#visually wise this episode is the best of the entire series

[winterdeepelegy]

My Thoughts on Dawntrail

So having finished DT, here are some of my thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Expect spoilers below the cut, do not click if you haven't finished. Again these are entirely my opinions, I don't intend to present this from a perspective of fact.

Hmm. I don't hate DT, but it's not high on my list: 1. Shadowbringers 2. Heavensward 3. Stormblood 4. Endwalker 5. Dawntrail 6. ARR That said, I don't hate any of the installments of this game, but there are some definitely high and low points. Let's rip the bandage off and get the blanks out of the way: 1. DT has a dialogue problem. I don't hate Wuk Lamat as a character, it was kind of refreshing to see a green, earnest character take center stage while our characters stepped aside and provided a guiding hand. The big problem I have with her is her dialogue. She's basically a shounen character, complete with the 'I'm gonna be king of the pirates'/'I'm gonna be hokage!' schtick, and it really wears on me after a while. That's not the character's fault so much as it is the writing team. That being so, this game is best played in short stints, 1-2 hours at a time instead of trying to marathon the whole thing in short order. Any more than that and it really becomes repetitious. If they want to script it to sound like an episodic anime series, it will be best enjoyed in smaller bites. Sphene suffers from the same problem. I wanted to enjoy her more as a character, but the script made that a challenge. 2. Pacing and exposition. God. The first few hours of EW were enough of a slog with its slow pacing before getting to the first dungeon, this felt like an eternity by comparison. Up to about the level 95 content, it is a long span of exposition and lore stuffing (far be it from me to complain about abundant lore!), so much of which could have been covered in less time and with less repetition. They really wanted to hammer the tribes into our heads, and it felt like too much at times. They wanted us to care about the tribes and the people therein, but few things make me care less than overdoing it. Level 95-ish is when things start becoming more interesting, in my opinion. That's a long way to climb to reach the proverbial cookie jar. 3. The music. I'll be honest, soundtrack wise, this is not my favorite. I appreciate all genres of music, but swing jazz doesn't quite fit the feel of Tulliyolal. I would have liked to hear something closer to a cultural aesthetic to match the visuals and themes presented throughout the areas and civilizations therein. We didn't get that, and it's kind of a weird choice. The main themesong, also? Ehh... I didn't care for it in the trailer. This opinion hasn't shifted since my playthrough. I didn't really start finding enjoyable area music until Shaaloani. 4. 'My people are more important than your people'. This plot point has been done. We just dealt with the Ascians and pretty much got the same shpiel from Hades. They made Sphene and her subjects a little more sympathetic, though, so... good, I guess? 5. Erenville deserved better. Fussy Bunbun got done so dirty in this expack, the very least anyone could have done was give him a hug. He didn't even get that from his mother who, frankly, was the worst character out of all of it. He was also deadnamed repeatedly, which could have been a teachable moment. 6. Wuk Lamat and/or Bakool Ja Ja still owes me tacos. ------------ As for the positives? There are some. Thanks for sticking with me so far. 1. Pretty graphics updates - better over all. 2. No weirdly split zones - thank the Twelve for this. StB, ShB, and EW all had zones that you could only cover in part, and couldn't finish until later. The zones in DT flow pretty well for the most part, and the transition between upper and lower areas of Yak'Tel are nothing short of beautiful, especially in flight. 3. More Reflections - I'm glad to see more of these and I hope this trend continues. 4. For once, I'm not luke warm on the bard AF gear. It's actually a fresh look, but haven't found a dye pairing I like yet.

[yjyt85r98r]

Pretty Series song reviews: Sweetness×Darkness

It's certainly unique!

Song

The Pretty Series has done a few songs that are basically two songs being sung at once, but this one is a little different. Instead of having two solo performances that come together to make a duo, it's a duo from the start, and the chorus is made by combining the intro with the first verse. Lemon sings the melody from her solo part, and Miruki overlays it with her melody from the intro.

The song has a bit of a bluesy vibe that reminds me of old cartoons. The inclusion of spoken lines, and the juxtaposition of different musical and vocal styles, only adds to the cartoony feeling.

The fuzzy distorted guitar for Lemon's parts was expected, but I'm very intrigued by the, like... crunchy glockenspiel in Miruki's parts. Why does it sound CRUNCHY??? What IS that thing??? Is it two instruments synced to sound like one, or is it something else entirely? In any case, very unique.

Both Miruki and Lemon's music styles feel a little bit old school on their own, but when you put them together, they create a modern and fresh sound. The only thing I can say for sure is that I've never heard a song like this before, and I probably never will again.

Vocals

There's such an inexplicable feeling that comes with hearing Miruki do a cute idol call-and-response, immediately followed by Lemon launching into powerful rock vocals. I feel like Lemon's voice sounds even deeper in this song than in the other ones.

It was good to have the two characters take turns singing, with just a bit of overlap in the chorus. There have been too many instances of characters with very different voices completely overshadowing each other vocally, so in some cases, it's probably wise to not even try to get them to sing at the same time. It also works with the episode, seeing as they never practiced together before performing.

Also, is this the first time in the Pretty Series that the audience has been part of a song? There have been times where the audience cheers or chants during a performance, but that's just in the anime, not part of the actual song. This time, Miruki actually invites them to say a specific line as part of the song's intro.

Lyrics

Lemon has a dark image but is actually quite sweet, and Miruki has a sweet image but actually has hidden darkness in her. I initially felt let down when they lyrics didn't explore this, but Miruki keeps her private life separate from her public persona, so I think it works. It's common for idol characters to sing about their secrets and their life story, but they really don't have to if they don't want to. Plus, Miruki's lyrics clearly mention her self-love, which ends up being the most important thing in her character development. Also, Lemon's line about face-wearing holograms (that phrase goes SO hard) hints at the fact that there is more to these characters than meets the eye.

Choreography

The fact that it’s a duet between the two most physically unfit characters who never practiced together does not seem to have been overlooked by the choreographers. The movements are often unpolished and not perfectly matched. (I was thinking they might just look uneven because of the height difference, but Matsuri and Auru also have a height difference and their dance looked pretty synced.) There’s also not a strong sense of rhythm - the movements don’t really follow a beat or anything.

All that being said, it's not particularly bad choreography.

Visuals

Those coords are the best... I don't even know where to start, I just love them so much.

I like the stage design, but I can't help but feel like it's not suited for this particular performance. The pink and purple, and the lasers, both feel more suited to EDM pop. And the amount of pink means that Lemon stands out while Miruki practically fades into the background.

Good points: Unique song Bad points: The typical lack of catchiness and coherence

Rating: 6.5 Personal rating: 6.5

[mindstriker]

What would you suggest watching/reading first if I wanted to get more into Johnny C, E. Nigma could work too but I'm more interested in Mr. Spook

I hope you know whoever you are anon that you sent me into an actual frenzy by asking me this (in a good way).

So full disclosure: I am a Picky Bitch with interpretations of Johnny Crane. I don't talk about it a lot because hey, part of the joy of these characters is that there are so many variable versions of the same character, but I range from being apathetic to having BEEF with several iterations of him- some of which other people really enjoy. And obviously, that's fine. I'm just saying this for reasons that'll be clear in a bit.

To me personally, I genuinely think one of the best places to start with Crane is the comic Scarecrow: Year One. It's a backstory/villain introduction comic that came out in 2005 that I personally really like to use as the standard for Johnny's backstory, and that I think could give you some interesting insight to who he is as a character/where he comes from as you explore other pieces with him in it (since pieces entirely dedicated to exploring him as a character/his origins and motives aren't exactly super common). He also has an alternate origin story in the New 52 comics (basically anything with him in it labelled New 52) that I... well. Personally I don't like it as much, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it, as it's a key part of his character in that entire reboot. Looking up a list of the issues featuring him could likely give you an insight into that version of him, at least!

If you were interested in older iterations of him history-wise, before he was really... I don't know, sharpened up a bit? Given nastier burdens to bear emotionally and handed a whole new coterie of motives? I would honestly recommend watching the episodes featuring him in the 90s Batman: The Animated Series as a visual choice. There are a whole coterie of older comics that feature him as well, but I wouldn't call all of them a good intro point(?)

There are a lot of really good comics I'd love to recommend, but on that same front: I don't really consider them all a good starting point for the character, I guess- if you want to look at their origins before moving on to see the different directions he's been taken in as a pre-established character. Some of my personal favourites featuring Crane are Kings of Fear, Year One (previously mentioned), this Incredibly specific 2022 comic that was part of Adventures Of The Dark Knight that I am still fighting for my life to identify entirely, Masters of Fear, and bits and pieces of like 17 million other pieces that I've scavenged based on what I love most about his character and how I personally like to view him. People also seem very fond of the Arkham games Crane, although I personally have Largely Mixed Feelings about him. For the sake of length, I'm gonna reblog this with a few Eddie recommendations if you're interested in those as well. I hope this proves helpful to some degree! I can always dig further into a list of reccomendations if you'd like (whoever you are.).

[lizz-revs]

Taisho x Alice: Chapter 1

Taisho x Alice is a romance visual novel with multiple episodes, where it is your job as the heroine to save the male leads from their past and possible future.

This review is about the first episode and reviews for the future episodes will follow (after I played them).

Story

The problem with this game is that it is really difficult to go into details without including spoilers, so I will have to be very careful with my words. Roughly speaking, you are Yurika (you can re-name her before (!) starting the game in the menu) and your job is to save the person of your choice with the power of love. While this seems like your typical otome game, believe me, it’s not. You really have to save the guys and get your happy end at all costs because “every fairy tale should have a happy ending”.

The Characters

While I don’t know the overall story that connects Yurika to all of this, every male character in this series is based off gender-swapped fairy tale characters. However, their stories are “darker” than the stories we know from childhood and if you don’t help them, their future looks bleak.

Heroine (Yurika)

Yurika is an exceptionally pushy and determined woman. She is not the naïve and helpless heroine that you usually see in otome games, but a person, who knows what she wants and will do everything in her power to achieve that. Even, if she is shunned or ignored or pushed away, she still tries her best to get her happy ending at all costs.

Red

Red is introduced as Officer Red Riding Hood, who came to Yurika’s home to protect her from “The Big Bad Wolf” by staying at her place for a short time. He is very stoic and rational in the beginning, but changes a lot as he gets to know Yurika better.

Cinderella

Cinderella is the heir from a rich family and the fiancé of Yurika. He is described as a person, whose heart is made of ash – a rich playboy, who throws around money and cares about no one but himself. Again, Yurika is a positive influence in his story and brings him to the right path.

My Opinion

Honestly, I really liked this game and I will continue playing the second episode asap.

Yurika is so refreshing as a heroine because I really dislike the damsel in distress trope. If Yurika wants to do something, she goes and does it. For example, in Cinderella’s story she wanted to get to know her fiancé better and so she grabbed her luggage and went to his place. While this is not entirely realistic, it is at least something I can respect.

And the male leads in this game have also both very interesting personalities. They are struggling with their lives and have actual issues. It’s not like Cinderella is just “your typical playboy” and the heroine’s existence makes him suddenly a better human being and makes him change his ways. There is actually a reasonable explanation for his behavior and he does not change overnight just because the heroine is on his side. Also, that Red is suddenly at Yurika’s place to protect her from all evil like a shining knight in armor, is also fairly reasonably explained.

Basically, this game takes typical tropes from otome games and makes them actually reasonable. It’s even believable why both male characters fall in love with her in such a short time – you actually WORK FOR IT. I believe one of the male leads actually literally says that he started loving Yurika because she always did what he liked or wanted to hear. (no wonder this game is gonna be real dark real soon…)

Anyway, beside the characters, the writing is also not typical for an otome game. It usually uses very informal language and makes fun of typical anime and otome game stereotypes story and dialogue-wise. A good example for that is Alice, who actually rants about everyone and everything (including the mentioned tropes) – I really love him. However, while it usually made me smile, sometimes things were just too exaggerated (like the insinuations in Red’s route) and just cringe-worthy. Honestly, the game even cringes about itself sometimes, so take everything with a grain of salt.

All in all, I was really impressed by this game (10/10). While I did like Red’s story more than Cinderella’s, they both were very fun to read. Although, I do have to say that I kept being curious about Alice and the overall story of this game, while reading. Because it’s never explained. The game basically just says: “Go romance these guys. Have fun. Bye.” and then you do that… and what now? The suspense is really killing me…

[comicsforyall]

The First Rebirth of Wonder Woman, Review and Analysis

-Art by George Pérez Background

This site has several ongoing series read-throughs and analyses, ranging from superhero comics to indie graphic novels, to those daunting picture-less books. Besides reviews that cover newly released material, most of the pieces published here are centered around stories with which I have at least some familiarity. This Wonder Woman article and subsequent DC based entries are the first to depart from the pattern and embrace my unknown entirely.

I have never read a mainstream DC comic book, and as such I have never been seriously interested in their universe. On the flip side, I have seen nearly every episode of DC’s sometimes popular and critically mixed shared TV universe, the CW’s Arrowverse. These disparate facts will undoubtedly color the following commentary in hopefully engaging or exciting ways. I will be coming at this content from a naive perspective content-wise, but I have plenty of experience with the medium to give a semi-coherent critique.

This first installment covers just six issues of the George Pérez run on Wonder Woman, but later entries will cover more or less depending on reader feedback and interest, so please feel free to let us know what you think, and what you would like to see!

Triumphs

With superhero comics, the concept of a house style is frequently criticized in regard to art. Flattening out an artist’s expression in exchange for consistency benefits commercial viability but can be read as stale or generic for avid readers. In the first arc of Wonder Woman, Pérez provides a detailed, complicated style that is as easy to read and follow as the most generic comic.

There is a lot of discourse and criticism surrounding the lens through which comic characters are portrayed, particularly women. A rudimentary argument commonly arises is the distinction between beauty and admiration with leering creepiness. Pérez deftly wields the concept of Greek mythology to construct a wide cast of characters ranging from perfect gods to regular folks, all while remaining a joy to behold. Diana, in particular, is clearly presented as a bombshell who turns heads walking down the street textually. Still, she is depicted foremost as the typical statuesque superhero from the reader’s vantage.

The character work extends throughout the numerous varied side players. From soldiers to librarians to Amazon warriors, all of the designs are distinct and effective, with at least some diversity in the types of bodies and people. The cast is visually distinguishable and relatable in ways that are not necessarily expected, but elevates the world-building and emotional attachment from the reader. The villain designs as well, are really wild and flat-out fun, but even Pérez’s best character designs are not the full extent of the art of these comics.

In each panel, the art seems to jam as much detail and small background elements as possible. There are a shocking number of lines in quantity; some pages' details cannot be understated. The sprawling pillars and endless crowds of gods are drawn in ways that break the laws of physics to emphasize their otherworldliness and complexity. The Olympus depicted by Pérez feels as though it is pulled straight from myth and legend.

Accompanying the exceptional art is a story that varies in quality over the first six issue arc. The page-by-page reading experience is reasonably competent, and the narrative structure is sound. The highest highs expose themes of power that are simultaneously classic to the superhero genre and fresh in their presentation, while the lowest lows showcase some relatively dull comics.

The book opens with a two-page issue outlining domestic violence between cavepeople. The character designs could be considered weird and off-putting, but the brief story is powerful and underpins much of the series’ themes. A caveman striking out in impotent rage over his own perceived deficiency and killing the woman who was simply trying to offer him comfort is tragic and gripping as an opener. As the story unfolds, the parallels and impact of the opening vignette become more transparent and impactful. Short-sighted and violent men with no consideration for the consequences of their actions become a pattern for the book.

While the characters do feel distinct and unique, the less compelling portions of the story can be attributed to the human side cast and Diana’s time in the world of man. The worst descriptor for these sections is ‘boring,’ but even at the most generic level, the comics are enjoyable to read. In some ways, the comic shines brightest when it focuses on magic and gods but feels the dullest when it plays into the role of a Bostonian superhero.

Defeats

The first Wonder Woman reboot knows precisely what it wants to be and the role it wants to play in the broader universe. Notably, the story is structured with these goals at the center. Plenty of time and exposition is given to the background of Diana and the Amazons as a whole. The placement of the series within both a mythological framework and a burgeoning world of heroes is subtle and intriguing. The accuracy with which the book achieves its goals makes finding the faults harder, and many are minor.

The most considerable disappointment is probably the characterization of Wonder Woman herself. While she is designed with an iconic, eye-catching look and has some extraordinary feats and moments, the reader never gets too much insight into Diana’s personality. She is noble, kind-hearted, and occasionally funny in a blunt sort of way, but above all, Wonder Woman is stiff. Even when upsetting the Amazon tournament or barreling her way through Boston, Diana’s thoughts and words do not convey the dynamic personality illustrated through her actions. In and of itself, this could be viewed as a specific trait, but it feels misaligned and not intentional.

The other downsides to the comic can arguably be attributed to the timing of the release of this series. There’s too much explaining, and the story is slow to start, but that’s almost undeniably a choice. Pérez is restarting a line and world of comics that will persist for decades, and there is clearly an expectation of a long run in the roots of these issues. As with many older comics, there are too many words and unnecessary descriptions for some modern readers. This is forgivable in most cases, though it can be glaring, considering Pérez’s art is done at such a high level, and the panel-to-panel writing is pretty average.

Citation Station

Wonder Woman Vol 2, 1-6, George Pérez (writer, penciler), Greg Potter (writer), Bruce D. Patterson (inker), Tatjana Wood (colorist), John Costanza (letterer), Len Wein (writer).

[villainii]

“Get in line. Lots of people want to kill Yoichiro the Manslayer.”

[justahumblesideblog]

Steve: The Character Arc Given Us Through Subtext Part 1

“Yeah! All hail the Emperor!”

I’m quite aware that Steve is already a very popular character in the fandom for pretty obvious reasons. Before Severine in Labyrinth Runners, he was the only coven scout given a name. Just giving him a name at all, and having him brought up again is bound to make him more memorable to the audience, especially these days when the trend of liking things ironically is so popular (not to say all fans of Steve only like him ironically of course, but you can’t say that the amount of fans who do in S1 at least is zero) Plus his very VERY few scenes gave him a likable if a bit too enthusiastic personality. He is a really easy character to meme and/or put headcanons on, which the fandom has. However, the thing I really like about Steve is how the show is able to have his entire arc happen almost completely off screen up until his character climax right before the Day of Unity.

In most shows, Steve’s presence in the Owl House during this scene would have just been both a visual gag and a reference to his one other speaking scene in the series. Him wearing a shirt with his name on it would have been just a very tongue and cheek method of differentiating him from the other scouts. In reality though, it serves as a way to not only show that Steve is the type of guy to continue a being supportive friend towards Lilith despite her losing favor with the Emperor, but to also quickly establish that King would know Steve on sight when they meet again in O’ Titan Where Art Thou.

“I know you. You’re Steve from Lilith’s party!”

One could even say that the reason Steve wore that shirt to begin with is so Hooty would know he is the coven scout that was actually invited. Then he decided to wear the shirt during his journey of self-realization, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

“*sighs* Steve is beginning to regret his choices”

In “Any Spot in a Storm” Steve literally starts reflecting on the questionable morals attached to Emperor Coven with the idea of kids reluctantly joining creeps into his mind. He’s understanding of why Skara would be so emotionally high to outright punch him so hard that it dents his mask. Short term wise, Steve’s presence in this episode makes Hunter realize the fault in his actions, but looking at this for the long term it doesn’t only let us know what’s on Steve’s mind:

“Darius sent us to collect your recruits”

It also establishes that during the time Steve was questioning his loyalty, he was working under Darius.

Then we have Labyrinth Runners, and while Steve makes no appearance (mentioned or otherwise), it still moves his character arc forward by showing us that another scout getting fed up with the system.

As method before, Severine is the other scout named outside of Steve. We are shown her mistreatment throughout the episode up until the very end when she quits and throws her mask to the floor in a huff. This tells us viewers that the scouts are indeed their own people and have feelings and lives hidden behind their masks. Again, another joke is used to perhaps foreshadow Steve’s offical departure from the Emperor’s Coven.

“Lost your way, little guy?”

Finally, we get to O’Titan Where Art Thou. In his talks with King, Steve shares with him (and with us viewers) a tale of a younger Steve who wanted to be considered one of th best and believed that joining the Emperor’s Coven was the way to do so. He took that dream and made it his reality, only to realize it wasn’t what he wanted. Of course this is clearly meant to mirror King’s childish desire to be king of the demons, only to dislike it once it started to become kinda true, but it also stays completely in character to the Steve we met in S1 up until the Steve we have now. Steve ultimately being the one to comfort King during this time wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying without the show putting the subtle groundwork to get us to this point.

Then King and Steve go off on a montage that mainly serves as King coming to terms with his heritage and what he wants in his life. However, it also serves as Steve’s little swan song to his life as the excited scout of the Emperor’s Coven to fully embracing himself as part of the rebellion.

Now, I would LOVE to go into as much detail into this montage in this post, but Tumblr only has a limit of ten photos per post soooooo~ I’m just going to briefly touch on this moment for now because it’s everywhere due to the awesome representation.

Back in “Any Sport in a Storm” Hunter mentions that in order to join the Emperor’s Coven, one must be separated from their family and other loved ones forever. One could argue Hunter’s case is more extreme due to his own circumstances, but seeing Steve’s reaction to two sweet old ladies being in love, perhaps there is truth to it. During this moment of the montage, Steve could be mourning all the time lost to his dream of being the best and it just hit him all at once. Ooooor maybe that love is so pure that it moved the passionate man to tears. Probably a mixed of both honestly.

More on the montage and Steve’s ultimate role in this episode in part 2!

[danwhobrowses]

The Rings of Power Eps 1&2 Review

The House of the Dragon is not the only fantasy prequel series out recently, and Amazon Prime have released the first two episodes of The Rings of Power.

Of the two, The Rings of Power's hype has diminished more than its risen, poor trailers and changes unbefitting of Tolkein's vision - especially compared to HOTD maintaining GRRM's vision - have lowered expectations, but still I decided to give it a shot.

Spoilers for the First Two Episodes

Okay so, it's not actually bad.

Not nearly as bad as trailers and vitriol makes out.

Now, it's not perfect, it's not better than HOTD. Frankly some narrative choices remain miffing such as Galadriel being a warrior doggedly seeking revenge on Sauron - even though in canon neither were active during Morgoth's downfall, Galadriel had skipped the entire war since she thought it was hopeless to do anything and Sauron himself as king of werewolves had already got his ass kicked by a wolfhound (clearly a greater series missed there) and even tried to get pardoned by crawling back to Eonwe, before opting out of going to Valar and just skulking away for centuries - Celeborn completely absent, and making Elrond a 'politician' type. I also think the Galadriel plot is the weakest so far, they tried to translate a symbol of Sauron and apparently they can't hear or beat a bunch of trolls wandering around, the Theo and the Morgoth Blade plot is perhaps the second weakest. The CGI can be garish as well, specifically the Wyrm, and it's highly unbelievable that Galadriel could survive so long in water, nor that Halbrand can look that handsome while adrift. Arondir the watchman elf - in love with the very attractive healer and Theo's mother, Bronwyn - is also rather wooden, and rather than get the back-up of his men decides to venture into a network of tunnels alone, and the script can be a bit dumb - the whole Ship vs Rock dialogue was awfully contrived.

However, on the plus side, I very much enjoy this story with the Harfoots, Nori has bigger protagonist energy fitting of a Tolkein story and though I am worried this fallen being is gonna end up as a rewrite of Gandalf, there is more intrigue on its side. Marked as a Politician aside, Elrond surprised me with his charm offensive, his actor and voice is great, I just don't see why he couldn't be more the Elrond we are familiar with, captain of Gil-Galad with his own biological and paternal conflicts, but his plot feels more like 'The Rings of Power' given how it is Celebrimbor creating a forge for it. Khazad Dum was glorious, its visual aesthetic is beautiful and well thought out, and plot-wise I did enjoy Elrond's interactions with Durin, as well as Durin's anger that his friend had blanked him for 20 years. The practical work on the burrowing orc was really good too, as was Arondir's armour design (the best of the costuming so far).

I understand that this isn't Tolkein's truest and most accurate vision, but considering how low the bar was, I am very surprised that we still have something here worth giving a shot.

[kaizokupolycule]

So, me being the curious person I am and having a discord server willing to indulge me in my weird requests, I sat down 5 friends and had them watch and rank every super sentai openings with basically no context. Most of them have only seen about 20 episodes of Gokaiger at most, so they were really going into these with absolutely no context what so ever about what was happening in these shows.

Tier Breakdown

TIER BREAKDOWN: Akibaranger - Should be self explaniatory. The sorter we were using didn't have images for Akibaranger so we had to make entirely separate tier for them. S Tier - The openings where both the song, visuals and overall execution of the opening are considered perfect. A Tier- Amazing Openings, Great Visuals, Music and all around a very well executed opening. Not as loved as S Tiers, but still fantastic openings. B Tier - A kinda catch all tier. These were openings where one aspect of it was fantastic and everyone enjoyed, but another part of it dragged it down, be it the song, the visuals, or something in between. Most people agreed opening in these tiers would probably go up upon more watches. Rawr-Red is a Vet - This is partically a joke because we love making fun of the fact that Gaored is a vet but also this tier was originally for opening that just kinda repeated one word over and over again but we legit forget to put any other openings in this tier. C Tier - None of these openings are bad, they just aren't memorable, either the visuals were kinda bland and boring, or the song didn't really catch us all that much.

TOP 10 OPENINGS W/ REASONS

Both Akibarager Openings: my god they loved these openings. Them having knowledge of what Akiba was also added to their love for just how wild these openings are. They couldn't rank them separately so here they are

ToQger! Widely agreed to be the best opening song wise and the visuals honestly just added to it all the more. The 1st song we put in the S Tier and agreed upon all to be the best opening of the official sentai series.

Lupinranger vs Patranger! Absolutely obsessed with the combination of two separate songs to make the opening as well as the fighting visuals that make each team very distinct and standing out. Everyone just loved how well thought out and executed this opening was.

Gokaiger! Small bit of bias considering it’s the only season most of them have seen. Putting their bias aside everyone agreed that the fact most of the shots were taken within the Galleon made the opening feel cohesive and some of the shots were just brilliant (Wanted Posters / Them falling through the keys.)

Gingaman! The first opening to actually be placed in A, they all ready enjoyed it and it’s entire vibe just fit right with every beat. Its hard to put into words why they all loved Gingaman's opening as much as they did but it was just a well put together opening.

Kiramager! The special effects and the use of sparkles really sold this one to a lot of them, especially the bits with the kaleidoscope effect and the just good use of gems made it a very good opening. Also the song bopped

Shinkenger! ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with the visuals of this opening, especially the bit with them all turning to face Takaru and their morphin little bit matching to the music. The amount of hype that happened when we got to the Shinkenger opening was insane.

Donbrothers! The catchiness of the opening, the way they say don, the use of the dance and also just how the opening played into its VR aspects were what got everyone just humming along to this opening.

Go-Busters OP1! The song was much more enjoyed in this opening and all the unique footage as well as just how it played along to the music got everyone to put this opening well above its second one.

Ryusoulger! They loved how fun this opening was, the song and the visuals honestly were what stuck out to them. (Also this one got small bonus points because one of the people ranking are obsessed with the ending)

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

#5: The One With Astruc's Self-Insert

In my introductory post, I said the main inspiration for this blog was @hypocrisyofandrewdobson​. For those who don't know, Andrew Dobson is an infamous webcomic artist known for drawing webcomics that tend to demonize people he's come across in public or people who disagree with him online (either critical of his art or his political views), while portraying himself as the victim or wise man calling them out on their differing beliefs.

If you want to learn more about this guy who I consider to be far worse than Astruc, check out the blog in question. And no, I don't know why he draws himself as a blue bear.

Why am I talking about this? It's one thing for some schmuck on the internet to use his work to respond to criticism, but the creator of a popular animated series dedicating an entire episode to attacking his critics and trying to get others to feel bad for him is another story.

The second episode of Miraculous Ladybug's third season, “Animaestro” served as a wake-up call for fans (myself included) to make them realize how immature Astruc could be. The plot centers around the premiere of a movie about Ladybug and Cat Noir directed by Thomas Astruc, who voices himself in the original French dub.

And this isn't just a brief cameo like what Stan Lee did in the MCU. Astruc is the Akumatized person this episode, so there's naturally a lot of focus on him. Throughout the first half of the episode, Astruc portrays himself as this timid man who nobody recognizes or respects, like this idiot who doesn't know what animation is.

Doorman: This is a private event, sir.

Astruc: Huh? Excuse me? I'm Thomas Astruc, the movie director.

Doorman: You filmed Cat Noir and Ladybug? What are they like in real life?

Astruc: Er, it's an animated movie. It's all cartoon characters. We don't actually film anyone. See, there's this whole team that draw the chara—

Doorman: Whatever. Who would want to see Ladybug and Cat Noir as cartoon characters?

Get it? Wasn't that meta joke hilarious? This is how much I was laughing:

And Astruc continues to get about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield when he interacts with other characters like Jagged Stone and Chloe.

Jagged Stone: Ladybug is one of my best buds! I can't wait to see her movie!

Astruc: Well I—I'm the director, so actually it's more my movie, so to speak.

Jagged Stone: Oh, so you're the one who created the story?

Astruc: Well, technically the screen writers wrote the story, inspired by Ladybug's exploits.

Jagged Stone: Oh, okay. So you did all the drawings?

Thomas: No, no. The animators do all the drawings.  

Jagged Stone: So what do you do then?

(Later on...)

Chloe: So you're the one responsible for this movie?

Astruc: Yes, yes! Exactly! That's me!

Chloe: Then you were the one who left Queen Bee out of the trailer. You're lame, utterly lame.

I can't believe Astruc had a scene where he interacted with Chloe and didn't insult her at all.

The episode is determined to make the audience feel bad for Astruc. Nobody respects him and what he does. Isn't that saaaaaad? Nobody cares about animated film directors like Walt Disney or Tex Avery anyway. Not even these stupid children understand how hard Astruc works.

Several Children: Ladybug! Where's Ladybug?

Astruc: Hey there, kids!

Teacher: Ladybug isn't here children. We came here to meet the director of the movie. Children: (frowning in disappointment) Aww.

(Astruc looks visibly disappointed.)

Way to insult your primary demographic, Astruc. I thought you said kids have a better understanding of these stories when people criticized the writing of a certain episode (It's that scene in “Puppeteer 2” if you're curious/don't value your sanity).

It's almost like you're using that as an excuse to half-ass your work while still getting to claim this show is so groundbreaking.

In case you can't tell, “Animaestro” is one of those episodes. The ones where the showrunners decide to dedicate an entire episode to attacking critics of the show in a blunt fashion. Whenever a show addresses criticism, they either create an obvious strawman character to parrot the opinions of fans who don't like their work, or have someone defend the show and insult the critics directly.

The problem isn't that they're ignoring criticism. It's their show, and they aren't obligated to listen to critics or fans who don't like the direction the show is taking. On the other hand, they aren't obligated to fight back like this and treat their audience like crap. Any show that does something like the three clips I showed you usually comes off as petty and immature because they dedicate so much time to insulting the critics. 

Even during the Akuma fight, Astruc has to call out Ladybug for having problems with his movie in-universe, obviously representing critics of the show Astruc claims have no right to criticize the show while it's still airing.

Ladybug: What's with that trailer too? I am not scared of cats, at all.

Astruc/Animaestro: You haven't even seen the movie and you're already slamming it?

Cat Noir: He does have a point, you know.

Ladybug: I wasn't slamming it. It's called constructive criticism!

Yeah, how dare Ladybug be angry that this movie is portraying her as a powerless coward dependent on Cat Noir as opposed to a confident and brave superhero. She just doesn't understand the genius of Thomas Astruc!

And of course the character Astruc claims is “perfect” is the one to take his side.

And that's another problem with this episode, the metatextual references. Before he gets akumatized, Astuc says he spent three years of his life working on his movie. I get that time in this show is weird (we somehow had episodes taking place on the first day of school, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and the first day of Summer), but how did Astruc's self-insert work on a movie based on a superhero who has only been active for a year? Meta-wise, it's an obvious reference to the scorn Astruc has gotten from fans after working so hard on his show, but the only people who would get that reference are the ones who are aware of Astruc's reputation online.

Self-Insert aside, I actually think the titular Animaestro is one of the more visually impressive Akumas featured on the show. Animaestro takes on several forms based off several different forms and eras of animation, like flash, anime, rubber hose, and they all stand out. Granted, some of them are obvious parodies of other characters like Goku or Sailor Moon, but the actual Akuma fight is fun to watch. According to the Mexican Miraculous Ladybug Twitter account, this episode took two and a half years to create, and it shows. It's too bad the story behind it is completely insufferable, almost like the cartoon equidistant to Pixels.

But then comes the part that honestly makes the episode worth it, mainly for how unintentionally hilarious it is. Do you want to know what Animaestro's weakness is? Do you really want to know?

Animaestro is physically incapable of moving unless someone is watching him. I am not making this up.

Ladybug and Cat Noir literally defeat Animaestro by getting everyone to stop paying attention to him.

I could make so many jokes with this, but I can guarantee you're already thinking of something just as good, if not better, than whatever I write.

And there's the end where Astruc gives Marinette his ticket to the movie, which prompts Marinette to kiss up to him for no real reason.

Astruc: Sorry, I guess you don't know who I am either.

Marinette: Of course do. You're Thomas Astruc, the movie director!

Astruc: She recognized me. Somebody actually recognized me!

Nothing happened to make her change her opinion on the Ladybug movie, she didn't really say anything to him earlier in the episode that connects to this exchange, and outside of a few lines Animaestro said, she doesn't even know why he got akumatized (even though ironically she and Chloe accidentally contributed to it because of the awful subplot involving Kagami I talked about last time). If anything, it comes off less like she actually appreciates Astruc's work, and more like she's stroking his ego just to keep him from getting akumatized again.

So yeah, this episode is awful, and the fact that it came out right after the controversial “Chameleon” only proved to show what kind of direction the show was taking this season.

But honestly, even if Astruc still wanted to make about how he doesn't get enough respect the episode could have potentially. All he had to do was make a simple change: Instead of making it about validation for Astruc as a creator, make it about validation for animation in general.

It's a common misconception that animation is only used for shows and movies aimed at children, so the episode could reflect it. Instead of the huge turnout where several celebrities appear at the premiere, instead, the turnout could be a lot smaller, with the media dismissing it as some stupid kiddie flick. Instead of getting akumatized because he gets humiliated in public/getting no respect from anyone else, Astruc gets akumatized because he sees the audience didn't go wild for the movie after the premiere. All he can hear them say is that it's just “kids stuff”.

So when Astruc is Animaestro, he goes on about how important animation is. How it's helped produce propaganda since World War II. How it helped improve special effects in big blockbusters. How the medium is used to create movies that simply can't be filmed on a physical set.

After defeating Animaestro, Ladybug shows up to talk to him. She had seen the movie earlier, and actually enjoyed it. She had a few problems with the story, but they were just minor nitpicks and inaccuracies Astruc wouldn't know about, and she was blown away by the animation. She tells Astruc not to be deterred by his critics, and continue to do what he does. As a designer in her civilian life, Ladybug knows the joy creating brings her, and both she and Astruc want to spread that joy through their work.

Back at the premiere, Astruc thinks about what Ladybug said to him when he sees some kids reenacting a scene from the movie. Astruc walks over to them and asks what they thought of the movie. They said they loved it and how energetic it was. When he tells them he is the director, the kids' faces light up and they say they want to do what he does when they grow up, bringing a smile to Astruc's face.

Isn't that a much more humble approach instead of what we got? It would have helped Astruc come across as more sympathetic, especially with animation fans. But instead, we got an entire episode of Astruc whining about how misunderstood he is.

And you know the footage used for the movie at the beginning? Remember that, because I have a huge rant about it saved for a later post.

For now, here’s an example of a creator appearing in his work done right.

[commander-minkowski]

watched the first three episodes of netflix witcher and it’s uhhhhhhhh not good

tonally and visually, it’s clearly trying to be the next game of thrones. I shouldn’t have to explain why that sucks. tv needs to catch up to the fact that not every fantasy is grimdark and full of sexual assault. the witcher saga is, despite the dark things that happen, ultimately a lighthearted, witty, and hopeful series, and the worldbuilding is largely tongue-in-cheek pastiche and/or political allegory. that doesn’t come through in the show at all.

literally all of the ciri-related character choices are ones I disagree with. first of all, aging her up to late teens/mid-20s at series start completely butchers ciri, geralt, and yennefer’s book dynamic because ciri is a literal child and geralt and yennefer are her surrogate parents. and this is the emotional core of the entire series!!! if they meet when she’s 20 what’s even the point.

that aside, the way ciri’s arc is framed and paced does a huge disservice to her character. in the books, we’re invested in the ordeals she goes through during the war BECAUSE we already care about her as a character, not the other way around. it’s important to see her as a cheerful, rebellious child before shit hits the fan -- otherwise she’s just a wall to throw misery spaghetti onto and hope some character development sticks!!

finally, freya allan is a beautiful young woman and was thus severely miscast. where is my ugly little BABY

Yennefer’s arc kind of suffers from the same pacing and framing issues, though not as severely. When we meet her in the books for the first time she is already a confident, powerful sorceress, but in the show, she, like ciri, is constantly downtrodden and miserable. I get that starting from square zero is supposed to be #girlpower or whatever, but taken with ciri’s arc, renfri’s arc, and calanthe’s death, it kinda just seems like the women on this show are here to look pretty and suffer

Henry cavill .... how do I put this tactfully. His resting face doesn’t convey enough emotion to pull off geralt? Like, for a very taciturn and buttoned up, but nonetheless sensitive character, the actor needs to show that somehow. When cavill stares off into space I just get a feeling of blankness. like all that’s behind geralt’s tough mask is elevator music lol

Geralt comes off as just rude and cruel to jaskier .... grumpy banter and insults are, in the books, an established-friend-of-many-years thing, not a we-met-today thing. And even then it’s clear that no matter how much he grouses, geralt really loves dandelion. I don’t get this from the show at all -- jaskier sticks to geralt like a tick and geralt does his best to shake him off. also like. where’s the bed sharing and the wound bandaging and the tenderly carrying off the battlefield. I didn’t see the episodes where that would conceivably be but I know it would have been giffed to hell and back!

no slavic flavor. like none whatsoever. less than shadow and bone even. subzero levels of slavic flavor. I mean .... maybe it’s for the better that they didn’t even try because I can’t rmr a single western portrayal of fantasy eastern europe that isn’t cringe? (yes, even shadow and bone!!) but idk. I NEVER would have guessed the source material was Polish from the show alone and that feels wrong.

I concede that adapting the witcher saga is hard bc the story collections and novels are different beasts, and the novels imo really take a while to hit their stride; getting the two formats to mesh tone and pacing-wise must be difficult. surely netflix could have done better than this, though

a few things that I did like:

juxtaposing the striga fight with yennefer’s hysterectomy worked for me. something something the monstrosity of womanhood in a misogynistic society. edit: a gender critical adjacent person was in the notes of this so I’ll clarify -- I don’t mean to say that having a uterus/getting a hysterectomy have a one-to-one correlation with “the monstrosity of womanhood in a misogynistic society.” rather, I meant that in a misogynistic society, any actions women take and any choices they make can and will be framed as violent and ugly by the people who set the dominant narrative, even (and especially) if those actions were taken in self-determination and self-preservation. I include trans women in my definition of “women” here. In fact, for the books, I think a trans woman Yennefer reading is 100% uncontradicted and it’s also my preferred reading of the character. I apologize to anyone who saw this and thought I was doing some weak gender essentialist take!

some of the casting was on point. the actors for jaskier, renfri, yennefer, and calanthe were all great; triss and fringilla weren’t half bad either.

more racial diversity is good.

geralt’s dynamic with roach is nice I guess ...... geralt IS a sentimental horse girl.......

that’s all I can say, I think. keep in mind, again, I could only get through half of the season.

[marireadshellblazer]

Constantine TV Series Episode 4 “A Feast of Friends”

Aight, I feel the need to express some feelings about this episode. I’m not sure this is going to be terribly articulate, but I’ll do my best. Let’s do this.

First off, it’s obvious to anyone who has read Hellblazer that this episode is based off of the first two issues of the comic book series. As I wrote in my post about my experience reading it, these issues were the perfect way to start off the series. It’s like “BOOM! This is how it is! Get ready for some serious shit! This is your only warning; this is what you’re in for.” Even though they did change the story for the episode, I still absolutely loved it. The storyline from the comics is a favorite of mine, but even with the changes made in order to adapt it for TV, this was an awesome episode. In fact, it’s my favorite episode of the TV series. Here’s why!  

   Why is it episode 4?

  Unlike the comics this story was adapted to be episode 4, meaning it doesn’t start the TV series. So, why wouldn’t it start the TV series? I think that you have to look at it from a few different perspectives.

  Let’s start with the comic: Issues 1 and 2, titled Hunger and A Feast of Friends respectively, make up the first arc of the Hellblazer series. Most fans know, however, that Hellblazer is not John’s first appearance in comics; he got his own series after appearing throughout the American Gothic story arc of Swamp Thing. Consequently, many people came into Hellblazer at the time having some familiarity with the character. While this chapter does expand on John’s character some, this doesn’t serve as a major introduction to him. They just drop the reader into one of his nightmare-inducing everyday situations with little to no preparation. Those who are familiar with his role in Swamp Thing will, odds are, not find these issues to be terribly weird or particularly jarring considering it’s in a series about John; they have a good idea what they are in for.

   Here is a quick run-down: John returns to his apartment in Paddington after dealing with the horror show that is the Brujeria in the Swamp Thing comics. Exhausted, he comes back to an unwelcome guest; Gary Lester. Gary is one of the friends who was involved in the Newcastle incident (which is fully explained in issue #11), which left each of them scarred in their own way. Gary dealt with the aftermath via drugs, which have left him wide open for other issues. After foolishly releasing a demon from a sacrificial victim, Gary runs to John for help dealing with the destruction said demon is causing. In this case it’s a hunger demon that causes people to feast upon whatever they greatly desire; food, a crucifix, and even an athlete committing autocannibalism. With help from club owner and Voodoo practitioner Papa Midnight, John betrays his vulnerable and trusting friend in order to stop the demon by instead making him the new sacrifice. Trapping the demon inside of Gary, the literal and figurative ghosts of John’s past haunt and torment him mentally as his friend dies slowly and in agony, ending this arc with a melancholy feeling. John stopped a demon, but at the cost of a friend who truly trusted and cared for him.

Using this story to begin the TV series as is, however, would have been more than a little strange. In the minds of most people outside of the comic book world, John Constantine was first introduced to them via the horrifyingly inaccurate Keanu Reeves film. (I love Keanu, I really do, but that film give me agita). Or, if they were introduced to the show after it had already aired, they are introduced via Matt Ryan’s masterful work portraying him in Legends of Tomorrow. While he does an incredible job in both Constantine and Legends (to the point where I find that I may simply be unable to accept anyone else taking on the role in live action) it depresses me terribly that Legends toned down John’s character so much with all the goofiness. It did not suit John at all! If anything, I find myself feeling sorry for Matt Ryan, who tried so hard to do John’s character justice. Uhg.

   Anyway…Already, a lot of the audience is going to be more than a little taken aback by the Constantine series’ portrayal of the character, however comic book accurate he may be. This show is tailored to as wide of an audience as possible, meaning they expect that pretty much no one has read Hellblazer or Swamp Thing before. Consequently, having the series start by just dropping the audience into his crazy world, especially with this particular story arc, might not be the best idea. I’m not saying that his introduction is done super well with the first episode (it’s not a total wreak, but there are issues) but it would have been much harder to start with A Feast of Friends.

     Characterization

    Now, let’s look at it from another angle: characterization. As the 4th episode this was, odds are, done assuming that there would be a lot more episodes after this (oh, the painful reality), but really the viewers are still just getting to know John. So, these early episodes are supposed to establish his character. They see him as knowledgeable and ready to handle the weird and scary in the first episode, and in 2 and 3 you see that he is serious about his work, a loner, weirdly well prepared, and how he interacts with others. While in some situations he does come off like a douche, his douche-ness is on full display in this episode. Honestly, this is accurate to how he is in the comics; he’s a nasty piece of work, after all. A world class bastard. He gives Gary shit for his drug addiction pretty much the entire episode as well as his choice to mess with a demon and the chaos it made that he now has to fix. He, like in the comics, tricks Gary into helping him and it results in a slow, painful death for the man. Gary really did trust John, and not only did John betray him, but he was callous about it. Now, that’s not to say that the situation and Gary’s death doesn’t bother him, and this is also seen in both the episode and the comic, but John solders through a lot of it with his mask of stoic indifference; he blatantly a deliberately betrays his friend without much hesitation.

    John’s characterization in the show is really important. While fans of Hellblazer know what they are in for (John being a dick, betraying people, sacrificing friends, etc) the wide audience the show was meant to appeal to might not respond well to that. How is the audience supposed to relate to a character whose major personality trait in this arc is to basically be a douche (even if it is justified in a way)? Generally speaking, TV shows try to have a lot of characters with redeeming traits and very basic bitch personalities so that as much of the audience as possible can relate to them in some capacity. They can describe the main character as “cool, quirky, sweet, loving, etc” because that is what network television strives for. The point is for the audience to relate to and find a lot of reasons to like the character, especially the main character. The audience is supposed to be able to see the qualities of the character in themselves. An example of a douchy character being changed for network television is the titular character in TV series Lucifer. He can be an asshat at times, but his redeeming qualities shine through in pretty much every episode; he’s helpful, has a strong sense of justice, and cares about Chloe. He often goes out of his way to understand others, although he often misses the mark, and tries to fix problems and issues that he accidentally creates in order to keep relationships with others. These are things people can relate to, and although he can be rather uncouth, it’s played for laughs, and he has more redeeming qualities than not. If the Constantine series started off with John coldly betraying a friend after giving him shit for his addiction the entire episode with not a lot of his positive traits coming through, from the perspective of most people, this might not be a good way to try and connect with the audience. I’m not saying there are people who don’t/won’t, but again, this is network television and they tend to play on the safe side.

    Comic book -> TV

    Ok so let’s move onto the meat of this; the changes made to the story. People always complain when something isn’t totally accurate to the book down to every last detail (Harry Potter *cough cough*) and making story and character changes to adaptions of comic books is nothing new. However, to be fair, there are some legitimately good reasons for this. Time, money, limits technology wise, and pacing are good examples. The most important thing to consider, in my opinion, is that we are going from a comic book to television. Literally, that is the most important thing. Essentially, what the writers had to do when adapting this story for the show was carry over the plot from one medium to another, which is tricky.

    What’s a medium? A medium is a platform that allows a message to be shared or presented. So, using the medium of a comic book is how Jamie Delano was able to share his message; the story of John Constantine. The writers of the television series then had to adapt the story from comics, a visual and written medium, into a different kind of visual medium with different features to it; stage craft, voice, music, etc.

    Comic books have features for story telling; the size and placement of the panels, the writing, word bubbles, narration bubbles, colors, art style, etc. The pro’s to this are that you don’t get paragraph after paragraph describing a place or a person; they literally show them to you and the art presents those details. They also allow for the art to take in the reader emotionally through what the images convey; messy art, sudden loss of color, or even a sudden blank page after a tragic event are simple yet effective ways to convey emotion that are, at times, difficult or downright impossible to put into words. And sometimes the writer wants to leave things to interpretation or allude to something without saying it outright. While this can be done in writing, it can be done through the art as well, and depending on how skilled the artist or creative a set up can be just as effective if not more.

     In television storytelling can be done with another wide array of features. Close-ups on the actors, the actors and their performance in general, music, background narration, changes in location, lighting, ect. This allows for emotions to come across in different ways; the quality of the acting can make or break the effectiveness of the scene, and music and lighting can alter the message or feel of scene in order to change or heighten the point, pacing, the use of CGI or practical effects, etc. So, keeping this in mind, there are many features that are exclusive to film that are not in comic books, and vice versa. So, as you can imagine, adapting the stories or message from one medium to another is nowhere near as straightforward as people like to think it is. In other words, I tend to give the writers/actors/etc a break when it comes to adaption because, honestly, there is a lot that goes into it and it’s not like I could do better, honestly. I mean, there are piss poor adaptions, I’m not gunna lie, but there are a lot of them that I think don’t get enough credit simply because it’s “different” in some ways.

     Aight, let’s first refer back to what I said earlier concerning the comic; these issues aren’t so much an intro to John as they are literally following him from the end of the American Gothic arc in Swamp Thing and to his apartment where he gets involved with more shit (no rest for the wicked, amirite?). So, again, not a good way to start the TV series. In the TV show, they also have to tie in the changes they set up in the previous episodes. Continuity, my friends.

    So, what is different? Here are a few things: John having a safe house, being in the US, Chaz being American and also not involved, Zed being involved and being Latina, the new angel character Manny, and the absence of Papa Midnight really change a lot about the story. The heart of it is John’s relationship with Gary and the defeat of the demon, which thankfully remains unchanged at it’s core. This is the central idea that drives this story and I think that idea was actually done a bit better in the film medium than in the comic.

   Keeping all of these factors and all of these changes that needed in order to keep things consistent with the TV show’s changes, let’s get into why I think that this episode is good even with the changes, but why I love it.

I love It

      After taking some time to consider things, I realize that what really makes this episode great is the actors; specifically, Matt Ryan and Jonjo O'Neill. The chemistry between them is undeniable. The way they look at each other and how they talk to each other really makes you feel like, at one time at least, they were friends. The scene where Gary swipes the ID badge and says “I learned from the best” is a great example of this. The look on his face and John’s; I don’t have a real eloquent way to say it. I just sort of feel it.

The retcon of Gary’s character really helps with this. Being that Gary is introduced and then killed off in two issues, you don’t really get to know his character in the comics. He’s only in one episode of the TV series, yet he feels more fleshed out. Soul was added to the character. Showing his struggles with addiction, as well as what I suspect to be depression and PTSD, really humanized him. In the episode, he was more than just a desperate, annoying junky; he was a flawed and relatable human being. Who hasn’t made a mistake? How many people have made BIG mistakes with consequences difficult to handle? How many people are haunted by their actions from the past? Addiction and the effects is has on people is devastating. I’m glad that they kept the ending true to the comics, but the way he was portrayed in the episode really made me feel for Gary in this case. It almost made me hope that maybe he really would get better, and have the chance at redemption that he was trying so desperately to find. But it wouldn’t be a John Constantine series without an ending like this one; John loses a friend and slowly digs himself deeper into hell.

Of course, it’s the ending of the episode that people really remember best. It’s the scenes that solidified, at least for me, Matt Ryan as John Constantine. It’s what really helped me have faith in the series. Watching it now, and seeing what really could have been, makes the episode somewhat bitter sweet for me. I felt like this is when the series really found it’s footing; the acting, storytelling, and how well arcs from Hellblazer could be adapted. This is where I think Matt Ryan hit his stride and we could see what he was really capable of as an actor if they let him spread his wings. In the earlier episodes I was honestly unsure. He looked the part, but the soul of the character had not really had a chance to shine through.

How John treats Gary at the end really made a difference, too. Holding him while he was in pain, and sitting with him as he died in agony; these simple yet effective changes really drove home John’s humanity in the face of evil and the tough decisions he has to make. The look he gives many at the very end, the anger and sorrow he seems to be struggling to hold back, is haunting.

In this episode, Matt Ryan’s love and dedication to John’s character shine. Seeing the story in live action gave this story a stronger impact. Even without a lot of the social commentary that was present in the comic, the live action element is what really helps drive the story home. I think it’s because it’s real people showing these very real emotions that can be hard to translate into art. Not to say that John Ridgway did a bad job, but it’s different in live action.

I hope I was able to get these thoughts across. I wasn’t sure if I should share this or not, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I know this is sort of jumbled, but hopefully it’s not a total mess to read.

[daleisgreat]

30 Years of Super Nintendo - Flashback Special

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of the North American launch, so it seems the perfect time to post a Flashback Special honoring it! Suppose you have not perused a past Flashback Special of mine (all linked at the bottom of this entry). In that case, they are essentially my history with the platform over the years, with a little bit of history thrown in, and recounting all my favorite games, accessories, memories, and moments with the system.

Odds are for the average gaming enthusiast reading this, and you probably are familiar with the core details of the SNES launch stateside (if not, then I highly recommend CGQ’s video on it for a quick breakdown). The SNES launched in 1991 when I was eight. I did not have a subscription to any gaming magazines yet, so I most likely first found out about the system around that time from classmates at the time at school, the infamous Paul Rudd commercial, and the fourth season of Roseanne that transpired from 1991-92. I vividly remember the Roseanne episode with her son, DJ, pleading with his parents for the brand new SNES for his birthday gift and how his parents dreaded not being able to afford the system. I covered that episode when I did my Roseanne complete series re-watch here in the year leading up to the relaunch of the show several years ago. It brought back memories of how that was the story with my parents also denying me the much sought-after SNES, saying it cost too much and that I already have an NES to tide me over. ”But mommmmm, the SNES is 16-bits!!!!” Yeah….playing that angle got me nowhere. Kiosks & Friends The first couple of years for the SNES, I mostly remember playing at store kiosks. Super Mario World blew me away from the brief time I played it with it being such a leap from the NES installments. I always ate up the precious few minutes I could procure at a store kiosk if no one were playing Super Mario Kart. One last store kiosk memory was eye-gazing over the impressive WWF Royal Rumble. I loved WWF WrestleFest in the arcade, and for a couple of years, it was the only WWF game that offered up WWF’s marquee over-the-top rope elimination match, the Royal Rumble, and it was endlessly fun to play in the arcade. Fast-forward to playing it on console kiosks around its 1993 release, and I could not eat up enough of that game’s Royal Rumble mode either, and at the time, the graphics seemed like a huge step up from the wrestling games on NES. One of my favorite issues of Nintendo Power is the 50th issue that did a several-page spread on WWF Royal Rumble that I must have thoroughly re-read at least a dozen times.

I read this NP spread of WWF Royal Rumble many times, and it was one of my initially most desired SNES games! Around 1993/94, a couple of friends and classmates started to get the Super Nintendo. An early SNES memory that stuck with me all these years is my grade school friend, Jon-Paul, having me over for his birthday where he rented a SNES console and Street Fighter II: Turbo from the video store, and we played it for several hours straight. Another is spending a lot of 1994 at my neighborhood friend’s place, where we played countless sessions of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat II. Both games were big on codes and secrets and perfect two-player games. I was just regularly getting into video game magazines at this time and ate up issues of Tips & Tricks, Game Players, and Electronic Gaming Monthly to see what kind of hidden character and other much-rumored codes were making the waves each month for both of these games. Mortal Kombat II especially dominated the code-fervor that season with trying to uncover how to face off against secret characters like Jade, Noob Saibot, and Smoke, and trying to memorize all the input sequences for the game’s infamous Fatalities. Fast forward to late 1995/early 1996, and I still did not have a SNES, but a new neighborhood friend, Rich, just got one and the next several months at his place introduced me to so many SNES games. Rich kind of got me somewhat into RPGs at the time, and while it may not sound fun on paper, there were many times I recall just kind of embracing the role of “armchair gamer.” I did this for games like EVO: Search for Eden, and Eye of the Beholder while keeping an eye out during gameplay to offer whatever suggestions seemed viable.

FFVI was eye-opening to me at the time of what video game narratives were capable of, and I devoured the latest secrets for FFVI discovered in the latest issue of my Game Players subscription that was delivered. The RPG I felt like that I contributed something to was the game that was originally released as Final Fantasy III. That game featured two-player support for battles only, so it was refreshing to help Rich with progressing through the game finally. My two favorite characters to use were Sabin and Cyan. That game especially blew me away with its larger-than-life story with two different game worlds, the momentous opera scene with Celes, the dazzling mode-seven graphics when traveling via airship or Chocobo, constantly getting irked at Shadow whenever he deserted the party, and so many other priceless moments. Over the years, I tried restarting the GBA version on a couple of occasions and regrettably have yet to finish it. Finally Owning a SNES….in 1996

Growing up with divorced parents put me in a unique childhood when it came to gaming. I lived with my mom, who provided for us as best as possible for the three siblings I grew up with, so we only had an NES for us for the longest time. However, when visiting my dad on weekends, he would always be big on hitting up as many garage sales and second-hand stores as possible and would acquire whatever he thought seemed like a bargain. Games-wise, this usually meant he lagged behind a generation because everyone was offloading their Atari VCS/2600s at garage sales for cheap when the NES was king, so I could have a great couple of years to become familiar with the pioneering-era of games on Atari. He then got into the NES scene when the SNES hit in 1991. Sure enough, the same month the N64 launched in America in September 1996 was when he bought a Super Nintendo for the family used at our local Premiere Video. The game we picked up with it was Street Fighter II: Turbo. My dad instantly remarked upon booting it up the noticeable jump in graphics. We played nothing but Capcom’s second Street Fighter game on SNES for a few weekends. I could only finish that game by button mashing into a victory against the final boss, M. Bison, once….with M. Bison. I still have a lot of love for this era of Street Fighter - whether it be for the roster, every character’s stage and theme music, and receiving Nintendo Power’s strategy guide for the game for Christmas and studying it regularly to improve.

After a few weeks, we realized we needed something else than a fighting game, and after another trip to Premiere Video, we came home with Super Mario All-Stars. It felt like the easy choice to go with 16-bit remakes of all four 8-bit versions of the core Mario Bros. games. Every game felt like a whole different game with all-new graphics and sound, and more importantly, being able to save progress midgame. This was a bigger hit with the entire family, and it provided many days of taking turns in its alternating two-player mode to see who could get the farthest in the four Mario games included.

Make sure to have some tissues by your side as you witness FFIII/VI's infamous "opera" scene. Seriously, this was mind-blowing stuff to 13-year old Dale in 1996. 16-bit Sportsball Fun

After playing a lot of those first two SNES games, I went into this stretch for the next several years, where most of what I played was sports and wrestling games. I attribute this to many multiplayer sessions with Rich, my brother, Joe, and my dad. I know my dad was not all that into sports other than a passing interest in rooting on hometown Minnesota pro-sports teams. Still, I have to give him credit for spending as much time with us and taking the time to learn and become a pretty solid player at teaming up with me in many sports games. It is worth noting that I feel the 16-bit era is probably the last-gen where most of its library of sports games had a relatively simple pick-up-and-play feel that NES games had. That changed a little bit in the final SNES years, where it was usually EA’s games that started to incorporate more realism in their sports games and make use of most of the buttons of the SNES controller. For football, Madden NFL ‘97 was the one I played the most. I played plenty of the Genesis version at Rich's place, so much so that I noticed too many little differences with the SNES version to make it stand out on its own. For 16-bit sports nuts that want to know, the Genesis version had the better playing version, but the SNES had a better overall presentation and more popping audio and visuals. I was part of a small slice of sports gamers big into NES Play Action Football, and the 16-bit version played almost exactly like the NES version, but with a 16-bit upgrade and also has a nifty feature to play games at the high school, college, or NFL level.

NBA Jam and NBA Hangtime dominated my 16-bit sports lineup. The code scene for these games were so intense at the time I had to keep my own binder of notes on them all that I still have today as seen above! As I alluded to earlier, when it came to hoops, I played way too much NBA Jam the first year it was out at my friend’s place. However, the arcade hoops game I played the most on SNES was NBA Hangtime, which was developed by the same people who made Jam. I got that game new for Christmas in 1996 and must have played it regularly with Rich for nearly a year straight. I do not hear that game receive the same level of praise as Jam, but it added a few new fun layers to freshen up the gameplay, like being able to do co-op dunks and earn “Team Fire,” and being able to create players. For more simulation-focused hoops, I played a lot of NBA Live ’96 with my dad, in addition to Nintendo’s NCAA Basketball which appeared like a technical marvel to me that was ahead of its time with the mode-seven camera allowing constant 3D rotation whenever possession of the ball changed and foreshadowed what would become the go-to camera perspective for the next-gen of basketball games. Finally, I will cherish my time with Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball for it being the only hoops game I ever had to consult a guide to figure out how to shoot the damn ball….and for its surprisingly rocking soundtrack. Find out all about it when I broke that game down with the Your Parents Basement crew on their penultimate podcast.

Nintendo incorporated the same camera style into its hockey game, NHL Stanley Cup. Its graphics also impressed me, but it was rather challenging to score a goal, and I did not have as much fun with it. I played EA’s hockey games more on Genesis than SNES, but EA’s baseball game, MLBPA Baseball, was the hardball game I spent the most time with on Super Nintendo. Many years later, I picked up Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. Presents: Major League Baseball, and had some fun with it, but already played the Game Boy version of it to death by the time I picked up the SNES version, and thus did not invest as much time with it as I did with EA’s game. Wanna Wrassle!?

I must have read through this review of WWF RAW countless times in my youth, and seeing how this essentially is a bigger and better version of Royal Rumble only increased my desire to one day own a SNES! The North American wrestling library was a significant step up from the bottom of the stairwell where most of the NES games hung out….but on the SNES, it only made it roughly halfway up the stairs. The aforementioned WWF Royal Rumble provided many hours of fun for its day, but it has not stood the test of time with the button-mashing grapple meter it featured that will obliterate thumbs on the normal difficulty level! Its sequel, WWF RAW, was noteworthy for having more match types available and being one of the first games to have a selectable female wrestler in Luna Vachon, but it too used that same ill-fated grapple meter that has not aged well. WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game is a fun little hybrid of Mortal Kombat and wrestling, but the SNES version is notorious for lacking two wrestlers compared to all other home versions.

For non-WWF games, WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling is rather unremarkable….except for its exceptional wrestler select screen.There were a few interesting unlicensed wrestling games in America. Natsume Championship Wrestling featured a solid wrestling engine but removed/altered the AJPW wrestlers from the Japanese version of the game. Hammerlock had a promising concept of having part of the screen dedicated to nonstop Tecmo-esque cinematics. In contrast, the other half of the screen featured 2D gameplay, but the cameras constantly flipped on screen, to which half was dedicated to cinematics or gameplay. It resulted in it being a jarring mess. Saturday Night Slam Masters is no such mess, however, and is a better hybrid of fighting game meets wrestling game, with this one done by Capcom. It features larger-than-life character sprites, full-on ring entrances with laser lights, and is a fun-playing combination of wrestling and Street Fighter. To top it off, Slam Masters has Final Fight’s Mike Haggar on the roster to boot!

Joey Pink does a fine job detailing why Capcom's "Street Fighter" in a wrestling ring should not be missed! Ensuring RPGs are here to Stay Aside from watching Rich play some of the RPGs I listed above, and of course, playing Final Fantasy VI with him, I did get a chance to play a few other RPGs on the SNES over the years, and it was not until the last few years that I finally finished a couple of them. In the late 1990s I first started two RPGs that stood out to me at the time because they broke out of the medieval fantasy mold most other RPGs at the time took place in. Shadowrun on the SNES was drastically different from the Genesis version I first encountered at Rich’s. This one still had the same futuristic cyberpunk world setting and terminology, but there were many more dialog options with NPCs that were pivotal in asking the right questions to progress the story. Additionally, the hacking games played out differently and had more of a puzzle theme to them than the action-oriented ones in the Genesis version, and the combat had kind a PC interface where a cursor had to be dragged across the screen on which target to aim at. I still wound up being totally into it and became stuck in the back half of the game before my save data became corrupted. I thought that would end my days with Shadowrun…

SNES Shadowrun remains one of my all-time favorite RPGs as of this writing! The final gauntlet tower was an ordeal and a half to work through, only to face off against a dragon as the final boss! …until nearly two decades later in 2016. I mentioned on past flashback specials how I occasionally guest host on the Your Parents Basement podcast, where they cover a random retro game per episode. In 2016 they asked me if there were any games I had in mind to cover, and Shadowrun felt like worth revisiting and possibly knocking off the “must beat this game” bucket list. I progressed until about a little over halfway through by the time we all met to record and broke down the game, but by that point, I just started to make further progress than my last effort and was determined to see this one through! I was playing on actual SNES hardware and was surprised that the battery still held a save but ran into trouble in the final tower with a gauntlet of enemies on each floor to overcome before the final boss. I looked up a walkthrough and discovered an exploit to grind experience to beef up my character. Eventually, I managed to persevere and finally conquer the final boss, a fire-breathing dragon, to cross finishing Shadowrun off my bucket list! I had a riot podcasting with the YPB crew about it too, so please click or press here to give it a listen if you want to know more about this under-the-radar 16-bit RPG.

Fast forward three years later in 2019, and the awesome YPB hosts of Steve, Huell, and Todd helped me once again restart and finish another SNES RPG that I came close to finishing in the late 1990s before evil corrupt save data reared its ugly head again. This time the game of choice is the uber-expensive Earthbound. Like Shadowrun, that game stood out to me because its setting went against the grain of fantasy settings and instead took place in modern times as grade school kids. The opening levels felt like getting lost in your neighborhood and using childlike items as weapons like Yo-Yos and baseball bats. I do not own that ridiculously expensive game, but by 2019 I did own a SNES Mini (more on that in a bit) that I made sure to abuse the save state and the rewind functions it provided to overcome some troubling bosses in the back half of the game. That final act of the game certainly goes places with its sci-fi twists and feels like an entirely different game, but I still loved it all the same! It felt exhilarating to finally knock this one off my “to do” list as well, and I had just as much fun dissecting it to pieces with the YPB crew that you can check out by click or pressing here. Unfortunately, this is where my extensive hands-on time with SNES RPGs comes to an end. I played a lot of FFIII/VI, and finished Earthbound, and Shadowrun. Sure, I dabbled in several other games but did not put more than an hour or two into them. One of those games is the much-heralded, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and I have no excuse for never sticking with it because I loved the NES original. It was the GBA re-release I played, and I think I was spreading myself thin while playing and reviewing too many games simultaneously. Lufia and Breath of Fire II were another pair of RPGs I put a couple of hours into that both left me with promising first impressions, but there was a whole other reason why I did not go back to those again, and that is because then I was waist-deep at the time in….. Discovering Emulation Right around the time my family acquired its first computer in the fall of 1997 was when I found out about emulation. It seemed way too good to be true to easily download and play games right on the computer, especially when factoring in the SNES was at the tail end of its lifecycle, and there were still new games releasing for it. As an unemployed 9th grader at the time, I sampled countless 8- and 16-bit ROMs with the SNES games I was the most curious about. A few of the RPGs in the previous paragraph being prime examples of the ones I invested the most time into. It proved to be overwhelming with so many choices, but I took a long sabbatical after a year or so of taking in the emulation scene after the family computer crashed and I lost all the save data I had amassed in so many games.

It has been interesting to see how emulation has evolved over the years from programs like SNES9X and Retroarch to being incorporated into machines like the MISTer, RetroPi, and Retron 5. Nintendo has learned to embrace official, legal emulation over the years with purchasable digital classic games on systems such as the Wii, WiiU, and 3DS. Having a stable income as an adult now many years later, I feel guilty for embracing the emulation scene so hard in my teenage years, so much so that whenever Nintendo re-releases one of its classic hits several times over, I choose to purchase it again (well…usually at a sale price) to redeem myself. Keeping SNES Alive Today

Over the years, I find myself diving into retro games versus the latest and greatest coming out. I am a fan of the various SNES hardware updates/clones, both officially from Nintendo and unofficially from other companies, which has kept my SNES and other retro game fandom blood flowing over the decades. I am unsure if it feels right to lump it in here, but the Super Game Boy lead to me getting a lot of extra life out of my SNES. Playing Game Boy games on the big screen was a big deal to me back then, considering it was always a pain to make out what was happening on the non-backlit handheld. For some reason, those special border screens that would eventually have funny animations after being left idle for so long made an impression on me. Game Boy games with the “Super Game Boy Enhanced” logo on the front of the box usually have their own exclusive border and special color palette. I loved the Mole Mania and Donkey Kong Land borders the most! I thought it was rad that around 15-20 special enhanced Super Game Boy titles featured multiplayer support with two SNES controllers. They consisted almost entirely of Bomberman and fighting games, but it was still a cool feature nonetheless. The handheld Hyperkin SupaBoy is the unauthorized SNES take on the Sega Nomad by having a portable SNES. It is a bit on the bulky side, but it has a rechargeable battery, and its support has been flawless with my entire SNES library. Another Hyperkin product I got a lot of use out of is the Retron 5. I know that particular clone system is controversial with retro game enthusiasts based on the unauthorized emulators it implements. However, the user interface and emulation support made it possible for me to make record progress in many SNES games by taking advantage of save states and its optional Game Genie-esque cheats library. The SNES Classic Edition is an excellent official piece of hardware from Nintendo that has the pint-sized SNES pre-installed with 21 SNES games, one of which is previously unreleased Star Fox 2. It has an adorably intuitive interface and supports game rewinding and save states, which made it the way I was finally able to finish Earthbound. It was also surprisingly not-so-difficult to plug into a PC and import a bunch of SNES ROMs into. Other companies like 8bitdo made that system extra convenient by making their recommended wireless controllers compatible with it!

If you did not grow up with the SNES, then both of these options are great entry points for those looking to move on beyond emulators. The Analogue Super NT may have been pushing it too much price-wise. When it comes down to the nuts and bolts of emulation tech, I am not a wizard by any means, except that by all sources, it sounds like the Super NT offers the best hardware emulation with its FPGA technology. It makes SNES games appear as pristine as possible on an HD/4KTV without any or as minimal of the fuzziness that happens whenever I try plugging in the composite/RCA cables from a base SNES system into a 4K/HDTV. For those unfamiliar with the Super NT, this video from the My Life in Gaming crew does a thorough dissection of everything it has to offer. The list of options in there is intimidating to mess around with, but this sounds like the way to go if one wants to keep playing their cartridges……although I have to admit I am pretty satisfied currently with the Retron 5 and SNES Classic Edition.

Odds are some of you are quite a bit younger than me and grew up post-SNES lifecycle. Not interested in going down the pricey road of hunting down old cartridges and hardware, and do not want to dabble on the dark side of illegal emulation? Then a terrific alternative is if you have a Switch with Nintendo’s $20/year online service membership and taking advantage of the Nintendo Switch Online and Super Nintendo Switch Online digital game portals. It has unlimited access to the slate of games on there, along with save points as long as your membership remains active. The implementation of save states and the user interface has also improved noticeably over the emulation used for NES & SNES Classic Editions. More importantly, it adds the feature to play online with a friend. Last year I played online SNES games with my nephew, who was wrapping up 6th grade at the time, and this was his first time playing SNES games. He loves Mario Kart 8 on Switch, and so when the first game we played was the original Super Mario Kart, I could not help but crack up when he instantly remarked, “Dale, this looks old!” He eventually came around, and then we had some fun playing co-op , Joe & Mac . A couple of years ago, on my Genesis Flashback Special, I made sure to reminisce of my fond memories of the summer I spent playing nonstop Sega Channel. These NES/SNES Switch portals are essentially the Sega Channel, but far better because it does not cost $15 a month (in 1994 dollars which equals $27.63 today per Google), offers multiple save states, and ability to play online for only $20 a year!!! Kids, get your parents to hook you up now!!! Miscellaneous Quick Hits

SNES games were the most common denominator on six of the 13 episodes I guest hosted on the retro game podcast, Your Parents Basement. Check out their full archives by click or pressing here. -Turns out I did quite a few guest hosting spots on Your Parents Basement Podcast for SNES games. For those that are podcasting fiends and dug the three episodes I linked to already, then I will link you to three more SNES themed episodes I appeared on where I breathed in the Mode 7 skies of Pilotwings, embraced Capcom’s action-platformer prowess in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and made sure not to miss any Gatorade and Wheaties health pick-ups in Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.

-The SNES controller is my favorite pre-disc console era controller. It kept the similar button layout of the NES controller but rounded off the edges into its iconic “dog bone” feel so the controller no longer cramped in your hands! Throw in the two extra face buttons and two additional shoulder buttons, and it opened up all kinds of deeper gameplay possibilities! It made it perfect for most fighting games that used almost all the face and shoulder buttons. I found the shoulder buttons were also smartly implemented in NBA Jam/Hangtime for being assigned to use for turbo speed functionality. As far as other SNES controllers/peripherals go, since I loved the NES Zapper, I always wanted to try the Super Scope, but as a kiddo, its bazooka-sized proportions were kind of intimidating. It still kind of bums me out all these years I never got to experience it with epics like Yoshi’s Safari, T2: The Arcade Game, and Tin Star. I never had an opportunity to use the SNES mouse either, which I kind of regret all these years later after seeing all the marvelous creations from experts at Mario Paint, and it was cool to see some PC ports like Civilization, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D take advantage of SNES Mouse compatibility.

-The 16-bit era was when fighting games exploded, and as you can tell above, I spent a lot of time with Street Fighter II: Turbo, and the first two Mortal Kombat games. Other than that, though, the only other fighting game on SNES I put significant time into was TMNT Tournament Fighters. It was released at the tail end of the TMNT-mania when the cartoon peaked at its popularity. The game itself was a surprisingly competent licensed fighting game from Konami, and tried its best to feel like a solid Street Fighter-clone. Speaking of them pesky turtles… -…TMNT IV: Turtles in Time was the only beat-em-up brawler I put considerable time into on the SNES. I have vague memories of trying others out once or twice like The Peace Keepers, and Super Double Dragon, but Turtles in Time was the one I frequently revisited over the years. It is a superb rendition of the arcade game, with SNES-exclusive levels like the Technodrome that had a fantastic first-person boss fight against Shredder, where lowly Foot Soldiers had to be chucked right at him to defeat Shredder. The soundtrack is one of my favorite SNES scores, so much so that I went all-in to get the for it! I have so many great memories of this game, with the highlight being my friend Matt and I revisiting this for complete runs of it once every year or two for about a dozen years.

Turtles in Time and FFIII/VI are my favorite SNES soundtracks, but Turtles in Time I own on vinyl so I will embed it here in all its glory for you to enjoy as well!

-The SNES library had a quality slate of racing games. Super Mario Kart quickly rose to the top of the ranks and was always fun to bust through a GP with a friend. Street Racer was one of the first kart-clones to hit in 1994, and for some reason, that one always stuck with me. As did it being one of the few games to have four-player split-screen support with all four screens being horizontal! Rock ‘n Roll Racing is another killer arcade racer on SNES; think of a more beefed up RC Pro-AM, but with a good dose of heavy metal mixed in. This past year saw it re-released as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection for everyone to experience it! I remember trying out F-Zero at a store kiosk around SNES launch, but was too young at eight years old at the time to fully grasp its style of futuristic racing (or that the name was a riff on F1 racing until a couple of years ago). I was more into a game similar to its style that was the trilogy of Top Gear titles. Uniracers was a quirky racer I enjoyed with its unique aesthetic and one-wheeled racers taking advantage of their nature in races filled with jumps and loop-de-loops….too bad about Pixar holding a grudge against Nintendo and legally forcing them to yank it off shelves. Nintendo’s other racer, Stunt Race FX, was ahead of its time with the polygonal FX-based graphics running pretty chunky on the SNES. Still, it is a commendable piece of 16-bit tech they were just barely able to keep running at a passable-enough framerate. Another FX-chip game that did not originally gel with me was…

-…the original Star Fox. Being 10 when it released in 1993, I thought those polygonal graphics looked blocky and horrendous and would have none of it! Many years later, I would revisit it and rightfully come around on it! -Another Nintendo-published game that received a lot of hype was Donkey Kong Country with its cutting-edge 3D models. They were plastered all over gaming mags at the time. I briefly recall trying out the first and second of the three Donkey Kong Country games on SNES. However, I did not put more time into them because I beat Donkey Kong Land on Game Boy before our family got a SNES, which was just a watered-down port with some remixed levels for the handheld. I enjoyed my time with it, but its disappointingly blunt “congratulations” ending left a bad impression on me, and I never felt like giving the other entries a serious go all these years.

-Some may be wondering why there has yet not been anything dedicated to the pair of Super Mario World titles and Super Mario RPG? Super Mario World was probably one of the first SNES games I tried when I visited my older brother at his first apartment in the early 90s. I think the heavy-duty graphics and trying to comprehend attacking with Yoshi proved to be too much for eight or nine-year-old me at the time. I played it a few other times in my 20s, hanging out with coworkers on retro game nights, and had fun with it, but I think since I was exposed to the NES trilogy more and played the hell out of All-Stars, that those were the versions I preferred more. I appreciated how Nintendo stepped up to Sega’s edgier marketing at the time with Nintendo’s “Play it Loud” marketing campaign. Unfortunately, I think their ad for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was a bit too extreme for 12-year old Dale at the time. That ad (click here for it if you are feeling daring)was forever planted in my subconscious and always crossed my mind and indirectly caused me to avoid Yoshi’s Island for all these years. I did pick up Super Mario RPG and it is on my “bucket list” of games to play as well. I am holding off on it all these years because I was hanging out with Matt one day, and he explained how he was having a tough time with the final boss, Smithy. Well, he wanted to give me a quick demo to show how unforgiving of a challenge the boss was….but for some reason his clutch gaming skills kicked in right then, and he beat Smithy and was exposed to the ending right then and there!

-As far as other tough SNES games go, the two most challenging for me are easily Contra III: The Alien Wars and Zombie Ate My Neighbors. Contra III is like the first two games on steroids. I love the boss battles and intense walk-n-shoot chaos, but do not love constantly dying in one shot! Zombies Ate My Neighbors is another fun action-platformer that is also equally tough to make it farther than a few levels in unless you seriously dedicate yourself to it. Hey, both of these games also saw re-releases this past year on current consoles with the Contra Anniversary Collection and Zombies Ate My Neighbors & Ghoul Patrol set for those wanting to experience 16-bit nail-biting difficulty (but with save state support!).

I hope this excellent video review from the quintessential retro video game source, Jeremy Parish, suffices for my lack of any meaningful Super Mario World memories here. -In 1997, I was hyped for a late SNES release, the original Harvest Moon. The farm/life/dating-sim series is still around today from publisher Natsume (as well as the original developers parting ways with Natsume and delivering their own competing Story of Seasons series). During the SNES era, I spent several summers out on a farm. I appreciated rural life's solitude and free spirit lifestyle, and that first Harvest Moon game perfectly encapsulated that. Trying to determine the best way to spend the day tending to the fields, livestock and managing a social/family life was surprisingly fun and engaging! Harvest Moon remain one of two games that I submitted a blurry Polaroid photo to Nintendo Power’s “Arena” high score section. I cannot recall if my score got posted or not.

-The original Sim City port on SNES received a lot of love around the SNES launch window, with Nintendo giving it a unique makeover with bonus Nintendo characters in it and an exclusive tutor in the form of Dr. Wright to ease everyone into the simulation gameplay. I never played too much of that version, but one night at Rich’s, the game we decided to rent that night was Sim City 2000. That one was released way late into the SNES lifecycle and lacked any Nintendo extras the first SNES game had. Still, we stayed up all night playing it and looking at our daily news recap and mayor approval ratings and trying to figure out where to stop underwater pipe blockages! It ran slowwww on the SNES, but we tolerated it fine enough at the time because I had yet to play the PC version. Eventually, I would check out the PC version and came away surprised with so much I had to put up within the SNES game. -For those wanting to dare the Super Famicom scene, there are a plethora of great games that never made their way stateside, and better yet, a hearty chunk of them have received English fan translations. I am partial to the FirePro wrestling games that never made it here that are vastly superior to all the American wrestling games I broke down above, BS Out of Bounds Golf is an addicting take on miniature golf, the original Star Ocean, and the Back to the Future platformer that was not a five-star classic by any means, but blew away the poor NES and Genesis games that did release here. If you are not that familiar with the Super Famicom library, this top 50 list from RVG Fanatic is a great place to start your research and very much helped clueing me into a bunch of Super Famicom games I had little-to-no knowledge of. Conclusion

If you are around my age reading this, you may be wondering why I have not gone on about the fabled “16-bit Wars” by now. Rest assured, I experienced it in the lunchroom and at recess and in gaming magazines at the time. I devoured all the side-by-side screenshots in gaming mags of dual-platform releases to see if I could spot which version was better. I want to say back then, I sided with the SNES because I grew up with the NES, but that does not seem like a fair choice since I did not own a SNES until 1996. Reflecting on it, although I experienced a fair amount of RPGs and other games on SNES with Rich, I primarily played endless hours of Genesis games with him back at the time. So whenever I hung out with Rich, I considered myself a Genesis fan, and when I finally got a SNES and grew my SNES library, I considered myself a SNES fan and avoided a lot of the “console wars” trash talk. For younger readers here who want to learn more about the fervor of the 16-bit wars, the book, Console Wars, and its corresponding documentary (which is currently only available on Paramount+/CBS All Access sadly) are my recommended ways to absorb all that hoopla. I will cherish all of the past 30 years of SNES memories and hope you have enjoyed reminiscing with me for the last several thousand words. If you want to hear more of my SNES memories in podcast form, I have a few SNES-centric episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted and have embedded below for your pleasure. They have some of the friends I repeatedly mentioned above as co-hosts that share their SNES experiences and memories, so please load up a random SNES “podcast game” and boot one of these podcasts up for fitting background noise….

10 years ago I did a 20th anniversary SNES special with Matt!

Here is the history of RPG series episode dedicated to the 16-bit era.

Finally, here is Matt and I hosting the 16-bit installment of our history of comic book games series. Bonus Overtime

It would not be a Flashback Special without one random oddball bonus story to wrap it up with. The only Kirby game I ever finished receives that honor. One day, my brother and his friend Jake were over at my place. We were discussing SNES games at some point, and Jake mentioned how Kirby Super Star is his all-time favorite. I said how I never played it and did not think anything of it at the time, but the next time I met up with him and my brother, Jake had the copy of that game with him and insisted on borrowing it to me and said not to give it back until I finished it. I felt this sudden obligation to play through it as a priority, so I did not feel like I was keeping his game hostage. Luckily, Kirby Super Star is a damn fun game, which the front of the box labels as “8 Games in One!” Most of the games are abbreviated-length adventures of only a handful of missions in their unique theme of levels, and a few of the games are mini-games like a race against King DeDeDe. Regardless, almost every game provided that trademark Kirby lighthearted fun and was hard to put down! Kirby’s Dream Course is also a lot of fun on SNES, and is an interesting take of Kirby meets miniature golf! With that anecdote, I will wrap up yet another Flashback Special. Thank you for sticking with me this far, and If you dug reading about my trials and tribulations with Nintendo’s 16-bit machine, please take a look at the other Flashbacks I have linked below!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PS2 20th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th and 32-X 25th Anniversaries Xbox 360 15th Anniversary

[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!

[tanjaded]

-Dragon Ball Rant Incoming-

God I fucking love the Dragon Ball series. Like, I grew up on GT and Kai, watched the OG Dragon Ball on YouTube, and enjoyed every second of Abridged.

Which makes what Super continues to do absolutely fucking infuriating on so many levels.

To start, one of the best tropes from early Z was the constant conversation of Saiyan nature and the love for battle. Like, Goku's mentality of "I'm backed into a corner, the situation is looking more impossible than ever... so why am I so excited?" was so fucking cool and great and i feel like it's kind of just par the course now. Admittedly, this is more of a minor complaint, but damn do I miss when it was actually important.

Vegeta is another issue, though it's not really his fault. Every time Vegeta gets a new power up, he gets his ass beat. Every. Single. Time. It's been happening since the Frieza saga of Z for fucks' sake. And of course everyone knows that Gohan was supposed to be the protagonist after Cell, but Goku was brought back after fan backlash or something. Gohan used to be so cool.

Bojack Unbound in particular was peak Gohan.

Not even Goku himself is safe. He went from a competent, decently rounded character to an idiotic "uh, what's kissing?" despite being married and having two kids.

I could also rant an entire essay about how the fights post-Buu saga from Z (and really, post-Android Saga if we're being real), have steadily declined from interesting, thought out life-or-death battles to "shoot a million ki blasts, shoot a kamehameha/masenko/final flash/insert any other beam that is functionally the exact fucking same" and "punch punch kick punch otherwise known as the dragon rush move from fighterz". And I'd have a million different examples to choose from as well.

And none of this is touching on the fact that anytime a new enemy appears they just happen to be stronger for some reason, which only gets more implausible as time goes on. And that the response to this is literally always some new form of super saiyan or some new form that is basically super saiyan color coded as something else.

Remember in Dragon Ball, when Tao beat Goku's ass? Yeah, remember the solution to that, where Goku climbed Korin Tower multiple times, got the Sacred Water (which was just normal water), and then beat Tao's ass because he'd very clearly earned a new level strength?

Yeah, that was good shit. That was satisfying to watch. It felt like the logical conclusion, and like Goku had really worked hard and gotten his just rewards for his efforts.

Now, to end off, I'll mention how while I admit to being nostalgic for GT, I do realize it was mostly garbage story wise. The universe hunt for the black star dragon balls was a clear nostalgia grab for fans of classic Dragon Ball, and it was not done well. Pan and Giru were incredibly annoying. Trunks was just okay. Super Android 17, Omega Shenron, etc all sucked for most or all of the time they existed on screen.

On the other hand the Baby saga is probably one of the best arc narratives in Dragon Ball (yes, not in GT, in the entire Dragon Ball series) up until maybe its last two or three episodes. And Super Saiyan 4 is eternally and objectively cool as fuck.

All that being said, Super, while having high points (SSJ God and SSJ Blue are cool, multiple universes is a great concept) also has stunningly low points (The destruction of Future Trunks as a cool character both visually and narratively, the overall not good fight scenes, the nonsensical power scaling, Jiren, I could go on forever).

It just could have been so much more, and I will always be sad about the series's decline into battle shonen low mediocrity. And no, when the latest manga chapters eventually get animated, the series will not jump back up into incredibleness, or to the top of the genre once more.

Trust me on this one. I know about Moro and Goku Ultra Instinct's fucking Gundam-aura thing, and Granola and Vegeta's new form. Even if it was cool in the manga, it will most definitely fall to the exact same subpar standard as the rest of animated Super. Maybe it will become above average. We can always hope, but I doubt it.

^ Me thinking about what could have been

I'd love for Super's eventual new seasons to be good, or even great. I'd be ecstatic to see Dragon Ball be genuinely good again. I love Dragon Ball! I just have realistic expectations.

-Rant Over-

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Tell me if I'm being crazy here but I was just wondering if you feel like the Ogata in the anime is an inaccurate representation of the Ogata we get in the manga? And if you feel the same as me why may that be? I really can't nail it but it's bothering me watching him in it. Like they missed the point of his character.

Well...

...in itself all the characters are inaccurately represented in the anime.

There are some problems that come with the anime adaptation:

- the first is not really a fault of who creates the anime, merely a consequence of the anime being a different medium. As a result some things can’t be delivered in the same way as the manga.

For example this is one of the spread pages in which Noda plays with the contrast between what happens in one half and what happens in the other half.

On one side we’ve Sugimoto and Asirpa eating warm food together, safe and happy, on the other we’ve Ogata being shown alone (although we know there’s people around him) about to freeze to death and in a poor shape.

You can’t just get the same effect on the anime.

We see a similar trick also used in a scene that seems to foreshadow the ‘cat alliance’. In this three panel we see Edogai’s cat and then, below his panel, two panel showing Wildcat Ogata and Tiget Kiroranke exchanging a nod as they turn at the same time.

You just can’t get the same effect in the anime but the anime didn’t even made an effort as it didn’t show the cat falling on the ground (or better, it’ll show it but later on) but just Ogata first and Kiro after, both clearly looking at Hijikata without turning, Ogata’s expression different from the original (change of expressions is a point in which I’ll dig later).

...and the same goes for other ‘manga only’ ways to show things. For example the manga can use a swirling shade to imply that Ogata is actually in turmoil despite looking calm on the outside.

The anime wouldn’t be able to do such thing without making the draws looking weird. Of course some anime would find different ways to drive home the same concept (from a certain music to moving the whole swirling to the background or things like that)... but Geno tends to miss those details.

Anyway this might seems minor, many believe they don’t notice this sort of details... but actually most of those details are meant to pass below your conscious radar, and give you a determinate feeling without you quite realizing it. They shape the background of your opinion on the characters or of their relations or of the themes of the story.

- another problem is something for which the adaptation can be partly blamed and it’s the matter of cutting scenes. We should probably split the anime adaptation into the three series because they had different fates.

A premise. Out of late anime series have started being created for being 12 episodes series for commercial reasons. I won’t get into details on the why but this affected GK as all its series are 12 episodes and, to fit all the amount they decided to fit in 12 episodes, cutting scenes was mandatory in many cases. You just wouldn’t manage to put everything in them.

Plus, many anime series aren’t created to cover the whole storyline but just a part of it, using the anime series merely as a way to promote the manga (and likely, originally GK was planned to be a mere 12 episodes series).

Now, in GK case...

The first series adapted most of the story. There were however some relevant cuts that affected the series, the main one being how they completely removed Umeko from the plot something that hugely affected Sugimoto’s characterization but also, will come to bite back in future series with the result it’ll affect Sugimoto and Asirpa. Another notable cut was the Barato arc. They recovered it in the OAD, but if you don’t watch the OAD but just the anime, you’ve a great hole in the plot development. If the series has stopped at 12 episodes and had been merely a promotional mean for the story it wouldn’t have been a big deal but we know ultimately it continued. I would also say in some points it felt a bit rushed... but again, it could have worked for a promotional series... while it feels pretty bad for an ongoing one.

The second series was... a mess. It cuts left and right without really paying care to connect well the various parts of the story. Parts of the cuts had a reason to be, as some scenes seemed hard to transpose in an anime (think Anehata), others though were just cut so that they would fit in the 12 episodes quota all the plot that was missing to cover the story up till Abashiri, when the series would have benefitted greatly if they had stopped sooner instead than making a mad rush for Abashiri that translated in a cutting fest. They then recovered the Shiraishi arc, the giant snake arc, the boss Wakayama arc, the Anehata arc in 3 OAD (but we still miss the Lighting bandit arc and the fake Ainu arc), but it’s worth to mention some of whose OAD clearly weren’t planned, as they can’t connect anymore with the series which cut them in such a way they can’t be reinserted anymore.

The third series tried again adapting everything except the Sekiya arc and the Koito past arc. Overall though, despite those two cuts, they tried to adapt the most they could and at a decent pace, which allows the third series to come out as the best of the 3.

Result of this all?

The characterization of most of the characters, especially if you watch only the anime series without the OAD (or with the OAD but not placed in the order in which the manga storyline would have placed them), suffers of a lot of cuts that are instead important for their development.

Ogata is, of course, among the ones affected.

Some cuts are small, for example here we see him explaining that he’s not just randomly escaping, but that he has assested the situation and a retreat was the smartest thing he could do.

The same goes here, with Ogata again analyzing the situation and planning countermeasures as well as taking care of their weaknesses (warning Nikaidou to hide his binoculars).

And the same goes here

Ogata is even capable to point out that Hijikata’s plan might suceed at first but not in the long run, which shows a capacity of analysis of the big picture.

Plot wise this kind of cuts are meaningless, they don’t change the story but, character wise, they rob Ogata of one of his main characteristics, observing a situation, analyzing it and being fast to come up with a valid course of action.

You’ll find many cuts through the anime series and they touch various aspects of each character.

Sometimes those cuts affected lines exchanged between characters so that the relationships felt different because some things were just left unsaid.

Other cuts affected the boxes explaining things, for example in the anime we aren’t told why Ogata eats snow but we’re supposed to figure out on our own, or how the bear could sneak up without Ogata and Nikaidou noticing or how Ogata learnt during the war that he had to avoid hitting vital parts to slow his pursuers down and so on.

Then there are the HUGE cuts, the one I mentioned before, that involved plot threads (Umeko) or entire arcs, or had arcs placed in OAD that not everyone saw or that don’t well connect with the anime.

The Barato Arc and the Anehata arc both involved Ogata significantly, so not seeing the OAD affects the understanding of the character.

The fake Ainu arc being cut stripped Ogata of a lot of scenes, among which Sugimoto’s stubborn refusal of Ogata’s logical theory (those Ainu are fake) as well as didn’t show how Ogata saved Sugimoto’s life by shooting to a fake Ainu who was about to kill Sugimoto, returning Sugimoto’s favour (Sugimoto saved him while they were in Edogai’s house).

The Lighting bandit arc in the manga worked well to tie with the fact Ogata was a child born from parents who didn’t love each other. The anime kept Ogata’s backstory (and animated it mostly rather well) but it felt less strong since it lacked the frame of the Lighting bandit arc... and the worst part is we lost this bit.

The constant cutting of Umeko from the plot ended up causing the scene in which Sugimoto replied to Asirpa he was searching the gold to take care of a friend’s widow and Ogata pointed out how that widow was the woman Sugimoto loved and also realized how Asirpa was crushing for Sugimoto. The lack of this bit affects how we read the whole scene on the ice in Karafuto.

The fact the anime decided to skip the Anehata arc, changed the reunion between Ogata and Tanigaki making Ogata’s reaction to the death of Tamai and Co and to the discovery of how they actually died weaker and even deprived us of Sugimoto’s recurring ‘don’t trust Ogata’ to Asirpa who instead trust him, affecting how the relations were presented. This cause the relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata to look much better than it was.

Also, they removed Ogata’s presence once they were in the blind bandits house. He entered in it with Sugimoto but then the anime decided to have him disappear and left Sugi to handle it all when in the manga Ogata was there to help.

- another HUGE problem are the transposition choices. The biggest fault of the first series is to tend to present the character from a distance or from behind, hardly showing us their expressions. The Japanese voice actors (sorry I hadn’t tried out the dubs), expecially Tsuda Kenjiro, Ogata’s voice actor, do try their best but sometimes you just need to see the faces to get a feeling of what they’re feelings.

Look at this manga scene in which we see Ogata’s expression trice.

Do you know what they showed us in the anime? This.

Basically the anime put entirely on Tsuda Kenjiro the burden of delivering to the viewers Ogata’s displeased and suspicious feelings. Only Tsuda Kenjiro was instructed on keeping Ogata mostly toneless so, while he’s still an awesome actor and there are differences in his performance that give out what Ogata is feeling, they don’t come out as obvious as the visual of the manga, especially to a not Japanese viewer. It’s not a choice to keep Ogata mysterious, it’s a specific problem of the 1st anime series which does it with many, many characters, Sugimoto and Asirpa included because drawing and recycling such a scene takes less effort than animating all the panels that were in the manga.

It’s a problem mostly of the first series though, as the two following series were more expression friendly but... but the expressions they showed in all three series were often different from the ones used in the manga. Look at how in this scene Ogata is serious, I’ll say worried in the manga since his face is shadowed and as he understands something might be up but he has no idea what he is, but he clearly doesn’t like this development...

...while he grins in the anime, his face well light as if he’s having the best day of his life.

Then when he’s proudly showing off what he knows in the manga he smiles...

while in the anime he feels down.

Smiling with his eyes raised...

...versus not smiling with his eyes lowered.

...and so on and I don’t even know why they felt the need to change the various characters’ expressions (yeah, it’s not just an Ogata’s problem) as there’s simply no reason to do it.

On an interesting  note the anime chose to expand some fighting scenes. Ogata’s first fight with Sugimoto is longer, as Ogata manages to swing his bayonet a little before ending up on the ground (which is detrimental of Sugimoto who’s WAY more amazing of a fighter than him as Sugimoto can fight on par with Gansoku and Ushiyama) and felt the need to stretch the confrontation with Tsukishima too.

In the manga Tsukishima just kicks Ogata, Ogata notices Tsukishima is taking then gun and then tosses himself behind the stuffed people as he was still in that room. In the anime Ogata is in the room with the stuffed bear instead. Tsukishima kicks him behind it but then Ogata manages to spring out the room and go hid behind the stuffed people in the other room.

On another note, when in Edogai’s house Ogata is being beaten up by a soldier in the manga it’s shown he’s trying to protect himself with his arms while in the anime he seems to remain there completely still... and the anime put a sudden focus on Ogata’s eyes to switch at Sugimoto attacking the soldier and, at the same time pushing him away from Ogata, as if Ogata knew that he wouldn’t die there because Sugimoto was there to cover up for him, where in the manga there’s no emphasis on Ogata’s eyes and the two scenes are cut by how one has to turn page... plus Sugimoto hit the soldier so that he fell above Ogata so it’s clear Ogata wouldn’t have managed to glimpse Sugimoto.

 - Lastly yes, they missed the point of many of his interactions. For example the anime makers said they believed since Ogata’s mom kept on making the anglerfish nabe, it was because Ogata liked it, a sign she liked her son... when, according to the story, she kept on making it because it was his father’s favourite dish and she had gotten mad. In Karafuto they downplayed Asirpa’s efforts to have Ogata say citatap and hinna and completely missed how Ogata was allucinating her as Yuusaku...

(I mean in this scene is pretty obvious there’s a parallel between the two so I’m not sure how the anime missed it)

...and the anime seems to put more focus on how the lynx and Ogata’s tracks superimposed than on how Ogata is now walking on a different path from the lynx... just to list some of the things that came to my mind.

For more I’ve a couple of tags in which I compared the episode transposition and the manga one in details or a little more vaguely.

So, long story short, anime Ogata can’t help but give a different impression compared to manga Ogata.

He misses part of his story, his interactions are different, his expressions are changed, scenes that were meant to deliver certain things aren’t there so of course he seems another person.

It’s not done specifically to him though, as everyone suffered about this.

The anime, in his attempt to make the story simple and more... ‘shonen’ friendly has taken away much of the grey concepts for a more black and white picture which influenced also how situations were presented.

But well, while I’m not satisfied, part of this is done to market the show to a wider audience so it’s kind of a forced choice.

(On a sidenote it’s worth to remember that the anime adapt the volume version of the story which differs from the mangazine version in some relevant points. So not all the changes are completely made up by the anime.)

I hope it helps. Thank you for your ask!