#i really love this manga its so hokey

[blenselche]

chap 133 異世界美少女受肉おじさんと; ファ美肉/Fabiniku panel redraw for fun and also cuz BIG zim makes me laugh. original under cut.

@alt-zadr-b1tch3z day 1

fabiniku is a “man wishes to be a woman when he's drunk and it actually happens” adventure/romance/isekai manga jsyk

[paulisweeabootrash]

Pokémon 2.B.A. Master

I stumbled across a piece of weeb trash media I had heard of, but neither attempted nor expected to find.  And it’s a bit different.  Today, my friends, we are not doing an anime or manga, or even another novel.  We’re doing a tie-in music album, a American blatant cash-grab based on a Japanese franchise.  Oh no.  Oh yes.

Pokémon 2.B.A. Master (1999)

As a young weeblet, I was a regular watcher of the first two arcs of Pokémon (Kanto and Johto).  It was in both weekday and weekend timeslots, and never seemed to be broadcast in any sensible order, but I nonetheless watched it frequently and enjoyed it no matter how many times WB decided to rerun episodes I’d already seen.  At some point, this CD came out, and I remember seeing ads for it when it was new.  There were even televised music videos for a few of the songs, broadcast as a segment called “Pikachu’s Jukebox”. I never saw a copy of the album in person, and never expected to. Maybe it was one of those that you had to order by calling some number?  I don't remember (or, frankly, care enough to look it up).  Anyway, I recently encountered this in the small music section of a used book store, and I figured "why not?"  And the obvious answer is "most of the contents".

The cover, in addition to using proud and unironic Comic Sans for the subtitle "2.B.A. Master", boasts that the album contains both "Music From The Hit TV Series" and "10 Brand New Songs!"  The former refers obviously to the main theme of the show and every child's favorite mnemonic device, the PokéRap (or “PokéRAP” as it’s spelled for some reason?), but I'm not sure what the third song from the show is.  And again, I don’t care enough to look it up.  The important thing is, John Loeffler wrote all of them, and apparently an absurd number of other Pokémon-related songs.  The "Brand New Songs!" here are mostly new to me, and they’re... a doozy.  Except for the songs from the show, plus “Double Trouble” and maybe “Misty’s Song” if I want to be very generous, I am tempted to suggest you could get a similar musical experience in a shorter time by putting on an episode of Pokémon, playing a mix of Milli Vanilli and Boyz II Men songs over it, and banging your head against a wall.

1. Pokémon Theme

We begin with the extended version of the classic theme, this is a sure dose of nostalgia for anyone who watched the show.  It sounds, considering the release date, a little outdated — I get kind of a "Beat It" vibe, not from the melody, but from the instrumentation, combining 80s-gated drums and searing electric guitar.  But the theme, already one of the few TV themes out there I find enjoyable and not instantly forgettable, extends to a full length surprisingly well, avoiding getting boring or devolving into complete idiocy with lyrics.  I actually like this song as a song, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

2. 2B A Master

The instrumentation in this track is absurdly 90s, and again kind of Michael Jackson-y, but is interesting and varied, especially in the sudden attention-grabbing rhythmic change accompanying the line "the greatest master of Pokémon".  It shows better restraint in its use of things like record scratch noises and basslines running parallel to vocal lines that I find get really old really quickly.  I actually, on the whole, enjoy this song and think the music could have been the basis for something great.  “Could have” being the keyword.  Lest you think I'm going to give a rosy, loving review of this album, no, it quickly gets bad.  Some of the lyrics feel like such forced attempts to get Pokémon references in that I am embarrassed on behalf of the people stuck singing and rapping them, 20 years later.  It’s a waste of what could’ve been a fun funky song.  (Incidentally, why is the title of the song punctuated differently from the title of the album?)

3. Viridian City

The slide downhill continues.  What the hell is this song?  The lyrics are only marginally less stupid than the previous track, the music sounds like a keyboard "dance" preset, and it has a weird rapped/spoken "echoing" of sung lines it’s incredibly hard to imagine anyone ever liked.  Ugh.

4. What Kind of Pokémon Are You?

Third time's the charm, I guess?  After the previous two tracks tried and failed to force Pokémon-related lyrics that just don't work, this one at least manages to fire off a series of type-related puns.  The music, however, turns back towards gratingly boring (and for some reason, the bridge comes thisclose to ripping off "Eye of the Tiger"?).  Actually, no, hahaha, the lyrics remain very stupid, I think I'm just getting "ground down by a Marowak" by how bad the preceding tracks were.

5. My Best Friends

The parts move in unison too closely for my tastes, the lyrics are bland, the vocal arrangement makes it sound downright inappropriately dramatic, and what’s up with the bridge that veers off into doo-wop?  The main thing this song has going for it is the vaguely pleasant piano part in the verses, which really appeals to me (it sounds familiar, although I can’t place what specifically it reminds me of).  The melody of the chorus sounds even more familiar — so familiar in fact I'm starting to wonder if it's a copyright-violation-skirting ripoff of something famous. But otherwise, this is a solid “meh”, sounding like a boy band song that would only briefly have made the charts.

6. Everything Changes

And now we're back to impressions of Michael Jackson.  This one's instrumentation and mood and even bits of the melody are so him that I could almost believe you if you told me this was an outtake that didn't make it onto Bad. (Although the singer sounds less like Jackson the longer the song goes on.) The lyrics, although vaguely applicable to everything, are a welcome change from the previous few tracks by not feeling like Pokémon has been painfully shoehorned in... up until the part where a clip from the show plays during a break between choruses.  Ugh.  Could you really not come up with a better way to make this into a distinctly Pokémon song?

7. The Time Has Come (Pikachu's Goodbye)

Yuck.  The sentimental ballad (I want to call it a “power ballad”, but I’m unsure what exactly counts as one), as a general rule, is a fire hose full of melodrama best used for comedy.  I don't understand how songs like this have ever been taken seriously.  I would expect to hear this as the ending theme to a movie that tries to be a tragedy but can’t quite pull it off.

8. Pokémon (Dance Mix)

I assumed from the title that this was a remix of the theme song, but instead, it's just sort of a filler track...  It makes almost no impression on me at all, although I do enjoy the intro’s use of "backward-sounding" and morphing synths.  Otherwise, this is another track that sounds like it uses keyboard preset backgrounds.

9. Double Trouble (Team Rocket)

Okay, look, I can’t rate this one fairly.  The longest-running fandom-related internal conflict of my life has been whether I'd rather be James or have James as mai hasubando, and I love Team Rocket in general as comedy relief villains.  I used to enthusiastically perform their ridiculous introductory speech with a friend from band camp (I am even more of a geek than you thought).  This song actually bothers to be more specific in terms of its Pokémon subject matter, meaning this is finally a song about Pokémon rather than just a generic pop song with Pokémon flavor, and it uniquely is performed by voice actors from the show, namely those who played Jesse, James, Meowth, and Giovanni.  It really grates on me when the VAs talk over the singers, but unlike some of the other songs, it feels like it builds up and goes somewhere.  We have at least broken free from the boringness of the last few tracks, with almost industrial percussion and chromatic and sometimes dissonant bass and synth lines that really make it a solid villain song, even though it has a hokey “rap written by people who haven’t actually listened to any rap” feel.  And James’s absolutely ludicrous laugh will absolutely alienate who isn’t already a fan of the character, and most people who are, too.

10. Together Forever

The “disappointing imitation of Michael Jackson” theme returns, this time mostly in the voice.  It especially pops out at me with the pronunciation of "friend" as "fraynnnndah!".  Unfortunately, rather than trying to imitate Jackson’s songwriting again, this song seems to want to rip off Stock Aitken Waterman.  And it succeeds at that, too well, as it somehow manages to outcompete a song those writers wrote for Rick Astley to be the worst song with this title.  Also returning here: the use of clips from the show to clumsily force an otherwise generic song to be Pokémon-related.  Hooray.

11. Misty's Song

Huh.  Now this one is interesting.  Buried deep in the album, we get something from a character POV that doesn’t just set trivia or quotes from the show to music.  Yvette Laboy does a believable job filling in as the singing counterpart for Rachel Lillis's speaking voice for Misty, and I just don't find it nearly as ridiculous as the other ballads on the album, for some reason. It even portrays a tsundere as insecure rather than just an obnoxious walking trope!  Sure, it's not great, but it's not bad either, especially after the other attempted ballads on here.  Until you remember that it's a 14-year-old singing a love song to a 10-year-old, which... ick.  It could've been sweet if put in the mouth of another character with a more age-appropriate relationship. Anyone want to rerecord this as “Kaname's Song” or something?

12. PokéRAP

Oh, educational rap.  Why?  It’s just unbearably cheesy and doesn’t seem to have had much thought put into it, as a general rule.  And this song is no exception.  Sure, I guess it has value as a mnemonic exercise (and it does a decent job of that, as anyone who still has large chunks of it memorized can tell you), but no value as music.  It often doesn’t even come close to rhyming where you’d expect it to, and it's obvious that Loeffler et al weren't sure what to do with a few of the names at all — Grimer and Chansey have egregious pauses after them, for example, and Omastar is stretched across space enough for two or three names for no good reason.  It is broken into convenient-sized stanzas that are only somewhat awkwardly forced into the established meter, but that meter has a too-regular feel, bouncing like a musical Superball, that even I, someone with no particular knowledge of nor interest in rap, recognize as being cheesier than Vanilla Ice.  It also hasn’t aged well.  The sung parts have absolutely no dynamic range and stay at MAXIMUM DRAMA LEVEL at all times.  Over the past 20 years, the lyrics have also become obsolete due to the many additional generations of Pokémon media and consequently much longer list of Pokémon to memorize.  Those topics have been covered in excruciating detail by Brian David Gilbert, who is much cleverer than I am, and yes, I do highly recommend sitting through that entire half-hour video.  All I can really add to that is, it's considerably less annoying than certain other mnemonic songs I was exposed to growing up. A bad song, unless you’re viewing it through sheer unfiltered silliness?  Yes.  A surprisingly catchy song that was a good marketing move?  Also yes.  And 20+ years later, I still can't avoid laughing at the way he says "Wartortle".

13. You Can Do It (If You Really Try)

The album could've gone out on that upbeat note, but no, they had to go for another overblown ballad, this time trying far too hard to be inspirational.  The plus side is, it's not yet another generic 80s/90s pop song.  The minus side is, it sounds like something that would be playing on the PA in a church thrift store.  Or a fake ad on an episode of SNL.  I do not feel empowered by this level of unironic encouragement.  I just feel like my eyes are rolling so hard they'll fall out.  Its only saving grace is that it’s somehow not the most irritating inspirational ballad from the late 90s that was used in connection with a geek-magnet TV show.

Overall... Although I want to describe the music as being "generic" — and it is full of the tiredest parts of 80s and 90s music, wandering from orchestra hits to record scratch noises to cutesy synthesizer "dings" to what seem to be several different singers' bad Michael Jackson impressions — some of it is actually interesting!  See, no matter what impression you got from what I said above, I don’t categorically hate this style of music.  I made multiple comparisons to songs from Thriller and Bad because I think most of the songs on those albums are examples of how to do this genre very well.  But 2.B.A. Master doesn’t just lag because I’m comparing it to widely-beloved albums.  Writing this review actually sent me introspecting for quite a while about what music I enjoy and why.  And I realized, many of the cheesiest and most flawed aspects of this album are also present on less-acclaimed albums I enjoy very much, like the niche The Golden Age of Wireless by Thomas Dolby and the virtually-unknown Playgrounds ‘n’ Glass by Urban Blight.  But, while Dolby’s music often has the same cheesy synthesizer voices and lack of dynamics or has weirdly melodramatic moments, it’s also often clearly experimenting with particular effects and techniques, and his lyrics have evocative images or stories that make the songs really engaging.  And, while Urban Blight’s lyrics are often cliche-ridden or downright idiotic, the 80s/90s pop music instrumentation and style elements are varied and used with... for lack of a better term, more discretion, I guess?, which makes me feel like their songs are building to something musically.  Well, except the song “Favorite Flavor”, which is just garbage.

The point is, while neither of those examples is a great album (at least not to my taste, which I freely admit colors this), they are both still good.  Unfortunately, while some songs on 2.B.A. Master approach goodness, they are the exception, not the rule.  Most of the music is simple and predictable and seem to use the more grating tropes of the time like orchestra hits and record-scratch noises just because they can, and most of the lyrics are less "song about Pokémon" and more "attempts at being vaguely inspirational with Pokémon references forced in uncomfortably".  Some of the songs are enjoyable in a "this was an earnest attempt” and/or guilty pleasure sort of way (and I unironically like the B-52s, so believe me, I know "this was an earnest attempt” and/or guilty pleasure music), but there’s very little on here I’d actually call good.  The best track here musically, “2B A Master”, is wasted on blah lyrics, and the one that most accomplishes the goal of being a song about Pokémon, “Double Trouble”, suffers greatly from its speaking-over-the-singers vocal performance.  All I can say is, I’m glad I got this album used.

-----

W/A/S Scores: 3/0/7

Weeb: The lyrics require some prior specific knowledge of the Pokémon anime to not be completely baffling, but Pokémon is probably the most well-known and well-entrenched Japanese franchise on this side of the Pacific, and other than that, it’s decidedly American, or at least decidedly within the musical cultures of Western Europe and the Anglosphere.

Ass: No.

Shit: AAAAAAAAH.  Okay, okay, no, seriously, there are a few good points, but it’s at best average-quality 90s pop with a veneer of Pokémon over the top.

-----

Oh Weird: While writing this and hunting down appropriate links, I was surprised to see how many uploads of, and even covers of, songs from this album there are on Youtube.  I assumed this album was a more or less forgotten piece of bad 90s media, but apparently it’s one with a significant fanbase.

Oh Cool: Maddie Blaustein, the original English-language voice actress for Meowth was also a comic editor and writer for both Marvel and DC and the Creative Director for the Weekly World News. Oh, and she was intersex and, according to one of the sources cited by the Wikipedia article, bi.

Oh No: Educational rap is still a thing, and there are resources to make your own.

[demyrie]

I'm curious but why did you delete JAM? It was one of my favorite JxD fics and I never got to finish reading it.

ahhhh oh dear, yeah, that happened.

So, for everyone arriving, I wrote a fic called Just Another Mission for the Jak and Daxter game series, and Jak/Daxter pairing. Yes, the green haired elf protag with the fuzzy orange thing, which btw used to be a human and was a human in fic. I think I started it when I was maybe 14 (yikes omg) and a few years ago, I deleted it, and I don’t delete fics.

Rant and personal history ahead, but tldr; i deleted this particular fic because:

1) I became more and more uncomfortable with the way I’d treated certain characters without giving them respect or resolution (throwing around things like domestic abuse while being too young to properly understand What I Was Doing or How to Answer Very Triggered Friends Who Had the Misfortune of Reading This I’m So Goddamn Sorry, as well as falling into that Not Like Other Girls slash fan ditch of treating female characters like shit/obstacles to the main pairing WHICH IS JUST ******) as well as personally uncomfortable portrayals of obsession and taking advantage of people that turn my stomach to this day (see reason 4)

2) i got way in over my head with my own writing/style which was so obtuse and self-indulgent that I felt a great amount of shame over it, including the attention it had gotten, and the way it went to my head and turned me into an egotistic little shit. I was an asshole peacock and I regret it. There was a break where I got waylaid before the final confrontation in the fic (see reason 4, also a very bad time to get held up in any narrative) and when I returned to the story, i nearly cried because it was such a mess and I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. Finishing it was a struggle and I even remember one JnD fan friend being like “hey this chapter seemed really curt??? short?? not like you” and I was like YEAH THATS NOT ME ANYMORE god i hope

3) there was a sort of ... anti-JxD surge in my little pool from people I really respected and it made me think i was doing something wrong even just remembering it, so I cut off that memory.

4) it coincided with two ugly relationships in my life that marred it, and I just wanted it gone for my own mental health.

So anon, I’m very sorry that you never got to finish it. I had good intentions in mind and gave them a happy ending where they realized they loved each other, even if the journey there was difficult. 

It both touched me and broke a piece of my heart when someone came to me years ago and asked me why I had deleted it, saying the story had given them the courage to come out as gay to their family. In that moment, overwhelmed with how ProblematicTM the whole story was, I was really struck with just ... how subjective our world experience is, and how so many things can mean so many different things to every single soul and how terrifyingly VALID peoples experiences are, no matter how they come by them. We’re all so unique and convoluted, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure -- and one man’s trigger is another man’s key to Becoming. But no matter how inspiring, I couldn’t bring myself to repost it. 

Hopefully this will be the only fic i ever delete with relish. Jak and Daxter will always be a good memory for me, regardless. Thanks for the ask, anon.

(even more) personal stuff below the cut. tw for stalking, harassment, manipulation and emotional abuse.

So.

Im a firm believer in stories living beyond their authors (something that JK rowling doesnt seem to understand iykwim). I don’t normally delete past works, because while I wrote them, I also know that they’ve outgrown me as most narratives do: people are absolutely allowed to enjoy what they want to or need to, not just because I think said thing is reflective of my current work or jives with my current stage of life. 

However, JAM was a particular Thing that Had to Go.

The timeline is hella fuzzy to me because I’ve blocked a lot of it out, but I was coming out of middle school and struggling with my mental health. On the real life side, I was stuck in a situation with a close friend of mine who was very fixated on us being in a relationship and the pining was loud enough to hear from the other side of the country. Wounded people pleaser that I was, I flipped (exhaustingly) back and forth between “i dont like you like that” and “but I want you to be happy so what if I tried liking you like that?” and there was massive amounts of hidden hurt and resentment and tension and abandonment complex activation and just ... a strangling of anything that made our friendship good for either of us. 

Also she was a she. So. Yannoe, gay is difficult.

This definitely burnt me out on the “best friends pining” trope and is probably legit the ONLY reason I’m not equally in the erasermic and erasermight camp haha. That trope feels claustrophobic and draining to me, so I leave it for others to enjoy.

It also coincided with a married 45yo adult man luring me into a “platonic, ecstatic, boundary-breaking, you-are-my-beautiful-young-muse, words cannot express how much I love you” creative type relationship that inevitably turned possessive, domineering and manipulative. Within the bounds of the Renaissance Faire community, I thought he was a safe person and he was not, and his constant reassurance that I wasn’t like other women my age was absolutely hypnotizing to a undeveloped soul who really, really wanted to be special.

We traded poetry and tarot card readings over email. He bought me manga and shared stories about his time overseas and in the service. He made me props to go with my renaissance faire character and showed me where to find cheap leather so I could piece things together myself.

He also stalked me and owned me for the better part of a year and I only realized it once he started harassing a dear friend of mine overseas, whom I was visiting, about a package that he’d sent, which apparently he’d covered in original poetry to let me know how much he loved me But Not In a Hetero or Sexual Way Bro, so of course he didn’t want it to get lost in the postal system. So what is he going to do? Note my friend twice a day asking if its arrived until she inevitably, tearfully spills that this guy is stressing her out and who is he anyway?

My horrible secret was out, which only sounded horrible when I explained it to someone else. I realized this man was trying to follow me wherever i went and I got so fucking angry that he was messing with my friend that I had to stop it.

(He called me a cunt when I broke it off with him on the phone in the dark on the floor of my bedroom in the middle of the night so my parents wouldn’t hear, then sobbed and said he was sorry. I was so dissociated from the rush of anger and helplessness that it took for me to actually MAKE the call that all I could do was wiggle my foot and watch it in the reflection of the mirror on the back of my door, and think maybe I was a cunt but I wasn’t his cunt anymore. So there. 

Afterward I slammed my forehead into the mirror a few times to make sure I’d actually done it and it wasn’t a dream.)

During all of this, I was writing this stupid fic. I think. Honestly, I don’t fucking know, but I can’t think of it without thinking of him and how i was devoured.

The stress of hiding this “totally wonderful but NORMAL PEOPLE DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT WE HAVE!!!!” grooming shit from my parents was gutting me alive, and I was so far gone RE: worthiness/autonomy that I didn’t even consider why I BOTHERED diffusing his petulant accusations over notes on deviantArt again and again as he baited me into shit just to explode over how I didn’t love him and I figured out another way to soothe his engorged and tarry ego without explicitly lying that I loved him too. 

He made me regret my silver tongue and way with words as I used it to defend myself again and again, and crushed my love of writing. I would pace the neighborhood for almost an hour several times a week, claiming I was ‘exercising’ but really trying to understand why i felt so trapped, or where the lines between love and hate lay, or why I wanted to cry all the time, as i low key tried to get hit by a car just to force something to change in my life and jolt me out of his smothering, needy nightmare of constant texting and emails and notes. I couldn’t fucking flinch without him knowing about it, and asking me if I was okay. For this reason, I react very poorly to people fretting over me at length, and loudly. I get angry and feel violated, or just pinned to the floor by someone Performing their love on me with no real regard for my health.

This whole time, I was escaping into fandom. It probably saved my life, in one way or another, because I found friends who supported me and made me laugh in the JnD sphere. Especially the friend whose distress caused me to snap and realize This Couldn’t Continue.

This terrible man was the first one outside of my friend group that I showed my writing to, the first adult as well. It was on the dark side even then, but he said it was wonderful and amazing. He teased me for being stuck up in my authors notes on JAM (one of the reasons I’m just getting over ... talking ...) but said it inspired him to start writing as well. He used that writing to imagine hokey sprawling stories of him being a hot rod racer and me being his sexy girlfriend, Very Totally in Love. Why Couldn’t We have Just Met in a Different Lifetime??? not that its a relevant question for my young 16yo friend lol just something dreamers wonder lol lol here why don’t you take this traditional irish engagement ring aka claddagh i bought for you, lie to your parents and say I bought one for everyone in our renfaire group, and turn it toward your heart, to imply that you’re in love, so that I can keep your heart safe for you until you find a boyfriend?

FUCKER YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKER ok I’m done. Fuck.

JAM was a project of mine that spanned a year or two and is intrinsically tangled in those very bad relationships and very bad lessons. I deleted it because I needed to, for purely personal reasons beyond the fact that it was generally bombastic, over-long, tone-deaf and dealt with very serious issues poorly. Due to these experiences, you won’t catch me in a hot minute writing either best-friends-pining or heavy jealousy/possessiveness fic, but everyone else? Go crazy just tag your shit.

so. anyway. isn’t subjectivity actually terrifying? You never know what something can mean to someone else. So just ask, maybe.

Damn, son. Some fics you just can’t repost.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Haddock’s FMA Live Action Thoughts (Part 1)

I live and breathe Fullmetal Alchemist. Specifically, the manga and Brotherhood. I’ve never actually watched the 2003 anime, because by the time I entered Arakawa’s great world, FMAB was already out and I could enjoy the story exactly the way the author intended. I adore the characters, marvel at the plot structure, howl at the humor, and constantly glean the text for its infinite parallels, allegories, and subtleties. When I tell people FMA is one of the greatest stories in human history, I damn fucking mean it.

I went into the FMA live action hearing mixed to negative reviews from most of my friends. I am thankful for those forewarnings, because then I could go into the movie with the knowledge that I wouldn’t get The Perfect Story (TM) Arakawa envisioned... and leave myself to try to casually enjoy new experiences.

Personally, I come out with a mixed-to-positive perspective of the movie. I’ll go into depth about why I feel this, including all of its spoilers, but I’ll give the quick, clean rundown now.

Biggest Cons:

Odd, unnecessary changes to the plot.

Some areas of costuming. Coming to mind are Ed’s hair, Winry’s skirt, and Envy and Gluttony’s looks.

Acting. Lots of characters were mediocre actors. Some were bad, like Cornello and Winry.

Biggest Pros:

The scenes that harked closest to the manga and Brotherhood.

The special effects.

The settings and scenery!

Now, below the Read More, my thoughts in more depth. I’ll arrange my sections by topic. 

In Part 1 here, I’ll talk about Casting/Acting, Scenery/Setting, Special Effects, and Character Portrayal (including Feminism). 

In Part 2 here, I cover the topics of Plot Changes, Heart/Intent, and... last... because I always love to go out happy and positive... My Favorite Things about the Live Action.

Frankly I could talk about each of these sections in depth... but I’ll try to be semi-brief. And pigs will fly and Ed will drink milk before I’m ever ACTUALLY brief.

Casting and Acting

By and large I found acting to be the weakest part of the FMA live action (It’s tied for worse with how plot changes were handled). I’m pretty sure acting is the reason why some of my friends said they were unable to finish watching the movie. Overall, I found the acting to be insufficient, usually in the sense that it was obviously unnatural and acted, or that it was overdone.

Now, I’m not going to be one of those people complaining about kids being imperfect actors. Kids are kids. It’s not the simplest thing to find a great acting kid. The little boys for Ed and Al got the job done, and the girl for Nina was pretty darned cute. Give the kids love, please.

Adults, I’ll be perfectly honest... almost everyone in this movie could have done a much better job.

Bad Acting

The characters whose acting bothered me the most were Cornello and Winry. That was bad acting. Winry was highly overacted and nothing was authentic about how she responded to situations. Cornello appeared rather hokey. As harsh as it sounds, I admit there were only a few rare times that I was appreciative of Winry’s appearance in the film, and for the most part, I really could have (and would have preferred to have) done without her. Okay, okay... sorry... I didn’t like her acting at all and it bothered me tons.

Mediocre Acting

I’d say the majority of the actors fall into the mediocre range of the spectrum. They weren’t great actors, and there were a number of scenes that they didn’t wholly sell. Well... I think most scenes they didn’t sell it completely, and I could always feel the “acting” part of the “acting.” But there were enough areas where I was fine letting it be. 

To take one character as an example, Ed tended to be overacted during dramatic moments when he had to yell, such as when he found out that the Philosopher’s Stone’s main ingredient was human souls. However, he never quite bothered me either. I’d get that uncomfortable, “Hm, that’s not good acting,” sense, and then brush it off and keep watching my Ed on screen. I’m someone who can let some things slide in quality so long as I can appreciate the overarching product, and the live action’s mediocre acting is one of those things I could overall let slide. And there were moments that our Ed did a good job, too, such as when Ed was crying pretty hard at the very end. I mean, that felt like quite the authentic cry. I liked that.

Best Acting / Casting

I’d put Lust, Al, and Mustang in the mediocre --> good range, where I feel like they did their job better than most. They never felt “off” in their acting. But I could have used more from them. In one large sense, I feel like “more” could have been had with a little better directing, better dialogue/moment choices, and better back-and-forth with other casting?

The best casting for characters was Shou Tucker, Maes Hughes, Riza Hawkeye, and Tim Marcoh. Those four characters, when they were on screen, just resonated exactly what those characters should look and act like. I mean... just look at that screencap above from Hughes. That is fucking FMA. And when they had their big moments and acted them out, I was nodding and saying, “Yup. That’s them. That’s them all right.”

Setting and Scenery

Oh yes. The setting! The scenery! The visual background! Huge plus. The scenery in the live action was spot on for me. Very often, the setting visuals were exactly what I would envision of manga turned to film.

This is totally Resembool and the Eastern Amestrian countryside. The fact that this was the opening shot of the film and was exactly what Resembool looks like... well, it gave me a big grin. Extra points for doing the same overhead camera angles of the rolling hills and railroad tracks we always see in FMAB.

(FMAB E46 for comparison)

On board with Reole and thought it looked great, cool vibe to it. I could excuse the presence of palm trees for its neat architecture and look.

(FMAB E3 for comparison)

And... ummmm YEAH that’s East City!!!

(FMAB E4 for comparison)

And talk about Marcoh’s place feeling exactly the same. Some variation in things like door color? Sure. But the same vibe and overall format? Abso-fucking-lutely.

(FMAB E6 for comparison)

Even when there was some unique variation to a location, it still looked nice and right in line with the FMA world. For instance, Shou Tucker’s house, we didn’t see a large library with rows and rows of shelves... but the large, fairly-nicely-decorated building overflowing with books and laboratory equipment gave quite a great Tucker residence vibe, and I rather liked it.

Now, I’m no expert on historical accuracy of the props compared to the time setting FMA mimics, but for a lay audience viewer’s eye like mine, I really liked what I saw. 

Oh, and good variety of colors and visuals throughout the movie. I hate when movies try to be edgy and make everything gray or dark.

Not going to lie, I’d say this movie is worth watching just to see these scenes from the pages turn to life in a live action setting.

Special Effects

I got very mixed reviews from url and irl friends about the special effects. I had lots of people say they were bad, some people say they were great, and others saying that at the very least I should appreciate Al.

And yes, let’s appreciate Al. Because lots of the BEST screencap moments in this film are when it’s a close-up on Al.

As far as the rest of the visual effects are concerned... I’m in the mixed-to-positive perspective, myself. I’d say that 80% of the special effects were fun and good for me, 20% passable or off.

I’ll admit I’m usually the last person to notice if special effects are outdated or wonky. Lots of people will complain about special effects in a movie, I’ll go see it, and think, “What the fuck is wrong with it?” Other times, I’m forgiving about imperfect CGI and don’t care about its lack of 100% realism. Why should we expect every studio to have an unending Hollywood budget for CGI?

When the boys were transmuting their mother, them flying through the air looked very off and fake. The dolls were extremely obviously CGI, but they’re supposed to be creepy and off-putting anyway, so I couldn’t care too much. But Lust and Roy moments were quite fun, Truth was a cool interpretation, the chimeras in their cages were good, the alchemy was all in the nature of the manga, and I think overall the CGI worked.

And seriously, this FMA movie requires *SO MUCH* CGI... you really gotta give them credit for doing as much as they did!!! Seriously, wow. It’s got to have been a lot of work. And it works!

“Perfect” CGI? No. Something I can work with? Yeah, totally. Especially since I was a kid before CGI was cool and everywhere. Remember when Toy Story was state of the art animation? I think this looks pretty cool!

Character Portrayal

Not all aspects of a character in a long series can enter a short movie. That’s the nature of the different genres. A movie can capture the essence of a character, shine light on some facets, and make passing references to other facets, but there’s obviously much more limited space working with a two hour movie versus dozens of show episodes or thousands of pages. Even FMAB has to do a slight amount of reduction, or portrays characters in a slightly different light... Roy and Al are subtly more favorably depicted in FMAB, we lose almost all of the cat jokes, there’s nothing about the miniskirt army, we skim over Yoki’s origins, Youswell characters are lost, some characters’ motivations and plans are cut out, etc.

So in the FMA live action, I didn’t expect to get everything. I was going to be fine if they got the overall essence of my beloved personalities (or even part of their overall essence!). I was even fine if they cut out certain characters for the sake of streamlining the plot, so long as it was done respectfully, kept the overall flow and heart of the story, and didn’t cut quality in narration.

That said, I’d say it’s a mixed bag about how successful they ended up being pulling characters onto screen. I don’t hate it, but there are many areas easy to constructively criticize.

Deleted Characters

I think, by and large, I’m mostly okay with which characters were deleted, when I think about the concept of deleted characters in general. Considering that a movie is so much shorter than a television series, I understand needing to streamline plot and make cuts. Sometimes cuts means scenes. Sometimes cuts means characters.

Omitting Bradley was a bad choice, in my opinion. He’s technically “easy” to cut away plot-wise in the first third of FMA, as easy as some of the other characters they’ve cut... but it comes at the cost of reducing narrative efficacy beyond Bradley, too. Bradley’s integral to the concept of Amestris and the conflict of the story. He’s the leader of the country. He’s a homonculus. His seat is Mustang’s goal. Without Bradley, the most the FMA live action could do was make a few vague comments about Roy wanting to climb the military’s ranks. Without Bradley, the talk of internal conspiracies and who to trust didn’t have much grounding. And all that’s really not the point of Mustang, Mustang’s character, or the issue with Amestris. Seriously, at the very least, it would have been better to give Hakuro’s extended part partially to Bradley. And I can think of many other better ways to have worked Bradley in. He didn’t need to be in lots of scenes... but... the story needed a lot more of the sense of Amestris as a military state and who the leader of that military state is. 

Note: There’s definitely bias in what I’m saying here about omitting Bradley being a bad choice (as versus, like, Scar), but I still am going to believe that the movie would have been better with even a little Bradley.

Scar’s not the best choice to delete, obviously. That said... I’m mostly fine with Scar being deleted, despite the fact he’s such an integral personality in FMA, even more integral to the first third of FMA than Bradley is. The reason for my “being fine” is not because of scenes (I would have loved the scene where Scar, Armstrong, Al, Ed, and Mustang encounter each other on the streets???). The reason is because I wanted to avoid controversy. I feared there’d be a race and ethnicity debate from a live action Scar portrayal, such as if his actor were pale skinned like the other Japanese actors in the movie, or they used makeup to make him darker skinned. Scar’s absence in the live action prevents any such uncomfortable possibility. He’s a major, important character, yes, and a bad choice to delete. But........... I could see how they could swing the story without him, if the writers were very (very, very) careful. And I do think regarding this aspect of the live action, they managed to do that.

Alex Armstrong is someone who I feel is a memorable, token character of FMA, unusual to be absent from the live action. He could have at least made a quick appearance like Maria Ross did. He might have been better to include over someone like Cornello. At the same time, I can see how, for the sake of time, Armstrong could be considered a character to be cut. He’s not the first person I’d cut myself, but I can see the reasoning. I can get behind it with a shrug.

Alex is far less of an issue than Scar, so yeah. I really can’t protest to that.

Barry, I miss him, but I think they did a good job with giving his lines about false memories to Shou Tucker instead. That worked. And I didn’t expect to see people like Pinako, Rose, Garfiel, Paninya, or Brosh, anyway.

Here’s the thing... though...

Here’s the problem with all of this.

If the writers hadn’t changed the plot of FMA, instead sticking to the manga...

...they wouldn’t have needed to delete almost ANY of these characters.

The rest of Team Mustang could have been easy background characters, no sweat to incorporate. Drop a few names in there, one or two lines to someone named “Fuery” instead of a random MP... tada. Same thing with Brosh and Sheska. Have them walk by. All the fighting between Roy, Envy, Lust, Ed, Al, Tucker, and Hakuro at Laboratory Number 5 could have been reassembled to be Roy, Lust, and Havoc again (and frankly been more dramatic, climactic, and less convoluted). Scar? Easy. He’s a BIG deal in the story. Bradley? Easy again. Yay. Maybe some challenges with Greed and his gang... but still. You could do a lot better by hugging the manga more closely.

If they had stuck to the original story and made a movie incorporating Chapters 1-39 directly, they wouldn’t have had to do any of these deletion choices at all.

Deletions should be to amplify the story and make it streamlined. But the deletions in the FMA live action did the opposite. It resulted in things being more convoluted, less clear, less natural, and minor characters being amped up to fill in the gaps.

First, you can feel the absence of the other characters because of how much they tossed to Winry. I know the underlying reason why they wrote Winry this way. She’s a well-known and remembered FMA character, they couldn’t delete her. But it’s hard to incorporate said well-known character when she’s out of the action in Resembool or Rush Valley. So letting Winry travel around with Ed and Al is a simple way to bring her more centrally to the plot and include someone they feel could not be forgotten. The problem is that I don’t think amping up Winry’s role worked at all. It felt contrived and odd, like she was just tacked on without explanation to create a trio. She ran around, talked, but didn’t contribute hugely. You got her more lines, yes, congratulations. But you didn’t make anything newly successful that way.

And here’s the kicker: the live action amped up several characters’ participation because of the absence of others. The goal? To try to make a central antagonist our heroes could defeat in the first third of the FMA story. They made Shou Tucker into a bigger villain so that he was a central problem start to end. They had quite a bit of liberty with Hakuro - again, so we could have a start-to-end villain who is taken down at the end. I see the logic. But again, they didn’t need to do that.

We had Lust, Envy, and Gluttony already! And, if you hadn’t deleted him, Scar!

(That same sort of unnecessary take-and-give happens in the rest of the plot, too, as I’ll talk about more specifically later in Part 2).

Accuracy of Characters’ Personality Traits

The live action’s character portrayal wasn’t perfect. It’s not something that offended me or put me off, but it was something I noticed. Ed could have been more fiery and grumpy, to give one example. Still, since they showed off some of his quirks like his sprawled-out sleeping, his hate of being called “short,” and his fury toward human cruelty... I was fine enough with Ed being as he was. You didn’t get all of his essence, but it worked enough.

I think where you notice the character portrayal being the most of a subset, the most narrowed, is with Mustang.

Roy Mustang is shown only his cold, serious side in the live action. It’s not an incorrect interpretation of his character, but it’s also far from complete. They wouldn’t have needed to do much to make it complete. It wouldn’t be hard to slip in a few flirtations. It wouldn’t be hard for Roy and Ed to actually bicker like six year olds in a scene or two. It wouldn’t be hard to portray Hughes and Roy’s friendship better. The narrowing thus felt slightly odd.

That said, I was fine with the idea of Roy being shown only his serious side. Again, I know that movies only show so much, and Roy’s serious side is a cool side of Roy. But I wanted that serious side in line with Arakawa’s character. What they did was take Roy’s coldness and his part at odds with Ed... and actually pull it to the point he says a few lines and does a few things that aren’t in line with his manga/FMAB personality. It’s like they slightly misread his personality when they wrote the script. In the live action, he straight out tells Ed to obey the military and almost obstructs the Elric brothers from their goal of searching for a Philosopher’s Stone. He almost seems borderline suspicious of his good friend Hughes. And it’s Hakuro of all people who decides to hook the Elrics up with Shou Tucker.

They do these changes to try to incorporate their own plot. Show Roy growing by handing Ed the Philosopher’s Stone at the end. Things like that. But they didn’t need to do any of that to portray Roy, the plot, and anything else well.

So that wasn’t spot on for his portrayal. While I can’t hate the movie for or be disappointed about how they portrayed him, it’s also not something that made me gravitate to my number one favorite FMA character as much as I usually do.

Character Representation and the Handling of Women Characters

Some characters were put more to the sidelines than they could have been. Al, though he had some notable moments fighting and performing alchemy, was given secondary attention compared to Ed. Writing definitely focused on Ed’s side of the brotherhood, Ed caring about Al, Ed trying to get their bodies back... rather than amplifying the brotherly team effort Arakawa gave them. It’s a common fallacy in movies and shows... they try to make the protagonist more protagonist-y, make the protagonist more central, make the protagonist do everything. But that’s not the charm of the Elric brothers. You need them both at their best and most present. 

It’s more emotional that way, too, and would have bettered not only Al’s portrayal... but Ed’s as well. The character they ironically were trying to better, they took away from instead.

I also felt like there was a pattern to which characters were more likely sidelined. I know that FMA is a story centered around the military, and the military in Amestris is more men than women... but Arakawa writes a variety of memorable, important women, too, in the manga. For every strong male character she has, there is a woman alongside him kicking butt just as powerfully and memorably. Did you feel the same thing I did... where it seemed like the women were the most likely to be reduced in the live action? (Apart from Winry, ’cause you got to [clenches fist] have a movie’s stereotypical love interest for the protagonist, you know?)

Izumi Curtis, extremely important character, 100% absent. Maria Ross has almost no lines, and two-thirds of them are Envy impersonating Maria. The only time Maria herself appears is to bring Ed a sandwich. Riza’s role is reduced, too. She has only one major conversation in the movie... though at least she fared better than others, and we got to see her in action.

It’s true that lots of male characters were deleted - Havoc, Breda, Fuery, Falman, Bradley, Scar, Brosh, Alex Armstrong. But of the women characters who remain, they didn’t make much of an impression. And that’s my point. Trisha grazed by. Winry’s automail talents and obsession was downplayed, rarely mentioned. Maria and Riza were notable for one plot point each. Lust was the one woman given a lot of good stuff and that’s because she’s the main villain leading this adventure. Lust’s presence still doesn’t erase the fact that the plot, the events, the “good stuff” felt like it was given all to the men.

We only barely passed the Bechdel Test when Winry talks to Nina briefly about playing together.

I felt like something was slightly “off” about how the women were presented on screen. We didn’t get sexualization, thank the heavens, but neither did we get butt-kicking women representation like FMA always has had.

The Best Parts of Character Portrayal

But!!! There were definitely some portrayal aspects I enjoyed a lot! And honestly, as much as I’m not gungho about how lots of characters were portrayed, I didn’t find them objectionable either? It was fun?

To give just one example of something I quite liked: Doctor Marcoh showed how you don’t have to have extensive screen time to nail down a character. He felt like Marcoh. You see the skittish, concerned man who tries to shoot the unexpected visitor who opens the door. You see the man hesitant to talk about the Philosopher’s Stone, but in the end gives Ed a clue to discover information about it.

And I mentioned the actors who always felt on... Riza Hawkeye, Shou Tucker, and Maes Hughes, too.

Overall, while I didn’t get the full characters, everyone was the character I knew. And it was great to see them on screen!

Like, Ed chasing after Cornello at the start? Way fun. Roy blasting fire at homunculi? Right on. Al sweetly, awkwardly explaining alchemy to the citizens of Reole? Yay. Nina rushing in to play? All for that. Shou Tucker telling Ed that they’re alike? Oh fuck if that wasn’t one of the best scenes in the film.

Alright. With that, I’ll post this and start to write Part 2!!! I’ll be talking a lot about plot in that one, so hold on tight.

[renaroo]

Wednesday Roundup

Basically this week came along and went “you know what, Rena really needs a pick me up” and it delivered pretty much a little bit of everything that I love and then just kept on giving. It was a fantastic, exciting, and enjoyable time reading every one of these and I’m excited to just jump right into it!

Viz’s My Hero Academia, DC’s Superman, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, IDW’s Transformers: Till All Are One

Viz’s My Hero Academia (2014- ) Vol. 8 Kōhei Horikoshi

I don’t know if I’ve ever included manga on the Roundups before now, I know I have anime. Regardless, if you had to guess before, no guesses now because I absolutely adore My Hero Academia and keeping up with the manga publishing has only deepened that love.

It’s one of the most beautiful, surprising superhero stories I’ve read and I just am so blown away by the detail and heart put into every moment of it. Izuku continues to be one of the most inspiring takes on a superhero I’ve ever seen and watching him grow to surpass, in some ways, even his mentor has felt just right. 

There’s also the perfect balance of growing tension with the League of Villains and the ever growing unsettling nature of Shigaraki balanced with the lessening of the antagonism with Izuku and Katsuki. And seeing how Izuku inspires all of his classmates every day -- it blows me away, quite literally.

That being said... the sexual politics are about on par with every other shonen out there which is... not great. There can be standout characters, of course, but exceptions don’t make the rules, and especially since the teenage girls are pretty much all naked in one page of this volume... that doesn’t get better. Unsurprising considering that the creator has said before that he considers himself a pervert and likens himself to Mineta who gets a whole subplot dedicated in this volume to how his aspirations of being a hero in order to “get chicks” is literally enough to propel him to the same accolades as his fellow Class A students. I get it’s humorous but every time we waste time on Mineta and the gross womanizer subplots every volume I think of how we could be spending that time with Asui or even Uraraka. 

Overall this is just another stellar volume, and actually introduces us and Izuku to the concept of people in the world who don’t like heroes for good reason. It’s very interesting and I am excited to see how we dive into these things more deeply in the future. 

DC’s Superman (2016- ) #22 Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, Wil Quintana

Now this is the Lois Lane action story I think we all deserve!

Sincerely, I really love this issue and I’m so grateful that after years of being poorly treated like Lois has been, she is back in full force and given so much to do as well. Like how she takes on the entire town on her own and solves the big mystery of the town being fake whereas Mister World’s Greatest Detective is in some kinda... tube. Thing. 

So this issue is amazing because it’s a great Lois Lane issue, but I also am really appreciating what this storyline is doing overall, too.

This is a reexamination of the hokey, too-good-to-be-true Smallville setup that the original Superboy (Clark) grew up in, and bringing into question how mechanized and falsified that old American Dream kind of is. It’s as artificial as anything else, and the people who profess to support “family values” and putting “the child first” -- in this case Jon -- might not have the family’s wellbeing at heart after all. 

Or perhaps I’m reading too much into it due to my own experiences with the so-called American Hometown. We’ll have to wait for the next issue to see for sure ; ) 

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011- ) #69 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Ronda Pattison

Look, if you’re not reading Teenage Mutant Ninja TUrtles and you call yourself a comic fan, you’ve gotta reevaluate because I cannot, I repeat, I cannot express enough how blown away I am by the fact that we’re 69 issues into a comic and we’re still just as surprising, still just as character-driven, still just as competent and comprehensive as we are. 

I mean, really what else is there to say about a comic that literally cannot be stopped? Which continues to raise stakes even after saving the world from interdimensional aliens already.... TWICE? 

It’s all in the delivery, of characters and of their arcs along with the fact that every character is fleshed out so that you feel the humanity even in the characters who do the nastiest, evilest things you can imagine in the issue.

AND there is a character named after Sally Ride. AND there is an adorable pink dinosaur pet. AND you almost cry for poor Slash (or if you’re a GOOD person you DEFINITELY cry).

Everything’s awesome and we’re just halfway through this story. Which is even more awesome. Every arc of TMNT just delivers and I love it. 

IDW’s Transformers: Till All Are One (2016- ) #9 Mairghread Scott, Sara Pitre-Durocher, Joana Lafuente

This issue was kind of a revelation for me. Like, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed TAAO up to this point, make no mistake. Sometimes I like it more than even Lost Light and MTMTE right toward the end of its run. But one thing that has always kind of taken me unawares is that I’m not entirely certain about the characterization for Starscream. 

I honestly have missed the more petty, unreasonable, and downright villainous Starscream we all know and love. And it’s been interesting but also somewhat hard to understand where his development was going. Like not even Megatron could believe Starscream would maintain his power through anything but lies and ruthlessness.

And in this issue, we finally get our answer. 

I’m genuinely surprised that Windblade seems to actually be dead, but we’ll see if that’s as it appears. After all, she’s a popular, fan voted character. But at the same time I can’t help but wonder where else her character’s direction could go. 

Elita One is fantastic and I also really enjoyed the Mistress of Flames. There’s just so many great characters, I adore it. 

It’s such a fascinating development and I’m really excited to follow Chromia and Cyberton now. 

I honestly loved everything I read today and for once didn’t have to dive into huge criticisms on just about anything other than my general feelings toward My Hero Academia’s sexual politics. And even then that feels like something so small compared to the greater whole of the read, and that can be said for all the comics I’m featuring today.

But my pick for best of the week has to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This comic continues to impress, to shock, and to awe me with damn near every issue. I could not be happier every time I read it!

But that’s just me, what are your thoughts on today’s pull? Any comics I didn’t pick up you love? I’d love to know!