#since today is apparently when the form debuted in the anime and all that

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Mechakoopa

Debut: Super Mario World

So a very polite anon has humbly requested we write a post about Mechakoopa! They are apparently this person's favorite, so today's their lucky day! See I don't like to brag but, I'd definitely consider myself as part of the top 100 most qualified people to talk about Mechakoopas in the world! And who am I to turn down such a request?

Now the 90s you see, were a turning point for good Mr. Bowser here. With a brand new clown-helicopter thing to pilot around you might think he's all set, but what kind of self-respecting villain would he be without filling his evil lair with a number of Evil Wind-up Toys based on himself? So he does exactly that- a whole fourteen years before Mario stole his idea, mind you!

Yes, you read that right! Despite their name, Mechakoopas are tiny mechanical versions of Big Bowser himself, not just any run of the mill Koopa, which explains their green heads and funky hair! You know how Koopa is actually Bowser's Japanese name? Yeah! They could've localized them as Mecha-Bowsers, but Mechakoopa just flows nicer doesn't it? And he is still technically a Koopa!

"Yo, somebody rang?"

No!! Not you, Mecha-Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine (2002)!! You'll get your turn eventually! Geez! Anyway. Where was I. Oh! Yes!

This is the obligatory part of the post where I'm like “Get a load of this funky guy”! Get a load of this funky guy! Instead of reinterpreting Bowser’s design very literally in toy form, the Mechakoopa is very much its own beast, with its funny beak and little funny legs. Our aforementioned anon mentioned the wind-up key, and oh, what a wind-up key it is! And of course the raisin d’eclair- the fantastic little googly eyes! Oh where would we be without those googly eyes?

Naturally though, Bowser doesn’t just use his toys to populate his spooky castle- he always has to keep a few on his person! So he chucks them at you in the game’s final boss fight, but he didn’t account for the fact that, in this game only, Mario can throw upwards! Oh no! His one weakness! Being pelted with plastic!

By the by, I’ve always thought the original Mechakoopa sprite from Super Mario World looked super funky! The hair almost looks like its on fire! And I like the goofy grin. 

The Super Mario World cartoon decided to interpret this sprite by turning him into a horrible little man. No, I don’t want this! He shouldn’t have arms!

The Mechakoopa’s next appearance in a mainline Mario platformer was in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where they act... exactly the same as they do in Super Mario World! Cool! This basically established them as modern Mario enemies, but there isn’t much to say other than that!

Like all our posts about Common Mario Enemies, it would probably be boring if I just listed off their every appearance, so I will just bring up the ones that are worth mentioning. For example, Super Mario RPG! In this game, Bowser’s strongest special attack is Bowser Crush, which summons a giant Mechakoopa to stop on foes! According to the Player’s Guide, this Mechakoopa was a top secret weapon developed by Koopa researchers... to stomp flowers and scare butterflies! Wow! That is so so evil! These big guys would definitely live up to the name “Mecha-Bowser”! 

“Hey guys, are you talking about me?”

NO, we are NOT talking about you, Mecha Bowser (with no hyphen) from Mario Kart: Double Dash (2003)’s Bowser’s Castle course! Get the heck outta here! Gosh, some people just don’t know when they’re not wanted!

I am sure after all this you are wondering, they may be mechanical toys but can they do math? The answer is yes obviously! This is Mechakoopa from Mario Party Advance, and they’re a mathematician! They invented Mechakoopa’s Theorem, the very real mathematical theorem that we all used in school! Everyone give them a round of applause!

I’d like to bring up their appearances in the Mario & Luigi games, not because it’s particularly notable, but because of how much I like their sprite and idle animation! Look at the wind-up key spin around and the eyes go up and down! So cute! Oh, and also because in the Superstar Saga remake they replaced the Mecha-Chomp enemies (may god rest their souls)!

Super Mario Maker 2′s final update was an epic win and a #1 victory royale for Mechakoopa fans anywhere, since it not only added Mechakoopas to all four main game themes, but also two brand new variants: the Blasta Mechakoopa (in red) and the Zappa Mechakoopa (in blue)! 

As you might expect, they can Blast (missiles) and Zap (lasers) respectively! I’ve no idea why they added these random functionalities to Mechakoopas specifically, but they’re a lot of fun and some of the most unique projectiles in the game! Zappa? I barely know ‘a! 

Oh, and I almost forgot! They are in Super Smash Bros. as well! Bowser Jr.’s moveset is a treasure trove of little references to Mario gadgets, and even though Bowser no longer tosses these guys from his Clown Car, his son has taken up the job! Only in this game, Mechakoopas explode. Uh oh! They didn’t do that before! Still, I really like popping a Mechakoopa out of its Mechakoopa Compartment just to see it wander around the stage. It’s fun!

Now that’s all I have to say about good old Mechakoopas, but I’d like to give a special shoutout to this guy in particular- the Micro Mecha-Bowser, from Super Mario Galaxy! For a long time, I assumed they were just Mechakoopas with a different design... But this definitely looks like a beefed up version of the Mechakoopa, with their big goofy teeth, their pig nose and their funky cross-hair eyes! These dudes can breathe fire too, so they really are more like Bowser! And if there’s a Micro Mecha-Bowser, there’s gotta be a normal one!

“Whassup? I heard somebody call my name!”

Harumph! Nobody called you, Mecha-Bowser from Super Mario Galaxy (2007)’s Toy Time Ga- Er... hold on a second. You actually are exactly the person I was talking about after all! My mistake! Though I do wish you’d at least give us a heads up when you’re gonna show up, given you’re the size of a small planetoid!

Yeah, the Micro Mecha-Bowsers are named after this big robot from Toy Time Galaxy, Mecha-Bowser (not to be confused with Mecha-Bowser or Mecha Bowser)! Though I have to say, there isn’t much family resemblance! He’s so blue and un-turtle like! Still, this must’ve been my favorite mission in Galaxy as a kid- I’d replay it over and over again just because the idea of climbing on a giant planet-sized robot and dismantling it piece by piece was so cool! It was like Shadow of the Colossus before I knew what the heck that was!

Well that’s about the extent of the Mechakoopa family. Isn’t it fun? There’s a moral to be learned here, and it’s that, uh... little wind-up toys are very charming! Um, I suppose. Look, writing conclusions is hard! 

Mechakoopa

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Rocketear

The Rocketeer is a 1991 Disney movie set in 1930's America where a test pilot gets a jetpack and uses it to fight Nazis and— Wait, what? “Rocketear”? Oh, damn it!

Let's get into the eleventh (chronologically the seventeenth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Rocketear.

We start off with Carapace and Cat Noir struggling to hold back some T-Rexes brought back to life by a scientist Jurassic Park style. Seriously, they reference the movie in the same scene.

Why wasn't this the plot of the episode again?

After managing to tame the dinosaurs with a whistle of all things, Ladybug notices something's wrong with Nino after he gives the Turtle Miraculous back to her. Apparently, he's wondering why Rena Rouge (who he knows is Alya) wasn't recruited with him today. Ladybug tells him that he was the only help she needed today. In reality, it's because Alya has adjusted to her new role of supporting Ladybug behind the scenes in her new form, Rena Furtive.

And I'm not a fan of the new form. I get the camo, but it doesn't really help her blend in when her suit is bright blue. I think it's based off the arctic fox, but that animal is able to camouflage itself because it's fur matches the snowy environment. I'm sure a bright blue jumpsuit won't stand out when she tries to blend in at all. Also, the fact that Alya can just change her hero form gives even less excuses as to why Ladybug's new form is only when she uses her Lucky Charm.

Alya is struggling to keep this a secret from Nino because they don't have a lot of secrets in their relationship. Marinette says she can kind of get it because she had to keep her identity a secret from her friend and has to keep keeping her identity a secret from everyone else. Basically, she's telling Alya to suck it up because this is what being a superhero is.

So the next time she sees Nino, Alya tells him she's no longer Rena Rouge, but not about Rena Furtive, which troubles her. The very next scene shows Alya showing Marinette pictures she took of her new costume and asking her which version looks better.

You could always try reviewing Akuma fights. I heard there's one blog that does it when they're not criticizing the famous director Thomas Astruc on social media.

Yeah, in case you can't tell, Alya was only able to rent her brain for a few episodes because she really doesn't seem as understanding about being a superhero as she was in earlier episodes. In episodes like “Optigami” and “Sentibubbler”, we saw Alya use more strategy and show discretion as Rena Rouge, seemingly taking her job more seriously, but then this episode just had to go and piss it all away. I also love how the first time the animators made Alya's skin the same when she's transformed is in a single frame for a joke.

Alya thankfully deletes the picture, but Nino overhears her talking about struggling to find more content for the Ladyblog, and decides to go to the movies with her to help take her mind off things. Nino, in turn, proceeds to give the same reaction to the in-universe Ladybug movie that Astruc gives to the PV.

Apparently, that movie's already getting a sequel and it has a teaser. So was the sequel animated at the same time as the original like Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III?

Nino gets pissed the next movie in the Ladybug Cinematic Universe will feature Rena Rouge and not Carapace... even though Rena Rouge debuted first. The teaser then shows Rena Rouge falling for Cat Noir (yet another creative liberty taken by the writers or something Astruc's self-insert threw in himself), and takes it like it's the real thing. Dude, the first movie said Ladybug was afraid of cats, and the director yelled at the person it was based on for judging it. He clearly has a hard time distinguishing fiction from reality.

Alya leaves Nino early so she can go on patrol, but Nino sees Cat Noir heading out as well. He then watches a video on the Ladyblog where Alya praises Cat Noir which is totally not Astruc projecting or anything.

I don't know what your definition of a prince is, Alya, and I honestly don't want to know.

So Nino takes this as evidence that Alya is in love with Cat Noir and decides to tell Adrien, who naturally laughs him off. And just before you think we have an episode where Adrien plays the straight man, Adrien decides to visit Alya because he's afraid he accidentally charmed Alya.

Yes, because Cat Noir is so charming, girls are just fighting over him, aren't they?

We then cut to a black and white film noir monologue by Nino (dressed like a detective with a fake mustache), who decides to spy on Alya. When Cat Noir asks Alya if she is attracted to him, she naturally laughs him off, though Cat Noir is thankfully a good sport about it, even giving her a hug to apologize. Unfortunately, Nino took this the wrong way.

The next day at school, Nino takes Adrien into his “office” (it's really an excuse to reuse the boiler room setpiece), and shows him the picture of the hug. Adrien says that Alya would never fall for Cat Noir because she's always dedicated to finding out the truth and telling her boyfriend everything. What's Nino's retort?

Okay, several problems with this bit. First of all, why would Nino even tell Adrien any of this? What would it accomplish? Why not say all this to Alya while confronting her about her alleged unfaithfulness? Second, Ladybug didn't give Nino and Alya their Miraculous at the same time until it was an absolute emergency. She outright said in “Hero's Day” that she didn't have time to recruit Nino and Alya separately.

Ladybug: I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. I know I'm revealing your secret identities but I don't have time to find a good excuse to give them to you separately. Rena Rouge and Carapace, I need you both!

Nino and Alya kept their identities secret from each other until then, with Alya even keeping the fact she knew who Carapace was a secret as well. Nino didn't find out because “they don't hide anything from each other” (which I plan to talk about later).

Other than that, I actually liked Adrien in this scene. It was really investing to see him try to justify the whole secret identities rule while Nino blatantly said there was an exception. This is the kind of stuff I wanted to see when it came to Adrien doubting Ladybug, not him destroying things in his anger.

While Nino rants about how Cat Noir “stole” Alya from him, Shadowmoth sends an Akuma his way, turning him into Rocketear.

And the design he has is just boring. It's just a blue jumpsuit with some black spots that look like teardrops, a teardrop-shaped head and a visor. I think the reason this season's been relying more on past Akumas and using more Sentimonsters is because DQ is terrible at character designs. I mean, compare this suit with Aigraon from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (his Power Rangers counterpart is Wrench from Dino Charge).

The design does so much more with the teardrop motif, giving him a perpetually miserable face with tear lines going all over his body. Add that to a more diverse color scheme, and you have a much more visually stunning design. And this was created in real life, not rendered on a computer. I'm not sure if this is a budget thing or a laziness thing, but if it's the former, you really need to do better, animators.

The powers are meh, giving Nino the ability to fling explosive tears at enemies. It's a clever idea, and it makes sense he gets a power that parallels Cat Noir's, but I think maybe it would have been more interesting if he couldn't control the tears at all. Like, imagine if he was constantly crying like Blue Diamond, and with every tear he shed, Rocketeer could send it at whoever he felt was causing him misery, mainly Cat Noir, all while serving as a metaphor for people who blame others for their own personal issues. Better yet, make him look like the detective outfit Nino wore for the second act. It would have made him more unpredictable instead of making his tears generic projectile weapons.

Marinette and Alya see the fight and transform into Ladybug and Rena Furtive respectively, the former summoning her Lucky Charm, a projector. Is it just me, or has this been happening with Ladybug a lot recently?

Back to Rocketear, we get a good moment where Cat Noir intentionally lets the Akuma hit him so he can get a chance to resolve things diplomatically. See, this is a moment where Cat Noir's self-sacrificing nature feels heroic and not selfish like when he does it without Ladybug's permission to spite her. Unfortunately, it doesn't really go anywhere as Ladybug shows up and plays the recording Nino took (Alya found his phone earlier), while Rena Furtive uses her Mirage to give the audio to what actually happened that night.

Rena transforms back into Alya and embraces Rocketear, who apologizes to her for his behavior. And then he just... rejects Shadowmoth's power while looking like it wasn't that much effort.

At least when Chloe and Alya did it, we saw them struggling for a little longer. I guess maybe it's because Nino is motivated by his love for Alya, but I think it should have been fleshed out more. So Ladybug purifies the Akuma, gives Nino a Magical Charm, and Cat Noir is still unsure about his feelings for Ladybug at the moment, though they still pound it.

Back in his room, Adrien ponders why Alya and Nino get to know their identities while he and Ladybug can't, but Plagg points out it's because she's the Guardian. It's brief, but I do like seeing Adrien start to doubt Ladybug's judgment, and it looks like it'll foreshadow future episodes. This is a problem I've had since “Hero's Day”, and I'm glad the writers are finally acknowledging this double standard. I just hope they don't end up blaming Marinette for whatever happens later on.

Marinette, of course, apologizes for what happened between Alya and Nino, and I have to say... yeah, no. It's obviously Nino's fault here.

Nino really pushed personal boundaries in this episode, much like Marinette's friends in “Gang of Secrets”. Yes, honesty is a valuable trait, but sometimes, people have secrets they want to keep to themselves. Nino's idea of “not hiding anything from each other” is somewhat controlling, like he's demanding Alya tell him everything whether she wants to or not. The fact that he immediately assumed Alya was cheating on him without giving her freedom to make her own choices doesn't make him look good. Let's be honest, a more realistic outcome would be Alya choosing to break things off with Nino or at least lecture him about how she can do what she wants and keep the secrets she wants. But instead...

And that's how the episode ends.

Okay, Marinette just said she trusted Alya to make the right decision, but I highly doubt she meant this. Marinette strictly said Alya had to keep Rena Furtive a secret, and now she's telling Nino this despite the risk? The whole reason Marinette and Luka broke up was because Marinette had to keep her secrets from Luka, but now it's okay for Alya to be completely honest? How is this not a double standard?

This episode was just dull, and there’s not even much I can really say about it.. There were a handful of standout moments, and the stuff with Adrien was somewhat compelling, but Nino's behavior was just insufferable and dragged the episode down. The Akuma fight was weak, only lasting about four minutes at most, and while the Lucky Charm was more creative this time, the plot was just frustrating. It's really one of the weaker episodes this season.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch the better Rocketeer.

[five-rivers]

Please don't make tinyToshi dislike how he turned out. All Might is /exactly/ the kind of hero a tween would want to be. Make Aizawa and Gran despair because of it. The gutpunch is his skinny form.

Sequel to this.

.

"So," said Toshinori, "what's old me like?"

"You're not old," said Midoriya, earnestly.

"Not right now," said Toshinori, "but, I mean, fifty is practically ancient."

"What does that make me, hmm?" asked Recovery Girl, reaching over to tap his shins with her cane. She'd healed him a moment ago, and was now checking for side effects.

"Someone who aged very gracefully."

Recovery Girl gave Toshinori a very hard look. "Well," she said, "other than being a teenager, you are now in perfect health."

"I told you so," said Toshinori.

Recovery Girl smacked his shins again. "Stay there while I take care of Midoriya-kun. I'll want to check you again in an hour."

Midoriya, it turned out, had broken a leg and several small bones in his foot.

"That's not too bad, then," said Midoriya.

"Yes, it is," said Aizawa, pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes drifted over to Tsukauchi, then to Toshinori. "Detective Tsukauchi. Would it be helpful for you to have another set of eyes on Yagi-san?"

"It would depend on whose eyes they were," said Tsukauchi.

"I really don't need to be babysitted," protested Toshinori. "I can take care of myself."

"Adult you is worse than Midoriya," said Aizawa. "So, no, you can't. And it would be Midoriya's eyes, since he isn't joining our morning exercise today."

"What?" said Midoriya. "But, Aizawa-sensei, the door wasn't my fault-"

"This isn't a punishment, Midoriya-kun. This is about your health. I'm not going to have you participate while you're drowsy from Recovery Girl's quirk and your bones are still fragile." Then he sighed, deeply, as if he knew his next words would give him pain. "Besides, don't you want to spend some time with All Might? Before he turns back into his usual... bombastic self."

Midoriya opened his mouth, closed it, and started looking between Toshinori and Aizawa, conflict clear on his face. Toshinori saw the exact moment when his decision was made, although it was mared by a split second of what almost looked like a horrified realization.

A few minutes later, Toshinori watched with amusement as tiny old Recovery Girl shooed out the two adult heroes (don't you have classes to teach?) and Todoroki (don't you have a class to attend?).

"So, uh." Midoriya cleared his throat and massaged his apparently-healed foot. "You know when you'll be turning back?"

"Nope," said Toshinori, cheerfully. "But I might as well enjoy it while it lasts, right? Not often a quirkless person gets to come to UA. Even if I'll manifest a quirk later. Really hasn't sunk in yet. It'll be a strength enhancer? What does that look like? What do I look like?"

"Uh," said Midoriya, as Detective Tsukauchi sank into a nearby chair and buried his face in his hands. "Here, let me show you." He bounced off the bed and walked over to Toshinori's, sitting next to him.

Then he showed Toshinori his phone. There was a picture of an extremely muscular blond man on the lock screen. He was wearing a very cool jumpsuit that Toshinori was honestly going to be jealous of forever. He waited for Midoriya to unlock the phone.

Midoriya did not unlock the phone.

Wait. Wait.

"Is that me?"

"Haha, yep," said Midoriya, nervously.

"Oh, gosh," said Toshinori. "I'm going to be shredded. Do I have a six pack? Is that a real six pack? Midoriya-kun, please tell me I have a six pack."

"You have a six pack," said Midoriya, who had, for some reason, gone bright red.

"That's so cool! Take that, Hirota-kun! I can too exercise! I hope he choked when I debuted."

"A-All Might!"

Toshinori cackled. "How tall am I? I know I'm already pretty tall, but I get taller, right?"

"You're two hundred and twenty centimeters tall, exactly," said Midoriya.

"I get so tall," whispered Toshinori. "Can you show me more?"

"Ah, yeah," said Midoriya. Then he swallowed. "But, um, there's something else you need to know, and I don't, and I don't know if Detective Tsukauchi already told you..."

"There wasn't really time to tell him everything," said Tsukauchi, "and with other people listening in..."

"But Yamada-sensei and Aizawa-sensei already know about his other form, so..."

"The driver," said Tsukauchi, "does not. Nor does your friend."

"Oh," said Midoriya.

"I have another form?" asked Toshinori, almost vibrating with glee. "That sounds like those really old animes. You know the ones."

"Well, um." Midoriya fiddled with his phone. "This, uh, this is also you."

Toshinori blinked at the picture in front of him. It was of Midoriya (who looked thrilled beyond all reason and also had an ice cream cone) and standing next to him was--

"Is that a skeleton?" he asked.

"It's you," said Midoriya.

"It's you," confirmed Tsukauchi. "It's a national secret, but about six years ago, you were severely injured. Your quirk lets you transform, but when you're not using it..." The detective gestured at Midoriya's phone.

"Oh," said Toshinori. "Well. I don't know how to feel about that right now." Sick, maybe? It was certainly a gut-punch. "You couldn't have let me live in blissful ignorance for the time being? At least until I turned back into old me?"

Midoriya winced as if he'd been slapped. "Th-that's kind of why I'm telling you," he said. "It's a secret. S-so, if you turn back, I mean, I don't know if you'll be in your muscle form or not when you turn back, and you don't know when you'll turn back, and if it's in public..."

Tsukauchi cursed quietly. "I didn't think about that," he said. "There isn't a better place than UA, anyway, with all the people who want to kill him."

"So," said Midoriya quietly, looking first at Toshinori, then and Tsukauchi, "what are we going to do?"

"UA has many unused rooms," interrupted Recovery Girl. "I'm sure Nezu would let you use one. Or you could stay in his office, for the time being."

"You mean," said Toshinori, determined to make this fun again, "I could meet Nezu? Like, the real Nezu?"

"That's quite right!" crowed a squeaky voice. "It's nice to see you again, Yagi-kun!"

[popculturebuffet]

The Owl House: Enchanting Grom Fright: Happy Valentine’s Gays

Happy Valentine’s Day owl ladies, gentleman and non-binary folks! It’s time to finish off this holiday in proper style with a LONG overdue review of enchanting Grom Fright and even longer overdue coverage of the Owl House.  The Owl House was one of the best debuts of last year if not THE best, only in contention because Close Enough also started last year and looks to surpass regular show in terms of quality. But with stunning animation, tons of representation, and colossal worldbuilding. And given how i’m on record for thinking Star Vs went so far down the tubes they bumped into where Cthulu is sleeping, it’s nice to have another magic based show that seems to be on the right track: carefully building i’ts world, supporting cast and for today’s topic main romance. It also rather than just obliquely hint one character was bi and the other pan, actually goes out of it’s way to have a bisexual protaginst with a gay love intrest. As my good friend @jess-the-vampire has brought up quite a bit, star had plnety of options. .but no willingness to actually campaign for any queer rep, the way Gravity Falls head Alex Hirsch tried to, he still gets credit for trying, and Owl House creator Dana Terrace gets full credit for. 

Terrace got her start working on Gravity Falls in line production before working her way up to directing for ducktales, being instrumental in how Webby was animated and how she moves and acts, and being the director for several classic season one episodes including “Woo-Hoo!”, “The Spear of Selene” , “Day of the Only Child!” which was one of my faviorites from season 1 and “The Beagle Birthday Massacre!”. And while I can’t 100% confirm she’s the only part responsible for starting Weblena, given she was director on an episode where a lot of the romantic subtext was in the visuals, she certainly helped so thank you Dana. Thank you a lot. Their adorable. Point is she’s a talented lady and wasn’t satisfied with directing, so she pitched her own show, combining tons of ides and stuff including of all things, Pokemon Red. I checked the article wikipedia had sourced, it was one of her happy childhood memories as it was one of the last things her dad gave her. Awwwwwww. That’s as sweet as it is painful. She’s also currently dating Alex Hirsch, something I was entirely unaware of but find also adorable. Point is i’m glad I looked into her as she’s a very nice person, and very much my kind of weirdo and i’m happy for her sucess and her singuarly weird show that sprung from that sucess. 

Now that part of it’s out of the way the episode itself was an uphill battle as you’d expect. As anyone familiar with this blog is aware, but just in case your new, you tend to hear me bitching about Disney’s handling of queer represntation a LOT

For the most part Disney’s pretty bad at it: There was the string of “FIRST GAY CHARACTER IN AN X” they had going for a while.. that consisted of a character I dind’t realize was gay, a kiss I didn’t see, and a talk with a character who I honestly wouldn’t of been looking for had disney not patted themselves on the back with some giant sized hands because htey saved some pym particles for that occasion. Ducktales was unable to have Penumbra come out as gay more clearly because I don’t know Ducks can’t be day.. but they can be IMPLIED to be gay or pansexual as hard as the crew possibly can so they win anyway. Pixar was able to have a gay lead character for one of it’s sparks shorts out and even focused on him coming out of the closet and it’s very good and something I WILL give Pixar credit for... but not Disney Plus who go out of their way to not mention the lead being gay.. despite the fact the short opens with a gay space cat riding a gay space dog out of a rainbow and then it being revaled our lead is in a relationship not long into the short. My point is the idiots who won’t watch this for having gay characters are just going to turn it off, who cares what they think, why are you like this Disney. They need to do better, and be better and i’m getting tired of this shit.

That being said... this episode is a step in the right directoin as despite having to get past one obstructive asshole, not her words but damn if it isn’t the truth, as the rest of hte execs were fine with having a gay character, Terrace fought hard for it and WON, having a clearly gay character, and a clear road to a gay romace as the lead one, all because she wanted some representation in her works. So to honor this, I present this review in honor of love, effort and saying screw you to not having represntation because money. Join me under the cut and allt hat. 

We open in the owl house, in the owl house, duck dodge push and shove, it’s how we show our love in the.. you get the point. Luz is learning yet another Rune, this time plant runes.. and already something I love about the series pops up: the fact Luz’s rise in skill is gradual but noticable. Each spell noticably improves in potency with time,  going from simple lights to shaping them into simple constructs, and learning to control or time her spells and glpyhs so they launch she she says so, with each one getting more powerful the more she learns. And on top of that osmething I just noticed on rewatch of this episode is her tecnique in finding them evolved, something I dind’t notice the first time because I hadn’t fully caught up and checked this one out to see if Disney would actually let them go through with it.. and they did. Point is her first spell is found by accident, her second by realizing how her magic works fundemntally, both require skilled deduction and on the fly thinking and casting, so she’s already pretty skilled.. but now sh’es ACTIVELY seeking out a new spell here for the first time. She knows how she gets them, she knows each school is tied to a form, and she likely got the plant from williow since that’s her thing and she’s a saint. A demon but also a saint. They can have those too. It’s what I assume relicor is. 

I miss that goblin demon bat man. Point is it shows an evolution in Luz’s thinking: while it’s a subtle thing she took a more proactive approach this time even if it took a lot of practice.. and it pay soff as by the time of her next rune, while it’s once again sorta handed to her she has less time to learn it, almost none, and finds it singed onto a ball.. and learns it effortlessly to the point where by the next episode it’s a crucial plot point. IT’s subtle but clever character progression, and stuff I really enjoy, showing our hero going from a bit inept but not helpless or incomptient.. to a force to be reckconed with and far more clever and strategic than yo’ud expect given her sometimes reckless and almost always happy go lucky attitude. 

Luz worries teaching King about the internet was a bad idea because he gets excited about a literal cat fight which .. yeah... it was a bad idea but not because of that.. but because next he finds someone saying the earth is flat and she wisely yanks it away. It’s.. very sad that the absolutley maddening and easily debunked flat earth theory is still RELATIVLEY more sane than the stuff we’ve had pop up during the trump era and the cornoavirus pandemic. 

But one of the main conlficts of the episode pops up as Luz’s mom messages her and Luz can’t bring herself to tell her anything and just sends a thumbs up.  I do think this episode helps even things from the pilot a bit as it was a bit lopsided: While I got that Camillia was genuinely struggling with how to deal with Luz, and was offered an out and had to take it... the fact she sees NO problem with the normalcy camp, which comes off intentioanlly or not a sa parallel to conversion camps or camps to make autistic kids “Normal”. And as someone whose both bisexual and autistic, I naturally relate to luz way more as someone whose intrests sometimes just don’t quite fit with everyone else, and who dosen’t get how bad some of their actions were.  THat’s why this episode feels like a necessary course correction: Luz is shown to genuinely love her mama and feel guilty.. but we see camilia genuinlely loves and supports her daughter a bit more. While it was clear from the pilot this shows it more, with her genuinely just wanting to know her daughter’s okay and checking up on her, and giving me the feeling that possible consequences or no if something bad WAS happening or she didn’t hear from her for a long time, she would’ve drove up there to get her. It feels like the writers realized the implications they accidently created and wanted to fix it, though I can’t say for certain. But if so good on you for course correcting, not every show does that. 

But King encourages her, telling her she’s doing the right thing by lying and to “trust the demon on your shoulder”. Keep this in mind for later, but that joke is great on it’s own. But soon i’ts time for school and Hooty.. barfs out Luz’s books for her. 

I haven’t been this disturbed since.. (Looks at the clock) About 2 maybe three hours ago when I watched a man have, if apparently shorter than the oriiginal cut as I wanted to see everyone else’s reactions dammit, sex with hiis car which was possesed by the mad ghost of his dead wife. Because that’s the kind of stuff i’m into when i’m not reviewing stuff. And before that Tinky.. just everything about tinky. 

I do not have enough time to get into TInky here or why he exestially horrifies me. Or why Jeff blim is a living god. I will save that for a proper review if I have the time tomorrow. Point is I saw a lot today and that still tops it. Willow and Gus are likewise grossed out and want to leave. 

Cut to school where Luz wonders what’s with all the decorations.. that remind me of this honestly

And frankly given the whole state of the boiling isles it REALLY wouldn’t surprise me if the decorations were indeed well cooked faces. But i’ts Grom time, which means elaborate gromposals (Some Dude asks Skara out with a beating heart and an elaborate medical proposal.. which.. points for effort. And for using an actual heart. Couldn’t get one for mine. ), dancing and someone being chosen for Grom Queen. WHich Willow hints isn’t as nice as that sounds. Before we can get into that though Amity bumps into them and gets into a tizzy before meekly greeting “Luz.. and Co”. which.. not going to lie.. is my faviorite gag of the season. Just htw way she adds them and just the way Willow and Guz both smile widely at it as if to say “That’s us!”. Amity drops a note and snatches it back. This will be important later, you all know why, point is Amity becomes Grom Queen.. and is heavily depressed with Luz following her to find out why.  At the gym.. she does indeed ifnd out why: Turns out Grom is not some mutation of an earthname but is based around a horrifying entity lurking beneath the isles, Gromethious the Fear Bringer, who emerges from his slumber once a year and must be fought back and brings out his target’s greatest fears. Just like groundhog day only with less time loops and rodent abuse. Amity is scared of hers, and i’ll obviously get into this more later, and Luz simply suggests asking bump to opt out and Amity appricates the support. Awwww. 

Luz heads home and we find out Eda is chaperoning and King is mcing. Eda is also rocking a suit. Just damn girl, damn. But Luz considers taking her place.. and gets laughed at, with Eda assuming she’ll have to save her and King just being kind of a dick. I mean he’s a loveable thoroughly cuddly dick but he’s still a dick... just more like a stuffed plushie of one.  So basically exactly like Tinky. Look I mention him more than once in this review he dosen’t put me in the bastard box. It’s a great system.  Naturally this makes Luz more determined than ever to prove herself and she finds Amity in the night, with Amity having been unable to get out of it.. and Bumps a resonable guy, he just wants a substitute and no one wants the job.. except Luz who galdly volunteers and insists ntohing scares her before the giant spider on the back of her head proves otherwise. Because of course it does, spiders are fucking terrifying. Kill then all.. except the pokemon ones. Galvaltula are sweethearts. As are Ariadoses. Sweethearts who can elctorcute or poison you but still. 

So the next way Luz begins preparing.. and by that I mean it’s time for training. Sadly we don’t get an episode of Luz and Amity getting trapped in an 80′s fashion montage... I mean yes Rise of the TMNT also did that plot the same year, but we had two diffrent plots about someone getting trapped in an eldtrich sitcom and a THIRD this year, all entertaingly unique. Though we do get Luz pulling out an otter suit that’s adorable and she sadly still hasn’t worn yet. “This one says i’m an otter, with a dark side”. She also got thrown out of a school dance for.. wearing an otter suit. Okay the other things we saw in the pilot were understandable but htis is just.. baffling. Who cares what you wear to a dance as long as it isn’t horribly racist of nothing at all. 

Damn you flanders and your glorious ass. Point is Amity shows up and threatens hooty’s life because.. he’s hooty. The fact he isn’t dead already is a testiment to how badass he is and how much money he’d cost Eda to replace. Owl Tubes don’t come out of a stygian hole in the unvierse every day you know. That’s only every three years. It’s basic styigan owl tube science. 

But Amity wants her to be ready and that she’ll have to face her greatest fear.. and cue hooty popping up, poking amity in the face and asking if she wants to know her greatest fear. Really he can clearly hear everything in the house given he heard that, so he heard the death threat he just chose to ignore it. That.. was a mistake. And by mistake I mean we get a hilarious cut to the outside of the house as Luz tries to stop her love intrest from murdering her second mom’s tube monster. The result is some bandages and an eyepatch. To be fair that last one was just flaring up from a  previous beating. 

For this solem task of training, Amity has brought in her local disaster bisexuals.. aka her twin siblgins Eldric and Elmyra, whose greatest fears are dying alone and being stuck with Eldric. Both understandable. They conjur luz’s greatest fears which are.. some of the funniest shit I heard all year.. and also very relatable. Human souls in cat bodies, which is genuinely terrifying good job Luz, Jerks on the internet who mansplain things, relatable, and soy milk. 

But Amity knows this is just the openign act. it needs to be something deeper.. so while Luz dosen’t realize it’s probably her mom issues she brings up her issues with her other mom: that Eda dosen’t think she can do this. Hence we get a giant eda putting Luz in a babychair. Before we can unpack how wrong that sentence sounded, Eda comes out, and marvels at how hot giant her is. But she’s quickly distracted from sex with a giant version of herself, which is not an easy feat, by the relization “Wait Luz is going to fight grom isn’t she.. fuck i’m going to have to save her”, though Luz holds firm on doing it to prove she’s fine and dosen’t need to be saved constantly. it’s a good conflict. Eda IS right that Luz is not ready for this alone, that she’s overcompensating and that Eda would, in normal circumstances be the one to rescue her. As we’ll see it’s not her who does it but still, were this any other foe she probably would be. But Luz’s motivations are equally understandable: She wants to help her friend not have to do this and she wants to prove she can do it. She just wants her mentor, the only person in her life up to meeting her that GNEUINELY supported her in magic to respect her. To have faith in her and actually see how far she’s come. And given how her own mother writes off her dreams, if not unrealistically, and before this she had no friends or support system to speak of outside her mom, it’s easy to see why this is so improtant to Luz: she just wants to make the one person in her life whose ever support her actually think it was worth it when in truth Eda already thinks it does and just dosen’t want her to die. 

She’s just not good with talking to her or not condescending to her as her own ego is stacked sky high, probably because the whole curse thing meant Eda was an outcast by default and the system wants to either chain her to one form of magic and one only or shackle her to them as a hired goon. Her ego, while justified, is also a defense mechanism: a way to shield herself from the fact almost no one cares about her and one of the few people who DOES, dosen’t care what she wants or needs. Once the curse happened she lost just about everything and had to rebuild and thus build up walls around herself and kept everyone else at arms length till Luz changed her for the better. It’s just a tragic clash of two wills both with similar problems but both unwilling to talk about them. 

But with time up, our heroes need to get to the diggity dance. So they indeed do and we get some fun sight gags, Willow makes corsages,  that one girl with the cresent head somehow ended up with Mathomule and is not happy, as anyone who ends up with him should. And it’s time for Luz to face her destiny.. in a tux with a tutu because of course, and Amity likes it because also of course. 

IT’s time to rumble, with King getting nervous due to eda’s prodding about mcing since his co-mc gus is really good at it, and introducing our champion.

No wait sorry he’s still trapped in Mojoworld. no it’s still Luz who shows off a seasons worth of skill by easily dispatching the first few fears and saying to grom let’s finish it.. before grom puts a tentacle on her head. 

It’s to downlaod her fear.. which is Camillia. Granted we could all see it coming but still Luz obviously can’t fight her own mother or her own overwhelming guilt.. her mom did hurt her.. but she gets why and just loves her and wants her to be proud but dosen’t know what to do: tell her the trutha nd possibly loose a happy and fufilling life or wait until it all blows up. It’s a painful choice. So luz and king end up running. King runs first because he can’t handle it and Gus talks him back into the groove while Luz runs away because she can’t fight her own mom, understandable, and Gus encourages king to lead the crowd which he does. Amity and Eda follow Luz. 

So Luz is backed down, facing down a monster tha’ts going to go on to everyone else next if she fails... and Eda prepares to interfere.. but it’s AMITY who faces her fear and dives in. And we find out just what her fear was as grom turns into a humanoid shape and rips the letter in half.. it was a grom invitation. Though conviently the who it’s adressed to was ripped out. 

And yeah not going to save this one: It’s Luz. You know it I know it I didn’t even hide it in the intro. Even before the reveal in a bit it was obvious. But it also makes perfect sense. I’ve avoided talking about her character arc up to this point because I was waiting for now. Amity’s growth is the third major arc of the season behind Luz’s slow learning of magic and eventually induction into hexside and eda’s curse, which I lump in with Lilith chasing her since both were mildly entertwined and then entirely are once the reveal hits in the finale. When we meet her she’s an outright bully.. but we slowly see there’s more there. That she’s not really HAPPY or content, is contstantly under pressure by her family name, is outright bullied by her own siblings who don’t understand her. So Luz coming in, seemingly only being intrested in magic because i’ts neat.. understandably bothers her. She’s not a great person, bullying her old best friend because tha’ts what’s expected and being close with outright bullies because of that.. but it’s through Luz she starts to grow, realizing Luz is genuinely nice and genuinely sorry for any trouble she caused Amity, and evne then both cases were causaed by Amity’s own dickishness and outside forces, so it’s easy to see why she defrosts faster. Her siblings realize they’ve genuinely hurt her, and actually try to be good siblings from then on and help her, and slowly Amity learns to truth luz, trust in her, and accept her... and thus accept her feelings for her. There are gradual hints she’s growing attracted to her.. but her walls had to come down first, and it wouldn’t of worked from the outset. The show cleverly has the two build a genuine friendship, two opposities who work well together, so when feelings do happen it feels natural. It’s not “I’m in love with this person because I have to because you can’t be friends with someone your attracted to” bullshit or anything like that, cough star vs cough, it’s just well built catching feelings. I’ts how this kind of thing SHOULD go: niether went in intending for this to happen.. it’s just happening. 

And Amity’s reluctance is painfully understandable, as Luz is the ONLY friend and support she has. Sure she and willow are patching things up, but WIllow would understandably choose luz over her and she’s terrified of loosing the one good thing in her life. Of course Luz would either say yes, and probably will some day, or let her down gently, she’s nice.. but it’s also understandable to be afraid that someone won’t take the reveal well. I’ve been there trust me, it’s easier when you let it out even if you get rejected, but I get it being hard to let out because you don’t want to loose a friend. I did not, and niether would she, but I can see why she wouldn’t want ot take the plunge. At least not yet. We’ll see this summer hopefully. 

But we do get a shiptastic, gorgeously aniamted scene of the two dancing an fightin gin perfect synch, combinging luz’s new use of plant magic with amity’s mastery of abominations resulting in the two utterly decimating grom, likely in part because with two fast moving targets he can’t get a lock on and likely nees more fear and mass to attack multiple targets at once. Or just more tendrils. it’s a quick, beautful sequence that’s utterly glorious, being framed as romantic as any hetero scene of the type and rightfully so. A triumph and well deserving of this praise. 

Our heros have won, get crowns, and King gets praise. All is well.. except Luz drops the crown once she gets home because she feels like she failed and feels lost about her mom.. though at least king gets it “I’m king and queen, best of both things!”. You tell em sister. 

So we end with Luz genuinely responding to her mom, with some montage stuff as we see Gus and Willow poke a fear blob, willow fears bugs, understandable and Gus fears clowns... 

Also understandable. Though I didn’t put up a bug picture because

And Amity looks out folornly into the night. Camilla responds to Luz.. and mentions letters.. which while Luz brushes those off.. we see someone sent them. And by someone I probably mean king since we now know only eda and him had acess to the portal, and given he was actively encouraging her to lie.. yeah i’m supscious. But we’ll see next season. For now this episode is fan fucking tastic, showing off tons of character development, being representative and sweet as all hell.. and being really funny. Tons of great gags in this one including the turtle guy from an earlier episode being forced to be adisco ball.  This is easily the series best so far and if you haven’t checked it out, please do it’s fantastic as is this show. Check both out. Until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure. Tommorow more disney shenanigans this time with pete. And also more of this possibly we’ll see what I get done. 

Goodnight everybody!

[aion-rsa]

The Suicide Squad: What’s Next for Harley Quinn in the DCEU?

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This article contains major spoilers for The Suicide Squad. We have a spoiler free review here.

The Suicide Squad might just be the best DCEU movie yet. Not only is it a sterling ensemble piece about the horrors of American imperialism but it’s also the world’s weirdest buddy comedy. And in a film full of stunning performances–Idris Elba, David Dastmalchian, and Daniela Melchior please stand up–we got another killer turn from Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. 

After kicking all kinds of ass in Birds of Prey, the Mistress of Mischief is back and better than ever. This is a truly emancipated Harley, one who hates the Joker, will kill an abusive man in a second, and who plays a huge part in saving the day after choking out a man with her thighs, of course. 

While Robbie has said she has “no current plans to reprise the role” after The Suicide Squad, we couldn’t help but think of where the DCEU’s most badass and brutal on-screen anti-hero has been and where she could go next. Thanks to the comics, cartoons, and imagination of those at DC Comics, we’ve got plenty to draw on. 

Let’s start with where Harley has been to see how it impacts her potential future…

Before the DCEU

Harley began her career in the beloved Batman: The Animated Series cartoon as a one-time henchwoman for the Joker. But that quickly changed and she soon became a core part of the show, and not long after became a fan fave character in the comic book universe. 

This iteration of Quinn was a huge influence on James Gunn in bringing her to The Suicide Squad and might explain that unforgettable animated sequence as she escapes from the palatial prison of Corto Maltese. 

It’s also important to note as until The Suicide Squad her most popular contemporary iteration was once again in a cartoon, but this time it was the DC Universe turned HBO Max smash hit adult animation series that bears her name. 

Harley Quinn in 2016’s Suicide Squad

While David Ayer’s Suicide Squad might not have been for everyone–apparently including Ayer himself–one thing stood out: Robbie as Harley Quinn. While she was mostly sexualized and used as eye candy, Robbie gave Harley depth, humor, and heart. It was the standout performance and is a huge part of why the DCEU version is so popular today. While it’s great to see Harley’s growth, we have to mention the movie where Robbie made her debut. 

Birds of Prey

Cathy Yan’s brilliant Birds of Prey let Robbie go wild with her take on Harley. This was the action heavy R-rated take that fans wanted to see. With a predominantly female creative team behind it, the film eschewed the male gaze and misogyny that Harley has sometimes had to fight through. 

Here we saw a Harley who was freed from the Joker, had her own crew, her own incredible fashion sense, and even her own burgeoning moral code. Not only was this a badass outing for Harley but it feels tonally and aesthetically in tune with the route that James Gunn went in The Suicide Squad. The emancipation of Harley Quinn began here, long may it reign! 

The Suicide Squad Sets Up What’s Next for Harley Quinn

While it’s unclear where Robbie sees the character going next, we get a good feel for Harley and her new found freedom here. The world is her oyster. She has new allies–maybe even… friends?–and a magical javelin. Basically, anything can happen as she heads into the future. 

Poison Ivy

This seems like the clearest and most popular option for more Harley Quinn. 

While it looked like it might happen in the form of the now not happening Gotham City Sirens movie (which Suicide Squad director Ayer was once attached to), there’s still legs in this partnership which has been delighting fans for decades. In both the comics and cartoons her relationship with Poison Ivy has been a key part of Harley’s lore. While they began as friends, the canon has shifted to being on-again off-again romantic partners in all mediums. So we need to see that on screen in live action… SOON! 

It would be really easy to take the comedic action stylings of the HBO Max Harley Quinn series which saw the pair traverse the hard realities of love in Gotham and bring that to either a longer format series–which we’d love–or a movie. Just putting these two A-listers together would be a huge selling point and if they played into the queer romance it would make huge waves. 

“Trust me, I chew their ear off about it all the time,” Robbie recently told us when we asked about the possibility of adding a live action Poison Ivy to the DCEU. “They must be sick of hearing it, but I’m like, ‘Poison Ivy, Poison Ivy. Come on, let’s do it.’ I’m very keen to see a Harley-Poison Ivy relationship on screen. It’d be so fun. So I’ll keep pestering them. Don’t worry.”

If DC decided to go a little more dramatic they could take from the pair’s comic book canon. It would make a lot of sense to explore Harley’s love life post the Joker as both of her most recent DCEU appearances have made note to mention his negative impact on her life. 

During the 2013 Harley Quinn comic series fans got to see the pair finally become official as Harley came to terms with her abusive relationship with the Joker. An easy route for the DCEU to take–either seriously or more comedically–would be to make Harley and Ivy a sort of Thelma and Louise of the DCEU, a couple of cool gals against the world… and if they have their “daughter” Cass Cain with them too we’d be very happy. 

While they broke up in the official DC Comics continuity, they are currently getting back together in Harley Quinn: The Animated Series – The Eat, Bang, Kill Tour. The hilarious sequel to the cartoon expands on their romance and plays into that more humorous angle. But simply the fact that the pair are together again in the comics means that there’s even more canon to take from here. 

Female Furies 

In spite of the sad news that Ava DuVernay’s New Gods movie is no longer in production, we might have found a silver lining. In recent years Harley has faced down against Granny Goodness and even joined her Female Furies. This has happened in both the ongoing Harley Quinn comics series and the DC Universe cartoon. It’s a really cool and out there idea for the character in the DCEU, and could be a cool way to introduce the more cosmic aspects of the universe through the lens of one of the world’s most popular comics characters. 

It would be pretty easy to do a Female Furies movie or TV show where Harley is enlisted into Apokolips’ hardcore squad of warriors. There’d be an exceedingly fun fish out of water element as well as the potential to do something totally different than we’ve seen before. 

There’s also the option to emulate the Harley Quinn TV series and follow Harley as she seeks out Granny Goodness in order to gain the nefarious power of the Motherbox, which would obviously go wrong pretty quickly. While we’ve seen elements touched on in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, DC isn’t afraid of reimagining things regularly and we’d love to see Harley on an epic cosmic adventure with Darkseid on her heels! 

Another HBO Max Spinoff? 

If the villainous Peacemaker is getting his own HBO Max show, why shouldn’t Harley? And there are a ton of incredible routes the series could go. The most obvious right now would be continuing the Harley we see in The Suicide Squad. 

Seeing as Rick Flag and Harley were clearly close, it would be very easy to intertwine the Harley show and the Peacemaker series. What if while Peacemaker was trying to “save the world,” Harley and potentially Bloodsport–he served with Rick and clearly cared about him–were hunting him down in their own series? That would be a pretty smart way to expand the radical world of The Suicide Squad while giving Robbie far more space to play with the character she’s long defined. 

Ever since Birds of Prey, fans have been wishing for a Black Canary or Harley-focused spinoff. With Peacemaker setting the precedent for solo DCEU shows, this could be another great route. We’d love to see the return of Ella Jay Basco as Cass Cain or even the return of Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya. This is a little more of an outlier but the gritty crime movie tone of Birds of Prey really fits into the current DCEU and HBO Max vibe. And in our real dreams, Cathy Yan would get the Gunn treatment and direct. 

Batgirl

We’re finishing off with what is currently the most likely of our options. The upcoming HBO Max Batgirl movie is penned by Christina Hodson. Hodson and Robbie have a close working relationship as the Bumblebee screenwriter also wrote Birds of Prey. There’s also the fact that Robbie is a huge supporter of female-led storytelling so bringing her clout and fan favorite character to Batgirl would do just that. It would be really cool to see Harley pop up here as either an antagonist or ally to Barbara Gordon. 

As this is going straight to HBO Max, there’s likely more freedom to play with canon and format. But with Robbie unsure of Harley’s future it could be more realistic to expect a brief cameo rather than a full on-screen Harley storyline when the movie hits the streamer down the line. 

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The Suicide Squad is on HBO Max and in theaters now! 

The post The Suicide Squad: What’s Next for Harley Quinn in the DCEU? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ofhellsbells]

@ofcupidslove​

The 21 Club, often simply 21, is an American traditional cuisine restaurant and former prohibition-era speakeasy, located at 21 West 52nd Street in New York City. The Bar Room includes a restaurant, a lounge and, as the name implies, a bar. The walls and ceiling of the Bar Room are covered with antique toys and sports memorabilia donated by famous patrons. The best known feature of 21 is the line of painted cast iron lawn jockey statues which adorns the balcony above the entrance. In the 1930s, some of the affluent customers of the bar began to show their appreciation by presenting 21 with jockeys painted to represent the racing colors of the stables they owned. There are 33 jockeys on the exterior of the building, and 2 more inside the doors.

‘21’ Club debuted America's original gourmet hamburger in 1950. It was cooked in duck fat, spiked with fennel seeds, and sold for a whopping $2.75 in an era of five- and 10-cent hamburgers. In dollar-adjusted value, that price is equivalent to over $25. The price today is $36, although the preparation has changed significantly — the current version of the ‘21’ Burger is closer to a classic hamburger, with a pickled relish and served on a brioche bun with fries on the side.

Belphegor had chosen this location (through Dean’s aid) because it served one of the best burgers in New York City while also being fancy enough that it might actually seem worthy of her. They rented out the whole restaurant for their date with Cupid, though that wasn’t to say that the rest of the restaurant would be empty. In fact, they made sure the whole restaurant would be full of loving couples. With Chastity’s help, they conducted numerous interviews with thousands of couples to make sure the restaurant would be full of only the most loving couples, so Cupid could be surrounded with a large amount of love and energy. After she finished breaking Lucifer and Levi’s curses, they imagined she would need something uplifting like that to energize her.

Once the restaurant owners understood what Belphegor was trying to do (and with a significant sum of money), they allowed Belphegor to decorate the restaurant however Belphegor wanted to. They planned out a design with Chastity’s help, but ultimately, most of the work was done by Belphegor themself. At the table Belphegor had designated as the one for their date, there were four chairs. In one of the chairs was a giant stuffed animals sloth, and in the chair opposite to it, there was a giant stack of boxes of chocolates. They put Cupid’s favorite flowers on all of the tables. Chastity had helped with that part. The flowers were actually from Cupid’s shop, but Chastity had told her that they were for a wedding. She’d even invented a pretend couple with pretend personalities to make the ruse more believable, ensuring Belphegor that Cupid had no idea the flowers were for her gift. There was one additional bouquet that Belphegor picked out themself for their table in particular. It wasn’t as cleanly or beautifully designed as the other flower arrangements, but they’d wanted to try their own hand at it too to show how much they were willing to do for her. They hung up decorations, and they cleared out some tables to make some room for a small dance floor and a stage for a band. They invited Snoop Dog, since he seemed to know a lot about love, and Bryson Bernard, who made the Cupid Shuffle and named himself after Cupid.

Belphegor was in their more confident form, dressed in a pink suit. There was a lot more effort put into their appearance this time. Their clothes weren’t oversized or wrinkled and were clearly tailored to Belphegor. Their shoes were actually tied, and their hair was neatly styled and combed. Chastity took several pictures of them in various spots both in the restaurant and out of it, along with pictures of the venue itself before she left Belphegor to wait on their date on their own.

Belphegor waited patiently at their table for Cupid to come and just entertained themself by listening to all the couples around them and watching how they interacted with each other in an attempt to understand how to be a better date for Cupid. They apparently had plenty of time for it since it was well over an hour since they’d asked Cupid to meet up with them. They hadn’t originally told her where she needed to go when they’d met up with her that morning. At the time, they’d focused more with supporting her and trying to instill her with confidence in herself. They’d brought her breakfast and kissed and bit her neck just like Dean had told them. They told her that they’d text her the directions of where to meet them once the time came for them to celebrate her birthday, so it could still stay a surprise to the very end. Then, they’d just left her to her work, so they didn’t distract her for too long. Maybe that interruption was part of why she was late, but it didn’t bother them too much. What she was doing was important, and they were proud of her no matter how long it took.

An hour started to turn into several hours, but they were still confident that Cupid would show up. “She’s coming,” they assured the staff of the 21 Club when they came to comfort Belphegor, apologizing for Cupid not being there. “She’s just running a little late is all.” They all gave Belphegor a look of pity, which they didn’t understand, and left them to continue waiting. Several people approached them like this as the hours went on. Nearly all of the couples thanked Belphegor for paying for their meals. They all assured Bells that even though this ‘didn’t work out,’ they’d still find the one someday. Belphegor didn’t know what they meant by that and primarily elected to ignore those kinds of comments altogether. There were starting to be fewer and fewer couples in the restaurant anyways, so they wouldn’t have to hear it for much longer.

Maybe she doesn’t really like you as much as you think she does, spoke the Void. Belphegor ignored them just as much, if not more. They might not have understood love that well yet, but they knew more than they did before. They were confident in the fact that Cupid loved them. She’d said it multiple times, and they’d always believe her. They knew, just as strongly, that they loved her too. It added to their resolve to stay here and wait for her no matter how long it took.

Another hour passed. All of the couples Belphegor had invited were gone now, replaced with other customers so the restaurant could keep its business going. Bryson had left too, and Snoop Dog had spent the past half hour sitting with Belphegor. “What I’m saying is fuck bitches.” 

Belphegor nodded, not understanding what he was talking about but just agreeing with him. “Fuck bitches,” they repeated.

“Exactly!” He nodded and sighed. “Aight, I better get going. I’ve got another gig in an hour, but it was cool kickin’ it with you.”

“Fo shizzle,” Belphegor grinned, quoting what he’d often said to them. “I’ll tell you how it goes once Cupid gets here and we finish our date.” 

Snoop Dog sighed and waved them off before taking off. “See you later, kid.”

“Bye!” they called after him and continued waiting for Cupid.

Eventually, it got to the point where it was near the time for the restaurant to close up. One of the waiters came out to talk to Belphegor. “So she still isn’t here yet?” he asked. Belphegor shook their head. “Well, you better order now, or you won’t be able to anymore. I can’t get her to show up any sooner, but what do you want to eat?”

Belphegor glanced over at Cupid’s empty seat. They didn’t want to order without her, but at this point they had to. “I’ll have the Speakeasy Steak Tartare, the 21 Burger, and the 21 Express.” They’d decided hours ago what they wanted to eat, but they just picked something for Cupid based on what they knew she liked. She would’ve wanted the burger, and the last thing was a dessert they could share once Cupid got here. The waiter went off to the kitchen to put in their order, and Belphegor continued waiting. After several minutes, Cupid still wasn’t here, so they sent her a text. They’d sent her several already.

[Sent 5:02 PM]: Hey, here’s the directions. [Link attached] [Sent 6:33 PM]: Don’t worry about being late. I’m still here. Take your time :) [Sent 8:21 PM]: In case you get here in the next minute or two, I’m just going to the bathroom really quick. I didn’t leave you, I promise. [Sent 10:49 PM]: They said I had to order now, so I just ordered for you. I hope that’s okay, but we can pick up something else somewhere else if you don’t like it.  [Sent 11:24 PM]: I hope things are going okay for you. I know you can do it! And if you need anything, just let me know. [Unsent 11:25 PM]: I lov

They closed their phone as the waiter arrived with their food. Belphegor thanked them, and they went off to help other tables. They waited a few more minutes, just in case Cupid got there, but in the end, they couldn’t hold back from eating their own food. They managed to finish it all, and Cupid’s food still remained untouched. As it got closer to closing time, it became clear that she wasn’t going to make it in time to eat her food at the restaurant. Belphegor asked for a to-go box, and put both her food and their dessert away. They at least had enough decency to not eat dessert without her. Still, they waited. They waited until the restaurant wouldn’t let them wait anymore.

“I’m sorry she stood you up,” said their waiter. “But honestly, with as much as you did, if she stood you up, she doesn’t deserve you.”

Belphegor scowled. “She deserves everything!” they snapped. “And you don’t know anything about her.”

The waiter held up their hands defensively. “Okayyy, but you still need to go. We’re closing for the night. I’ll have someone help you carry your things out, and you can wait outside for her if you want, but we’ve got to finish cleaning here.” Belphegor sighed, calming down a little to do what the waiter asked. The remaining staff carried their things outside, and Belphegor sat on the steps to the restaurant, still waiting.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 238: Shigaraki Tomura: Tattered Goth Remix

Previously on BnHA: Young Shimura Tenko killed his whole family, as angsty young misguided antagonist characters sometimes do, and then proceeded to wander the streets feeling all sad about it until All for One just happened!! to come across him and was all “oh you poor thing it looks like you killed your whole family by accident, let me just adopt you and raise you to be my own personal killing machine.” We got some more flashbacks showing just how this transformation took place, plus some answers about the hands that kind of just raised more questions though tbh, and watched as little Tenko made his first premeditated kill after a number of effed up AFO pep talks. AFO then rechristened him “Shigaraki Tomura”, and we learned that Shigaraki is actually AFO’s own last name. The chapter ended back in the present day, with Tomura reflecting on how his family’s death wasn’t really a tragedy after all and ended up setting him free. We’ll have to agree to disagree, kid, but in the meantime have fun fucking up Re-Destro and dealing with Gigantomachia’s rampage!

Today on BnHA: Re-Destro tries to smash Tomura at 100% and absolutely nothing happens. So then he summons a bunch of robot armor bits like fucking Iron Man, and levels up to 150%! Tomura could not care less, because he’s leveled up to be one of those “yawn, is that all you got?” bad guys now, and while RD desperately tries to intimidate him, we briefly check in with the rest of the League. Everyone is freaking out at how quickly Machia is destroying the Liberation Army, and Compress calls Ujiko and frantically begs him to warp them all to safety. But Ujiko is all “nah” and says he wants to drive Tomura into a corner. Meanwhile Gigantomachia finally takes out Dairy Queen, since Dabi was doing fuckall, and the chapter ends with Tomura possibly killing Re-Destro?? To be honest it’s really unclear. For all I know the dude just dropped dead of a heart attack from all that stress. In fact, now that I’ve typed that, I kind of think that’s what did happen. Anyway! The point is I’m pretty sure the battle is finally over.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added one or two ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.) 

so I mentioned this in an ask post a couple days ago, but this recap is a day late because I was out of town this week. consequently I’m behind on my asks and other things as well (I know, what else is new), so I’m sorry about that!

also! @temperatezone informed me that there’s yet another BnHA spinoff coming out, and that the preview chapter debuted last week! so I went to check it out, and holy shit, it’s a manga all about the U.A. kids teaming up with various pro heroes!!!!??!! between this and the new anime season coming up in just two months (it’ll fly by) and BakuDeku: Heroes Rising coming out in December, I feel like I’m being fucking spoiled with BnHA content. and I didn’t even mention the 2nd light novel which just had its official English translation released last month! so all in all it’s a lot of good stuff, and I desperately want to recap chapter 0 of the new spinoff as soon as possible, but it’ll probably be a few days unfortunately, unless I decide to be very irresponsible and do that instead of the piles of work I should actually be doing. we’ll see which impulses actually win out sob

fortunately Jump is on a break next week if I recall, so that’ll give me some time to catch up. anyway let’s start this thing before I manage to procrastinate anymore! so the new chapter is called “Liberation”, probably after a certain army

and the chapter is picking up where we left off before, with Tomura taking his Father Hand out of his pocket and saying he doesn’t need it or any of his other hands

ooooooh

maybe the title isn’t referring to the Liberation Army after all! or just one of those cool double meaning things

oooh man

god but that is satisfying. is there anything more satisfying than seeing a character you’ve been rooting for finally reach out and take control of their own destiny? ahhhh yessss that’s the good shounen shit right there

lol Re-Destro

he finally scared you into using your ~full power~, huh? punk

don’t mind me I’m just appreciating how much of a total badass my boy here is

your move, RD. personally if it were me, I wouldn’t want to fuck with him anymore! but hey your funeral bud

hmmm

the last few chapters have been so well-drawn that I’m starting to think I was maybe getting spoiled. I wonder if Horikoshi will re-do these later for the volume release

anyway so it seems like what’s happening is that RD is trying to hit Tomura with another Almighty Bitchslap and Tomura is not having any of it, basically

oh wow

and this isn’t even the Gigantomachia damage. will there be any pieces of this town left larger than a toothpick once all is said and done here?? stay tuned! but the answer is no

so the rest of this two page spread is just more panels showing vague high-contrast images of the destruction. we’re also briefly cutting to Gigantomachia! and to Dabi, who is still fighting Pinkberry, and like, dude, come on. finish him off already

and now the dust is clearing after that latest clash, and would you guys fucking look at this dramatic bitch though omfg

Shigaraki Tomura: Tattered Goth Remix. you look like the cover of a Bauhaus album. thank god this arc isn’t set somewhere stupidly dark, like, say, a basement

lmao Re-Destro is so mad

once again I would like to point out that you invited him here, you overconfident dishrag

so now Tomura is casually conversing with him

Tomura did you burn one right before this battle. you’re so fucking chill all of a sudden. gotta say that if someone had asked me “what do you think it would take to get Shigaraki Tomura to mellow out” before this arc, I probably would not have answered, “hmm, well maybe flashbacks to his horrific childhood and the violent deaths of all of his loved ones”

well at any rate, watching Re-Destro progressively freak out while Tomura makes more (ﾟ⊿ﾟ) faces is my new form of sustenance, guys

“you seem a bit rattled. a bit ill at ease. perturbed. something’s got you in a tizzy, huh.” ⊂( ・ ̫・)⊃

(ETA: okay but rereading this here, he keeps talking about his heart pounding, and then he goes and summons a fucking robot suit that actually raises his stress on purpose. so like, I don’t know? but I vaguely recall reading a theory on reddit a few weeks ago that RD was going to have a heart attack and it looks like it could really be the case. or not! that last page is really inconclusive.)

and now the Re-Destro flashbacks that absolutely no one asked for! of course!!

-- OH MY GOD

I’M DYING I CAN’T. SEND HELP

Iida I’m so sorry. all this time I have been teasing you and calling you a 40-year-old man, when this whole time it was actually Re-Destro who Benjamin Buttoned his way from his mother’s womb

is he related to the Alpha Kid from the adventures of the Babysitter’s Club? he can’t not be, right? what else could it be? two characters just happening to vaguely resemble one another in a purely coincidental manner?? are you even hearing yourself?! get out!!

um hey, so what the actual fuck is happening

...Krestro??

lol what. Horikoshi Muriel Kouhei, did you seriously just give this fucker Hulkbuster armor. do you just have a list of Marvel comics tribute shit that you check off as you go

so apparently this suit jacks his power up to one hundred and fifty percent! wowwwwwwww

but meanwhile Tomura is all just

what would it take to faze new Toked Goth Remix Tomura, I wonder

sob omg

goddammit now he’s going to want one. Ujiko you’d better get on it

oh my god you guys

I’m starting to feel really bad about all of these nice Twice clones who are being so helpful and are just going to end up dying in the end omg

also, if someone ever asks you, “should I read BnHA,” you can say, “well that depends, how much do you like scenes of characters with two broken arms getting piggyback rides from other characters?” and they’ll be like, “that’s really specific, does that... happen often,” and you can be like, “well it’s officially happened more than once, so”

like, it’s a whole thing now I guess. also, ouch

anyway so Real!Twice is concerned that Machia is having far too easy of a time kicking names and taking ass, and he’s trying to regroup with the rest of the League

oh my god Compress, seriously?

League of Ungrateful Sods, is what you guys are. he’s trying to help you guys out!!

lol Dabi you fucking liar

no you fucking weren’t, you were going to keep fighting him for a million more years. your fight was going to make Goku VS Frieza look like a 15-second Youtube ad. once again, you guys should really be more grateful here

(ETA: why did they even invite Dabi lol. all he did was fight offscreen and have zero (0) flashbacks. fucking tease.)

so now Compress is calling Ujiko and asking him to warp them out of there

what...?

he’s absolutely 100% making this up, right?

lol yeah now even Compress is calling him on it

right, Compress??

okay now Ujiko is straight up telling him no

oh, this is good you guys

Ujiko, I don’t know how to tell you this but while you weren’t looking, the dude hopped on a fucking golf cart and drove his own damn self. and now appears to have made himself pretty damn comfortable in that corner too

oh is Halo Top finally about to fucking die??

the cornerstone?? really?? holy shit, it really is remarkable how thoroughly unprepared these guys actually were in the end

anyway so now more action panels are happening

did Machia kill him? it looks like he survived but just went flying

and what the hell does Hanabata think he’s actually going to be able to do. drive his van at him? give him encouragement??

anyway I guess we’re wrapping this up now, and we’re cutting back to Tomura who’s saying something extremely cool

it is kind of like that. except that it’s bullshit

anyway so it looks like he’s touching the ground and using his decay again and holy shit is this it???

!!!!!

YOU GUYS DID HE JUST DISINTEGRATE RE-DESTRO OH MY GOD. JUST LIKE THAT!!??!

YOU GUYS I HONESTLY CAN’T TELL, ALL I KNOW IS TOMURA TAPPED THE GROUND, AND RE-DESTRO HAD A WEIRD PANEL WHERE YOU COULDN’T SEE WHAT WAS HAPPENING, AND HE HAD A THOUGHT AND IT WAS SUDDENLY CUT OFF, AND THEN WE CUT TO GIGANTOMACHIA WATCHING AND WE COULDN’T REALLY SEE ANYTHING OMG

but can you imagine, though?? “one single strike”?! like oh my god, there wasn’t even any fanfare? if he really did just kill him that is pretty much exactly how I would have wanted it to go down tbh

at any rate, it’s safe to say life just got a hell of a lot more dangerous for our Actual Protagonist with this new power-up. shit. oh my god

well I guess that’s it! does that mean this arc is gonna wrap up next chapter. because I’m also going to be away the 16th, so I’ll be a day late in doing that chapter too. I s2g Horikoshi, if you finally cut back to U.A. on a day that I’m not able to read the chapter right away, I will... well actually I’ll be pretty happy regardless, but secretly I will also believe it’s some sort of conspiracy against me. so just know that

[miracle-in-the-eye-of-the-storm]

Sorry I’m Not Perfect, part II ― Trixx’s Grief

eyy part two! i’m gonna go back and tag the first bit i did as “Sorry I’m Not Perfect AU”, which is what i’m calling this thing. when i’ve gotten all of the chapters/parts up on tumblr, i’m gonna move it to AO3 as well, so look out for that!

Trixx has always loved its kits, even when it wasn’t the one to personally choose them. What could it not love about them? Fiercely protective, resourceful, clever, curious, and sneaky when they needed to be. True, they may not be as powerful as Tikki and Plagg’s children, but they’re still Trixx’s, and for that it will always love them dearly ― even when it has to leave them.    It had thought that Alya would be one of the better ones, with time. Right now, she is too loud, too brash, too prone to charging in when she should have been watching from the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to bring in her illusions. But that would be fixed, if she could be trained properly as its next Wielder. So when Tikki tells it in their dreams that Alya has failed as a hero in her civilian life, Trixx grieves her as if she had lost her life, not her friendship with the kwami. And then it decides to test her one more time, Tikki giving it her blessing.     Trixx has never understood how the Guardian Fu’s tests for Plagg and Tikki’s kits worked; what would he have done if they weren’t there? What if someone else had helped him? Would he have given them to that someone else? What if he actually had been hurt, more seriously than he had let on? It made no sense to Trixx. Ladybug choosing Alya made more sense to it, because she knew Alya, and she trusted her. Alya was curious, and bright, and mischievous. Trixx loved her almost right away. But to hear that she had set aside her natural curiosity in favor of the newest shiny thing, that was ― that hurt. All the kwami in and outside of the Miracle Box had felt Tikki’s fury last night; their eldest did not change to her Spirit form often. Wayzz, who had spoken with Tikki, had told them all what had happened with Fu.     Personally, Trixx doesn’t particularly care about the old man. He’s just a human who made a mistake, and was so ashamed to admit to it that he ran away. He took care of their Miracle Box, yes, but that was it; he’s made no effort to try and bring back the Order, or to train others to take up his duty when he can’t any longer. Trixx said nothing against him because Wayzz loved him, but there was no love lost between the man and the kwami.     Trixx imagines that Wayzz must be feeling as betrayed as it does, right now. He and Fu had become very close over the years, so to realize that Fu would rather prioritize the feelings of the one at fault over the one being hurt must have come as a horrible shock.     It shakes itself; it is going to see Alya. It is going to look and listen with its own eyes and ears, to make sure that she isn’t beyond hope. She goes to the same school as Ladybug and Chat Noir; it can see how she treats them outside of the mask, too. It doesn’t have very high hopes, considering what Tikki told everyone, but still ― still. It loved her ― loves her. It doesn’t want her to be this . . . child that Tikki has described her as. It wants to believe better of her. It wants to have faith in her.     “Alya,” it says by her window.     Alya, who’s sitting at her desk and appears to be editing a video, startles and looks up. She lights up when she sees Trixx, and bounds over. “Trixx!” She squeals and cups her hands around the kwami, hugging it. “I haven’t seen you in ages, I missed you so much! Wait.” She pulls away, frowning in concern. “There isn’t an Akuma attack, is there? I can’t imagine why else you’d be here . . .”    “No, no Akuma,” Trixx assures her. “I am here of my own volition, kit. There are certain circumstances that allow kwami to be separated from their Miraculous for a while, and this is one of them.”     Alya raises an eyebrow, but accepts this. “It’s not a bad circumstance, is it?” When Trixx shakes it head, she squeals again and whirls around. “Oh, this is great! We can catch up on how we’ve been, we can talk about Ladybug, we can ― ooh! Do you have nails? We can probably still do a makeover party even if you don’t, but―”    “Alya,” Trixx interrupts, exasperated. “It is after midnight, and tomorrow is Monday. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”     Alya slumps. “Yeah, but I still gotta get this video up and finish the last bits of my homework.”     “So do that,” Trixx tells her, settling down on her bed and resting it tail around itself comfortably. “There will be time to catch up later, when you don’t have other commitments.” The girl groans, theatrical and dramatic, but grins at Trixx and agrees to finish her work and go to sleep. When the light is off, and they’ve told each other good night, Trixx curls up on her pillow and hopes for the best.     The next morning, Trixx hides in Alya’s bag while she walks to school and grimaces at the cramped feeling. At some point, Alya meets up with another girl ― someone decidedly not Ladybug, though Trixx isn’t sure who else she is. Whoever she may be, though, Trixx knows it doesn’t like her. She feels too sly, too sharp, too wrong. Trixx has a sinking feeling that this is the Lila girl who pushed Alya away from her path.     Trixx’s suspicions are confirmed when except for classes and going to the bathroom, Lila doesn’t leave Alya’s side. In the middle of lunch, Trixx sneaks away to meet with Tikki.     “I don’t remember it hurting this much,” Trixx confesses to its elder. Tikki nods solemnly, holding its pas in hers. “It’s always horrible when our kits stray away from us, but . . .”     “It feels worse every time,” Tikki finishes. “I know. And I’m sorry that yours left so early, Trixx.”     Trixx sighs. “Thank you, Tikki. I’m going to talk to her after school, today. If she doesn’t realize she’s done anything wrong, then . . .” Trixx shakes its head. It blinks, and says “I’m sorry, Tikki, I have to go ― Alya’s finishing lunch.”     “Goodbye,” Tikki calls softly as Trixx flies off.     It phases back into Alya’s bag just before she opens it up to check for the kwami. Trixx smiles at her reassuringly, and she grins back. Trixx’s smile hurts. “Alya,” Trixx says, after watching her hum and tweak an interview with Lila for two hours. The girl doesn’t answer, absorbed as she is in her work. Trixx sighs. “Alya,” it says again, louder.     Alya’s head jerks up, and she looks around at it. “Hmm? What’s up?”     Trixx studies her. Her face is open, smiling and joyful; there’s no hint of any guilt that she tossed aside her best friend at the drop of a hat, no sign that she thinks something is wrong here, nothing to say that she feels bad for believing Lila over Marinette. Alya ― its dear, lovely, reckless kit. “What do you think of Lila?” It says eventually, instead of asking her how could you like it so desperately wants to do.    Alya immediately lights up, and Trixx closes its eyes in resignation. “Lila? Oh, she’s awesome! Did you know she saved Jagged Stone’s cat from being run over by a plane? She got tinnitus from that, but Jagged was so grateful that he wrote a whole song dedicated to her, so I think it was worth it. Plus, she knows Prince Ali from the kingdom of Achu, too! She spent a while with him working on ways to help stop pollution in the world. She’s given me a lot of interviews ― did you know she’s Ladybug’s best friend? They started hanging out after Ladybug saved her from an Akuma that turned everyone around her into chickens. Like, animal chickens, not ‘ooh, what a chicken’ chickens. Lila said she even knows her secret identity! Apparently it’s because Lila and Ladybug are descended from heroes, so they’ve known each other since they were little kids. Lila isn’t a superhero anymore because Ladybug was so worried about her safety. And―”     “Alya,” Trixx says, floored, “Alya, stop.”     Alya draws up short and blinks at it. It stares at her, feeling nauseated. “Trixx?” She asks uncertainly, coming closer. “What’s wrong?”     “You,” Trixx says helplessly. “You’re what’s wrong, Alya, can’t you see that? You don’t even realize how ― how ― how horrid that Lila girl is, you’re so blinded by her tall tales! Ladybug’s best friend? Descended from heroes? Alya, you of all people should know that isn’t how this works. If she were Ladybug’s best friend, she should know better than to say that to all of Paris, including Papillon ― all that does is paint a target onto her back. And if she knew Ladybug under the mask? That’s even worse, Alya, that would mean she’s betrayed Ladybug’s trust ― you know that girl’s secret identity is important to her, you know it is! Why would she let someone tell everyone from here to the moon that they know her personally? Alya, please, think; Lila can’t be telling the truth. You contradicted your own story just now! They met when Ladybug saved her from an Akuma and have been friends since, but they’ve known each other all their lives? That just doesn’t fit, Alya, and you know it doesn’t. More than that ― you know that Ladybug gets her power from her Miraculous, not her bloodline. Lila wouldn’t be able to be a superhero because she has no Miraculous.” Trixx floats up to Alya’s eye level, giving her a pleading look. “Please, think about it.”    Alya stares at it for a while. At the beginning of Trixx’s rant, she had taken a step back, her eyes wide. Now, her lip is a thin line, her arms are crossed over her chest, and her eyebrows are drawn together. Trixx sags; clearly, Alya isn’t backing down from her position on Lila. “You don’t know Lila like I do,” Alya says, proving Trixx right. It had so dearly wished this was one of the times it’s proven wrong. “She’s an amazing girl, and I know ― I know she wouldn’t lie to me about all that stuff. Sure, maybe she’s . . . exaggerated some of the details, but I’ve done that plenty of times! Plenty of kids in my class have done amazing things! Rose, Juleka, and Ivan are in a band, and they’re already selling copies of their debut song. Marinette’s won a whole bunch of competitions, and she was in Clara Nightingale’s dance video. Adrien’s a model. Why wouldn’t I believe Lila?”    Trixx gives her a tired look. “Let me ask you this,” it says instead of answering. “Why would you believe Lila?”    Alya blinks, startled. “Excuse me?”    “Why would you believe Lila?” Trixx repeats. “What about her has convinced you that she’s trustworthy? Some interviews to raise hits on your blog? Promises she has yet to fulfill? Why, Alya, have you given this girl your loyalty when all she has given you is a ball of yarn?”     “She’s my friend!” Alya snaps.     “Marinette is your friend, too,” Trixx counters. “And if I remember right, Marinette doesn’t believe Lila.”     Alya rolls her eyes. “That’s because Marinette’s jealous of her. If she could just―”     “Jealous?” Trixx interrupts. “Jealous? Of what? You said yourself, Marinette is hardly unaccomplished. What on earth would Marinette be jealous of?”     ���Uh, Adrien?” Alya asks with a raised eyebrow. “Duh. The girl’s had a crush on him for almost as long as she’s known him, and Lila’s been pretty close to him recently. With how jealous Marinette’s gotten of other girls, of course she’s touchy about Lila sitting next to him in class.” Then Alya pauses and squints at Trixx. “Hang on, why are you so hung up about Marinette? It’s not like she’s all that important or anything. Sure, it’d be great if she and Lila could get along, but she made it pretty clear that’s not gonna happen.” Alya rolls her eyes again. “Going so far as to accuse Lila of stealing from her? That’s a new low.”     Trixx feels something in its chest go very cold. It steps forward, shifting into its Spirit form as easily as breathing. Alya’s eyes go wide and she stumbles backwards. Wisps of smoke and mist fill the room, gently waving in the shape of fox tails behind and around Trixx. “Alya Cesaire,” Trixx says, cold and low and echoing even in the cluttered space. “I revoke you.”    Alya gasps and clutches at her chest where the Fox Miraculous would rest if she were wearing it. “What―?” She starts, tearing up.    “You have lost your curiosity,” Trixx tells her. She looks up at it through her tears. It’s towering over her now, has to bend over so its head doesn’t hit the ceiling. “You have lost your loyalty. You have lost your joy in real companionship, and for that I revoke you. Alya Cesaire.” It kneels, letting its own tears drip down its snout, caressing her cheeks. “I loved you,” it whispers. “I loved you so much, Alya Cesaire, but I can’t love you anymore. You can’t love me anymore, either, and for that I am so sorry.”     “I don’t understand,” Alya croaks. “If I could just ― just give me a second chance―”     “This was your second chance, kit!” Trixx cries, its tears blinding it for a moment. “This was your second chance, and you wasted it.” It strokes her cheek, wiping away a tear track and shifting the way her glasses sit on her nose. “I’m so sorry, kit, but you’ve made your choice. You have to live with it, now.”     It draws away, shifting back to its Doll form, and leaves her sobbing on the floor. It watches from the window, hidden, as her mother knocks, then comes in when Alya doesn’t answer, then exclaims and rushes to hug her daughter. Alya leans into her mother, her cries clear even through the glass.

[puppyluver256]

Underworld Ultimatum: The Quest for the Hottest Hades

So I mentioned in a previous big text post that I have some Very Strong Opinions on the interpretation of Greek god Hades shown in Disney’s Hercules film, and now I’m gonna talk about those opinions dammit! But let’s make it a little interesting. I always believe that if you can’t say something nice you shouldn’t say anything at all, so I’m also going to use this as an opportunity to talk about a Hades that I do enjoy. It’s a competition, babey! The Underworld Ultimatum! Or, if you’re preferring to reference a property one of these guys is in, the Hades Cup! (though to be fair this is less of a true competition and more of me showing why I like one and not the other)

First off, it’s the guy who inspired this, give it up foooor...

Disney’s Hades!

First of all, the guy’s design might’ve seemed cool back in the day, but looking back on him he’s kinda bland. Grey toga with accents of other greys, blue deathly pallor, nasty teeth... The flame hair is a pretty good concept, but considering the ancient Greek idea of the underworld probably wasn’t fire-themed I don’t know if it was an appropriate choice.  ❌

Speaking of that flame hair, he commits the crime of “blue fire is totally cooler than red fire you guys what is physics?” nonsense. Anyone who puts even the tiniest bit of research in knows that, disregarding chemical compounds that affect flame color, blue flames are hotter than red/orange/yellow flames. Yeah, from an artistic perspective it seems counterintuitive, and blue flames work better with his standard palette, but even with that in consideration they couldn’t’ve made it so his flames turned white when he got angry rather than orange? Lazy... ❌

This is a problem with the Hercules film overall, but this feels like a christianized take on the ancient Grecian pantheon, with a much less horny Zeus in the place of the christian god and Hercules as sort of a Jesus figure. In line with this, Hades is portrayed as an equivalent to Satan and thus is shown to be undeniably evil. This is inaccurate to the actual mythology of Hades, where (and someone with a better scope of Greek mythology can either back me up or refute me on this) he was just a dude who ran the underworld and had no real malicious intent. But of course, a character is themed around death, they have to be a completely irredeemable villain. ❌

AND continuing the villain thing! He ugly, at least according to western society standards and especially compared to the hero and leading lady who are conventionally attractive by those same standards. This is continuing a long Disney tradition that a villain should be ugly. He’s evil, thus he doesn’t get to visit the dentist. ❌

His goals are basically just the same as every other villain, take over the world with some big strong brutes that are locked away by a supposedly benevolent horndog. Well, specifically Olympus, but considering that’s where the gods live and his brief rule subjugates the GODS, if he’d been in the head for longer he’d basically rule the world. Boring, bland, think of something else for once. Or at least have a good reason other than “I’m the villain, world domination for me!” ❌

There’s no real satisfying tension between him as a villain and the hero! His initial direct action against Hercules happens when he’s an infant (speaking of, dude actively tries to kill an infant), and then the next direct interaction between them is like nearly 20 years later and Herc has no knowledge of who this guy is and how big of a threat he’s been this whole time. Call me crazy, but I feel a villain is more effective when the protag is aware of the threat they pose for longer than just “oh he showed up today and apparently he’s been trying to kill me since I was a baby and now he’s got my girl??? guess he’s a bad guy” ❌

Following this point, there’s no satisfying confrontation between Hades and Herc that works to finish off the conflict between them. The major battle that Herc has against him is mainly against the titans, and iirc the only thing that he does to him in the “grabbing Meg’s soul from the soul pool brb” section is punch him in the face. I don’t remember any direct action that Herc does to cause Hades to fall into his soul pool. ❌

He’s voiced by James Woods, who is a major jerk. I’m not going into detail here as this is already long-winded enough, and Google is free. ❌

He’s got Cerberus, as any good interpretation of Hades should. That’s a plus! ✅ Though this Cerberus seems to be based on the “generic mean dog breed” aesthetic, and also I hated fighting this guy in Kingdom Hearts (the original, not the final mix with updated controls, OOF), which leads me toooo...

The guy THEN proceeds to smear his presence all over nearly every Kingdom Hearts game! Like, you’re not needed! Get out! Leave some room for better Disney villains!!! ❌

So nine bads, one good, and that “good” only comes from me liking dogs.

Next up, we have a more recent contender to the Hades mythos in modern media. Showing up outta nowhere in the first entry into a classic series for 21 years, let’s bring our hands together fooooor...

Kid Icarus Uprising’s Hades!

First off...look at this man. Look at this man! Hell yeah that is my aesthetic! Look at all the chaotic colors, the wild anime-esque hair, aaaaa! Amazing design! I would ask someone to get me the name of Uprising’s character designer so I can shake their hand and tell ‘em they did a wonderful job on the Hades look, but they’re probably Japanese and I don’t know a lick of it. Maybe someone at NoA could pass on my compliments... ✅

He does have a flame head form at some point with blue flames, but it doesn’t become red to show his anger so there’s no more of a violation of physics then the rest of his insides are. ✅ And that’s the real problem I have with Disney’s Hades for this particular point, if you’re going to violate physics at least have some damn fun with it instead of just thinking that cooler fire is hotter just because it’s made of warmer colors.

While this Hades is also irredeemably evil, there’s no weird christ-washing of Greek mythology going on here, because the Japanese generally don’t do that sort of thing when throwing a bunch of other culture’s mythologies together. Sure, Kid Icarus includes a lot of Greek mythology elements (Medusa, Thanatos, Pandora, arguably Palutena being based on Athena, among others), but it also incorporates a lot of original elements, such as the Forces of Nature who are not based on any specific Greek gods, the Chaos Kin, the Aurum, freaking space pirates?! And in regards to the Aurum, this Hades is able to put differences aside in order to help the other factions around at the time defeat the Aurum so there’s that! ...though he’s not exactly the best team player, hehehe... ✅

While he does show up out of nowhere after the defeat of the initially perceived villain, Medusa, once he debuts Hades is a constant presence. He’s almost always poking his head into the dialogue to taunt Pit, make some quip or joke, flirt with a female character, give a dastardly threat. Everyone’s always aware of exactly what kind of threat he poses! Good villain writing! ✅

But yeah, speaking of that, he does do the whole “initial villain wasn’t the real villain SURPRISE BITCH” thing that I’m not that fond of. Call it lingering resentment from Twilight Princess where Zant was basically thrown away in favor of bringing Ganondorf back. ❌

This Hades also doesn’t seem to have a Cerberus. Twinbellows is a Thing, yes, but they never show up in the same instance in time. The real Twinbellows is dealt with in the first chapter of Uprising, and the fake version of Twinbellows that shows up in chapter 9 is dealt with LONG before Hades reveals himself. ❌

His goal is to use the souls of everyone and everything that’s died to increase the ranks of his army and in the process throw off the natural order of things, which honestly makes sense as a goal for a malevolent death god. It’s helped by the fact that there’s really no one “good” faction in this game, everyone has their own self interests and Palutena’s just the one that’s most kind to humanity and Pit, who is the protag we experience the game’s events through and thus passes on a little of his bias. ✅

Oh, you want satisfying hero/villain confrontation? The boss battle against him takes up a whole chapter and oooohhhh boy is it a good’un. Do yourself a favor and look up the battle on YouTube, or to avoid a lot of spoilers and gain a lot of context, do yourself an even bigger favor and look up Chuggaconroy’s whole Uprising playthrough. The man goes into detail about everything of this game, not just its characters and basic gameplay. ✅

He eats Pit at one point, and then that whole chapter takes place in his innards. Ew. Gross. ❌

He’s voiced by S. Scott Bollock in the English dub and Hōchū Ōtsuka in the Japanese original. I don’t know whether either of ‘em are jerks, but I doubt they’re as bad as James Woods soooooo... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Setting aside cameos like being a spirit in Smash Ultimate, this Hades has only had a significant appearance in a single piece of media. Even though it’s a tad bittersweet, he doesn’t overstay his welcome, unlike another Hades. ✅

That’s 7 goods, 3 bads, and a shrug. The winner is clear! KI Hades is the victor! Or at least it’s obvious that I prefer him over the Disney version. Rant over, thanks for sticking through my ramblin’ goofballery. It was fun at least, right? I had fun. :D

[dweemeister]

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964, Japan)

Godzilla’s introduction in 1954 enthralled and horrified Japanese moviegoers. That classic kaiju film, so filled with action and fantastical interest, introduced the Japanese to a monster also bearing the burdens of being a victim to something possible only in the nuclear age. Godzilla’s body is filled with keloid scars, meant to evoke the images of those who survived (if only for a time) the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Created in humanity’s pursuit of a civilization-destroying weapon, Godzilla is often interpreted as nature seeking payback against humanity. Despite Godzilla’s seeming desire for natural vengeance, Japanese audiences could empathize with Godzilla, recognizing the allegory that they had been living since 1945.

In the first four films in the Godzilla franchise and the Shôwa era of Godzilla (named after the concurrent Japanese Imperial era of Hirohito’s reign), Godzilla is an antagonist – wreaking havoc upon humanity, even when fighting other kaiju foes such as Anguirus (1955′s Godzilla Raids Again), King Kong (1962′s King Kong vs. Godzilla), and Mothra (1964′s Mothra vs. Godzilla). For Ishirô Honda’s Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla begins a rehabilitation of his image that will take three subsequent films to complete. When faced with an extraterrestrial threat to the planet, Godzilla will set aside his affray with Rodan (after both are persuaded by Mothra) to defeat King Ghidorah – who makes his cinematic debut with this film.

Princess Selina Salno (Akiko Wakabayashi) of Selgina is en route for an official visit to Japan in the midst of a winter heatwave. Just as her plane is destroyed by an assassin’s bomb, an enormous meteor impacts into the Japanese countryside near Kurobe Dam in Toyama Prefecture – considering that this same dam was destroyed by Mothra in 1961′s Mothra, all credit to the construction workers for their work in fixing the dam that quickly. Soon after, Princess Selina announces herself in the middle of a Tokyo crowd, news of her death greatly exaggerated. Claiming to be from Venus, she warns the public that Rodan – presumed dead at the end of his film debut in 1956 – will rise from Mt. Aso and that Godzilla, who has just battled Mothra in the previous movie, will destroy a ship. Away from the ears of the public, the gaze of assassins, and known only by bodyguard Detective Shindo (Yosuke Natsuki) and psychiatrist Dr. Tsukamoto (Takashi Shimura in his final Godzilla film appearance), she reveals a third prophecy. The final prophecy is prefaced by the fact that Selina’s Venusian civilization was destroyed by a three-headed dragon named King Ghidorah. She prophesies that he will attempt to destroy the Earth. Ghidorah, hailing from beyond our solar system, is the creature that emerges from the impacted meteor.

The evolving Godzilla franchise from Toho Company would soon face budget constraints and the artistic decision to make Toho’s most prized kaiju more family-friendly. Japan’s demographics in the late 1950s and early ‘60s skewed far younger than today – a time where the nation is now shrinking because of its rapidly aging population and low fertility rates. These considerations impact Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster narratively and aesthetically. Beginning with this film, Godzilla’s rampaging presence is a side effect to his ultimate defense of Japan, not an attempt to annihilate the Japanese. Nuclear allegories though mentionable to children, are likely to be beyond a child’s appreciation (in the neutral sense of the term). Thus, discussions of Godzilla’s origins and the morality of conflict against kaiju all but disappear in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. 

In earlier Godzilla films, the combat between monsters or between Godzilla and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF; which does not bother getting in the way of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidorah in this monstrous rumble) was portrayed as a battle between or against a titan. One can feel the weight of these enormous, lumbering (“lumbering” does not usually apply to flying beings, so Mothra should be excluded) kaiju trudging against the urban battlefields scorched by electric and nuclear fire. With Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Honda and kaiju actors Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Masanori Shinohara (Rodan), and Shoichi Hirose (King Ghidorah) approach violence as if it was professional wrestling – not the Greco-Roman or freestyle wrestling associated with the Olympics. There is even a ludicrous moment where Godzilla and Rodan are batting an enormous boulder between each other with the former’s fists and tail and the latter’s wings. All that is missing in this scene are a net and a chair umpire announcing the score. A new Godzilla suit was commissioned for this film, giving Nakajima the ability to more fully personalize his character through gestures and an off-camera technician to control the direction of Godzilla’s eyes in the sockets.

These results are jarring, contributing to the perceptions of the franchise’s campiness in later Shôwa era-Godzilla films. In the West until only recently, these Godzilla films were only available in dubbed versions – readers who are anime fans know how poor some of those English dubs of Japanese media can be. These films, at least in North America, were also extensively re-edited to emphasize the increasingly cartoonish battles between and against the kaiju. With thanks to Janus Films and the Criterion Collection, the original, unedited, subtitled versions of Shôwa era-Toho Company kaiju films are easily accessible for the first time. This review is based on the original unedited and subtitled version of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Beware the dubbed version of this film, which runs eighty minutes (as opposed to the original’s ninety-two minutes). But even with the restoration of all of the scenes with those supposedly boring grown-ups talking about tiresome things, the tonal dissonance between the human- and kaiju-centric scenes combined with the combat choreography is bewildering.

Debuting in Japan as San daikaijû: Chikyû saidai no kessen (translated literally as: “Three giant monsters: Earth’s greatest battle”), this is a film underselling – at least, in its title – the genius of the antagonist. Special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya (a co-creator of Godzilla) visualizes a serpentine dragon with, you guessed it, three heads. But to complicate things, Ghidorah also has two tails and wings – seven appendages in total. To keep all seven in motion as Ghidorah flies across screen, Honda and Tsuburaya utilized several wires (somehow, almost none of them are ever on-screen) and a handful of puppeteers to keep Ghidorah in realistic animation, even when he – screeching at Godzilla and Rodan – has his feet planted on the ground. Unlike Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla and Masanori Shinohara as Rodan, Shoichi Hirose cannot use his arms as Ghidorah. So where his fellow kaiju actor counterparts could keep their balance by maneuvering their arms, Hirose is left with no option other than to position his feet correctly and hope for the best. Future iterations of Ghidorah would look even more impressive than this first attempt. With this striking introduction into the Godzilla series (with a lower-string-heavy motif by longtime Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube... starting at 0:49 in the provided link), Ghidorah’s emergence begins the greatest rivalry in kaiju cinema.

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, for unknown reasons, was never released theatrically in many European countries. That makes it, outside of Japan and North America, one of the lesser-known films in the Toho Studios’ kaiju canon. The film is also, in addition to Mothra vs. Godzilla, the inauguration of – dare we say it – one of the earliest cinematic universes (and certainly one of the most sprawling). How the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is acclaimed for being so narratively innovative escapes me, especially given the financial and logistical realities of studio filmmaking in 1950s/1960s Japan and the 2010s in the United States. Even when fighting against the ill-informed wishes of producers and executives, the directorial vision is almost always apparent in these Godzilla films, including Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. The same cannot be written for numerous other cinematic universes and their respective films.

In the halls of Toho throughout the 1960s and into the ‘70s, one of Godzilla’s creators was becoming unsettled by the requests of the company’s executives. As the director who brought Godzilla to being, Ishirô Honda insisted that Godzilla be seen as a figure warning against the folly of nuclear war. The increasing demands to make Godzilla a character engage in human-like behaviors and have identifiable human emotions fit perfectly with what some social critics saw as the infantilization of Japanese audiences because of the arrival of popular Japanese television. Honda – who essentially created the kaiju film, the monster film, and the disaster film – is an underappreciated figure in cinema whose legacy is undergoing a rapid reevaluation because of the fact that the Shôwa era kaiju films (in their original unedited and subtitled forms) are being made widely available outside Japan for the first time.

Nevertheless, after Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, the pendulum would swing exactly the way Honda never wanted to witness. Honda would not live to see it, but I think he would have appreciated the fact that the pendulum has swung back.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 287: Daughters Hell Songs

Very few “heavy” bands truly live up to the misanthropy they project through their music. But Daughters were different. Over the course of a U.S. tour together, I got to know the guys in the band pretty well, and they were a rare instance where their personalities were as fucked up as their music. Don’t get me wrong---they were all great people. But there was something inherently damaged in their chemistry. They were barely functional as a unit, but that made their music seem all the more dangerous.

A year or two after that tour, Continuum Books announced open submissions for their 33 1/3 book series, wherein authors analyze classic albums and assess their cultural impact. I knew I didn’t stand a chance, but I pitched a book on Hell Songs. My thesis was pretty basic: heavy music is typically just theater, but Daughters was real life drama, and that made their music that much more intense. As per their submission guidelines, I wrote an opening chapter. The pitch was rejected, but I wound up posting the chapter online, where it caught the attention of Robotic Empire, the label that put out Daughters’ debut LP. They offered to print the book. And so for the next year-and-a-half I dedicated all my spare time to questioning the individual band members, chasing down old tour mates, stitching together the chronology of their history, reading old interviews, and writing the damn thing. I submitted a first draft to the band and waited two weeks to hear back from them.

They eventually asked to cancel the project. There were disagreements within their camp as to how shit actually went down. And, understandably, there were a lot of grimy details that they weren’t too excited to share publicly. It was disappointing, but understandable. I figured a certain amount of rejection is inevitable as a writer, and this one at least had a valid excuse, so there wasn’t much of a sting.

Anyhow, I’ve posted the first chapter after the jump. The writing seems a little corny now, so maybe I ultimately dodged a bullet.

“Yeah, I’ve been called a sinner...”

And so begins Daughter’s 2006 sophomore album Hell Songs--with a declaration of degradation. Vocalist Alexis S.F. Marshall, or Lex for short, wears the insult proudly, announcing it with the kind of defiant pride of Hester Prynne and her scarlet letter. And then a cascade of noise descends upon the final syllable. The song, “Daughters Spelled Wrong”, is one minute and 42 seconds of Lex’s self-flagellations delivered in a slurred Southern Baptist preacher’s drawl. In that short parcel of time, Lex lists off every slanderous label he’s endured.

“…wrong-doer, evil-doer…”

As the front man for Daughters, Lex was the human element to the band. And while his performance on Hell Songsis unnerving enough in its own right, his tirades became exponentially more menacing live. With his stringy waist-long hair, his tall and gangly frame, his wiry handle-bar mustache, his hopelessly tattered black pants (apparently his only pair), and his ill-fitting stained white dress shirt, he gave off an aura of someone who didn’t give a fuck about the pageantry of rock music. He wasn’t even fashionably unfashionable. Grooming, hygiene, and composure were neglected. He looked disheveled, poverty-stricken, strung out. Most Daughters sets found Lex in less attire, usually just a pair of briefs. Far from the display of muscle and machismo seen in chiseled frontmen like Henry Rollins, Anthony Kiedis, and Chris Cornell, there was nothing erotic about near-nude Lex. Sexual? Certainly, but only in the most degrading, animalistic sense of the word. Lex’s stage presence only served to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible. He would claw red lines into his belly, cram his entire fist into his mouth, fellate the microphone, and drool on himself while fondling his genitals. In moments where audience members chose to interact with him on stage, the results were equally filthy. People vied for his spit. Women pulled at his briefs. Fans fondled and licked his exposed cock. A confessed “sex addict”, Lex would swap spit with both men and women mid-set and fuck fans in venue bathrooms. His tally of sexual conquests was startling, given his disturbing stage behavior and lack of sociability. Claiming a bad acid trip as the root of his social anxiety, Lex was nearly bipolar in his daily interactions. He was relatively friendly and talkative one moment, withdrawn and angry the next. A ninth-grade drop out and former homeless teenager, his bleak world-view was legitimate.

“…worker of iniquities…”

There’s no verse. No chorus. No rhyming scheme. No melody. It’s just one musical phrase repeating for the entire duration of the song. The instrumental accompaniment sounds like a broken machine filtered through the ears of someone simultaneously shuddering through a panic attack and immersed in vertigo. The sound underneath Lex’s litany is a study in all things wrong and counter-intuitive. The band—comprised of entirely capable and talented players—sounds like they’re deliberately unlearning their instruments. Cymbals crash without a kick drum to punctuate them. The bass guitar dives and climbs with little regard for actual notes. One guitar avoids the lower octaves completely and opts instead for atonal high-end screeching and skronky discord. The other guitar remains stuck on one warbled, seasick riff through the whole song, sounding off-balance and broken even when the whole band locks in around it. It’s confounding, ugly music.

“…transgressor, bad example, scoundrel, villain, knave…”

The annals of rock music have no shortage of bands showcasing the darker side of human nature. Ever since Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, ever since Jerry Lee Lewis set his piano on fire, ever since Iggy Pop rolled in broken glass, there has existed a certain sector of the rock community dedicated to exorcising its demons on stage. It’s the reason that concerned parents and church groups still argue that rock music is evil. This flagrant display of bad behavior, self-destruction, and reckless abandon is at the very root of rock music. And perpetuating rock’s legacy of danger requires raising the bar of rebellion. As rock music nears the age of retirement, its old tricks no longer impress young audiences. Chuck Berry and Little Richard carry none of the threat they did in their heyday. KISS terrified puritanical parents with the widespread rumors of their name serving as an acronym for Kids In Satan’s Service, but now they seem downright Christian in comparison to the blasphemous content of black metal bands like Gorgoroth. So prevalent is the anti-social contingent of music in today’s market that it’s hardly noteworthy for a band to parade its malice for an audience. The harder edged realms of rock music—metal and punk, for example—depend on that kind of antagonism. Daughters looked for one of those last few buttons to push, one of those last few taboos to break, one the last few ways to make people cringe. Perry Farrell noted well over two decades ago “nothing’s shocking.” Daughters challenged that statement.

“…miscreant, viper, wretch, the devil incarnate…”

It takes a certain brand of individuals to make nihilism translate into music, and it requires their contempt to be believable. Words like “genuine”, “sincerity”, and “honesty” get thrown around by critics and fans as signifiers of good music. How do those qualities apply to antagonistic musicians? Do the artists have to be genuinely miserable people to make convincingly ugly music? The artists who are typically the most successful at channeling this kind of dark art manage to convey that wrath and misery in both content and form. It’s not just a matter of singing about the pasty underbelly of the human psyche or throwing a few skulls on an album cover; it’s about the thoroughness of pessimism. It’s about creating a genuine sense of danger. And it requires a misanthropic honesty that carries itself both on and off-stage. It used to be that the entirety of the public’s perception of an artist stemmed from image they set forth on stage and on record. In the age of the internet, this is no longer the case. Even more so for a band of Daughter’s stature—a band that rarely had a backstage to slink off to, a band that still had to unload their own gear off stage, a band that still had to run back to the merch booth after their set to sling t-shirts for gas money, a band with no place to hide and sustain a fabricated mystique.

“…monster, demon, fallen angel, murderer, and thief…”

The Catch-22 is that being in a successful band—a band that can write music together, play shows, tour, record, maybe even make a little money—requires unity, solidarity, positivity, compromise, and sociability. In other words, a band that’s genuinely driven by angst and hostility is doomed for failure. Proof of the unsustainable nature of these kinds of acts is most evident in the dearth of popular nihilistic bands. Even the somewhat well-known misery peddlers tend to be tragically stunted. Notorious shock rock icon GG Allin made a career out of anti-social behavior and bilious lyrical themes. He was known to take the stage naked, ready to fight the audience and fling his feces at the crowd. He wrote songs with titles like “Last In Line For The Gang Bang” and “Fuckin’ The Dog”. He famously promised to kill himself on stage, which would have been the ultimate display of the self-destructive nature of negative music, but a heroin overdose beat him to it. Glen Benton, the vocalist and bassist for seminal death metal band Deicide similarly promised to off himself at the age of 33 as a mockery of Jesus Christ’s year of death. Benton failed to live up to his word. And while he will always be remembered for the controversy he created in his early career by branding an inverted cross into his forehead and advocating animal sacrifice, he tempered out in his later years when he became a family man with a wife and kids. Not surprisingly, the quality of Deicide’s albums declined, as did their album sales. Allin went too close to the edge and fell into the abyss. Benton mellowed out. Neither managed to sustain the malice of their classic records over a protracted career. Daughter’s brand of ugliness had none of Allin’s overt misogyny and violence, none of Deicide’s Christian-baiting Satanism. Instead, they specialized in a kind of implied depravity. Lex wouldn’t attack the venue patrons, but he’d do everything else in his power to make the audience take a squeamish step back. Even though their album title references Hell, there was no trumpeting of a contrarian religion in their lyrics, no acknowledgement of moral consequence. Instead, Lex sang about emotional voids. It somehow made Lex scarier than GG or Glen. He seemed smarter. Colder. Less confrontational, but also less vested in cheap stunts and outlandish behavior for the sake of winning over anyone’s approval. He wasn’t interested in violence. He was interested in degrading himself on stage, forcing the audience into an unnerving kind of voyeurism.

“…lost sheep, black sheep, black guard, loafer, and sneak…”

Even the millionaire “bad boys of rock”—artists like Alice Cooper, Guns N’ Roses, and Motley Crue—aren’t exempt from the imbalance of nihilism and authenticity. For one thing, these cultural giants never tread so far into the blackness that you feared them as people. Their worst crimes were their hedonistic appetites. They still came across as people that would be fun to party with. Marilyn Manson managed to up the ante of anti-social behavior in the ‘90s, but the controversy was calculated. Manson always knew how to articulate his more vitriolic statements in a calm, well-spoken, intellectual manner. It was obviously theater. Daughters didn’t come across as the life of the party. They didn’t come across as having any sort of deeper, thoughtful meaning to their art. They came across as genuinely bitter, crass, resentful individuals.

“…good-for-nothing ass-fucking son of a bitch.”

Daughters were a band that tried to find that balance between thorough, real ugliness and some kind of self-sustaining functionality. They wanted to be successful; they wanted to tour the world and make money. But they also wanted to make something truly hideous and uncomfortable. Their debut album, Canada Songs, was an 11-minute surge of hyper-paced noise-driven hardcore. Occupying the kind of punk/metal hybrid territory instigated by bands like The Locust and Dillinger Escape Plan, Daughters found an immediate audience among fans of frenzied, technical music. It was well-received, but not entirely unconventional for that particular style. But Hell Songs was different. The band ditched their lightning-speed tempos, metal-steeped instrumentation, and shrieking, indecipherable vocals for disjointed mid-tempo lurches and Lex’s drunken oratory. They weeded their old material out of their performances. The fans felt betrayed. They had gone from sounding like the arty descendents of the powerviolence and grindcore scenes into a tightly wound meth-fed version of The Birthday Party. There was a much stronger adversarial vibe to their new approach. Their sound was less tethered to any particular scene. It alienated a fan base that was already built on embracing disenfranchisement and being at odds with everything.

But deservedly, the record found an audience, albeit a small one. For as caustic and abrasive of an album as it is, there’s a surprising catchiness to the material. The low end groans; the high end piercingly buzzes like a swarm of insects; the drums flit from spasms of hyperkinetic pulverizations to deconstructed thuds and clatter; and Lex moans and howls over all of it. Yet somehow, Hell Songs is rife with hooks. There was a discipline to what they did. It could’ve easily devolved into white noise, but there was always a clarity and separation to the instruments. They were a tight band. And for the three years that followed the release of Hell Songs before the group imploded, Daughters came about as close as any band can get to being a total train wreck without rattling apart at the seams. There was fighting, a rotating cast of guitar players, drugs, infidelities, van accidents, hospital trips, lost money, rivalries with tourmates, promoters pulling guns on the band, and an never-ending list of lewd stage behavior. They were a fascinating, glorious mess, and they perfectly captured it over the course of ten songs.

“I’ve been called a sinner.”

[amisbro]

Deep Dive:  The subplot of the UtaPri Anime NO ONE talks about

(God Damn that’s a long title...am I writing a Light Novel?) ANYWAYS (Yes already with the snark...hello @baku5ds) Welcome everyone to a brand new edition of “Deep Dive” where we take a look at things that have happened in Animes and other media and we TRY to find out if there was some other meaning to things that happened...or if there is a possibility that I am just overthinking things Today’s topic is a subplot that I don’t think anyone has ever discussed in the Anime of Uta no Prince-Sama (henceforth known as “UtaPri”) and I thought *Let’s discuss this!* So for this post we are discussing one of UtaPri’s greatest subplots that appeared to go over EVERYONE’S HEAD (including mine) and we’re gonna go over it now! Ladies and Gents...we’re talking about Shining Saotome ,STARISH and HEAVENS! LET’S GO

Alright before we get too far in let’s explain WHY we are talking about this EVERYONE in the UtaPri fandom has always said either one of the following (if not both things) “The UtaPri Anime was all about STARISH’s story” OR “HEAVENS’ role was to make STARISH better” The thing is there was one thing that became interestingly apparent since even the end of Series 1 and then became more clear as we started to move forward was there was some weird motive going on with Shining behind the scenes that made for a very interesting time.  Here is how it started In the end of Series 1 (it was episode 12 I do believe) Shining told the other 5 members at the time that the only way he would allow all of them to be a part of a “group” was if Tokiya got back in time...now he did so STARISH was allowed to form right?  Well not quite yet See Shining had a nasty trick up his sleeve Shining decided it would be a good idea to tell them that ,in order for them to debut, they had to ditch Nanami (whom up to this point had been around them all series.  STARISH protested but it was Shining’s word that was law so they were going to have to deal with it UNLESS Haruka could write something better than the “God of Composing” which SPOILER...we never met (all we got to find out was it was a man and that’s it). So now Nanami runs away and goes back to live with her grandmom (and I loved Granny Nanami as a character...I don’t think they allowed her to be at the SSS though which annoyed me) and then STARISH went and tracked her down (which I was fine with cos they wanted HER to be the composer and I can dig the rebellion.  Its revealed not long after that Shining was just “testing her” and then STARISH got to debut with her as composer So so far we had Shining fucking with STARISH in this sense...was their more to come? Oh yeah and Series two was going to be the start of something very telling when it came to Shining and even moreso the relationship he had with at least one of his instructors in my main man Ryuuga-Sensei but more on this later When Season 2 starts we are introduced to new cast members in the QUARTET NIGHT and they are to be the “Seniors” for STARISH whom kind of scoff at the idea.  This later comes back to bite them (even if the writers don’t do a good job of explaining it) but for now its QN and STARISH under the same roof...but what’s the deal with Shining? Shining finds out that STARISH refused the mentorship of the 4 new cast but is “kind of” okay with it.  Its later announced that they (STARISH) would be going for the “UtaPri Award” and you would be left to wonder if its going to be against QN or some group that would be made up for STARISH to truck over (because my belief is that if it HAD been QN there would have been a different outcome). Now everything is pretty tame and everyone is going on relatively “Drama Free” until we get to the 6th episode of the season in “Orange Rhapsody”.  THIS was the first episode that made me start to wonder what was going on in Shining’s head after the stunt he pulled in Season 1 with Nanami! It was revealed in this episode that he had heard about “a trio of Amateurs” that would take on STARISH at the awards and when he revealed this it was in front of Ryuuga (I’m refraining from using surnames for a reason here...it’ll be clear in a bit) and ,while Ryu-Sensei didn’t flinch here you know he had to be trusting them less and less because of stuff that was going on. (I say this and we have to remember my fave instructor basically demoted Tokiya and threatened to kick Ren out in Season 1...still like him though) Now my question that I had asked myself at this point was this “How does Shining know about this ‘Trio of Amateurs’ and who are they?” Well we don’t get their identity revealed until the 10th episode of the season (”Crystal Time”) and now things get interesting. See around this time Cecil was getting ready to leave to go back to Agnapolis by order of his dad...problem was that he wanted to help STARISH be the best group they could be so he basically begged to come back and he did...now when it comes to the deal with HEAVENS well... Shining (and the man we would come to know as Raging Ootori) make an agreement that the winner of the UtaPri Awards can stay on as a group but the loser has to disband...this part is interesting because both groups had zero say in this (and not long before this STARISH rebelled against Ringo and Ryuuga) so we had a lot going on here and it was going to take time to process...except we didn’t have that much because the UtaPri awards were coming up! So surprise surprise STARISH wins the award and everyone (before the Season 3 announcement) thinks the show is over...the series 3 announcement comes and we find out otherwise but let’s talk about this competition. The idea was that the group that lost goes away for good right?  Okay so then WHY did Shining prevent the disbandment of HEAVENS?  I dunno about everyone when they first saw this but I was very curious about what was going on here because Raging was legit ready to honor the agreement and then Saotome broke it...the hell?! As much as I love Season 2 this ending confuses me for this reason A “Protagonist” usually would honor an agreement put forth and do as was told but an “Antagonist” would find a way to weasel out of it.  Someone tell me how Shining ,despite being the President of the “Protagonist company”, isn’t an Antag here when he deliberately broke the agreement and then STARISH backed it?  I dunno why but I forever find this confusing. Oh but the Shining/HEAVENS connection was going to start to get even more confusing. See come Season 3 we had more stuff with Shining and Ryuuga in the car when the issue over “Code:  T.V.U.” broke out (and again another Ren episode).  The thing was here was that Ryuuga was wondering if Shining had something planned for STARISH and when Shining didn’t say ANYTHING that gave him all the intel he needed...but he just didn’t know WHAT! So now fast forward to the end of Season 3 and what do we see? HEAVENS (whom was a trio in Season 2 and now 7 members in Season 3) AND Shining and Raging standing atop the Shining Tower together as if they were in on this the whole time! Aight...this are STARTING to come into the picture here So now we know that Shining and Raging were halfass working together.  I say “halfass” cos the reality was that with Season 4 we come to find out that it would appear all the episodes at least STARTED in the Raging Entertainment office! THEN we talk about the “Three episodes from hell” (or more specifically “NEXT DOOR”) The things that forever puzzled me about the episode Eiichi claimed that Shining gave him permission for the training camp.  IF we go under the assumption that Shining has had an interest in HEAVENS this whole time then that makes sense that he would give the Leader the “go ahead” for doing this kind of thing with Otoya...makes sense to me. Now...the report It can be speculated that Eiichi “invaded” the privacy of Otoya to get what he wanted out of him.  I still don’t think that is the case and its been almost two years since the episode. I’m still thinking that Shining gave him whatever he needed (which if we again go by him having an interest in HEAVENS this makes sense) but Shining didn’t know what the result was going to be. NOW...once we got out of that mess what would Shining’s next point of interest be with HEAVENS? The SSS! Remember that in Episode 11 STARISH delivered their song from Nanami (and shocker of shocker NANAMI couldn’t be there..was still curious was they kept Nanami from HEAVENS for a good portion of the season) and around episode 12 HEAVENS made their triumphant reappearance at the re-election (with an assist from QN of all groups) and then despite losing was asked by STARISH of all groups to assist with a song. Okay this part puzzled me but the more you think about Saotome and his weird connection with HEAVENS this is gonna kind of make sense because when they were getting ready to do it Raging was going to stop them...then SHINING showed up and prevented him from leaving! Plot hole Why did Shining Stop Raging from going to get HEAVENS at this point in time...they lost again to STARISH so him getting them and pulling them off the stage would make sense right? Here is like the point of all of this It seemed whenever STARISH was going to do something Shining put up a roadblock to try and keep them from appearing Like in Season 1 it was “Either you do it without Nanami or you don’t do it at all” Season 2 was “If Cecil doesn’t come back before I get on this copter and leave you aren’t going to do the award show Season 3 was “I dunno if I want you to do the SSS election” but got backed into it by QN whom then turned on STARISH Season 4 was the only season that really HE didn’t do it...it was an accident by Eiichi but it was Raging’s idea in the FIRST PLACE! YET When it comes to HEAVENS Shining S2 Prevented HEAVENS from disbanding despite the conditions in the agreement S3 Was with Raging after HEAVENS reappeared as a 7 member group S4 Prevented Raging from going to pull HEAVENS during the final song of the season Have you noticed something herte:  Shining seems VERY INTERESTED in HEAVENS for some reason and yet oddly DIDN’T say “They had enough of your abuse...they’re coming with ME now!” And I legit wondered why...still do honestly. There is a part of me that wondered THIS So we got this new movie and now we have the different members in units now and HEAVENS have AT MINIMUM 1 with a STARISH member but also a QN member (some have 2 HEAVENS because of QN having only 4 members). NOW...this makes me wonder this Its known that Shining now has a big interest in them AND its known that he PROBABLY KNOWS that Raging tried to recruit Tokiya.  I DON’T THINK its out of the realm of possibility now that he (Shining) is going to try and and get HEAVENS away from Raging but he’s waiting till this next concert.  He PROBABLY also wants to see how the HEAVENS members work with QN (R.I.P Eiji and Shion...more the former TBH) and if he gets the results he wants...HEAVENS will NEVER go back to Raging ever again! Now WILL this happen?  Hard to say cos its going to be hard to see what goes on with HEAVENS in the movie and then after.  If Broc is complete morons then they will ax HEAVENS after this BUT we will have to wait and see because we got a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG wait until then and now the clock starts for the QN single and then we find out about HEAVENS’ HOLY SHIT THIS WAS LONG...okay I think we are done for now but you might see me back later with something a bit more lighthearted...give me a few hours Until then my friends do take care and Good Day Good Night Good BYE!

[popculturebuffet]

Goof Week: Goofy Birthday Shortstacular!

Hyuck all you happy people! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOFY! The celebration already got on track today with a look at the two part goof troop pilot. You can find that here.  

That review kicked off GOOF WEEK my weeklong look at all things Goofy, but as is tradition on this blog the birthday of one of the big three wouldn’t’t be complete without a look at their theatrical shorts career. And with this one i’ve covered all three of Disney’s biggest stars having covered Donald last june (and will again next month) and Mickey in September so it’s long overdue that my boy gets a shot and even longer overdue I watched some of his classic shorts. 

A large part of why I started doing these is because I love classic theatrical shorts and the reason I love looking at the Disney ones is, unlike Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry, I didn’t grow up with these and Disney never replayed them. At most you’d get one or a small slice of one in a House of Mouse episode. So this is a fun way to dive right into history and see a piece of Disney I’ve only started scratching the surface of. 

This is a fun one too. I ended bumping this up to 12 shorts again, and i’m glad as it allowed me to take a look at some of the weirder stuff and we go all over the place: We have dancing, goofy begging for a smoke, goofy devlopnig a split personality that calls him fat a bunch, a prototypical max who is a LOT, trips to medevil times and cowboy times, a tex avery esque noir short, and the lead in short to National treasure. If any of that sounds like a real good time to you, then keep reading under the cut!

Mickey’s Revue (1933)

Goofy was created by his VA Pinto Colvig, who based the character on the local happy go lucky moron from his home town, and after a dicussion with Walt it was decided to roll him into Mickey’s growing supporting cast. 

My guess from here is they decided to do a dry run to make sure the character worked with audeinces before giving him a full time roll. Given Goofy’s been both a staple of Mickey’s supporting cast and often more popular than the mouse or even the duck, you can see how that went. 

Colvig was awesome. While Bill Farmer is my preferred Goofy, I still tip my hat to the original and it’s clear this was a character he was born t play and it shows: a lot of characters take a short or too to really find their personality. Goofy.. has his early shorts persona straight out of the box> The only weird thing is he’s an ol dman here.. but otherwise his schick here, loudly eating peanuts, laughing a bit too loud and annoying everyone around him with no genuine malice.. that’s Goofy and Pinto really hit onto something and as we’ll see today had a TON of range beyond this. 

As for the rest of the short.. it’s forgetable. It’s not BAD, but it’s just Mickey and friends capering on stage. Nothing really out of the oridnary for these early Mickey Shorts, especially since some of them could get really damn creative.

The Whoopee Party (1933)

Now we have Goofy’s first proper appearance, going from joke character in the crowd to full member of Mickey’s friend group. 

This one is also just okay, but better than the last: Mickey and friends throw a wild party, with Mickey, Goofy and Horace making the sammiches. Goofy dosen’t do much btu gets a good gag or two, and overall it’s alright. Enjoyabl efor it’s lively animation and not much else. 

Goofy and Wilbur (1936) Three years later we get Goofy’s proper debut, a cute short about him using his Cricket friend to fish. That’s not the exestitnal nightmare that it sounds like mind you as Wilbur simply tricks them into Goofy’s net an donly gets eaten when they catch on and Goofy runs to his aid. The short really is more about Wilbur but it’s fair: like with Donald , who was paired with Pluto in his first solo short, they wanted to test the waters before having Goofy carry a cartoon himself. As we’ll see he very well could, but it’s fair to want ot backdor pilot it first and it’s easily one of the best shorts of today’s batch.

How to Play Baseball (1937)

First off while they make a good effort I already know how ot play baseball short...

How To Play Baseball is my faviorite of the Goofy Shorts on Disney Plus, which is a VERY small batch. Especailly since most of Today’s shorts aren’t at all problematic or inapproriate for kids. This one is a gem though. It’s one of the How To Shorts where a narrator goes ove rgoofy trying and failing at an activity though this one’s a tad diffrent. 

 The How To Narrator teaches us about baseball before narrating the world series game. It’s full of cleve slapstick, high speed animation and plain fun. It’s also part of the trend that would dominate Goofy’s sports career of putting him in whatever roll the shorts needed. Here he’s everyone at once, others he’s his old goofy self, other time sh’es just a normal joe. But Colvig does every version amazingly, so it all meshes and that general goofy design is so appealing it just WORKS.  So yeah while i’m not into sports I do genuinely love the How To shorts, as they were my faviorite part of House of Mouse and still are, and the originals are every bit as classic as their reputation says they are. 

A Knight For A Day (1946)

This one is the only other one of these on Disney Plus and it’s decent enough. Nothing incredibble or extra specail: Goofy plays a Squire who has to fil lin for his Knight in a tournament and tries to win a princesses hand against another douchier goofy. Simple stuff iwth some fun gags, but it just dosen’t feel all that fresh, especially since Disney already did a much better shorts with knights with Mickey’s “Ye Olden Days”. It just dosen’t feel as fun or creative as that one was btu on it’s own it’s fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible, just fine. First short of the day to feature Goofy’s faceless blonde love interest who in domestic shorts is his wife and by the same extension Max’s now dead mother. 

Tomorrow We Diet (1951)

We’ve got three from 1951 here. By this point Goofy had traditioned from lovable bumbler to every man, taking on a more generalized personality to fit into every day slice of life scenarios, using those to brilliantly contrast the goofy animated comedy with the more mundane setting it comes from. And sometimes it’s just straight up sticom humor with the ocasoinal joke you could only do in a cartoon.  And sometimes.. you get a version of Goofy who lives in a mirror taunting Goofy over being fat and then trying to keep him on his diet while it’s not clear if thi sis a split personality, a mirror ghost tormenting him that took his form and is doing this so Goofy breaks the mirror and frees him, or his evil doppleganger from another universe. 

Yeah .. one of the centerpieces of this short is Goofy’s reflection/split personality/earth 3 doppleganger/some sort of evil genie taunt shim abotu the fact he’s putting on weight startnig by saying “Hey Fat”... because apparently in this unvierse the best weight joke they can come up with is literally just calling someone fat. I bet I know who rules THIS timeline with an iron fist....

The first half of this short is Goofy being told he’s fat by a bunch of people and the second half is his hallucination/psychotic break/guardian asshole tormenting him with the diet. And I do mean tormenting: He knocks away all of Goofy’s food, then suggests he not even eat his carrot and STARVE himself, which is just deeply unhealthy, and earlier forces Goofy to let him read his book and then tell shim to just diet anyway. Which granted dieting IS sensible.

So yeah this short as you can probably guess by the fact it involves the term “Hey Fat” which was only said by a human being once.. Dick Kinney or Mick Shaffer, the writers of ths short,  when one pitched the line to the other and they laughed for some reason and put it in the script. But with that you can wager this short is REALLY outdated> Overating CAN be a problem and fat shaming still exists, but it’s far less tolerated and far less of a thing.

And hell I can tolerate a good natured weight joke, the Critic had some great ones, especially as a fat guy myself... but this isn’t good natured. The entire joke is, as the man said above HE’S FAT.. So as a legit short. it’s deeply unfunny at best, horribly insulting at worst. But as a so bad it’s good short? it’s GOLD. From the whole mirror goofy thing, to the fact fat is seen as a legit insult here or something to just call fat people because that’s what the writers thoguht humans, even in the 50′s talked like it’s just riffably cruel.. though it will obviously depend onthe viewers tolerance for both fat jokes and how creepy the short can be and again as a short it sucks. As something to be mocked for fun.. it’s fat with potential

Father’s Are People (1951)

Hey Kids you wanna see Max and Goofy reenact Problem Child? 

Given I did Goof Troop earlier this week and i’m finishing this week with A Goofy Movie, it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker that I wanted to cover the first short with Goofy’s son Juinor, who’d later be remolded into Max. 

The short STARTS promising with Goofy having a kid and the hyjinks that comes from having a baby child: Goofy passes out Cigars because Lung Cancer was the preferred way of celebrating having a child in the 50′s, runs himself ragid helping out, which I give the short credit for as “Donald’s Diary” three years later would play a man helping a woman around the house for horror. Here George (Goofy would often go by George Geef in later shorts) pitches in and while he’s clearly exausted he is trying to help with the boy. 

It takes a turn though once we jump ahead to a toddler Junior. Seriously a red head named junior... there’s no way that’s a coincidence. Anyways, the problem is unlike problem child, where Junor dosen’t really go after his dad but the assholes around his pushover dad who genuinely deserve it, this Junior goes after Goofy who at wors tis mildly negelectful but clearly loves his boy> He also DOES try to take a brus hto the kid... but it’s hard to be too mad about that as it was acceptable at the time and he dosen’t actually paddle a three year old. It’s like a less horrfying version of donald puttin ga penguin to a shotguns face in that the targeted party dosen’t see the threat and that goofy isn’t some form of sociopath in this short like Donald was there. It’s just not very funny and only worth watching at all for the historical value. 

No Smoking! (1951) (Patreon Selection by WeirdKev27)

This is my first of two Patreon selections, my patreon is here if you want to chip in a buck to pick a short for Donald’s birthday next month, by longtime friend and backer of the blog Kev. He suggested this one for the sheer absurdity of Goofy smooking.. and was right on the money> This one is DELGITHFUL. 

It works on two levels: it works on the modern level of seeing such an iconic cartoon grapple with trying to quit smoking, first smoknig so constantly a giant cloud appears over him and he has about 80 cigs in his mouth at once, but then trying to quit and being surrounded bycigs before finally DESPERATELY begging for one. As I discovered you really HAVEN’T lived till you’ve heard goofy madly call out “Smoke, smoke gotta have a smoke”. 

But while the novelty IS great.. it’s also just a good cartoon. Outside of some blatant racisim at the start, with a native american sterotype introducing smoking to colmbus which feels so wrong to type I need a shower and really puts a damper on the short which after that.. is just really funny. From the smoking through the ages, to the very creative smoking gags it’s just fun.. and it is CLEARLY anti-smoking, showing both the insane amount of cigrte smoker can go through and how mad the addiction can drive you. It’s not bad... though if you can’t stomach the blatant and terrible racisim.. I get that and it’s fair. 

Two Gun Goofy (1952)

This is one of two “put Goofy in another setting all together” pieces, both in the same year which tells me they were trying to find new stuff to do for Goofy. Thi sisn’t unheard of in cartoons: Around the same time and before Bugs Bunny went all over the world and thorugh time and space, and Mickey went through the looking glass and had two fantasy shorts, so i’ts not unusual

But what IS neat about these next two shorts is they combined the two goofys: he has his goofy demanor and oblivoiusness from the classic shorts, but still has his deeper, slightly less goofy voice from the everyman shorts and is still treated as an average joe, just one now undertaking genre careers, here a cowboy and next a detective

This short is decent. I’m a sucker for cowboy episodes apparently: either old west style showdowns or having the characters go to a dude ranch or something. So naturally I picked this one and was told Max was in it an dhe is... in a two second cameo when Goofy has a thought bubble after meeting faceless lady.

But this is a really enjoyable picture. not Disne’y sbest but good stuff. It also pairs Goofy with pete which really is a perfect pairing, putting our scowling rotund villian against our skinny well meaning hero. And while i’ts a common gag in a lto of things I do love Goofy accidently beating the shit out of pete as the short finds fun ways to do it. All in all worth a watch. 

How to Be a Detective (1952)

This one was a REALLY fun one. Like with westerns i’m a sucker for a good noir parody, even if ironically I haven’t watched much of either genre proper. Add in the fact this is clearly inspiried by Tex Avery’s work and i’m sold on this fun madcap romp with an approraitely more noirsh narrator. 

Goofy is naturally a detective and hired by the faceless woman to find “Al” having to contend with both a goon he keeps failing to recognize and The Chief of Police, played by Pete, who keeps telling him “I told ya to stay off the case Goof!”. It’s just the delivery makes it funny any time he says it as does his instance... and the punchline, which I won’t spoil to both that an dthe overaching mystery i sa gem. This one’s on youtube, seek it out, it’s damn fun. Before I go thoguh I also love how Goofy is Given “Goof Balls”. Yes GOOFY GETS DRUGGED and I am here for it

Father’s Day Out (1953)

I couldn’t find any GIF’s for this one, not even one’s in teh same tag that were unrelated so here, have more smoking Goofy. It will never not be funny.

This one is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtastic. Goofy is overworked, wnats to rest on his weeknd, and stuff gets in the way. Oh and halfway through he abrubtly has to take Max to the beach. It’s.. not much honestly. It’s like the simpsons if it wasn’t funny. 

How To Hook Up Your Home Theater (2007) (Emma Fici Patreon Selection)

You may notice the MASSIVE time jump here. That’s because while Disney still does theatrical shorts nowadays, in part because Pixar’s shorts turned out to be a huge hit, they almost never use the classic cast. This delightful anamoly is one of the few exceptions and was picked by Emma out of sheer curosity. And she picked well this short is fun, feelnig like a big budget version of the House of Mouse How To Shorts I loved so an dhaving a modern yet still ultimatley timeless subject: while the tech featured is missin ga streaming box and 4k, otherwise it really has aged incredibly well and getting all the diffrent modes set up and what not is a hassel we al lcan agree with. 

It’s a fun short with lots of good gags and humor as Goofy tries to set up his Home Theater before the big game, and worth a watch. Weirdly not on Disney+ though try explaining that one. 

One final note is for whatever reason this was paired up with National Treasure: Book of Secrets. 

My BEST GUESS i sthat it appeals to the kinds of dads who’d watch National Traesure: Book of Secrets as well as kids since it’s an adventure film. Though it now makes me want to see Nicholas Cage voice goofy. Get on it Disney. Not forever though, Bill’s a treasure. Just for a gag like Don Cheadle vocing Donald.. oh god put them together.. and then have them do a movie together I don’t think they have and do not know why. 

Final Ranking: As a bit of added fun to close this out and as a new feature for these i’m ranking today’s shorts from best to worst How To Be A Detective How To Play Baseball No Smoking Goofy and WIlbur How To Hook Up Your Home Theater Two Gun Goofy The Whoopee Party Mickey’s Revue Tommorow We Diet A Knight for A Day Father’s Are People Father’s Weekend

For the record despite not being a GOOD short Tommorow we diet is at least intresting, hence i’ts ranknig while Father’s weekend is just a boring 50′s version of problem child. Fathers are People at least has some good gags to set it off. 

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow

[pandamilo]

Fanboy Yuri

#29 You could have warned me

@outoffcks gave me like a prompt spam so this is one of three that i’ll be posting over the next few days. Have some nerdy Otayuri fanboy fluff for your Saturday night <3

***

Yuri Plisetsky was many things.

He was a dancer, primarily in ballet but he dabbled in many different forms. Yuri was a cat lover, a good cook, a homeowner (well he owned a studio apartment but still), a barista at some indy/hipster coffee shop his uncle Viktor owned. He was a gamer and played competitively with his uncle’s husband, Yuuri, any chance he could and they usually won.

All these things and many more were parts of Yuri that people knew. They knew he was tall, lean, blonde with green cat-like eyes and he had the body of a dancer.

They knew he was snippy, sassy, loud and very opinionated, things always had to go his way.

But what people didn't know, was that Yuri was a fanboy.

Well, not entirely true - he went to figure skating competitions and blatantly showed his adoration for a particular skater but no one knew how deep it ran...

Yuri wrote fanfic’s and draw smutty art and rambled essay-length text posts on his tumblr about his favourite figure skater. Yuri had been a fan of Otabek Altin’s since he first debuted in Juniors - he wasn't like the other skaters. Otabek was stoic, rigid and defined in a way many others weren't.

Yuri has been following figure skating since he was a child because Viktor used to skate but suffered an injury just before his debut into seniors but it worked out best for him because it’s how he met his husband - Yuuri was the support sports nurse on call for the local rink.

They have been annoyingly inseparable ever since.

The first time Otabek had appeared in Yuri’s world he was shocked, the boy was angry looking but also soft. He moved, not like a dancer but a man on a mission. He was beautiful but not in the same way skater’s normally were. He wasn’t fluid like them but he also wasn’t stilted. He was utterly unique and fascinated Yuri to no end.

That’s how it all started, innocent enough, just following his skating… then his interviews… then his hobbies… likes… dislikes, any information that made Yuri feel like he already knew the man he had a soul (and dick for that matter) crush on.

He hadn't really set out to write fanfiction, Yuri was just scrolling through his tumblr and saw someone had made a post shit-post dishing Otabek’s skating and Yuri had defending him. He created a post that justified Otabek’s skating, music and movement choices, debunking every word the other idiot had said. This, of course, just made the idiot retort with some contrite comment about Yuri’s obvious desperate plea to get in Otabek’s pants.

Now this wasn't something Yuri could actually deny, the man was a fucking sex god who dripped sexiness by simply breathing.

So Yuri did the only reasonable thing and wrote a smutty story of all the ways he’d take Otabek’s arse, all the ways he’d let that beautifully hung sex-god fuck him till morning.

That was the beginning...

Twenty fic’s ranging from detailed descriptions of sucking Otabek’s cock to fluffy little things they would say while laying in bed together and talking about the big questions in life, Yuri wrote it all.

Yuri even came up with their ship name - Otayuri, he was quite proud of himself. And people even seemed to like it. They thought he and Otabek made a cute couple (based of Yuri’s on rough sketches of what they would look like together) and they loved his shit-drabbles, apparently he wrote good smut and people started requesting him to write other things.

This is how Yuri’s other life began.

He started to pick up a kind of following, many people respected his opinion on anything Otabek and on other things as well.

Yuri wrote and drew for people he didn't know, about all kinds of topics, anime, films, movie stars. It ranged from simple sweet things to the dirtiest kinks he didn't even think were a turn on but people started paying him for them. Either in real money or gifts of other things, it was a world he never knew he needed.

But his other life and real world came crashing down in a brutal tidal wave one day when he received a text from Viktor to come into work as soon as possible.

Yuri arrived, his hair in a braid and twisted around his head, his black polo already slightly dirty since he hadn’t been able to wash it. His black skinny jeans hanging a little too low to be suitable for work but once he started he’d be wearing an apron so it wouldn’t matter. But just as Yuri was walking around the main floor he stopped, there was a voice, gravelly and unmistakable.

Yuri didn’t look, he couldn’t look. He also couldn’t deny that just hearing that voice in person was giving him a partial.

What the fuck is he doing here?!

Yuri was panicking, he sprinted out the back to the staff room and nearly bold over his uncle’s husband. “Yuuri-kun! You could have warned me! Holy shit, what the fuck is he doing here!”

“Yura-kun, calm down, deep breaths. I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was here until about a minute ago, Vitya seemed so pleased with himself and it took going on the floor to find out why.”

Yuri had been interested in Japanese when he first met Yuuri and asked him to teach him some things and that began their close relationship, there was only actually four years difference between them. After a long, long, argument about the fact that never in a million fucking years was Yuri ever going to call him senpai, they had come to the conclusion they would add -kun to both their names as sign they were on the same level, despite their age gap.

“I’m gonna kill him.” Yuri growled out between his teeth, going to step around Yuuri and burst into Viktor’s office, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.

“Why? I thought you would at least be kind of excited. Go introduce yourself, he seemed friendly enough, he even remembered Vitya.”

Yuri turned to look at Yuuri, there was no way he could talk to that man… not after everything. He would either turn into a gooey mess or be so hard he wouldn’t be able to hide it.

But this might be your only chance to actually meet him in person.

Yuri was torn, he wanted to run but he honestly couldn’t decide in which direction.

“Yura-kun?” Yuuri questioned, tilting his head to look properly into Yuuri’s face.

“What if he’s awful? After all this time... what if he just turns out to be another one of those self-absorbed, ego-stuffed skater’s who think they are better than everyone else just because they have a gold fucking medals?” Yuri’s voice was small, irritated and he was staring at his own hands wound into fists in front of him.

“Do you honestly believe that?” Yuuri’s voice was kind, just like always. Never judgemental, just a nudge in the right direction, a clarification.

No, I don’t believe it.

Yuri didn’t bother to reply, simply turned on the spot and ditched his things in his locker, tying his apron, checking himself in the mirror… five times, before he was out on the floor. He didn’t go up to the table straight away, simply fixed up the counter, served a few customers and made some coffees. It was only when he heard the very distinct laughter of his uncle that he let himself drift over to the table.

There were five people sat there, six if you included Viktor, all figure skater’s that Yuri recognised instantly. There was Jean-Jacques Leroy and his wife (who wasn’t actually a figure skater but she basically lived under JJ’s arm so she might as well have been on the ice with him), Guang Hong Ji, Leo de la Iglesia and the one and only, Otabek Altin.

Now or never.

“Hi, I’m Yuri, is there anything else I can get for you today?” Yuri tried to be polite and smile but his eyes were almost exclusively fixed onto Otabek’s face and when those eyes flickered up to look at him curiously, Yuri almost choked.

They were warm, inviting and kind, Otabek smiled at him as his mouth fell open into a gap like an idiot but he couldn’t seem to stop it.

“YURI! This is my other Yuri! He is my nephew, he is a big fan of figure skating, especially you. Otabek.”

Yuri was going to kill him, headlines tomorrow will read Man arrested today for impaling his uncle with a cake server.

“Oh, you follow my skating? Shame I didn’t have a better session for you-”

“That wasn’t your fault, you were unfairly judged because of that new competitor’s trickery.He was all smoke and mirrors with stupid music, he isn’t actually a good skater at all, he is utterly boring, you should have won gold, not him...” The words were tumbling out of Yuri’s mouth of their own accord and there was nothing he could do to stop them now. “Sorry.” Yuri mumbled at the end, he knew his face was actually on fire at this point as six pairs of eyes examined him for a good thirty seconds of utter silence.

Send help. Someone please save me from this agonizingly slow, death.

“Thank you.” Otabek broke the silence and Yuri’s head whipped up to meet his gaze, he seemed so genuine and shocked, his eyes flickered over Yuri’s body again before coming back up to meet his eyes once more. It was as if everyone else melted away and it was just the two of them.

“Yeah, well… no need to thank me, it’s just the truth.” Yuri couldn’t take it anymore and bolted, pretending he needed to help Yuuri with a customer even though there was only actually two coffee’s to make.

They stayed a little longer, chatting with Viktor and Yuri took a few chances to flick his eyes over to the table only to nearly drop what he was carrying everytime as he was met with Otabek’s piercing stare.

Yep, it’s offical. I am so dead.

When they were getting up to leave Otabek broke away from the counter, and stopped in front of Yuri.

“I wanted to give you your tip personally.” Otabek’s voice grumbled in Yuri’s ears as he stared at him, offering his hand, palm up and slightly shaking. Yuri couldn’t speak, what the hell was he meant to say if he did.

Otabek smiled at him as he placed something light in his hand, running his fingers lightly over Yuri’s wrist and palm as he slowly retracted his hand.

“It was nice to finally meet you, Yuri, I hope we get a chance to get to know one another better.” Otabek smirked a little before turning on the spot and briskly walking away as Yuri’s eyes flickered down to the note in his hand.

Call me - Otayuri

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen 1 | Gakuen Babysitters 1 | Idolish7 3 | Zoku Touken Ranbu Hanamaru 1 | Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 1 | Miira no Kaikata 1 | Death March 1

The debuts for the winter season keep coming, but we’re almost at the end of them with this post.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card 1

Note I don’t have any prior experience with Cardcaptor Sakura aside from 1 volume of manga and watching the show in passing while other people were watching it, plus knowing about a few spoilers and the show’s reputation as a seminal magical show show…then in more recent days, I finished 2 episodes of it (in fact as of the day I’m typing this, I finished episide 2 today!).

This OP makes Sakura look like later-stage Sailor Moon, and I think that’s the point.

Where did the bear in Syaoran’s hand go when Sakura hugged him?

Eriol! I don’t really know much about him, and I knew I should’ve known about him before starting this, but…it was a bit of a shock to see a character I technically haven’t seen the debut of with my own eyes.

I get the feeling these are the “two bears” from the prologue OVA…

Emails! In the world of Cardcaptor Sakura! Wow, I feel old…and I didn’t even grow up with her.

Hot dang! Gimme dat bishie (Yue)! I knew he was coming, but…I still don’t really know how he came to be!

Wow, this Yamazaki kid spouts such rubbish! I’m looking forward to seeing him in the main series now.

It’s pretty obvious I need to watch the original before understanding this fully, so I’m putting it on hold.

Gakuen Babysitters 1

I’m here for my Ume and Nishiyama. I’m not particularly good at dealing with kids, especially younger kids, but this doesn’t make me run for the hills either.

Ryuichi involves the kanji for “dragon” and Kotaro has the kanji for “tiger”.

That man with the hat is so not sketchy…

I’ve never heard of NAS before (but I have heard of NAZ through Idolish7).

That joke Saikawa told actually worked! These shows may all be middling this winter, but I’d be happy with even some of them on my docket. I’ve been pleasantly surprised more often than not that I haven’t found “stinker of the season” yet.

The comedy for this show’s really on point, although the overall design is a tad lackluster.

K-Kamitani?! Apparently Ume-chan’s character is Hayato Kamitani, so that’s how Ume got involved, so to speak. This sudden intro of 4 kids works on a story scale, but not in a way any person can process without pausing the video (or getting individual intros later).

Well, there are those individual intros I was asking for. Spoke too soon.

It’s actually kinda sad and quite telling how independent Kotaro is. (I still find it extremely hilarous Nishiyama – whose first name is Kotaro - didn’t voice Kotaro, although from a practical standpoint I understand why.)

Usaida has such bedroom eyes, it’s hard to ignore (because they make him look like En)! Dangit, I want my En back!

This brings back memories. My mum used to deal with kids all the time, and of course I was in the background for some of the shenanigans.

Dragon puppet symbolism, eh? (see the dotpoint a bit back about Ryuichi’s name)

As soon as this guy (who kinda looks like something out of Haikyuu) started demanding Taka come with him, I screamed. That character doesn’t seem very Ume, but…uh, it’s Ume. Gotta deal with it. Now that I listen to their voices properly though, Ume does have a “big bro” voice and Nishiyama a “earnest young man” voice.

Oh dear. Taka’s imprinted on me already, and I don’t even like boys that age.

I haven’t felt a genuine sense of danger from any of these winter shows until this one, so it seems like it’s one of the strongest debuts. Then again, CCS was my frontrunner before this and YuruCamp the second best, so I guess I can’t talk, eh?

Gah, I feel like I wanna cry now. That is a strong premiere!

I have a real problem with how anime tears come out in globs. Then again, I’m too much of a crybaby, as my notes can attest…so I guess no arguing here.

Should it be “Chairman” or “Chairwoman”???

Tsundere grandma. Now there’s something I thought I’d never think in my life…

Oh, I didn’t realise earlier but Taka = “hawk” and Hayato = “falcon man”. Animal jingoism at its finest!

Whoo, that was a real nice debut. I thought I was too old for this stuff, but it’s a keeper!

Idolish7 3

It’s a good thing I chose to cover episodes 1 – 2 so I won’t have to do them now.

I didn’t notice Nagi getting all huggy there with everyone in range (the first time, at least).

In case you don’t know from all the other idol shows, the centre is the one in centre stage. They’re often seen as the leader, so it’s a very important position.

This song can’t be anything but Monster Generation! Woohoo!

Wow, I haven’t seen one of those “watch from a distance” things in a while. Makes me nostalgic.

“Ichi” would probably refer to Iori, right? (He has the kanji for “one” in his name.)

Wowee, Nagi’s entendre…is really thick. Like pudding.

I agree, brothers can be so strange…

“…spoil me sometimes.” - Laying on the entendre thicker than custard here, Iori!

These boys are so into their Magical Kokona. I want in now.

Tamaki really is an En-chan…En-chan! Come back! (But why does Tamaki have no socks???)

These ED outfits are so elaborate! Ooh! Imagine a gender-swapped cosplay of them, that’s be great!

Who’s that on the edge of the ED video though? (You can see something hopping up and down.)

Zoku Touken Ranbu Hanamaru 1

Can we please just call this “Hanamaru 2” like Crunchyroll? “Zoku” just refers to a continuation…anyways, I got Hanamaru season 1 done last year while dealing with Katsugeki, so…here I come, sword boys!

Didn’t Hanamaru get a dub, by the way? Why would you dub this? For me to criticise it? The Touken Ranbu fanbase is kinda small…

W-Wait, did they just write Yams out of this season? Yams is the protag (if not a protag) here! What did Ichiki do now to deserve this???

It was getting too hard to jump through the proxies to play Touken Ranbu as of late, so I deleted my DMM account. Even still, the sword boys have multiplied since I left! Yikes!

Wow, unexpected 1st person bit there, Kashuu/Masuda. I thought I told the industry to stop doing that…

Exposition wave…I don’t need this wave, but I guess anime-only fans might. Carry on, Heshikiri.

So this multiple Konnosuke thing wasn’t a Katsugeki-only gag? Oh dear, my head’s spinning…

I don’t think I noticed, but Kashuu uses a brush (and not a specialty brush provided in the lid of nail polish). Probably because in Touken Ranbu, plastic isn’t much of a concept…

I still appreciate how Kashuu was this Saniwa’s starter. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy for my own TR days…

Photos are a nice way to recap. After all, 1 picture speaks 1000 words.

Wow, Shishiou’s a real chibi compared to these tachi. But Shishiou’s a tachi too…

Dang, I’m jealous. These bros were around when I was a TR player, and I missed ‘em! Dang Kebishii drops!

So that thing really is a nue. I could never see it on Shishiou’s card, y’know.

Hmm…considering the bros are new swords, the Saniwa’s strategy is to level up them up using the younger bro as leader (remember, the leader gets more experience). I see…

A “pincer attack” is a V shape, so the description fits the Crane Wings formation…

I can’t say I wasn’t impressed by Akashi just then. Come to think of it, he didn’t have any battles in Hanamaru’s 1st season.

A double attack suits a pair like this, of course!

Oh my gosh, they even got two dfferent voice actors for the Konnosukes! LOL!

Hanamaru’s EDs kept changing and it seems like they’ll continue to change, eh? This one looks quite spiffy.

The style of this ED doesn’t look like Hanamaru at all. It was probably done by the original illustrator for the swords.

It’s a great return to form for Hanamaru! I’m sold!

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 1

Another day, another long title…plus this show I would’ve passed on, if not for that resolution…

Michiko Yokote is on a lot of shows I watch. I don’t really know what her influence is, but it seems she’s genuinely competent at what she does.

So…uh, Gendo pose anyone?

I think the teacher is the best part of this. I’ve been a bit of Tonari no Seki-kun, and the pull of that is the sheer ludicrousness of what Seki does with his stuff. However, there didn’t seem to be any intervention aside from Yokoi (I think that was her name)…

Nishikata’s reactions are just way too easy to read…

Well, that was okay, but it’s definitely a show to binge all at once. On to the “on hold” pile it goes.

Wait, but they missed a segment (the 100 yen segment). Gotta skip forward…

I didn’t get any laughs out of that show at all, but it’s still a decent school SoL.

How to Keep a Mummy 1

I have absolutely no experience with this manga, mind you…aside from seeing this tiny mummy on Comico…

Wow, if the mummy can fit in his shoe…how big is it?

The translation of “ready” is surprisingly ganbaru, and there’s a “but” mentioned in the Japanese title missing from the English. Also, “ready” has sexual connotations I’d rather not pair with a tiny mummy…I’d say the translation of the episode title should be something more along the lines of “White, Round, Small, Very Wimpy But [Also] Tries Its Hardest” (“It” being the mummy and not Pennywise…).

Is Dracula even public domain right now? (Does anyone care about the intellectual property of a classic vampire novel anyway? Because I sure don’t.)

Can we please start making jokes about how Sora’s daddy got him a mummy? It may seem childish, but I’m tempted to now.

This mummy is so adorable, I think it even beat out the kids from Gakuen Babysitters! Geesh, I’m spoilt this season! It completely set off my moe senses, and I don’t even have any!

It imprinted on him! Oh wow!

The mummy doesn’t even have a mouth…how can it spit things-oh wait. That’s the joke, isn’t it?

Come to think of it, crybaby characters ae few and far between. However, between this and Devilman…er, Crybaby…they’ve suddenly become popular…I guess?

It’s like a harem, only it’s between a dog and a mummy. Why I never…

One of the best things about anime is that you can learn about other cultures through the things included offhandedly…like that molokhiya thing that Sora mentioned. Apparently it’s a Jewish vegetable of some sort.

Do mummies get jet lag too? I was just thinking how Comico stories, with their full colour and yet simple design (to allow for downward scrolling and intake by the eyes) are perfect for anime.

I listened to the show with volume for once…because Tazuki seems to be the guy voiced by Keisuke Koumoto…and I think I was on the money there. Plus, Sora’s VA really sells the delivery of jokes (although he seems to be voiced by a woman…?)!

Yamanba…like Yamanbagiri’s namesake. The mountain hag, right?

Yep, I was right on the money with Tazuki being Koumoto. Kamitani Tazuki, it seems his name is…

This dance ending’s kind of cute, too. It’s a keeper!

Death March 1

(looks at title just above this dotpoint) C’mon. There’s no way I’m going to repeat “Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody” over and over again for at least 11 or 12 episodes…by the way, I’m here because I was reading a KonoSuba novel and saw an ad for this, just in time for the anime…

“SADA”, my butt…

I love how they almost replicated Windows 8 in this show. Or is it 7, or 10? They don’t show the taskbar, which is the main visual difference between 8 and 10, but either way the Windows replication without being sued is really something…

This OP’s gonna make me dizzy someday…

Classes, eh? So that means Suzuki’s working with an OOP language. Plus you can see Cortana on the computer as the mention of classes goes by, meaning that person’s on Windows 10.

UML.

By the way, Satou is a fairly common name in Japan…at least to my knowledge. But Suzuki is a pretty common one, too, hence the mistake.

The client? Unless Suzuki is referring to the client as in the program, it could also mean the client as in the person/group who wants the game made. Considering what he says though involving a call, it’s probably the latter.

That’s the second show with a lost kid in the first episode. It seems a bit trite, don’tcha think?

According to his phone map (flip phone!), he’s in Akihabara.

FFL…eh? Google says there are multiple Final Fantasy games for Android, meaning I’ve probably thinking of Fire Emblem Fates (which doesn’t match), and there’s no such thing as Final Fantasy 50 (L in Roman numerals) yet.

That’s the second time they mentioned work/daily life being a death march. Can we not???

Come to think of it, Suzuki looks like Nobuaki (King’s Game), which doesn’t bode well for either show.

Apparently you can get Facebook Messenger for Windows 10, which I didn’t know…

“…being a corporate slave.”

C’mon! This ain’t the Animatrix, but still, if you’re trying to make stuff look technological, at least make it look a bit better.

Third time they’ve mentioned “death march”.

It might just be Houseki no Kuni’s fault, but this CGI is really janky.

Welllll…at least it looks like a game.

Welllllllll…at least they knew where to put their money for some sakuga…

This running through fields scene is either a homage to Every Anime Opening ever, or Pokémon. I distinctly remember it being in Emerald’s opening animation, at least.

Dude, if you want to look for a wyvern, do it from the ground where you won’t get injured, dumb Satoo.

Does this look a lot like Berserk (2016) with all its CGI knights…or is that just me?

Zena…? I might be showing how old I am with this (or how much I scour the internet), but…by any chance, do you mean this gal instead?

I think I’ve had enough of this flip for now, so I’m putting it on hold.

[dweemeister]

Ready Player One (2018)

On a recent episode of CBS Sunday Morning, author Ernest Cline attributed his debut novel’s success as, “a testament to what happens if you be free about what you love and why you love it.” That novel, filled with 1970s and 1980s pop culture, is Ready Player One, now directed by Steven Spielberg (who, arguably, defined cinema in those decades), co-adapted to the screen by Cline and Zak Penn, and retaining the ideas Cline sought to express. After a run of topical dramas, this is Spielberg’s first legitimately “fun movie” since 2011′s The Adventures of Tintin (as much as I liked 2016′s The BFG, it is tonally scattered). Jaws (1975) and Jurassic Park (1993) scared the pants off of sensitive viewers; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Hook (1991) reached into childhood fears amid the entertainment. But of all of Spielberg’s “fun movies”, Ready Player One is the only one that is pure spectacle. Its nostalgia there for show, almost never in service of whatever themes the film happens to stumble upon. This pure spectacle is a fleeting, flashy thrill and little else – take the jump, because despite its weaknesses, there is no film analogous to Ready Player One.

It is 2045 and humans are addicted to the virtual reality world of OASIS. OASIS was designed by co-creators James Halliday (Mark Rylance; whose eccentric character has been deceased for some time) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg; who left the developing company before OASIS became so widespread), who hid an Easter egg requiring three keys within his game. The Easter egg promises the winner ownership of OASIS. Living in a multi-tiered trailer park in Columbus, Ohio, is the orphaned Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), whose OASIS username is Parzival. He befriends one of the game’s best players, Art3mis (the avatar of Samantha Cook, played by Olivia Cooke) on his way to acquire Halliday’s three keys and unearth the game’s deepest secrets that millions have tried to solve. Faster than Wade can tell Samantha, “I wanna be your lover”, she rebuffs his requests to meet her in person because she fears that he will not like the real her.

Everybody wants to rule the world. One corporation, Innovative Online Industries (IOI), has essentially dedicated itself thousands of employees to find the Easter egg to gain full control of OASIS. The CEO of IOI is Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), and he finds himself in conflict with Tye’s friends – who name themselves the “High Five”. The High Five will also include (actual name/username): Helen/Aech (Lena Waithe), Zhou/Sho (Philip Zhao), and Toshiro/Daito (Win Morisaki).

One could spend much longer explaining the world inhabited by the characters, but Ready Player One is up to the challenge of excessive exposition as Penn and Cline’s screenplay spend about twenty minutes with Wade explaining what has happened to 2045 Earth (or, at least, Columbus). The screenplay also refuses to grasp any of the implications of the dystopia it presents – having not read the book, my hope is that Cline does examine those social aspects more. How did the widespread disillusionment in real life that, apparently, the whole world (?) is connected to OASIS come to be? Aren’t humans, even those who believe they have no power, more resilient than that? How can an enormous conglomerate be able to have what basically is a paramilitary that engages in domestic terrorism (police forces exist, if the ending is any indication, so do cops work one day a week or something in 2045)? Given trends in gaming today, are there microtransactions or something similar in the OASIS that creates a class structure replicating itself in the real world and allowing for certain in-game or real-life advantages by class?

Maybe it is just my imagination running away with me, but why the hell are all the best players in the world living in Columbus, Ohio?

One way or another, enduring science-fiction asks questions of its characters’ humanity and dares the reader or viewer to understand, question, and improve their own being. In cinema, Metropolis (1927, Germany) comments on class power struggles and how society is impoverished with a permanent working class; Planet of the Apes (1968) is a sharp allegory of religious and scientific tensions; A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) asks if a synthetic being programmed to simulate love can feel love. Ready Player One’s stake in cinema’s science-fiction tradition is not as weighty as those films, but there are pressing thoughts to be gleamed from the film.

The movie presents fandom that is corporatized, excessive, or taken in moderation, as well as providing an environment of pandemic video game addiction (now a disorder recognized by the World Health Organization). On corporatized fandom, Ready Player One presents audiences with IOI – a combination of video gaming as sweatshop work and individuals whose job it is to know everything about twentieth-century cinematic (I might be a decent candidate in this department but turning it into soul-sucking work is too depressing to think about), comic book, and video gaming culture. Something like IOI is laughable now, but the film stands on it, so perhaps we will not be laughing if something resembling it emerges in the decades to come.

Regarding excessive fan culture, one could argue the whole conception of OASIS is a monument to one man’s uninhibited obsession with elements of pop culture. Ready Player One – at least in this adaptation – is unwilling to examine how damaging one’s fandom, when taken to extremes, can be (the throwaway epilogue in the film’s final frames is not enough). Outside of Halliday’s story, how does one’s fixation on video games or movies or other art forms make actual life easier or more difficult? The epilogue’s reveal that Wade and Samantha no longer log into the OASIS every day makes one wonder how prepared they are to go without a virtual reality where they have essentially lived their lives. Perhaps that latter point belongs to a different movie or the fan-fiction writing corners of the Internet, but the fact that Ready Player One only superficially touches upon these points adds little else to this reference-heavy movie.

What non-readers of Ready Player One may have noticed is the presence of so many popular movie and video game characters. One begins to wonder about how much money was spent on licensing. Many detractors of Ready Player One, who aren’t gonna take it, have commented on how some of the references in the film are shallow, disrespectful of the original source materials. These critiques are mostly beside the point. Take the Iron Giant. The Iron Giant appears as Helen’s avatar in the climactic battle as she/it proceeds to punch the stuffing out of IOI’s mechanized tanks and Mechagodzilla. This goes against the character’s essence: that it will only use violence in cases of self-defense. True, but this is an Internet avatar and the OASIS not necessarily a strict role-playing environment.

Nevertheless, one’s personal sense of fandom always has some degree of appropriation. Understanding a person’s passions and the origin of those passions make for incredible emotional connections that can barely be described. Where Cline’s passion for largely 1970s and ‘80s popular culture is apparent, what about his characters? Halliday is a human compendium of knowledge and trivia of that period – its movies, television, video games, anime, comics, and more. But why does he love those things implemented into OASIS? Why is Wade’s ride a DeLorean? Is it because he identifies with Marty McFly from the Back to the Future series? Artemis has the motorcycle from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988)? Is she an enormous anime fan, and is Akira a personal favorite anime film? Spielberg, Penn, and Cline need not have crafted indulgent soliloquies for every reference, but the audience is bereft of understanding why these references from these past works appeal so much to Ready Player One’s characters. It does not help that the romantic kindling between Sheridan and Cooke (as Samantha, she is very much ashamed of a sizable birthmark… thankfully, not to Phantom of the Opera levels of shame) is iffy at best.

The BFG was the motion-capture dress rehearsal for Ready Player One. Almost everything that occurs in the OASIS was shot using motion capture – a process that is similar to regular film shooting for actors but is more demanding for visual effects teams. The results produced by these hundreds of visual effects artists for Ready Player One are commendable, but Spielberg regulars cinematographer Janusz Kamiński and editors Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar (not a Spielberg regular, but co-editor of 2017′s The Post) are more at ease in the non-OASIS scenes in how they use lighting to evoke the decrepit nature of Wade’s neighborhood. Production designer Adam Stockhausen (Wes Anderson’s primary production designer since 2012′s Moonrise Kingdom) makes these towers of trailer homes feel lived in and not soundstage-bound or CGI’d into the film. Contrast that with the sleek, ultramodern headquarters of IOI – which somewhat recalls the aesthetic in the Tron series.

This is only the fourth Spielberg movie not to be scored by John Williams, who withdrew from the project after scheduling conflicts with his work for Dear Basketball (2017), The Post, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). So in comes Alan Silvestri (1994′s Forrest Gump, 2012′s The Avengers), who worked with Spielberg when the latter served as producer on Back to the Future. Outside of the musical quotations Silvestri uses from Back to the Future and other films, his score successfully recalls the orchestral adventurism of 1980s action movies. Several are interspersed throughout, with the most commonly-used motifs – for Wade and Halliday, respectively – incorporated into the main titles. Lushly orchestrated and allowing strings, woodwinds, and brass jumping into the action-packed or romantic frays of the plot, Silvestri’s score is weakest when the cameras are inside IOI’s headquarters and the electronic elements reminiscent of a Marvel movie do little even to increase suspense.

Separate from the score is a ‘70s/’80s soundtrack that many viewers will be familiar with. A dance sequence using the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” echoes John Travolta’s moves in Saturday Night Fever (1977). Many other songs are included in the soundtrack, but they have already been name-dropped in this review to prove a larger point (ahem).

Having already criticized Ready Player One for its insubstantial callbacks, I may be guilty of shameful hypocrisy because of this paragraph. One musical omission that defined Ready Player One’s marketing campaign should have been implemented into the film. “Pure Imagination”, composed by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), played an important part in setting the tone for Ready Player One’s trailers. Whether integrated into the score or soundtrack, “Pure Imagination” is a widely-known song even to audiences who consider older movies not worth their time. I see Willy Wonka and Ready Player One as distant cousins: a young character embarks on an exhilarating, occasionally dangerous, adventure and – through their actions – will become the loving custodian of another person’s fantastical dream. Such a decision would not be unprecedented in a Spielberg movie. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), John Williams used “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio (1940) in his score to underline the interstellar optimism and childlike wonderment in both films. Ready Player One never has a moment like that – where the film can make sense and explore the emotions behind what pieces of popular culture enabled the creation of the OASIS.

If this review seems like poop in the punch bowl, that is not my intention. As a self-identified nerd who shuns nerd culture, I enjoyed Ready Player One and got a kick out of identifying the movie and video game characters my eyes could catch in time – I had fun, and that is important in watching movies. If Ready Player One is nothing more than a celebration of how our popular culture tastes makes us who we are, then that is fine. Yet it never asks where such love comes from because that is the most exciting thing we can ever learn about another person.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.