Wishing you all the best in your solstice orgies.
The end of an era
Well, Legend of Korra ended. The final finale for the fictional universe first depicted on Avatar: The Last Airbender has aired. What do I think about it?
I think it had a suitably awesome ending. No deus ex machina and an exciting use of the dubstep laser, so this is ahead of other Avatar finales.
I liked that Korra won not by beating up her enemy, but by being a better person. And let me get a hell yeah for our heroine not ending up with Mako (that was a close one) and walking off into the sunset hand in hand with her beloved.
Having said that, though, let’s not forget that another, more obscure and less noticed series ended as well. Yes, I’m talking about Argevollen.
You know, calling the finale of Argevollen good or bad implies that it could have ended any other way. I honestly don’t see how else the show could have ended and remained true to itself and its deliberately low-key approach. I mean, looked at what happened: the relationship between the two leads remains platonic, there was no giant battle, the angry rival dies in his suit without ever crossing swords with the hero, and a suicidal man gets talked down from his ledge.
It’s as if they tried to make the opposite of a typical giant robot anime. I hadn’t realized how entrenched the clichés were in this subgenre until I saw this finale. I seriously doubt Argevollen will be a big earner for its studio, considering how different it is from Valvrave and whatnot. I predict that the Blu-ray and DVD collections will end up remaindered and become collectors’ items among a very small subset of anime fans. I liked Argevollen, but I have to ask, how in the hell did this show get made in the first place?
Anime: the year that was
Okay, this video of basically every anime TV series that came out in 2014 is quite impressive in its breadth and its aesthetic unity. Props go to its obsessive creator. I think I only recognized maybe 2% of the shows that were featured.
There and back again
Ever watch the movie Primer, about a couple of engineers inventing and exploiting a time machine in their garage? Ever wonder what it would be like to see that seemingly-realistic depiction of science at work in an anime setting?
Because Steins;Gate has you covered. I like this series, which is actually an adaptation of a visual novel game – in essence, a Choose Your Own Adventure story with added pictures. And guess what? The translated version is available for digital purchase straight from the comfort of your couch.
The game is $30, though, so it seems that the Japanese haven’t gotten the hang of this digital pricing thing yet. Were it $5 I would seriously be tempted to get it. But hey, maybe there’ll be a deal there someday.
My thanks go out to Hanako Games for alerting me to this opportunity. I’m afraid I’m not going to buy Long Live the Queen as many reviews say that it’s too short, but I’ll keep an eye out for other games from this studio.
The superhero from apartment 23
Everyone, meet your new Jessica Jones: Krysten Ritter, the bitch from Apartment 23! And Michael Colter is the frontrunner for playing Luke Cage. I’m not familiar with him, but I lurve Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. Possibly Ritter may need to bulk up a bit to play our washed out superhero, but she’s certainly got the comedic timing for the funny bits, and her turn as Jesse Pinkman’s drug addict girlfriend in Breaking Bad shows that she’s pretty good at this drama thing too.
It’s interesting to look back on my posts about the TV adaptation of Alias. The earliest rumblings of such a thing were back in 2010, meaning that it took at least five years, and probably a bit more, to get this show from being a vague idea to something that shows up on your TV screen. I wonder, is that the normal development timeframe?
Anyway, I’m cautiously optimistic. I wonder who will play Daredevil and Iron Fist? Here’s hoping for more casting news soon.
The return of the king
A new version of King’s Quest is coming in 2015 . . . for the PS3 and PS4? What the hell?
My thoughts, in the order they came to me: First, the game studio Sierra has been resurrected and is making games again? Second, this adventure game franchise has been dead for like 15 years now. There are avid gamers of voting age who have never heard of these games. Third, all previous game are indelibly linked to the PC and it would be odd to play them with a controller. Fourth, I’m getting the awful impression from the trailer that this new game will be full of Quick Time Events – i.e., flashing prompts will show up on screen telling you to press up, press down, press R2, and do the hokey pokey, and god help you if you screw up because you’ll have to start all over again.
Boy, I’m just full of positive energy, aren’t I? I’ll allow that this might turn out to be a fun game, but unless it gets near-universally good word of mouth then I’ll probably never play it.
What particularly sucks for me is that apparently Telltale Entertainment, makers of The Walking Dead game, were in the midst of developing their own take on King’s Quest when they had to drop it and make way for this one. Ah, what might have been.
Morituri te salutant
I bought Dark Souls 2 over the weekend, and I’ve been playing it every day since. It’s quite fun.
Among many in the video game community, the Souls games are held up as the pinnacle of difficulty, with a typical playthrough resulting in at least hundreds of deaths for the player. I don’t really see it, though. My failures are the result of my miscalculations and are essentially just part of the learning process for a new player.
I do want to share my favourite story so far, which is about the first time my game got invaded. Other players may enter your game to help or hinder you, as they wish, and one such person did so to me. I was just minding my own business when someone glowing red showed up in my game. I bowed to him, since it seemed the polite thing to do, then he bowed back, then I stepped forward to get a closer look at him and he shot me in the chest with a crossbow. I didn’t know we were supposed to be fighting. He was classy about it and messaged me saying "Valar morghulis", so of course I replied back "Valar dohaeris" since no one is outdorking me.
Anyway, I also discovered this list of player names banned from Dark Souls 2. Players may choose the names of their characters, and if you’re familiar with certain parts of the Internet then you’ve already guessed that most of the banned names involve sex acts or are various synonyms for genitals. It’s kind of awe-inspiring that so much human creativity is expended on slipping obscenities into a video game.
Vox dei
I’ve been following the series When Supernatural Battles Were Commonplace. It’s okay. I like the premise of teenagers gaining superpowers for absolutely no purpose – no evil conspiracies to fight, no invading aliens, no villains bent on world domination. So they spend their time doing nothing of worth in their after-school literature club.
The group’s useless everyday conflicts, however, are not as engaging as I’d wish, so I’d say this is one of those nice but inessential anime.
Having said that, I quite like the work that the voice actress has been doing for Hatoko (the ranting girl in the cardigan), so I looked her up and she’s actually voiced a bunch of characters that I’ve liked.
Saori Hayami has done the voices for:
- Tsuruko from Anohana
- Yotsugi Ononoki from Monogatari (the corpse girl who kept saying “I said, with a posed look” after every sentence)
- Yukino Yukinoshita from My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
- Izumiko Suzuhara from Red Data Girl
The thing of it is that each character Hayami has voiced has sounded distinct from the others. I have to say that she’s quite versatile in her work.
Behind the scenes
I just came across this Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion run by Hiroaki Yura, the producer of Under the Dog. Basically, Reddit users ask questions and the person running the discussion answers. Obviously the person being asked is not obligated to answer all questions, but quite a lot of juicy dirt still manages to come out.
In this case, Yura doesn’t reveal much about the anime production process that should be too surprising for people familiar with how sausages get made in the entertainment industry at large. His description of the committee process for securing funding and approval for creative decisions, for example, sounds rather like the way studios send movies for endless rewrites and focus group testings and recasting. If you think about it, it’s bizarre that a bunch of beancounters should be the arbiters of expression, as if having lots of money is the most important criterion for creating art.
But that criticism of the present system of production is neither here nor there. It’s depressing, but the fact that the rich use their money to perpetuate their biases is not a revelatory observation.
What I did find interesting is the point that under the current production regime, anime with negative or tragic stories tend not to get produced. I hadn’t thought about it, but I haven’t seen a tearjerker anime show in a while. It’s all been happy and fun and affirming, and any sadness experienced are merely temporary setbacks or obstacles that the protagonist overcomes on the road to self-actualization.
Anyway, I’m still not convinced that Under the Dog will be all that, but it’s interesting to see that an insider to the anime industry is also sick of all the shows pandering to otaku.
High school of the dead
I just started watching Angel Beats. So far, I like it.
There are some obvious things to be said about this anime. It’s about immortal high school kids in the afterlife fighting against obliteration by an uncaring angel of God, so you could say that the series is like Battle Royale in being a metaphor for the extreme pressure placed on Japanese kids to excel academically. Or you could also point out that the show is a self-centred teenager’s fantasy about being in a world that revolves around their own person, with no parents around and with constant opportunity to star in rock concerts.
But all I want to say is that I enjoyed the second episode. I mean, the kids are so blasé about their immortality that they didn’t even bother to remember the death traps they set up in their own dungeon. The sight of heavily-armed civilians desperately fighting against a superior force recalls Iraqi resistance fighters, but the kids are too half-assed about their struggle to be taken seriously. Their own leader throws one of her own men down a bottomless pit for accidentally touching her butt, then solemnly intones “His was a noble sacrifice” when asked what happened to the guy.
After watching that scene, how could I not like this show? Hopefully the rest of the series is just as enjoyable.