then be picked up by the mainstream media branches for distribution and showing. With the way technology is going this is more a likely hood then a guess. Since almost anyone can pick up a decent video camera and start filiming and then be able to edit it on a decent system. The thing is that not everyone can. You have to love that your doing it and be able to put the time in it to get it out. It's not really a cut and paste thing. The people who put out Riese seemed to have got it. Some episodes during last year were delayed but they came out eventually and they looked good as any of the previous episdoes.

Overall I hope to see more of this type of  webisodes coming out in the future. It'll be interesting to see if Riese can stay as good as this in feel and story when it hits the main stream. I just say that cause of good series going down hill after they hit the public mainstream.

Well enough of my ramblings. Just wanted to say keep your eyes open for Riese when it hits a TV channel near you and keep an eye on the website for when they put the episodes back online. It's worth a look. But in the mean time you can check out the trailers for Chapter 1 and 2 on their website, http://www.riesetheseries.com