Let’s talk about party games on Nintendo consoles.


I’m sure anyone even remotely interested in video games knows about 1-2 Switch, that interactive party game for the Switch console. It’s the game IGN mocked and claimed had “killed Nintendo” when it was shown on their livestream. It’s the game gamers got pissed about and thought was a joke. It’s also the game that, months later, many gamers think is the dumbest launch title ever, and that it shouldn’t have been made. And yet, I have no problems with it existing, and even encourage more like it.

Let me explain.


Now, I have nothing against party games as a concept. In my Wii library, I have Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit (complete with the balance board) from Nintendo alone, and that’s not including third-party games like both Boom Blox entries. I, honestly, don’t see them as a threat, and I never have. Even Wii Music, which I ended up avoiding, bothered me for other reasons than it looking stupid while demonstrated at Nintendo’s E3 2008 presentation. (It actually bothered me because it didn’t do enough with its concept.)

So when gamers were touting that the Wii was a “baby’s console”, I was a little perturbed. Granted, I was also a teenager and, thus, emotionally insecure, but looking back it’s hard not to laugh. Long before GamerGate became a phenomenon, I was already aware of the fragility of the gaming community. I knew they looked down on people who didn’t fit their absurd criteria of a “10-12 hours on an FPS or RPG in a row” gamer, and I even got crap for acknowledging that I liked Super Smash Bros. Brawl more than Super Smash Bros. Melee. That I also didn’t mind the Wii’s casual games was the icing on the cake for why I didn’t connect with my fellow gamers.

The situation didn’t get better with the WiiU. Despite it taking until 2016 to end up buying one, that disdain for WiiU successors to Wii party games, like Wii FitU, was still on full-force was enough to remind me of that. Granted, I’d also long-since move onto anime and film as general hobbies, but why did gamers have such disdain for these experiences? What were they afraid of? And why did it bother me?

Which leads me to 1-2 Switch. On one hand, I’ll admit that the premise is silly: It’s basically rock, paper, scissors in video game form. My, isn’t that original? All it tells me is that rock, paper, scissors is an easy game to replicate.

On the other hand, 1-2 Switch isn’t an awful idea. Remember how Wii Sports was maligned in 2006 as being a “cheap gimmick” for a “gimmicky console”? Remember how it was predicted to fail? Remember how the game boosted the Wii’s early sales instead, surpassing Super Mario Bros. and Tetris as the highest-grossing launch title in video game history? Remember how the game was causing geriatric and rehab patients to recover from trauma without even realizing it? Because I remember all of that!

Even on 1-2 Switch’s end, there’s a lot of potential here. Think of the interactivity. Think of what it can do at parties. Think of what it can do to reverse laziness. And while it’s easy to make fun of, think of how it can get people with vision problems to experience gaming in a new way.

And no, I’m not kidding about that last part:

”Even though it's just me and my husband (who is totally blind), I bought 1-2 Switch because I figured it would be a little reminiscent of Wii Play or Wii Sports. When he got home from work at 7 I put the game in and asked him to play with me. I didn't expect to play for more than 15 minutes, but it was after 9 before we quit. We went through every game except for the ones that seem too sight-based (like the dancing ones and the treasure chest game). I was amazed at how accessible this game is for blind people. So many of the games require listening for a prompt to react (like Quick Draw) or feeling the rumble in the joy con to know when you've hit the mark (like in Safe Crack). Out of the 28 games he was able to play against me in 21 or 22 or of them, and he beat me most of the time. Even at ping pong! So it turns out, this was a worthy investment for me. :)”

The above was taken from a Reddit post, but it rings home why 1-2 Switch is such a neat idea. Because while gamers keep whining about their medium not getting respect, only to turn around and whine when they start getting said respect, everyday people, or “casual gamers”, now have opportunities to play games their own way. Shouldn’t that be praised? Shouldn’t we be open to the possibility that someone can become a gamer through 1-2 Switch, instead of Mario, Zelda or Metroid games? Is that really so bad?

I’m not gonna act like there isn’t legit reason to dislike a party game, because there is. But when the disdain boils down to unneeded nerd rage, well…it reflects poorly. It makes a community of people desperate to have their “games are art” mindset validated look childish and silly, when there’s so much more that can come from this. Because, like it or not, party games bring in an audience and stream of revenue. If we’re to keep getting our “bread and butter” games, we need to be open-minded even if we don’t like them.

Or we can complain. Regardless, 1-2 Switch will still sell.

Pretty recently, we finally got The Silver Case by SUDA 51 released in English. Sadly, it comes with a bad translation, but hey, better now than never. And honestly, the game is presented so strongly on its own that it almost makes up entirely for the messy script. It's a fantastic update, and now that I'm actually playing it, I'm a little surprised how different it is compared to the rest of Grasshopper's catalog. In particular, I'm surprised by how it's so ...Japanese.

Now this isn't too rare with Grasshopper, but it is odd within the Kill The Past trilogy, a series of thematically connected games that include The Silver Case, the previously reviewed Flower Sun and Rain, and the cult classic Killer7. The later two seem to take more from the likes of David Lynch or Tarantino, with strange, dreamlike atmosphere and a focus on building tension through conversation. But The Silver Case is a different beast altogether, and its particular story screams less American surreal horror or action, and more mature OVA or adult manga. It also is one of the games SUDA's made that actually takes place in Japan, which is becoming rarer and rarer these days.

The game is about a lot of things, but it's mainly focused on law enforcement and crime. But it doesn't follow the then rule breaking cop archetype that was so popular in the west, but tries to portray the detectives and SWAT team you work with as professionals with their own frustrations with society born from seeing facets of it only possible in their work. It has a very Japanese viewpoint in that it doesn't have any of the usual commentary you see in US police stories. Race divides and abuse of authority against minorities aren't as big of issues in Japan, partly because of how secluded the country is. Instead, it's more interested in exploring how society can push people into doing horrid things, even linking aspects that make humans more than animals to our capacity for performing abominable acts. It's not so much economics or minority politics its interested in, but the failures of modern society to allow people within it to function properly.

That's not an angle that comes up too much in western crime fiction compared to police abuse or the plight of the abused. The game also shows off its influences through its unorthodox presentation, with small clips alongside dialog and character portraits. From a design standpoint, The Silver Case is very much more visual novel than anything else, but it also bases its story and look more in then modern Japanese culture than American cinema. This is shown particularly with the use of ghosts and spirits, mainly in how they influence humans and are used as a metaphor for influence. To be “possessed” is not necessarily to be “possessed,” but to be influenced by what one has witnessed. It's not about hauntings or demons, but the monsters humans can become with their actions and how their actions influence others. To treat a spirit more like a virus than a being is something more common in Japanese fiction. A spirit is not so much the spirit of someone who died, but a being that comes into existence from human emotion and thought taking on a new form of its own. It's a view born from Shinto myth, a major faith system in Japan.

I think the biggest influence at work is the OVA, or Original Video Animation. The rise of VHS resulted in a new wave of mature anime releases on video that couldn't be aired on TV, commonly called OVAs. The age of the OVA was marked by ultra violence, disturbing themes, and an open expression of sexuality never really seen before, though certainly not a mature expression. Honestly, it was mostly an age of trash, but definitely creative trash. The Silver Case's dive into heavy subject matter like sexual assault, murder, psychosis, and trauma is drenched in OVA trappings, from how often characters resort to cussing to the dark, stifling atmosphere, causing tons of moments of tone whiplash. It's even presented sort of like an OVA divided into episodes, heavily episodic and constantly making plot breaks for a neat story someone on staff wanted to share. There's also that causal undercurrent of sexism, which is sadly kind of inescapable with SUDA 51, even at his best.

You can't forget the setting, either. I mean, the game was so Japanese that a quiz section had to be completely re-written for western audiences who would have no context for the storm of Japanese pop culture trivia. The game takes full advantage of the setting, making stories based heavily on the realities of living in a Japanese city, with a mixture of political commentary and glimpses of everyday life. This is shown especially well in the third main case, Spectrum, where actual video was made in real neighborhoods Grasshopper was stationed near. It's about both growing up in these sorts of densely packed urban areas and the challenges that come about. The area presented isn't really like a US metropolis, though, as divides come from interests and lifestyles more than race or ethnicity.

The Silver Case is many things, and Japanese is definitely one of them. It's interesting seeing Grasshopper stick to their national roots here, making a story that can't get the same universal appeal their other works can get. It's an interesting historical footnote in this respect, though there's so much more there. Give me some time before I talk about the thematic meat, though, because there's a lot more game for me to play.

Let’s talk reviewer bias.



A while back, I had the pleasure of watching the following video on YouTube:


I don’t know much about these guys' videos, nor do I really want to. But their mockery over reviews of Pokémon: The First Movie struck me as odd. Even ignoring that most of the reviewers in question seemed to be heavily perplexed by the film’s existence, or that the video was mildly funny, Griffin and Nick appeared to be lampooning reviewers for “not getting” this movie. This is especially troubling in light of the following comment:

“All I have to say is, why did professional film critics need to review pokemon movies anyway? They're kids movies, and from a completely different country. Not really your area of expertise, my dude.”

Ignoring that this comes off as a thinly veiled “keep your opinions away from what I love!” comment, it raises the issue of whether or not there are films that critics are able to comment on objectively. Pokémon: The First Movie, going by this video, appears to be one of them. So the question that needs asking is, “Is a movie fair game for bad reviews if its target audience isn’t reviewers?” I know the Nostalgia Critic has already made a video on this matter, but I figured I’d share my thoughts anyway.

Keep in mind that reviewing, like any facet of entertainment, isn't a science. There’s no definitive method for reviewing something: I’ve seen reviews that look at something analytically, and I’ve seen reviews that look at something farcically. There are reviews that compare to other films, and there are reviews that don’t. Some reviews use humour, others don’t. And some reviews even span multiple reviews, as the author’s thoughts can’t be done justice in one piece.

Regardless, the point of a review is to give a personal take. And that means that there won’t be 100% objectivity, as that’s impossible. Reviews are opinion pieces, and opinions vary from person-to-person. To assume that a review can be totally impartial is to assume that there’s a right way to view art. And Pokémon: The First Movie, irrespective of its target audience, is no different.

The complication is in a detachment from the source material. Like it or not, Pokémon is relatively new to film entertainment. Up until 1998, there were no Pokémon movies, so people had little to go with outside of the show and games the movies tied into. That in itself is a challenge, but given that appreciation of Pokémon: The First Movie is heavily tied into prior knowledge of the IP it becomes much harder to discuss objectively. At least comic book movies have the flexibility of using comics as templates that they need not follow rigidly, but the Pokémon movies? Not so much.

My point is that, like it or not, reviewing the Pokémon films does require a level of prior knowledge of what Pokémon is to review them fairly. This is why the comparisons to other anime films of the time, i.e. Princess Mononoke or Akira, are unfair: to review the films, one must be a fan of said films, as opposed to crap-shooting in hopes of getting it right. Most reviewers of Pokémon: The First Movie didn’t have that when they reviewed it.

That said, I can’t help but take umbrage in saying that only Pokémon fans can review Pokémon movies. For one, reviewers review because it’s their job. And two, putting up gates around franchises you hold dear is arrogance. It reeks of paranoia, and makes you look like you’re hiding something; after all, why should your fan-favourite property be given special treatment?

But even outside of that, why is Pokémon so unique? Speaking as a lapsed fan, the Pokémon movies, particularly the first one, are garbage. The animation is choppy, the characterizations are flat and the messages and writing are subpar. Even ignoring the dub changes, they don’t hold up, and they serve as nothing more than cheap marketing ploys for the grander franchise. Shouldn’t that be legit reason for harsh critiquing?

This is why the aforementioned comment is so troubling: reviewers can, and should, be entitled to review Pokémon: The First Movie. They should be entitled to criticize its flaws, and they should be entitled to give better recommendations. And even if they’re not familiar with the franchise, they should be entitled to explain why the film, and its subsequent sequels, aren’t any good. Because what makes this film different than other films, with ham-fisted, hypocritical messages about violence and death, outside of the brand name? It’s behaviour like this that allows celebrities to run countries without accountability for their actions, after all!

So yes, I don’t think Griffin and Nick should’ve been so snarky, even if they were trying to prove a point, and I also don’t think that comment was fair. Does that mean the video has to be deleted? No, but it doesn't mean that I can't take issue with it. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the first step to engaging in discourse. Especially over something as trivial as a Pokémon film.

My personal interest in Ocean Waves is a story on its own: for the longest time, I never thought I’d get to see it, let-alone own it. It remained that one elusive entry in Studio Ghibli’s library, to the point where I didn’t even think it counted as an official film. Then last year, right as I’d nabbed all of their canonical films, Ocean Waves was announced for an official release on home video sometime in 2017, courtesy of GKids. So I purchased it on Amazon…only to hold off watching it once it arrived for nearly a month. Now that I’ve given it a viewing, I think it’s only fair to review it for Infinite Rainy Day.

Ocean Waves tells the story of two friends, Taku Morisaki and Yutaka Matsuno, and their high school friendship/relationship with a girl named Rikako Muto. Initially that “weird, new girl at school”, Taku eventually warms up to Rikako and begins taking an unhealthy interest in her personal life, a fact Rikako exploits by over-relying on him for money and emotional support. It eventually gets to the point where Rikako’s over-dependance causes friction in the relationship between Taku and Yutaka, forcing the three of them to drift apart. It isn’t until university that the three make amends for their past behaviour, reconcile their true feelings and, ultimately, look toward the future.

If it sounds like this is the bare-minimum in a romance thesis, that’s because it is. Clocking in at roughly 72-minutes, the film’s not all that deep or emotionally gripping narratively. That’s not to say it’s not interesting, because it is, but it’s not winning awards compared to the more elaborate romance in Studio Ghibli works like Whisper of the Heart and From Up On Poppy Hill. In truth, the film’s less about the narrative, which plays out like a ballad in film form, and more about the experience. You’re supposed to be in the shoes of Taku as he narrates his past, right up until his friendships with Yutaka and Rikako fall apart, as well as in the present when he fixes everything. To ignore that would ruin the intent.

Technically, Ocean Waves isn’t exactly the most-impressive. It’s well-scored by Shigeru Nagata, but there are times where the music overtakes the dialogue instead of complimenting it. It looks good for a TV-film, but even with the budget having, allegedly, gone over allotments it’s still nothing to sneeze at compared to Studio Ghibli’s theatrical entries. Even the direction, from then-newcomer Tomomi Mochizuki, isn’t all that special, with maybe one or two brilliant camera moments amidst a sea of okay ones. It begs the question of why this film needed to be animated, something I never thought I’d ask of even Studio Ghibli’s less-fantastical works.

Fortunately, the saving grace is its characters. Are they deep? Not really. But they get the job done, which is more than I expected from this movie based on initial impressions. So kudos to that, I suppose?

Perhaps the most-interesting facet of said characters is the dynamic between Taku, Yutaka and Rikako. In 72-minutes, you get a feel for who each of these three really are: Taku is opinionated, yet also somewhat judgemental. Yutaka is more reserved and clear-headed than Taku, even sometimes seeing what Taku refuses to. And Rikako is much quieter than both of them, yet whenever she opens up to people it’s usually out of desperation or frilliness. In his now yanked video review on the film, Jacob Chapman compared Rikako to a more realistic version of Haruhi Suzumiya, and it’s not hard to see why. Because she has that shallow, manipulative vibe, yet it’s not without warrant given her family background and distrust of others. She’s more sympathetic, basically.

But perhaps the film’s biggest detriment, in my opinion, is a lack of a dub. I’ve already expressed my frustration with subtitles in the past, even rebutting common complaints lobbed at dubs, and not having one here made it harder to fully-appreciate the movie. I mean, the Japanese acting seemed fine, I can’t tell because I don’t speak the language, but forcing myself to over-concentrate on subtitles meant pulling me out of the experience somewhat. Besides, why not have a dub? I guess it had to do with timing and the inability to find actors for the roles, but if Disney was willing to do it for even their direct-to-DVD efforts then why not GKids? It’d help with the accessibility of the film to a larger audience, so it’s really suspicious.

All that being said, is Ocean Waves worth your time? I suppose. It’s not a grand fantasy like Hayao Miyazaki’s works are, nor is it as packed with content as Studio Ghibli’s other more grounded dramas. It’s simply a vehicle for the studio’s then-up-and-coming talent in the animation, directing and producing categories, a fitting irony given that both Tomomi Michizuki’s future ended up being outside of Studio Ghibli and none of the talent involved really mattered in the grand scheme. It’s simply a high-end TV movie that also happens to have Studio Ghibli’s name on it. If that’s enough to entice you to check it out, then by all means go ahead. If not, well…I can’t say it’s the worst that the studio has done, that title still belongs to Tales from Earthsea, but it’s not an immediate must-see like some of their best.

(By the way, as a side-note, the DVD also includes the never-before-seen The Ghiblies Episode 2, which I’d, funnily enough, never heard of. I should get on watching that, no?)

For those of you who are not familiar with me (Which is 99% of you, most likely), you'll know during the days when we were doing hard-core seasonal coverage, I tended to either have terrible luck with drawing the worst shows (Super Lovers), took fliers out on real stinkers (Chaos Dragon), or took responsibility for titles I knew were going to be bad but I had some sort of fandom connection to them (The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan). Over a half-a-year later and I'm back in the fray.

Not that I want to be the angry guy yelling at bad things for your entertainment like half of the people trying to make money on the internet. I've actively stayed away from terrible anime since seasonal reviews hit hiatus and my blood pressure's been all the better for it (Or worse, given my blood pressure's extremely low and nurses have commented about how I should be dead right now). But I also haven't found any new stuff to talk about. Fuuka removed all of the insane content from the manga and became every single middling romance anime. Sakura Quest is fine so far, but like its predecessor Hanasaku Iroha, it's so light, if I don't keep a close watch on it as it comes out, the series will float away and I'll forget all about it. Then one night, I had some alcohol and the urge to watch last season's bar-none worst series Hand Shakers, and I knew I had to see it through to the end.

The opening few minutes lets you know this is going to be an epic disaster and they are PROUD of it. The production team got their names translated into English to run in huge, flashy font, obscuring the in media res opening sequence where our hero is trying to avoid chains that spawn from a woman's private area. That isn't even the biggest tip-off. The graphics are mostly 3DCG done by studio GoHands in a manner to bring attention to the visuals and their "amazingness." The walls look great, but what you'll remember is how garbage the animation performance is. Anything in action that's not the characters lacks texture and the actual fighting is extremely choppy. Camera movements (of which there are many) absolutely tank the frame rate until all the people are jumping around like Speedy Gonzalez. It's like a PlayStation One cutscene given a glitzy remaster for the PS3 and then scaled back down to the PS1 for kicks. This is going to be AMAZING.

This is where I tell you what the series is about, which is a more difficult task than it should be. The concept is easy to explain: It's 2-on-2 Highlander where the ultimate winners get to talk to God and possibly get a wish granted depending on if what these competitors tell each other is true. The winners continue on and the losers are stripped of their abilities if they manage to survive the onslaught (Actual injury is less severe than it appears, but you can still die if your opponent is vicious enough). It's when the Japanese crack open the reference books that the eyes start to glaze. The Hand Shakers are people who've received the Revelation of Babylon. With this, they can summon Nimrods, powers gifted from God that usually relate to their personalities. They're called Hand Shakers because two Nimrod users have to hold hands to charge their abilities. When two groups of Hand Shakers meet to quarrel, they open a fighting arena called the Ziggurat which is an alternate dimension that looks like the real world with cool moving paintings projected on the walls. The worlds are supposed to be slowly rewritten by the competitors as they get better, but I couldn't tell except when they go out of their way to point out a building in the background and the final episode where they get completely unsubtle with it. Even if the Biblical references vaguely make sense tied together, it still binds it as a series that focuses on terms and rules to feign complexity.

The main character is one of those dopes who stumbles into his powers. Tazuna is a mechanical whiz of a teenager who is always fixing things. He gets invited to the lab of Dr. Makihara where he finds a girl in a hospital bed who reminds him of his dead sister. Through circumstances, he holds her hand, simultaneously awakening his powers as a Hand Shaker and the girl, a very silent Koyori with wide eyes who looks like she'd rather be in Clannad. Her long slumber has made her weak to the point that he has to hold her hand constantly or she will die, and she doesn't have a Nimrod so Tazuna has to do do all the fighting. A rough spot to be in for sure, especially considering right around when this happens, a guy and his, um, abused partner arrive on the scene and start with the smashing. He does manage to summon a sword made of cogs that can dismantle itself and turn into a shield, so there's that.

This is where we catch up to the woman who shoots chains out of her hoo-haw and the 3DCG's graphics processor gets overwhelmed with fighting to an extent not seen since the ill-fated SNES adaptation of Street Fighter Alpha 2. This would be so hilarious if the bad guy didn't step on his lady partner multiple times to force more chains out of her while her boobs wobble. Yick (By the way, the breast animation is extremely awkward. They're like actual racks, like you can hang your coat on them). They're re-occurring characters, too, though thankfully after this, they don't invoke the catastrophic level of misunderstanding the makers have about a BDSM relationship.

There is something truly fascinating about watching an anime that goes all-in with ambition without having the skills to pull off even half of what it wants to do. It's like the people who graduate college who now think they know all the SECRETS. They've been imparted with the knowledge of what makes something good and how they should approach a project and they're going to WOW the entire world with these mind-blowing revelations. Alas, they don't have the experience or the innate skills to refine anything, leaving transparent stabs at creativity with a dull butter knife from the dollar store.

GoHands knows anime tends to be a little stiff and static when it comes to animation and wants to make something more dynamic; they're trying to make something that moves and pops out out at the viewer. They can make insanely detailed backgrounds and since it's mostly done in 3DCG, they can also make the camera move however they want in ways shows built on standard animation can't without a whole bunch of extra cash and time. Unfortunately, they call attention to their visuals in all the wrong ways. Rather than bringing the audience into the experience with the visual splendor, it takes the viewer out at all times, waving its hands furiously in the direction of the craft whether it should or not. Vital, dramatic moments occur, and the only thought that passed by was, "Wow, that hardwood floor is FANTASTIC!" Shifts in distance and perspective are also mostly shoddy. One critical scene that takes place on Tazuna's bed inspires seasickness rather than empathy in the way it sways and tilts unnaturally. The framing of some scenes is thrown into chaos with dodgy compositing where the layouts make it seem like an average sunny day and the sky is actually clouds endlessly marching in a manner that resembles a screensaver set at 2x speed. We've already covered the fighting animation which feels like letting Crunchyroll buffer a bit would fix matters, but no, it's nothing Crunchyroll can do but accidentally start running Etotama. I was hard on that series because its humor mostly annoyed me, but its 3DCG fighting is pristine and they put some real thought into how to integrate it into the rest of the series.

The point is they're trying to be fancy and:
1) It's not fancy.
2) It's supposed to act in the service of the story and it does the exact opposite.

The writing is in a similar pickle, though much more grounded in the standards and practices of anime hack writing. I mean, it KNOWS you shouldn't drop massive amounts of plot information straight out, but they give the "entertaining" info dumping to a scientist who is supposed to be a charming dork in his eccentric that delivery just comes off as annoying (And he even says so, giving way to the anime trope where if your character is self-aware he's doing an anime trope, it's supposed to make it okay. It does not). As the series barrels through its villains of the week, they start off promisingly enough with a duo who've been essentially shunned by the business world, one for a being a short woman who is always mistaken for an intern, and the other because he is the definition of being an unassuming salaryman who dared to ask for more out of his life. They're decent characters, they've had to fight tooth and nail to get every inch of ground in their lives, and even when they're defeated and they become friends with the heroes, they have a sincerely human moment when they have to admit they're angry about losing their golden ticket. The next opponents are a brother and a sister who want God to make it okay that they're brother and sister and in love each other in THAT way. You give them an inch....

The rest of the series is amateur hour where it slowly adds more chunks of awfulness into the usual recipe. Tazuna meets the main villain while walking the streets and they have a conversation that's either stretched ten minutes to choke out about one sentence a minute, or they hit a pocket of space-time that made them go slower than the rest of the universe. The main villain is one of the least gripping antagonists to the point where I don't think even he's that invested in his ultimate plan. There's a herky-jerky fighting scene with a wannabe pop idol where she's going through an endless string of Bartlett's quotes (It's her one character trait besides wanting to be an idol) and her lips aren't even moving as she's going through moves that would push the limits of even a superhuman to simply breathe, and the makers even have her mug at the camera while she's talking to make the failure almost awe inspiring. It's also a huge visual clue that much of the opening animation is mostly scenes that has already been made for the series edited together rather than an actual opening. The ending episode tries to go in every direction possible with the most uninspiring production (Parts of the epilogue are still images of events that should be for all intents and purposes in motion) and the lamest attempt at teasing for a sequel ("Oh yeah, we didn't really finish the story, did we? Quick, throw a character design together in five minutes and write something threatening for him to say"). It almost doesn't need to be said that unless this becomes a The Room type of cult disaster, this is the last you'll hear from Hand Shakers. 


What stops it from being a laughably terri-awesome show can be blamed on the pacing. The episodes switch off from being entirely plot to being completely focused on action until they have to throw together the full backstory and ending because they're so not getting a second cour. This overloads the viewer on either boring, talky scenes with awkward humor or visually abysmal action. The lack of balance makes it numbing instead of keeping the awfulness fresh and inventive. Okay, fine, one moment with Tazuna having to constantly hold hands with Koyori where he has to go into the bathroom with her works. Then they make most of the episode about having to to do things such as bathing her after a trip to professor exposition. I've had to watch too many icky sequences like this in anime over the years that I have no energy to yell at it. It's just... dull, making the same jokes and having the same reaction of every everyman nice guy of the Tenchi variety going through it. It's only an extremely small consolation Koyori actually becomes somewhat of a cool character when they stop forcing her to be the typical silent anime girl. She quickly learns a Yu-Gi-Oh knockoff and morphs her quietness into giving her lines a calm importance. She never gets to be a full character, but she tries.

Finally, what brings this piece together is how terribly NOT together this title is. I was reminded these were the same people who made K, maybe known to you as that series you instantly skip while checking Netflix's anime. K seems made to be like one of those intellectual properties that only exists to be available at Hot Topic. The logo, the outfits, and the feel are trying too hard to be dark cool while taking a stab at a wider audience. But at least it HAD a unified style, a focus, and while the perspective shifts in the animation are jarring and poorly executed, all the imagery looks like it's a part of the same show. Hand Shakers exists because they wanted to make a series and all the vision they had is their 3DCG setup and spare parts from other mediocre series. Hell, the music is credited to Goon Trax, which might not make you bat an eye. It sounds like they got some DJ or musician with a professional name to lay down some uniquely jazz-influenced hip hop tunes. Then you realize Goon Trax is a RECORD LABEL. They couldn't even get a person to oversee the music, instead throwing in some cues from a company that may or may not fit what's going on (Mostly, it doesn't).

When they first fired up this cursed alchemy of anime, it instantly exploded in as grand of a misfire as I've seen in some time. Following the fireworks, though, all you're left with is being surrounded by a whole bunch of junk.

The word “underrated” is misappropriated when it comes to the Zelda franchise: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is “underrated” because no one appreciates its side-scrolling. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is “underrated” because it was a Game Boy game that got lost in the shuffle. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is “underrated” because its time mechanic alienated fans. And, of course, The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap is “underrated” because its gimmick, the ability to shrink, is under-appreciated and unique.


Personally, I don’t consider any of the core Zelda games, even the “bad” ones, “underrated”, but that didn’t stop fans of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker from touting it for years. It got so bad that I actively avoided seeking it out, even though I owned a Gamecube and could’ve easily rented it from Blockbuster. It doesn’t help that I have my own share of issues with the Zelda franchise, and that this game, judging from footage, seemed to embody most of them. Still, my curiosity did eventually kick in, so I went out and purchased a copy of the WiiU port. Having now beaten it, I can assure you that the game was exactly what I thought it’d be in some ways, yet surpassed expectations in others.

It begins with an exposition dump explaining the tragedy of Hyrule, and how it was flooded over to reveal a new world with scattered islands. One of these is Outset Island, where our hero, a 12 year-old boy with blond hair, dons a ceremonial tunic, sword and shield after his younger sister is kidnapped by a giant bird and taken to The Forbidden Fortress. Initially teaming up with rogue pirates, led by a spunky 12 year-old named Tetra, to rescue her, he soon learns that this was planned by the evil Ganon to see if he’s the legendary Hero of Time. Exiled to the farthest reaches of the sea, he’s saved by a talking boat called The Red Lion, who tells him that he has to stop Ganon once-and-for-all.

Right away, the game shows its biggest strength and greatest setback: it’s an ambience experience. The overworld of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is vast and covered with water, and most of the game’s objectives are scattered all-over. You’re forced to sail portions of this overworld on The Red Dragon to get from dungeon to dungeon, all-the-while relying on the tides and wind patterns. You have a trusty Wind Waker, a metal baton that can change the winds, to help, but it’s quite a trek.

And here’s where the sailing becomes hit-or-miss: on one hand, it can be relaxing and alleviate the tensions of the journey, as the overworld moves at a slow pace. It also breaks the flow and helps to absorb the visuals and atmosphere, both of which are excellent. On the other hand, however, the constant back-and-forth can get tedious and boring. Add in that the overworld is largely bereft of enemies, and you’re left with blank space that isn’t terribly impressive.

This also factors into some of the game’s biggest annoyances. For one, the Wind Waker, while definitely a neat little instrument, has quite the learning curve, and while the orchestrations you learn are all recorded, memorizing every tune is a juggling act. The Red Lion is also equipped with a crane for excavating sunken treasure, yet using it is a pain. This is made worse by one of your objectives later on, i.e. collecting all eight pieces of The Triforce of Courage, obligating you to use it, and it’s a living nightmare. And, of course, being forced to buy food for map locations is no different than in-game DLC, an annoyance given that the overworld practically requires memorization without it. I’ll give the game’s ability to warp later on to different areas as a positive, but acquiring that ability is tedious and really difficult.

Fortunately, the game’s strengths far outweigh any and all complaints. For one, the dungeons, though relying too heavily on past franchise knowledge, are as fun as ever, even being more linear than older entries. Combat is especially great, with in-game feats that make it more fluid and exciting than earlier Zelda games. The story, though not too deep or well-written, is investing, a first, in my opinion, for Zelda games to that point. And the character interactions are as interesting as ever.

As a side-note, the game’s the right balance, at least for me, of hard and fun. I’ll forever attest that there’s no “ideal” difficulty, as it’s too subjective, but one of my many gripes with previous games was that they were too challenging to fully appreciate. That I was constantly chained to walkthroughs and video guides, and even then was still unable to beat a few entries, was a testament to that. With The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, however, I only had to resort to a walkthrough a handful of times, and even then most of the solutions were pretty obvious. The exception was hunting for The Triforce of Courage, but the less said there, the better.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, in a nutshell, is at its best the furthest it strays away from the franchise’s more cumbersome elements (like backtracking, repetitive boss fights, obnoxious side-quests and un-obvious puzzles). It’s when it revels in them, however, that it falls short of brilliance. Still, credit where credit is due. This is a fun game, and one I’m glad I played. I’m not sure where I’d place it in my personal pantheon of Zelda games, but it’d probably be somewhere near the top. If only other Zelda games were this accessible, but I guess I can’t have my cake and eat it too…

The talk of the internet recently was the live-action Cowboy Bebop TV series co-produced by Sunrise Entertainment for Western audiences. I’m late to the party, (I was busy with this, cut me some slack!) but my concerns line-up with everyone else: I think it’s a terrible idea. Irrespective of how we’ve yet to have a successful anime-to-live-action adaptation in the West, unless you’d consider Speed Racer the exception, not only has the ideal time passed, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anywhere left for this franchise to go. Not to mention, it largely exists as a “lightning in a bottle” series.

Let me explain.



I’ve been trying to write an analysis on Cowboy Bebop for over a year. I’ve scrapped my format several times, tried again several more, and even put the whole project on the back-burner to work on easier articles. Cowboy Bebop’s way too difficult to talk about on any other level than purely emotional, as while I take issue with certain facets of it, it’s as much a part of my Otaku nostalgia as anyone else. And I didn’t even know it existed until early-2009, well over a decade after it’d finished syndication.

My issue with analysis is twofold: on one hand, its characters are so well-established that telling you why you should love Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed would take forever and probably bore you to tears. On the other hand, its well-established characters exist in a world that’s so experimental cinematically that discussing them in-depth would take forever, probably bore you to tears and confuse you to no end trying to understand why the show succeeds as much as it does. In other words, Cowboy Bebop is best meant to be experienced.

That alone should be cause for concern with this rumoured adaptation. It’s also not like this is the first time it’s been announced anyway; after all, Cowboy Bebop was rumoured for theatres for over a decade. Its constant talks, rumours and failed launches have even seen its focus, aka Keanu Reeves, go from being one of the hottest action stars of the 21st Century, to a laughing stock with no financial return, to back to being a hot-topic action star following John Wick and its sequel. Simply put, Cowboy Bebop coming to the West isn’t anything new.

What’s new, however, is the change from the big-screen to the small-screen. On a surface level, this isn’t a bad idea: Cowboy Bebop’s premise and writing work best as serialized television, as evidenced by the original anime being a 26-episode show. In addition, attempts to translate it to other mediums have proven less-successful. There was a Manga adaptation that no one talks about, and the movie, Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven’s Door, took heavy flak for being an elongated episode of the show proper. So this adaptation being a TV series seems like a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a good idea for two reasons. Superficially, the time for Cowboy Bebop to be ported is over. The original show began syndication in 1998, roughly 19 years ago. Since then, it’s seen a dub release on Adult Swim in 2001, a DVD release that went out of print when Bandai’s American distributor went under and a Blu-Ray rescue courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment. The show has also transcended into the mainstream, such that non-anime fans have seen and enjoyed it too.

If anything, Cowboy Bebop being remade in live-action would’ve been perfect when it was at its height of popularity, or at least around the time of the film in the early-2000’s. Like Ghost in the Shell, making a live-action adaptation now would feel late and unnecessary, as well as disassociated from the original material. Essentially, Cowboy Bebop’s become so synonymous with anime that anything else is awkward. Not to mention, knowing past adaptations of anime, it’d probably miss the point of the original show.

But on a deeper level, I’m not sure if Cowboy Bebop would work to the same extent as the original. The 1998 show, like many other timeless classics, was a by-product of circumstance. Recreating a show is one issue, but making it work in the same way? Even if a live-action show ends up being good, and this is a big IF, without the directorial prowess of Shinichirō Watanabe it’ll be nothing more than an above-average sci-fi Western. Even if a live-action show ends up being good, without the cold, subtle writing of Keiko Nobumoto it’ll lack that punch needed to be an instant classic. And even if a live-action show ends up being good, without Yoko Kanno’s legendary compositions it’ll never reach the heights the original was famous for. You could probably find workarounds for aforementioned, but it’ll never be the same unless all three came together.

I’m not sure if we need a live-action Cowboy Bebop anyway. Ignoring Firefly, sci-fi/space operas are a-dime-a-dozen here. There’s Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and that’s naming the obvious ones! If Cowboy Bebop were to be remade into live-action TV, it’d only get lost in the shuffle. And that’s even worse than it being made at all.

I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love for a successful reimagining of a classic anime to make it big in the West. Classics are classics, but sometimes the success of a good idea is if it can be redone in a unique way for a different audience. Cowboy Bebop, if done properly, could be that. But it’s doubtful that it will, for the above reasons. So while having Sunrise Entertainment as the producer is a step in the right direction, at the same time I’m not sold on this at all.

A while back, Infinite Rainy Day published two articles on the same day about the Netflix adaptation of Death Note. One of these articles was a lukewarm defence of it. The other article was a scathing deconstruction of why it was doomed to fail. Guess which one I wrote? (I’ll give you a hint: it’s the one with a title pun.)

Anyway, ever since the initial trailer, we’ve gotten some interesting bits of news regarding this Netflix original. For one, despite the protagonist being a white, blonde-haired emo-teen, the protagonist’s main foil, L, is to be portrayed by Straight Outta Compton’s Keith Stanfield. This isn’t a bad idea, because although L in the original show, and subsequent Manga, was Japanese, having a black actor in a Westernized adaptation, i.e. where it’d make sense, is a smart move, and one that could potentially make a nobody into a mainstay star. This didn’t stop people from complaining about “racism” with his casting, but that’s for another day.

But the biggest bombshell came from an announcement courtesy of ANN. In an article titled “Netflix's Live-Action Death Note Film Poster Shows Ryuk”, they covered exactly that, Ryuk’s look in the film; in fact, the picture shows Willem Dafoe’s character bathed in shadows, staring back at the viewer with his piercing eyes. It’s not the most “inspired” pose, side-glance framing isn’t original, but Ryuk’s design makes an impact: he’s hunched over, covered in feathers, has spiked hair and appears to be juggling a partially-eaten apple. This is in-character for him, but the design itself is noticeable for resembling a certain other role Dafoe has played before. That’s right, he looks like The Green Goblin!

I know what you’re thinking, and no, I don’t think this is a bad look…in theory. For as much as The Green Goblin’s costume in that film gets a lot of flak from comic purists, The Green Goblin being a suit of armour pisses me off no more than Spider-Man having organic web-shooters. As in, it doesn’t piss me off at all. There was a lot that comic book films couldn’t get away with in 2002, so Raimi had to improvise and compromise. Besides, it made sense in the context of the world the film had established, so…

What actually bothers me is less that Ryuk looks bad, and more that he looks too similar to Dafoe’s character. On one hand, like the creative choices in Spider-Man, this design makes sense: it’s a live-action adaptation of a comic, and one where the original design doesn’t translate between mediums. And on the other hand, anime adaptations have yet to prove themselves in live-action, so there’s a lot they can’t do. However, that Ryuk looks so similar to The Green Goblin is a little lazy. I mean, Dafoe’s face is pretty expressive, so why not work with that instead of copying a design where you can’t see his face?

And this, right here, is what bothers me. Yes, Willem Dafoe's more iconic role as a comic book villain is one where you can’t see his face. Yes, I enjoyed his take as The Green Goblin a lot. But no, that doesn’t mean every future comic book character Dafoe plays has to be modelled off of that role. I know that Dafoe pretty much plays some version of himself in every film he’s in, but typecasting doesn’t help matters.

I’ll use an example from another anime performance to illustrate my point: remember Tales from Earthsea? It’s terrible, you don’t need me to tell you that, but one of its most-memorable aspects was its dub. All of the casting, save Blaire Restaneo, was incredibly-inspired, but if I had a personal gripe, it’d be Dafoe as Cob. All of his lines were spoken in a soft whisper akin to a more controlled version of The Green Goblin, yet it was impossible not to see that character bleed through. Because everything about him, right down to his look, suggested that Disney only cast him as Cob because of The Green Goblin, and it was distracting.
Which is why I think that giving Ryuk The Green Goblin treatment is annoying. I’m sure it’ll work out somehow, I hope. Adam Wingard’s a talented director of horror and suspense, and Death Note seems right up his alley. I even like that the Netflix adaptation is going with the “if it’s taking place in the US, we might as well Westernize it!” angle that it could’ve easily missed the boat on in the hands of a lesser-talent, and the casting of Keith Stanfield as L is, like I said earlier, especially inspired. But I’m not convinced that this character design was the best choice. I could end up being wrong, but for now consider me skeptical.

When all that is said and done, Death Note debuts on August 25th on Netflix, so it’s not like my complaints hold much weight anymore.

I hated university. Oh sure, I gained a lot from the six years I was there! But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t frequently arduous. Whether it was the strike halfway through my first year, losing me 85 days of class, the poor mapping of the colleges, the daily routine that messed with my sleeping and eating schedules, or the sheer volume of readings, books, assignments and exams on areas that didn’t interest me at all, it felt like I was fighting an uphill battle that I could never win. Like Sisyphus of Greek mythology, it was like I was doomed to an endless punishment of lifting a rock that wouldn’t budge up a long, tiring hill.

There were many instances where I felt like giving up. In my second year, I dropped my favourite class, American Poetry, so that I could focus on one of my tedious electives. In my third year, I spent half of the first semester anticipating another strike. Even in my fourth year, as I was starting to get the hang of everything, I argued with my mom about the inherent value of staying in university, suggesting that leaving would be a better option. But I stayed anyway.

I mention this because it was also when I discovered Studio Ghibli. I still remember the night I watched that copy of Spirited Away lying around in the living room of my house, left there accidentally by a friend of my brother’s. It was a week before my third year began, a fact made easier by school starting late to atone for the strike, and I was bored out of my mind. Yet there it was, tempting me. I’d already heard that it was great, so I figured that I had nothing to lose. The disc was scratched, meaning that part of an early scene was missing, but it sucked me in anyway.

Right after that, I made it my mission to look up aka Hayao Miyazaki’s other work. I went to my local Blockbuster and rented Castle in the Sky and Howl’s Moving Castle, as those were the only two films that were available. The former wowed me from the get-go, prompting enough renewals that the store eventually let me buy it for a discounted price. The latter disappointed initially, but even amidst my criticism I ended up learning to love it. Both were Miyazaki, so I had to give them a chance.

It didn’t stop there. For my 20th birthday, I’d received a gift card to my local mall for $25. I spent it all at HMV on Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service, even going over-budget, but I didn’t care. They too were Miyazaki, so I had to own them. I’d even go back several times to buy the remainder of the Miyazaki stock, as I was hooked. And I was hooked because they were that good.

I remember the stories that often came with these films. After a mid-class excursion to HMV to purchase some non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli films, I returned to an angry professor who called me a “disruption”. The professor was a jerk anyway, and that the class was a bad fit, so I dropped the course that evening. For my first Gender Studies essay, I wrote a paper on classism and the status of women in Princess Mononoke, to which I received an A-. It remains one of my proudest moments.

Studio Ghibli was also influencing me personally. As I was getting more and more sucked into their work, so too was my chatter with friends and family becoming consumed by them. My writing on ScrewAttack was also becoming Studio Ghibli-centric, to the point where it was all I could write about. It was a drug, and I couldn’t stop. But it was keeping me going, so I wasn’t going to stop anyway.

In hindsight, Studio Ghibli kept me from dropping out of university. Whether direct or indirect is uncertain, but the power and messages of those films gave me hope and courage. Kiki’s Delivery Service taught me to persevere through bouts of creative blockage, and I’d give it a watch whenever I needed creative rejuvenation. Whisper of the Heart spoke to me as a writer, inspiring me to keep writing. Princess Mononoke challenged me to think critically, such that I’ve been striving to do so ever since. And then there was Spirited Away, which, aside from being my favourite film of all-time, reminded me that it was okay to be myself. All of these films taught me to work hard toward my goal even when the going got tough, hence eventually making it through university and graduating in 2014.

Studio Ghibli did all of that for me, and I thank them for it. It’s also why I write about them so frequently on Infinite Rainy Day, as there’s simply too much to talk. Perhaps it’s unhealthy, and maybe I need to diversify my tastes a little more. Maybe I’m casual trash, perpetuating a toxic fanbase that claims that no other anime but Studio Ghibli is worth your time. It’s even possible that I may one day annoy everyone to the point of complete isolation and abandonment. But if Studio Ghibli is responsible for my succeeding through the nightmare of university, ensuring that I’d come out with a double-major, then perhaps it’s worth it to sing their praises; after all, so long as I’m passionate, then who cares?

I've been at a loss of what to review lately. Nothing seemed to speak to me lately. Then I heard some buzz about a title called Little Witch Academia by studio Trigger and the disappointment that it was going to Netflix so the wait to watch it legally would be longer than anticipated. Hey, it works on my lazy schedule of usually being behind three months on a series anyway, so why not check out now that the first season is available officially? After watching the short film and the Kickstarted follow-up that preceded it, I had a little regret in my decision. The first short is what I'd call "pleasant," which is sort of a back-handed compliment. It means it's nice enough that I don't really want to start rambling about all I found wrong with it because it may not deserve it. The original short was designed is part of the Anime Mirai projects to develop young animators (though how much it actually helps young animators or gives money for extra projects on already established animators is still up in the air give of Little Witch Academia's staff were already well established in the industry), and as a demonstration of animation prowess, it's really damn solid. Lots of colorful, flowing scenes of animation with only a reasonable amount of editing.

But... it's one of those titles that is trying to copy successful formulas and it wears its inspirations on its sleeves to the point of distraction. A trio of students at a magic school where one doesn't come from a magical house finds she is the chosen one for... something through an event involving an item called the sorcerer's stone. Seems familiar. Would noting main character Akko has a rival who is blonde and snooty be piling on? Also, the script is dumb. REALLY dumb. One of the students accidentally unleashes a most dangerous beasts for beginner witches that can absorb all magic to make itself stronger. Fair enough, but it was originally sealed away in a training dungeon for students who are encouraged to get as good of a grade as possible by using their magical abilities to their limits in order to bag the more challenging creatures. That situation seems exceptionally avoidable. The follow-up, a Kickstarter-supported feature called The Enchanted Parade, was better, taking the focus way from the Harry Potter influences and trying to be its own thing (With a scoche of Fantasia), but it still had some similar scripting quirks like when one character explains her own motivation to herself for the sake of the audience. And can we just drop the fat person whose only defining characteristic is how much they like to inhale food from children's and young adult fiction FOREVER, please?

Thankfully, Little Witch Academia the series is something of a reboot. Perhaps remix would be a better phrase since all of the characters look and act exactly the same, but the plot is mixed around to accommodate a different story from its predecessors. Instead of starting in the middle of the school year, the TV series goes back to when Atsuko "Akko" Kagari has her first day of school. Seeing the performance of famous witch Shiny Chariot as a child, she is inspired to go to Luna Nova Magical Academy even though magic doesn't run in the family. Unfortunately, she is way behind everyone else to the point that she can't even ride a broom and takes herself and future classmates Sucy and Lotte into a dangerous labyrinth woods with a cockatrice just trying to get to the school's opening ceremonies. Sucy has a dark personality with a penchant for mushrooms and mixing dangerous potions while Lotte is a more unassuming student whose interest lies more in an EXTREMELY long-running series of novels loosely parodying Twilight (Honestly, the more they explain the plot of the books, the less I understand. That's probably the joke). After their initial encounter gets them in serious trouble, they are all placed in the same dorm under the supervision of Ursula, one of the younger teachers at the school. Early on, Akko runs afoul of Diana, the most gifted girl at the school who is a mix between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy in her combination of genius and snobbiness.

It doesn't take long for Akko to realize Luna Nova isn't all she expected it to be. The witches-in-training despise Shiny Chariot for turning their life's work into a fireworks show of parlor tricks. The curriculum is less wowie zowie magic and more history textbooks Akko doesn't have the attention span for. She's way behind everyone else, so even when she does get to practice magic, it goes wrong in embarrassing ways. So, she and her wrangled cohorts try to find shortcuts, which usually involve some of the most dangerous artifacts and secrets that could possibly destroy the entire school. Even though one or two of these instances would be means for expulsion, they get let off with cleaning punishments and being grounded to the premises... which they ignore half the time. Perhaps the reason they have a longer leash is magic is falling out of favor with the world and they're losing funding and popularity, so they need Akko's tuition. While the sorcerer's stone in the school provides more than enough power to run the school, a magic degree is becoming more and more as useful as a Philosophy major due to the lack of magic energy in the rest of the world.



The early episodes make this seem like a continuation of the attitudes from the previous works. I'm not going to lie, I was less than taken with Akko. The beginning makes her seem like the worst kind of main bright-eyed lead. She goes by Chariot's quote that belief is your own magic... which is fine until you have a task that has the slightest bit of complexity or a requires a smidgen of experience. She doesn't even try to earnestly catch up with her classmates, but literally tries as many easy ways out as she can find, even the most dangerous ones (Perhaps especially the most dangerous ones). The most irksome episode features a broom race Akko and her pals are eager to win despite Akko being unable to even ride a broom by herself. What to do? Well, they cheat, frankly. They nail down other racers with mushrooms, set up a path of donuts to distract fellow student Jasminka (See, it's funny because she's a fatty fat fat and her only major character aspect is she loves to eat). Akko finds a broom that doesn't run on magic, is muzzled up like Hannibal Lector, and she's explicitly warned not to use it, but what do people who've been involved in magic for years know? The trio have to show up that snobby know-it-all Diana who is actually one of the most reasonable characters in the series because she realizes the responsibilities that exist with wielding this immense amount of power. It doesn't help that most of this episode is narrated by one of those journalism club characters who exist to provide obvious commentary if the internet distracts you from actually watching it.

Here's the thing: The TV series knows all of this. Where the other features have a limited amount of time to tell a story, this one has more than enough length to develop and expand on its characters and setting. We get why the lead trio seem apprehensive with each other. Akko eventually learns that yes, belief in yourself is a good thing to have, but you eventually need to learn, practice, and work to get where you want or need to be. The universe is established and they have an internal consistency so there's a line of what's too far to get them expelled and how they don't have that happen even as they threaten to completely wreck the academy every week. This is boring stuff if you just want to talk about cool witch school stuff but it's ESSENTIAL if you don't want people to roll their eyes at a main character who snarls at her snooty rival yet doesn't do anything to be a rival except try cheats that nearly get fellow students killed.

With my biggest issues addressed, now to look at the series a whole. The animation is absolute candy from the stellar light show of the opening (That fabric embroidery on that title...) to the literal splashing of colors that greet the ending credits. Obviously, the television budget lowers how many overtly flashy scenes one can have, but it still manages to pull off plenty. Akko has serious problems getting metamorphosis spells right and the anime doesn't shy away from showing all the ways she screws up her form and the forms of others. The look is clean with welcoming hues around every corner. The only thing I'd say is there are WAY too many little references to Kill la Kill in the visuals. Not EVERY white object and being needs to have a star in the middle of it. We get it. You're the company that did that thing and that visual was a part of that thing.

While there is a storyline with its own progress and plot threads, the focus is more on episodic escapades. As I've said, there is an internal logic that prevents them from going on school-destroying adventures all day, every day (Though one episode essentially uses a reset button), but that doesn't mean they don't get crazy. Some are predictable wacky antics, like a cupid bee that makes anyone it stings fall in love with the first person they see loose at a well-to-do party. Others, however, take more unexpected turns, like the episode that goes into Sucy's mind and finds what makes her tick (For a taste: the visual representation of her mind features Pyramid Head executioners). Some are usual kids show stories of the week. Thankfully, the narrative for Akko as "the important one" moves away from possible fantasy fiction tropes and is a little more vague this time around, making her not so much a chosen special person, but the random student who could just happen to use certain phrases that unlocks a certain thingamabob that isn't explained in the first 13 episodes (I am only reviewing the episodes Netflix has available. Yes, I know there are more out there. No, I'm looking at them yet).

For an IP that seemed to have a chemistry problem among the characters early on (The delinquents in The Enchanted Parade got along better with Akko than her best friends and it was weird), the interaction gets much better as they grow and even gets good characters where you wouldn't expect. Akko gets a Darien in the son of a politician who only pays lip service to witches while wanting to completely scrub their funding, and they have the whole love/hate relationship going. They earn their respect for each other and their ire helping each other survive circumstances... that many times were completely avoidable. They become that lovable group of people you tune into every week because you like them, even if they don't start out that way.

A peppy orchestral score caps a solid first half for Little Witch Academia. I may not have been charmed by what preceded the TV series nor may I enjoy it as much as others, but I have reached an understanding. The leads being given far more definition and getting the screws put to their shortcomings goes a long way to forgiving them and enjoying their presence. The franchise has always looked beautiful and this iteration is no different. It simply needed to carve out its own identity from the other magic fiction that inspired it to become a rounded student.

Today’s article was commissioned by a regular reader. If you’d like to have me write about something of your choosing, consider commissioning me! Details here, willing to discuss subjects not covered on that page. Use the e-mail listed there.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is definitely one of the most memorable works to come from Kyoto Animation, and that's saying a lot. The studio responsible for the adaptations of K-ON! And Sound! Euphonium finally returned to their Nichijou-style comedic antics for this comedy manga animation, but also infused it with a surprising amount of heart and thought. The end result is a very strange show that tries to combine wacky humor with commentary on integrating into a new culture, family dynamics, and and lifestyle choices, not to mention some queer coding under the surface (both subtle and not-so-subtle).

The initial premise is that Kobayashi, a loner office drone, wakes up one day to find a dragon at her door, one that turns into a cute maid before her eyes and asks for room and board. This dragon is Tohru, whom Kobayashi promised could stay with her the previous night after a whole lot of drinking and wandering into the woods. Tohru promises to earn her keep by working as Kobayashi's maid, though, and it's not long before the two have adopted the child dragon Kanna. Along with all this, two of Tohru's friends and one enemy dragon come to the human world and start carving out lives on their own with the general populace, to varying degrees of success, and we learn more about Tohru's dark past and Kobayashi's numbing anxieties.

Maid Dragon is an animation spectacle in a lot of places, especially if you've been paying attention to the various directors KyoAni has on staff. Their little tells and all get thrown around, especially Yamada's in episode eight, where her love for expressing emotion through the movement of legs shines through. The flashiest moments always make full use of the effects on hand and expressive exaggeration, especially with Tohru. Whenever she shows a bit of her true dragon self in human mode, it's always a memorable visual that blends a bit of horror and comedic sensibilities. On top of this, the show's grounded but colorful pallet makes every setting feel alive and comfortable. It's a great show to watch if you need a break, despite some of the heavier subject matter, simply because of the art style. This goes especially with the detail on the dragons, who all have a little something strange in their designs that make them stick out, like Tohru's mysterious tail (seriously, where does that attach) and Lucoa's discolored eyes.

The most unexpected element is that the show takes the dragons' status as immigrants very seriously and make their adapting to Japanese society central to their arcs. This is shown most with Tohru, who's suffering from some mild PTSD due to the fights she got into back in her world. She's quick to violence early on and doesn't understand the ideas of compromise or unity, only dominance through force and asserting one's will. This is a big problem for much of the early episodes, as Japan itself is a society that values order and community in ways Tohru can't really understand. Even as the show goes along and she adapts to Japan's norms, she still shows some struggle with the oppressive, stuffy focus on norms. A shopping market sequence really shows this strongly, as Tohru over-exerts her power stopping a robber and it seems like the entire community is going to turn on her after some initial shock.

This focus on the suffocating nature of norms could be read as some queer coded commentary, with Tohru and Kobayashi both expressing frustration with Japanese society excluding whatever doesn't fit in with the desired norm and their shared attraction. The show is not subtle with the two being in an unspoken relationship, with Tohru being very open about her feelings from episode one and on. Kobayashi herself is a very closed off person who has trouble understanding how to respond to someone expressing that sort of interest in her, but she constantly shows that she appreciates Tohru's feelings and seems unsure how to return them. This is all pushed more with the two basically becoming Kanna's parents, with the last episode giving a glimpse at Kobayashi trying to be a single parent for a short bit. It's particularly why the show's dub from Funimation is so widely criticized, as some script changes result in a current of homophobia by coding Kobayashi as straight instead of queer, something that actually goes against the source material as well. All that's left is Tohru as the wacky, predatory lesbian, which left a bad taste in a lot of mouths.

The queer elements are unfortunately too downplayed to the point that many who watched the show subbed honestly didn't pick up on what should have been obvious tells. However, the immigration stuff is much more developed, especially with Fafnir and Elma. Fafnir expresses more old world prejudices and is actively annoyed by Tohru's ease at adapting, ending up rooming with an otaku and choosing to seclude himself and only interact with those he respects. He was already a shut-in back in the old world, but now he has an entire subculture that accepts him for that. Elma, on the other hand, is genuinely trying to understand this culture, though she needs guidance from Kobayashi at first and still struggles with the all too familiar problem of poverty. She doesn't really find a place outside the office, but finds comfort instead in good food and small moments of relaxation. Their stories are all about adaptation and each go through it in different ways, one blending with a subculture, and the other struggling with the more “normal” aspects of this society.

There are tons of heartfelt moments in the series with every dragon and their human counterpart (or in Elma's case, whoever won't antagonize her), but one pair falls flat. Lucoa and Shota feel completely out of place with all this thoughtful musing, as the entire joke between the two is that Lucoa constantly makes the poor kid feel sexually confused because of her boobs. It's an ongoing joke that's both gross and weird and acts as the show's most obvious shortcoming. It's a shame because both character are likable and funny in their own ways, especially when Lucoa is just hanging out with the adults, but the joke that binds them together is one of the worst I've seen in any anime within recent memory. Lucoa's more maternal qualities also get downplayed far too much for lame gags where she doesn't know how to dress properly in public, robbing her of any real positive impact in the series. It's not good when both characters are more entertaining when separate instead of together.

The main attraction, though, is not the social commentary, but the comedy. Maid Dragon has a great mixture of visual gags, absurdist segways, and down to Earth musings to have a joke for most everyone, outside the aforementioned Lucoa and Shota scenes. It's the right balance of the more fantastical elements and subdued slice of life energy that make the show stand out so much, equal parts comfy and hilarious. It says a lot to the character writing that just about every character can fit into any scenario and have something to add, especially Tohru and Kanna. Tohru's struggles with adapting to Japanese life and her little moments of letting out her true self really help make her not only likable, but also layered and even relatable. As a semi-closeted bi man, the convention episode really stuck out to me a good bit of describing how important outlets for one's sexuality or gender identity are. Kanna, on the other hand, is just your average child after her initial introduction, fitting well with daily life segments, but also adding a new energy to comedic scenes with her one tone voice and general innocence. The play episode late in the series is the best example of the show's comedy chops, using elements from every character and making them all work together for an incredible skit, even finding an actual funny gag with Lucoa.

Oddly, it's the moments where you see characters just living live that really stuck with me, especially as the series goes on. A good character can make any situation engaging, and the Kobayashi household do that constantly. The New Years episode has a pretty long segment that just has the three relaxing with a kotatsu and getting treats from neighbors, with no huge jokes beyond Tohru having to leave the kotatsu constantly, but it works. A good slice of life show can build a relationship between the audience and the characters, making the most mundane scenarios relatable. Maid Dragon may be the best example off this I've come across, thanks to Tohru's fantastic growth through the show in the small moments.

Maid Dragon is an interesting show because it may be the best way to introduce yourself to KyoAni and their particular quirks and interests. It has depth and introspective themes, laugh out loud comedy, and a lot of lovely little sequences where you just see characters living their normal lives, and it all works almost the entire time. It's not perfect by any means, especially with the misuse of Lucoa and Shota, but it's definitely one of the studio's most memorable shows and worth a watch if you haven't tried it yet. Just do be warned the dub is really insulting to the material, so sub is the way to go here.

I really like anime. I don’t get to watch it as much as I’d want, due to my finances being sparse, but I still really like it. I even like it enough to overlook some weird details about its style, even though anime’s pretty diverse visually. And so, in a response to this piece I wrote a while back, here are 5 trends about anime’s style that I find bizarre, yet amusing:



1. Side-mouth-I’ll begin with the most bizarre of them all. You ever notice how whenever a character’s head is shown from a side-angle, their mouth is still centred? As in, the animators were careful to get everything else about the head right, yet wanted the mouth to still be noticeable? I see this in cheaply-made action and/or slice-of-life anime, and it’s always made me giggle. Because, when you get down to it, it’s weird to see a mouth contort like that.

I’m sure some of you fail to see the big deal, so think about it this way: take that same face, contorted mouth intact, and flip it so the character’s facing the audience directly. Now have said character speak. It looks weird, no? It looks creepy too, right? People in real-life don’t have mouths that contort like that, so it’s funny to see it done in anime. (Unless you have some kind of condition, in which case…my sympathies.)

This is one of the weird anime-isms that big-budget studios, i.e. Studio Ghibli, buck with their characters. They recognize that in order to properly immerse the audience, the animation has to be believable. It doesn’t have to be truthful, it’s still fiction, but when your character’s talking from a side-angle, their mouth shouldn’t contort. It should be relatively-consistent with the direction the character’s facing. But then again, what do I know? These characters’ mouths generically move up-and-down, which leads to…

2. Mouth flaps-You knew I’d mention this, didn’t you? I’ve not only covered it before in rants about anime dubs, but it’s an easy detail to poke fun at. I get why it’s done: anime’s a cheap art-form, and it saves costs. It’s also one of the reasons why Western animation’s so much more expensive to produce than anime. However, as with side-mouth, it begs the question of whether or not it really makes sense.

Think about it: the typical mouth flap in anime only moves up and down. The exception is that 5-10% of the time when it stretches to the sides like an elastic, and even then only when the character’s singing or emphasizing something important. Alternatively, as in BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad’s case, the characters always talk like that. I dunno, it’s still kinda weird. At least, I think it’s kinda weird.

Fortunately, unlike side-mouth, I can easily adjust. Anime’s still fiction, so characters are granted some level of creative interpretation. I mean, you have loli teenagers who go around fighting giant monsters with the power of love in some of these anime! I can suspend my disbelief about the characters’ mouths if I can accept that, right? Right?!
3. Mouth expansions-Right when you thought it was safe to stop obsessing about mouths, here I come with yet another complaint! (Don’t worry, this is the last time you’ll hear me complain about this.) Ever notice how anime characters’ mouths grow really big when they’re excited or happy? Like, to an unreasonable degree? Isn’t that a little off-putting? I think so!

It’s strange that expanded mouths are what bother me so much, isn’t it? I mean, side-mouth? It’s weird to see that contortion, but I can live with it. Lip flaps only moving up-and-down? Again, weird to see, but I can live with it. But mouth expansions pull me from the experience?!

That last question was a tad hyperbolic, I won’t lie. But I can’t help finding it weird how characters’ mouths, even in high-end films, expand like that. Wouldn’t that hurt in real-life? I know that anime’s not real, but…wouldn’t it hurt anyway? Because it absolutely hurts to look at!

4. Invisible noses-Moving on from the mouth, let’s focus on the mysterious case of the anime nose. Why’s it mysterious? Because it’s non-existent from a certain angle. The rest of the facial features are present, mind you, but the nose? It’s present when the character’s face is sideways, but when facing straight…it’s nowhere to be found. Unless you’d consider a small dot between the eyes and mouth a nose, I’m not sure.

This one’s less a function of budget and/or laziness, and more the evolution of the art-style. Believe it or not, there was a time, way back in the 70’s and 80’s, when the anime nose was clearly defined. Over time, however, the nose became less and less obvious as the face became more stylized and detailed, to the point where, by the 2000’s, it was nowhere to be found. Strange, huh?

To be fair, the anime nose is still visible in some anime genres. Shonen and Seinen have actually enhanced it via shadows and shading. This is especially apparent in the Fullmetal Alchemist franchise, where the noses on characters, particularly adults, are so noticeable that it’s easy to get distracted by them and wonder if they’re part of the characters themselves, or a character on their own. If you want proof, watch any clip and argue otherwise. I dare you!

5. Manga Iconography-Now we go full-circle from a rant that I wrote a while back. While I’ve warmed up ever-so-slightly to Manga Iconography, to the point of accepting that it exists, it still creeps me out to see it in comedy. The human body and/or face is already pretty expressive, it doesn’t need to be overdrawn for laughs. I’d argue that smart animators can milk laughs without Manga Iconography, but who am I talk? I can’t even write a novel without getting frustrated.

It wouldn’t even weird me out if the Manga Iconography used made sense visually. Some of it I sorta understand, like spiralled eyes symbolizing dizziness or fatigue, but alligator fangs? A swelled head? Off-model running? Who comes up with this, and can I have some of what they’re smoking?

I think the worst is when movies, like Mamoru Hosoda’s earlier work, use Manga Iconography. Because while it might be “endearing” on some level in TV anime, it’s also a time-saver. Movies, which have bigger budgets and higher expectations automatically, shouldn’t be employing these time-savours. If you have to cut corners, why not scale-back a bit on the insanely-detailed character models? So long as your characters are aesthetically-pleasing, it won’t matter in the grand scheme.

And there you have it: 5 bizarre design choices in anime. If you’ll excuse me, I have to contort my exaggerated mouth that only moves up-and-down to the side of my face while searching for my non-existent nose and wondering my eyes are spiralled from fatigue.

Hoo boy, time to venture into the arena of Yasumi Matsuno. A critical darling of Square's late SNES-PS 2 era, his titles from Ogre Battle to Final Fantasy Tactics to Vagrant Story have shown up on countless best games ever list, or at the very least, "underrated" countdowns. To me, his games have always felt like a members-only club. I get it. They are ambitious, ahead of their time (Sometimes too ahead of their time), and most importantly, give a refreshingly adult story. They usually deal in mature themes with a Shakespearean flare, but God help you if you don't know exactly how to play them. God is usually a convoluted lie in Matsuno's worlds, by the way.

See, these games-at least of the PlayStation One/Two era-have a tendency to be ball busters after an all-too-brief brief acclimation to whatever newfangled system Matsuno's drawn up. Final Fantasy Tactics can get seriously brutal after a fair first couple of chapters, causing your party to get slaughtered before even being able to make a move (By the way, if you rushed to get to the cool classes, you missed the JP up Squire ability that is vital to your party's evolution). The handle system in Vagrant Story is frustratingly trial and error, and if it's error, enjoy causing minimal damage to a tough enemy and reloading your save point. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together would be one of my favorite games of all time if the story battles didn't consistently become unreasonably difficult after a certain point without some serious grinding. These are games that can easily become chores if you don't stay on top of what you need to do or exercise an inordinate amount of patience. If you want to pull snob ranking and tell me I'm just a crap player, hey, whatever makes you feel better.




Enter Final Fantasy XII, what was supposed to be the link between the massively successful franchise and Matsuno's high-brow Square games the audiences hadn't quite caught up to... until it wasn't. Matsuno left Square in the middle of making the game due to still unknown circumstances, the powers that be forced more Tidus-like Vaan to be the main character with his friend Panelo to attract a larger target audience even though they have next-to-nothing to do with the plot after a certain point, and the new gambit system virtually let the game play itself, leaving large swaths of time where you're just sitting there watching the party go about its business. Response was mixed with many loving the adventure and others trashing it. Aside from a few cherry picked aspects like the suave rogue Balthier, not much lingered over a decade later until Square-Enix announced a complete tune-up with The Zodiac Age. High-definition graphics, updated music, the "International" version that included the Zodiac class licensing system, and other tweaks all promised to make it a distinct improvement from its original release.

My memories of Final Fantasy XII are long stretches of misery with small bits of joy. When I say Matsuno was too far ahead of his time, his use of MMORPG-style exploration and battle was a precursor to titles like the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise that have similar field battle with packs of enemies roaming the wild and extremely high-level enemies occasionally wandering into the picture. However, FFXII is a rather dry, bare-bones version of this before many many refinements were added. You go around automatically fighting enemies, collecting their loot, finding treasures, and... killing more of the same enemies and taking their loot. New renditions of this kind of system at least give you some special skills buttons to press to feel like you're contributing (Except when there are enemies with status afflictions because your party will get ALL the diseases and you'll have to step in with potions). There are some variations in the main quest where you have different objectives like dipping your toe into information brokering, but it's mostly talking to a bunch of people and is more padding than adding depth to the game. The twists to battle are when you go on hunts to kill stronger enemies and invisible traps are randomly strewn about the place you need to use the skill Libra to see. On the latter, you can still be in trouble even after you see everything since the characters you don't control can trip them if you don't have a mage completely dedicated to casting float all day... and they WILL trip them. No, Panelo, don't do th... oh, good, now all of us are afflicted with petrify.... Golden needles, come hither.

The gambit system does give flexibility to take various approaches to battle as long as you purchase the proper gambit you need. Having to buy everything but the basics is a pain, but if you consistently purchase a little at a time every trip back to town, you should have everything you need and not have to worry about it rom about a quarter of the way in to the end. The ones you'll use 95% of the time are attacking nearest enemy and healing (keep it to magic healing or your auto-run characters will chug every potion you have in seconds). The game does have a moment where it suddenly flips from barely needing to know the finer points to it's EXTREMELY important you know everything fairly quickly like in most Matsuno games, but this happens far later than most of them. By the time you have to master gambits, you'll be able to cast protection spells that last awhile to your entire party in seconds while also dispelling your opponents' strengths with little trouble and not using a huge chunk of resources. It's great for the people who get into preparing for raids and the like, but I prefer feeling more like I'm more a part of the battle than simply chiming in on emergency situations.



I want to say upfront there are three improvements that rescue the game from the pitfalls of the original. The first is the ever-present auto-save features most of the latest games have that only backtracks you to the start of the current map you were on instead of the last crystal save point. I invented new swear words the day I had found myself in a corner of a deep dungeon and turned around to find one of my party members had irritated an Elemental (Balls of pure energy that can wipe a party in seconds), and with no proper place to flee, between one and two hours of work were erased just like that. Some of the later dungeons are simply massive as well, making huge mistakes even more costly. Not anymore. If you're a purist, it's still pretty easy to find your last crystal save if you MUST play by the rules (Hey, a part of me still has to play FF I without auto-targeting and Life working in battle. I am not judging). The second is a fast-forward button that can be used at any time to speed up the game while you're wandering the field. So much of the title is spent gallivanting around the sprawing overworld picking fights with minor enemies for loot, experience, and license points, getting incredibly tedious since there's not much to do otherwise.

The third major improvement is the Zodiac license system. To use most abilities, weapons, and get stat boosts for a more effective character, you have to activate them on a license board for each character. The individual boards were essentially the same in the original, so it could be difficult to get the ideal build you want without feeling like you're wandering aimlessly, triggering weapons and armor you'll never use. The boards are now divided into the signs of the Zodiac with each given a specific class. These boards are tailored for the class aside from accessories so you can far more easily manage everyone's progression. Later you can even get a second class to shore up your character's weak spots or make them even more devastating with the talents they already possess. This streamlining makes it far easier to give each character a role and not just leave all the experience to three characters like stupid me did in the PS2 version and I got annihilated on the last area of the game I couldn't escape. You can even give ill-fitting classes to certain people like making Balthier the white mage and everything works out A-OK.



The worst strike against the old version was not even its fault. I distinctly remember it came out just after Xenosaga Episode III. I was one of maybe ten people who hadn't given up on the series after the disastrous Episode II was cheap, slow, and generally a rotten game. Episode III is a masterpiece in over-the-top anime/JRPG style, blasting the audience with mile-high melodrama, easily one of the top three scores composer Yuki Kajiura has ever done, and massive showdowns that brought about one of the most satisfying conclusions to a middling franchise I have ever seen. Above all things, though, it is not nuanced or subtle. There was no palette cleanser between games and likely I wasn't ready for XII when it came along with its rather understated dramatics.

Upon reassessing the story, the first thing is it wasn't try to gussy up Star Wars (Or if you'd like, The Hidden Fortress). There are elements taken from it, but they are much smaller portions than I remember. The problem here is I remember these parts because the rest of the storytelling is so sleight and many of the elements are disconnected or never resonate that I forgot about most of them.

 The story takes place in Dalmasca, a mostly desert country in-between two colossal nations that seem to have constant tension. The Archadian empire strikes first, annihilating Dalmasca and neighboring Nabradia that had just united with the marriage of Princess Ashelia and Prince Rasler. Rasler dies in battle, leaving Ashe to figure out what to do one her own, while Lord Vayne of Archadia promises a peaceful transition.



The emotional thrust of the story at this point should be Princess Ashe as she seeks to assemble a rebellion against Archadia and unfolding their plot involving Archadia's heir apparent Lord Vayne gathering resources for a powerful mineral called magicite and its mechanically processed version nethicite. The nethicite not only has immensely destructive capabilities, but a hypnotic lure over people, as one piece shows Ashe visions of her former husband to keep her from destroying it. Can Ashe navigate her feelings of loss and the complicated political mess as the only one who can with the help of Balthier, a sky pirate with his own tragic history involving the empire?

...The key word here is SHOULD.

After a fantastic opening movie setting the scene and a related tutorial level, we switch characters to Vaan and Panelo, two street urchins in the dusty Dalmascan capital Rabinastre. They sort of stumble into the major players after a botched robbery of a palace, running into Balthier and his partner in crime Fran, a tall woman who comes from a race of woodland rabbit humans. Fleeing into the sewers, they uncover Ashe and a group of insurgents. Vaan does have a link to the main conflict in the death of his soldier brother, but it's quickly diffused after a weird subplot involving other party member Basche potentially murdering his brother but turning out he has a twin. This whole section has such needless complications while ignoring the emotional throughway of the venture. Vaan and Panelo are supposed to be portals into the others, making Ashe and the pertinent cast spill their guts, but they're more distractions, providing unneeded comic relief and unnecessary story sessions instead of just jumping into the thoughts of Ashe or having her have more meaningful conversations with Basche or Balthier, people who have weathered similar storms in their lives.

It's simply weird that one of the cruxes of the inner conflict is the unchecked grief Ashe has because everything else happened on top of it, and yet we get one flashback to a conversation they have that suggests the marriage of convenience has more substance than bringing their respective countries together. It's sincerely poignant, but it's one crunch berry in a box of Cap 'n' Crunch that has precious few crunch berries. I was happy when they had Fran stop in the woods to deal with her people she left behind as it was at least putting an emotional anchor on something for awhile.



The entire story has similar emotional disconnect. There's plenty of political intrigue and a ton of moving parts, but they don't strike any particularchords. The drama seems Shakesperian almost to a fault. It's probably Lord Vayne (A name just begging to become a super villain) being a hard-R villain in a PG-13 title with weird staging where most of his extreme actions occur off screen. He's a silver-tongued son of Archadia's leader who murdered two of his brothers, but most of his actions are conveyed after the fact or through dialogue than showing us what a conniving bastard he is. It feels like Hamlet when the titular prince is sent off to war; since it's a stage play, they have to read a letter stating what's going on with him. Vayne at least does get a creepy with the one younger brother late in the game. Also curious is the Judges, a direct riff on Judge Dredd where they act as Archadia's judge, jury, and executioners. Unfortunately, they spend more time being a danger to each other than being a threat to our heroes. And again, there's an intriguing character buried with the most off-the-rocker Cid in Final Fantasy history, a researcher who has become an odd husk of a human after his lab work consumed him. He's rightfully well regarded as a great character... and he's barely in the game. Sigh....

If I sound like I'm being overly harsh, perhaps I am. After all, I had just played a bunch of trashy space opera in 2006 when before I approached this work and was SO HAPPY doing so. Every piece of work has a different set of terms it either works on or doesn't, and XII's aims are higher than most, thus making it easy to be extraordinarily picky about it. It more or less works, but it rarely soars to the pinnacle of the franchise that it seems like it should.



At the very least, the hi-def edition makes it far more of the game it wanted to be from an aesthetic standpoint. The PS2 version was certainly one of the best looking games on the system, but it still felt a little compressed. The incredibly ornate style, borrowing from Persian and Ottoman architecture, gives most buildings complex and detailed geometric designs. With a huge amount of the fuzzyness gone, all that's left is gorgeous save a couple weird graphical issues (Vaan's abs used to look like they were Lego, but now they look like a portal to another dimension). I'm not even going to fault the characters for having sleepy eyes all the time since it fits. Old me used to complain that there was nothing that really popped out about the visuals and it was all crusty brown buildings or utilitarian Archadian strongholds, but this version cleans everything up to give proper awe to the various structures from the stunning entrance of the Stillshrine to an underground palace.

The music has the most substantial turnaround here. Hitoshi Sakimoto is an immensely talented composer and I can easily whistle a melody from each of his most well-known scores. The issues arise with his samples when he insists on using synth orchestra. One of my personal pet peeves is when people use terrible orchestral samples and pretend it's totally the real thing. The fake strings jab at my ear and the thudding brass punches my stomach. At the time Sakimoto was cranking out the tracks for the prime Matsuno joints, only Hans Zimmer could pull off the kind of synth orchestra sound these were looking for. Over ten years is an eternity for technology to catch up to certain things and Square-Enix now has he resources to get plenty of live musicians to add to the mix. The result is a sound that is a thousand times more rich and fully realizes its potential, turning one of the most annoying soundtracks in the series to one of the absolute best. The game's music is no longer only the source for "surprisingly" good performance pieces produced for the Distance Worlds and A New World concerts.



Shame about the voice recordings for the English VOs. The acting is perfectly fine. They got a wonderfully talented cast who did a splendid job. Something simply happened to the original recordings themselves where they were likely compressed for space (Not surprising, given the amount of graphical detail likely slammed the space limitations of a PS2 disc). Most of the dialogue sounds muffled, like they're talking through a silk cloth or something. It would've been a stretch to expect the original decompressed voice files were locked away somewhere, but it's still disappointing that with every other annoyance I had with the game getting addressed, this persists. It's not like I don't understand though, and you can switch on the Japanese voice tracks easily.

That's really the main theme to The Zodiac Age. It addresses, fixes, or gives alternatives to almost every issue that was annoying or repellant in the original. The too low-key story as well as the long stretches where the characters walk from seemingly endless fields chopping up baddies on their own to the next keep stop it from being a masterpiece at the top of the franchise in my book. However, this new version certainly makes it worthy of consideration instead of the lost opportunity the PS2 version felt like.  Rather than saying I didn't care for it and leaving it at that, I can now get what the people who love it see in the title.

A while back, I wrote a rant about why Perfect Blue’s twist ending didn't work. One particular part of it still sticks out in my mind to this day:

“Ultimately, this twist makes me question why Perfect Blue is frequently considered one of Satoshi Kon’s best. It’s not, it’s a crappy movie directed by a man who’d go on to greater works in the future.”

Remember how I stated that Perfect Blue’s ending haunts me like a cocaine addiction? That’s because the ending wouldn’t really stick out as much if Satoshi Kon, the director, hadn’t gone on to improve his craft in future projects. Paranoia Agent, for example, would take what the twist represented, which wasn’t bad, and make it work, while Millennium Actress, his film following Perfect Blue, would demonstrate that he could, in fact, pull-off twist endings; in fact, it’s the latter work that I plan on discussing, as Millennium Actress’s ending really is that good.


I want to remind everyone, as with my Perfect Blue post, that this’ll contain spoilers. I’ll be dissecting the ending and revealing some plot details, so if you don’t want the movie ruined, then please click on another article. This is your last warning. For everyone else, allow me to shed light on why Millennium Actress’s ending feels like a direct response to Perfect Blue’s ending. Ready, and…go!

For context, Millennium Actress is the story of a bankrupt film studio that commissions a director, named Genya Tachibana, and his cameraman, Kyōji Ida, to interview legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara as a last-minute attempt to archive their history. Initially reluctant, Chiyoko opens up when Genya reveals a missing key that once belonged to her. Said key was given to her by a mysterious man during WWII after saving his life and offering him shelter from the police. Despite his stay being brief, the two promised to one day be together, and Chiyoko would spend the next few decades, as well as multiple film roles, searching for him.

Before I tackle the twists, there are some noticeable details that elevate Millennium Actress qualitatively over its predecessor. For one, the animation’s far crisper, a clear sign of a budget increase. And two, the film has a tighter focus, a clear sign of greater confidence. This isn’t to say the movie’s perfect, mind you: the core narrative’s a tad cliché, while the structure can often come off as repetitive. The recurring motif of earthquakes still doesn’t make sense after a repeat viewing, although I suppose it’s a metaphor for the fragility of Chiyoko’s psyche. Also, the whole “eternal youth” subplot makes no sense on a literal level, even if the potion that Chiyoko drinks represents her being doomed to chase the man of her dreams forever.


Anyway, the brilliance of the narrative comes into play at the end, when a mid-aged Chiyoko’s confronted by a police officer who’d caused her misery for so long. Said officer is hobbling on a crutch, having lost a leg, and is missing an eye. In his tired, regretful way, he apologizes for the hardship he’s put her through, and he hands her a letter the man of her dreams had written for her. In that moment, her long-dead search for the man reawakens, and she darts off to find him again. Cut back to the present, where Chikoyo passes out from excitement and is rushed to the hospital.

It’s here where we get the first twist. Unbeknownst to Chiyoko, Genya, who was present at the time, informs his cameraman that the officer told him the truth: the man of Chiyoko’s dreams was tortured to death all those years ago. Chiyoko’s, therefore, been chasing a shadow memory. This is a great twist because it passes my litmus test of being contextually relevant and a proper plot driver, both of which are important for a twist to work. But it’s also really sad, retroactively making Chiyoko’s quest a doomed one.

And then, as if to flip the first twist on its head, we get a second, even more powerful twist in the film’s last line: like Chiyoko says herself, it’s the chase she really loves the most.

This is brilliant for several reasons. Firstly, as with the first twist, it passes my personal litmus test. Secondly, it reframes Chiyoko’s quest from one of blind optimism to plain old optimism, giving her agency. And thirdly, and this can’t be stated plainly enough, it speaks to an ever-longing desire for purpose in life. So what if the goal is farfetched and impossible? As every good dreamer can attest, the longing for the dream is as important, if not more important, as the dream itself.


The best comparison I can make is to another movie that’s elevated by its end-twist. Remember Memento, Christopher Nolan’s second feature-film? It's brilliant, but a good chunk of that brilliance centres around its end twist. The film centres around Leonard, a man with short-term memory loss, figuring out the mystery of his wife’s murder. He uses pictures and tattoos to help him, all-the-while shirking off the warnings of a cop named Teddy. If that’s not complicated enough, the main storyline, which is told backwards, is interwoven with another storyline about a man with short-term memory loss who accidentally killed his diabetic wife through an insulin overdose, which is told forwards.

The twist in that film, which is revealed in the final minutes, meld both storylines via a single reveal: Leonard was the one who accidentally killed his wife. The “murdered wife” story was a coping mechanism, one he repeatedly uses to avoid his guilt. In that instance, Leonard transforms from sympathetic to unsympathetic, completely revoking all pity the audience has for him. And yet, because he can’t remember this anyway, it doesn’t end up mattering.

Millennium Actress, though different narratively and tonally, has a double-twist ending that works in a similar vein. Chiyoko may not be a Leonard, but she’s not passive. Her story goes from being about destiny to agency, similar to Leonard’s, and that’s why it’s so compelling. Not to mention, in keeping with the Japanese mantra of mono no aware (or “the apathy of it all”), her not caring if she’s chasing a lie, despite not knowing that it is one, adds an extra layer.


Which is what makes Millennium Actress so impactful. It’s as if Satoshi Kon looked at the feedback of Perfect Blue, saw what didn’t work about its ending and decided to fix it. The end-result wasn’t only an improvement, but also a complete rethinking on my part as to whether or not Kon could actually be clever. I’m still not completely in-love with his work, as I’ve stated before, but if Millennium Actress is indication, he probably could’ve done something this good again if he’d tried. It’s too bad he passed away at the peak of his career, but it’s no use crying over that…

Apologies for forgetting to post the first episode here. For those not following our Twitter, Heavy Storms is back with a new format with a single new channel (alongside Jonathan's gaming podcast). Feel free to subscribe and watch! Click the title cards!

In 2006, as part of a last-ditch effort to up its rapidly-dwindling ratings, Toonami, Cartoon Network’s action-anime block, screened four of director Hayao Miyazaki’s films over a month. To say the event was successful is an understatement, but it was interesting noting the films it showed off: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.


These are also my four favourite Miyazaki movies, albeit not necessarily in that order. But it’s worth noting that I was a fan of them before I knew that Toonami had done this marathon (we don’t get Toonami in Canada.) All four are brilliantly-made, and I’d easily recommend them to a novice to Miyazaki as a director. Yet while Spirited Away deserves its own analysis piece, I think it's best to focus on the three films that comprise what I consider “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity”.

So that’s what I’ll do for the next three articles. I’ll even do it chronologically, i.e. year of release, since it’s the easiest. Do keep in mind that there’ll be spoilers, and while I won’t give ratings, I’ll still rank them in order of preference. Here goes:



Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind had a lot going against it: it was director Hayao Miyazaki’s first independent film following The Castle of Cagliostro. It was his first big-budget project. The entire movie was only allotted nine months for production, so hours were long and staff had to be hired on commission. And it was to be adapted from the first volume and a half of Miyazaki’s then-unfinished Manga of the same name. To say that it paid off is an understatement.

The film follows Princess Nausicaä in her struggle to save The Valley of the Wind from destruction. It kicks off when the Tolmekkians, led by Princess Kushana, invade The Valley of the Wind, murder their ailing king and try reawakening an ancient beast called The God Warrior. The Tolmekkians also select hostages to bring back to Tolmekkia, a trek that’s cut-short when a Pejite gunship, flown by Prince Asbel, intervenes and lands them in the middle of The Toxic Jungle. From here, loyalties are tested, Nausicaä uncovers a plot to destroy her home, and the film’s pro-environmentalist themes start showing.

Right away, this is a film run by emotion, not logic. Any attempts to deconstruct it narratively will instantly cause it to fall apart. For example, the film starts off with a backstory about The Seven Days of Fire, and how they destroyed the planet. What were The Seven Days of Fire? Why did they destroy the world? And who created those Giant God Warriors shown in the opening montage? I know this is fantasy, hence you’re allowed to break logic, but the film never answers these questions despite constantly referencing the events.


This extends to character dialogue. Most of the time, the characters speak in expository monologues. Even by anime standards this is excessive. This is because they frequently narrate their motivations, their feelings and their thoughts. It seems like a buzzkill to have everyone ramble on and on about this or that, and there’s rarely, if any, room for a breather. In most circumstances, this’d become draining.

And yet, both the storytelling and writing are compensated for with the emotion. So what if the narrative’s riddled with holes? It’s compelling. The character writing is the same, with every line of exposition, right down to the irrelevant ones, uttered with sincerity. That’s not to say there’s no intelligence to be had, there is, but, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it’s not interested in that.

This even extends to the music and animation. The score, helmed by then-relative newcomer Joe Hisaishi, evokes childish nostalgia. The tunes range from electronic synth, to full-out orchestrations, to even hybrids. Hisaishi would score more ambitious music in future Miyazaki works, but for now this hybrid fits the “damaged innocence” vibe the movie has going for it. I can’t picture it working half as well without it.


The animation follows suit. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was made on a budget of roughly a single episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. That might seem like a lot by anime standards, but it’s nothing compared to most Western animated films. Even The Emoji Movie, a relatively-cheap film, cost infinitely more to produce. Yet due to the artistry of Miyazaki and his staff, the film’s world isn’t only fluid and colourful, it looks good 33 years later. I especially like the designs on the non-human characters, particularly The God Warrior in the finale. That was legendary anime director Hideaki Anno’s first work in animation, and it’s impressive.

As for characters, none of them are “real” in ways that future Miyazaki casts are, but it doesn’t matter. They too fuel the film’s overarching emotion. When Princess Lastelle dies, for example, you feel it, despite her not being in the movie for long and having minimal lines. Asbel, while Nausicaä’s second-wheel for most of the film, ends up sympathetic because the film dictates it. I know that this feels an awful lot like cheap manipulation, but since the movie isn’t working on logic it’s hard to really fault it.

Perhaps the best example of the film’s emotional resonance is Nausicaä. There’s a growing trend in the anime community to label her as a shallow, Mary Sue gender-swap of Jesus, especially given how minimally-flawed she is and how she doesn’t change much. I don’t agree, even though the Jesus allegory’s intentional, because her character arc operates on emotion. She doesn’t change much, but her entire arc, small as it is, is learning to be the saviour that everyone else believes her to be. And it works.


That’s what makes this movie so great: it’s an example of the whole being better than the sum of its parts. That’s not to say that I’d excuse this angle from Miyazaki had he done it now, but for an ambitious second project that tackled environmentalism when the idea was novel, I’m really impressed. The Manga the film’s based on might also be more cohesive and fleshed-out, but I prefer Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as a film because it gets to the point and delivers an emotionally-satisfying whole.

Does this mean that the film’s flawless? No. Even on its own logic, the film starts unravelling in the finale. The God Warrior, while neat, is barely on-screen and feels wasted. And the ending is a cop-out. It may be another resurrection analogy, that’s a given when your protagonist is fantasy Jesus, but it ends without much of a wrap-up. In fact, not only does it wrap-up in the credits, which’d confuse anyone not familiar with how anime films are structured, but it’s a little too clean for my tastes.

As one last point, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’s emotionally-draining. I’ll forever attest that Hayao Miyazaki not draining like Isao Takahata, see Grave of the Fireflies or The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, but in terms of his own works, and in keeping with the film’s underpinning, there are so many moments of over-investment that you’re bound to be exhausted by the end. It’s something you have to experience in order to fully-appreciate.


Would I recommend Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind? Absolutely! It’s not Miyazaki’s smartest-written movie, nor would I consider it the best of the trinity, but its strengths overshadow any flaws it has. There’s a reason the film endures now, and it’s not because anime fans are annoying, but because it’s that good and paves the way for what to expect from the director. That’s also probably why it was screened on Toonami as part of A Month of Miyazaki.

And thus concludes the first part of my “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity” series. Join me next time as I tackle steampunk fantasy with Castle in the Sky. I’ll see you then!

Welcome to another entry in my “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity” series! For those who are new, feel free to read my previous entry on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Windhere. Anyway, onward! (Also, spoilers inbound.)



If Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind proved that Hayao Miyazaki wasn’t a one-trick pony with The Castle of Cagliostro, then Castle in the Sky (or Laputa: The Castle in the Sky, for those in non-English speaking countries) was proof that he was here to stay. In truth, this film strays furthest from what we’d typically expect while still being a Miyazaki movie…at least until The Wind Rises came out. It feels like a traditional action serial akin to Star Wars or Indiana Jones, but I’ll cover why shortly.

Castle in the Sky is the story of Pazu, a miner’s apprentice, and Sheeta, a mysterious farmer girl with a magical necklace, and their attempt to find a long-forgotten kingdom in the clouds called Laputa. For Pazu, the stakes are personal, as he hopes to clear his deceased father’s name. Sheeta’s motivations are less-clear initially, but it’s revealed that she's from the Laputian royal family. All-the-while, the two are pursued by a gang of pirates, led by Dola, and the military, led by Colonel Muska, both of whom wish to uncover Laputa for themselves. Being an action serial-type film, the quest is filled with mystery, action and whimsy.

I have an interesting relationship with Castle in the Sky. It was the second Studio Ghibli movie I watched following Spirited Away, as well as the first film of Miyazaki’s that I rented from my then-local Blockbuster, and I didn't know what to expect. Even with the introduction from John Lasseter of Pixar fame, because the man’s a huge Miyazaki fanboy, I wasn’t sure if this'd be a heist movie, or an epic fantasy. With the opening scene, I was under the impression that I was watching The President’s daughter and her secret service ambushed by pirates. It took a while to get a grasp of what’d happened, but it was nice to watch a movie without any idea of what to expect.


Like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky’s priorities aren’t in its narrative. The movie’s riddled with contrivances and plot-holes, most-notably how Pazu’s father died a liar if the evidence of Laputa’s existence was framed on his wall, yet none of it ends up mattering. Unlike Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, that has less to do with the movie being fuelled by emotion, although there’s lots to be had, and more with the movie being a typical 80's kid’s movie. It has all of the ingredients of one: high fantasy, the whimsy purposely kept vague, a villain with a deviously one-dimensional motive, goofy side-characters and corny one-liners that help cut the darker moments. In the vein of a traditional serial, the film’s also a clichéd Magoffin chase where you can guess every plot-beat the first time around, yet stay because it’s too much fun.

This is what baffled me most about Castle in the Sky initially. Up until that point, the only action serial Magoffin series I’d watched was Indiana Jones, and I remember being so bored by Raiders of the Lost Ark in high school that I fell asleep before the Ark of the Covenant was found. In my mind, every movie of this type was boring. So while Castle in the Sky wouldn’t have been made without those films, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it. Looking back, part of that probably was that, in true Miyazaki fashion, the film’s stakes in its Magoffin were kept small and personal despite the grandiose plot.

This is best-exemplified in the leads. Pazu’s no Indy, he’s a kid who wants to clear his father’s name. To him, Laputa represents redemption, an incredibly personal goal. Sheeta’s a descendant of Laputian royalty, giving her a connection to Laputa on a personal level too. Branching to the side-characters, their motivations aren’t big triumphs, but small ones; after all, Laputa has riches, so why not attain them? Even Muska, the film’s villain, only wants Laputa to fuel his megalomania, which is understandable given how he frequently mentions Laputa’s scientific knowledge.


It's these personal connections that make it easier for me to sympathize and relate to the protagonists. With Indiana Jones, he’s an adventurer who grabs relics to study. He has no real connection to them otherwise, and the films know this. So while they might be fun, I never feel an intimacy in my personal viewing. Castle in the Sky, on the other hand, has that intimacy, hence the investment.

It helps that the movie’s funny. Ignoring the added dialogue in the Disney dub, which I don’t mind, the film has many laugh-out-loud moments that work in context. I think my favourite is the brawl in the village, although Castle in the Sky also sneaks in a fart joke without it feeling cheap. It’s these tidbits that help keep it from being draining, especially since the movie can feel a little slow. Not to mention, they transition well into the film’s serious moments.

Because rest-assured, Castle in the Sky isn’t only whimsy. It can get pretty dark and serious too, especially in the second-half. I think the darkest it gets is in the third of its five major action sequences, i.e. the one with the robot blowing up the fortress. The scene’s a little over 12-minutes long, which is unusual for Miyazaki, yet it has plenty of “this got real” moments. It also successfully transitions to the darker tone of the movie’s second-half, which could’ve been bungled with a lesser director.


Castle in the Sky’s also beautiful visually. The budget’s slightly higher than Miyazaki’s previous work, but even with its shortcomings the movie looks gorgeous 31 years later. I especially like how the colour palate is bright and timeless. Many 80’s movies have that sentimental vibe that dates them visually, but this movie l looks like it could’ve come out today with some tweaks. Even the remasters haven’t detracted from how beautiful it looks, which isn’t an easy given that hand-drawn films don’t translate well to HD or 4K.

The music is excellent. It’s Joe Hisaishi again, and depending on your preference, be it synth or orchestration, you have two distinct ways to listen. My favourite piece is easily during the fortress fight, but there are enough great tracks that all of them are winners. They’re that good.

What makes Castle in the Sky fit well in “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity” is that it’s easily accessible to the uninitiated. Perhaps even more than Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. And I think part of this is because of how Westernized it is, borrowing a genre aesthetic, as well as classic references, from Western media. There’s Indiana Jones, but there are also nods to Jules Verne and Jonathan Swift, both directly and indirectly. It’s this Western appeal that makes the film an easy recommendation for friends and family members. I know because I've watched it with a few of my own.


And really, this is far more important than whether or not a film is ground-breaking. Because Castle in the Sky, even by 1980’s standards, is nothing new, being a child-friendly Indiana Jones with a tacked-on environmental message. That, and it can feel a little slow. But it’s great fun, easily my favourite of the trinity, and it’s easy to see why Toonami picked it for their marathon. I can’t recommend it enough.

That concludes the second part of my “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity” series. Join me next time as I tackle nature and environmentalism again with Princess Mononoke. I’ll see you then!

One thing I want to make crystal clear from the outset: I do not care about the original Death Note. The way certain writers apply chess-like logic to a real world that resists it with every fiber of its being bothers me, so the original work doesn't appeal to me, even when it went "insane." If you think this disqualifies me from doing a proper review, there are tens of other takes that may suit your fancy. Might I suggest this from one of the stable of reviewers who replaced the late Roger Ebert? I'm watching it for the same reason I watched Dragonball Evolution (While I'm alienating everyone, the only thing I care about in that entire franchise is Bulma's hairstyles): To see what mess white people adapting anime have gotten us into this time.



Coincidentally enough, Netflix Presents Netflix Original Film Death Note (Actual opening credit progression) begins with the exact same starting point Evolution does: Bullies. Seattle high schooler who looks like a 25-year-old Light Turner (Nat Wolff) is a whiz kid who copies his homework for about 15 other students on the football team. When Light tries to stop a bully shaking a classmate down for money, he gets a right cross to the face where a teacher finds him later, discovers the copied homework, and sends him to principal. In Evolution, Goku is taught to believe in nonviolence, so he gets his revenge by having his tormentors destroy their own car by trying to beat him up (In the movie's one good scene). This one has much more R-rated methods of vengeance.

It just so happens that day, a notebook labeled "Death Note" fell from the sky and into Light's possession. While in detention, he's visited by death demon Ryuk (voiced by Willem Dafoe with the exact flair you'd get casting Willem Dafoe as a death demon), who explains the features of Light's new book while freaking the kid out enough to trash the room (Light screams like Daffy Duck on fire in one of the movie's more amusing moments). The Death Note allows whoever uses it to kill whomever's name is written in it and select how they die as long as it follows the many many rules in the book that are skimmed over. He uses it to kill the bully who just happens to be outside assaulting someone brand new (They're in public at this point. Surely somebody's called the POLICE by now?). The bully's head is half-exploded by a ladder from a passing truck. The gruesome deaths and loose use of the F-word let you know this is for adults.



I will be tempted to use the phrase skimmed over far too many times in this review. We get a brief glimpse into Light's family life as he goes home to his police investigator father (Shea Whigham). His dad is simply wondering how he got into detention which turns to Light–and I'm just paraphrasing here–wondering, "Why did you let mom get murdered by a criminal?!" within 30 seconds. Holy shit, kid! That escalated quickly. Escalating faster is Light using the Death Note to kill the gangster that took his mother, literally using the entire setup to get a girlfriend (?!) in cigarette smoking cheerleader Mia (Margaret Qualley), and together making up a god named Kira who brings justice to the world's worst criminals. And it's extra wonderful because Light gets sex as frosting on the cake!

Four hundred deaths later (25 minutes in, by the way) and "Kira" has the attention of L (Lakeith Stanfield), an extremely eccentric man whose job as one of the world's greatest detectives pays enough to net a private jet on standby at all times and a helpful assistant named Watari (Paul Nakauchi) who micro-manages all of his awkward tics. He's narrowed Kira's location to Seattle and is working with Light's father, who is named to the Kira investigation squad. This becomes a bunch of "because the screenplay says so." Why is Light's father head of the investigation? Because he's a good investigator even though we never see any of it. The rest of the cops trash the father's office because they're perfectly okay with Kira making their jobs easy, though they never have any other problems working with him or L, a socially awkward jerk who isn't even on any local or federal payroll.

I'll stop with the blow-by-blow plot synopsis because you get the idea. For the fans of the manga and anime, this version likely will not work at all. I don't enjoy the original property much, but I understand its appeal as a carefully plotted cat-and-mouse game with huge stakes and morality debates (You know, until THAT twist). The Death Note of 2017 shrinks the main character from an antihero with a God complex to a doofus who starts all of this with good intentions matched with the need to get laid, getting in way over his head. If this didn't have worldwide ramifications like literally toppling dictators, this could just as easily be another cheaply-made monkey paw horror flick about a high school kid who'd better be careful what he wishes for. This even climaxes with prom. Okay, it's a winter ball (...on October 12th. That's homecoming. I know that and I'm almost 20 years free of high school), so the outside scenes can be in non-distinct darkness, but it has the same effect.



Director Adam Wingard (The Blair Witch remake) doesn't so much assemble a movie as bring jigsaw pieces from other puzzles and tries to make them its own picture. Most of these weird pieces involve L. Take his entrance into the film at an almost literal orgy of murder between two Japanese gangs. The scene takes place at a weird strip joint with naked bodies strewn about in bizarre locations, like people just shot up the fetish club from Matrix Revolutions. Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes and the guy with the best Godzilla gag in Austin Powers'Goldmember iteration) shows up for five seconds as a familiar face in a detective role and vanishes, much like the entire scene. L later has a press conference in a hoodie and mask to hide his identity and there's a blatant, intentional shot of him in front of the American flag. Did Banksy take over as director of photography for a moment?

The movie as a whole has a look and a feel in Seattle's dreary landscape, but all of it never stops seeming like a movie. The school Light attends is pristine and everyone wears outfits that look like they were just bought off the rack. They establish Light as living in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, but that's one SPACIOUS bedroom for pricey Seattle. I'd take Sound Transit rattling my dinner plates for that house! The details in the room are stock as well, giving us no insight into the characters except the very basics, again reminding me that all these places are sets. Even the over-the-top deaths feel too unreal when all of this would work better if it was more grounded and realistic instead of taking notes from M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening.



Yet, I don't hate this movie. Likely it's because I have no affection for the source material (Those who do and take it seriously will probably rage until they burn through the entire planet), but it's well enough made that I'm not suffering through it and its many misfires have a goofy charm. If I may say something it does much better than its live-action Japanese counterpart, it handles Ryuk impressively. He's held in the shadows with blazing eyes and a sadistic smile being the dominant features. It's effective rather than the Japanese live-action version being a distraction of special effects, and Willem Dafoe voices him to perfection. The cast is made up of talented people who more or less do their job, including Lakeith Stanfield's idiosyncratic L. Even Nat Wolff isn't so much miscast and his character is misplaced. He plays a high school schlub who does about what you'd expect when a guy such as him would get these powers and not realize maybe the girl who hooks up with him over smashing a guy with a SWAT truck doesn't have the best head on her shoulders (And their DUMB dialogue still fits along the lines of awkward, uncool teenagers trying to converse). He's simply in the entirely wrong movie.

My brain was firing in all the wrong ways during this flick, but at least I was interacting with it. There are timelines that don't match up, plot elements that are supposed to build off each other that collapse in on themselves, and strange choices. Light and Ryuk wreck the detention room he's in and the teacher in charge of it never comes back and gets him in further trouble even though he's the one kid in detention. People who are Death Note'd seemingly have a switch flipped in their head that goes to complete obedience mode and I never stopped wondering how that worked. Stanfield was in the brilliant Get Out, and that made me think if the real personality was repressed or if their subconscious does this without a thought, or whatever. Later in the movie, there are long-form death note situations where a guy has 48 hours to think, "Hmmmm, why am I going out of my way to betray the person most important to me?" The weird choices all go back to L, whose backstory involves the most convoluted way to make the world's greatest detectives. Why would you go through all of this mess just to make detectives? I don't know if that was in the original or not, but damn, Kinderheim 511 from the mange/anime Monster is telling you you're trying way too hard to make geniuses.



This all builds to the climax where the filmmaking is so off the rails, it's kind of awe-inspiring. The ticking timeline makes no sense for what's happening (A major story point occurs at 7 p.m. when the winter dance is already at full steam. Do the Seattle school districts want to make sure all these kids are in bed by 10?). The action spreads to the streets involving a stolen police car, and the roads on a Saturday night are surprisingly minimal with all the population hanging out in obviously Canadian alleys... except when it changes to a foot chase where suddenly the streets are jammed wall-to-wall. The music switches between Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" (Yes, the song from Top Gun) and composers Atticus and Leopold Ross doing their best Hotline Miami impersonation. So much chaos ensues in the last minutes (Set to a Chicago song from when the band had lost all edge) that the movie forgets Light threatens a guy with a gun and could be visibly blamed by multiple witnesses for the catastrophe that follows to no punishment. What else to do but end with an Air Supply song accompanying credits impersonating the opening credits to Seven with outtakes thrown in? Only the most logical of steps, if you ask me.

What we have here is a crappy cable movie that you'd catch in the middle of the night that's still shit, yet you find yourself watching it more than you should; maybe the occasional good reason, but mostly, all the wrong ones. The only difference is it's attached to one of the largest manga properties of the past 15 years. It's at least not Dragonball Evolution in feeling like a lazy 90's adaptation with no pulse, and it's not turning one of the most badass characters into a weaboo wank fantasy played by Scarlett Johansson as if her ZzzQuil just kicked in. Death Note is interesting in how it fails and I have no ill will to anybody involved with it.  If you're going to do an American Death Note movie that arbitrarily changes some of the main pillars of the franchise for poor reasons and transforming it into a high school melodrama, this is about as good as you can hope.

Welcome to the final entry in “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity”! For those who need some major catching up, my previous entries on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky are here and here. For everyone else, it’s time to officially wrap this up! (Also, spoilers inbound.)



If Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was Hayao Miyazaki’s big break, and Castle in the Sky was a continuation of that, then Princess Mononoke feels like a culmination of his life’s work into a giant, personal epic. It took well over a decade to complete, and while not my favourite of the man’s works, or even my favourite of his trinity, it definitely feels like his most-passionate to-date. This is because, despite being a relatively overdone topic by that point (environmentalism), the film takes an interesting angle on it.

Princess Mononoke is about Prince Ashitaka, an Emishi warrior whose arm is cursed after defending his village from a demon boar. The only way to lift the curse is to find the god of life and death, or Shishigami, and beg for its help. Because leaving his village is forbidden, Ashitaka goes into exile, whereupon he meets a town at war with the nearby forest. Said town is run by Lady Eboshi, an imperialist with a heart of gold, who’s constantly butting heads with San, a human raised by wolves. Thinking that mediating will win him favour, Ashitaka plays the part of peacemaker in the battle that’s yet to come.

One of the biggest compliments I can give is the Shintoist approach to environmentalism. The common flaw with environmental films is their heavy-handedness and lack of nuance. Not that this is always a bad angle, I like Avatar, but that ignores the reality that humans are important to the ecosystem. Princess Mononoke, while not subtle, acknowledges this, hence standing the test of time better than many environmental films released today.


Perhaps the best example is through its characterization of the humans and the animals. The people of Iron Town are dedicated and loyal, yet frequently act selfish when faced with external dilemmas. Conversely, the animals of the forest, majestic as they are, are violent and completely distrusting of humans. Even Lady Eboshi, who could be considered the film’s antagonist, is more tragic than anything, being forced to do villainous deeds as a result of blackmail. And the film shifts back-and-forth between humans and animals via Ashitaka’s, hence our sympathies are frequently in question.

This does, unfortunately, bring about one of Princess Mononoke’s biggest, flaws: because of the back-and-forth, we rarely get a chance to attach to any characters. The people of Iron Town blur together, while the animals of the forest mostly act the same. It becomes hard, therefore, to fully-sympathize with any one side. That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions, Toki and Kuroku are easy favourites, but it’s not enough.

The film also cheapens out slightly in its resolution. The film presents a secondary-antagonist, Jigo, to bounce off of Lady Eboshi and amp up the stakes. Jigo’s the puppet-master behind the assassination of Shishigami, yet aside from a moment of reflection, he never gets penalized for his behaviour. This wouldn’t be unfair had Lady Enoshi’s entire arm not been ripped off by the head of Morro, San’s mother, so it’s disappointing.


Fortunately, Princess Mononoke compensates with its feminist themes. Far too often, women in movies are relegated to side-characters and items of rescue, even in Japan. Miyazaki, and subsequently Studio Ghibli, is no stranger to empowering women, but it’s here that that comes out fully. Not only are the women of Princess Mononoke competent leaders and figures of power, but they frequently out-do their male counterparts. It’s a nice change of pace.

On the note of power, the weight of the violence is at full-force. Miyazaki, ever the one to show restraint even during fight scenes, doesn’t hold back on carnage and bloodshed here. People are maimed brutally, limbs are hacked-off and there's even a scene of a badly-injured Okkoto, the leader of the boars, vomiting blood after being injected with a iron ball. It’s quite a shock for those expecting children’s fare, making this the first, and possibly only, Miyazaki movie meant strictly for adults. If you don’t believe me, judge it for yourselves!

Princess Mononoke also boasts excellent music and animation. Joe Hisaishi returns yet again to score the film, and, despite having scored every Studio Ghibli-created Miyazaki movie, the years since Castle in the Sky have been kind to him. Gone are the synth jingles of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, instead replaced by a symphony. It’s music to the ears, and it’s wonderful. I’d even argue that the tracks are worth listening to solo, but that’s a subject for another day.


Of course, there’s the animation. Even after 20 years, the hybrid of cel animation and occasional CGI mesh beautifully. This isn’t easy given that the 90’s was a decade of experimentation with computers, and many attempts, even in anime, don’t hold up. My favourite example of this subtle integration of CGI is in the demon tentacles. They're so beautiful that you wouldn’t even know they weren’t hand-drawn if I hadn’t pointed it out.

So what makes this movie work so well, especially amongst the other entries in “Miyazaki’s Action Trifecta”? I think much of it’s in the way it presents in its story. If Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’s strength is emotional innocence and Castle in the Sky’s strength is familial accessibility, then Princess Mononoke’s strength is graceful maturity. It’s a common practice for adult-oriented animation to be edgy for the sake of shock value, pushing boundaries without needing to (see Akira), but this movie’s dark while never feeling a need to pander to its audience. That’s something I definitely appreciate.

Its underlying message is no different. Like I said, it’d have been really easy to ham-fist its message down our throats for shock value. Yet it doesn’t, instead taking its time to let the audience sympathize with its characters in spite of their horrible deeds. That alone is gutsy and difficult to pull off, and I applaud Princess Mononoke for doing so successfully. Especially since, at 134 minutes, it’s the longest Miyazaki film to-date.


Honestly, it’s the grace and maturity of the subject matter that makes this stand out. In an anime world filled with action, it’s nice to see something tackle environmentalism with grace. It’s not perfect, its ambition sometimes overshadows its storytelling, but I appreciate that it takes its time to tell a big story that simultaneously feels small and intricate. You don’t see many feature-length animations do that. It’s also a fitting entry in “Miyazaki’s Action Trinity”, as well as a well-earned choice for Toonami’s “A Month of Miyazaki” marathon. I highly recommend that you check it out.


And that about does it for my three-part analysis. As it currently stands, here’s my personal ranking of the three films I've discussed:

Castle in the Sky > Princess Mononoke > Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

This, admittedly, is all subjective, illustrating how worthwhile these films really are for any anime fan to watch, new and old-alike. So give them a watch/re-watch, and I’ll see you next time!