#reversal of fate; (yoko)

[tainbocuailnge]

Couldn't be there for the stream, but congrats on finishing Nier. What did you think of it? And what game will you play next? (Maybe you already answered somewhere, if so sorry for being redundant.)

in terms of style and aesthetic the game is absolutely gorgeous. definitely one of its strongest points is the ways it uses design to reinforce its themes and provide subtle worldbuilding. the example freshest in my memory is how different hacking a2 looks from hacking anything else because she’s such an old model, but also the way the vivid colors of the regular overworld contrast with the grayscale of the bunker or the white cubes of that city where you fight adam/the tower cannon, or 9s’ fucked up memories of 2b in C and D routes using the same attacks as adam and eve’s bossfights in A and B routes. the game really leans into the strong contrast between vibrant organic shapes and washed out mechanical shapes, from the very start with the overgrown buildings of the city but also the difference between the detailed & colorful regular interface and the hacking segments consisting of straight lines & muted browns, and it will reverse that distinction at key moments to make a point. switching between different styles of video game (like the visual novel sections) is a really neat way to control the pacing of the story too

conversely i think a lot of the game’s actual playability was sacrificed for the aesthetic. hacking is really cool as concept and visually i adore the way it’s implemented but in terms of gameplay it fucking sucks. not only does it throw off the whole flow of combat but the actual gameplay of the hacking segments themselves is just frustrating as hell because it wants you to hack stronger enemies instead of fight them with 9s’ weak noodle arms but then makes specifically the stronger enemies a huge pain to hack, and if you fail at hacking you take damage anyway so in the end it’s still easier to just fight directly. stuff like the emp’s being able to seal your combat abilities or fuck up your visual processors also makes sense and enriches the game storywise, but is a huge fucking pain in the ass to deal with as someone Playing A Video Game because it means you just have to run the fuck away until the effect has worn off. switching between 9s and a2′s individual bossfights in the tower, too, is very cool conceptually but ended up being super annoying in practise because like the hacking it just disrupts the flow of combat (it was very cool when they were fighting the same enemy though)

i also feel like a lot of the fights just took way too damn long. this one might be on me since I didn’t do a lot of sidequests and thus was underleveled, but it felt like a lot of the combat was intentionally stretched out in order to pad out the game’s length. honestly i think i have a case here even with being underleveled because having to do the sidequests in order to even be strong enough to progress the main story at a reasonable pace is very much padding out the game’s length. even though it took me several dozen hours to complete the main story it still feels pretty short to me because so much of that was just dragged out bossfights. bloodborne definitely spoilt me on this point because in that one once you figure out a boss youre Done, you prove you know how to deal with it and you perform the Trick a few times and then you’re done with it but every Phucking nier automata boss was just endlessly whaling on some annoying mother fucker while i’m thinking bro just show me the next story section already. and then every other bossfight they dump lore on you WHILE you’re trying not to die and i hate that too dude i can’t fucking read and fight at the same time Don’t Call For A Meeting You Son Of A Bitch This Could Have Been A Cutscene

STORYWISE. storywise. honestly I need to rewatch some cutscenes before i can form a Real In-Depth Informed Opinion cuz we spent so much of the stream joking about horsecock that i didn’t pay enough attention to perform my true analysis no jutsu. what you’re about to read is subject to change. looking at just the progression of events in nier tomato there’s some things I don’t really understand why they happened other than ‘themes, bro’ which is not necessarily a complaint mind you because im a fate fan after all but its. hmm how do i say this. i feel like yoko taro is very much a Conceptual Writer. he’s got a strong idea of the kind of message and themes he wants to convey and then he constructs a story around that idea, but because it’s all so thematically driven the actual logistics of the story end up falling behind, like with all the above bitching about the gameplay suffering for the aesthetic. a lot of time i was like ‘no idea who i am no idea why im here all i know is im sad’ if you’re the kind of person who needs [ending EXPLAINED] videos then tomato is probably an incomprehensible robot ass simulator. speaking of robot ass I think it’s super cool that they just fuckin killed 2b actually because I absolutely did not expect that, it really puts a hard line between AB and CD routes.

it’s a very bittersweet game.... it asks “is there meaning in wanting to live when there is nothing left to live for?” and “is there meaning in wanting to protect something when there is nothing left of it to protect?” and answers with “if you want there to be, yeah” it’s about being able to die with hope in your heart as ultimate definition of humanity

ultimately it’s a very beautiful game both in visuals and emotionally and I’d recommend it to anyone whose tastes even vaguely align with mine but I don’t think I’m ever gonna actually replay it. look up story compilations on youtube at most. and it’s really such a shame because I think the way the gameplay is integrated in the story is fantastic from a thematic standpoint but it comes at the expense of the enjoyability of that gameplay so even though this is very much a Video Game Story it’s a hassle to actually consume it in video game format. [yoko taro voice] you WILL be sad about these robots and you WILL work for it

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: My Favorite Anime of 2020 Are All Music Videos

Image via ZUTOMAYO

  Despite the enormous pressures of COVID-19, 2020 has had its share of anime classics. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a stone-cold classic to the degree it now feels as if it’s always existed. Decadence channeled the creative spirit of 2000s-era Madhouse into an off-kilter riff on dystopian science fiction and Pixar movies. Akudama Drive, now in its second half, continues to translate the bonkers, heartfelt pulp style of Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka to TV anime. There have been big successes in film, as well — Demon Slayer Mugen Train scored the highest opening weekend box office in Japanese history, while folks I follow on Twitter are excited for the new Bones film Josee, the Tiger and the Fish.

  One of my favorite anime projects this year was something completely different. It’s "Gotcha!," a short Pokemon-themed music video directed by Rie Matsumoto and her friends at Bones. A sequence that takes all of Matsumoto’s strengths — her attention to detail, the way she depicts exciting and supernatural things bursting out of the walls of our ordinary world, and her obsession with cramming every layer of the screen with stuff — and turns them with the precision of a laser toward celebrating the series’s near 25-year history. As encyclopedic as a Pokedex despite being only three minutes long, it’s a glorious celebration of a series loved and made by passionate fans. 

  Image via Pokemon Official YouTube Channel

  But "Gotcha!" wasn’t even the only fantastic music video made by former employees from the historic studio Toei. Earlier this year, animator Koudai Watanabe collaborated with the talented Naoki Yoshibe — director of the opening sequences for Gatchaman Crowds — to create a music video for ZUTOMAYO titled “STUDY ME.” It’s a rich purple-and-green media landscape of TV screens, glitches, Undertale references, and desperately reaching hands, packed with enough wild ideas and visual iconography to fuel an entire season of anime. But it wraps up in just under five minutes.  You’re left watching the video over and over again in a daze, trying in vain to catch every little detail.

  The animated music videos being made right now represent the most slept-on creative success in modern anime production among English language fans. (That’s music videos that are animated, not AMVs! You could write an entirely separate article on those.) I need to qualify “slept on,” since hardcore animation nerds like Yuyucow and Catsuka have been stumping for these works over the past several years. There are viral successes like "Gotcha!" and the inevitable crossover that happens when an artist doing the theme song for an anime leads others to check out their back catalog of past videos. But on websites and in magazines, I see stories about Netflix’s aggressive production of new TV series, the renaissance of Japanese anime films after Your Name, and bemused reactions to the shocking popularity of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Talk about the newest music videos online is a lot rarer. Not to mention older videos. "Gotcha!" may have broken out as a celebration of a popular game series, but its predecessor — a Lotte chocolate commercial produced by much of the same staff — is just as good!

  Image via ZUTOMAYO

  "Gotcha!" isn’t 2020’s only spiritual successor to excellent early work, either. In 2013, Yoko Kuno produced the video "Airy Me" as part of a graduate assignment. Set to a song by Cuushe, it’s a hallucinatory epic that’s both starkly horrifying and bittersweet. In the years since, Yoko Kuno’s made a name for herself across several mediums — winning the New Face Award for her manga work at Japan Media Arts Festival, serving as a pinch hitter on Orange’s production of Land of the Lustrous and contributing a memorable sequence to Beastars. She returned this year with filmmaker Tao Tajima to produce another sequence scored to Cuushe’s music, Magic. Riffing on Airy Me's themes of bodily transformation and human ennui, it sets the action against real photographic landscapes. It's another haunting masterwork by one of anime’s most multitalented young artists and has been on repeat for me since it came up on my Twitter feed.  

  Image via FLAU

  Meanwhile, the Japanese vocalist Eve continues to commission new and excellent animated work based on his songs. This May saw the release of "How to Eat Life," a video by indie animator Mariyasu which repurposes Eve’s unique symbology of surly adolescents and freaky puppet monsters into a stylish and spooky carnival of carnivorism. It’s an excellent piece that stands tall among the work collected under Eve’s banner, many of which are stone-cold classics themselves. But "Promise," released at the end of this October, threatens to outdo them all. Directed by Ken Yamamoto and produced at Cloverworks, it plays as another greatest hits compilation of Eve’s works — broken promises, collapsing cityscapes, creatures powered by feeling that shake the earth with their footsteps. There’s a real visceral punch to it that beats out even its excellent predecessors. When the protagonist folds over himself in anguish, you feel it in your gut. When he steps deep into the water and the entire world around him is shredded into pieces, anyone who’s ever been a teenager knows exactly how that feels. When his friend reaches in and pulls him out of that water, that’s real joy rising like bubbles through your veins.

  Image via Eve

  Ken Yamamoto’s a bit more mainstream than Mariyasu — just last year he contributed some face-melting action sequences to Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia. But it says something to me that "Promise" — maybe his best work yet — was released as a music video rather than a new TV series. He’s not alone, either.  This August, the animator China (storyboarder for Encouragement of Climb’s third season) together with character designer Mooang (storyboarder for Sarazanmai) produced the music video "Sore wo Ai to Yobu dake." Like the reverse of Yamamoto’s "Promise," it’s the story not of a pair of teenage boys and their separation that devastates a cityscape — but of a pair of teenage girls who reach across time to recover the bond they shared in their high school days. A potent combination of FLCL-style faded nostalgia, careful attention to body language, and pure patented kids-falling-through-the-sky-while-frantically-reaching-for-each-other anime magic, it’s one of the best-animated sequences of this year. I’ve linked it to friends just to plead “Watch this thing!” And it ends in less than four minutes long.

  Image via Mafumafu

  I can’t help but think: Where is China and Moaang’s movie project? Where is Ken Yamamoto’s TV series? Why is it that Rie Matsumoto has produced two excellent music videos over the past two years that commemorate big franchises, but her rumored film project has yet to lift off? Perhaps the truth is that there isn’t room anymore in the TV anime industry for work like this. Many original projects seem to be tied to cellphone games or stage productions. Projects like Decadence are few and far between, and even those that exist play within a space already laid out by past successes. It’s not all bad, of course — Eizouken this year was a great example of an adaptation working in harmony with its source material. And we’ve seen studios like Orange employ weirder anime creators like Yoko Kuno or the stop-motion team dwarf to great effect in their projects. But perhaps animated music videos represent the future for artists like Matsumoto — a medium that pays well, rewards experimentation, and lets strong artists play around without having to dilute their style. A bite-sized format just outside of the soul-draining churn that defines the industry.

  Maybe this is fine, though. Short-form work is just as worthy of admiration as long-form work. I’d love feature-length projects from Ken Yamamoto or China, and I’d love for the world to see another Rie Matsumoto story told on a grand scale. But I can’t deny that Matsumoto rocks at putting together fantastic music videos and that I might even prefer the concise flow of "Gotcha!" to her TV series output. Either way, in this historically difficult year, I’m grateful to these folks for turning in career-best work and giving me hope for the future.

  Do you have a favorite animated music video? At the risk of getting off track, do you have a favorite anime music video? Do you still watch different fan edits of Hatsune Miku and wowaka's "Rolling Girl" on rotation, like I do? Let me know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't rewatching his favorite anime OPs over and over, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

[brokehorrorfan]

One Missed Call Trilogy will be released on February 25 via Arrow Video. The two-disc Blu-ray set features a reversible sleeve with new artwork by Matt Griffin and the original poster.

It features all three films in the Japanese horror trilogy: 2003’s One Missed Call directed by Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer), 2005’s One Missed Call 2 directed by Renpei Tsukamoto, and 2006’s One Missed Call: Final directed by directed by Manabu Aso.

One Missed Call stars Ko Shibasaki, Shinichi Tsutsumi, and Kazue Fukiishi. One Missed Call 2 stars Mimura, Renji Ishibashi, Peter Ho, and Asaka Seto. One Missed Call: Final stars Maki Horikita, Meisa Kuroki, and Itsuji Itao.

All three films are presented in high definition with lossless Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 soundtracks with optional English subtitles. Special features are listed below.

One Missed Call special features:

Audio commentary by Takashi Miike biographer Tom Mes (new)

The Making of One Missed Call

Interviews with director Takashi Miike and actors Ko Shibasaki, Shinichi Tsutsumi, and Kazue Fukiishi

Interview with director Takashi Miike

Premiere footage

Alternate ending

Live or Die TV special

A Day with the Mizunuma Family

Trailer and TV spots

One Missed Call 2 special features:

The Making of One Missed Call 2

Deleted scenes

Music video

Gomu, a short film by director Renpei Tsukamoto

Trailer and TV spots

One Missed Call: Final special features:

The Making of One Missed Call: Final

Maki and Meisa featurette with actresses Maki Horikita and Meisa Kuroki

 Behind the Scenes with actor Keun-Suk Jang

The Love Story - One Missed Call: Final tie-in short film

Candid Mimiko - Location tour with the series’ iconic villain

Trailer and TV spots

In the first installment in the trilogy, 2003’s One Missed Call, student Yoko (Anna Nagata) receives a phone message from her future self, ending with her own death scream. Two days later, she dies in a horrific rail collision. As the mysterious phone curse spreads, claiming more young lives, Yoko’s friend Yumi (Ko Shibasaki) joins forces with detective Hiroshi (Shinichi Tsutsumi), whose sister met the same gruesome fate. But can they unravel the mystery before the clock runs out on the next victim – Yumi herself?

Mimiko’s curse continues to wreak bloody havoc in two sequels – 2005’s One Missed Call 2 and 2006’s One Missed Call: Final, in addition to spawning a TV series and an American remake. This lavish collection from Arrow Video gathers together the original trilogy and a swathe of in-depth bonus features for the ultimate spine-tingling experience.

[captaintoomanybattles]

Stucky Playlist Part IV

Part IV: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Loosely follows the plot of Winter Soldier. I always think of “Field This Side of Heaven” and “Touch of Grey” as Steve & Peggy songs-- missed chances and love that survives old age and distance. “Hitman”-”Have You Ever Seen the Rain” deal with Nick Fury’s “death”. “Rattlesnake” reminds me of Alexander Pierce, and “Murder by Numbers”, Project Insight. “Born to Run” through “Help” refer to Steve and Natasha’s time on the lam, while Sam offers “Shelter from the Storm”, followed by “Trouble Man”. Other than that, it’s all Steve/Bucky angst.

Please let me know what you think!

“Wish You Were Here”, Pink Floyd

https://open.spotify.com/track/7aE5WXu5sFeNRh3Z05wwu4?si=UUNbawIjQ86ksWALKdD8yw

“Castle of Glass”, Linkin Park

https://open.spotify.com/track/1r1fPuhj9H4VdXr7OK6FL5?si=2OtB8sOrRhK6GusxWADPJQ

“Asheville Skies”, The Milk Carton Kids

https://open.spotify.com/track/4Ie7fX5ekLa7HO7F3c9F4n?si=gpQaGwcdSqWi7Bg2ogtSmw

“Say Uncle”, Vienna Teng

https://open.spotify.com/track/7wBOQVF1LgefBhK4ZE6iuS?si=p1h7GVPVSfi-UZ23vuh4Ww

“Don’t Let it Bring You Down”, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

https://open.spotify.com/track/3oOPIrRUrCtBxnpLbxCSHY?si=XFo9PfP9SS23IT0I4mEfvQ

“Hold On”, Yes

https://open.spotify.com/track/7HIxje7YI8IRqMS8HsEYOg?si=SAJgutVeRXyNIiiCEuEBsA

“Kryptonite”, 3 Doors Down

https://open.spotify.com/track/5ZPp1V3PufN6qhAe3rLNmb?si=KY1EGFJfRt2lpCRFXZSR0w

“The Ballad of John and Yoko”, John Lennon

https://open.spotify.com/track/1F7s27lLKshLPt9TPCgMDL?si=jPGiFNJwQoeyUBgrj3eu2Q

“Don’t Beat Me Down”, Gordon Lightfoot

https://open.spotify.com/track/2jX1aTxSS0qpqN2QBx1Y6i?si=kUj8sqyFSI2Ph2YGA822pQ

“Our Field This Side of Heaven”, Tanglefoot

https://open.spotify.com/track/7Esgb0HiFNv7HaIGVLa86v?si=ZTFEW5CWSKqJMGSnJhBrTQ

“Touch of Grey”, The Grateful Dead

https://open.spotify.com/track/5YzzWlWfAVNvtduNDHKhHc?si=UvYoDzlBSPCY4UIGtYcyLA

“Galileo”, the Indigo Girls

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Q0DVZhtZJZs9t45b8zNSD?si=AH-PlrLQQYW7BjRKx2QpAA

“Try to Remember”, from The Fantasticks

https://open.spotify.com/track/0jqpQkPkfZVgG7Vvc5XnKd?si=Akw_j0oIQdqKMm590z6MoQ

“The Chain”, Fleetwood Mac

https://open.spotify.com/track/7Dm3dV3WPNdTgxoNY7YFnc?si=hq2iIk2yRkaQzC-5d4Cl4w

“Hitman”, Jocelyn & Chris Arndt

https://open.spotify.com/track/2mJnin3OTPGFHf2JP5PWh5?si=ytGoJV3-SKGSsr1K3NIyiw

“Who Are You”, The Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/3x2bXiU0o4WbsPkawXlfDA?si=_TDr9yDXTzeIAcvX3jF5Mw

“Ohio”, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

https://open.spotify.com/track/0ToHhkK4qtwEyKOxhQpMbJ?si=yLGyHLarQqeMiuBOdfa0QQ

“Have You Ever Seen the Rain”, Creedence Clearwater Revival

https://open.spotify.com/track/2LawezPeJhN4AWuSB0GtAU?si=2NXG0OoYTouw3KUQv8QQMA

“Rattlesnake”, Caravan of Thieves

https://open.spotify.com/track/69VkFmdM3r6M0Fa7sYgFcm?si=f0YWfhrBSIGfi7Q6IT0yQA

“It’s Not My Time”, 3 Doors Down

https://open.spotify.com/track/6FVjs1K8YpFY2xCHQRzPWq?si=60jcZxUlTX6sDFKkyKAykg

“Born to Run”, Bruce Springsteen

https://open.spotify.com/track/6hTcuIQa0sxrrByu9wTD7s?si=dNI69tIFT8mQ9npncnkVhA

“Down in the Flood”, Flatt & Scruggs

https://open.spotify.com/track/4gJJt7jc1ND4qzUCdlYqQX?si=0C4IyYw2R6iXigEF8Wfj0Q

“Bad Day”, Daniel Powter

https://open.spotify.com/track/0mUyMawtxj1CJ76kn9gIZK?si=5txOJctOSxyj-AN1fvUdyQ

“Don’t Bring Me Down”, Electric Light Orchestra

https://open.spotify.com/track/72ahyckBJfTigJCFCviVN7?si=k0dJICgRQZuw27nDcLGU1A

“New Song”, The Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/0N7hkRAeLz6CzX4jK4q5Gs?si=74S2_VEKT02_n2vI5SCs6A

“Rogues in a Nation”, Steeleye Span

https://open.spotify.com/track/2L3EtvJMdVNjsvHxM1yG4m?si=JhyhX2FSTEGxFEoy0huehQ

“Trail of the Survivor”, Dougie MacLean

https://open.spotify.com/track/4vbFV3KwBJdk0A8RGaSwnl?si=j76WReR2Soqp_uok7U2X1g

“Help!”, The Beatles

https://open.spotify.com/track/5ou2BiQ9FxIYkxsYvYHpAT?si=J8MsS4RIQ66097SA1r2g3w

“Shelter from the Storm”, Bob Dylan

https://open.spotify.com/track/3y4Uza6K58JXQ7RYya8ZI5?si=a5V5C3f0Sx6K_6fnrlvLDg

“Trouble Man”, Marvin Gaye

https://open.spotify.com/track/3qCgqVpz0EPi9zz0R3WhJA?si=0lYMkpcwRJuTga75Qm6omA

“Masters of War”, Bob Dylan

https://open.spotify.com/track/7xVpkVkd1klTzLJEysIR7z?si=nauvl_6UTXGViJVN6G93-A

“You May Be Right”, Billy Joel

https://open.spotify.com/track/7gMOe0gXYcELUoVugfMmHP?si=umdncgKERe2wA-mrMNR5xw

“Pride (In the Name of Love)”, U2

https://open.spotify.com/track/3dh2LlmeMqKJbzn2WUgt3d?si=o3W9ILGbSC-IEHcvpKjV0Q

“Dead Wrong”, Caravan of Thieves

https://open.spotify.com/track/0GySTVKRyq0GLVQ1NVM486?si=sAfhHjDySXCuhdksqNh5lA

“Smackwater Jack”, Carol King

https://open.spotify.com/track/0PrW6YZOBGeukTkvJsSIV3?si=zDUJs-WkRJ-8WssXsVH8Kw

“You Don’t Mess Around With Jim”, Jim Croce

https://open.spotify.com/track/5yrsBzgHkfu2idkl2ILQis?si=zJOj5m_nSF64vvOYBKKgpg

“Aqualung”, Jethro Tull

https://open.spotify.com/track/5UuikgHTxSRFRnC0zXx10i?si=F1JyCovQSKebnds9q7uyQA

“Bullet the Blue Sky”, U2

https://open.spotify.com/track/1C6Tmo58WMtnAPdxYz9qCz?si=enw2FaNrR3a4-xDfu3ZDFA

“Barracuda”, Heart

https://open.spotify.com/track/4KfSdst7rW39C0sfhArdrz?si=2T_BMqj6RKC_YIiqTJXC2A

“Kiss with a Fist”, Florence + the Machine

https://open.spotify.com/track/0jv5OcbvTUHgO8FgHhya8b?si=yAVK0GMzQpi6_Bu0Zu0Huw

“Simple Twist of Fate”, Joan Baez

https://open.spotify.com/track/1738E8lzksWSBktLeMU7I0?si=GGbRAzQmQUqBPWB0DuAw_g

“Haunt Me”, Caravan of Thieves

https://open.spotify.com/track/6cvi2L5lnRdGzWyaDYLroj?si=zvuehwlVRIGUy7AkIHMjgQ

“I Don’t Even Know Myself”, The Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/3GvqSAsapwHOtkCvAEMz7m?si=C8H9etBiSFOqivSoYPoJqw

“Don’t Dream It’s Over”, Crowded House

https://open.spotify.com/track/7G7tgVYORlDuVprcYHuFJh

“Behind Blue Eyes”, the Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/2X59ZxwE9x4pWnxsxKhr1E?si=VexoFuzQQOyU3ZRJXNoHjQ

“Zombie”, Bad Wolves

https://open.spotify.com/track/1vNoA9F5ASnlBISFekDmg3?si=YtslFj_OSuWG1Oo4iy9MSw

“Lithium”, Nirvana

https://open.spotify.com/track/2YodwKJnbPyNKe8XXSE9V7?si=dBJqcXEmQPeLHZK9aZ2Uog

“Poison”, Fuzz and Carrie

https://open.spotify.com/track/4p6rjTYuzVI5GF69weVjpQ?si=ISnJ_z7UTu-9zWd_hUMQoA

“Away From the Sun”, 3 Doors Down

https://open.spotify.com/track/28D7fJlDAIaOqzSgPyD5KD?si=e-EM2YiWRfusHDMbJS9o0g

“Did She Mention My Name”, Gordon Lightfoot

https://open.spotify.com/track/6Gza5NA3e2TPoI7YJGeqSI?si=wYuUskeQRuq-3ZtN0onHwg

“Distant Sun”, Crowded House

https://open.spotify.com/track/4oh6NKtMdiXIhgGGQBR09b?si=RTfEYLb2TLyTPfINoaKOMg

“King Midas in Reverse”, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

https://open.spotify.com/track/41WDVYmXv6ybPR1RrIhFcs?si=3wgrvt_dTAGLA3035hOh3w

“Bring Me to Life”, Evanescence

https://open.spotify.com/track/646J2jOtUe4Jflrmh6JFjN?si=SR140c9cRk2bWrRr_falEQ

“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”, Eurythmics

https://open.spotify.com/track/1TfqLAPs4K3s2rJMoCokcS?si=74GKruYsSaOwv2zDAgtLNQ

“Murder by Numbers”, The Police

https://open.spotify.com/track/13DqH0mXW0V1VJm41ZMZHW?si=g7agh27tT6KdpWWp-jH04Q

“Nina Cried Power”, Hozier, Mavis Staples

https://open.spotify.com/track/7wR5r0KYGXBpyWXCdyYs3F?si=C64ockP6QM2of2uo0IbHyw

 “Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)”, Joan Baez

https://open.spotify.com/track/11GpBFvo5JBTew2CE21M5d?si=NAMpT3kaQkGxcSKiRDd7rA

“Music Must Change”, The Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/7aoWJCA8U8QoCvbtGezBIS?si=BIkONJjlR4Sw7H6-zDyrgg

“Turning Away”, Dougie MacLean

https://open.spotify.com/track/5bJlCNnHM5Tdrh21a3XGNd?si=Kwp_VCEcT6K-ZIyatYQKOA

“Ghost in this House”, Alison Krauss

https://open.spotify.com/track/33jXZCskHTfXtmBd2EImNy?si=cOZnlem_RTWhVQRPq0VY7w

“Hallelujah”, Judy Collins & Bhi Bhiman

https://open.spotify.com/track/49XoJy0tbGePCe6DugjsO6?si=naCFzUrfRcCsKiAJvTQtwA

“Scarborough Fair/Canticle”, Simon & Garfunkel

https://open.spotify.com/track/6vmprkXeV1EcImj65DSHql?si=7Zqqnb0BQm-pCuKe8dcDVA

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, Crosby, Stills, & Nash

https://open.spotify.com/track/2PuUFT13yCzUOZun94WOXv?si=9B51USLOQ_yheWyb5rm3rQ

“Eye of the Tiger”, Survivor

https://open.spotify.com/track/2KH16WveTQWT6KOG9Rg6e2?si=Z42ZycU8T3y8bLWBJ8bIkA

“End of the World”, Great Big Sea

https://open.spotify.com/track/0IuFrRjF9IMV2zXXLahHfI?si=47Hki_GMTgugVlqGoQ2pxg

“Catch Me Now I’m Falling”, The Kinks

https://open.spotify.com/track/4Md3PxO2w79RXJtWfDv7PH?si=mue8k4sKSXqnE5beBTRYzw

“Had Enough”, The Who

https://open.spotify.com/track/6l8XuZbtjQbF9qwc7niScP?si=11jLlWY1RIOJN3H8i-uLrA

“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, Pat Benitar

https://open.spotify.com/track/0vOkmmJEtjuFZDzrQSFzEE?si=AAJpb6KjRwuFeYdgVpzSeA

 “Bury Me With My Guns”, Bobaflex

https://open.spotify.com/track/5tjEFjXJZOiFYfUsH1L6D3?si=GOYdbkWpR02b3nP33l_6GQ

“Surrender”, Cheap Trick

https://open.spotify.com/track/2ccUQnjjNWT0rsNnsBpsCA?si=3X1Afr4BSzqs7y1hmLseWg

“Hurts So Good”, John Mellencamp

https://open.spotify.com/track/67eX1ovaHyVPUinMHeUtIM?si=Q-FGnVqiSK-Lp-eY5lDhEA

“Walls”, Gordon Lightfoot

https://open.spotify.com/track/3d465okspe05389wYzzxUs?si=7KGixHYvT8u07-8SCD3oew

“The Trapeze Swinger”, Iron & Wine

https://open.spotify.com/track/2m0t8SqIROCNqlYz9NJWb7?si=nTCA81yCSDWQv7rP5CSH-A

“Fortune”, William Fitzsimmons

https://open.spotify.com/track/5UcsxVPmXd974EkMtowmNV?si=c1cyeyUFRXCjbNStuG7-_A

“Three Rounds and a Sound”, Blind Pilot

https://open.spotify.com/track/44BGoGw0sUc0Txh8Y4ZyFg?si=-yFZpLPsQIa8--aBjm85Zw

“With or Without You”, U2

https://open.spotify.com/track/2x45xqISlmmDJqxOqr8BuS?si=I9zuF3LLSViNLxxeA7KY6Q

“Medley: The Loner, Cinnamon Girl, Down by the River”, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

https://open.spotify.com/track/2eOjdOOIajxsonr2arkfie?si=TrWQ-qXVTM27_ebwK_bSsA

“Gravity”, Vienna Teng

https://open.spotify.com/track/4pYag7Qcr2q7U0h6NmfMW9?si=6NqqAbDdQ2i-WfLcwh_yrQ

“What the Water Gave Me”, Florence + the Machine

https://open.spotify.com/track/3RiOPzAvhNKuMIdPYOrKV8?si=vS7jyqrjTWWVH-bh3tei1A

“Name”, Goo Goo Dolls

https://open.spotify.com/track/1G8jae4jD8mwkXdodqHsBM?si=rrNefSHtQZyPW8gUECWblA

Part 1 2  3 5

[topmixtrends]

CRITICAL CONSENSUS HOLDS that Wes Anderson movies are about loss. For some artists, aestheticism acts as a kind of spider’s silk: a complexly structured beauty proves best for binding and healing whatever wound. As with a play by the unloved Wilde or a mazurka by the exiled Chopin, the sheer symmetrical precision of an Anderson film knits up and covers over trauma the way that Richie Tenenbaum’s bandages knit up his slashed wrists.

But Isle of Dogs, the director’s most recent stop-motion effort, is not a movie about loss. It’s not even about losing, nor about the ethical and aesthetic miracle of sustaining a marvelously well-ordered fantasy in the face of devastation — you know, that whole Anderson thing.

By contrast, Isle of Dogs is a movie about finding: finding a dog, finding your friends and family, finding your purpose and your identity. So it is slightly difficult to integrate it into the Anderson oeuvre: its primary affect is not sorrow or melancholy but anger, its aesthetic a kind of closely controlled, roiling ickiness: packs of grimy dogs explode into fights, samurai heads fall off, planes burst into immaculate balls of cotton-fluff smoke, sushi fish are hacked up squirmingly alive. At every point in the film (and the film is surprisingly unpleasant to watch for precisely this reason), Anderson seems to ask what forms, what styles, are commensurate to rage — and not just to rage but to a double-pronged, rage-driven teen quest to defeat the patent unfairness of the world.

A first answer would appear to be taiko drumming: in a well of light, surrounded by darkness, three well-fleshed, bare-chested adolescents hammer out a theme by Oscar-winner Alexandre Desplat. We are then drawn into an epic expository sequence about a centuries-old conflict between the dogs of Japan and the cat-loving Kobayashi dynasty, which still controls the fictional Uni Prefecture, which in turns contains the fictional city of Megasaki. Cut to the issuing of a municipal decree by the mayor of Megasaki, who is also the current head of the Kobayashi dynasty, 20 years in the future, as measured from our heterodiegetic present: infected with something called “Dog Flu,” all of the city’s dogs are to be quarantined on Trash Island, now known as the Isle of Dogs. The mayor’s ward, Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin), aged 12 — granted, not quite a teen, but pissed as hell, a classic Anderson pubescent — watches from the shadows as his beloved guard dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber), is sent off in a crate as proof that his guardian means business.

Revealed mostly in flashbacks, Spots’s fate furnishes one of the film’s intricate, Andersonian subplots; just as crammed with reversals, the A story details Atari’s quest to find Spots on Trash Island. He’s helped by a pack of alpha dogs voiced by regular Anderson collaborators: former house pets Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray), and Duke (Jeff Goldblum), plus Chief (Bryan Cranston), a former stray. If this sounds cute, well, it isn’t. The film’s violence is remarkably violent. Chief’s a scrapper: in his first scene he chews off another dog’s ear. It sits like a hot-sauced chicharron in the center of the screen, vaguely horrid and blood-spotted, until it’s dragged away by a rat. As they journey, the dogs pass through a series of gorgeously bleak landscapes, arguing among themselves all the while. The group’s conflicts usually center on Rex, head of the pets — who wants to help Atari — and Chief, sole gutter spawn, who’s keeping an open mind on the question of whether the dogs should just eat him. Cranston-as-Chief sometimes sounds so threateningly grumpy his performance sometimes loses its comic touch.

The B plot follows Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig), a foreign exchange student from Ohio and the second prong of Anderson’s preteen anger force. Tracy is a cub reporter on the Megasaki Senior High newspaper; she is also very noticeably pissed. She declares she’s angry at several points. She hates the mayor, hates that he’s corrupt, hates that no one in Megasaki can see how corrupt and unfair the treatment of its dog population might be. She chews her gum so hard you can hear it — that’s how pissed she is. As she discovers that a massive conspiracy lies behind the dogs’ expulsion, she only gets madder. On the hunt for a serum to cure the dogs of Trash Island, she bursts into a bar and screams down a bereaved scientist voiced by Yoko Ono. The scene is almost unwatchably unpleasant: anger is, based on the scantiness of its representation, more unsettling than fear or grief. On the other hand, there’s a certain bravery in showing us a character’s outrage, even at the cost of showing — or trying to show us — things atrocious enough to outrage both the character and the audience.

Unlike cats, who conspire with the corrupt Kobayashis, the dogs of Megasaki are fundamentally innocent — and so, of course, people would send them to hell, misdirection of our own pain or culpability onto the nearest possible Other being the single great talent of humankind. Thus scapegoated, the dogs form their own raggedy community. And again, an ugliness, an ickiness, holds the day despite the ingenuity, the sheer (and familiar) beauty of certain of Anderson’s shots. The emaciated, dirty, insomniac creatures we see in an early montage flirt with the Burton-esque. The atrocities perpetrated on another subcommunity of Trash Island dogs — the survivors of a medical facility where they were experimented on — leaves many of them with glass eyes, tubes sticking out of their necks, or, in the case of the old, much-bereaved dog Gondo (Harvey Keitel), a face that’s half-bald and decorated with medical tattoos. (Keitel’s monologue about the loss of his own fellow canine best friend — riven by instinctive howling — is the film’s best performance.)

Anderson has never shied from medical horror, torture, arterial blood, knives, arrows, severed heads, severed fingers, small arms, pepper spray, flamethrowers, sabers, shoves out of windows and down stairs, punches to the nose, and bigtime scuffles of the squad-of-baddies-on-squad-of-hapless-heroes or bro-on-bro or even the kid-on-kid kind. In Moonrise Kingdom, Social Services threatens 12-year-old Sam Shakusky with electric shock for refusing to betray his true love, Suzy Bishop; Anderson’s previous stop-motion film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, also sports with amputations and gory gallows humor. But Isle throbs with a much darker and more disturbing intensity than any of Anderson’s other films. It flirts with the thin representational line between slapstick and cruelty. In two different instances, we are left to think that our favorite characters — sweet innocent dogs — have either starved to death or been incinerated. Audible gasps of adult discomfort accompanied both scenes both times I saw the film. Not for nothing is its PG-13 rating for “violent images.”

But that makes the film a challenge — its nearest animal-tale analogue, so far as I can tell, is Art Spiegelman’s Maus. At the very least, it helps furnish some internal answer as to what to do about movies that, like this one, seem to make people very mad.

¤

Upon the film’s release, some heralded Isle of Dogs as prescient; they celebrated it, for example, for its celebration of student protest. But the idealism of the pro-dog movement as headed by the gum-snapping, conspiracy-busting Tracy doesn’t much resemble anything that young people might find to protest. In a certain sense — although no one in the film can know this, since the humans and the dogs in Megasaki don’t speak the same language — Chief and co. are quirky but loyal old-fashioned, white-sounding dudes who want nothing more than to find masters. Counterpoised against this wholesome if utterly outdated modus vivendi is a vision of fascist evil decidedly incomplete — a vision of camps and complete dog extermination that conjures up the Holocaust but that leaves aside other ways that fascism has expressed itself in any moment closer to Tracy’s and Atari’s or our own.

Whether it is appropriate to aestheticize the Holocaust is one question (shades of Maus again — but the film has none of the comic book’s claim to history); strong views on both sides would make for a real conversation. But the film has attracted even stronger takes. Though the critical dust has mostly settled, the film’s reception was hampered by charges of cultural appropriation: Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote a scathing review of what he saw as Anderson’s failures. But as a recent piece at The New Yorker rightly points out, Anderson did not invent the commodification or appropriation of Japanese culture, and Japonism was often aided and abetted by the Japanese. Indeed, the mayor of Megasaki is a thundering Asian dictator — very close to racist stereotype — but then again, he looks not a little like the thundering dictator-to-be who runs our country. And if Anderson’s fictional Megasaki is no more than a Japanese-ish place outside of history, that’s for better and for worse, too. We learn that Trash Island was repeatedly destroyed by the natural disasters to which the Japanese archipelago is in fact susceptible — volcanoes, tidal waves — but the film’s Japan does not seem to have known the unnatural disaster that killed twice as many people as the nearest natural contender. There is something moderately disturbing about a Japan that has never known the American atomic bomb — and then again, there’s something beautiful about it, too.

To me, there is nothing (or maybe only one thing) about Isle of Dogs that seems finally vehemently unjust. In many of its aspects — perhaps especially in its complex idealization of a universal emotion — the film is a reminder that our representations can adopt a playful, inter-cultural permeability. One hopes that at the same time, though, we are still pursuing, honing, and revising a better understanding of what kinds of representations by what kinds of people are just. This knowledge — which is made and assembled and broken down and reassembled collectively, like all other forms of knowledge — involves an awareness not only of race or ethnicity or nationality but of the intersections of those constructs with gender and class and then, too, with history and with the way that historiography is shaped by power relations. And at the same time, a person has to grapple with the idea that elite internationalist culture of the kind Anderson now incarnates exploits anyone who has no access to the free movement of capital between countries.

Which is to say that that process is long and complex as hell. No one artist can be expected to manage all of these relations; no one artist ever has. Ideally, too, no critic should fly off the handle without understanding what the purpose of their flying off the handle might be.

So here I go flying right off the handle. Watch me.

Wes Anderson might or might not want to know that his film’s vision of gender struck me as frankly awful. We have Tracy and Yoko in Isle of Dogs’s human population, but there are only three “bitches” in the film. And yes, “bitch” is the word the dogs use. It’s a joke that never lands anything but awkwardly, the kind of obsolete and embarrassing joke my dad would make to utter silence at the dinner table. One, the pug, Oracle (Tilda Swinton), is sexless; the other two, Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson) and Peppermint (Kara Hayward), function purely as love interests for alphas — or rather, and more grimly, as prospective mates. Nutmeg’s character arc consists solely of reversing her original objection that no one should bring puppies into the world of Trash Island and becoming a mother. (The change? The dogs escape from Trash Island.)

Nutmeg is a fancy show dog, and she sometimes does amazing tricks for Chief — balancing on her front paws while juggling invisible bowling balls or bowling pins — but this finally incomplete attempt to make her seem interesting only makes it too easy to imagine that with slightest story tweaks she could, er, actually do something. As it is, she exists solely to suggest to Chief that he should help Atari find Spots — that is, to use her sexual magnetism to help an emotionally stunted alpha male remember what’s important about life. And yes, Chief does eventually find a job and become a family man, a bizarrely schlocky outcome for any Anderson protagonist. Worst is that the proposition and subsequent worship of these sorts of faux-interesting female characters is an easily solvable problem, one that could have been fixed in any number of ways without altering the film’s vision.

Unless that vision is finally and most importantly the sad, worn-out vision of indomitable American masculinity. Chief can’t make a good house pet because, as he reminds us frequently, he bites. And why does he bite? He doesn’t know. He’s aggressive, he’s never known love — and even when he does, at film’s end, become a “good boy” and agree to serve as Atari’s new guard dog, he still struggles not to bite the shit out of visiting dignitaries. His ultimate virility is verified at the end of the film by Nutmeg, who assures him that she isn’t attracted to tame animals. Fine: Wildness is a virtue. But the film’s characterological structure suggests that Nutmeg only understands Chief because she is the tamest possible animal (that is, a show dog). The story of Chief and Nutmeg feels like a warmed-over Lady and the Tramp — when so much more might have been possible in terms of either character and in terms of their relationship.

Then again, their love could be read as an incarnation of the two central columns of Andersonian filmmaking and of Isle of Dogs itself: the unpredictable and chaotic in Chief, his rage and sorrow, is elaborated out into the exquisite comical expertise of Nutmeg’s tricks. And that is neither objectionable nor regrettable but rather the mark of a mature film, one that figures its own making inside itself.

The point, I think, is that any film is only ever the film that it is. But it also lives differently in each historical moment and persists or dies differently in the way that, not just each culture, but each one of us remembers or forgets it — how much we choose to argue and about what. For now, Isle of Dogs is, for me, memorable as one of the few testaments to how important it is to be pissed, how it is surprisingly possible to make and explore within a state of outrage, of conviction usually considered too much, too large, and too loud for complex and careful thought, much less for beautiful form.

¤

Marc Dragon lives and works in Los Angeles.

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