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cherryclakanin-blog · 5 years ago

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CHARACTER DESIGN

CHARACTER INFORMATION

Name: Estelle

Race: Magical (Sorcerer)

Age: 17

Magic:

Father-inherited: Air - Sun Mother-inherited: Fire - Moon

Strand (Other World): Alchemy

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

Dealer at a human school.

Used to be an alchemist student from a parallel world but went through a portal.

Her body's artificial with insertion of a soul and magic from both of her parents because her parents are of different species and can’t produce and offspring.

She strong (power-wise in using magic) but her stamina is weak.

PERSONALITY

Arrogant (at first) and sassy but chill.

Gets easily frustrated when she can’t be good at something right away.

Has an inferiority complex because of her situation in the magical world but she slowly learns to accept herself through her time on earth while making business with people and learning about humans and spending her days in “Luna Magica Academy”.

TRINKETS

Heirloom

holds partial magic. Every magical has this object or something of the like. It's for controlling power. It’s comparable to a wand or staff used by magicians from classic literature and story books.

It helps manifest the power and change its form. For example if an individual inherited water-based magic, using the heirloom, they can transform it into water healing magic. Skilled users can even transform their element to use a different element (but to an extent).

Basically, if your magical energy stored within the heirloom is the same amount of energy as the magic you want to use, you can transform your magic to an ability outside of your own capabilities with the heirloom.

Amount and power of magic depends on the wielder's skill, and talent regardless of quality of heirloom (although quality of heirloom is also a big factor in magic making).

Suitcase

That's where she lives.

A gift from parents because since she’s from the alchemy division, she does frequent research and tends to stays over at school or goes home late. It was given to her so she could stay at school when she needs to. Permission was asked from the headmaster so it’s all good.

Also made it into a storage room so it's a mess.

100sqm x 100 sqm, 2 floors on the inside

Glasses

Conceals eye color so criminal magicals don’t finds out she's one of them or so that nobody thinks she’s weird.

Dealer jacket

Contains magical stuff that she sells when someone approaches her for it... sort of like sketchy dealers from games and movies.

OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS

Ellis

Met Estelle by asking her for a potion.

Has pure magical parents but was tossed out by relatives because they thought he had no powers, he's abandoned. He also knows this story because he was already conscious when this happened.

Didn’t know he was a magical until he found out Estelle wanted use him because her body’s too weak to handle very immense magic.

eyes: instead of having a glint is completely empty.

Thought he had no powers but he's made sort of like a shell (i.e. you can insert magic in him)

Living heirloom (can transform into weapons or magical items)

Gemini

Junior gatekeeper(s)

disguised as students because they were tasked to pursue Estelle.

not actually twins the sign gemini just needs to manifesters

magic: Air - Sun and Moon

Sansa

Estelle’s best friend from the Other World

magic: aparition and astral projection

Turns out they were following Estelle when she was breaking in the sacred rooms and reported everything to the ministry

actually didn't like Estelle, she was jealous of her and was pushing her to steal the object.

LORE

The magic world has no concept of time so it's hard to control where you jump if you encounter a portal. It could be anywhere at any time and is dangerousif you’re not trained in time magic.

Powers are inherited

You could distinguish magicals from non-magicals with the glint in their eyes (Estelle has bluish gray eyes with a glint of pink)

Gatekeepers - guards time and space since it's very fragile, ancient, and barely touched magic.

Astrology is important because constellations and planet alignment are important to finding the gates that separate the two worlds.

Magic school - kind of like school on earth, from very young to high school students are taught the necessary things and basic magic and construct of the world while higher enchantment (SHS) gives students a choice for specialization. After HS you can go for higher learning or not.

Some jobs don't require magic at all

Current era earth contains very very tiny amounts of magic since criminals are banished here (explanation for sightings of the supernatural.. e.g. aswang and those who carry great “luck” that are the so-called “mediums” and “voodoo witch doctors” on earth)

“Luck“ is the only form of magic within humans. Their luck also coincide with Astrology and the alignment of various heavenly bodies. If it is taken out, they futures might turn haywire. If you have only a small portion of luck, you could still accumulate some through a) practicing good karma b)getting astrologically connected with your sun and moon signs.

In the past united non-magic earth and magic earth used to be one until the Disaster of Divine Separation happened where half of the population lost their magic and the other half didn’t. This caused a divide as the ones who retained magic called themselves the “chosen ones” and those who didn’t got ridiculed. So the now non-magicals threw a rebellion which forced the separation of the normal and supernatural.

All magic fall under the four elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) and two categories (Sun and Moon).

STORY

Estelle is a genius at their school although, she's arrogant and prideful because of her talent. You could say she's admired but also disliked. Her parents are also quite powerful and hold high regard of their daughter. Her co-students don't wanna praise her though because they know it'll further inflate her ego.

Eventually their class went on a trip to the ministry of magic (not Harry Potter lol I just couldn’t think of a name) where all magic records, historical events, and experimentation are kept. The ministry also guards the sacred artifacts which hold the "secrets" of time magic. Only selected people could handle time magic, even if one is very powerful but cannot contain this magic will not be able to handle it.

Prior to this trip, Estelle had a fight with her Higher enchantment professor because she was saying she’ll make the ministry make her a gatekeep and was acting all high and mighty. Her professor told her "whatever you become, in that state, you’re not going to be as good as your parents".

Maybe it was the professor’s choice of words but it didn’t sit right with her. Estelle’s parents were former gatekeepers that now work for the ministry after their contract ended (and also by choice). During the selection period, she didn't get picked.

Due to desperation and wanting to “show them all” she planned to go to the artifact room and see if she could handle time magic. Her friend Sansa helped her with distracting security and Estelle was already good enough to bypass the guards.

When she reached the room of the sacred artifacts. Because she wasn’t at the right location and time of alignment, and for various other reasons, she failed in trying to use the items and the whole ministry’s magic got drained then she got transported to the earthly world.

Naturally she was very confused but one thing lead to another, she got scammed into enrolling into "Luna Magica Academy" which she thought was a magic school that could help her get back to the Other World, but in all truth it was just a name of a private school with zero magic. She wasn’t fond of reading history books as she thought they weren’t necessary. Here, aside from being frustrated by the whole ordeal, she get's a taste of failure as she doesn't know anything about earth and their studies.

Here, she notices a lot of problems in the non-magic world that could easily be fixed by magic. From typical things like aching backs and sores to things done by other magical beings banished to the earthly world .

Because of this, she thought of opening up a service where she sells potions and extinguishes problems for a price of a portion of that person's luck. Since they didn’t know what she was talking about and thought they had nothing to lose, they’d agree to this contract. She puts their luck in her heirloom in hopes of trying to return (she still has this the sacred artifact btw).

Business runs smoothly but then she meets a guy asking for her help, a healer’s potion to be exact. Through the emptiness in his eyes, she figures out that he's a powerful living heirloom and makes a contract with him, without him knowing he was an heirloom. From here on out, he became her assistant and according to the contract will help her with whatever problem may be and agree if she asks for “divine” help.

Long story short, as she interacts with more people and encounters their problems and commit many failures both in school and personal life, she slowly loses her will to do business for the sake of acquiring magic as she doesn't want to take away other people's luck and becomes guilty whenever she lets someone sign her contract.

As she grows as a person, makes new friends and her abilities in academics improve (since she catches up quick), and feels normal, she felt like she found her place and nearly forgets her desire to go back to earth. She even thought of opening up a magic shop (totally not sketchy at all) after graduation.

But of course fun times ain’t the end of it all, because someone enrolls in their school - part of the gatekeepers, Gemini. And everything was coming back to her.

Of course this had to happen, she still had the artifact, naturally someone was going to chase her. Although she didn’t want to leave anyone behind and didn’t want anyone to forget her, she most of all didn't want to get the people she interacted with on earth involved because she knows at that point that she made a mistake. So it was back to plan A - to go back to before she stole the artifact, the day of the ministry field trip and he needed Ellis to get back.

When he found out he was mad, they fought but eventually made up. They talked to the people they helped in school and they all agreed to give her a part of their luck (she returned these people's lucks after meeting Ellis, also everyone at the school knows she’s not ordinary by now) to her.

Ellis also agreed on letting her use him as an heirloom. They guided their way through the constellations while escaping Gemini’s surveillance. She finds the portal entry and uses Ellis to get back.

After the travel, she realizes she transported at the exact time that she left and found out her friend, Sansa snitched on her. Afterwards she got into all sorts of trouble and was banned from entering the Other World until she fixes everything on earth because after she opened the portal of time - the ministry which is also a prison had the criminals escape.

She's gotta find em, on this journey she’s going to be accompanied by Ellis and Gemini.

She goes back to earth and apologizes to everyone and thanks ‘em before venturing off through time and space to find these criminals.

to be continued in season 2...

#character design

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marcusssanderson · 6 years ago

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10 Ways To Become a Better and Faster Learner

Have you ever wondered how fast learners can absorb any knowledge effortlessly and hold it, as if their memory had infinite capacity?

You know learning is crucial for self-growth and professional development. You are hungry for knowledge…

But somehow your attempts so far have not been as efficient or effective as you expected. You can’t find time to learn. You seem to forever fight distractions. The newly learnt facts pour out of your head like water from a strainer.

So it’s time to give up and hang up your learning hat? No! Don’t do that! And don’t look for magic potions, either.

Below are ten evidence-based, proven ways to help you become a better and fast learner. Keep reading to discover how to learn faster. We all can develop fast learning skills.

10 Ways To Become a Better and Faster Learner

1. Sharpen your focus

The most common problem students of all ages and stages face these days are distractions brought by the modern world’s busyness and noise. With so many things competing for our attention our ability to focus for prolonged periods of time is reduced.

Don’t give in to the pressure to multitask. Multitasking is damaging your ability to concentrate. Research show that people who multitask take twice as much time and make more twice as many errors than those who don’t. Focus on one thing at the time.

Technology kills focus, too, providing distraction galore and opportunities to give in to procrastination. Turn off any notifications: emails, social media, and messengers. Put your phone on silent. Let yourself immerse in the learning process.

2. Be intentional

It’s hard to learn if you’re not sure what you want to learn. Have a clear purpose for your learning. Be it personal growth, or professional development, having a clear WHY helps keep us on track and fight distractions.

Research shows that attitude to learning is the most powerful factor predicting academic success.

Positive learning mindset is a combination of motivation, clear goals, the sense of self efficacy (believing in your own abilities to achieve your goals ) and being surrounded by people who support you in your learning goals and expect you to achieve them.

3. Have a learning plan and stick to it

‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’- A. De Saint-Exupery

If you have a purpose to your learning, set clear learning goals. Long-term goals should be aligned with your long-term personal growth or professional development plans. Break them down into medium-and short-term goals.

Build you learning plan based on that. Don’t forget to have a plan for every learning session, even if it’s just a few points you need to cover. This will keep you on track and help you cover what you need to cover.

4. Use every opportunity for learning

Once you’re out of school, it’s hard to find time for learning. We get so busy with work, family and other ‘grown up’ commitments. But don’t let the lack of time become an excuse. With technology, you can learn anywhere and without having to carry heavy books around.

You can access a wealth of knowledge with a simple tap on your smartphone or other mobile device: from ebooks, audiobooks, YouTube videos, or entire courses and ‘nanodegrees’ at MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and many of them – for free. Make sure you always have learning resources at your fingertips when going out.

Use synchronising apps, such as Kindle or Evernote (all platforms), or iBooks (Apple) to effortlessly pick up where you left off, and don’t forget to take notes(you can make notes in many e-reading apps).

5. Sleep plenty

Wanna know what’s the easiest way to become a fast learner? Get plenty of sleep.

Sleep is the time when our brain processes and ‘practices’ stuff we’ve learnt during the day. Sleep is crucial for consolidation of newly learnt information.

National Sleep Foundation recommends that a healthy, non-pregnant, working adult should get 7-9 hrs of sleep per night.

If you’ve not been sleeping too well, check NSF website for tips on improving your sleep and see your doctor.

6. Exercise regularly

And if you’re ready for something a little harder but still sure-fire: put on your training gear. Exercise improves memory, executive functions, spacial tasks, reaction time and even math skills.

If not for your physical and mental health/happiness, schedule regular exercise for the sake of becoming a better and fast learner. Even if it’s a half-hour brisk walk a couple of times per week.

7. Take useful notes

There is no effective learning without effective recall. And the first step to being able to recall what you’ve learnt is to take notes. Notes that capture the essence of the learnt material and are written in your own wordsnot only serve as a storage of knowledge, which can be accessed quickly at a later time, but also enhance the process of creating connections – which is crucial to ‘deeper learning’.

Record any relevant dates and names, definitions, arguments and examples. If you’re learning for practical purposes, e.g. to solve a particular problem in your business, write down what’s relevant to you and use examples from your world to illustrate the concepts presented.

There are multiple note-taking systems: outlining, Cornell notes, mind-mapping, etc. Pick up one that works best for you.

8. Fight the forgetting curve

The learner’s biggest enemy is the Forgetting Curve.

The Forgetting curve graph illustrates how quickly we forget the learnt material if we don’t take care. Generally speaking, around 70% of what we’ve learnt is gone out of our heads within 24hrs.

To ensure your newly absorbed knowledge doesn’t evaporate from your memory, schedule revisions and relearning into your diary. This can be as simple as going over your notes (see, they’re useful!), or even scanning the headlines/sub-headlines in the textbook. However, the most effective strategy is to put your learning into practice ASAP.

Adults best learn things that are relevant to them and when the knowledge and skills acquired can solve real-life problems. Having a practical project, even short and simple, provides you with excellent opportunities for immediate application of the learnt theory.

9. Don’t bother with learning styles but take context for learning into consideration

The theory of learning styles (e.g. visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners) still holds quite strongly, but actually, scientific evidence to support its effectiveness is weak

Don’t get me wrong, I like it too – it’s convenient and fun, but evidence is evidence. You’re welcome to use whichever learning preference suits you best, however, more importantly, take into consideration the context for learning.

If you have an audio book you want to retain a lot of information from, don’t listen to in while driving. Firstly, you won’t be able to fully concentrate on driving AND listening,so please do not do it for your own and other road users’ sake. Secondly, you won’t be able to take notes.

Choose something less knowledge-dense, or more entertaining. If you’re intending to read while on a train, consider taking a notebook with you, or take notes in the reading app.

Conversely, if you want to learn a practical skill, such as knitting or wood work, you’d be probably better off watching videos rather than reading a book/article even with some pictures.

10. Set up a study routine

Study routine is a powerful way to boost your learning abilities. It puts you on a ‘learning autopilot’: you don’t have to remember you’re supposed to learn now, you don’t have to fight motivational battles, you just quietly get on with it and reap the rewards of regular learning.

Start with as little time as you can dedicate to it, but be practical – there is little use of 5min, if you not able to complete your task. The easiest way to commit to a regular study/learning session is to use an existing slot of time you already have to yourself. Commute, exercise time, lunch breaks, or house chores time can work well here. Just add a book/audio course or video series to it and don’t forget to take notes.

Another great advantage of having a regular slot dedicated to learning is that you can schedule your ‘revisions’ into it. If you’re reading about Emotional Intelligence today, recap the highlights of today’s reading tomorrow – to consolidate your knowledge.

Hack into your learning brain

You are motivated to life-long learning and self-development. You put your time and effort into learning. Now, you need to maximize the return on your investment in learning. Use those evidence-based tricks to take your knowledge to the next level.

Keep practicing these strategies, and with time, you’ll see what difference the right tools can make. Your ‘brain power’ will boost, your memory will improve. You will become a more powerful, more efficient and more effective fast learner.

The post 10 Ways To Become a Better and Faster Learner appeared first on Everyday Power.

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theycallmeshaggyrogers · 7 years ago

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Essay One: ‘Anastasia’ Probably Could Have Been Great

This post will contain spoilers. There, I'm guiltless.

Have you ever heard a premise or logline to a movie that sounded so promising that there was no conceivable way in your mind that it could fail? And were you absolutely bewildered when you watched said movie your hopes were slowly choked out of you? Well, that's what watching Don Bluth's 1997 animated musical Anastasia feels like. Now, despite being a 90s fetus and having grown up watching French-dubbed Disney Renaissance films from relatively the same time period this film was released, I had not watched Anastasia until last December. It was the Tuesday night before my final exams/presentations/seminars went into full swing, and rather than dutifully studying like a good boy trying to retain his scholarship and federal grants so he can attend an out-of-state college for half the price, I decided to watch a couple animated movies that had been on my bucket list for well over a year at that point (though I only got around to watching two).

The first was Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, and while Fritz's plot is kind of a disconnected mess, it was quite enjoyable thematically and aesthetically. I had also went in with very little context. Sure, I saw the opening scene of those dumb college girls fawning over the crow dude just cause he was African-American, I knew it was famous for being a raunchy, animated movie intended for adults, and on more than one occasion I have had to draw in Robert Crumb's style for class, but that's all I really knew about Fritz.

Anastasia on the other hand has perplexed me. I knew of it, which is to say, all I knew was the premise, that of the sole surviving heir of the Romanov Dynasty living in secret after the Bolsheviks deposed her father during the Russian Revolution. I don't recall watching it as a child. However, as I got older and began transitioning into high school, I started taking an interest in the Edwardian period, Tsarist Russia, World War I and tons and tons and tons amateur alternate history stories I found online. I specifically became curious about what led to the fall of the 300 year-old Romanov dynasty.

I even wrote a similar story going off Anastasia's premise because I was so infatuated with the idea that the Romanovs were able to survive such a violent deposition effort, just as the House of Bourbon did following the French Revolution (the first one at least). Like your average American Civil War buff, I like this idea of putting a “what-if?” spin on history that is fairly recent in the grand scheme of things, but has long since left cultural memory on account of those living at the time slowly dying off, and it seems that modern American media agrees with me on that sentiment, even if the more maintstream content is centered almost exclusively about Nazis and World War II.

But yeah, Anastasia has a premise that I'm sold on, is set in a country that I love for a bajillion and one reasons during a rather recent period in European history that I am genuinely fascinated by.

And guess what? It sucks.

Anastasia, for all that it does stylistically to emulate the story, aesthetic and pacing of a Disney film, is just mediocre, its premise wasted. It very much feels like a knock-off or a mockbuster with an extraordinarily high budget to match that of your average 1990s animated feature. Those who have watched Anastasia before reading this post probably assumed that the film's budget was remarkably lower than that of other big-budget animated movies being produced at the time, and I am here to dispel that assumption with the help of a series of simple Google searches.

For context, 1995's Pocahontas had a budget of $55 million, 1991's Beauty and the Beast had approximately half the budget of Pocahontas, and 1994's The Lion King, arguably the most well-remembered of the Renaissance Disney films according to my generation in particular, had a budget of $45 million. Anastasia had a budget of $50 million. And I am using Disney films as a comparison because Anastasia is very much trying to look and feel like a Disney film, and it's falling embarrassingly flat. Its character designs look like Disney knock-offs, its score feels like imitation-Alan Menkin, and even its use of 3D renders feels like Don Bluth was trying to 1-up the technological marvels done well by Beauty and the Beast. Hell, you can even tell based off Anastasia's character designs who fits into which archetype in your big-budget kids movie.

The titular Anya is the unquestionably feminine but nonetheless strong-willed female lead, as well as the “Princess™”, and her design by the third act of the movie reminds me strongly of 1953's Cinderella. Vlad is the obligatory comic relief because... well, cause he's older and fat. You think he's gonna be the protagonist? As much as that would have been cool, considering his background as a former member of the exterminated nobility and the emotional implications the Russian Revolution may have left on him and all, this movie had to be marketed towards kids, ergo, young leads in their twenties. But I digress. That annoying little dog-looking creature (whose name I forget even after re-watching the movie to write this) is the mute comic-relief animal sidekick who can be pushed heavily in the marketing, and Bartok is the other animal sidekick who is cute enough to be memorable and/or marketable for the movie's sake, but not cute enough to make you forget that he's technically an antagonist. Bartok's master Rasputin is self-explanatory, though that said, the over-exaggeration of facial features to make the antagonist inhuman is kind of par for the course regarding animated movies from this time and the eras preceding it. I don't feel that I need to explain myself in too much depth here, especially since the Don Bluth take on Grigori Rasputin has the emotional depth of the Sea of Azov.

However, Dmitri appears to be the exception to this rule of taking well-established Disney archetypes and making knock-off characters from them. Obviously he's the dude half of this movie's forced breeding pair on account of his youthful charm (that translates into hideously rotoscoped facial features), but I don't think he really embodies any direct resemblance to a male Disney lead or even the generic handsome princes characters of Snow White, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Maybe he's meant to be modeled off all those lookalike, generic handsome prince characters with a hint of Aladdin on account of his street smarts and non-royal status. Or maybe, just maybe, Dmitri's design makes him less an archetypal Disney rip-off and instead, a carefully-crafted prettyboy meant to catch the eye of the average preteen girl in 1997, one who probably listened to a lot of boy bands with pasty, broody, Dmitri-looking skinny white dudes on the cover with his exact haircut. This is honestly just speculation with no further research on my part, but I genuinely think Don Bluth was going for a 90s-boy band look for his strapping male lead, or was otherwise convinced by some focus group during pre-production that this was a sound decision. And I have to repeat myself here: it's shame that in trying to capture the essence of a moody bad boy, Bluth went the extra mile and made him as awkwardly-animated as possible, which is saying something considering how awkwardly-animated every other proportionally-realistic character is to begin with.

The animation quality of Anastasia is probably the most glaring indicator that you're not actually watching a Disney movie, not because it's awful, but because its quality varies from character model to character model. Dmitri's character design is probably the closest in resemblance to a real person, but that benefit, if you can even call it that, is immediately squandered when you put a more stylized character like Vlad (or really any one-note side character from the film) in the same shot. Members of the royal family suffer from this issue too. Their designs seem to be based off real models rather than possess the stylization Don Bluth is famous for. Nicholas II and Anya's sisters in this regard are alright since they are minor characters with only a few speaking lines if any at all, but in the case of Empress Marie, a major supporting character, she ends up animating in the same janky manner as Dmitri. I don't think Bluth could decide whether or not to go with the exaggerated caricatures he is so accustomed to, or committing to realistic character models that would likely be hard to animate consistently. The end result that was reached seems to be this loose middle-ground where everything just feels awkward and inconsistent.

I also wanna touch on the liberal use of 3D animation a bit too, because it is probably my biggest issue with this movie's overall aesthetic. This isn't to say I have an issue with 3D, and if you can make it work in your movie, then more power to you. This issue with 3D in Anastasia however is simply the fact that it does not mesh well with the 2D setting at all. This movie has all these beautiful hand-painted backgrounds for nearly every shot but once we've moved on from the abandoned Catherine Palace (why wasn't that touched at all by the Bolsheviks again? It's been a solid decade post-timeskip right?) and onto the the train, the fact that the entire locomotive itself is a CG render will not be able to leave your head, because it is just that obvious. The one time the CG isn't blatantly tacked-on is the opening shot, depicting two music box figurines of the tsar and his wife, and that's where I think this then-budding animation technology worked the best. It did not work for a model as big as an noticeably unmanned ocean liner being battered by painstakingly-animated 2D waves.

Now, this isn't to say that CG animation was not viable for animated motion pictures of the 1990s; it very well was. The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses it quite excellently throughout the film to render large crowds of Parisians as well as various exterior shots of the eponymous cathedral itself, and are perhaps the most memorable shots of that movie. Beauty and the Beast famously used the new technology to great effect as well during the famous ballroom scene. But in these two particular cases, the 3D was used largely as a backdrop to save the animators time when working on a particular shot. They were not necessarily the point of attention in the shots they appeared in; the protagonists were.

When Quasimodo is expressing his desire to attend the Festival of Fools at the beginning of Hunchback and is climbing all about the cathedral singing all angelically and whatnot, he is always the center of attention in each shot. Meanwhile, in Anastasia, many of the ship scenes during the storm are wide shots which go on for long enough that the viewer is able to identify that these backgrounds, are in fact, 3D. In all of these instances, 3D rendering was used as a crutch that made production easier. In the better-executed examples however, the directors demonstrated a degree of restraint.

Don't even get me started with that CG pegasus statue either.

Now this entire post so far has been me harping on the technical blunders of Anastasia, but if a movie looked a bit goofy at times due to inexperienced animators, the grandiose expectations of a director, time constraints or experimental technology that just wasn't there yet, it can probably make up for that with a cohesive and engaging story, of which Anastasia does not have any of these things. My first glaring issue going into this movie was how the movie introduces and frames Rasputin. There is no explanation given as to how or why he's a necromancer. In fact, necromancy seems inappropriate for Rasputin's character considering from a historic basis, he was believed to be a spiritual healer blessed by God, who I'm pretty sure frowns upon pagan magic regardless of one's denomination. I will admit that it is an interesting take on Rasputin's character given the fact that he is remembered pretty negatively by history, but with that said, if he was a necromancer, how would he have been able to convince the extremely religious, extremely superstitious Tsarevna Alexandra that he was in fact this God-blessed mystic who could cure her son of hemophilia? What could have made this work was if Rasputin was in fact used his infamously adept persuasion to convince the tsar that his dark powers were actually good powers, allowing the suspicions held by his detractors in court to appear far less warranted than they were in reality.

Regardless, the nature of Rasputin's powers go unexplained in the movie and is hand-waived by Empress Marie as “oh, we trusted him but he turned out to be hella fake lol”. It is also never explained in Anastasia how Rasputin lost favor with the Russian court, which is arguably the inciting incident of the film and happens within the first five or so minutes of its runtime. That is an issue in of itself. These thoughts immediately came to mind as I was watching Anastasia, breaking the immersion even more with each raised question gone unanswered. Would I have known Dmitri was going to be an integral character from the split-second shot where he was introduced? That's the biggest issue with the plot of Anastasia itself: it does not give you any breathing room.

The first five minutes throw story beat after story beat at you; Russian aristocrats are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty, Dowager Empress Marie confides in her granddaughter that she will be leaving for Paris and hands her the plot-device music box, Rasputin storms in, crashes the party, curses Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks immediately attack the Catherine Palace, and Anya escapes, only to contract amnesia while fleeing. Ideally, these beats are meant for the first half of a first act, spanning about ten to fifteen minutes at most, not the first five!

The opening scenes of this movie feel insanely rushed, and it just keeps happening and happening. Rasputin destroyed the train? Fuck it, Anya, Vlad, Dmitri and Annoying Dog will just walk to the nearest port city instead, and it'll be a merry old trip where Anya's groomed for her inevitable reunion with her grandmother! Not a single beat in this story felt organic, which in turn, as someone who has watched enough family-friendly animated features as an adult to pick up on particular narrative beats, made it predictable. By the time the climactic confrontation between Anya and Rasputin had commenced, I was so disinterested with what was happening because I knew where this story was going: Rasputin was gonna die in some way, be it through hubris, being outwitted by Anya, or a deliberate fake-out (guess what, it was behind door #3!). My only respite throughout this entire movie was the fact that Anya and Dmitri's endless exchange of sarky retorts never got tired for me for some odd reason. I understand that giving both of these characters sardonic, witty personalities was meant to show chemistry between the two, but it all feels like filler dialogue when their inevitable union at the end of the movie barely feels earned, especially when I'm 20 minutes into the movie and I still can't figure out if this animated musical is supposed to be an intense historical drama or a romantic comedy. I can barely remember anything about Anya's personality beyond her snark. She's humble, pretty without trying, and a well-meaning person, but so was Cinderella. She's witty and sharp-tongued to a degree, but so was Beauty's Belle and Hercules' Megara.

Finally, no criticism of Anastasia is complete without examining the ethics behind basing a story off a violent major event in a nation's already violent history. Anyone who has read up on the causes of the Russian Revolution would be made aware of the empire's horrible mismanagement at the hands of Nicholas II. They would know that at the time of World War I, Russia was bankrupting itself, it was conscripting young men my age into a losing war without even being provided the proper equipment, and the Romanovs were effectively sitting on their hands the whole time. Listening to a grandiose opening musical number sung by the citizens of St. Petersburg bemoaning their lives under Soviet leadership all the while exchanging hopeful whispers of Anastasia's survival just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Moreover, on the opposite side of the social hierarchy, I was hoping to see surviving members of the old regime expressing how they felt after losing their power, and how it might have changed them, namely Vlad as well as Anya's grandmother, Empress Marie. I was hoping, from premise alone, that this movie would explore some more mature themes about power and how one comes to terms with losing it. Family-friendly movies don't have to be sanitized to be family-friendly, no matter what the hypersensitive, suburban white mom may tell you. Hunchback approached themes of infanticide, emotional manipulation, racism and religious zealotry through its villain, Claude Frollo, while Beauty and the Beast confronted hypermasculinity and human cruelty through Gaston. With that in mind, why did this film, predicated on a violent revolution with horrifying consequences in the form of a civil war, purges and genocide, have end up as thematically sterile as it did?

Admittedly, what I was hoping from Anastasia was probably too much for the production team at Twentieth Century Fox to get away with, because after all, when you make media that is meant to have a broad appeal, it means you have to make thematic sacrifices mandated by corporate. Sometimes, you can't write the story you want to write. I was expecting the very same story I wrote for myself all those years ago, one of a lost royal who must come to terms with the fact that the old empire has fallen and things will never be the same again. I was hoping that the true villain would be a former revolutionary or a member of Lenin's cabinet whose hatred of the monarchy spurred him to ruthlessly pursue any Romanov survivors, and not the one-note Rasputin whose motivation we don't even completely understand.

Apparently, Bluth never considered to use Bolsheviks as the antagonist faction of the film, though at one point it was bounced around that a fictional vigilante police officer with a grudge towards the old regime would be the central antagonist rather than Rasputin. And you know what? I'd dig that! But while a communist police officer taking the law into his own hands doesn't seem nearly as menacing as a corrupt priest turned-evil wizard, I definitely think it would have been a step in the right direction. If the writers went for the “vigilante police” angle, I think that aspect alone would be enough to warrant less egregious comparison to Disney at the time, at least from a characterization standpoint. We could probably have had this officer villain be multifaceted a villain with a complex sense of justice, or even a redeemable one at that! Not even Hunchback's Frollo had that narrative luxury!

I honestly think this movie could have been great, but it could only have been great had it chose to stand on its own two feet instead. It tried to be a Disney movie at Disney's then-artistic height since the 1950s. it tried to make use of 3D, it tried to make use of diegetic, catchy musical numbers, it tried to play into appealing character archetypes right down to their designs, and it tried to copy the broad-appeal narrative trappings of your average well-received Disney film. I think what Anastasia proves the most about itself is that while the “Disney style” can easily be replicated on account of its ubiquity and impact on western culture, that doesn't mean imitating the formula will always be a successful endeavor.

#shaggy essays

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