#literally singlehandedly brought me back to this franchise

[kaicean]

I normally just draw and not make long text posts but I have bundled up Natsu/Lucy feelings I want to word vomit ever since I picked up the Fairy Tail game out of curiosity (PLS & THIS & ?!?!) and most of all watched the Dragon Cry movie for the very first time a few months ago (July ironically). This movie dragged me back by the neck to this ship I loved several years ago.

Now I own a copy of the movie’s storyboard manga drawn by Mashima himself and the pamphlet. I flip through the pages of these two more times than I can count like-

真島自らが描いた、ナツの回想の中ルーシィ Natsu’s recollection of Lucy, drawn by Mashima himself

I’ve read several essays + interview (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii to name a few) revolving around the famous nalu scenes in the movie, but I don’t think I ever came across anyone talking about what I think is the ultimate song that perfectly captures them in their entirety—Dragon Cry’s ending theme What You Are by Polka Dots.

There are only two translations I found, one of them being from the wiki but it’s a little off. This one is more accurate. My translation version is a mix of it plus usage of DeepL so it may not be entirely accurate but it’s close enough.

I absolutely see this song as Lucy -> Natsu due to obvious phrases within the lyrics and it fits my headcanon of Natsu being metaphorically Lucy’s brightest star. His name means summer which has ties to the sun, aka the brightest star. The sun is known to be the brightest star because it’s the closest to us, just like the person closest to Lucy is Natsu.

You're still you, no matter what Softly illuminating the darkness You're a star

Self explanatory, first line starts off with Lucy’s answer to Natsu’s “What do I look like?” question. This was first shown to us in the beginning of the movie so let’s keep that in mind.

Where is tomorrow? The past cannot be erased In a pitch-dark world I found a warm, enveloping light "It's gonna be okay" the voice said That voice echoed in my heart I want to believe in you, whatever you are Whatever the road I take, I want to be by your side I want to keep walking Wish on a star Let's find it, let's find it The only light

This can be easily depicted by my favorite scene in Snow Fairy opening, where Lucy’s world was rainy and bleak until a literal light shines through when she looks at Fairy Tail, particularly Mirajane and main team:

She ran away from home, stripped herself from Lucy Heartfilia to just Lucy, and began her own journey. Her world was small and lonely due to her strict upbringing but it was thanks to Natsu, who led her to Fairy Tail, that her world brightened and expanded since that day. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t hide her Heartfilia name for long which led us to the Phantom Lord arc. Here was where Natsu firmly assured her twice that she could stay in the guild and that it is her home that she can come back to, because she’s Lucy of Fairy Tail. These feelings were further cemented towards the end of the arc by Makarov. From then, she stopped running away and faced her past/father head-on, before returning home to the guild.

The cherry blossom colored dusk reflects in your eyes I'm not sad, yet the tears spilled Someone once said that the most beautiful things are fleeting No matter what today is, it has meaning I’ll always be by your side I'll hold your hand tight Let's tell each other The feelings hidden in our hearts You're a star You're a star

This part screams post-Tenrou Island and GMG arc+. One of my top favorite chapters is chapter 257 which happened after the 7-year timeskip. Natsu, Lucy and Happy traveled to visit Lucy’s father only to find out he had passed away just one month prior. Natsu offered her words of comfort and space but it’s this chapter where the lost of time was incredibly overwhelming for Lucy. I truly believe it was after this day (her BIRTHDAY no less wtf Mashima, satanic much???) that “time” was seen more precious and that every day has a meaning. Lucy’s first step of moving forward was tagging along with Natsu and Happy on a job, and her monologue just hits.

The concept of each moment being precious solidified during the GMG arc. Future Lucy lost her life to save her past self before wishing she could go on more adventures. Present Lucy proclaimed she had to laugh, cry, and live enough for both her and her future self. In Future Lucy’s version of heaven, it was Natsu who first called out to her and pulled her hand to say “Let’s continue on our adventure” before they ceased to exist.

And in the current timeline, present Lucy felt what Future Lucy felt in her heart. She then thanked Natsu, for saving her and their future.

You ask, "What am I?" I'll answer, "You're you” That assurance is all we need from each other Let’s make a wish upon the shining stars You're still you, no matter what The one who gently shines in the darkness That's right, my own Superstar A Superstar that lights up this road that goes on and on You're a star

At the end of the song, we circled back to the beginning, just like we did in the movie where Natsu asked Lucy for the second time what he looked like and she assured him yet again that Natsu looked like Natsu, obviously. And this was enough.

Natsu was the one who saved her (unintentionally) back in Hargeon thus leading her to Fairy Tail and stuck with her ever since. He became the person who she was closest to and vice versa. It was thanks to him that she got to experience so many things and came out stronger from it. Without meeting him and Happy, she wouldn’t be the person she was today. No matter what happens, as Natsu told her at the end of the main series, it doesn’t matter because they will always be together, to continue on more adventures!

I love when songs line up perfectly with the theme and this takes the cake. Thanks for coming to my TED talk as I continue to listen to this song on repeat and cry. I can’t wait until I can draw all of this out in the future, something similar to my comic here.

Also if there is an analysis of nalu + dragon cry’s ending theme out there, pls throw it my way thanks I will literally die on this hill.

[im-no-jedi]

happy May the Fourth! ✨✨✨ and happy one year anniversary to the premiere of The Bad Batch! 💙💙💙

Star Wars in general has always been a big part of my life, but this show and these characters have impacted me in a very special way that I will be eternally grateful for. more sappy rambling and a looooooooong backstory under the cut:

as I said, Star Wars has been in my life for as long as I can remember. my parents are MASSIVE fans, with my mom proudly being a SW hipster (she was one of the people hyped about the movie before it even came out) LOL. I wasn’t a fan at first though! in fact, I hated Star Wars for several years of my life. mostly due to the fact that Palpatine and especially Darth Vader scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I made a vow as a child to never watch Star Wars ever for as long as I lived.

then The Phantom Menace came out. I had just turned 11 when the movie first premiered (literally the day after my birthday!). my parents of course absolutely HAD to see the movie, and after doing so, they both HAD to tell me how much they thought I would enjoy it. number one, Vader and Palpatine weren’t in it (technically they were, but I didn’t know that yet 😉), and number two, there was a character in the movie that they 100% knew that I was going to love. that character, as most of you know, was Jar-Jar Binks. and it was thanks to good ol’ Jar-Jar Binks that my parents finally convinced me to watch a Star Wars movie.

needless to say, I loved the movie and proudly proclaimed it as one of my favorite movies ever for quite some time. and just two years later, I watched through the entire original trilogy while getting over a nasty cold. ever since then, Return of the Jedi has been definitively one of my top favorite movies, second now only to Tron Legacy 💙

because of my introduction to the series through TPM though, I’ve always had a massive soft spot for the prequel era. which is funny to me looking back because I had zero interest in The Clone Wars when it first came out. especially after finding out the series focused so heavily on the Clones. I had no idea why anyone would want to watch a show about “stormtrooper wannabes” or Anakin having a padawan. I specifically remember watching the Rookies episode randomly on TV once and thinking “why are they trying to make me care about these guys?”

oh poor naive young me... 😂

gradually, I got more interested in the show and even got over my apparent disdain for the Clones, but I was only ever a casual fan of the show. Ham and I would only watch it when we happened to catch it on TV basically. 

but then... oh but then... the Umbara arc happened. y’all when I tell you my life actually CHANGED after watching that arc... I have literally never been the same. that arc not only singlehandedly got me back into the show (as in now I HAD to watch the new episodes every week), but it solidified my love for the Clones. and that is an understatement if I ever said one. calling myself a “Clone fangirl” doesn’t even cut it imo. 

most of y’all know what happened after that. you can go back in the annals of my blog, all the way back in 2012 to witness my decent into TCW madness. I started using this username (im-no-jedi) back then, and although I’ve changed it a few times since then, this is the only name I’ve ever gone back to more than once. and I have no plans on changing it ever again now 💙

now to specifically talk about TBB. cause I have much to say about this particular corner of the Star Wars franchise.

I remember when the unfinished arc first came out, after TCW was initially cancelled, before Disney brought it back again. 2015 was a good year for Star Wars fans; that was the year The Force Awakens was announced, and I was ECCSTATIC. but we’re not talking about the sequel trilogy on this post, nope (despite me being one of the only persons in my family who actually likes it *COUGHS*). 

anyway! Ham and I were super intrigued by the concept of TBB, and to no one’s surprise, we loved them immediately. I believe we liked them so much, we actually watched the unfinished arc twice (Ham can correct me if I’m wrong LOL). also, I posted about this already, but I actually drew a little fanart of a chibi Hunter back then; I had planned on drawing all of them, but only ever drew Hunter (talk about fate, right? 😏). so needless to say, we were sooooooooo happy that when Disney brought TCW back, the TBB arc was one of the ones that made the cut! rip in peace to the Padme pinup art joke though 😞✊🏻

I’m gonna be honest now... as much as I loved them, I was quite shocked when I found out Disney was making a spinoff show about them. of course, I was happy to just be getting more Clones content, especially since it directly related to TCW. I’ve also always wanted to see how the Clones dealt with the aftermath of Order 66. and like I said, I liked the boys a lot! I was just skeptical if they could carry a show all by themselves is all.

and oh boy. ohhhhhhh boy. history once again repeated itself with this one. in a BIG way.

at the time the show came out, I was running a DnD campaign. so I remember, although I loved it right off the bat, I wasn’t able to fully give my full attention to it because I was so focused on running my game. and ironically, by the time the season ended, I also ended up taking a break from my game. so I decided to rewatch the show again, giving it my full attention this time. and, well, the rest is history, I don’t need to say anymore, y’all witnessed my decent into madness last year and don’t need to relive that 😝

I want to actually get into my feelings about the show though, and why it’s impacted me so much. time for another wall of text! 🤣

as I’ve already stated, the Clones are my favorite thing about Star Wars, period. and TBB is no exception. in fact, I would go so far as to argue that TBB is a perfect example of why I love them so much (on par with the Umbara arc at least). and I didn’t fully realize it until watching this show. but it’s the real reason I love Star Wars as a franchise in general.

it’s about family. Star Wars has always been about family and the bonds that form (or break) because of that. however, aside from the Skywalkers, we don’t see much of actual blood-related families. and don’t get me wrong here! I looooooooove me a good Found Family and am a HUGE fan of the trope. but to me, the best stories will always be about families that are formed through blood, as well as choice. and that’s exactly what the Clones are. technically, they’re related through blood. but it’s also by choice. they choose to view each other as brothers and treat each other as such. and I would definitely argue that the best example of this is TBB.

with the rest of the Clones, it’s easy to see the similarities between them. they of course have their own perks and behaviors, but none of them as varied as TBB. and to me, that makes all the difference. I like seeing variation in families. it reminds me of my own family.

and that there is the core of it all for me. what it all boils down to. TBB reminds me of my own family. all the way down to the fact that there are six people in my family, and four of us are siblings. I see myself and my three siblings in the og four TBB boys. not exactly character wise (although I’ve gone into detail before how much I personally relate to Hunter), but the bond the four of them have greatly reminds me of the bond I have with my three siblings. even down to Crosshair leaving the group, to a certain degree. I’ve even got a similar age difference to my youngest sister that’s akin to Hunter and Omega! (if Hunter was actually in his mid 20s of course LOL)

another thing that I personally relate to is the characters’ circumstance. I’ve not been secret about how my teenage years were hard. my dad lost his job when I was 15, and my life completely changed after that. my family nearly lost everything. we even lost all the people in our lives we considered “friends”. we had nobody but each other, and we were trying our best to just survive for quite some time. much like TBB has been since Order 66.

I know 100% for a fact that this is why the show is so special to me. showing that family bond, while also showing the characters struggle to make it in a galaxy that’s constantly against them... I can relate to it. 

and that’s what makes Star Wars so great to me. the vastness of the universe allows for literally anything to happen, which means someone will inevitably be able to find that (1) thing that they can latch onto and relate to. for me, it’s TBB. and I will forever be grateful to the people who made this show a reality. thank you for making me feel like I’m a part of the Star Wars universe 💙💙💙

....which I am now thanks to MLWTBB 😉

[sweetiecenter]

Fallout, Borderlands, and how a Medium Compliments a Theme.

Fallout, Borderlands, and how the Theme can serve the Medium well, and vice versa. A small essay by me about two of my favorite game series.

2K Games and Bethesda are industry giants. Both of these studios have built their companies on the backs of extremely successful game franchises.

In the case of 2K, they built their franchise around sports, as well as Sid Meier’s RTS, Civilization, as well as delving into many other genres. It wasn’t until 2K started to delve into RPGs like Bioshock, from the creators of System Shock 2, that they started to develop their formula.

For Bethesda, they got their massive start a bit earlier with id software with games like Doom and Wolfenstein, which almost singlehandedly popularized the FPS genre.

Both of these industry giants are responsible for thousands of hours of love and enjoyment, and Bioshock 2 is singlehandedly responsible for growing my love of video games, and their writing.

There are two franchises from these respective companies that are both known for being notable open-world, first person RPGs: Borderlands and Fallout, and both series were published by their respective companies around the same time, with Borderlands 1 entering development in 2005, and Bethesda being commissioned to work on Fallout 3 in 2007, which later turned into Bethesda buying the rights and absorbing Interplay. Fallout 3 was released in 2008 on October 28, with Borderlands coming out almost exactly a year later.

As time has gone on, both companies have paid mutual respect to each other, particularly in regards to these FPSRPG games; Borderlands 2 even has a gun called thre dog in reference to the infamous Three Dog from Fallout 3. The similarities between the themes and playstyle of these games has led to many comparisons, but I would just like to take the time to talk about how each respective game does justice to the themes of their stories and the medium they use.

So what are the themes of these games, really?

The more unique taglines and themes of these games would be “war never changes” and “everyone is the hero of their own story” for Fallout and Borderlands, respectively. The underlying themes that go unspoken (mostly), seem to be anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.

The anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism arguments are where it gets interesting.

First, let’s look at how both games use American culture and atmosphere to their advantage and to get their point across.

We can all agree that governments are, at their core, made to protect folks, right? That is their stated job. It is in their job description. Especially in America, the idea is that you should never, ever have your rights taken from you. We are surrounded by people who believe in the government, and if not in the government, then in your country itself. Patriotism has its own dedicated holiday! This is why Fallout has such a huge focus on how the government of their universe shifted away from protecting people, and how they have become imperialistic, jingoistic, and xenophobic. Even if you hate the military, the world of Fallout is intended to make you go “shit, at least we aren’t THAT bad”.

And this tone helps to set the theme for the Fallout games. Everywhere you turn, you are completely let down by the people you rely on. Looks are deceptive, and yet they aren’t. The dark and gritty atmosphere of the games are constantly screaming at you that the world has already ended, even as Ron Perlman tells you it is only the beginning. Happy endings are nonexistent in almost every case, with the sole exception of perhaps the Courier... but then, the Courier is the only one with no ties to a Vault. No delusions of grandeur, no expectations.

It should be noted that in the dialogue choices as the Courier, you are the most aware of everything that has happened. Instead of being shocked that someone shot you in the head, you are apathetic at best and mostly want the package back; even if you roleplay your courier as a revenge-driven mailman, they are never surprised. Disappointed? Oh, almost certainly.

The first time I booted up the original Fallout and saw the Overseer start talking, my first thought was:

“This is it. Humanity has degenerated into ridiculous blue cavemen.”

I think the design of the Overseer was very intentionally made to be odd, and to showcase that the people have changed. Then you step out into the wasteland. You see the disconnect between the Vaults, the only remnants of pre-war society in the first game, and the rest of the world.

The discovery that the government willingly let all these experiments happen only adds to our disgust as we piece things together, piece by piece. You become jaded and cynical, and in your quest to save everyone, you truly have changed. Sure, the Overseer exiling you because “you’re different” may seem weird and a flimsy excuse to keep the experiment going, but it has a hint of truth to it. You’ve changed. You’re knowledgeable. You can no longer be controlled by the propaganda you had taken as the truth, that all Vault residents had taken as the truth. This disconnect between reality and the Vaults is further explored whenever you reach a new Vault.

Finding out the horrifying truth about what the Vaults were, what they were made for, never gets any easier. The game’s sound design is always made to harken back to something behind you, in some way. The base game’s sound design usually invokes paranoia and fear, while the radios that constantly play music from a bygone era invoke a general feeling of “nothing will ever be the same”.

All in all, Fallout does a fantastic job of setting the basis of its universe. Worldbuilding is a massive part, and their is little to nothing left unknown for a savvy player, should you be willing to listen to exposition. The overall tone is tragic and bleak, in order to juxtapose itself with the pre-war propaganda.

Which brings us to Borderlands.

Borderlands does not ask you as a player to think. It does not ask you to feel. The main focus has never been the story, and yet it is still a beautiful aspect of it, in the way of all the things that go left unsaid. How did the sirens come to be? Who knows. How did all the Eridians die out? Who knows. Why is it so much god damn fun to shoot a vertically challenged man in a gas mask and watch his head explode? Who knows.

Borderlands never gives you enough time to reflect on the overarching theme of the series. Compared to Fallout the game is much more fast-paced and linear, but if you take the time, you can see everything fall apart as the story progresses. You have no choice. Nothing you do ever matters, especially in the face of corporate overlords. All these bandits you’ve been fighting? They were normal people once. Convicts, sure, but they were also taken advantage of, brought to this strange alien planet and used as slave labor. Fresh off of the heels of Fallout, you could ask yourself, “what sick government would do this?” The answer is it isn’t a government. It is a corporation that styles itself as a government.

There lies the sick joke of the Borderlands series. This isn’t some far fetched, awful alternate reality. This is the future, where corporations continue down the same path they are on now - unchecked, allowed to ruin the worlds, contracted by governments - and nobody did a god damn thing. These guns you buy? Produced by Atlas. The clothes you’re wearing? Probably Hyperion fashion. The planets you come from? Owned almost completely by corporations. Atlas has an iron grip on Promethea, and Mister Torgue literally blew up an entire PLANET, even if it is played for laughs.

Just like in Fallout, nobody is on your side - and yet you know this. You embrace futility anyway; you buy Atlas, you buy Hyperion, and you buy Maliwan because at the end of the day, they are more powerful than any Vault Monster you could hope to kill. The bright tones and dark humor of the Borderlands are a direct result of embracing futility. The fun does not lie within facing your oppressors, it lies within killing them over and over. The thing that makes Borderlands so celebrated is its replayability; in Fallout, everything you do is permanent. Borderlands has next to no permanence. No matter how many Hyperion soldiers you kill, you won’t put a dent in them. These corporations span six whole galaxies.

Borderlands doesn’t need to set an atmosphere to make you immerse yourself in the story. We already know corporations are horrible. Jeff Bezos spends his money on space while Amazon employees die of exhaustion.

The horror of these two games directly correspond with each other. Fallout is horrifying because of past deeds, because of what could have come to pass. Borderlands is horrifying because of what still could happen.

Both of these game series have, in many’s opinion, fallen off in recent years, but I personally will always have a special place in my heart for these wonderful games and their storytelling.

Thank you for reading.

[temmaha1996]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoiler Review

Where to start with this mess?

First off, I was a huge fan of The Force Awakens. It might have been mainly nostalgia bait, but it reminded me of why I fell in love with Star Wars all those years ago. Fast forward a few years later, The Last Jedi happened. Even so, I was one of the few who really didn’t mind the film and thought they were going in a somewhat interesting direction. Now, up steps JJ Abrams to limit the damage as fans rebelled against Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow’s visions.

The result is an absolute disaster.

It was evident there was no clear plan from the beginning. Kathleen Kennedy should have sat down with her directors and outlined her vision for the trilogy the way Kevin Feige did for Marvel’s Infinity Saga. Instead, we got a “make it up as we go” trilogy that really does not hold up once you watch all three in succession. There is no real constant character development besides from Kylo Ren, and even with him there’s more to be desired.

Only a fool would buy into the excuse that Palpatine was supposed to be brought back this whole time. Finn, Rose and Poe became nothing more than just sidekicks with little to no development, backstory or purpose. I don’t get why they’d introduce three new characters in this film when they’re trying to conclude a franchise. Snoke is nothing more than a literal clone, Hux is a joke and Palpatine’s resurrection was barely even explained. We are supposed to believe this entire time that The Emperor survived his fall + explosion in Return of The Jedi, and that he was just in hiding waiting for the right moment.

It was also clear that the plan was never to kill Luke off, and Rian Johnson’s decision to do that was somehow greenlit to the probable dismay of Abrams. Instead, we literally see all of our past heroes die way before a simple, feel-good reunion for the fans.

I’ve always liked Kylo Ren, and his redemption arc is easily the best thing about this film. It’s a damn shame that he had to sacrifice himself for Rey, who is far less likable and believable as the protagonist. Not once did we ever believe she’d stray to the Dark Side, and that’s the problem of this entire trilogy. Even with the Palpatine reveal, she is still a boring protagonist. If you ever want to feel awkward and yucky, just think about their last kiss. Only the strongest Sith can bring people back to life or heal a wound, but Kylo and Rey do it for fun in this film.

The most infuriating moments actually stem from Rey. I have nothing against Daisey Ridley, she’s wonderful. What I have a problem with is her whole “I Am All The Jedi” shtick that made me roll my eyes in disgust instead of cheer in joy as she beat the Emperor almost singlehandedly. What has she done to warrant the honor of being helped by Yoda, Anakin, Qui Gon, Windu, Luke and Leia among many others? The problem is that moment never felt earned. Speaking of which, the final scene was the nail in the coffin for me. Who in god’s green earth thought it was a good idea for her to say “Rey Skywalker”? That just spits in the face of the entire Star Wars universe. Heck, I can be a Skywalker as well using that shameful logic. Since when do we just randomly take up surnames because the moment “felt right”.

Never before had I been this disappointed in a Star Wars film before, let alone the one that is supposed to conclude an iconic Skywalker saga. What a shameful way to end.

[entamewitchlulu]

Homura’s Flash Reviews [February 2019]

This will be my first review post for 2019!!  I’m watching winter anime currently which I won’t be reviewing til the season is over, but for those who are interested, here’s what I’m watching for winter!

The Price of Smiles

Ace Attorney

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

The Promised Neverland

Mysteria Friends

I’m also gonna be adding a few other things to these Flash Reviews and also review the movies I’ve seen during the month, just cause I rly like having opinions lol.  So without further ado, here are the anime, shows, and movies that I saw this February and January!

Castlevania

Not technically an anime in anything other than style, Castlevania is the animated adaptation of the third Castlevania game, following the adventures of Trevor Belmont, the last of his vampire hunting legacy, Sypha, a nomadic magician, and Alucard Tepes, the son of Dracula and his human wife who was killed by the church, and their struggles to take down Dracula before he wipes out all of humanity.

I don’t know much about Castlevania the games, as they really aren’t my genre, but this adaptation was incredible!!  Proof that video game adaptations can and should strive for greater heights!  The dialogue was funny and witty, the characters were interesting and even the villains were endearing, and there was this incredibly crafted atmosphere of both sadness and hope.  Not to mention, the animation was top notch.  Plus, I have to give it credit for finally letting characters say “fuck” realistically.

overall: 9/10

Futari wa Pretty Cure

The very first, original start of the popular magical girl franchise, Pretty Cure chronicles the tale of Nagisa and Honoka, two very different girls who are brought together when they are chosen to become Pretty Cure, the legendary warriors who will defend light from the darkness!  Together with their mascot friends Mepple and Mipple, and juggling their real lives along with their supernatural battles, Cure Black and Cure White will do whatever it takes to protect the world from evil!

I’ve intended to watch Pretty Cure for literally years now, and no one could agree with where I should start, so I decided to just do what I usually do and watch from the beginning.  I’ve only seen the first season of Pretty Cure and not the Max Heart sequel yet.  Overall, it was about what I expected!  I’m a bit of a sucker for the traditional 2000s magical girl genre, with its repetitive formulas, catchphrases, poses, and the usual five episode plots that every single one of them has.  The designs were super cute and I love how Black and White look so distinct and yet are still clearly a team.  Pollun especially is super adorable!!

Definitely I can see why Pretty Cure became such of a behemoth in the magical girl genre today; it has staying power.  This season was definitely full of a lot of generic magical girl filler, and I will be honest that I started to lose steam for it towards the end, plus the villains were not at all endearing or interesting (like, Poisonny and Regine are both very pretty, and Kiriya was okay, but other than that, no one stands out), but it was still a great and adorable experience that I’m glad I experienced.  I’m not sure when I’ll get to the next series, but I’m sure it won’t be long!

overall: 7/10

Incredibles 2

I took my sweet time going to see this sequel, but here we are.  In the anticipated sequel to the original Incredibles, the family faces new challenges as Elastigirl is scouted by a CEO to help make superheroes legal again, while Mr. Incredible has to learn the challenges of taking care of the family by himself.

 I guess overall it was a good movie and well made for its intended audience.  The animation was pretty good and I usually like their cartoony anatomy designs which are more concerned with a comic-book-esque aesthetic rather than proper anatomy and perfect realism.  Definitely the quality has soared since the first Incredibles.  For me personally though...as much as it was entertaining, in hindsight I don’t think it was really made for me.  There were a lot of plot threads that didn’t seem to get resolved or even addressed.  Bob never fully confronts his jealousy for Helen’s new job, and is never quite confronted about the fact that he hid Jack Jack’s powers from Helen either.  The new superheroes were...honestly not my favorite designs in the world outside of Void, and I felt like their only purpose was to become fight fodder for the final battle, which could have been done with almost any other means.  For as long as the movie was, it felt like a lot of the threads were simply not deeply solved, and only shallowly addressed.  As this is a movie for kids, though, I can look past that; this wasn’t the story for a hugely deep look at things.  It did affect my personal enjoyment, though, but it was still a greatly fun movie to watch.

overall: 7/10

Dragon Ball Super: Broly

Finally coming for the canon after a couple of decades, DBS Broly brings the legendary super Saiyan Broly into the main cast.  When the young Broly is sent away from Planet Vegeta for being too overwhelmingly powerful, he and his father are stranded on a barren planet for forty years, until they are found by some of Frieza’s soldiers and brought into the Frieza Force.  Frieza immediately pits the super powerful Broly up against our heroes Goku and Vegeta, who must pull out every trick in the book in order to stop him from destroying the planet in his growing rage.

I never ever thought I would say this about anything relating to Broly, but GODDAMN that might have been the best Dragon Ball media in years.  Let’s get this part straight: I’ve disliked Broly since he first appeared in the DB movies.  He was boring, had a ridiculous backstory, and was just there to be a Gary Stu to really push Goku and Vegeta to their limits.  But this movie??? This movie singlehandedly shot Broly to my top ten characters in Dragon Ball.  He is endearing, gentle, a recovering abuse victim with a rage he cannot control, and his strength is more dangerous to himself than to those around him.  In TFS’ review of the movie, they made a great point: the real stakes of his movie aren’t whether Broly is going to destroy the planet; they’re whether Broly himself is going to be okay.  I’m focusing a lot on Broly, but Goku and Vegeta are in top form in his movie as well.  It’s great getting to see Vegeta have a massive fight where he isn’t immediately jobbed for Goku’s sake, and Goku himself is at the top of his game as the fun-loving, battle-crazed but still sympathetic hero that he should always be written as.  Not to mention our new additions to the main cast in Cheelai and Lemo, two of Frieza’s soldiers who found and ended up befriending Broly, who are equally endearing and fun especially in their dynamics with Broly himself.  

All in all, this was a fucking excellent movie, and the first DB media that I can imagine wanting to rewatch!

overall: 10/10

Fireworks

When Nazuna is about to move away, she asks Norimichi to come with her to the fireworks, though she plans instead to run away.  When this doesn’t work according to plan, Norimichi finds that a strangle marble belonging to Nazuna has the power to turn back the clock, giving them a second chance to be together.  However, with each reset, they move further and further away from reality -- can they return to a world where they’re able to spend at least one day with each other?

This is pretty much, in a nutshell, everything I love about anime movies.  It’s beautiful, fluid, full of amazing music, and the emotions hit so close to home.  While the story itself doesn’t explain much, it really doesn’t have to -- the surrealism of the surrounding world sells it more than any exposition would, proving you don’t need to slow down your story to explain something as long as you can make people feel something for it.  Despite having so little to know about both Norimichi and Nazuna, I was still more than sold by their romance. And once again, the surrealism of the animation and the story are something that only anime can pull off.  You just can’t do stories like this live action.

The only thing that really dragged this story down were some of the CGI bits, which I found unnecessary and weird against the otherwise gorgeous backgrounds, but I guess this is where animation is going lately so I might have to get used to it.

overall: 8/10

[corellian-smuggler]

The thing is that every single choice made in the movie was a deliberate attempt to obliterate the original trilogy. Luke Skywalker, the hero we all were waiting for and have loved for decades, the man who no matter what never lost hope or faith or gave up on his loved ones or his family or stopped believing in the Light? Whose entire character arc CULMINATED in his statement, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” was entirely unrecognizable. Instead we learn that despite the events of the OT, he almost murdered his nephew in his sleep—an act so disgracefully out of character that I literally CRIED. Instead of the hero we all know and love, they wrote that into the script explicitly to give Kylo Ren a more “sympathetic” back story—so they literally cared more about getting the audience to sympathize with and excuse the actions of a fascist murderer than they cared about the legacy of and integrity of Luke Skywalker, without whom they wouldn’t even HAVE a franchise to screw up. In addition to this, Luke has turned his back on his sister—not even willing to help her when she’s begging for him to come back or when he learns that Han Solo is dead, despite the fact that one of his defining qualities in the OT is his outright refusal to abandon Leia and his intense love for and loyalty to her to the extent that it’s the threat against HER—not against the galaxy or against himself—that causes Luke to almost lose control of his anger in ROTJ. They LITERALLY threw away the Skywalker legacy; Luke literally throws away the lightsaber like it’s pathetic, worthless garbage. This moment was not only significant within the context of the film—it had powerful implications for the audience. It was literally saying, “this lightsaber and all it represents is trash.” It was taking something we treasured—Luke’s journey and triumph—and spitting on it in front of our faces. What was the whole point of the original trilogy, of Luke’s story, if this is how the new film treats it? And add to that that he is portrayed as a grumpy, isolated, selfish coward too absorbed in self-disgust and self-absorption (as a result of the WILDLY out of character act of wanting to kill his nephew, by the way) to care about his family, or to try to at least RIGHT HIS WRONGS. He was dedicated to protecting the galaxy and now his own angst matters more to him than the fact that he alone had the power to stop the First Order from blowing up planets and enslaving and everyone, and as a result of his vanity and cowardice, that is exactly what happens. The new republic capital system is obliterated and, as the crawl informs us, “the First Order reigns” and now his nephew has become the next Emperor. Kylo Ren’s corruption just by nature of his existence in the story as a member of the Dark Side is already against the very point of the original trilogy—it’s basically blasphemy—but to try to insinuate that it’s partially Luke’s fault, and then that he doesn’t even try to make it right? There are no words for how disgraceful that is. And our hero whose greatest victory was that moment of becoming a Jedi at last spends a good hour telling the audience how stupid he was, how the Jedi should end, how he’s a failure and how we should not look upon him as a hero or hold dear his journey to our hearts. The film mocks him and does everything in its power to mar the beauty and goodness of the original trilogy, bending over backwards to say, “Luke was a blinded, self-absorbed fool and now look where he is.” This was deliberate. They invalidated the original trilogy on purpose.

And even at the end of the film when Luke finally tries to help, he is still out of character the entire time, telling Leia that there’s no hope, that he won’t try to save her son—even though supposedly (though I will never accept it, it is an Untruth) it’s Luke’s fault that her son fell. And then, after buying time for his sister to escape, Luke dies an old, broken down man who had lost his faith and his purity of spirit and his dedication to his family, alone as a hermit after having spent years in self-imposed exile so he could have a pity party and let the galaxy crumble and his sister suffer. Don’t be fooled. Rian Johnson and Lucasfilm knew that this was not Luke Skywalker. Anyone with half a brain can see that they systematically stripped him of every single thing that made him Luke Skywalker, right down to stating that he could find peace in death finally now that he’s had purpose, indirectly telling us all that he’d been a failure until then and that the events of the original trilogy, which the audience had been told throughout the course of the film were a farce—were inconsequential, and that the only path left to him was to sacrifice himself to just barely try to “redeem” himself for being such a failure and a coward and a piece of shit.

This is all, of course, in conjunction with Han and Leia’s son being a cold-blooded and deranged killer who embraces and represents EVERYTHING that his parents and uncle fought to destroy. This is in addition to Han and Leia’s love story being entirely invalidated, as well, with their marriage ending in estrangement and misery, with JJ Abrams stating in interviews that the two of them were incompatible and never have worked out. This is in addition to Han’s whole arc being ignored and him being reduced to a selfish smuggler again—his son is running around being not only a Space Nazi but basically the right-hand Space Nazi and is singlehandedly murdering countless people in the name of the First Order and his wife is all alone and in constant danger fighting a war with no help and trying to get their son back, and Han Solo just decides to traipse around “swindling people” and reverting to little more than petty crime instead of wanting to help or protect his wife or find Luke or do literally anything about what was happening. This was done despite the fact that Han was selfless and brave at every single turn of the OT, and that his whole story was about devoting himself to his friends and risking his life to save them and admitting that he’s not an apathetic criminal but a hero who is willing to go toe to toe with Vader himself to protect Leia, to save the galaxy, to do what’s right. And they stripped him of that entire arc and painted him as selfish and wrote his relationship with Leia as futile and miserable and resulting in the monster who is destroying the galaxy.

Leia has now lost EVERYTHING. She lost her entire PLANET in the OT, and found a family and solace in the man she loved, in her brother, in her friends, and in the freedom and democracy she almost singlehandedly brought to fruition, and they ripped all that away from her. They destroyed the New Republic and also made it a point to DISCREDIT HER, to let us all know that the no one was even taking her seriously about the First Order anyways. They made Han leave her side even though her safety was his top priority from every single moment in the OT as soon as they met. They cast a black shadow on her marriage to let us all know that they were doomed to fail and suffer, and then they killed Han Solo to serve Kylo Ren’s story just like they sacrificed Luke to that same story, ruining Leia’s life further in the process. They made her son be evil. They made Luke abandon her so that she didn’t even have her brother there by her side, and then they killed him too. So Leia has NOTHING. They made it a point to tell us that not one single person in the galaxy was willing to come to Leia’s aid when she uses her personal code to send a distress signal. They even stripped her of her NAME. No no no, this isn’t Princess Leia. She’s GENERAL ORGANA and you’d better accept it.

Let the past die, because we’re murdering it.

That’s what the sequel trilogy has done. They have deconstructed every single victory the OT had, made the heroes miserable at every chance they got, stripped them of all the best qualities of their characters, systematically undid every single part of their happy ending, and then even took it a step further to not only make it so that they didn’t win, but to make it seem that their actions—what had until now been victories—were actually “vanities” and indirectly blamed them for every single bad thing that’s happened since. Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm did everything in their power to ruin the original trilogy to such an extent that it is IMPOSSIBLE that it wasn’t deliberate.

These movies are not Star Wars.

[nautilusopus]

I’m feeling angry today so here are all the entries of the Compilation listed from least terrible to “Nojima and Nomura are incompetent hacks and should be fired”.

8. The Case of Denzel OVA is the most bearable entry in the Compilation, because it does what a sequel is supposed to do: expand upon the lore of the established setting while showing us more about the characters in it. It's a shame, because I think this also might be the least acknowledged entry in it, apart from maybe Before Crisis, perhaps partially because it has no official English dub. In this case, we get to see Denzel finally fleshed out beyond "the littlest geostigma patient that Cloud needs to win the big game for!" He joins up with a group of salvagers, and we see everyone trying to piece the world back together following the complete collapse of the government, the economy, their primary energy source, and the deaths of millions, where they're immediately set upon by disease and societal tensions between what used to be the "upper class" and the slum dwellers that have always had it this way, more or less. 

What the fuck, this is what Advent Children should have been entirely. Except with Cloud and his friends, and not Denzel, because screw Denzel, I wanna see what Avalanche has been up to. (We never get to see what Avalanche has been up to, and we never will.)

That being said, even Case of Denzel didn't manage to not fuck up royally, and it has a giant huge plothole in the form of forgetting to account for an entire goddamn year because it forgot Advent Children was set two years after the OG and not one. Whoops.

7. Advent Children Complete, which I'm treating as a separate entry from Advent Children -- Advent Children is a fucking mess with a nonsensical plot and wonky character motivations that, word of god, were literally just there because they figured it's how the fans wanted to be pandered to the best and not because they thought the motivations would be good or interesting (nothing like a content creator that openly states he thinks his target audience are morons!). It's slightly lower on the list than Advent Children vanilla because A) it looks slightly less ugly due to the Bluray release, B) Denzel's and Marlene's child actors got too old and they had to find younger ones for the redub, and these newer actors are actually better and significantly less obnoxious, and C) it has My Chemical Romance doing the theme song. 

These are all very shallow reasons, admittedly. You'd think it'd be lower because the added scenes help fill in some plot holes, but they were badly added scenes that meshed very poorly with the story at large, and because of that they actually created about as many new plot holes as they filled in. Shite movie. 

6. Advent Children vanilla. This is a good place to discuss why they're both on the bottom of the list, since they're pretty much the same movie. Shitty plot, characters are a sad shadow of what they used to be, and they did some weird thing with Cloud where he unlearns everything from the original game for the sake of cheap conflict and the fans try and defend it like it's actually deep and coherent. Not to mention some more bad decisions: Renu and Rude are good guys now and friends with Cloud and Tifa despite murdering their friends along with everyone else in Sector 7, Marlene is no longer Barret's daughter because ewwww, black people, and Tseng and Rufus are retconned back to life for literally no damn reason at all (they contribute nothing to the movie. Nothing. They even waste the dramatic reveal with the sheet by having him say "yeah it's me Rufus but I'm gonna wear this sheet for no reason and rip it off dramatically revealing ME, RUFUS SHINRA"). As far as I'm concerned they both just died again right after this movie. 

Basically, Advent Children was bad and stupid, but it was pointless as well, which in this case works to its advantage: we relearn the exact same lessons but in a shittier, more juvenile way, wind up at the exact same point we started at by the movie's conclusion, and get confirmation that there were, in fact, zero fucking stakes. At least it didn't take a scalpel to the franchise lore at large, like everything else on this list. 

5. The Last Order OVA is basically Square Enix frantically trying to save face after they've realised that, "Oh shit, our complete inability to proofread the first drafts of the scrips we've been running with have resulted in every single bit of VII lore introduced in these things wildly contradicting one another!" Basically, Last Order is a very pretty fight scene with Zack in it animated by Madhouse that occasionally tries to have a plot. This is the entry that began the handwave of "oh, all the entries in the Compilation are different because they're all told from a difrerent point of view! It's up to you do decide what really happened!" Lazy, bad, the beginning of the end. It looked nice, but I can't even enjoy the fight scene in the reactor properly because Zack doesn't immediately get bodied like he should've, which wouldn't have been very much fun to watch but at least would've made more sense; as well as the weird bit where they tried to imply Cloud was always infected with Jenova and mako-enhanced from birth? Somehow?

Also, the "Last Order" in question seems to be Zack telling Cloud to run. Cloud, who is in a vegetative state, and even if he weren't, can't even walk. Sure, he'll get right on that.

4. Case of Novels. These things suck and are terrible and look like they were written by a third grader. That's not just a "lol these are terrible" jab, either. I mean they literally read like they were written by a child with a very basic grasp of how to put sentences together. All of them are structured like so:

Tifa was very sad, because Cloud wasn't talking to her. Tifa thought that maybe Cloud felt sad because his friends were dead. Then Tifa thought about her adventures with her friends from Avalanche, the friends that she was best friends with two years ago. Cloud and Tifa had lots of adventures with them, but they were sad by the end of it because Aeris died, and then Tifa thought that Cloud was probably thinking about that too. Tifa felt bad about that. 

They are bad to look at, just objectively, regardless of the content in them. Case of Barret's is by far the worst in that regard, to the point where I'm not entirely certain I didn't read a bootleg fake version of it, because there is no way Square Enix would charge actual money for a product that was meant to be released to the masses and presented as canon to Final Fantasy VII. Except that they did. (I can also believe it because it further works towards the goal of erasing Barret from the story entirely, more on this later.)

As far as the actual story content, I'd probably have to say Case of Lifestream White/Black are the worst, due to some weird nonsense where Aeris just hangs out in the Lifestream and watches people like it's a spectral break room, and Sephiroth grumbles and pines over Cloud like a jilted ex-boyfriend because Nojima forgot there was anything else to his character. These, like Advent Children, are pointless, but they’re pointless to the extent that it’s absurd they even exist -- there's apparently an entire third Shinra bastard running around out there, and he has zero bearing on anything ever, and never will again. What Shinra bastard? Who? Kadaj murdered a whole town offscreen or something, but I guess it wasn’t relevant, don’t know why we brought it up.

3. Before Crisis. Japan-exclusive mobile game where Square stops even bothering trying to hide their contempt for anyone not in the "marketable niche" (i.e: all the white male characters ages 16-27) and begins writing them out of the story. It's not enough that they take his goddamn daughter away from him on the basis that he's prospecting oil, which is fucking stupid in and of itself -- this is the story that decides Avalanche, the group Barret founded in response to Shinra murdering everyone in his hometown because they didn't want any competition in the form of coal, wasn't actually even Barret's. It was some other guy's, and grrrr he was a terrorist even more terroristier than OG Avalanche was because moral ambiguity is gonna go over our audience’s heads so let’s just make it nice and cleanly black and white for them. I've ranted about this before, but it's even worse that the fans seem to have no problem incorporating these changes into everything, because who gives a rat's ass about Barret, right? There was some dumb thing about Nanaki finding a girl catdog to have those babies he has in the epilogue, and the Ravens, but it's all just more of the same introducing samefaced teeny boppers that the fans love so much at the expense of everything else.

2. SPEAKING OF WHICH, Crisis Core, the king of samefaced teeny boppers consuming the franchise. I flipflop a lot on whether this one is the worst or not, but in addition to having the same problem as Before Crisis times fifty, I consider it as bad as it was because you could tell it could have been really good, and that's honestly heartbreaking. The first hour or so kicks things off with a really good start, introducing Zack as this cocksure jackass trying to make a name for himself, and his mentor Catchphrase Man. Then around the point where Banora gets firebombed it all sort of goes downhill, and you realise a lot of the credit you were giving it wasn't actually due. Zack being a gloryhound for Shinra and believing Soldier to be a bastion of good wasn't supposed to be a character flaw like it should've. Genesis almost singlehandedly ruins the entire thing by eating all the screentime in the word with his obnoxious motivations that made zero sense, and in a flashback we see he was always a fucking tool so there's no reason to feel sorry for him in the first place. He's actually secretly responsible for the iconic Nibelheim scene, of all fucking things (GENESIS DID NIBELHEIM would make a good bumper sticker). Tifa gets thirty seconds of screentime. Cloud doesn't fare much better, which is a seriously huge problem considering he's the goddamn protagonist of the entire franchise. He gets a single 49 second cutscene of them establishing "okay he's best friends with Zack" and then nothing else, ever, unless you want to count the three emails he sends him that you could tell were supposed to lead to more bonding cutscenes that were ultimately cut for more GENESIS, YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH RIGHT GUYS??? Aeris fares even worse than Cloud and Tifa combined, being barely in it, and Square having decided that Zack actually made all her life decisions for her. That's right -- literally everything about her character? Zack did it. Fuck you. 

It's also this high up for what it represents, I suppose -- in the fanbase, you see a whole lot of "Well, Cloud lost Zack and Aeris so now he has no friends and nothing else to live for in this world because he didn't really care about anyone else besides them". It seems everyone forgot that not only was there more to Cloud’s character than "his friends are dead so he’s sad” and his friends being dead was only a small part of it, but that there were seven other people we spent about sixty hours establishing in no uncertain terms that they loved him unconditionally and that he felt the same way. Crisis Core is what finally got people to start disregarding the rest of the main fucking cast from the OG, and it was very, very deliberate. An old unwashed man in his late thirties jaded about his future in spaceflight, a catdog with daddy issues, a black man with a character arc revolving around fatherhood, a triple agent paper-pusher that had a furry phase right in the middle of his midlife crisis, two women that are both alive and have agency of their own, and hell, even a young man with severe psychological issues that had a very strong bond with all of these people even though most of them aren't young and attractive white people and realises he can count on them all for support, are not as marketable as the cast of Crisis Core. Square knows this. You can't wring any sex appeal out of "happy supportive environment" or "female characters", since most of the fanbase tends to be straight women in their late teens and early twenties. So, everyone in both those categories gets shafted. And, as mentioned, the fans seem all to happy to run with this, given the overwhelming amount of material that seems to disregard everyone else in Cloud's life that wasn't Zack (and sometimes Aeris gets acknowledged because all she's good for anymore is a corpse to motivate Cloud) as unimportant, and not really his friends. 

The fact that the entire game seems to undermine the original's tone very badly almost seems like a nitpick at this point next to very intentional racism and sexism and pandering, but I'm gonna bring that up too. The new version of Zack's death scene flies directly in the face with how they were handled in the original game, and is more in line with Cait Sith's than anything else's -- that death isn't heroic, or glorious, or profound. It's just sad and fucking hurts, and it's something that happens. They made that pretty clear the first time around when he just gets gunned down on a cliff in complete silence. You can practically hear the "so it goes" in the background. Naturally, this time around they gave him an entire speech about dreams an honour and then when he dies he goes to heaven (on a planet with no heaven) and he's successfully become a hero. Fucking bravo. Or the bit where, as has been pointed out, you have a wacky scene where Zack meets a young Yuffie, and she skips off amongst the corpses of her people that Zack himself just finished making in the name of glory and imperialism (not a character flaw, though! He’s a good guy!). There's an astounding lack of self-awareness in everything the game does. 

AND IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD, and that's why I still debate whether or not it belongs in the Worst spot or not. It could have been great to see a non 49-second version of the friendship that eventually motivated Zack to die for Cloud, but then they forgot to write it, because why write that when you could have these four cutscenes with Genesis? It would've been great to see Aeris and her relationship with running from Shinra that caused her to grow up street smart and how that caused Zack to maybe question Shinra's motivations, but them they forgot to write it because HEY LOOK HERE'S SOME MORE WING SYMBOLISM WITH ANGEAL DO YOU GET IT THERE'S ONLY ONE OF THEM AND HIS NAME IS SPELLED ALMOST LIKE ANGEL, I'M WORKING WITH GENESIS NOW HIS NAME MEANS BEGINNING LOL. It could have been great to see Tifa getting her start with Avalanche, but after her obligatory cameo in Nibelheim she's swallowed into the void again because they forgot she was ever anything besides Cloud's love interest, and fuck you we gotta show you this Genesis scene in Modeoheim. It could have been great to meet a younger Barret, and wonder how at odds he would've been with Zack, a man who's been drinking the Soldier kool-aid for years, but instead we got Genesis reciting poetry. It could have been great to see the workings of Soldier before it all went to shit, but instead we got fucking goddamn Genesis. Genesis Genesis Genesis. 90% of the screentime in this game that should've gone to developing Zack's character for one fucking second, let alone other things, just gets eaten up by Genesis. God I hate Genesis.

1. Dirge of Cerberus.

I'll try and keep this brief because I can go on about Dirge of Cerberus all fucking day if you let me. 

If Crisis Core is terrible because it had the shadows of great ideas that were terribly mishandled in the name of turning a profit, Dirge is sort of its opposite, in that at no point did anything even remotely resembling a good idea come anywhere near the building this was being written in during the entirety of its production. It's bad. Thoroughly bad. There are no redeeming qualities. It's ugly, it plays badly, 90% of it is cutscenes* and the remaining 10% is invisible walls, the plot is a fucking mess by anyone's standards whether you're familiar with the franchise or not, it is the reigning fucking king of tone issues, the design choices are the worst of what Nomura has to offer by a country mile, and the characters are the worst Square has ever made in the Final Fantasy series. 

Vincent is the protagonist, and since he just wants a nap and is too cool to care that means you don't really give a rat's ass about what's going on either, which you wouldn't have anyway, because Dirge's plot isn't so much rife with plot holes as it is a giant, gaping hole, where bits of plot occasionally drift by, mangled beyond recognition by the plane crash in 1976 that claimed their lives. Did you know there was an even more secreter army living under Midgar that somehow survived the entire city being demolished with cosmic hellfire, a pandemic with no cure, and a giant sword battle dropping more debris on them? Did you know Hojo actually didn't die, he invented the internet in 30 seconds in his death throes and then invented the technology to upload minds to computers, AKA created a fucking goddamn technological singularity, and then uploaded himself in a .zip file until he could blow up the world for shits and giggles completely unrelated to anything even remotely having to do with Jenova? Did you know Lucrecia wasn't actually a terrible person that willingly carried Hojo's child and injected it with science juice for the sake of their careers, but was actually a really nice lady and is really sorry you guys, and was just an unwilling womb for Sephiroth to be birthed from, and was pretty much the Madonna? Did you know that apparently the Actual Goddamn Apocalypse wasn't enough to convince the Planet it was dying, but someone stabbing a few thousand people was? Did you know Reeve decided to call the events of the main game the "Jenova Wars" because he doesn't actually know what a war is? Did you know mako actually makes you live forever instead of giving you brain damage and killing you? Did you know the Lifestream is pretty much the same thing as the internet? Did you know Vincent was a paedophile? Did you know someone decided Genesis still needed to be fucking alive? 

Oh yeah, and also there are such stellar characters such as Red the Red, Blue the Blue, White the Clean, Black the I-Have-A-Jockstrap-Taped-Over-My-Mouth-Because-Fuck-You-Why-Not, and Orange the Clear, who is physically 9 years old but mentally 19 so it's totally not paedophilia if we have a weird romance between her and Vincent (never mind that if we're going by that logic, you now have a 19 year-old dating a 61 year-old, which is... not a whole lot better.) 

And hey, remember that one scene where Shalua completely unnecessarily died by holding a door she could've easily ducked through, and then she pissed herself upon death, and the game took the time to show the piss puddle, and Yuffie was super upset about it despite the fact that they never interacted even once but the writers forgot about that, and then after all that shit she didn't even die in her own melodramatic death scene, and then she did die anyway at the end of the game and all you can think about is the piss and god Shalua is so fucking pointless and looks so fucking stupid. Look at this hot mess: 

She’s a scientist! Or something. 

Even by Final Fantasy standards these designs are fucking ridiculous.

There is nothing redeeming about this game. It's like a gift that keeps on giving -- every time I look back at it, I discover a new plothole that I didn't catch the first time before. It's easier to hate than Crisis Core, though, which just makes me sad. At least Dirge never had anything going for it in the first place. I paid two bucks for my copy and I still feel ripped off.

* Okay, that’s an exaggeration -- 50% of it is cutscenes. Four hours out of an eight hour game is cutscenes. Do you realise how fucking many cutscenes that is? It’s a lot. (And yet not one of them has any plot in them HEYOOOO)

[survivor-rebelsvsroyals]

EPISODE 6:Sorry hosts and viewers but we're keeping the inactivish girl. -Ryan M

My new tribe kinda slaps? It’s just nice playing with people who have the fight to win. We fucking S L A Y E D Jeopardy. Ken Jennings who? It felt so good helping my tribe win. For this reward comp I’m a little worried because we have a good system but if someone doesn’t show up, we’ll all hit 5 and be screwed. Also poor Glo, she’s just out here doing her best. She’s cute, but I don’t want that to carry her to the end like it did in Mongolia.

Finally have my computer back, so I can start writing confessionals as I think about the game. It sucks that Chloe was voted out. She was definitely my #1 ally in the game, so seeing her leave just sucks. And now I am on a tribe with 4 Royals who would be happy to vote me out the second we get to tribal council. I doubt my social game will let me leave here alive if we go to tribal. Instead, I just have to make sure we don't go to tribal. I need to put in all my effort in the next immunity challenge lest I want to be in the VL watching the rest of this season.

* a little later*

I've been socially active with Seamus and Amanda today. I hope I can grow a tight bond with them in order to keep myself safe for tribals to come. Especially if I manage to get to merge with a tight three. I'm praying that things work out because I need this for my own sanity.

It’s truly like babysitting this tribe lmao Like I know this is reward but how fucking hard is it to post on time. I worked a 9 hour shift today and still posted on time when I said I would. We have the lead, like why squander it. Also, I’m hoping we win out to til merge because I really don’t want to go into a tribal at swap in the minority. I feel like I might be making myself a target bc I’m being a little aggressive with this comp BUT I regret nothing.

I feel like I’ve been too MIA I’m kind of just ready for a tribal so I can get a little blood on my hands! Sorry I am the most boring player ever I’ll post something juicy tomorrow

I'm glad that we won the reward challenge. It must be a good omen for the next one, but I have to put in twice as much effort! I'm not planning on being the next one booted, so this tribe needs to pull its weight and get to winning!

Well I don;t know if I am coming or going or who is with me and who is not. I was lost on reward challenge and posted few times but they all offered to help me lol So how is my game ok I guess but I feel lost in a wilderness cause I think lots of these players know each other very well and I am lost

I feel so bad for Chloe. I stopped talking to her after Seamus told me she was debating between voting for me or Amanda. I feel like we all felt like we liked Chloe but we've spent so much time together. And also maybe a pagoning or w/e would be a little fun!!!! She's so sweet I wish she started off a royal.

Well I just BOMBED that challenge.  I love to read but suddenly my mind went blank and I could only think of books with long titles! HAHA.  I majored in art in college for a year and suddenly I forgot every color in existence! Hopefully the other tribes blanked so we'll be safe. 0:-) If not... maybe the royals will stay together but no lie, I've been talking to John and Lachie more than Pippa and Ryan.

I'm happy two tribes are going to tribal. Because I really want to see them vote ugly people out!!! But also if we go to tribal nbd Raffy goes. He's completely okay! But I love Seamus and Amanda and I think I can also get Anabel to trust me come merge time. xo

I am praying to god all-mighty that we win

WE LITERALLY COULD'VE WON IF ANABEL DID EVEN HALF THE CHALLENGE!!!!! I was so down to get rid of Raffy... still could... I like Anabel. But... I already feel bad about voting out Chloe and this time it's like... obvi Ana deserves to be voted out... ugh 

I hope the 5 movies Glo could muster up in 60 seconds were all of the Twilight franchise movies

*Dan comes back ten minutes later*

Okay but real talk, 5 movies??? Glo you could only name 5 movies in 60 seconds? If she had done as well as Asya and gotten 28 we wouldn’t have gone to tribal. I really pray I can get Dane or Linus to team up with Asya and I. I mean if it comes down to it and I have to vote out Asya, I guess she better get those bags packed!

I am so pissed that we lost. We easily could have won this competition if Anabel had participated, but she's evidently bad at time management. If you knew you were going to be busy the next day, why wouldn't you do the challenge the night it was posted? I'm so over it! For once, I didn't want to have to go to tribal, but now I can't even have that. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that I am the target since I am not a Royal which is utter bullshit. Hopefully my social game has paid off and I have bonded enough with these people, but I am not too sure about that. I'll just have to put it all my effort into saving myself, or my game is sunk. Pray for me.

* a little later*

I think I can get Seamus. He and I have talked a lot during the limited amount of time we've had together. I want to consider him an ally, but I'm not sure if he hasn't been doing this with everyone else. My target is going to be Anabel for three reasons: 1. She is a winner (literally won last season) which makes a threat going into merge 2. She singlehandedly lost us the challenge 3. I haven't personally talked to her a lot so she's the easiest to target for me I want to get everyone on board, but I need to not pester them. However, I cannot just let the vote casually go towards me either. I'm not going out without a fight

OK SO. glo sucks at challenges. like it’s real bad. which is good for me. cause linus is like he doesn’t have any allegiances or whatever to old arioi and just wants to succeed so like. let’s cut the dead weight. obviously dan is down and that’s all we need. i’d like to get dane on board too but it’s not necessary. like really, i just wanna keep my no vote streak. which means if dane and glo vote for a manahune, it’s dan and not me.

Seamus brought up Anabel's name to me which is a good sign. He also told me that I shouldn't worry about being the only Rebel, and he is open to keeping/working with me. I hope he's telling the truth. Apparently, he's only talked to me about the vote, so I am hoping that's a good sign. Now I need to approach Amanda and Ryan. If one just votes for Ryan, then I should be good.

*he talks a lot*

Amanda seems open, but reserved. She's acting noncommittal which is worrying for me. I have to speak with Ryan later and get him on board. Keeping this tribe together will help me going into a merge. I'm just hoping Amanda joins my side and not Anabel's, in the end. There is still time to save myself.

So tribal council is coming up soon and I legit have no idea what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get voted out tonight since I'm spreading myself too thin. I have a couple ideas going on through my head and I can't decipher which plan will be the best to project me moving forward. The first plan I have is to stay royal strong and vote out Asya. I have Glo and Linus as fellow Royals to make the majority. If I do successfully blindside Dan and Asya tonight then we have the majority going into the last pre-merge stage. However, Glo isn't the strongest in challenges and this could result in us going back to tribal council. If we do go back to tribal council then there is the chance that Dan can pull out an idol and take me out. If we don't even go to tribal then there's no chance of me rebuilding the burnt bridge with Dan prior to going to the merge, resulting in another person coming after me. Also continuing into merge, I imagine I'm at the bottom of the royals tribe. People can "like" me but that doesn't necessarily mean that they want to work with me. I'd be continuing this trend of saving people that don't want to work with me. The other plan in place is for Linus and I to team up with Dan and Asya to vote out Glo. If we are possibly merging after tonight then voting out Glo in my opinion is one of the smartest decisions. She is very well liked and she's a very loyal player, I don't think she will ever be targeted and it'll be an easy flow for her to get to the end of the game. Also, Linus was telling me that Anabel talks to Glo A LOT, and that lowkey just reinforces this idea that I created of an all-winners alliance existing. If we have another tribal stage I don't imagine that it will be a double trial again so getting rid of Glo (the weakest competitor on our tribe) might be the best decision for the tribe. Also with getting rid of Glo, this helps solidify some sort of allegiance with Dan + Asya. Going into the merge with Linus, Dan, Asya would open up so many doors. Dan and Asya are very close with the rest of the Rebels plus, Dan and Amanda are high school friends. I spoke to Dan and I think we'd possibly team up to take out Ryan M. Ryan M. always plays these games personally and votes out Dan, and now that him and I are not on great terms Ryan will target me. I explained that to Dan that neither of us would win with Ryan M. still in the game so we need to pull strength and get him out together. Plus we matched on Tinder one time so that'll help build some trust with Dan. Right now I think the benefits of voting out Glo outweighs voting out Asya so I think that's how we'll go. You can't predict the future but I can outweigh the pros and cons and keeping Dan + Asya on my side while pissing off the Royals majority might benefit me more than being a sheep led to slaughter

I lied to Raffy about not voting him... I mean he's not dumb he probably has a string inkling. I just feel bad . Like Anabel deserves to go home but I think she'll save me in the future. Plus she has beef with Lachie we can feed off of. I'm sorry Chloe and Im sorry Raffy. Sorry hosts and viewers but we're keeping the inactivish girl.

So Um the votes landed on Glo? Super easily? So I’m assuming I’m getting blindsided

I think I should be good for this tribal. Everyone has given me their word that they are voting Anabel, and Seamus seems trustworthy. I just hope my trust his well-placed.

[ladala99]

Spyro Reignited Countdown - Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (Console)

(In this case PS3, as it differed slightly from the Wii version. It won’t affect much of my review, though.)

I have to say I have mixed feelings about this series. On one hand, when it was announced I was so excited. It wasn’t TLoS, which at the time I hated! It brought Spyro back to being colorful and fun! With the figure gimmick, there were endless possibilities of the types of games that would be released!

On the other hand, this series singlehandedly beat the completionist out of me, made me despise Activision, and now I have two shelves full of plastic figures I hardly look at, let alone use. And I still sometimes look at the ones I’m missing on Amazon to check if they’ve become worthless yet since I wasn’t going to pay premium for them then, let alone now.

This was the first game, though. It was when optimism was high. And honestly the last time I played this game the nostalgia hit me hard even though it was only five years old or so. So this one gets a pass.

Gameplay

We have a complete overhaul again. With so many playable characters, things have to be genericized a bit.

We’ve got a fixed camera now. Platforming is only done with Bounce Pads and there’s hardy any of that in the first place. There’s no jumping in this game otherwise. In general, maneuvering isn’t the challenge, combat is. That’s what the game’s built around.

Every character has three attacks, and they all act differently (at least in this game). I’d be here all day describing them if I did, and honestly I don’t have all of them to describe anyway. Because these characters are the ones you buy. With real money. In the real world. But be assured that the combat works pretty well. Some are faster than others, but you can beat the game with anybody and have fun doing so if you like this sort of combat. Like in TLoS, you buy new abilities for your characters as you play, and each character has two ability paths to give some customization options.

But yeah, no jumping, no gliding. Spyro’s moveset is reduced to something more varied than his Classic counterpart but much less varied than his Legend counterpart. No more gems, even, although there is a money system, sort-of.

The Gates

Not going to talk about additional playable characters because that’s overwhelming, but here’s a section on why you’ll want to buy them.

You cannot have a file that says 100% on it without buying at least five additional figures. Each level has a couple/few Elemental Gates scattered around, and you cannot access them without a Skylander of that element. The Starter Pack gives you three, but beyond that you’ll have to go to your local retailer to buy extras.

Is it worth it? Honestly... not really. But without them the game feels particularly frustrating, at least that’s what I found with a later title. In this game, the Elemental Areas are pretty small, but have the more interesting puzzles in them. But honestly they don’t add that much to the gameplay, and your dollar-to-playtime ratio isn’t very favorable if you solely get the characters for additional content. At least when it came out. If you can get a bulk deal nowadays it might be different.

The Collectables

There’s five types of collectables in this game, to various effect.

The most common is Treasure Chests, which are generally scattered around the levels in the main areas, but are also sometimes hidden in Elemental Gates. Yeah. They give you a burst of treasure, which you can use to buy upgrades.

Next we have Soul Gems, which unlock a special ability to the Skylander it features. It also advertises them with a quick video showcasing their powers. Each Skylander has one Soul Gem somewhere in the game, and they’re usually in the main level. The ones that aren’t are only in Magic, Water, and Tech areas, which elements come in the Starter Pack so with just that you’ll be able to get them all.

Next are Story Scrolls, which just give you some flavor text. They’re generally at the end of optional puzzles in the main level. (When I say “main level,” by the way, I’m just talking about anything that’s not an Elemental Area)

Finally we have Legendary Treasures, which are very well-hidden. Some are in the main level, others require you to traverse Elemental Areas, but all of them are difficult to find. On my first playthrough, I thought they were exclusive to something I didn’t have since I found none on my own.

Bosses

Usually come in the form of just a bunch of enemies, but Kaos comes at you with some Skylanders of his own occasionally. I always found the Kaos fights particularly fun, as they go between fighting his Skylanders and him casting spells you need to dodge/use to your advantage.

Kaos himself, the final boss, is this turned up to eleven. It’s actually legitimately difficult, as Toys For Bob did not get to the point of difficulty testing it before release. I say it’s for the better, and it was a fantastic and fun fight, that really puts your skill and collection to the test.

Levels

Feel really dumbed-down compared to Spyro games. You’re shown where to go if it’s not already obvious (and sometimes even if it is). You’re told what to do. Puzzles are literally just push the boulder until you can’t anymore or interact with the light reflector until you can’t anymore. And if you don’t have a full collection of elements, you’re very limited in what you can access, as the best content is all behind Elemental Gates, but again, they’re not worth the price to open them. I did of course, but it just didn’t feel quite worth it. Honestly I got them with the assumption that they’d be useful in future games. In a way I was right, but in other ways I was very very wrong.

Story

Kaos is an evil Portal Master who used his powers of darkness to destroy the Core of Light, essentially render the good Portal Master a ghost, and send all the Skylanders to a different dimension. When you arrive, he has already won.

And it is *you* arriving. You’re a Portal Master who found the Skylanders, and it’s up to you to restore the Core of Light (by finding each individual piece) and defeat Kaos. Characters talk directly to *you* oftentimes (although usually they do speak to the Skylanders).

And honestly, I love the concept. It’s not often you see the villain having already won in children’s media. Usually you stop them before the worst happens, but here it already did.

Okay, TLoS did that too, but it felt like it aimed a bit higher on the age scale. This game overall has a very unique feel and I love it.

Unique in the Series?

As far as Skylanders goes, this is the only game that has specific terrain that only specific types of Skylanders can traverse. There’s water that Water-element and anyone who can fly can fly over, and there’s lava that only Fire-element Skylanders can walk across. I found this concept fun, especially since the game comes with Skylanders than can traverse water, and my favorite level uses this gimmick to a ridiculous degree.

Also, this is the only Skylanders game where the characters don’t all speak in your language. In this game, they each have unique sounds, some shouting in their own language and others making animal noises. A few speak your language, but they’re the exception, not the norm.

Both of these features I missed in later titles, but everything else this game sets the standard for remains for at least one other game.

Conclusion

This game would be pretty good if it weren’t for the fact that you need to buy all the characters separately. If a complete version of this game (or really any game in the series) comes out where you unlock the characters through gameplay, I would be all for it. I might even get it. Maybe.

At the same time, though, I liked the gimmick. It was legitimately fun picking up a physical figure and the character disappears from the screen, replacing it with another one, and that one appears on-screen. This game also has the lowest loading time for that action, and it’s satisfying.

I had high hopes for this series and they only sort-of came to fruition. And because of those hopes I feel positively about this first title because I actually did have hope for the franchise back then. It’s just a bit bittersweet because the series disappointed me more and more as time went on.

So I’m just going to stick with: the story was great, the combat worked well enough, but the puzzles were pretty dumbed-down aside from the Legendary Treasure ones. The real issue is the price, as it’s just not worth what you get for it. If you like collecting toys, this game has no downsides, but judging it as a game it’s not worth it.

[brothermouzongaming]

Warmind thots

Better if only by a bit

I understand that Vicarious Visions made this expansion, a fact that is a little troubling if you ask me and my pessimistic tendencies. Even with that information, I almost forgot another developer had taken care of this expansion because it was very much along the lines of Bungie’s typical format. I still feel that these thoughts and feelings are relevant and still perfectly appropriate despite Bungie doing this a little differently this time around. The fact remains: nothing is going in the game that doesn’t have Bungie’s approval. Hell, as far as we know Vicarious merely did what Bungie would’ve done anyway, following a template that was explicitly written by Bungie. From what I understand they did design the Raid Lair but I doubt they were given such liberties with dlc given what we have is reported to have been lined up for a while. Regardless, the overall message of this is that the Warmind dlc is an improvement. The subtext is that such an accomplishment means fuck-all in the face of what can only be described as a huge flop for both Bungie and Activision. Despite what the financial reports may say.  Changes to exotics are great and give us something to grind that improves our favorite guns. Escalation Protocol is a challenge that takes coordination but is still a great idea at its core. Nodes are another means of grind that again give guardians a reason to come back. Curse of Osiris was a low bar to step over, but at least they did it and did it fairly well.

“Dress-tiny”

Good god how is it that the dlc adds blander armors. I think the focus on armor is all wrong and centered way too much around looks but since it’s here; the least they could do is stand out. Hunters get straight up screwed with some of the least impressive and lazy designs I’ve ever seen. Literally solid color sleeves and a slightly different glove design. Titans are clearly the character type that inspires the artists the most because from the looks to the functionality they have it the best hands down in my opinion. My preferred class, Warlock, sits somewhere in the middle. With armor pieces that work like a dream in the field, some that are beyond useless and those are just the exotics. The legendary pieces rarely vary in any significant way beyond a couple points this way or that way between the whopping three stats you have to manage. So looks are really all that is left, and there isn’t anything definitive about a lot of these “legendary” pieces of armor. The shader situation is an absolute trash fire, hopefully, the Warmind dlc was gonna add some interesting tweaks to the color scheme...imagine my surprise when the color pallets are few and far between as far as anything really distinguishable. I put on four shaders on some pants and they all looked exactly the same. That’s one of Destiny’s many problems, it’s only half in with all of its ideas.

“Remember whoo you areee”

Lion King reference aside, I can’t be any more serious. *snaps fingers repeatedly* Hello Bungie, wake up! You are squandering all the goodwill built up in your past successes. I understand this is far from the team that brought us Halo: CE but I would’ve thought they would be fighting in its memory. The ambition is there, I commend and respect that much. The effort and execution, however, has been wildly lackluster. I can forgive a large amount of D1′s problems, it’s an ambitious idea that was gonna have some kinks and issues in it. 

Company’s like Ubisoft and Capcom are giving away the occasional free update to games like The Divison and Monster Hunter World respectively. For Destiny 2 to become essentially the biggest flop of this generation and offer no respite or token of gratitude to the fanbase that stayed is miraculously idiotic. Oh what’s that? They gave us the broken Prometheus Lens? Aw, that’d be nice if it wasn’t the only gesture Bungie has made, and it released so broken it singlehandedly turned the Crucible into laser tag. Yes, that was fun, but it wasn’t even something Bungie did, it was an accident. That accident for a short period of time was the most exciting and engaging thing that has happened in D2 for a while now. The initial concept of Destiny is very promising, especially when you find out it’s in the hands of Bungie. I can’t help but feel that somewhere along the way they realized that the idea was better than the actual physical manifestation of it. Now that they’re in way too deep, all they can do is press on through the self-made muck and mire. Doing what they want to expand the franchise rather than improve it; coming from a developer I once revered it’s both infuriating and deeply saddening. Please Bungie, get it together for your sake, not ours. I’m not buying D3 and I have a funny feeling a decent amount of people won’t either, you aren’t an indie dev with no experience. Why are you acting like it?

Copy and paste

Warmind’s loot pool is vastly more interesting and enticing than that of Osiris. The sharp geometric shapes, as well as the sounds and skills associated with the guns, are very distinct and dare I say enjoyable. They don’t drop quite as often, Destiny has reverted back to its old ways in that sense and I’m not against it at all. If we get everything in the first week what’s the point of paying so much/ what’s keeping us here? My issue is the recurring problem of both reskins and returning exotics. Osiris was fairly wrought with reskins and even worse with poor and just unsavory perks, these guns rained from the sky I practically had to set up a direct deposit to my trash bin. Even better, these weapons seem to be tiered and earned with different kinds of currency. Now getting that new auto rifle or sub-machine gun feels good when it drops and not repetitive. The bringing back of D1 exotics is nice, there’s no reason in the world why some of these guns can’t and shouldn’t exist in this game. When two of the four guns are D1 guns, that’s when I get peeved. There needs to be more, I’m not talking truckloads but half the guns shouldn’t be D1 guns not for dlc we paid for. Honestly, how hard is it to design a new gun, what are you guys saving it for D3? Why not put out as much as you can to satisfy a fanbase that is struggling in the here and now? Seriously would it kill you guys to throw us a bone beyond fixing the issues we shouldn’t be dealing with at all? I know I can come off as entitled, but realize that this is a game with so much money behind it that I’m genuinely uncomfortable with the figure itself. This money could’ve gone to like... help people. Bungie got $500 million for the franchise as a whole, let’s say it broke up evenly which is about  $166,666,666. Where the fuck did that money go? Destiny 2 is essentially one massive asset flip and when players like me were told D2 would progress the series, it’s done almost nothing but regress. So maybe as a paying customer who has been deceived and lied to since day one of this game, maybe in this instance entitlement is a little understandable. 

Change ‘Gon Come

The exotic changes are good, this is a big step in the right direction. Destiny beat its dick to no end about being a power fantasy, then D2 came around and took away the power. These guns are starting to feel exponentially better, really living up to the “exotic” term. Escalation Protocol is brutal, I’m worried it is more difficult than any random group of guardians can handle. The most I’ve done a run with is four or five and I’m suspecting it may take somewhere up to seven. Hard isn’t bad but it’s crushing to the point where I can see players avoiding the event entirely to go complete something they actually have a chance of achieving. The title of this segment is two parts, change is coming to Destiny in the form of the development end. Changes to the game that are efforts in the right direction to give this game a sense of life and purpose. We’ll see what E3 holds, this “Comet” expansion is gonna be featured due to their “brand new game mode” or whatever, something that’s “never been done before int he genre of FPS”. I have no idea what that means but it sounds like th same high aiming that got us in this mess to begin with, we will see. The other half is the changes in the form of who plays Destiny/ how many people will be playing Destiny. I said it earlier and I’ll say it again. Four years is too long for a big name dev like Bungie to say “sorry guys, making games is hard”. You signed up for this, you had time to prepare. No one asked for Destiny, and though making games is no doubt very difficult; I don’t see how you can use that as an excuse in a case of sheer negligence and outright maliciousness by Bungie. Change ‘gon come, one way or another.